Surviving Day By Day (Book 1): So it Begins (6 page)

Not even thinking Beth reached into the back of her jeans and grabbed her Beretta. Once the door flew open she heard the cries of both of
her mom
and sister. She didn’t walk but ran into the room where she found
her dad
sitting up with
Mom
and Mary under his arms.
Her father was biting both her mother and sister, blood was all over his mouth.
Her mom
screamed, “GET OUT
,
BETH….SAVE YOURSELF!!!”

Time for that
Moment
had stopped. Beth had to assess the situation and assess it quickly.
Dad
was dead
just
a few minutes earlier. She knew this
be
cause
she, herself had checked and he had no pulse.
Now he was sitting up in bed with his eyes wide open and blood pouring out of his mouth.

Suddenly it became clear
, the news reports, the boy at Wal-mart and now her own father
! Whatever happened at the CDC was
highly
contagious and had taken her family. There was no way to contain them, no facility nearby and no medicines available.

Dad
then bit down even harder on poor Mary when he had finished with
Mom
and with their screams traveling through the room the decision had to be made.

Lifting her gun and locking
her dad
within her sight she
whispered, “I love you Daddy”…

Then not even thinking twice after firing her weapon she honed in on
her mom
and then Mary hitting all three of them dead center in the chest.

But even with the chest wound
her dad
jumped up and star
ted making his way over to Beth, m
oaning loudly in the process. Quickly she took a deep breath and aimed straight at her Dad’s head then fired.

Stanley’s body hit the floor with a thud and
her mom
started to move. As soon as Beth noticed the movements she side s
tepped over the body of her d
ad,
she than shot
her mom
point blank in the head. Mary had not moved yet but Beth didn’t even stop to think
, she
moved the gun over to Mary’s forehead then pulled the trigger.

With the sun now up Beth was quietly getting prepared to leave her
parents’
house. Knowing that her emergency kit was out in the trunk of her car she wasn’t too nervous about that. Wanting to make sure that she had a sufficient amount of bottled water and some food was what she really focused on. After making her way downstairs to grab a good size tote Beth walked over to the refrigerator where she knew
her dad
always
kept a twenty four case of bottled water.
Dad
would always stock up especially with Mary living with them she always liked having a nice cold bottle of water with one of her straws.

How the little things that brought her big sister comfort, would now be means of survival for Beth. Quickly she put the case
out in the garage beside two others,
when
she walked back to
the door she noticed there were some canned jellies and jams along with some beans and peaches
oh the storage shelves
.
Mom
had always
loved canning. Many a day went by when Beth was little, that she would sit outside on the
porch swing
snapping home grown green beans getting them ready for
Mom
. But the best thing in the whole entire world was
Mom
’s black raspberry jelly! Beth
memories continued to filter through her mind as she snatched up a
few jars
,
adding them to the tote
.

She
and Mary’s fingers would get stained from the berries when they would go down
past
the fields to the woods where the patches grew. For hours they both would pick the berries. That was before Mary got really sick. Mary would always look after Beth
but
when Mary got very ill
, that
was when Beth had to grow up quick
ly. That was the hardest part, w
atching Mary get sick as the time marched on and Beth continued to grow older.

At some point in time Beth took on the responsibility of being the older sister
. W
hen she got her job and moved out
, her mission was to cure Mary, w
hile
Mom
and
Dad
stayed home to take care of
her
. When the tote was filled and the lid was put back on Beth sat down on the floor and began to cry.

The memories were like a raging river now
;
here she sat with her family dead upstairs. She was trying to make sense of everything but
with the state world
was in she knew that this might be some way of God stepping in and putting his foot down. Then as soon as she thought like that she shook her head and smiled sarcastically, “Beth! That is the biggest bunch of horse shit you’ve ever thought of!!

The reason it got to this point was of how lazy and ignorant this world got!!”

Beth had an uncanny way of snapping herself back into reality. Wiping the tears from her eye
s,
Beth got her barrings, stood up and picked up the tote
. She set it beside the water,
then made her way up the stairs.

Still moving quietly through the house Beth put everything that she thought she needed
out in the garage
. She had some blankets, toiletries, extra clothes, Dad’s collection of bowie knives and a few other keep sakes that she couldn’t leave behind. When she was finished she went back into the room where her family laid. One by one Beth placed them side by side on the bed and covered each of them with a blanket. The tears began to fall when she got to Mary. Beth couldn’t look at her face
,
the thought of seeing the b
ullet hole would cause her to l
ose it and now was not the time to be doing that. She had to keep her composure.

Just then s
omething triggered a memory and that was ‘puppy’. Mary had a favorite stuffed animal that she always kept with her especially when she got sick and that was ‘puppy’. That little tan dog with big brown floppy ears was always with Mary and Beth then turned to go to Mary’s room to find it. When she did find it
,
she picked it up and made her way back to where Mary was. Softly she placed puppy in her sister’s hands, “Sissy, here is your puppy and he has been looking all over for you…..”

