Before the Storm

On the way home from work tonight, I had heard the same news story from earlier at work about the woman who had gotten sick about two more times on the car radio. By the end of the second broadcast, I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the whole thing. I felt like this whole thing would be exactly like how the Swine Flu started out. Everybody would get all up into a panic about it, think that they're going to get sick from it, and then a vaccine would come out and everybody would move on with their lives. Just like it always worked out.

I drove down the long country road, heading towards my house. The moon was shining brightly overhead, which was my only source of light aside from my headlights. I lived so far outside of the main town that they apparently didn't believe in putting street lights out here. It didn't really bother me, though. I liked it. It was quiet, secluded, and the stars at night weren't being drowned out by the harsh lights.

By the time I had driven down the drive way and parked my car in front of the porch, it was around 11 o'clock at night. My parents would most likely already be in bed and asleep, and it would honestly surprise me if they weren't. I let the fresh air from outside fill my lungs and I closed the car door, walking across the dirt pathway and beginning up the aged wooden steps.

The house that we lived in looked more like a getaway cabin in the woods than an actual family house. The outside of the house was lined with exposed timber, with a dark red brick chimney protruding from the roof. It was somewhat small, but it was cozy enough for a family of our size.

Once inside, just as I had expected, nobody else was awake and it was just me. Looks like I would have to wait until tomorrow morning to tell them the news of Zack coming home. I placed my bag and car keys down on the coffee table and walked into the kitchen to grab myself something to snack on before retiring to my bedroom for the night.

I climbed the stairs up to my bedroom and quickly got changed into some comfier clothes, draping my work uniform over the back of my desk chair. I grabbed the neck of my acoustic guitar and walked over to my bed, flopping down and getting comfortable before beginning to softly strum away.

I was in no way, shape or form tired enough to go to sleep, regardless of the tiring night I had had at work. I was mindlessly strumming away at any note that entered my mind, not really playing anything that sounded like a legitimate song, but it still sounded pretty. I pulled my laptop computer off of my bedside table and opened it up, searching up the tabs for one of my favorite songs, If It Means A lot to You by A Day to Remember, so that I could finally learn it.

I let my mind drift off into my own little world as I played. I was always a pretty fast learner when it came to music, and it wasn't long before I had the entire first verse down and memorized. I pressed play on the song on my computer, just so that I could play along and see how it sounded. All of the sudden, I heard a slight commotion going on downstairs.

My brows knit together in confusion. Surely that wasn't my mom or dad down there; No way they would have made so much noise. But then again, maybe it was an accident, like they dropped or bumped up against something in the darkness. I shrugged it off, but the thought still lingering in the back of my mind as I continued to play. Not even a few seconds after, I heard another loud thud come from the living room, and knew that this was something entirely different.

I placed my guitar down onto the foot of my bed and slid myself off, cautiously walking towards my bedroom door. I quickly looked around for something that I could use as a weapon, just in case it was an actual intruder instead of a raccoon or something that had managed to find it's way inside. My hand grasped around a metal baseball bat that I had used when I was younger and in softball.

I could feel my stomach doing flips and my legs were beginning to shake. I was completely terrified, but I needed to go downstairs and check it out. I would have felt really damn stupid if it was just an animal and I had involved the police in this. I hesitantly opened the door and headed downstairs as quietly as I could. At first glance, I wasn't able to see anything moving around at all.

I crept down the stairs and once I was down in the living room, I kept myself pressed up against the wall as close as I could get, trying to keep my breathing down so that I wouldn't be heard. I felt my mouth begin to go dry as I placed my hand on the light switch. I had to psych myself up for whatever was going to be around the corner.

I heard it begin moving around again, and it began walking in my direction, but was soon stopped my smacking right into the end table that was up against the wall. It made a loud bang, which caused me to jump and I was very surprised that neither of my parents had woken up through all of this.

"Damn it!" I heard the thing say, emitting a low growl, and it was then that I realized that it was in fact a person, a male, that was intruding into my house.

I flicked the light on quickly and whirled myself around, ready to strike the person down with my bat, when instead I was stopped in my tracks, mouth ajar as I saw who exactly it was.

"Zack?!" I said exasperated, leaning the bat against the back of the couch and wrapping my arms around him excitedly.

"Who the hell did ya think it was?" He asked, hugging me back tightly.

I didn't answer at first, I just relished in the feeling of having my brother back home and safe. I hadn't seen him in person for at least 8 or 9 months now. We had Skyped a couple times since then, but it just wasn't the same.

