Chapter 1

The ten million dollar mansion in Bel Air that they now call their own must have once been a beautiful place to live. They tried their best to clean the blood and remove the bodies. Ever tried removing blood from a carpet? Not so easy.

The mansion still looks stunning from the outside. No one would expect this house to be located in the middle of a city that's about to go down. If celebrity homes tours still existed this jewel could be one of their plenty stops. The tourists with their Canons, caps, water bottles and shades would have to guess the owner before the tour guide would reveal the name of the true resident to them.

Is it Adele's? That of Miley Cyrus or Kendall Jenner?

When Helen Chen first moved to Los Angeles she went on a hike to the Hollywood Hills with a tour guide from her hostel. They do that tour every Friday.

Well, not anymore.

The hostel probably doesn't exist any longer or it now shelters people like Helen, those who are still alive and try to maintain that status.

On the tour they came across the Playboy Mansion and a villa owned by Taylor Swift. That's all she remembers because back then she never would've expected to once live in one of those villas, even though she never earned living here, let alone bought the mansion, but instead accidentally became a squatter.

Helen had no idea that moving to LA would cause that much trouble. Actually, it doesn't matter where she is now or where she was when it started, it would've happened anyway. The point is she's not with her family and she doesn't know if they're dead already.

She's with strangers.

It's been three weeks now and they haven't heard from anyone – family members, friends, any TV or radio station, YouTubers or podcasters.

No official and neither the police nor the military have reached out to them, have send them a sign. There is still no WIFI or mobile phone network.

The last thing they've said on the news was that everyone should stay where they are (they intentionally didn't use the word home) and wait for further instructions. That's what they did.

No further instructions came.

Most channels stopped broadcasting a few days later. The posts and live streams stopped at the same time. No platform and no app or site remained accessible. It's like the world suddenly stopped spinning and everything's on hold.

At first being stuck in this mansion felt like quarantine life during the corona pandemic when Helen was a child, just more luxurious than in her dorm.

But Helen and her new housemates soon understood that this may not be something temporary. There is no contagious virus this time – a flu as some people denounced it – that makes them stay at home, binge watch series on Netflix or Prime, stockpile toilet paper and medicine, and eat some pizza.

This is more serious.

Even after three weeks only one of them has been affected. He's not here anymore. He's gone. The rest of them is okay, for now. That's why they haven't gone outside.

Helen spends her days reading books she found in a ceiling-high bookshelf that occupies a whole wall in the spacious living room that leads to the terrace with an infinity pool that is slowly turning to a dirty lake occupied by dead spiders and flies rather than a clean and warm swimming pool.

She has so far read about twelve books, four a week, compared to her regular two books a months, most of which aren't for pleasure but compulsory reading.

Some of them turned out to be her favorite books, other made her depressed. Like sci-fi, apocalyptic and horror novels. Sadly, whoever lived here before seemed to be a fan of those kind of books. Those works become too relatable. They remind her that something's happening here and that there is no help on the way yet.

She's basically a full-time reader now.

If Instagram still existed she would put this in her bio and replace "full-time traveler". She only put the term in there because she had attended a summer program in Paris and then travelled through Europe, which made her feel like a true cosmopolitan.

All servers are down, so she doesn't know if Instagram, Twitter or TikTok still exist. If anyone ever managed to film his experience and upload it on YouTube he would make a fortune.

Helen regrets having travelled so little since she can now barely leave the house – a stranger's home – or Los Angeles, let alone California. She doesn't know what's happening outside of these walls.

There must be people like them, people who sought shelter and are now waiting for someone to safe them or tell them what to do.

Today, Helen is responsible for rationing the meals as well as water for drinking and hygiene. When they arrived here they found several packs of bottled water and some grocery bags in the garage, next to the silver Porsche.

In the kitchen and in a tiny storage room they found pasta, rice, canned food, milk, coke, juices, cornflakes, packet soup, and more water.

The thing is since they're in a house that's been lacking electricity and running water for two weeks now, so a lot of the food is useless, because none of them can prepare it without heat, and many of those water bottles are needed for hygiene.

Elijah told them they have to consume the packet soups, pasta and canned vegetables and beans – everything that's prepared with heat or spoils easily – first. Now they know he was right. They have lots of cornflakes, twinkies, beer, maple syrup, tikka masala sauce and bread left. But soon those things will either be rotten or used up.

Helen counts twice as she's about to grab eight bottles, one for each of them. There should be about thirty left but no matter how often she points her finger at them she counts fifteen. Take away eight and there are seven left.

In a day they will have to go look for water.