Rocking Chair

She sat in her rocking chair and stared through the window into her back yard. There were plants in various stages of Spring growth. Her tulips were blooming brightly, but her lilacs were simply thickening their leaves at the moment. The sunny weather with the occasional rains of early April were doing their best to keep the soil wet and the plants thriving. She smiled at the simplistic beauty of the lawn.

It had been a while since she'd had the chance to get outside and tend to any of it; her granddaughter had been doing most of the work over the last few years. She would tell the little girl what to do and she would simply do it. The tasks weren't difficult; dig a small hole for the bulb, rake the mulch over there, turn the hose on and spray everything down. There was the occasional pruning that had to be done, and she was always worried about her granddaughter holding the clippers, but nothing ever went wrong. It was a chance to bond with between the two of them, and it was more connection with someone than she'd gotten in a long time. Her husband had passed away, her siblings were all older and elsewhere. She'd lost her parents a long, long time ago. Each day, it was just her, her rocking chair, a pot of coffee and the void-filling noise on the television.

That's how it was, at least, things had changed recently. It had been around a week since the news burst into one of her shows with an abrupt screeching noise. The emergency alert system took over the speakers and her favorite show stopped suddenly. "This is not a test of the--" She turned the volume down. Even with her hearing troubles, this was too much for her. "This is an emergency broadcast. At this time, the entire city is being placed under a lock-down. There has been a confirmed outbreak of an unknown illness." This was a first. She hadn't heard of the emergency system actually being used for an emergency like this, at least not where she'd lived. She listened to the rest of the broadcast; despite the urgency of the matter, it wasn't going to change anything. Her only son had taken the opportunity of spring break to leave the state; he was somewhere in the southern end of Florida at this point. At the very least, she knew that her granddaughter was safely out of the way of whatever this illness was.

She quickly learned what the illness actually meant; people were being infected with something, a parasite it seemed, and going crazy. It all seemed like the premise of a movie; people getting sick and eating each other like zombies. It certainly didn't feel like a Tuesday evening, but that's what it had turned into. She saw the footage of the monsters tearing each other apart. She saw the videos on the news of what was happening at the hospital, it was terrifying to say the least. There was no way she was going to make it out of this whole thing alive, she couldn't leave the house and there was no one coming to rescue her. She'd managed to make it as long as she had, but it wasn't going to matter. She'd come to terms with this at the beginning of it all.

She lifted the ceramic mug from the table to her mouth and sipped the bitter coffee. The warmth was refreshing. She moved to place the mug back onto the table and began rocking the chair once more as she watched the beautiful day outside. Her hands caressed the shotgun that sat idly across her lap. She smiled, her husband would have been happy to know that his military training had rubbed off on her. He would have been even more proud that his insistence on keeping the shotgun was going to keep her safe, even if for just a little while. She hated guns, she hated that he had this one in the house to begin with; but something about holding it and preparing to use it made her think of him.

"Maybe he was crazy." She grinned again and pushed back once more. "Maybe we both were." She could feel her eyes starting to water. If there was anything after life, then she would know soon. If not, that was fine. She'd spent more than eighty-three years watching the world around her change, and that amount of time was plenty. After everything else she'd experienced, it was almost nice to know that her end would come at a time when watching the sun rise and set were her entertainment of choice. She laughed at this thought. "Sheesh, I am old..."

She had grown older, and she'd loved every moment of life that had passed. She knew that, eventually, the infected were going to sniff her out, and they would find her. She couldn't run, but that was fine. She gripped the shotgun once more; she wasn't going to go down without a fight...

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One Word Idea came from the following: http://ideagenerator.creativitygames.net

It's a neat site that may help others, and I wanted to give credit.

#FreeWrite #JustWrite #OneWord

-This isn't my favorite free write, but i wanted to write something that tied into the story in my novels. -