I felt sick about my own family. My mom…my dad. I used Hattie’s phone to try and call my sister, but I got no answer. For a couple of minutes, we listened to the radio as she drove, but it was all the same. No one knew what was happening, and all the reports said that it seemed to be a virus that had affected people. Hattie switched it off and we rode in silence the rest of the way to her house.

I never knew that she lived almost forty-five minutes away, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I had always just assumed that she had a house somewhere within Oakridge. It was small, but comfortable. A giant oak tree in the front yard shaded most of the property, and Charles’ truck was parked in the driveway. We looked in every direction to make sure none of those grey things were lurking around before we got out.

Hattie ran toward the front porch, but before she reached it, Charles and their son came out to meet her. Both of them held a rifle in their hands.

“Are you all right?” Charles asked her, hugging her tightly. “I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour.”

“So have I,” she said, “but I haven’t been able to get through.”

“Who’s this?” Charles asked as I walk toward the porch.

“This is Waverly,” Hattie said.

Charles nodded at me and then looked at Hattie.

She shook her head. “She doesn’t have any place to go,” she whispered, though I could still hear her.

Charles nodded again and smiled at me, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It seemed like pity as he motioned for me to come toward the porch. “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Let’s get inside,” he said.

I looked at Hattie’s son and did my best to smile at him, but my heart wasn’t in it. I had met him a couple of years before when he had been with his mom and she had to drop something off at our house. He was about my age, maybe a year older. He had a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled. The gun he carried seemed too big for him, but he carried it like he knew how to use it.

“Have you seen one of those things in person?” he asked as we walked through the door.

“Yeah,” I said. “They are scary.” I didn’t want to talk about it, but I had to accept that this would be talked about non-stop for a long time, wouldn’t it? This was the kind of thing that would be the top new story on every station for months. They would be debating over and over. Was this a terrorist attack? Was it a virus? Would there ever be a way to fix this problem? Someone would find a fix or a cure eventually, but it would be too late for my family.