Chapter 8

Paul, when entering his bedroom, took hold of the door handle, trying to open it, but instead, he just heard a loud breaking sound, ending with the handle in his hand and the door pulled off its hinges, falling to the ground.

His sisters inside, who were lazing away and passing time, heard the sound and saw how the door broke apart, falling to the floor, making a loud sound.

"Shit," Paul cursed with a blank look at the door handle in his hand and the broken door on the floor.

After the disturbance, Madison came quickly to see what had happened, and Alicia and Claire quickly got up to see if their brother was hurt, after seeing it was Paul, they asked, "What happened? x3," worriedly looking at the door and him.

Seeing their worried looks, Paul tried quickly to defuse the situation. "I'm okay, I'm okay, don't worry. I don't know what happened. I just tried to open the door, and it ended up like this." He tried to reassure them with a confused look.

"How is that even possible?" Claire asked with amazement and wide-open eyes, looking at him and the door.

Madison looked at the door with a worried look, then intuitively thought of the blood on his abdomen before. "Maybe the hinges were rusty and broke apart easily," Paul tried to find a logical reason, but he knew he was just trying to bullshit his way out of the situation.

Alicia looked at the hinges and the handle and saw no rust, making her more worried than alarmed at his strength. "Paul!! There's something wrong with you?"

"Yes, Paul, start talking. Also, why are you only in your pants, with blood in them, and your pistol in the back?" Claire observed him more carefully now, worried.

Paul sighed, seeing that talking shit would not make them easily let things go. "I... I think I'm okay."

"What do you mean by that, Paul?" Madison asked, now worried and fearful that something had happened to him. Alice and Claire didn't say anything but were like their mother, looking at him, waiting for his answer.

"I'm not exactly sure how to answer that because I myself don't know the answer," Paul answered, only confusing them more than they already were.

"Look, this is the thing," Paul entered the room, stepping over the door, and embraced his sisters close to his body before kissing them for a moment under their bewildered looks. "I'm with Mom again, and I just fucked her really hard." Madison opened her eyes wide at him telling them like this and blushed red.

Claire and Alicia were stunned and surprised at the turn of events, but after a second, they recovered. They already expected that he would get Mom again at some point, as it wasn't hidden that he still desired her, wanting to have all of us at the same time, so they didn't bother too much at it. "Alright... You fucked Mom again, congrats, but what does that have to do with this?" Alicia pointed to the door, saying the obvious situation at hand.

"Well, it has something to do with that, I believe." Paul now more at ease, seeing their reaction, rested his hands on their bubbly ass and touched them, making them blush. "After I left you two to rest, I went out for water. After all, we fucked like animals back there," Paul smugly said while putting more force as he caressed their ass.

"Then here comes the trouble. I saw Mom going into the garage and leaving with a large bolt cutter and a worried look, and I decided to follow her, thinking that something was wrong. I just picked my pistol and followed her, just in my pants as fast as I could." Paul pointed to his pants, almost naked.

Madison was embarrassed by that and blushed more strongly as she explained. "I was trying to see what was happening outside. Chris saw something with the binoculars from the roof in the distance, and all this weird situation in the safe zone and the outside made me worried, so I wanted to investigate what was happening. Also, I wasn't having a good time lately, making me do this wrong move."

"Well, here's the thing. She fucked it up doing that, and I'm glad I saw her just in time when she was leaving the house. I followed her as she bypassed a patrol, cut the fence, and ran into the city. I did the same, going after her. The path was rocky and hurt like hell, cutting all my fucking feet, still sucking it up, I followed closely.

"I lost sight of her but after looking around, got her again in the main street looking at bodies on the ground before hiding. I did the same, given her reaction. There was a death squad of soldiers checking the bodies in the streets. Luckily for us, the humvee covering them moved in another direction.

"They were shooting and burning any suspicious body, but they were not only taking care of the infected bodies, no, they were after anyone outside the safe zone. Mom hiding under a truck almost got found by one of them, and having no choice, I just killed them all."

"After she got out from under the car, she saw blood on me. A little scared, I touched the place and put pressure in case I was bleeding out, not feeling it because of the adrenaline, but I found no wound. So I thought it was the soldier's blood when I picked his weapon," Paul related to them, still a little with cold feet at having been shot and not felt it. It was more worrisome than knowing it; at least you could try to stop the bleeding. Not knowing you bled out.

