The Zombie Apocalypse with MCR (Complete)

Grace Ruined

The front door swings open with only the lightest pressure, applied by the tips of my fingers. I step into my home. 

There is a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach that chokes me. Something awful has happened. I know it has. I can smell it and feel it in the air. Despair and pain and terror. Perhaps it's just my own emotions, washing around my body and settling heavy on my shoulders.

My foot slides on the smooth kitchen tile, and my legs splay outwards, shooting in different directions. My knees holler as they smack hard against the ceramic, and then my mind hollers when it comprehends the mess. The liquid slicking the floor. Splattering the walls. Dripping over the edge of the table. 

Blood. Blood everywhere. 

Chairs have been overturned. Plates and cups smashed. The toaster and microwave are in pieces, sparking angrily. 

There is a pile of bodies in one corner of the room. They are moving.

I cannot look properly. 

But I can look at the stairs, at the tiny, broken body lying on them. Like a discarded doll, thrown aside with too much force. 

Riley. 

I rush for him. Scoop his tiny, heavy body up into my arms. His babygrow is green, and covered in dinosaurs. It is covered as well in blood.

I sit on the stairs, knees tucked up into my chest. The baby I cradle in my lap. Hands around his head, forearms under his body. Whenever I hold him like this, he puts his fat little feet against my cheeks, and laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever seen.

He isn't laughing now. His eyes are closed. His face is too pale. His curls, so dark and delicate, are wet. There are no bites on him. But... His chest doesn't feel right. It feels like he's deflated, like he's not real and stuffed full of cotton. His round little cheeks are splattered with scarlet too, and I carefully rub away the mess with my sleeve. 

There are no tears in me for this. I cannot cry, because this simply cannot be real. Babies don't die like this. He is so young, his life cannot possibly be over. 

"Nevaeh?" The voice is weak and trembling. 

I look round. 

My mother is looking at me. 

I stand, tucking the baby under my chin. Keep my arms tight around his torso, one under his bum to support him. Imagine the damage if I dropped him. 

I circle the table, and inspect the pile of bodies in the corner. 

Lillie is one of them. She's flat on her back, eyes open and empty. Her hair is wrapped around her neck, so orange it looks like a wound. Then I realise... It is a wound. Her throat has been cut, so savagely her head is twisted at a painful angle. Her face is pale. Her eyes are entirely black. She's not moving. 

It is Orchid who leans over my mother. Her heavy dark hair hides her face, but her hands are busy and easy to see. 

She's picking at a wound in mum's bicep. I can see layers of bubbly yellow fat, and stringy muscle, and in amongst it all the stark white of bone.

Orchid has dug all the way through, picking and yanking at the flapping edges of the wound. She's cramming the flesh into her mouth, chewing on it all loudly. The sounds she makes are grotesque. Wet and slapping, like she's starving. 

Mum is still alive, staring at me with fluttering eyelids. She's hurt in more than one place. There's a wound in her thigh too, as deep as the one on her bicep. Her face is deathly pale, her lips blue. Her whole body shakes, but she does nothing to defend herself against Orchid.