One

Nothing ever stayed the same, that's one thing Amelia knew. She wasn't always going be young, she wasn't always going be happy, she wasn't always going have people around her, and she wasn't always going stay in the same place. As far as she can remember, she must've moved houses about a dozen times. She's met some kids who she found interesting. Kids who didn't find her weird, too quiet, or abnormal for never going outside much. But then those kids would never show up or Amelia's family would move house again.

"Why do we keep moving so much?" Amelia asked Mamma when they were on the road. She just didn't understand it at the time, she was six.

"The same reason we keep eating, and we keep sleeping. We just have to, sötnos," said Amelia's mom. She was a thin profile of a hapless woman with pale blonde hair, and contours on her face. "Just trust in God, sötnos."

It was like watching a miserable white rose withering away, Amelia sometimes thought to herself. Why did she never get a proper answer? What was she hiding? Did mamma hate her? Amelia turned to Annika for some type of explanation. Annika could see the confusion in her eyes, the bereavement of not knowing what normal was anymore, but she would just ruffle Amelia's hair and say, "Muntra upp! You'll understand one day, little sis."

For every house they had first entered, Amelia had to stay outside while Annika and Mamma went to check it out. She remembered the harsh sounds beckoning her ears. Sounds of incessant rasping, growling, screaming, and groaning, almost as if an animal was being wounded. It was only when Annika emerged out of those looming doors, a gloomy countenance cast on her face, followed by the words "It's done" that Amelia would be allowed to enter. But what exactly had been done? What did Annika and her mother do exactly that they didn't want her to know? Amelia kept this question to herself for years for she knew she wouldn't get the proper answer she deserved. Her heart stung the more she thought about it, being blood and not knowing what they'd known her entire life.

From the ages of six to eleven, Amelia had been locked inside every house she ever stayed in. They had once arrived at a wooden mansion on top of a desert hill. Mamma had hammered in every door with wooden beams and shut every window to make sure there was nothing her little sötnos could do to get out. Amelia remembered being swallowed by the inky darkness, staring glassy-eyed at the pounding, hefty door. Dust settled into the air and floated right under her nose.

"Mamma, why do you always board the doors? Do you hate me so much that my eyes must only see this Devil's tomb they call a house?" Amelia asked. That was the day she had just turned eleven.

"It's good that you stay in there. You'll be safer in there, my sötnos." Mamma's voice was dead, dried of any tenderness.

"That's not fair! Annika goes with you wherever you are! I wanna go do what you guys do! I'm sick of being in this cold place! I'm sick of eating rotten meat and fruit. Take me with you, mamma! Why do you avoid me, mamma?"

There was a dead pause where nothing could be heard but Amelia's quaking stomach. Hunger was inescapable. Even the meat and the fruit that mamma brought in sometimes wasn't enough. The fruit was okay at best, but the meat...there was something about the taste that lingered questingly in her mouth. Annika had told her over dinner that it was javelina meat but she hadn't quite met her eyes when she said that.

For a sickening moment, Amelia thought her mother had left.

"There's nothing but death out here, sötnos," said Mamma, her voice slightly ossified. A cold breeze blew through her words. "I can't just bring you out here. But since you cry and push, I'll make you a deal. When you turn twelve, I'll tell you what it is we do. I'll bring you into our lives."

"Swear it!" Amelia protested. "Swear it on the Bible."

"I promise I'll do what I say. And sötnos... I love you, don't you ever forget that."

A gentle sultry voice permeated through the door. "Just do what mamma says, Amelia. You'll understand one day."

"I don't want to hear it, Annika!" Amelia said, teeth ground, envy coursing through every beating pulse. But Annika didn't respond. They had already left.

That was another night she would be staying in that hissing, dark house by herself. Perhaps even three or four nights. The lights were out and there would be no stove to produce heat. She would be isolated with nothing but her barren thoughts to comfort her.

A year later, Amelia Bergstrom was standing by the window, evidently the only one that wasn't boarded up, and staring wistfully out into the cold desert morning. The light was just beginning to crack behind the orange desert mountains and the cacti were beginning to show some green behind the shadows. The day whispered new promises, yet Amelia still felt hollow inside. Like she missed out on a huge part of her life. But also, the nights that she slept alone were cold, unforgiving, and bred nightmares. Every time she slept she kept on seeing these ghoulish, pale people, limp towards her. They carried this mark...this hellishly red pentagram symbol stamped on their foreheads. They would choke out her name and suddenly Amelia would be seeing herself, a gangly white blonde figure branded with the bright red mark. She would wade through the morose landscape to meet the colorless creatures, smiling.

"We've been waiting for you." A crippled voice slithered through the dead white-masked crowd.

"I know," Amelia uttered lustfully as they encroached her, worshipped her, and ate her flesh to the bones.

The real Amelia would wake up to this in cold beaded sweat, trembling, willing to unreel her mind of what she had dreamed. Wanting, even, to tell Mamma and Annika. But what would they care? What did they want with her? Amelia had long thought about ditching this place and going somewhere far far away where they could never find her and where she could be finally happy. Where she could meet friends and strangers who took an interest in her existence. Yet, strangely enough, her feet became stone heavy and difficult to move.

The door pounded eerily, and then it released a few more bangs. Amelia stepped away from the living room window and crept into the hallway. The door unleashed a final blow and banged right open. A tall blonde profile entered the room feigning any acknowledgment of the broken state of the door. She had steely gray eyes, thin scars carved on her face, and a brown shawl that wrapped around her neck and fell down her shoulders like silky linen sheets. Tight ripped jeans and boots covered her bottom half, and two holsters strapped loosely to her legs. One carried a dagger and the other a pistol.

