Sweat slid from her brow as Andrea jogged along the morning twilight-dark street, marking her progress as she passed from one pool of light to the next until she reached the intersection of 12th Street and Main where she had to wait for the light. She stopped moving forward but still jogged in place, pressing her right index and middle fingers to her neck, counting each rhythmic thud against her fingertips while she waited, making sure her heart rate was where it should be.

The light changed. She moved to continue, but the person shambling up to the far corner brought her up short. He, she, Andrea couldn't tell which in the dark because the person wasn't...normal, the movements weren't indicative of either sex, but whatever it was, the person moved with what seemed like exaggerated effort, stumbling over its feet like a drunkard, weaving, keeping its head bowed toward the ground. When the person was halfway through the intersection Andrea shivered, realizing that all the bells and whistles were going off inside her head and that she needed to go before the person made it all the way across the street. She turned and slammed into what felt like a cushioned wall. It grabbed her. She screamed.

"Ugh!" he said. His fingers dug into her biceps and Andrea looked up into his face while attempting to step backward, out of his grasp. Her eyes grew wide with disbelief.

"Robby?" she asked. She stood there mesmerized at the sight of her two weeks dead son standing in front of her but reeling from the cloyingly sweet stench of him. He stared at her and she stared back into his cataract eyes. A white maggot squirmed from between jagged, broken teeth and out over his mottled, blackened lips, but Andrea never saw what happened to it. Robby pulled her to him, dipping his head toward her like he was going to kiss her but he met a lower mark, cutting short his mother's screams as, with his strong jaw and jagged teeth, he bit through her neck, seizing her trachea, tearing a gaping hole in it. Hands grabbed her from behind, teeth sunk into the base of her skull, and she knew who they belonged to.

This isn't happening! She told herself over and over again in her mind. They're dead! Her son and his wife, their two children, they were all dead. The kids had been torn apart, mauled to beyond recognition. Robby and Jackie had been torn up to a lesser extent but they had still been shredded slowly, much of them eaten while they were still alive. Investigators claimed that wild, rabid dogs did it, yeah, right! Andrea put two and two together now.

They dropped her droopy, rag doll body to the ground between them. She couldn't move, but she could still see. They bit into her arms and tore ragged strips of flesh from her legs. She wondered how long it would take to bleed to death and was glad that it was painless, as she had always prayed her death would be.

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