Stormy Valley, Washington State; that was my home. It wasn't where I was born, but it was where I was reborn. There I found my happily ever after. I had a home, a nice home on a nice quiet street, a few close friends (okay so not that many), I was studying online to start my own business and I had against all odds found my Mr Right. Then there were my babies, Damon, Jamie and Kasey; my reason for everything. At 35 I loved being a mom. I always wanted a big family, the great 'American Dream' that was pretty universal no matter what part of the planet you belong to. I pretty much had it too. Life was nearly perfect. I didn't know how good I had it until one night it was all suddenly ripped away from me. Guess my story is the same as pretty much anyone you'd care to ask now anyway, if there's many of us left that is.

Jamie my ten month old had always been sick. If there was anything going around he was sure to catch it. I didn't really know his father and nor did he; just some power-mad cop who got his moment of fun before disappearing into the proverbial sunset. Jamie had been running a fever for days. Living in a small town we'd heard talk of some major virus in the cities but it wasn't near us. Besides, we felt insular there, protected, safe almost. But then whatever it was struck so fast there was hardly time to run screaming to the media much less in a place where gossip precedes truth. My boyfriend Kane of only a few months was asleep beside me. He owned a small gun store in town and co-managed a bar with his best friend Jon. The last thing he needed was to be kept awake all night by a crying baby that wasn't even his. But unlike most nights Jamie wasn't really crying; it was his silence that scared me more than anything. I knew maybe instinctively, mother's instinct, that something was really wrong. I had hoped he was turning a corner, he was just exhausted and was catching up on sleep. I brought him in to bed with us. I didn't really sleep. It was fitful and restless. I was too worried.

When I woke up I automatically knew something was terribly wrong. Jamie was cold and heavy against me. I could feel the weight on my arm; dead weight. He was staring at me. I saw his eyes gleaming in the half-light. He couldn't be staring with focus if he were dead. Logic had escaped me. The moments that followed after that are a blur to me now; flashes of memories I've tried piecing together. I'm not sure if Jamie lunged first or I screamed to wake Kane beside me. I remember seeing Jamie at the foot of the bed. Had I thrown him? Had Kane shoved him? It was then I saw the mouth, a little baby's mouth contorted and opened wide like some wild feral animal. It didn't compute in my mind what I was seeing but the panic I felt was real as it snapped at the air, tiny teeth cut into greying flesh soon stained red by the blood. I tried to reach for him. Kane stopped me. I don't know how or why but somehow he knew. I'd like to think maybe his rough childhood on the wrong side of the tracks prepared him for something like this but I don't know how. His fingers bit into my arm as he dragged me back and away. I remembered screaming when the shots rang out. I stared at the gun in his hand. It didn't add up. Not at that moment anyway. I didn't realize how close I had been to becoming one of them until afterwards when it was already arguably way too late.

Panic had set in. I remember the look on Kane's face as he stared at me across the bed. It will haunt me forever. Guilt. Shame. Fear. He thought he had killed my child and at that moment I thought it too. I had to save my other babies from his madness even as he tried to stop me. We were in the next room, the boys room, where Damon my eldest should have been soundly asleep. At almost twenty months Damon was Mr Independent. I still don't know how he got out of his crib. He didn't move fast but he didn't move like himself. The door slammed shut separating us. Kane said something about getting help. "Don't go in there!" He was dressed and gone before I found the strengths to stand again. In the bedroom I couldn't even look at my boy on the bed. In a daze I scooped Kasey into my arms. At just three weeks old and born premature she was my precious little distraction. My sanity. I held her to me and hummed something out of tune that just came out of nowhere. Kasey didn't stir, just made these little sounds... I can't even describe it. Nothing comes close. If she'd been able to talk she may have been begging me to kill her, to make it stop. I didn't even know she was dying in those moments that I held her and sat staring at the closed bedroom door. The sound of snarling and tiny fingernails clawing at the wood were the only sounds to break the absolute stillness. It felt like some kind of dream. Maybe that's how I got through what followed.

Just before daybreak Kane returned. He had a bag in one fist; I remember the sound of it hitting the floor. On his shoulder rested a shotgun. He didn't even speak to me as he passed. Something had changed him in those minutes (hours?) he'd been gone. Dark stains marred his shirt. He always smoked too much but this time he smelled of something other than cigarettes or beer. The door burst open and little feet flew in the air as the boy was thrown backwards. There was a crashing sound. Then two loud, impossibly loud explosions rang out. It deafened me to all else. I knew. I saw it. I watched it unfold. But something in the way Kane's shoulders fell made it worse. He was always so strong, so confidant, even cocky at times. This wasn't a thrill kill. I still couldn't fathom what I now know he saw or must have seen both out on the streets and in the faces of those little boys.

Our three week old daughter passed away as I grieved for her brothers. Through it subliminally I knew. I held her to my chest. I let her go. My whole world had just inextricably fallen apart as such that it just couldn't be real. I couldn't comprehend it. Couldn't begin to. Kasey lay on the floor. I don't know how much time passed. Seemed a second later Kane was there crouched before me, collapsed on a knee, crying. I'd never seen him cry before or since, not even when she was born, Mr Tough man that he is. Kasey, our precious baby girl, our reason for being together in the first place was gone. But she wasn't gone. Like the others, like the continuation of this Giger-esque nightmare, her eyes snapped open. So too her mouth. I didn't know it then. Part of me wishes I had; that this... thing, whatever sickness it is that makes them come back only seems to travel through the blood. Through direct fluid contact. I don't even know who told me that but back then we were literally in the dark. At three weeks old she didn't even have any teeth. Seems ironic the sickness chose to reanimate dead tissue when she was in no way developed enough to pass it on, but I didn't know that. Whether it was the shock of seeing what my sons had become, of seeing them die at the end something I still do fear and despise (guns), or maybe the fear of losing the only one thing I had left in this world, the love of my life, that I acted so fast. The heavy statuette was in hand before the weight registered. It came down twice that I recall, countless others that I don't. Don't want to. I don't even want to remember what it look like laying there mushed up and not even human. I remember the absolute weight of his eyes as Kane stared at me, stared so long with the muscle in his cheek twitching so furiously I thought his head was going to explode. He dragged me up onto my feet. Then we were sitting in his truck rolling through town. Maybe it was the town that was literally slipping away. The place I had come to know and call home was not the one I had gone to sleep in. People, neighbors, friends tore each other apart as fires flickered from broken windows. Stormy Valley was dead. My children were dead. Life as I knew it was dead. A whole lot of nothing lay stretched out before us as we headed into the unknown...

... the unknown of Arklay.