[ WP ] Everyone 's gaze suddenly 'lights up ' . It does n't affect anyone 's vision , but suddenly everyone is aware of what everyone is really looking at , since your gaze 's target shines like a dim flashlight .

Rachel McPhearson, who was a widow as of today, already knew it was too late to leave her husband's decrepit cabin. *I guess I can say it's my cabin now*, she thought, stroking her husband's wiry hair. He used to be so proud that he had a head full of hair, that he had narrowly escaped the baldness gene that infused his entire family's DNA. He used to put it up in different styles to entertain their kids, and used to shave funny shapes into his beard with his grandpa's strait razor. But that was back when their kids were still alive. Now, Rachel cradled her husband's cold and damp body in a sooty corner near the fireplace. 
 
 She picked up a soiled piece of gauze and tried to wipe the blood off his face once more. She knew it was pointless, but did it anyway. Perhaps it was because of guilt. Earlier in the day, when he burst back into the cabin, gravely wounded from the waist on up, he managed to lock the door behind him before collapsing into a bloody pile on the floor. It took every nerve in her body not to scream when she saw how much blood he had lost. But since she was a nurse before the Calamity really hit, they had a stockpile of first aid supplies that she filched from the hospital before they fled into the forest. Immediately, she got to work trying to stitch up his injuries, drawing on the entirety of her first responder experience to save her husband. But deep down, a little part of her knew there was nothing she could do to revive him. Not when a man's face turns the color of a granite tombstone. 
 
 He only left the cabin that morning because they were low on food. And when he got back, she could n't save him. 
 
 She dabbed another dried splotch on his cheek, then gasped. A set of dark red beams passed through the window. Then another set panned across the clouded glass. The bands were wide and dull, and were soon followed by more. The beasts must have only been a hundred feet away -- too far yet to smell Rachel, but close enough to be a serious danger. They might smell the bloody trail left by her husband. The beasts could n't think, but they loved the smell of blood. 
 
 After the Calamity, people started losing their minds. Scientists thought it was a mental disorder at first, a sort of mass hysteria that occasionally plagued mankind throughout history. Then they said it was a disease, then a fungus, and then after that they stopped hypothesizing because society collapsed. All Rachel knew was that the beast's eyes emitted a dark red light; and the beasts were violent, mindless creatures, with no trace of their former selves. And Rachel knew *that* because she had to kill her own two children. 
 
 They had attacked her with her husband's strait razor. 
 
 Rachel leaned over his corpse and pulled back a scalpel, warm and red from dried blood. She could n't just sit here and let the beasts kill her. Not after everything she'd been through. But there must have been dozens of them out there in the woods, hunting, searching, sniffing. What could she do with a 1-inch blade against all of them? Would she fare any better than her husband? 
 
 The red beams grew brighter, and she could see her husband clearly in the light. Seeing his cold and still face, already stiff from rigor mortis, gave her a risky idea. Perhaps if she played dead, they would keep on moving by. She had seen plenty of corpses back in the city, and the beasts seemed to ignore them as if they were logs in a forest. Yes, it might work. It was certainly a better idea than fighting with a scalpel. 
 
 And she made her decision just in time. As soon as she eased back against the wall, her hands limp over her husband's chest, a bright pair of eyes rose against the glass pane. The beast's crimson light illuminated the entire cabin, which at this point looked more like a butchering shop than a vacation home. The beams swept across the wall, searched the fireplace, then stopped on Rachel just as she squeezed her eyes shut. 
 
 She held her breath. The beast made no sound, nor did he shift his gaze. Her heart pounded against her eardrums, and she strained to keep her body as still as a fallen tree. Her lungs burned and cried out for a breath of air. Yet the beast kept his all-seeing eyes fixed on Rachel and her dear husband's body. 
 
 Against her better judgement, she cracked open one of her eyelids. The two red dots hovered on the other side of the old window. They filled her with a fear strong enough to give her a renewed effort to play dead. 
 
 But before she could tap into this new source of survival energy, she screamed. 
 
 Two red beams of light shone up from her lap.