"We came back into the safe zone, and Mom pulled me into Susan's house where she checked me. We found nothing, no wound in my body. At the time, I didn't think about it, but my feet didn't hurt anymore. I was just concentrating on the situation of Mom being safe, and I got horny as Mom did a few moves on me. All concluded with an ending of fucking her senseless and being together again."

"Then we came back, and now this happened." Paul ended up shrugging at them, not really explaining well what had happened.

"Mom!!" Alicia and Claire were terrified at knowing that Paul possibly got shot and also almost killed, looking frantically at his body to see if he was okay. After a moment, they found nothing and left their brother's embrace, running to their mother scared about her almost getting killed too.

"Why are you so reckless, Mom?!" Alicia reproached her loudly, scared about thinking that she almost lost her mother.

"What a way to do stupid things, Mom. Alicia is right. You did things not thinking about what could possibly happen with what you did. The first thing the soldiers did when they came was say to everyone don't leave the safe zone, and you just go and do that," Claire was mad at her.

"Still, this doesn't solve what happened with the door. Also, you say that your feet were bleeding before, right?" Madison couldn't say anything because her daughters were right, so instead she started thinking about the situation at hand, still worried about Paul. She took his hand and made him sit on the bed and started checking his feet, but they were fine with no scratches or cuts.

"There's nothing," Madison said to him in wonder.

"Yeah, I thought so. I have suspicions that it's the Wildfire Virus, that is latent in all of us doing something on me. We know, thanks to the World Health Organization, that it does something after its infected host dies ending in the body becoming those things. Maybe my body responds differently to the virus and it's doing something in my body, changing me while still alive." Paul looked with a wondering look, but inside he just kept bullshitting more and more with half-truths, trying to make something reasonable of what was happening.

Madison now looked more convinced that the blood before wasn't from the soldier's but his getting shot, after checking his feet, but somehow, he healed inhumanely fast. She was terrified at the thought of him being shot because of her and thankful that whatever was happening it saved him.

The sisters had a wondering look on their faces at this fantasy history that was happening in front of them, but also distressed at the events. "Maybe, fucking Mom gave you powers," Claire joked at the absurd situation.

"It could be," Paul smirked, then he got to a nightstand and pulled out a hunting knife carefully, trying not to use almost strength, and scratched his hand, bleeding a little before it closed as fast as it came. They saw it all, amazed at it, wondering if they could be like him, but no one tried anything. They took his palm and touched it in wonder while looking at the blood in the knife.

"So weird, how are you feeling?" Alicia asked him while seeing nothing at all.

"I'm good, same as always. Well, maybe a little better. Just fucked, so more happy?" Paul talked after thinking for a moment like wondering.

Then Paul picked a dumbbell and tried deforming it, easily it became a lump of scrap, to his amazement and theirs.

"We can't tell anybody about this. It's too dangerous. They are killing people infected or not. What could they do to Paul if they knew this?" Madison said, worried, also having Daniel's warning and history still fresh on her mind.

"We're not stupid, Mom. We know this is not normal, and we're not as reckless," Claire argued back.

"Well, in any case, I'm good. So stop worrying. If I feel bad, you'll be the first to know. Let's stop here," Paul reassured them again. "And now, where is Nick?"

"I was about to look for him before this happened. Daniel's warning scared me a little. Baby, clean yourself and try to repair that door. I'll go look for Nick."

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An hour later, after showering and changing the door hinges while carefully training with the amount of force used while doing things, he thought that maybe unconsciously his body controlled his strength when touching his girls as he luckily didn't harm them.

Paul rested between his sisters on the bed as they embraced him tightly and showed him Susan's suicide note they took from her house when they sneaked in there at some point, which read:

"Patrick, if you find this, I'm sorry. If you find this, I love you. I saw something today, something that horrified me. At first, I thought it was unnatural. I thought it was an aberration. But I was wrong. What I saw was prophesied. What I saw was godly. And I think it's overdue. I wish you were here, but I will see you soon. And you will hold me. If you find this, I'm sorry. If you find this, I love you."

Paul read it and then said, "That's just the ravings of an old woman who can't comprehend what she saw. She's associating it with something more grand than it is. There's nothing to look into here—someone dying and something else using the remains left behind. You know what happens when you see the eyes of a living being leaving its last breath? The spark of life fades away and his body shuts down. What we see remaining nowadays is nothing more than a moving husk."

