Bang!

The door slammed shut.

In the howling rain, the sound hit like a coffin lid dropping.

Ivy Brooks stood motionless on the front step of her own home, her newborn daughter pressed to her chest ... three days old, barely a weight at all.

On either side of her, eight-year-old Aria and six-year-old Lila had locked themselves together, two small bodies staring at the closed door like it might open if they looked hard enough.

The wind came at them sideways. Their pajamas were soaked within seconds.

Neither girl had shoes.

The gravel beneath their bare feet had already drawn blood — thin red lines threading between their toes — and they hadn't even moved yet.

Because there hadn't been time to move.

There hadn't been time for anything.

One moment they were inside.

The next, Adrian and Maya had pushed them through the door.

No warning. No explanation. Not even a pair of shoes.

One month ago, she had found out the truth.

Her husband, Adrian, had been betraying her for longer than she had known him practically.

Long enough that his son with Maya .... Jack was older than Aria.

Which meant that before Ivy had ever conceived her first daughter… before any of this… there had already been another woman.

Another family.

Running parallel to hers the entire time.

In the weeks since, as her newborn's due date approached, Adrian and Maya had pushed her to sign the house over.

Threats. Bargaining. Pressure from every angle but she hadn't given in.

And then the world ended… and none of it mattered anymore.

Seven days.

That was all it had taken.

Seven days to turn every city into something out of a nightmare ....the dead rising, then changing, then becoming something worse than dead. Monsters of different types, some made of animals bigger than humans, more like a giant with razor sharp teeth...some were stone monsters, spitting out fire, their hands crushing anything that came into contact. They were uncountable.

The walls people had trusted their whole lives suddenly became the only thing standing between them and extinction.

Humanity retreated inside and waited for a salvation that showed no sign of coming.

Ivy had not imagined that Adrian would choose this moment to throw them out.

She had given him too much credit.

"Adrian."

She knocked. Hard.

The baby stirred against her chest.

"ADRIAN. Open the door. Please open the door. Your daughters are going to die out here."

A pause.

Then his voice, coming through the door:

"They're YOUR daughters. NOT MINE. I don't need them. Take them and go, Ivy."

Something tore open in her chest.

She had loved this man.

She had loved him.

How was it possible that this was the same voice.

"This is MY HOUSE." Her voice cracked down the middle. "My parents left this to ME. You cannot do this."

The baby in her arms let out a thin, shaking cry .... barely audible beneath the rain.

The sound was wrong.

Too faint. Too fragile.

Small bodies lost heat fast.

Next to Ivy, Aria pressed both hands over her mouth.

When she spoke, her voice came out in pieces.

"Mama… I'm so cold."

Lila had stopped trying to hold back.

She was just crying now, pressed against her sister's side.

"Why doesn't Daddy want us? What did we do? We didn't do anything…"

Ivy crouched down.

She pulled both of them against her, the baby between her body and theirs, trying to share whatever warmth she had left.

Then she stood back up and pressed her palm flat against the door.

"Adrian… I KNOW you hate me. I'm not asking for myself."

"But PLEASE ..... let the girls in. Just the girls. I'll leave. You can have the house. You can have EVERYTHING."

"Just open the door."

Maya laughed from inside.

High and satisfied ....the laugh of someone who had won.

"Ivy, sweetie… this is OUR home now. It has been for a while."

Then Jack's voice.

Ten years old… with ten years of learned contempt in it.

"Why would we waste food on them? They're useless. Let the zombies have them."

Ivy stood very still.

This child.

This child.

When Jack had a fever, she was the one who sat up through the night checking his temperature.

When older boys at school had cornered him, she was the one who had walked into that principal's office and made it stop.

When she discovered what Adrian had done, she could have thrown them out ....Jack included.

She had every right.

Instead, she had told herself he was innocent.

That he was just a child.

That he was, in whatever broken way, a brother to her daughters.

She had extended her hand.

And now that same hand was being used to hit her children.

"Jack," she said, keeping her voice steady. "Do you remember when you were sick? I stayed up all night with you."

"When those boys at school .... I went in for YOU."

"Aria and Lila are your sisters. They are six and eight years old....."

"They're not my sisters."

Flat. Finished.

"They're dead weight. Go feed the zombies."

Lila made a sound like she'd been struck.

"Jack…" Her voice was tiny. "Do you really hate us? I made you a drawing…"

Her hands shook as she reached into her soaked pajama pocket.

She pulled out a folded piece of paper, completely ruined by the rain, the colors bleeding into each other.

But you could still see it.

A tall boy and two small girls holding hands.... drawn in the stumbling lines of a six-year-old's best effort.

Beside the figures, in large, careful letters:

I love my big brother.

Ivy could not breathe.

Adrian's voice came back one last time.

"Ivy… be realistic. The world has changed. Weak people are a liability now .... that's not cruelty, that's just survival."

"You and those girls consume resources and contribute nothing."

"And honestly…"

A pause.

"I never loved you. I only ever loved Maya."

"This is how things are now. Leave before you draw something to our door."

Ivy knocked until her knuckles ached.

Aria knocked.

Even Lila knocked with both small fists, crying the whole time.

The door did not move.

No sound came from inside.

They had been discarded so completely… that even acknowledging them had become too much effort.

The rain doubled.

The baby's crying thinned to almost nothing.

Her little body had gone cool in ways that made Ivy's stomach drop.

Aria's knees buckled but Ivy caught her.

"Mama…" Aria's voice was just breath now. "Am I going to die?"

" Mama, I don't want to…" Lila wrapped both arms around Ivy's leg. "I want to grow up. I want to go back to school. I want...."

Ivy wrapped herself around all three of them.

She pressed her mouth against Aria's wet hair.

"You WON'T," she said. "I promise you. Mama PROMISES."

"Do you hear me? I will not let you die."

She held them as she said the words.

But she knew what exposure did to a newborn.

She knew what the cold was doing to her daughters right now.

She knew with the calm clarity of someone who had run out of options that the words she was saying and the reality she was standing in were not the same thing.

Grrrrm.

Low. Guttural.

Coming from the dark ahead.

Ivy lifted her head and saw two eyes burned in the rain.

Red and enormous.

Each one glowing like something that had swallowed a light source whole.

Then two more.

Then more still...getting closer.