Prolouge
Kyle woke up, and prayed it was a dream. The staff room couch was about 10 years too old to support human occupants but it was the only thing resembling a bed they had. He unplugged his iPod from the wall and ran through his library, creating a play list for the wee hours of morning. It was his turn for night watch. He figured the whole idea absurd. All there were were hundreds of zombies, nothing spectacular to watch, all he did was fight sleep, shoot coffee mugs he flung using the clay pigeon shooter he found in layaway, and listen to heavy metal. He prayed not because it was night watch, but simply because of the entire circumstance.
Zombies or something similar to them had overrun the town a week ago. Mello said it must have been biblical, end times and whatnot, but Kyle wasn't sure he believed in any of that God stuff. It had always just been fairy tales mommy told you to get you to behave as a kid, up until everything here had happened, now he just wasn't sure anymore. He made his way to the roof, the 20 or 30 shell-shocked refugees milled about around Wal-Mart, performing upkeep tasks, checking entrances, all eerily silent.
No one spoke unnecessarily anymore, all business. Many of the residents of their makeshift fortress had broken down and were still coming to grips with their emotions, others simply had nothing to say, they were past emotional shell-shock and either in denial or emotionally dead. One resident, Mickey, who was 16 had become a mute as a way of coping; he couldn't talk if he tried now.
He passed Mello on the way out. At 18, Mello was one of the older boys in the compound; he was also one of the smartest and the leader of over half the people, Him and Reaper. Reaper wasn't his real name, it had been given to him by the residents, and nobody knew his real name, except Mello, who seemed fonder of this nickname than the original. Mello also had a nickname, many of the residents referred to him as Saint. He was a devout Christian and often talked openly of his beliefs to the residents. Some disliked his openness and sometimes overbearing religious aura, but even if they had the power to do anything about it, they knew they couldn't, Mello, as dark and brooding as he was, was vital to the operation of this base; he was a genius when it came to zombies. He seemed to be able to find every hole and plug it before it became a problem.
Zombies, the term still sounded strange in Kyle's mind as he walked up the rear stairs to the roof. A lawn chair lay where he left it, the other guards preferred to walk the roof and look on all sides so no one else ever used his chair. He sat down at the Guard tent and looked through the jimmy-rigged camera monitors and saw nothing out of the usual. He picked up his copy of Red Dragon by Thomas Harris and dove into the adventures of Hannibal Lector and the detective Graham once again.
The moan's faded into the haze of his mind and soon there was nothing but the book.