Episode 2

Abraham and Bella walked into the living room and looked around.

"How long were we unconscious for?" asked Bella, wiping her finger on a shelf and seeing a thin layer of dust.

Megan was a neat freak and hated dust. She made sure the house was dusted and cleaned every day. Now it looked like it hadn't been touched in a week.

"Like I said, I don't remember," Abraham whispered, and Bella only nodded.

Suddenly, they heard a dragging and snarling noise coming from the kitchen, and they looked into the room. Bella and Abraham's eyes widened as they saw their neighbor, Mr. Pitts, hobble into the room, dragging his foot, and he looked disgusting. Bella gasped, seeing the man's torso ripped open and half his intestines hanging out. Green decaying skin hung from his face, and his eyes were bloodshot red.

The mutant outstretched his arms and hobbled toward Bella and her father, groaning and snarling.

"Mr. Pitts?" Bella gasped.

The creature growled, drooling, and she realized her neighbor was a zombie described in her comic books.

"Bill, stop right there. It's me, Abe, and my daughter Bella. You know who we are," said Abraham.

Bella sighed, knowing what to do, and looked at her father.

"It's not really him," she breathed, seeing the set of fireplace pokers, and walked over to the fireplace.

The mutant man turned toward Bella and started hobbling her way. She sighed heavily, and Abraham watched in horror as his daughter stabbed their neighbor in the head. Blood splattered all over her, and she made a disgusted face as she pulled out the poker. The body fell to the floor, and Abraham stared at his daughter in awe.

"Why did you…did you have…" he stuttered breathlessly, and Bella grabbed a doily from the end table.

She wiped her face off and sighed as she looked at the dead mutant man.

"Welcome to the zombie apocalypse, Dad. You should be glad I read all those comics, or we would be up shit creek right about now," she said.

"Bell, that shit isn't real. You just killed our neighbor," he yelled.

They heard banging coming from outside the house, and Bella signaled for her father to be quiet.

"If we want to make it out of here alive, then you need to learn how to be quiet," she whispered, walking to the window.

She pulled back the curtain, and her heart surged, seeing her friends and people of the town turned into monsters and aimlessly roaming the streets of their quiet little town.

"Do you need to see it again?" she asked, and he walked to the window.

He still couldn't believe his eyes, staring at the grotesque monsters roaming the streets, and realized his daughter was right. This shit was real. Something turned their town into a wasteland for the unfortunate, and he knew they had to get out there and find their family.

"We need to get out of here, little bird," he whispered.

"Yep," Bella breathed, stepping back from the window.

She walked over to the garage door, opened it, and grinned, gesturing to her father's green truck and the black motorcycle.

"Did you already forget the truck and my bike are here?" she asked, and Abraham shook his head.

"Okay, go upstairs and gather what we need. I'll comb the downstairs. We will load everything in the truck," said Abraham, and Bella nodded.

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Bella entered her room and put on a pair of black bell-bottom jeans, a white tank top, steel-toe boots, and earrings up her lobes. She fastened her mother's moon necklace around her neck and slipped on her thigh, waist, and wrist knife holsters. When Bella was fourteen, her father signed her up for combat and specialty classes through the police department, where she was trained in Taekwondo, combat skills, and how to maneuver the sports bike in obstacles.

Bella stuffed bags with essentials, clothes, and anything else she could think of they would need or want. She entered her brother's room and grabbed a picture of him and her off his desk. Surprisingly, she saw an empty clear bottle with a label she had never seen before. She picked up the bottle and read the label.

"Chloroform!" Bella whispered and looked at the floor.

She saw a pipe with blood on the end of it and a rag next to where she woke up. Someone wanted her and her father out of the picture. But who would do something like that? Did someone take her mother and brother?

Bella scoffed, letting the bottle fall from her hand, and carried the bags downstairs. Abraham loaded the truck with bags, boxes of food, and supplies and helped his daughter load her bags. Bella loaded her side choppers and extra-throwing knives in the back of the truck, and her father grinned.

She made long flat sword-like flanks with sharp jagged edges for a class project in shop class a few years back, and everyone thought she was crazy for making them. Abraham thought they were a genius invention, and now she could use them.

"You sure you want to take the bike?" he asked, and Bella nodded.

"Yes, I'm not leaving it. We can use the short ramp to load it."

She grabbed the ramp, and Abraham helped her set it up.

"So, since you have an idea of what's going on around here. What happens when one of those things catches you?" he asked, and Bella chuckled.

"According to the comics, if they catch you and bite you, you turn in a matter of hours," she explained, rolling her bike to the truck.

Abraham helped maneuver the machine on the ramp and into the truck bed.

"Turn into what?"

"Them. The freaks, zombies, monsters. Whatever you want to call them. Once you're infected, you lose all your senses except the need to feed, like always being hungry even after you've eaten. Just a constant hunger that never goes away," she explained as they secured the bike, and Abraham sighed.

"Well, let's get out of here, check out the Base and police station, and head to the city."

Bella nodded, and they got in the truck.

"Did you grab everything you wanted? Because once we open that door, there's no coming back. Those things are going to raid the house," said Bella.

Abraham nodded, pushing the button for the garage door, but nothing happened, and Bella laughed. He looked at her oddly, and she laughed harder.

"There isn't any power. You are going to have to drive through the door."

Abraham laughed, threw the truck in gear, revved the engine, and crashed through the door, hitting two mutants. Blood splattered all over the windshield, and Bella and her father made disgusted faces. Abraham turned on the main road and headed for the police station first.