Dead birds were always the first sign.
Cinder sighed. "Cress," she called. Her skin prickled. It always did when this happened. It was like a sort of anxiety, like they wouldn't all make it out unscathed this time.
Cress walked in, throwing a hand towel over her shoulder. She had been drying the dishes that Kai had washed down at the stream.
"Call everyone in. It's time."
Cress fell against the door jamb, frowning. "Didn't this just happen?"
"Last week. They're getting more frequent."
She crossed her arms. "And Ze'ev and Winter just finished cleaning up the last round of dead birds."
Cinder nodded.
It was always the crows that attacked the bodies, and in their craze, they attacked other birds. On their runs, Cinder, Thorne, Scarlet, and Ze'ev always noticed the birds that were too far gone to have flown, but there were always those that went with the crows.
Sometimes, Cinder saw them fall from the sky through her binoculars. Usually, the attacks were close enough for them to make it to rural Missouri before falling to their deaths. And always right into the front yard of the farmhouse.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the disease was too much for the birds. Rather than infect them, it killed them.
It was probably more on the fortunate side. Though Cinder can't say she didn't feel bad for the birds.
"I'll ring the bell," said Cress. She walked to the back of the house.
Everyone else, save for Winter and Kai, was out hunting and foraging.
Winter and Kai were at the stream still, washing their clothes. At least it was laundry day, because it was so much worse when they were down to their last few clean articles of clothing each and a hoard came through. The longest one lasted a week before the last of them sprinkled past, and they had all but run out of their food reserves.
The bell was loud as it rang through the house and through the woodland just beyond the farmland boundaries. While its volume was concerning when they first set up the alarm system, as it could draw more walkers they could handle, it was the safest way to alert those that were out without putting everyone in danger while they went out to search for them.
Cinder started upstairs, closing the blackout curtains. They had a lookout window, and they kept the room dark. It had a blackout curtain, but it left the bottom fourth of the window open so they could keep an eye on what was coming.
The doors would be last. They boarded them up and reinforced them as soon as the birds showed up and everyone was inside. Cinder strengthened the front door with steel back when they first found the place. It had been deserted not long before they all showed up.
When they were in danger, she and Ze'ev had a steel board they placed on the inside of the door. It was one and a half times larger than the door and kept it from being opened, as they drilled it directly into the wall.
The back doors were reinforced with both wood and steel, because they were mostly glass and all too easy to get into. The downstairs windows were boarded up to keep them from being broken through.
It happened once, towards the end of a hoard, back in the early days. One had knocked straight into a window, and they assumed that one of its bones had broken through the glass, despite the wood on the other side. There was nothing but utter panic as they wondered if the noise would draw the interest of the walkers, if they would continue breaking windows, if they would break through the wood, and breach their last line of defense.
It was nothing short of luck that caused the walkers to continue on their way, rambling on like nothing had happened at all. You could feel the relief as it spread through the house, though they were all cowering in the basement (save for Cress, who had been brave enough to climb the stairs and listen intently through the door).
Cinder heard the back door slide open as people started coming home. Cress was greeting Thorne with a kiss and a bear hug as she ran downstairs. Thorne was dirty from foraging. He had his basket-bag hanging off his back, half of it full of berries and the occasional apple, and the other half full of Maypop, a passionfruit native to Missouri. Cinder grinned. He knew it was her favorite, even if no one else had a real taste for it.
Ze'ev and Scarlet were coming through the yard, the basket-bags on their backs full, dragging a large buck behind them, each holding one of its antlers.
Jacin, just behind them, had a string of squirrels around his neck and ducks sticking out of his basket-bag.
They never had such a good haul. They'd have enough meat for the next few months, that was sure.
When they found the farmhouse, they couldn't believe it had been abandoned. There were solar panels on the roof, and that promised them a constant flow of energy for hot water and to keep the fridge, freezer, and electric stove up and running. The U.S. had just started to turn to greener technology before everything went to Hell.
It was perfect, really.
As perfect as something could get in a damned zombie apocalypse.
Some of the solar panels had broken, though, so they conserved as much energy for the food. They timed their showers, did their laundry in the stream, left the curtains open or used candles at night.
They all made up a story that the family living there had left to go find the rest of their family and found somewhere better.
Cinder grabbed Cress and they went to pick any ripe fruit from the small garden behind the house. They already had plenty, but it would go bad if the hoard took too long to pass through.
She looked to the west, where the stream ran along the farmland just behind the treeline, and Winter and Kai were coming up to them, hauling the laundry bags, moving as quickly as they could.
