​Im new to this, any advice/ tips?

As the clock strikes midnight from the bell tower in the centre square of Clearwater, the winds howling past as the rush of blood pounds through her ears. Her family is dead. Her friends are missing; uncontactable since all power across the country is down. The final word she heard on the radio ringing through her head ‘They are coming’ What is coming is a simple but horrifying truth. Scout can hear the groans of her dead neighbours and fellow village dwellers as they trip and stumble around the small, cobbled streets in the quaint village in the heart of England. Up until this morning, nothing untoward or overly exciting happened here. Scout has spent most of her life wishing for an escape from her mundane life with her family. But now she would give anything to have that life back, to turn back time and hug her mother and brother before the phantom sickness wiped them out and turned them into her worst nightmare.

Looking back all the signs were there, she should have known this was coming eventually. The army rolled in 3 days prior after the first signs of sickness developed with Mrs Norton’s youngest, Annabel. Only 3 doors down the road from Scout’s house. Mrs Norton told her about the symptoms, the usual cough, and tight chest. She didn’t listen after this assuming it was a regular cold that would last a few days. This morning, July 30th of 20XX Annabel seemed to be making her recovery, while the rest of the village seemed to be coming down the symptoms too, fast. In hindsight, this should have raised Scouts’ internal alarm that something was about to happen, but the army has a base nearby and colds come and go throughout the year in ranging severity. After Josh, Scout’s younger brother by 3 years and her mum Cynthia started coughing the day before and staying mostly in their rooms resting, Scout did not realise the most important symptom to notice. The blood.

She awoke to a gargling sound coming from Josh’s room and ran to check he was okay. After practically breaking down the closed door with a bang, she assumed would also wake her sleeping mother from down the other end of the corridor. She saw it, as the blood poured and spluttered from his mouth as he choked, flowing into his bed and clothes, the look of fear and death lining his blood red eyes as he made eye contact with Scout.

She runs over to his side and lays him on his side in an attempt to stop the blood from entering his lungs and buy her time to run to her mum’s room to wake her. As she entered her mother’s bedroom, nothing could prepare her for the horror she was about to see. The pool of drying blood spread across the floor from the middle of the room, where her mother lay motionless, eyes wide with a glossy film one can only recognise as death.

A scream echoes and bounces off the house’s walls, one she did not realise she had released as she falls back against the hardwood door of her mother’s bedroom. As she stumbled back to her brother’s room in hopes that she would be able to save his quickly faltering body, questioned her sanity and how she was still healthy while her family perished around her. Re-entering the room her brother lays, the moon being the only source of light as she looks, assessing the next best move to help one person in her life she owed everything to. Josh was her best friend, a constant in a turbulent life that had led her to this moment and losing him would mean she too lost a part of herself that she did not know if she could live without.