Ghostpocalypse

Chapter One: Six Months Later

The town was always quiet now, especially in the morning.

Milo had hoped to hear at least some noises of interest, being that he was living in the Baker's house, and they lived right next to the sheriff's department, but there was no commotion to break up the idle small talk passing about the Baker's breakfast table.

"Are you heading out today, Rosalyn?" Mr. John Baker, a pleasant man of fifty-something, asked Milo's mother, a woman almost fifteen years his junior.

Rosalyn Carver nodded, smiling in her soft, sympathetic way, "Yes, Calvin Tennyson's oldest daughter, Melissa, called me last night. Naturally, Calvin is having a hard time with losing Gina, and Melissa is worried he'll... Try to cope unhealthily."

"Poor Calvin," Mrs. Jasmine Baker, John's wife, pursed her lips and sighed, "I was worried he would go back to drinking. He was never a drunk, of course, but he struggled with alcohol in the past, you remember, Ros, don't you?"

"Yes," Rosalyn looked at the wall of windows opposite the table framing the sunny, strangely warm February day, "Marrying Gina did him a world of good."

The two women continued to talk, both were natives of the Graycott/Morrison area and knew everything about everyone who lived in the towns. Rosalyn listened but didn't really say anything, Milo assumed it was a psychologist thing. From her frequent glances towards him, Milo knew she was trying to get a read on what her son was thinking, but his mind was like a blank sheet of paper: monotone and dull, waiting for someone to turn it into something worth noting. With his luck, it'd probably just be used as scratch paper.

"Milo, could you go check on Jen?" He looked up sharply, eyes flitting for a moment before landing on the speaker, Mrs. Baker, "I think it would do her some good to get outside today, maybe the two of you could go down to the creek."

Milo shrugged, staring contest with his bowl of decomposing cereal interrupted, and though the last thing he wanted to do was spend time with the Baker's daughter, responded with an amiable, "Sure."

He could feel the adult's eyes on him as he walked up the polished wooden staircase to the second floor. The Baker's had a nice house, a warm house, considering the town had diverted all of their emergency generator's power to the fence, sheriff's department and town hall, leaving residential buildings without central heating or plumbing for most of the day.

"Jen, your parents want you to get out of the house," Milo called from the hallway. Jen's door was closed, as per usual, and no noise emanated from it, it was as if Jen wasn't in there at all. There was no response, so, with an exaggerated eyeroll, Milo tried again, this time in a louder voice, "Jen, your parents want you to stop being antisocial."

He could hear her huff, "Me, antisocial?" The door whipped open, revealing Jen, who, judging by her squinted eyes, had just woken up. She patted down her tangled blond hair, "What do you want?"

"Your parents want us to go outside." He shrugged, indicating he was not the instigator of this plan.

"Fine, I need time to get ready, though." Milo hadn't expected Jen to relent so quickly, but he didn't complain, merely shrugging again and sitting down on the carpeted hallway, opposite Jen's again-closed door.

He stared at the wood grain pattern on the door, the dark lines curving in such a way that they almost formed a heart. It suited Jen, and Milo had no doubt she'd noticed it too, maybe even taken it off of its hinges from somewhere else in the house.

As uncomfortable living with the Bakers could be, Milo was grateful for Jen, though he'd never admit it. The two hadn't been friends before the satellite, but they'd shared something: Milo's best friend had been her boyfriend. There was a comforting sense of normalcy in the fact that Jen was still around, and she was still annoying.