Monsters

Chapter 1

My heartbeat quickened as I turned off the news. Over 900 dead. How could one zombie do that? The blurry footage showed only glimpses of it in werewolf mode. That's what everyone called it when zombies killed. It was because they resembled werewolves when they went into killing frenzies. They looked like werewolves that had started to turn into a wolf but stopped before growing fur and falling on a fours. I had seen it all before. Every now and then you'd see a video of one walking down an alley in slow motion grunting like a zombie. But whenever they passed a human they killed it. They couldn't not kill humans. Experts say that they can sense human flesh but the distance they can sense it from depends on where they are on the zombie/werewolf spectrum. No one really understood it. Why sometimes they walked around like zombies and other times they ran like wolves on two feet bounding in angry leaps. Yeah sure, I had heard it all before. The stories, the sightings, the mass killings and losses. It was the only thing on the news since the first killing. But this one was the mall in my town and the scary thing about killings is, they leave no survivors.

The eerie silence sent a shiver down my spine so I turned the news back on. But the sound only reminded me of the creepy noise in the background of a horror film so I turned it off again. I needed to get out of town. Time was running out, I needed to get out now. I thought of my little brother upstairs and suddenly wondered if he was okay. I got this super paranoid feeling that any second a monster would jump out in front of me. What if it jumped out at Kevin, my little brother? The feeling of paranoia increased as well as the feeling that it was too late to leave town. I didn't have my license yet but I pretty much knew the basics. My stomach growled but we could grab food once we were out of the town. We hadn't eaten since our mother had left yesterday to borrow money from her brother. When our dad was killed we were left with no money and our mother has been planning to move us to live with our aunt in Georgia. But in the meantime we needed money now. We didn't even have food left. Even though my mother and I had grown used to the gnawing feeling of hunger, Kevin was only six years old and he couldn't go without food for much longer.

I listened in the silence willing myself to move but the image of a monster being wherever I turn kept my legs locked in place. I kept my eyes focused on the blank tv, terrified to look anywhere else. Soon that too became creepy and I tried not to notice the reflection of the staircase in the tv, positive that I'd see a monster in it.

The fear was overwhelming so I made a mad dash from the basement, up the stairs, to the kitchen. Kevin was hopefully still up in his room but I was too scared to check, afraid of what I might find. What if it killed Kevin and left me? But that wouldn't happen, no survivors, remember? I walked slowly to the base of the steps.

"...Kevin," I called up. Crap. I probably shouldn't have made any noise. Maybe the monsters didn't sense humans maybe they just listened for unsuspecting idiots to start running their big mouth.

"Kevin..." I whispered this time panicking when he still didn't respond. What would I do if he was dead? What if I went up there and he was just lying on the floor dead? But what if he was hiding under his bed too scared to come down unless I came and got him? Or what if, my heart stopped, what if he was dead and the monster was just waiting in front of the door for me to come in. It didn't feel like a what if. The monster was upstairs. I could picture it perfectly grinning, waiting for me to be stupid enough to open the door. Then I heard a creaking sound. Kevin. Thank God. My breathing slowed in relief.

We needed to leave now. "Kevin," I whispered upstairs to get him to hurry up. Instead of a reply I heard a sound of shattering glass followed by loud thumping and scratching. My worst nightmare. It was here.

Sound blurred together, I could hear it bounding through the hall. I didn't have time to think. I looked around in panic then scrambled to get underneath the couch. It was coming down the stairs. I had to make it out of sight in time. I had to.

It was downstairs. It was here. It stopped. Only for a second. I heard it hurriedly lifting up furniture effortlessly. I froze, praying that it wouldn't see me. My stomach was in my mouth and I couldn't think in full sentences. My heart flinched each second as a piece of furniture was dropped to the ground. The next furniture it lifted would be mine, i thought each time one slammed back onto the ground. Then I felt the couch being lifted from above me. My eyes were tightly shut but i could feel it above me, staring at me. My pulse stopped while I choked on my stomach. And the couch was slammed back down.

The monster moved into the kitchen grunting now. I didn't dare move but it had seen me. It had seen me and walked away. What happened to the 'no survivors' rule? I could finally hear something other than my own pulse again when I remembered. Kevin. Ohmygod, had it killed Kevin? I was such a horrible sister. I had left him upstairs. I needed to go see if he was okay. But the monster was still here. I could still hear it shuffling in the kitchen. But I had to suck it up and go find him anyways.

Just when I had resolved to sneak out from under the couch I heard Kevin's soft voice, "Sarie?" Oh no. What was he doing? Didn't he know there was a monster in the house? "Sarie?" I heard him call his nickname for me again. My full name was Sarah but he had called my Sarie because that's what our dad used to call me. But when my dad stopped because I had outgrown the little kid nickname, Kevin continued to call me by it.

I shifted my position under the couch so I could see Kevin's feet walking towards the kitchen.

"Kevin!" I whispered. Now I'd be testing my theory about zombies having super good hearing instead of senses. "No!" I practically shouted as he bumped right into the zombie. I tried to stand up but instead I hit my head on the bottom of the couch. I held my breath, but the zombie just grunted.

"Where's Sarie?" Kevin persisted, tugging at the zombie's faded jeans. Jeans? Now that I looked closely I realized the zombie seemed to be wearing normal clothes. "Saarie," Kevin called louder now.

"I'm here!" I had gotten out from beneath the couch and was standing up now. The monster looked over. I met its eyes which were surprisingly blue. I looked away. I couldn't focus on its face which unlike the videos, where it looked half werewolf, was very zombie-like.

"Sarie!" Kevin joyfully ran over to me and gave me a hug.

"Hey, buddy, why don't we go visit Aunt Kathleen now?"

"Who is he?" he pointed at the zombie. I was disgruntled by Kevin referring to a monster as a he instead of an it, but when I looked up again it did look more like a he than it had before. It's body, though holding itself up like a zombie, seemed to be very human unlike the monster that had been trashing our furniture. I walked over into the kitchen and pretended to get stuff together while talking some to Kevin. We didn't really have anything to get ready, our suitcases were already packed but I kept glancing up at the zombie and with every glance it seemed to look more like a teenage boy than a zombie. After fifteen minutes passed the only thing that reminded me it was a zombie was the blank expression on its face as it too seemed to be trying to look apart of things as it opened cabinets and wiped its hands along the counters as if dusting. Also it kept its zombie-like demeanor.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore. "Why didn't you kill me?" I tried to meet its gaze but it just looked down. What was I thinking anyways? It couldn't talk. But in the little time I had been around it I had started questioning everything I knew about zombies. I waited a few seconds with no response so I went back to fake getting things together.

"I. Don't . . . know."