The scent of dinner continued to linger in the air. It had been pretty damn sparse, the stores seemingly picked cleaner and cleaner with each passing day, Abi hadn’t commented much though. Like most meals these days there’d been a silence hanging over the table most of the time. Coming full circle from those painful first months after they’d moved to Lethford, where Daya’s absence at the table had been palpable. There was no chair at the side of Abi’s, where she once would’ve sat, just the two of them sat opposite one another in what passed as a dining room in the house here.

Michael sat at it now, leaning back in that same chair that had been his since they’d moved here and replaced all the old with new like that would erase anything. He tipped his head back slightly, green eyes on the ceiling. Abi had retreated to her bedroom, telling him she was gonna talk to some friends on Skype, that he didn’t have to check on her. Her homework was in hand and the dishes were washed. As though that was all that mattered. He’d almost called her back to talk but he’d let her go, watching his teenaged daughter retreat upstairs. He supposed he could’ve done for the same, holing up in the third bedroom that he’d taken for a home office after they’d moved here. It hadn’t felt right though, not since all of this had kicked off.

His jaw tightening slightly, Michael let his gaze drop to the drape covered front windows of the house. He could see a chink of the world outside through the above the top of his laptop. The light dimming as the sun went down and the day crept towards curfew. People will still venture out, not paying an ounce of attention to the rules set in place for their own good. Not him though, and not Abi. He hoped. Being a teenager in the middle of this wasn’t fair, hell, not of it was.

Drawing a breath in through his nose, Michael ran a hand over his face and then dropped it back to the keyboard. His fingers racing over the keyboard in time with the statistics that flooded down the screen. When things were bad this was what he’d always been able to lose his mind in. The constant juggle of data not leaving room for much else. What had once been a problem, a distraction from his family, had become the only way he could deal with what had happened.

As the doorbell rang Michael took a moment to react. He frowned, slowed his typing before he punched a button to stop it. Gatherings were prohibited, Abi knew that, no friends over, no going to anybody else’s place. Harsh but necessary. Work? Damn he hoped not. He locked the laptop, stood and padded to the door. The glass in it was frosted, just enough to show two forms through it. Michael frowned, unlocked the door, ready to step back as it swung open and stopped. Hell, he was pretty sure his heart stopped in his chest too. His gaze didn’t drop to the kid standing there beside his wife, it remained locked on Daya’s face instead, his eyes burning as he blinked. ”Daya?” The word was breathed, shuddering as he lifted a hand to his chest, fingers curling over his ribcage like it would stop his heart from tearing its way free. ”How … what …” Was this the first sign of the virus? Hallucinations of the dead?

Tagged: @daya * Word Count: 594