Taking a very deep breath what Beth uttered next was the last words she would ever say to Mary. Slowly she continued with her voice breaking, “Puppy, it’s your job now to look after Sissy. You… take care of her.”

Just then the sun
rays
pierced
though the windows and there was no time like the present.
Beth knew it
was time to go. Once she had left the bedroom Beth never looked back. Looking out the window she could she a few of the
‘
subjects
’
slowly walking the streets. There were none located by her car. Quickly she reached into her pocket and grabbed her keys
, headed out the door, she backed the car into the driveway. She darted back in the house and out to the garage hitting the opener. S
he
put the
keys
in her mouth after she pressed the automatic button to open the trunk. Time was of the essence she picked up the tote with
a few of
the supplies stacked neatly on top of it. There would have to be at least one more trip to be made back to get the rest because she couldn’t carry all of it.

As soon as she was out by her car the ‘subjects’ saw her and started making their way to her. Throwing the tote in
,
she ran quickly back to the
garage
, got the
last of the supplies. She made one last trip; Beth hit the garage door button and ran underneath it as it lowered. She was sure
no one would disturb her families resting place.

The ‘subjects’ were now about twenty feet to her car and picking up speed. She slammed
trunk
and darted to the
driver’s
door. When she was inside one of the ‘subject
s’ began pounding on the window,
Beth
quickly
hit the door locks. Before she even knew
she was doing it,
the car roared to life and she sped off. Beth didn’t even remember putting the key into the ignition.

Pulling herself together she looked into the rear view mirror and she saw more and more of them walking around aimlessly. Then she refocused her attention to straight ahead and there
seemed to be
a lot more
here,
then there
were
by her home. One by one she drove by them fast as if they were standing still but in fact they were moving right towards her
, reaching out to grab the car as it passed
.

The only thing that Beth knew was that for the time being she was on the road, car was full of gas, supplies were in the trunk and her Beretta was at her side. Once she got throug
h Paducah she headed north on I-
24. Several explosions could be seen off in the distance
both in front of her and
in her rear view mirror. There was quite a bit of traffic that was heading out of the city
, mostly stalled, abandoned or wrecked vehicles, but
not much at all going in. Beth decided that before she got
too
much farther that she would have to stop off somewhere
;
figure out where to get a few gas cans and find some gas
to fill them
or she wasn’
t going to be going much farther
.
It amazed her that in a few short weeks of her arriving at her parents that the outside world had deteriorated so much.

After being on the road for a couple hours, she
had
made it through Metropolis Beth decided to pull into a gas station which looked abandoned. When the car was stopped she quickly surveyed the place and saw only a few
infected
subjects roaming the streets up ahead. Grabbing her Beretta she opened the door and made sure to leave it open
ed
in case she had to get out of there quickly. These subjects did not seem to be in any hurry to get to her but
all the same,
were coming her way. So Beth took a quick scan to see if she could see something that may suit her needs and just when she was about to give up and head back to the car Beth saw a bright red t
en
gallon gas can sitting at the corner of the building.

The subjects were getting closer by the minute and this left no time for her to try to syphon gas out of cars but she could at least get the gas can. Running over she picked it up and much to her surprise it felt like there was at least half full. Turning to head back to the car one of the subjects had caught her off guard.

There he was about five feet from her and she knew that she had to do something. Remembering what happened earlier with her family, Beth did not care anymore. This subject was limping horribly and had huge chunk taken out of the right side of his face. His right eye was hanging out of its socket and he looked like he had been dead for at least a week or more. Not even thinking and acting on primal instinct Beth raised her right arm with her firearm in hand. The safety was off and with a hair trigger pull she shot the subject dead center in the head.

The gun shot must
have
been
a dinner bell,
because now more subjects were headed in her direction. Quickly reaching down to pick up the gas can Beth then ran over to her car door which she had left open for just this reason. She placed the gas can in her passenger seat after she got in and shut the door. Turning the key Beth sped off once more with at least a dozen of the subjects crowding her vehicle.

Beth stayed on I-
24 going west and thought that going through Cape Girardeau would be ten times as worse
than
Metropolis was. Before she got into the Cape Beth pulled off the side of the road
needing
to go to the bathroom but what was more she had to put the gas can in the trunk
,
the fumes were giving her a headache.
She had left the windows down but if she had to go through anywhere populated they would need to be rolled up and passing out due to gas fumes was not on her list of things to do.

When she had the car parked Beth got out and the fresh air really felt good to
breathe
in. No subjects were in sight and she reached inside the car to pop the trunk. After she
put the gas can inside, Beth rea
rranged everything and got a bottle of water out of the tote. Beth did not want to go
too
far
from the car,
so she decided to go to pop a squat right by the car. Relieving herself outside was really uncomfortable but quite refreshing all at the same time. “Guys have got it easy!!! All they have to do is shake it once or twice…..lucky bastards”, she said out loud to herself trying to make light of the situation.