Chapter IX

Sixteen consecutive hours had passed since Emma Hillard had moved from the couch in her mother's living room. She hadn't eaten or slept ... she'd barely even stirred. Emma was familiar with depression, and when she got in these moods, she really didn't feel the need to do anything. She liked the dual feeling of slight delirium and total numbness that came with complete apathy. It was a way of dealing with life that she had repeated so often, it came as a second nature to her.
Emma couldn't exactly recall how many days it had been since she had left her apartment in Galveston, Texas to find a city of nothingness. At the time, she had panicked and gotten in her car to find herself weaving through Interstate 10, which was littered with empty cars, to get to Lake Charles -- her hometown, and the place where her son, Aidan, had been visiting her mother for the week.
However, her apprehension ... and her confusion ... and her fear as she navigated her Jetta through the swarm of vacant vehicles were still fresh in her mind. Not once had she dared to stop and examine anything. She was too afraid.
"Maybe everything will be okay when I get to Lake Charles," she thought. "Maybe I'll find out what's going on."
She had arrived to find the city looking just like Galveston in the sense that it was completely deserted. With tears streaming down her face, she pushed hard on the accelerator and didn’t let up until she found herself in front of her mother’s house.
It too, was completely empty.
After Emma had conducted a frenzied search around the neighborhood and come up with nothing, she had returned to her mother’s house and let her sorrow take over.
Now, all she could think of was Aidan.
Her beautiful son, Aidan. The light of her life. She’d never see him again.
A sob escaped her throat, and Emma’s body jolted with the intensity of it. She waited for it to pass and continued to lay, shuddering, on the couch. She bit on ther thumbnail and thought back to when she’d first found out about Aidan’s impending birth.
“Yes, once upon a time, I was really something,” she thought.
When Emma was 19, she was cheerful, nubile and on top of the world. She was engaged to the scion of an oil fortune, Allan Reynolds, and couldn’t have been happier. Allan was the kind of man that was strong, smart and responsible, as well as devastatingly handsome. Some nights, as she lay next to his in bed, she’d look at him sleeping and scarcely believe her good fortune.
But her fortunes ran out just as fast as Allan did when she discovered that she was pregnant.
She didn’t see him through the duration of her pregnancy. She called, she stopped by, she hoped and she prayed, but she never saw Allan. On the day of Aidan’s birth, a man in a suit came to the hospital with a bouquet of flowers, a check for $500,000 that was signed by R. James Reynolds, Allan’s father, and a note that read “You may keep the ring. - A.R.” After that, the only time Emma ever saw anybody in the Reynolds family was on the news.
That had been nine years ago. Since then, with the check from Mr. Reynolds, Emma had provided for Aidan and herself with moderate success and had fallen in and out of depression in direct correlation to when she fell in and out of love with men.
With each new beau that came and went, she felt as if she was letting Aidan down. She’d always wanted to find him a father, someone who would be as strong, smart and responsible as Allan had appeared to be. But, it seemed like the harder she tried, the more futile her efforts were. Men continued to slip through her fingers and her son was still a bastard child -- just as she’d been.
But, none of that mattered anymore. Now, Emma had no son. She had no mother, and she’d never had a father. She didn’t even know who he was.
Everyone had abandoned her.
Emma continued to sob and even though she didn’t want to, she realized she had to get up. She needed to dry her eyes and blow her nose. So, she feebly shifted her legs to the floor, slowly stood up and walked to the bathroom.
After she’d finished, Emma started to walk back to the couch. She didn’t know what she was going to do. After all, what was the point of life now that there was absolutely nobody else?
“Maybe I’ll die or disappear or whatever the hell else happened,” she thought bitterly.
And then, she stopped short, stopped breathing for a moment. Voices -- there were people outside. She moved quickly, too quickly, and crashed to the hardwood floor. She immediately paused, and held her position on the floor.
There were definitely people out there. Emma didn’t know whether to be afraid or ecstatic, but either way, she’d just stay put for now.
“I tell you fath … um … Sebastian. I heard someone in there,” Olaf said.
Sebastian looked toward the doorway with skepticism. He’d heard the crash from inside the house, but that didn’t mean that someONE was inside. It meant someTHING was inside, and if it was some kind of animal, they needed to be prepared.
“There’s someone in there. What are we going to do?” Olaf asked.
“We’re definitely going in that house,” Sebastian said. He went to the side of the house and picked up a heavy shovel that was leaning against it. He picked it up and turned back to Olaf.
“But we’re not going in without weapons.”