He continued, "I will never let anything like that happen to any of you, Mom, or even Nick while I still breathe."

Then he tried to change the heavy topic and make a small talk. "You know, unfortunately, our bad luck has struck at the worst time. You know that I started working from home a few months ago, right? That's because I no longer needed to go out to work the jobs I was doing before. Can you believe it? I—and all of us, for that matter—were already rich. Since last week, my investments have been worth over 15 million dollars. In fact, we've been rich since last year, but I kept investing the money and only took what we needed for the household, your college tuition, and to help Mom with anything she required."

"We're rich, yet we haven't been able to enjoy a moment of that fortune because of this damn apocalypse. I had everything planned for us: a luxurious life where we could have anything we wanted. This money was just the start. In the next few years, I could have accumulated enough wealth for ten lifetimes for all of us, so that none of us would ever have to work again."

"Now, everything is gone. We face a hard world and a hard life ahead. But I believe it won't be like this forever. At some point, we must believe that things will get better. And if they don't, I will pave the way for it to get better—even if it's just for our family."

Paul kept chatting with his sisters as they cuddled and rested for a while, they showed him how they made on their forearm a cute tattoo of a 'P' inside a heart, making him horny seeing them marked with his initial, they did the same to him, with their initial in each arm, after that they continued casually chatting until dinner. At some point, Alicia left for the bathroom, and they heard Nick and Alicia talking loudly outside the bedroom.

"Go away. Go away," Nick said in a distressed voice.

"What happened to your face?" Alicia asked, trying to enter the bathroom.

"Knock, for Christ's sake! Go away!" Nick said angrily.

"Nick! Let me in!" Alicia insisted.

"What's going on?" Travis appeared, his voice cracked as if his world came crashing down just a moment ago.

Hearing him like that from the bedroom, Paul thought that Madison had recently ended their relationship, making him smile and wanting to hold Claire to celebrate, but she left to see what was happening with Nick.

"Nick! What happened?" Travis asked behind the door, trying to put himself together and not appear devastated before Madison's kids.

"Travis, stop. Let me handle this," Alicia said, knowing Nick wouldn't let them in, especially with Travis asking. She noticed Travis wasn't well at the moment.

"Let me just... I've got it, okay?" Alicia said, sending Travis away.

"Okay," Travis resigned.

"Nick? He's gone. Come on. Let me in, do you want me to get Mom?" Alicia said, knowing what to say to make Nick open the door. He hastily opened it for her and Claire.

"Who did that to you? Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?" Alicia asked after seeing his face.

But Nick just crumbled a little and didn't say anything. "Hey, hey, it's okay. It's okay," Alicia said, supporting her brother.

Not long after, a group of soldiers arrived in trucks and Humvees with .50 cal machine guns pointing at the house. Liza and Dr. Bethany Exner were with them. Inside the bedroom, Paul quickly dressed when he heard the commotion outside. He saw soldiers carrying Daniel's wife, Griselda, on a stretcher, with Liza at her side.

"This is good. This is good," Liza said.

"Okay, come on. Alright," she said after checking Griselda's condition."Careful." Liza continued as the soldiers carried her outside the house.

"I don't know how long we will be out," Daniel said to his daughter, Ofelia, as he prepared to go with the soldiers and his wife.

"What the hell is going on?" Travis asked, confused about what was happening and being also a little grumpy because of his finished relationship.

Madison also appeared from another side, disconcerted by the situation. "Hey! Whoa! Hey, hey. What's all this?" Travis asked after a soldier pointed a gun at him.

Paul was with his sisters and Nick in the hallway. "Hey, what's the need to point guns at us? We're unarmed and not hostile," Paul said to the group's leader.

"Don't disturb our work and incite the people, young man. We're just following protocol. Step aside and let us do our job. The quicker we do it, the faster we'll leave," the sergeant said, with soldiers inside pointing their guns at him.

Paul saw the risky situation and didn't say anything more, especially with the menacing machine guns pointing at the house he could see outside in their front yard.

"If we don't get Griselda to the base hospital where she can receive better treatment and check her condition at all times, she'll lose a foot. You're in the way," Liza said to Travis, de-escalating the situation.

