Chapter 2

No one answered. The thick, overwhelming absence of sound was worse than any noise I could have imagined. I opened the door and stepped inside my parents' bedroom. The first thing I noticed was the wet tracks on the hardwood floor. I couldn't believe my eyes. My parents were absolute hard-asses about keeping the house clean. In school, they told us if we ever found a puddle of Blight Rain in our house that we should immediately cover it with a layer of salt.

Change the ionic content of the water, make the particles less infectious.

I couldn't believe my mom left this here for anyone to step in.

Looking around the small master bedroom, I found her lying on the couch beside a pair of wet bunny slippers. I saw her head lounging limply on the couch. She was facing away from me.

A knot formed in the pit of my stomach as I walked closer. I noticed that my mother was bundled up in a comforter, but she still shivered under it. My mother was always a petite woman with a bit of a belly. She made up for her lack of height by growing waist-long auburn hair. Her hair was hanging over her face like an oily slick. I noticed she was breathing rapidly under her dark, wet locks of hair.

"Maw?"

She didn't answer. I stepped closer and squeezed her shoulder. Her body was stiff and cold. It was like touching the shoulder of Michelangelo's David. If she didn't immediately roll her shoulder out of my grasp, I would have wondered if it was really a human lying under those blankets. She drew the thick down comforter closer around her shoulders.

"You're really c-cold," I said. "Do you want me to turn up the heater?"

There was no response.

I didn't need the thumping of my telltale heart to know that something was amiss.

"H-hey...hey," I said. "Wake up. I'm going to make some pancakes for dinner for Grace and me. Do you want anything?"

She turned her head, and I saw her eyes moving under her closed lids.

"Mom?" I repeated.

Finally, her lids opened a slit. I could barely see them under her wet hair. I sucked in a breath. There was light emitting from under her lids. Her pupils were bright, like a cat's.

"W-what's wrong with your eyes?" I asked and flinched back. She was infected. I needed to get her to a hospital — now! Was there time, even if it wasn't raining? My eyes went to the window. There was no hope of the Blight Rain stopping. The rain was pounding against the windows with so much force I could hear the wooden frames creaking with every blow. In the distance, I could see the rain coming down in sheets, all but turning the streets into a river.

"Ouch!"

In horror, I looked down at my arm.

My mother bit me. I couldn't believe my eyes. My wrist was bleeding from several puncture marks. I could see the smooth indents of her teeth in my pale wrist. I watched her lick her lips. Was that my blood and flesh on her lips?

I backed away. My mother threw aside the comforter and slid her feet into her drenched slippers.

I saw her glowing eyes approach like two torches in the night. She wanted more.

Plop, plop — her soaked slippers went against the hardware floor.

Her hair continued to drip Blight Rain around her.

She didn't just want to eat me. She was going to infect me too.

I didn't know what terrified me more — becoming a mindless vampire or having my mother rip an enormous chunk of raw steak out of my neck.

Lock her in the room. That was my only hope. As she reached out toward me with one clawed hand, I turned and ran. I thanked goodness that my mother suffered from arthritis and had a bad knee from slipping on some wet stairs last winter. I slammed the bedroom door closed behind me and threw a heavy hallway cabinet down behind me.

I flew down the stairs and grabbed my father's keys from the dining room table. Water pelted my face as I came to the front door. Grace was standing before the wide-open door, and the torrential rain was flying into the house. She was standing there with her arms open as though she was embracing the storm.

The horrifying sight momentarily left me speechless. What had gotten into her? Grace was only ten, but she knew the Blight Rain was poisonous.

"What are you doing?" I snapped. Forgetting how dangerous the rain was, I reached over and yanked Grace back from the door by her ponytail. She turned her eyes to me. With relief, I saw that although her skin was ice cold, her eyes didn't glow.

"I saw pa-pa," she said. "He said to hold the door open for him."

"You numbskull! Dad isn't here," I snapped. "We're getting out of here."

"Why?" Grace asked dreamily and shivered. She was drenched from head to toe. Loose strands of black hair were plastered against her small face.

"No questions. I'm the older one, get into dad's car now!"

"Do you even have a driver's license?"

"I have a permit," I said and glanced upstairs. I heard a heavy clattering sound of a cabinet being knocked over and glass toiletry bottles shattering on the floor. She was coming. We had to hurry. At my age, most of my friends had long since acquired a real driver's license. My parents were always overprotective of me because of my frail health. I always gave in to their concerns, but even so, I really wished that I had more than a permit on this night of all nights. It wasn't that I was afraid of being pulled over by a cop, it was the fact that I had never driven alone without supervision. Now I had to learn to do so, on the fly, during an unprecedented disaster. "Shut up and follow me, Shortcake. I promise you — it doesn't matter— anymore."

Grabbing Grace's small hand, I dragged her into the garage. At least Grace seemed to be lost in a quiet trance as she followed me. I didn't want her to ask me where we were going without our mother. There was no time to explain that our mother was infected, and she wanted to eat us. I locked the door back into the house behind me. Hopefully, in her vampire state, my mother would know to stay indoors. I shoved Grace into the backseat of the car and hit the remote for the garage door to open.

I had never driven a car by myself before. Any practice until that point wouldn't have helped much — the streets were completely flooded. As the car went slipping and sliding across the road, I knew we had to find our father.