Infected

Chapter 1

3 years later...

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"What the hell?" Ivy mutters as she storms through her house towards the front door, which someone is stupid enough to bang on it like a swat team member from the police force. "I'm coming! I'm coming! Fuck!"

Ripping open the door, Ivy was fully prepared to give hell to whoever messed with her early morning coffee session, only to have her older brother barrel into her living room. Ethan's hands are waving around like he's trying to swat flies, and he's paler than Ivy's ever seen him, looking as if he'd just encountered something truly horrifying. It doesn't help that he's talking a hundred miles a minute, making Ivy's head spin since she'd only gotten up twenty minutes ago.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Ivy exclaims before her head can explode, waving her arms around as she tries to calm her frantic brother. "Ethan, what the hell is going on?"

"This." Ethan rushes out before he rips a slightly crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, practically shoving it into his little sister's hands. "Read it, Ivy. Look at it."

"I'm looking, I'm looking." Ivy mutters as she waves at her brother, hardly concerned with how he's practically having a mental breakdown in her living room. "Oh, my God. Is this...is this from Mia?"

"She's alive. I told you all that I knew she wasn't dead." Ethan states as he points at his sister, almost as if to say I told you so, but Ivy just looks up at her brother, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Ethan, I love you dearly, but you're either having a mid-life crisis, or you've officially become stupid." Ivy casually says as she hands the printed email back to her brother. "This is clearly a trap, and if you can't see that, then you've officially lost your damn mind."

"Which is why you're coming with me." Ethan practically orders, making Ivy's jaw drop a bit, but before she can even counter her brother, he's already racing to her bedroom to pack a bag for her.

"Wait, what-"

"You still keep your gun in the closet?" Ethan asks rhetorically, already pulling Ivy's favored Desert Eagle from the closet. It was the last gift she'd received from Mia before the woman mysteriously vanished off the face of the planet.

It's all Ivy can do as she simply stands in the doorway, watching her brother toss the gun and three boxes of ammo into the large suitcase. Next comes a couple shirts, tank tops, and some shorts, and upon realizing that her brother truly isn't joking around, Ivy quickly grabs some clothes before heading into her bathroom. She quickly throws on the forest green tank top, black jean shorts, and tosses her long blonde hair up into a high ponytail.

"Ethan," Ivy starts as she comes back into her room to find her things packed up and ready to go, "where are we even going?"

"Dulvey, Louisianna." Ethan replies, making Ivy nod her head as she goes to her closet to grab her black combat boots. She makes sure to tighten her strings on her boots and even goes as far as to double tie them before she stands up, grabbing her baseball bat as she does.

"Fine, I'll go, but on one condition." Ivy says while also grabbing her combat knife off her kitchen counter, and Ethan turns to look at her as she closes her front door, following him to his car. "We're listening to my music the entire drive there."

Ethan groans in annoyance, making his sister laugh amusedly, but he doesn't really care so long as she comes along. Ethan knows it's a trap, knows that he's probably about to be heading into some kind of fight, and he knows that if anyone could help him in any way, it'd be his constantly picking fights little sister. Everyone knows to not fuck with Ivy Winters's family, or they risk facing her hell spawn wrath.