“This place is it,” I said as we drove up to a decrepit gas station. There was a two story house behind it, no doubt belonging to the people who owned the gas station. It looked like it would be the ideal place to camp out for a while if it was abandoned; there were probably plenty of supplies in the store and the house looked like it was a safe place to stay. It was also in a rural area, so there wasn’t as big of a risk of getting attacked (either by more of those creatures or by other people) than there would be if we were in a city. At least, I hoped so. Of course, we could only stay there if it was unoccupied. Which was something we would obviously have to check.

I pulled into the driveway of the house, “Stay here with Aaron, I’m going to check the house for people... or other things.”

He protested, “No, I should be the one to go in there. You risked your life back in the city. If you get hurt, what about your son?”

I glanced at Aaron, who was sleeping soundly next to me.

“Alright, you can go in,” I handed him the flashlight, “You should check all of the rooms, just to be sure. If it’s clear, then we’ll sleep in there tonight and then we can check out the store in the morning.”

Jared grabbed his gun, I wished him well and then he was out of the carand walking towards the door of the house. I saw him knock, wait ten seconds, turn around and wave, then walk into the house.

I glanced at my watch. It was 9:00pm, about two hours since we had left the city. I kept alternating from eyeing the hands of my watch, and the house.

I hoped that there was nothing in there. From what I could tell, the only damage done to the house was caused by the heavy rain and winds. None of the windows were shattered and the doors were all in place. The white siding of the house had been slightly torn in some places, but it seemed like that damage had been caused in the past. Behind the house was a small patch of trees, which I found my eyes drifting to often. Something about it made me a little uneasy; it seemed like the ideal place for something to hide. But that was just me being paranoid.

By now, Jared had been gone for seven minutes. Just when I started to worry that something may have happened to him, the door to the house opened. He was alright. I sighed with relief as he came up to the car and opened the door, “It’s all clear. The power’s out but there’s a wood stove in the basement, a bit of wood too but not much. We can definitely stay here for a little while.”

“Great, we can start taking the stuff from the trunk into the house. I’ll carry Aaron in.”

Gently, so that I wouldn’t wake him up, I lifted Aaron into my arms. I had carried him before, when we were running away from those monsters, but I was in a complete panic at the time. Now that things were calm I realized just how much bigger he had gotten since the last time we saw each other; I was having a bit of trouble carrying him.

Jared opened the door for me, and we stepped inside.

The first thing that I noticed was the smell; it smelled like bread had been baking in the house. The room was lit by a lone candle sitting on a table in the middle of the room that had been almost completely burnt down. I guess that meant the people living here hadn’t immediately left when the storm came; they had probably lit the candle when the storm took out their power. Judging by the state of the candle, something must have prompted them to leave a while ago.

By the relatively dim light of the candle, I could see that my suspicion about baking bread had been correct. The oven was left partially open, and although I couldn’t see inside, I could tell that the smell was coming from around there. They must have left in quite a panic if they had left a luxury such as perfectly good homemade bread behind, but I didn’t think too much about it. Around the table, there were four chairs, one of which was knocked over. The cupboard had been left opened and was nearly emptied, but I could see a few cans of food inside. There were doorways straight ahead and to my right.

Jared walked over to the candle that was burning out, used it to light a candle resting next to it, and then blew it out. “The living room’s to the right, you can put Aaron down on one of the couches there for now.”

I stepped into the room to the right. There was a sofa, a coffee table and a rocking chair. You didn’t usually see a “living room” in the few houses that people could actually afford that much nowadays. The owners must have been old and decently well off if they owned a house like this. I put Aaron down on the sofa, and I noticed that there was a few tears in the fabric. I breathed in; the room smelled like mothballs. The furniture and by extension the house were definitely from before the economic crash.

I walked back into the kitchen, “So, are there beds or anything in here?” I asked Jared.

He thought for a second, “Uh, there’s a big bed upstairs and a smaller one in a spare room. You and Aaron can share the big one; I’ll take the small one.”

“Alright, but does this place have a basement?” I asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“I just think it would be better to sleep down there, it just feels a little safer. What’s down there?”

“Oh okay. There’s nothing much down there, there’s a wood stove, a small pile of wood, a few boxes and a bathroom. Oh, and it has a window. There’s plenty of room for the mattresses down there, do you want to move them right away?”

“Sure, then let’s get some sleep,” I glanced at my watch. “It’s only nine twenty three, but damn it feels like I’ve been awake all week.”

“Tell me about it...” Jared said as he turned to go up the stairs. I locked the door before going to follow him. On the wall to the right of the stairs there were three picture frames; one held a photo of what must have been the owners of the house on their wedding day, another was a picture of a young girl, their daughter I supposed and the third looked like a more recent photo of the couple. They were old, anywhere between sixty or eighty. I stopped and stared at the wedding photo for a moment, feeling in my pocket for Jessica’s ring. I glanced to the photo of the couple when they had grown old, but stopped myself from staring. I couldn’t break down again.

Stolen story; please report.

I continued my way up the stairs, my finger feeling the ring.

Finally, after bringing both of the mattresses downstairs, barricading the doors and windows, using the washroom and bringing Aaron down the stairs, I got to lie down.

Jared had brought the candle downstairs and set in the middle of the room. I stared around the basement, taking in what would be our home for the next little while. The basement had no drywall, and the floor was all concrete. The room had a sort of damp musky smell, but at least the floor was dry. There was a small cubby hole in the corner, and next to it were a few stacks of boxes. We had put the stuff we brought in next to the boxes in the corner of the room, which we were going to search through the next day. Jared and I put our wet clothes in front of the fireplace after starting a fire.

