Chapter One: A scream

When the outbreak had first hit, Juno was at work.

She had made a life for herself in Troup County, LaGrange Georgia... specifically on a small island in the West Point Lake called Pogonip adjacent to the 'mainland.' It only took a small ferry ride that lasted about fifteen minutes to make it to the main town of Troup County where the more important buildings of the County were located. This included the town hall, the chapel, the elementary/middle/high school, a small but well-supplied clinic (since the main LaGrange hospital took more than an hour to reach, and that was without traffic), two fairly popular restaurants, a small cinema, a bookstore, an ice cream parlor/bakery, police station, fire department, pharmacy, and large grocery store.

Pogonip wasn't a large residential area, only taking up less than half of the island (the rest of it being a lush and green forest, like on its smaller and mostly uninhabited sister island, Pakenappeh, that housed the power plant for the island and was only visited by the five-or-so workers that manned it). It was a sleepy and cozy place to live. There was one small farm on the outliers of the 'civilization' owned by the Kim family and the small town square was home to a cafe/diner, a tiny craft store that sold some of the most random items that Juno had ever seen (including yarn, books, buttons, birdhouses, seeds, porcelain dolls, board games, fabric, etc.), a firearm store that catered to the local hunters and even fishermen (was more like a miniature wonderland for the more adventurous members of Troup County), a Rec Center, the Brigade Building (which was just a small outpost for the Troup County police and fire department, containing only one cop car and fire truck in case of emergencies), the preschool/daycare she worked at, and ten small-sized houses.

Juno was the only one out of her co-workers that actually lived on Pogonip, right above the daycare in one of the apartments her boss was renting out (which meant that she usually always opened up the preschool or stayed in late when a parent didn't show up for closing time), the others made the ferry trip every morning and evening. She hadn't always worked at the preschool/daycare though. At first, she was just the caretaker or rather glorified handyman for the building, she would clean the empty apartments and fix anything up that needed readjustments. The only thing that she did for the preschool was paint the pictures on the windows in the front (usually the paintings mirrored the time of the year with images of children playing in whatever season it was outside).

Whenever Ms. Bettina found boarders (usually adventurous tourists in the summer there to enjoy the Yellowjacket Creek Recreation area), she'd help them settle in and stock up their rooms with food and other commodities they'd need. The year before she had José come down and help her install a new water heater and a generator after a bad storm had wiped out the electricity from the island for over a week (it hadn't been too hard to convince her boss that it was a good investment either). Now she just made sure to maintain all of the appliances.

Since she lived on the top floor, the biggest apartment belonging to her, she also had access to the rooftop. After getting permission, she had created a safe little vegetable garden, to her mother's delight, and lounge area (that was more importantly private since she liked to get sun topless without having to worry about the peering eyes of perverts). Juno also maintained the storage unit in the basement and kept the children's play area in the back yard clean and tidy, as well the parking space attached to it (it was closed off from both the public and the children and was the only way to get into the daycare from the back) by pruning the wildlife and sweeping the space when needed.

Juno had been living in Pogonip for five years, ever since she was twenty-one, and her only constant companions were Finn and May. Her deceased boyfriend's service dog Finn, who was now six years old, was a sweet golden retriever that never failed to make her smile after a long day at work. May, four years old, was also a golden retriever, but she'd gotten the silly thing as a puppy when she had first moved to Pogonip. The Kim family's dog had a litter of goldens and Juno hadn't been able to resist taking May home. Her parents lived in upstate New York, one county away from Woodstock.

Her sisters Julia and Jayleen lived in the same area as her parents (they were never quite ready to leave their mom's side), the older one (Julia) was a doctor in the local hospital and her younger sister worked in the sheriff's department. On the other hand, her little brother José was a budding engineer living in West Virginia. He owned his own automobile garage and spent most of his time fixing up the engines of cars/tractors and other mechanical devices like generators and so on... To be honest, Juno tended to zone out when José started to ramble on about his beloved machines.

It had been a semi-regular day before everything went to hell, it was an early Friday afternoon and she'd been internally counting down the minutes until she was let off work so that she could get on the road. It was a Moreno family tradition to go hiking in the Mohonk preserve after the open season officially ended. All of the siblings would take a week off from work and spend it in their parents' home. Really, it was just Juno's mother's creative plan to get all of her children within her grasp and under her thumb for a week during the non-holiday season... The only reason her dad put up with it was because that meant he would get two extra hands, since her sisters and their husbands were often stuck helping throughout the year, to help around the house and make renovations. The ex-military man was fanatic about his renovations and carving his own furniture, even if he hadn't exactly gotten the padding down just right for cushions yet.

She'd been absentmindedly pushing Xiao-Chen and Emma alternately in the baby swing while keeping an eye on the other gaggle of two-year-old's as they ran merrily around the jungle gym playset. Thankfully there hadn't been a lot of Hearts (two-year-old's) dropped off that morning so she was only keeping an eye on ten kids compared the usual seventeen. There had been rumors of a weird contagious illness spreading across the States and the more overprotective parents hadn't sent their kids in, but the ones that couldn't stop going to work and living their life because of a 'silly rumor' had dropped their kids off at the daycare in the morning like normal.

Her coworkers Kathy and Marcy were inside of the preschool (more like summer daycare now that the school year had ended) with the Diamonds and Stars (the three and four-year-old's) doing an arts-and-craft project to let her Hearts have a turn outside in the fenced play area, while Ashley had stepped in to change one of the Kim twin's, Mae-Ri's, diaper and then make her way back out to help her.

That was when she heard it.

Her kids had been winding down from their exuberance of being outside in the summer sunshine, most of them coming close to her side to hide underneath the jungle gym attached to the swings to shield themselves from the sun.

There was a scream.

A pained agonized scream and loud moan followed by a chorus of similar exclamations of pain and panicked yelling. Her Hearts had tensed up and the one's not close to her quickly scampered to her side in fear.

Words 1375

(This is the story I was writing before Unexpected, and sort of inspired it. I figured that I would start editing and publishing what I already had written. I hope you all like it!)