She felt that too much time had passed since the birds fell. They had to get inside, board the doors, and get to storing the new meat before the hoard showed up.
Jacin and Thorne set their collections down and ran to Winter and Kai to help with the laundry. Doing laundry for eight people in one day was a lot, even spread over two people. They typically spent all of the daylight doing all of the laundry, and there would more than likely be dirty clothes left over. And it took days for what was cleaned to dry, especially when it had to be dried inside instead of out. At least they had clean clothes.
After taking the ripened vegetables and fruit to the kitchen, Cinder set off to help drag the buck inside and down the basement stairs, where they had an area set up for preparing the meat for storage and consumption. They cleaned the fur and kept it to keep warm in the winter, and Scarlet used the bones to make stock. They used as much as they could, and there was a designated area in the basement for all of it. Anything they couldn't use was buried, and they honored the animals in hopes that it would mean more would come their way.
None of them were really spiritual anymore, but it was important to Winter, so they observed the practice.
Kai, Winter, Jacin, and Thorne arrived with the laundry as Cinder made her way back to the main floor, having helped Scarlet and Ze'ev lift the buck onto the butcher table.
Though she smelled like dirty animal fur, Kai embraced her. "How long has it been," he asked, "since you first saw them?"
"About an hour."
"Shit," he breathed.
They were running out of time.
Cinder gave him a squeeze and a kiss. She didn't take her eyes off him as she spoke to Ze'ev. "Ze'ev, let's get everything boarded up." She offered a small smile to Kai. "Everyone else," now she scanned the rest of the group, "delegate, but we need the meat prepared and the extra fruit and veggies sliced and frozen. You guys know the drill."
She gave Kai another kiss before pushing off of him and rushing to the front of the house, where Ze'ev had the steel board ready to put in place. She grabbed the drill as he held it up, the pre-drilled holes of the board on top of the pre-drilled holes of the wall. Cinder secured everything in quickly–it was becoming a dance more than a job. They both checked its security before moving to the backdoor to repeat the process.
Most of it was done after another hour and a half. Once everything in the kitchen was done, the rest of the gang had gone to help Scarlet and Cress with the butchering.
The first of the hoard was coming up on the treeline just as everything was finished. Cinder and Kai went to the lookout room for the first shift. He clutched her hand, and she was shaking from nerves as she ran a list through her head. The curtains were closed, the downstairs windows were boarded, all the external doors sealed. Everyone was inside. They were as safe as they could be.
Her thigh was sore from working her prosthetic. She'd outgrown it a year ago, and when she was finally able to afford a new one, things went bad. Finding the house, finding the rest of the group, was a stroke of good luck, her leg a stroke of bad.
"God, look at all of them," Kai whispered, as if they would hear him if he spoke any louder.
There were hundreds. There were always hundreds. Cinder wondered where they came from every time, how they all managed to congregate together. Perhaps it was the insatiable search for food, that somehow the mob mentality expanded to the undead–if a small group of them were headed a certain direction, then there was obviously food that way, and the rest just followed.
She scooted closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. He reached over and cupped his hand around her knee. Though they were still far, Cinder could hear their groans in her mind, as if they were in the room with her instead of a mile away.
Birds sprinkled the front lawn, those that were not crows were bloody and bitten and limp where they lay. It was a wonder they were able to fly at all while the disease ravaged them.
They had all lost someone to the disease. Cinder's step-sister, Peony, was attacked early, when the cities first began to be overrun. Kai lost his father, Ze'ev and Thorne their parents, Winter her cousin, Cress her younger sister, Scarlet her grandmother, and Jacin his best friend. They had all lost someone, had stumbled upon each other by some grace of the stars.
Cinder met Kai just after she left Phoenix. He was traveling alone from Las Vegas, and they teamed up as soon as they decided they both could trust each other.
The love came later.
After they found Scarlet and Winter, who had stumbled upon Ze'ev and Cress during a run. After Thorne came limping into their camp after spraining his ankle, Jacin just behind him.
It came in the quiet of the night, when he held her as she cried over Peony every time the moon was full. It came during the day, when he would take over simple tasks when her hip was starting to give out.
"Do you think we'll make it through this one?" she asked him.
He took his hand off her knee and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling her into him as the hoard grew closer and larger as more of them came through the woods.
"We've done everything we can," he replied.
She wet her lips. "That's all we can do."
They watched, and they waited, and hoped to just survive another day.
Author's Note: Yeah, who knows!