Chapter 2

The next morning, the atmosphere in the house was thick with a strange mix of fear and excitement. My parents moved with a hushed reverence, tiptoeing around Sarah as if she were a fragile, holy relic. They made her a special breakfast of pancakes and bacon, while I got a box of stale cereal. I ate it silently at the kitchen counter, observing.

Sarah was holding court at the dining table, a napkin tucked primly into her shirt collar.

"After the birds, the communication lines will start to fail," she announced between bites of pancake. "It will be sporadic at first. Dropped calls. Slow internet. The energy grid is unstable. The... the zombie frequency interferes with our technology."

My father, Tom, a man who normally couldn't be bothered to fix a leaky faucet, was listening with rapt attention, his coffee growing cold in his hands. "So we'll need to prepare for that. Ham radios, maybe? Signal flares?"

"Exactly, Dad," Sarah said, nodding sagely. "We need to get off the grid. We need a secure location, a bunker. And we need supplies. Lots of supplies. Canned goods, water purifiers, weapons."

I almost choked on my cereal. Weapons. Last time, this part had terrified me. This time, I just felt a cold, detached curiosity. I wondered how far they would actually take it.

I decided to test the waters. I put my bowl in the sink and walked over to the table. "That makes sense," I said, my voice carefully modulated to sound earnest and a little naive. "If the prophecy is real, we have to be prepared. Sarah, you're so brave to be able to see these things."

Sarah preened under the praise. "Some of us are just more sensitive to the universe's vibrations, Lily."

My mother, Martha, reached across the table and patted my hand. Her expression was relieved. "I'm so glad you're finally understanding, dear. We need to be a family in this. We need to support your sister."

Her words were meant to be kind, but they felt like a familiar twist of the knife. Support your sister. My entire life had been a series of commands to support Sarah, to yield to Sarah, to celebrate Sarah.

Just then, my father cleared his throat. A sliver of his usual practicality had managed to pierce through the fog of delusion. "Honey, this... this bunker and supplies... that's going to cost a lot of money. A lot. Where are we going to get that kind of cash?"

The air grew tense. Sarah' s face darkened instantly. "Dad, are you questioning me? Are you questioning the prophecy? Money isn't going to matter when the dead are walking the streets! Our lives are what's at stake!"

"No, no, of course not," he backpedaled immediately, withering under her glare. "I just mean... logistically. We have the house, but our savings... after your last business idea..."

He trailed off, but I knew what he was talking about. Sarah' s "Artisanal Soap and Candle Emporium," which had been funded by a significant chunk of their savings, had gone bankrupt in six months, leaving them with thousands of dollars in debt and a garage full of unsold, lumpy soap. They had never once blamed her for it. It was the "bad economy" or "unsupportive customers."

"That was different!" Sarah snapped. "This is about survival! We have to sell the house. We have to sell everything. The stocks, the car, Mom' s jewelry. It will all be worthless anyway."

My mother gasped, her hand flying to the pearl necklace she always wore. "My jewelry?"

"Mom!" Sarah's voice rose to a shrill pitch. "Pearls won't stop a zombie from eating your face! We need to be ruthless. We need to be smart. And we need to do it now, before everyone else figures out what's happening and it's too late!"

My father looked pale. The idea of selling the house, the physical monument to his life's work as a mid-level accountant, was clearly a shock. He looked from Sarah' s furious face to my mother' s anxious one. For a second, I saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes, a moment of sanity. He looked at me, as if searching for an ally.

Last time, I had seized that moment. I had said, "Dad's right, Sarah, this is crazy." It had backfired, pushing him firmly back into her camp to present a united front against me.

This time, I looked down at my hands. I said nothing. I offered him no support, no lifeline of reason.

The moment passed. His shoulders slumped in defeat. "Okay," he said softly. "Okay, Sarah. Whatever you think is best."

My mother nodded in agreement, though her hand still nervously stroked her pearls. "We trust you, honey."

I watched this exchange from the sidelines, a ghost in my own home. I saw the familiar pattern play out: Sarah's narcissistic demand, my parents' weak-willed capitulation, and my own calculated silence. The power in the room had shifted entirely to my sister, and the target of the family's dysfunction was no longer me. It was their own future.

My father, trying to re-establish some sense of control, pulled out a notepad. "Okay. Let's make a list. What's the next prophecy? We need to verify it."

Sarah' s mood brightened instantly now that she had won. "Tonight," she declared. "There's a meteor shower. But it won't be normal. One of the meteors will be green. A brilliant, sickening green. It' s the first wave of the alien virus that reanimates the dead."

She said it with such conviction that my mother shivered.

My father wrote it down. Green meteor.

I kept my face perfectly blank. I knew about the meteor shower. It was the annual Perseids shower. And I also knew that my astronomy professor in college had once explained that meteors containing high levels of nickel and magnesium can sometimes burn with a green or blue-green hue. It wasn't common, but it wasn't unheard of either. It was another lucky guess, another bit of trivia that she would spin into a divine revelation.

And they would believe her. They would watch the sky, and when that random piece of space rock burned green, it would cement their faith. It would be the final nail in their financial coffin.

I felt a ghost of a smile touch my lips, but I quickly suppressed it. The game was just beginning.