More Than a Sunburn

As the night crept closer my heart started to feel uneasy. My palms had the consistency of baby oil, and I was starting to run out of food. I didn’t want to die here. I have spent the past two weeks on the eastside of San Marcos in an abandoned warehouse. Power was inconsistent, there was no heat and only enough water to drink a few glasses a day. I was forced to come here due to the severity of what the sun was doing to people. In simple terms, it was a mass murderer that no one (so far) had handcuffs big enough to arrest. I didn’t know too many details on how or why this was happening. All I did know is that melting skin, exploding eyeballs, and excessive vomit were all things that would occur (in no particular order) when exposed to sunlight directly. Even if a person was able to get inside immediately after exposure, it was only delaying the inevitable. Within ten minutes one of the three bodily effects begin to take heed. To make matters worse, it was highly infectious and spreading faster than a California wildfire. Everyone in my city had either evacuated or become a victim of the Sun disease.

Fortunately I wasn’t alone. I managed to save my cat Leo, so he kept me company on these lonely nights. Except we weren’t alone. Things would be fine during the day, but every night the main door would always rattle loudy, with a faint knock that followed. It always happened around 1 am, so I’d wait on it before I would go to sleep. This night was different though. The hard knocking upgraded to an even harder banging, and I could see the door hinges beginning to loosen. At this rate, whatever was outside was going to be inside within a matter of minutes. Sweat covered my face as if I had just bobbed for apples and after doing careful calculations in my head, I quickly came to the conclusion that we were screwed. Doubtful thoughts planted themselves in my mind with no intention of being uprooted. But I couldn’t focus on the negative energy, I had to figure out how to escape my current predicament.By this time one of the hinges had completely came off, and the other two were about to join the first one. I grabbed a 4X4, tossed a few box cutters in my pocket, then commanded Leo to get behind me and to have his claws on standby. After a couple more hard bangs on the door, the other two hinges fell off. Whatever was behind that door, we were about to face it head on.