It felt good to lie down. Jared and I didn’t talk much, even though there was a lot to talk about. We just didn’t want to think about it.

In a few minutes, I heard him snoring. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep to the sound of the rain battering down on the house and the wind whistling ominously through the air.

My eyes snapped open.

I was in our apartment, with something in my hands. My vision blurred around the edges, it almost felt like I was looking through a fishbowl.

“Alright Markus, he’s here!” I heard a female voice. Was that Jessica?

I tried to move, to call out her name or to turn to face her, but my body wouldn’t budge.

Involuntarily, my head glanced down and I saw that I was holding a cake with bright vibrant icing that read “Happy 9thBirthday Aaron!” There were eight tiny candles scattered around the cake, all lit.

I heard someone open the door to the apartment and step in.

“Hi Aaron, how was your day?” that same female voice asked.

“Great! At recess me and Daniel made this huge pile of leaves that we kept jumping in, it was really fun!” Aaron’s voice called from where I couldn’t see. His voice sounded much younger.

“There’s a surprise for you here!” the female voice echoed through my head. There was no doubt, it was Jessica.

Suddenly, my head turned and Jessica and I started to sing happy birthday. When Aaron saw me, his face lit up into a wide smile; an expression that I hadn’t seen in a long time and one that I would probably never see again.

“Go blow out your candles and make a wish!” Jessica said.

“Alright, I know exactly what I’m going to wish for!” Aaron said as he sat down at the end of the table and took a deep breath.

When he blew out the candles, the room went pitch black.

I felt a cold chill run through the room, and realized that the window was shattered open. A storm was raging outside. Nobody was in the room except for me. What had just happened?

Suddenly, the screams rang out from down below, and I heard rapid footsteps smashing their way up the stairs. I wanted to run, I wanted to get the hell out of there but I couldn’t move a muscle. All I could do was keep staring at the direction of the doorway. The footsteps made it to the door, and then something started smashing on it.

I would have jumped if I could have moved, because a bright light flashed in front of me, revealing a feminine figure. It was Jessica, but she looked just like I had seen her last; missing her arm, covered in cuts, mangled legs. And her eyes... there was not an inch of life in them.

The banging on the door stopped, and all I heard was the howling of the wind and the steady sound of blood dripping from Jessica onto the floor.

Then she spoke, and the banging started again as she did, “You never should have come into the storm, Markus. You shouldn’t have come,” although it was Jessica’s voice, there was no way that was Jessica talking. There was a hidden malice underneath it, like she was ready to start screaming at any second. Never had I ever heard her speak with venom in her voice. The banging grew louder.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she repeated, this time nearly shouting it, “Why would you bring Aaron? Because of you, he’s suffering!” The banging was almost constant now, and in the dim light I could see that the door was starting to crack. The wind blowing in through the window violently knocked things over and threw them around the room.

“Jessica” started to scream, “All your fault! It’s all your fault Markus!” She screamed over and over. A face peeked in through the window. It was the man I had shot. The door finally burst open, and as it did, Jessica disappeared and the thing I had seen in the building stood in her place. A violent blast of wind threw me down onto the ground.

The last thing I saw was the creature’s face pressing against my own, its smile widening.

I woke up screaming. I threw the blankets off of myself and immediately turned to check on Aaron. He was fine, still sleeping soundly.

I glanced out the window; it was still dark outside so at first I thought it must still be night time but with the dark clouds blanketing the sky, I couldn’t be sure until I checked the time. The rain hadn’t let up at all.

Everything was where we had left it. After the events of yesterday, I almost expected to not wake up at all. This calm situation was the exact opposite of that nightmare we had lived through not even a few hours ago.

I sat there for what must have been an hour, thinking about nothing, trying to keep the nightmarish thoughts aside, until Jared woke up.

We both muttered a good morning to each other. Both of us were still fazed from the day before.

We immediately started looking through the boxes in the room, which were full of canned food preserves. There was actually enough to last a few weeks, maybe even a month or two if we were careful with it.

As we were sorting through them, I decided to ask Jared a question, “So, uh, why did you decide to become a police officer?”

He froze for a second, took a deep breath, then responded, “Well, it’s mostly cause of my dad. He was always telling my brother and I how messed up this country was, how nobody was on the side of justice anymore. He said that this world needed the new generation to take charge and to fight for what was right, or it wouldn’t be long before things would get so bad that there wouldn’t be any chance of recovery... he always said that a good job for us would be to join the police force or the army. So when he passed away, me and my brother decided to become cops in order to honour him. My brother didn’t really want to, I told him he didn’t have to do it, that dad would have been proud of him no matter what he did, but... Our parents death hit him a lot harder than me. He really didn’t want to let the old man down. I wish he would have listened to me...” he lowered his head, tears started to well up in his eyes, “...then, maybe now he’d still be alive...”

If only I had not come back into the city after the storm started, then I wouldn’t have put Aaron in danger. If only I had stayed in the city, maybe I could have saved Jessica... I shook my head.

“There’s no point in worrying about what ifs,” I put my hand on his shoulder, “We can’t change the past. Your brother would have wanted you to stay strong now. I know that Jessica would want me to stay strong, too. You saved us in the city, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I’m sure your father would be proud, your brother too.”

The tears cleared from his eyes, he nodded, “You’re right. I can’t let them down! I’m going to do what I can, I’ll save you two, and anyone else who’s innocent that we come across,” he extended his hand to me, “Let’s survive, and live on. For the sake of those we’ve lost.”

We firmly shook hands.