Chapter One

Jordan slowly crept down the convenience store aisle. The rows of fluorescent lights above flickered on and off arrhythmically. His eyes darted from shelf to shelf, searching for any item that could be of use to him. Most of the shelves were picked clean from supply runs made by others, but there were still a few items remaining. The store itself was a grisly sight. Frayed electrical wires draped from the ceiling, shards of window glass lay everywhere, and dried blood caked the floor. With every pool of blood that Jordan stepped over, his fingers involuntary tightened around the metal grip of the letter opener that he had grabbed from his house the day of the outbreak.

As Jordan reached the end of the aisle, he knelt down, shrugged off his worn black school backpack, and threw in a can of baked beans as well as the last pack of AA batteries on this aisle. He took a quick inventory of the meager supplies inside: a small flashlight, half of a granola bar, a ball cap, and a wrinkled plastic bottle of lukewarm water. Jordan sighed. He was running out of options. There was hardly anything left in this store and all of the other stores he looted were running low on supplies too. Jordan knew that, sooner or later, it was going to come down to the decision he dreaded having to make: to stay or leave town.

A shiver ran down his spine as he considered the idea. He'd often thought of moving to a bigger city like Columbus to join a larger group of survivors. Every ounce of his survival instinct told him to leave. This town was tapped. Any remaining valuable supplies were in the hands of the few groups in town, and they certainly were not going to be willing to share anything. Everything made sense to leave. But there was something unspeakably terrifying about leaving his hometown. If he left, he would be hopelessly disoriented in the new town. As much as he tried to convince himself that the rest of the world was fine, Jordan knew that it was all a deluded, childish fantasy. No matter what he chose, it was a death sentence.

"Well, can't worry about that now," Jordan whispered. He had developed a habit of talking to himself because he had spent the three months after the outbreak on his own. Jordan zipped up the backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and started to leave the convenience store when he heard the crunch of footsteps on broken glass.

Without a word, Jordan stopped dead in his tracks and bolted to the temporary safety of a nearby aisle, pressing his back up against the makeshift shelter. He held his letter opener at the ready. His heart pounded so hard that Jordan was worried that the intruder would hear its throb. Whether the intruder was human or one of them, they spelled trouble.

As he listened to the rhythm of the crunches, Jordan heard the telltale, unsteady shamble of a walker. His heart sunk. It was almost hopeless now. The walkers were the cause of the apocalypse. It all started with one person getting infected. The illness began with a raging fever and killed you within hours. But it didn't end there. The disease brought you back from the dead as a rotting body hungry for human flesh. You couldn't talk or think; you just ate. Jordan called them walkers because of their constant motion through the city streets. The worst part was that, with one bite, you were infected and would come back as one of them, ready to terrorize your own species. Maybe that's what made it all so painful; ultimately, humans were dragging their own world to hell.

Jordan was about to check around the aisle corner when he heard a second crunch and a loping gait. He gasped. It was all over for him. If they didn't see Jordan first, they would be able to smell him soon enough. He would die here. Jordan might have been able to handle one walker, but with two loose in the small convenience store, there was no chance for survival.

Jordan glanced down at his letter opener. He could end it right here. He wouldn't have to face the agony of being ripped apart and eaten by his own kind. If he killed himself, he would have no chance of turning into a walker and killing someone he loved. It would be one less walker for the other survivors to deal with. Death would be so much more convenient.

But then Jordan thought about everybody who had wanted to stay alive but by chance had been killed and then turned by the walkers. He saw how offensive that would be to them, after all of their struggles that amounted to nothing, if he just gave up on his life after coming so far. Jordan steeled his courage. Whether he liked it or not, he was making a stand.

Suddenly, one of the walkers slammed itself into the aisle Jordan was hiding behind. He cried out and backed away quickly. However, once his back stopped pressing against the aisle, the force of the ravenous walker caused the shelves that he was hiding behind to tip over on top of him. The weight of the metal shelves pinned Jordan to the floor, leaving only his head and left arm free. Unfortunately, his right arm which held his only weapon was trapped. The walker was not left unscathed from the fall. Both of its knees had been shattered after falling on the hard metal. The walker did not seem to notice its mutilation and began to pull itself up the shelves.

Jordan desperately tried to pull his right arm out from under the metal, but the combined force of the walker's body and the aisle was too much. "God damn it!" Jordan grunted through gritted teeth. He tried to keep the walker at bay with his left hand, but Jordan didn't want to risk getting bitten and then turned. Despite his efforts, his arm was still stuck where it was and the walker kept getting closer and closer. The other walker in the store was starting to move toward him as well. Jordan started to panic. There were no other options.

Suddenly, Jordan spotted a flash of metal in a gap between two of the shelves. It was his letter opener. Jordan then realized how he could survive. It had very little chance of working, but at least now he had a chance. Jordan clamped his left hand onto the walker's head and shoved the walker toward the letter opener. He then thrust his arm through the gap between the shelves and stabbed the walker in the chin with the letter opener, pinning its jaws together. As cold black blood started running down his hands, Jordan screwed his eyes closed and slammed the walker's head into one of the metal shelves over and over until he heard the skull crack and felt the walker stop moving. He reopened his eyes just in time to see the second walker close in on him. Jordan went limp. It was all over. He waited to the inevitable bite.

A gunshot suddenly rang out. A bullet tore through the walker's head and the walker crumpled to the ground. Jordan lay stunned, his heart racing. He had resigned himself to death and this world had given him another chance. As much as he wished that he could lie there forever, Jordan knew that he would have to leave and keep moving. Even though this unknown person saved his life, he couldn't trust anyone now. Jordan resumed his efforts to free himself.

"Oh my God," a voice gasped. "Jordan? Is that actually you?" Jordan looked up and his jaw dropped. He couldn't believe it. There stood Adrian, his friend from grade school, a person that he never thought he'd see again for the rest of whatever was left of his life. For the first time since the end of his world, Jordan smiled. And they just stood there for a second, silently reveling in the fact that they had found each other.

"You should probably help me up," Jordan smirked, still being crushed beneath the metal shelves. "You know, before the other walkers come."

Adrian laughed. "Don't worry, big guy, I got you." And within a matter of seconds, the walkers and shelves were pried off of Jordan, he grabbed his backpack of supplies, and the two of them left the convenience store. Adrian walked over to a motorcycle parked by a mailbox and mounted it. Jordan got on his bike from home that he had leaned up against the store walls. He pedaled over to Adrian as he was revving the motorcycle's engine.

"Man, you're going to love it where we are," Adrian said as they took off down the road. "We've got a huge group of survivors and everybody we knew from the school is in it, now that you're here." Jordan shook his head in disbelief. It all seemed so surreal. Just hours ago, he was scrounging for the bottom of the barrel, fighting every second for survival; now, he was going to meet all of his friends and be in a huge group. He wouldn't have to worry about where his next meal was going to come from or if he would end up waking up the next morning. Jordan could finally sleep.

Maybe he was going to beat this world.