Tom finds the girls are home with a gift.

Tom shot up in bed, rudely torn from a fitful doze suddenly by a clattering noise coming from downstairs. Coming from within the house!

A spike of rancid fear shot through him and he seized his baseball bat, a genuine Louisville slugger, from under the bed and crept cautiously down the stairs with it lifted ready to strike. The sounds were coming from the kitchen…

Tom leaned around the doorway and almost sobbed in relief when he saw that it was just Jessica and Britney fussing over some plates on the kitchen counter-top.

“Jesus, what the hell are you two doing here?" He exclaimed angrily then added in an uncertain tone, “Wait… what time is it? How long have I been asleep?”

“Don’t worry, it’s just after lunch.” Jessica replied “We came home early, the school day is a total write-off. Everyone is looking for Dr Turner and someone they’re calling the Beast. The whole place was a madhouse.”

At first Tom was irritated that they just chose to leave school without calling him but then decided he was just glad that they had got home safely. Especially if the college was as chaotic as they described.

He let out a soft sigh and rested the bat against a table leg as Britney beamed up at him and showed him what they were working on.

“Milk and cookies like mum used to make for us when we got home.” She said, clearly pleased with herself. “We've been talking about how hard it's been for you, so we wanted to treat you.”

She offered him a small plate of cookies and a tall glass of milk with such a happy smile that Tom found himself taking them before he really thought about it. He thanked her tiredly before heading back into the living room and flopping down onto the couch, turning on the TV and taking a bite from a cookie.

It wasn’t until he had finished his third cookie and drank half of the tall glass of milk that he felt it; a spreading warmth in his belly. The sensation was so unusual that it disturbed Tom and his eyes fell on the glass of milk. Then he suffered a vivid and horrifying flashback of how the milk carton had spilled everywhere when he had crashed the shopping cart over the front step in his race home the other day.

Leaping up, he ran to the kitchen as the warmth inside him grew steadily hotter and seized Britney by the shoulders.

“The milk! Where did you get the milk?” He yelled into her shocked expression.

“It.. it… it was on the doorstep along with the cookies… they were there when we got home.” She stammered, looking alarmed. “In a glass bottle like the milkman used to bring, we just thought…”

Tom could guess what they had thought. Many services these days were sporadic, a XXX-infected might neglect their old job for weeks then take it up again one day for no reason that he could fathom. The newspaper was still coming reasonably regularly, even though the paperboy was now a papergirl…

He could feel his body heating like a fever and much of that heat was seeping down towards his groin.

Somebody–and Tom knew the list of names had to be short–had left milk and cookies on their doorstep and his sisters had unwittingly brought them inside and fed him. Tom's face was beginning to feel flushed as cold sweat prickled his brow.

This was bad…

Really, really bad!