"I had no idea! I thought someone was breaking in," I pulled away and looked him up and down quickly. He was still wearing his Army uniform, a large back pack slung over his shoulder filled with all of his civilian clothes. "You were makin' suck a racket down here, could ya really blame me?"

"I couldn't see a damn thing in the dark." He defended himself, taking his cap off and putting it on the arm of the couch.

"You're supposed to be stealthy in these kinds of situations. What kind of sniper are you?" I joked, causing a smile to cross his face.

"Hey, I am ... With night vision. But that's a different story." He said with a cheeky smirk.

It was then that I heard the door to my parent's room open, and I looked up at the top of the stairs to see my dad, Jack Schmidt, standing there. He had a groggy and dazed look on his weathered face, his dark brown hair, which had begun to gray a few years back, was disheveled. "What's going on down here?"

"Zack's here!" I said, a little bit louder now that he was awake.

As if he didn't even see him in the first place, he glanced around through tired eyes and saw him standing behind me. That seemed to perk him up quite a bit, and he started down the stairs, coming over to give his first born, his son, a big hug.

"Hey pop, how have ya been? Sorry to wake ya." Zack said, embracing him once he came over to him.

"Been good, been good! We weren't expecting you until tomorrow morning?" He said in his smooth, velvety voice.

"Yeah, that was the plan. But there was an earlier flight that came up, and I took that one instead." Zack said, quickly explaining the situation.

"Well, would ya like me to make some coffee or something?" I asked the two of them, sensing that nobody would be going to sleep any time soon now that Zack was home.

"Sure, I could go for some." Zack said, being the first to respond to me.

I nodded, heading over into the kitchen to begin the pot of coffee. Zack and my dad followed into the now lit up kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table, beginning to catch up with each other.

I smiled over at the two of them, seeing how happy my dad was having his son back at home after such a long time. I felt the same, and hoped that he would be home for a long while to come, instead of just for a couple of weeks and then getting called back to do something else or get shipped off somewhere.

My dad turned the television onto the News station, just to have a little bit of background noise so that it wasn't so quiet. I glanced over and saw that they were once again doing the story on the sick woman an giving the same precautions that I had heard earlier at work.

"Do you know anything about that?" I asked Zack, nodding my head to the side towards the tv.

He just shrugged his shoulders. "Not really, jus' that people are gettin' all uppity over it. I don't really see the big deal about it."

"Well, until it's been taken care of, I want you two bein' careful when you leave the house." My dad announced to the both of us.

"Ya don't gotta worry about anything. The odds of it getting too bad are slim." Zack stated confidently.

"I hope you're right. Madisen was tellin' me about it happening to a guy at her mom's work. It's already pretty close to us." I said. I couldn't say that I wasn't at all worried about it, because I was. I just wasn't letting it get the better of me.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and headed over to the table to sit with them. However, I wasn't too much interested in the conversation they were having about what Zack had to do out in Afghanistan. Standing in a tower keeping watch over a bunch of cattle? No thank you.

However, I was happy enough that I was just able to be around him. I had thoughts of waking my mom, Vivien, up so that she'd be able to see him for a little bit tonight, but then I thought against it. She was lucky that she hadn't been disturbed and could probably use the rest. Her job as a bank teller could be very emotionally and mentally demanding at times.

I sat contentedly at the table, listening to the two of them banter on and on about anything and everything that got brought up. The whole thing about the sickness still lingered on in the back of my mind and I couldn't seem to tear my thoughts away from it.

"Jay?" I heard Zack say, and I blinked my eyes a couple of times before focusing on him.

"What? Sorry, I guess I zoned out there a bit." I said with a nervous smile.

"Yeah, I could tell," He chuckled, shaking his head. "I had asked if you'd want to do lunch sometime tomorrow?" He asked.

"Oh, yeah! Yeah, that'd be awesome."

"We could go to Zanetti's, that little diner that we used to go to all the time." He suggested.

That sounded wonderful. Zanetti's was a little burger joint that Zack and I used to go to after school when we didn't know where else to go. We'd either get something to eat or just settle for a milkshake and do our homework or something. Anything, really, just to keep from going home. He was the only one that I ever went there with; Kind of like it was just our special place.

I nodded my head, accepting his offer generously. "Sounds great. But I'm gonna get going up to bed now. Work has been draining me dry recently." I said, and dismissed myself from the table.

I placed my coffee mug on the counter next to the sink, and headed back up the stairs to my room after telling him and my dad goodnight. Exhaustion was quickly beginning to set in, and all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and let myself succumb to it.