"Alright. Okay," Travis stepped aside.

"Alright, step..." Liza instructed the soldier carrying Griselda.

"Sir, I'll need you to wait," a sergeant stopped Daniel as he tried to follow his wife.

"No, that's okay. That's his wife," Madison spoke up for Daniel.

"I have two names," the sergeant said.

"Griselda Salazar, Daniel Salazar," Daniel tried to explain.

"No, not you. Nicholas Clark," the sergeant said after checking a clipboard.

"What?" Madison said, bewildered.

"Come on, man, free medical care from the U.S. military," a soldier said, pointing at Nick. Before they could grab him, Paul knocked the soldier out with an elbow.

"Run," Alicia said.

A few other soldiers ran after Nick, while others stayed to pin down Paul but also bashed him out of the air as retaliation. Claire and Alicia tried to push them away.

"Alicia, Claire, stop. Let them do it. Just stay at the side," Paul said, not daring to make any wrong moves with the soldiers pointing their guns at everyone.

"That's a mistake. That's a mistake," Madison historically yelled at the soldiers as they grabbed Nick.

"Nick!" Claire and Alicia screamed.

"Wait, wait! Hey!" Madison tried to stop them but was only gun-pointed as well.

"No, no!" Madison cried out.

"Take it easy! Take it easy!" Travis said while pointed too with a gun.

"No, don't you hurt him! Nick!" Madison saw the soldiers hit Nick.

"Back off. Back off, ma'am," a soldier blocked her way as two others carried Nick out.

"No! He's not sick." Madison desperately tells them.

"What's going on?" Chris asked, appearing and seeing the situation.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Ofelia said, seeing a soldier push Daniel to the ground after he tried to get past them to go to his wife.

"Whoa! Easy! Take it easy," Travis put himself between a soldier pointing at Chris.

"Step back!" the soldier ordered Travis.

"What are you doing?" Travis yelled, seeing the soldier point at his son.

"Take it easy, man, he's a kid. It's an old man and a kid. What are you doing? This is our home," Travis said.

"What are you doing, man?" Meanwhile, Nick tried to reason with the soldiers outside the house as they pulled him away forcefully.

"I didn't do anything," Nick said confusedly, still trying to release himself.

"Get him in," The sergeant not answering anything just orders for him to be transported.

"Let Nick stay. He's not a risk. I'll look after him, please," Liza said to Dr. Bethany Exner as she saw them detaining Nick as well.

"You said you wanted to help," Bethany doesn't answer her just diverts the conversation to something else.

"Yeah, I do, yes, but..." Liza hesitated.

"Then get in the truck. We could use you at the hospital," Bethany said plainly.

"He knows me. Let me talk to Moyers," Travis still tried to reason with the soldiers.

"It doesn't matter," the sergeant was dismissive of him.

"Just let me talk to Moyers," Travis pleaded.

"No! No, Nick!" Madison was hysterical as they loaded Nick into the truck and were about to depart.

"I have a son. He needs me," Liza said to Bethany, who was already sitting in the truck with the soldiers.

"We'll come back for your son," Bethany misguided her with false words.

"He's safe here for now. But Griselda, the others..." Bethany tries to appeal to her desire to be more than just a nurse. "They need you. I need you. Are you coming? Liza?"

"Mom?" Chris asked, confused about what his mother was doing with the doctor and the soldiers.

"Alright, clear out," the sergeant said after finishing their task.

"Mom?" Chris asked, doubting his eyes as Liza willingly got into the truck with the doctor and the soldiers.

"Where is he? Where did you take him? Where is he? No! Nick!" Madison asked the soldiers leaving despairingly.

"Fucking Liza and that cock sucker doctor. See where it got us with her making herself look like a saint, helping the needed, doing shit in the house, and bringing only trouble," Paul said angrily to no one in particular before embracing his sisters to calm them down.

"Liza, she did this," Madison said madly to Travis, now more than sure that her decision to be back with her son was the correct one.

Travis was exhausted after the situation and the people blaming Liza for the troubles. "Chris?" he looked at his son who had an angry face, silently leaving the living room.

"What are we gonna do now, Paul?" Claire asked.

"We need to do something, get Nick back," Alicia said.

Paul sighed and took a breath. "Calm down, both of you. Now we can't do anything, but I will get Nick back. I promise."