Jane Story

Author: Centuries of History.

The light from the window, woke Jane Goldshot up. It is only sunrise, but she jumps up off the bed, as sunrise means she is late. The days on the ranch start before the sun comes up and ends hours after the sun goes down. Jane knows she will be teased all day by her brothers for sleeping in today.

While trying to get both her shirt and pants on at the same time, she trips over her pantleg and she falls face down on the floor in front of her bed. As she lays there on the floor, giggling a bit at her own clumsiness her eyes catches sight of a box in the dust under her bed. She puts on her clothes and then pulls out the box, opening it and starting to smile.

Inside there are several photos from her early childhood to now, her brothers, parents, and herself. They may tease her every now and then, but she knows it is out of love, and thanks to being the only girl of the six children, she has learned how she needs to speak her mind and not be afraid of judgment. Jane picks up a photo with all of her brothers and her parents, she had just won their family contest on the fastest draw of the revolver, Jane always won, of course.

She puts the photo in the back pocket of her jeans and heads down the stairs and out of the front door which makes a screeching sound when closing behind her. She can see in the distance from the porch one of her older brothers trying to tame their new mare. The family truck is not in the driveway so one or more of her family are in town.

Jane starts walking towards the stable, hearing the gravel under her boots and the horses that started to neigh for their breakfast being late. They can be so stubborn, they always want their food at the same time every day. Today Jane is late, and they are showing clearly that they are not happy with that. The day passes as most days, tending to the ranch and everything that it entails. Long after sunset, she places her head down on her pillow expecting to do the same the next day. But no day after would ever be the same again.

The day after starts the same, except this morning she is not late, she wakes up before sunrise and goes downstairs towards the kitchen to get herself some breakfast. Everyone except her two oldest brothers who had already moved out were sitting there, listening to the news on the radio while eating breakfast. Mostly the ranch is protected from worldly problems and only affected if there are problems in the nearest town or the road there.

The news announced that they wanted everyone to stay inside, and not go into bigger towns as there was a new drug-causing panic in the bigger cities. It did not change much for them except they did not go into town for errands this day. The sun started to go down and there had already been massive changes to the world. The news was no longer talking, there were only automatic messages from the military, warning them about people eating people or as they called them infected eating humans.

Jane and her family were sitting on the front porch, like nothing had changed, as one of their neighbors Luke came walking over the field towards them. As he got closer, the weirder his walk seemed. Her father got up, and walked to greet Luke and somehow Jane knew it was a big mistake, she could just feel it in her bones, but she could only watch as her muscles would not obey her.

She watched how Luke jumped on her father, sinking his teeth into his neck. The screams and running footsteps of her mother running towards her father, woke her from her paralyzed state and she and her brothers screamed and started to run towards their mother that also had fell victim to their neighbor.

In the distance she heard her name being called, but she woke up to Maddie looking at her wondering if she was okay. Jane nodded, and Maddie kept looking at her unsure if she was telling the truth while petting Franks's head. Jane looked at Maddie, meeting her grey-blue eyes, "I am sure, I´m okay, I was just wandering down memory lane".

She was still sitting with her back towards a tree facing the hills, she had been seeing some wild horses in the distance that had been triggering her memories of the days before the outbreak. Jane picked up the photo from her jeans pocket, she always carried that with her now, as it helps her carry on in this world, with the hope of seeing her brothers again.

## See Also

Read more about Jane here.
Jane's Grain Harvest

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