Run, run fast, run hard, don’t turn around . . . she yelled to the twins.  Tears streaming down her face. She had turned back from the accident to face a grizzly scene, Brian …. bruised and bloody and barely alive. He was gasping for breath, blood bubbling with each attempt to speak. ” Don’t do this to me, you are strong , you’ll make it. Please baby, please….  do not leave us. I cannot do this on my own!”

She woke up screaming and trembling again. Surprised she hadn’t awakened anyone else the trembling wasn’t stopping this time. Rocking back and forth as the waves of pain tormented her heart and soul. She thought she heard the faintest echo and her head snapped up looking for her twins. Nobody knew she had gotten pregnant at school. Nobody knew the night the outbreak reached her university that her kids, following the others involved in the accident  had disappeared. They were so young, so young . . . how could they have survived…. her head rattled on with similar thoughts for almost an hour, then she heard it again. She swore to God she was hearing Kailee & Taylor’s voices.  Then a flash of Brian’s face. She shook her head thinking No thats impossible. I saw him die, felt him take a ragged breath in my arms and tell me goodbye. Her thumb instantly going to her ring finger rubbing the base of her finger where his ring had been.

She had to be losing her mind. Her kids were nowhere to be found… her fiancee had died. Yet she heard it a third time so she raced outside in the pouring rain, the chill of it seeping into her bones.  Please wake me from this nightmare she cried out loudly. The thunder concealing her outbursts. Over and over she screamed into the violence of the storm, her eyes red and puffy, her will to be strong fading. Her body now trembling with exhaustion and cold . . .

She collapsed in front of the stable not caring what happened next, as she faded into nothingness she heard it again… the repeating, recurring echo of her twins calling for her….

“Momma, Momma lubb yew, momma where….?”