The 0714 Files: File #1 Inferno (Remake 2)

Chapter 40

"911, what's your emergency?"

"H-hello? I need help. A lot of sick people are walking around my street and I even saw a man attack my neighbor. I called because- because I don't know what to do—"

"Are you parents' home?" the woman's voice works hard to keep steady for the sake of the little girl on the line.

A trembling breath on her end, "N-no, they're at work."

"I need you to stay calm, okay, sweetie? Listen to me. I'll send somebody out right away to check the problem. Until then I need you to find a place to hide in your home, and don't come out. What's your name?"

"Sherry. Sherry Birkin."

Sherry had held the phone handle gripped tightly in her hand during that phone call. So much so, she thought if she were a little older and a little stronger, it might snap under the pressure. She'd been crying while speaking to the 911 operator, something she seldom did, but given the circumstances of watching her neighbor's throat be torn out right in front of her. It was a display of emotions she could afford in her young mind's working through of the trauma from witnessing the gruesome scene.

What was worse than watching the fourth-grade school teacher she'd lived next to all her life, and had even attended her class die that way. Was the fact after the prospect of safety was promised, it was never delivered. Nobody came to check on Sherry, and when hours passed, when waiting in her cramped closet till her butt and back were numb from sitting was found useless. She'd crawled out to see both the man who'd attacked Mrs. Gold was gone, and so was her body.

She tried calling the number Mommy left her to the front office of the chemical plant they work at. Nobody answered after six calls. She was scared, in a way she'd never known and when neither came home that evening...

Then the TV went out, the phone was gone within the next two days and with that. The spotty internet connection in the behemoth of a computer they'd bought for her last year. Finally, when it seemed like it couldn't get any worse. The power went out in the middle of the third night, shutting off her bedside lamp and leaving her scrambling for the flashlight beneath her bed.

All she had was herself and that flashlight as the moans from outside echoed into her bedroom through the locked window. The growling of people, who weren't people. She could also hear screams too as one by one, neighbors were chased down and mauled by the zombies she'd come to accept as a reality. Not a movie. It was a nightmare, and she wanted out of it, crying into her pillow till dawn in quiet, body wracking sobs that she needed Mommy to come home and tell her what to do.

They'd told her what to do for everything. Call the police if there's an accident, call Mommy or Daddy if it's absolutely urgent. She even knew how to use a fire extinguisher if there's ever a fire in the house. But they never told her what to do if people started eating each other. Or when those same people who died right outside the house would then get up a few hours later and walk around to do the same to another person.

Zombie apocalypses were always joked about in school thanks to the plethora of zombie movies produced over the decades. Sherry never foresaw a future where one would be occurring outside the safe walls of her house. Or at least she had thought were safe. On that third night alone in her bedroom the house was broken into, leaving her hiding under her bed as the house was robbed. There she fell back asleep after the house grew deathly still when the thieves left.

When she awoke it was to a sore neck, tear swollen cheeks, and a heavy heart to see the rifled dressers of her and her parent's bedroom. There were cracked frames throughout the house, especially a recent one taken not long ago: she and Mommy wearing white, loose, and flowing blouses, while Daddy wore a black, long-sleeve sweater. One of their family outings that didn't even qualify as rare with how little they happened. Her parents were more consumed with work than anything to do with Sherry. That bitter thought didn't stop her from shaking out the broken glass and returning it to the place on the side table it'd been knocked from though.