"There's something I think you should see, Amelia," said Annika's gentle sultry voice. It had gotten deeper over the years. Amelia always thought Annika looked a lot like Mamma only younger and more beautiful, like a Swedish model. But the older they got, Amelia couldn't help but feel there was something more behind those blonde locks and that gentle voice, something dark and nasty. Annika was seven years Amelia's senior and she hardly said much when she was around her. She's always kept her distance and obediently stuck by Mamma's side. She never said more or less than what she was instructed to say. For the longest time, Amelia loathed Annika for betraying their sisterly bond to be with Mamma, for knowing more about the outside world than she did. But now, Annika's face had lost some of its luster. It was bleached, wounded, and rusted with weariness.

"It's Mamma."

Amelia followed Annika through the front door and wended their way around the house to the backdoor entrance with the sliding doors. The sun had melted behind the mountains and it leaked out a scorching orange glow onto the patio. Round wooden tables with plates of food were planted on different areas of the patio like dirty brown patches. Flies and mosquitos surrounded the dirty plates as if awaiting ghosts to return to their tables and finish their meals. Through the maze of stench, a lanky blonde figure sat against the wall covering her stomach with her hands. The lines on her face had become more prominent, her countenance had become pastel white, and shadows had begun to grow behind her sunken eyes. The bloody red fluids continued to drip down from her stomach but her hands continued to hold it as if it were a sponge. Each scarlet drip became a tear that trickled closer and closer to death.

"Mamma!" Amelia shouted, scrambling to hug her mother, to touch her, to smell her. But she could hardly do any of those things besides manage a soft touch on her shoulder and eject a weak sob. "Mamma, what happened?"

"I-I got stabbed, sötnos," Mamma gasped. "It happens all the time. It'll be alright. We'll all be right."

"You know full well that's not what happened." Annika's gray eyes narrowed. "She's twelve. It's time you told her the truth, like you promised."

Amelia looked at mom and Annika as if deciding which dessert to eat, but her eyes landed back on Mamma entreatingly. The hate still lingered but it wasn't as intense, just numb. Just tired. "Mamma, remove your hands, let me see what hurt you."

"No!" Mamma rasped fervently. "Amelia I need you to go back to your room. I need to have a word with your sister. Now!" Those words reverberated, and jingled darkly into Amelia's head, causing her tiny knobby legs to buckle. She ambled back around the house but stealthily crept back under the window near one of the wooden tables.

"You can't keep hiding our world away from her," Annika's voice cropped out behind the tables.

"It's none of your business what I can and can't do! That girl is too young to understand the sinful lives that we live. To understand what those demons out there are capable of! Listen...I need you to protect her, to take care of her, and carefully teach her what I taught you...when the time is right. But for now, Annika please—" Mamma ejected a noxious cough. The blood had already groveled into her throat and her pupils were losing color. "I need you to keep her in this house until she's of age. Until she has nurtured the maturity to understand. Do you hear me?"

For a moment all Amelia heard was a repleting heartless silence.

"And that attitude of yours, it needs to go. You've done things your way countless of times when I specifically told you not to. You will not go down that route again, you hear me?"

"Whatever you say, Mamma," Annika uttered callously.

"Now don't give me that look. I've done a lot to keep this family alive ever since your stepfather...happened. Don't turn me out into some bad guy, don't make me the reason—"

The air gave a booming crack. But Amelia must've heard it wrong. It couldn't have been a gunshot, it must've been a firecracker or an exploding engine of a car. But she saw Annika poised with her pistol pointed at Mamma. Legs trembling like weak toothpicks, Amelia ushered over to the lifeless body. She held Mamma's blood-ridden face and sure enough the hole was as gaping and evident. Hot tears began to well out of Amelia's face. "Mamma, mamma!"

"Get a grip," said Annika.

"What have you done?" Amelia demanded.

"What I should've done when I knew she was bit. I just wanted you to see it for yourself."

"You killed her!"

The gun danced on Annika's fingers. The steely gray eyes behind those bleach blonde locks narrowed. "I gave her a quick and easy ride. She was going to turn in a matter of seconds."

These words weren't making sense to Amelia. "What do you mean by bit and turn?"

Annika tucked the gun back into her holster. "It's time you understand who we are and what it is we do."

Amelia stared eagerly, legs still wobbling, hands coated in blood.

"We haven't exactly been picking cherries, Amelia. We're zombie hunters. We go out, we kill, and we get paid for it, either through rations or currency."

"Z-Zombies?" Amelia said uncertainly, unsure she liked the taste of that word. "But zombies only exist in comics, and in movies. They're not real."

Annika stared at her deadeye.

"Ok, but that's all you guys do, right? You kill zombies."

"No, Amelia, we kill. Our job as zombie hunters is to bring balance into this city. So if zombies kill, we kill them. And if humans kill, we have to kill them as well."

"But..." Amelia's words became muddy, ineffable, unable to grasp this strange ideology.

Annika knelt down so they were nose to nose, breath to breath. She held her shoulders cajolingly. "I can't put everything into words, little sis, but I told you you would understand one day. I may not have been there to explain it all to you, and I'm sorry. But now, there's a lot for you to understand about this business. And there's a lot for you to understand about Paradise."