The Dance of Death Upon Mankind

chapter one: thanatophobia

I loved fairy tales as a little girl. I still do. For many years I believed in witches and fairies, princesses locked up in towers, fish that granted wishes, and the knights and princes that always showed up right in the nick of time, and an ending that was more likely a happily ever after than a bittersweet end. An eternal summer. I used to think that life would be like a fairy tale, where things would always be sorted out, the villains defeated and the heroes victorious, and that, one day, I'd have my own happy ending. To say I was naive was an understatement.

Of course life couldn't be like a fairy tale. It wasn't.

All of my childish illusions were swiftly crushed when monsters became real. People stopped being dead and came back as mindless creatures that were driven by a singular primitive instinct: to eat. They only wanted to eat one thing, human flesh, but their hunger was never-ending.

Nobody knew what to call these things that roamed the surface of the earth. I chose eaters, because that was all they wanted to do. Collie, my twin sister, said this was stupid and called them biters, because that sounded marginally more threatening.

Eaters or biters, whatever you want to call them, it doesn't matter. They're all the same empty-headed monster sent from Hell, and many of them press up against the fence to my family and I's new home, a prison.

A man named Daryl had found my family in a pharmacy, Collie trying desperately to keep me quiet while my dad searched through the shelves of prescription medication to find the pills I heavily rely upon. We were in more than a tight spot- we hadn't eaten in days, and I was hysterical, beyond reason before I swallowed a klonopin tablet and was able to calm down. Daryl took us back to the prison after asking my dad a few questions, and I was relieved to be safe for the first time in months.

The prison was cleared out and claimed by Rick, the former leader, and his group, who now led the prison as a council. They had semi-running water, limited electricity, and beds. It was better than heaven- it was like I fell down the well in the story Old Mother Frost. We were led to a cell in cell block 'd', and we became members of the community.

Everyone pulls their own weight around here, except for the younger kids, because they couldn't do much else without adult supervision, and there was little of that to go around. Dad works fence duty, and every day it makes my heart race, making me want to cling to him like a toddler would, to make sure he wouldn't ever get hurt at the fence, but that wasn't the end of my stress concerning his jobs. Dad is a strong and sturdy man from years of working on docks, and volunteers for runs, trips the adults make to bring back things like clothes, food, and weapons. He doesn't do it often because I'm very much a nervous wreck when he's gone, terrified of him getting hurt or eaten or abandoning us forever, but not today.

Early this morning, when my father had told Collie and I that he was venturing outside the safe wire fences of the prison with some of the other adults to get supplies. I couldn't help it- I broke down into tears, begging my father not to go. I was nauseous with thoughts that he might never come back, that he might be killed or worse, that he would be abandoning Collie and I now that we weren't young enough to simply drop dead without him anymore, that he wanted to be rid of us.

Dad had sighed and reminded me that he needed to get my medication, that he wouldn't need to go if I didn't need it and Collie was behaving and not making a fuss, couldn't I behave myself for once in my life?  He told us he loved us and that he would see us later before getting into one of the vehicles and driving out past the gates. I didn't stop crying until Collie took my hand and led me away from the gates, where biters began to gather, entranced by the noise the cars produced, along with Daryl's motorcycle.