Disclaimer: Everything you recognize from the game belongs to Valve. The rest, moi.

Prologue

She put her eyes to the gap between the wooden planks that had boarded up the window in front of which she stood. Below her, the street was littered with haphazardly parked cars, fallen street lights, overturned trash cans… and several stumbling, moaning Infected. She focused on one that was sitting on the sidewalk, with his head tilted upwards and his mouth, drenched with blood, hung open. His neck and shoulders twitched. Suddenly he began to get to his feet. Blood spilled freely from his mouth. His knees couldn't hold him. He stumbled backwards and fell on his back onto the sidewalk, his body twitching. Then he went still, and she knew that he was truly dead.

She had observed them for awhile now and it seemed to her that sooner or later they would bleed themselves out and die. It was a horrible fate, to lose all sense of humanity before finally dying, nameless, forgotten, and wretched. A pang of pity tugged at her gut and she pushed it away, determined to never let it get to her.

The last time she had shown sympathy (which was not so long ago), her eyes had nearly been gouged out by one of those clawed bitches. The mark of it remained on her face, a two gashes on her right cheek that graced her cheekbone. She unconsciously ran her fingers down the scars, feeling every obvious bump and hating them. One good thing about the zombie apocalypse though was that you didn't have to care about how you look like anymore. No one would be giving the hot blonde tramp a raise while you, the plain Jane Doe, bent over backwards to keep the place running. She wasn't exactly thankful for the whole zombie apocalypse thing, but she wasn't exactly happy anyway before it happened. Her life had only gotten from worse to worst.

"Mom?" She turned around abruptly, startled from her thoughts. The blanket shifted and her 10-year-old son's head peeked out from underneath. "Why aren't you sleepin' too?"

Her eyes darted towards the window, then to the door that she had barricaded with a sofa and rocking chair they had found in the apartment they were hiding in. "I dunno about you dude, but I just don't feel safe," she whispered as she clicked on the safety lock of the two handguns she had strapped around her legs and sat down on the floor beside him.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, stifling a yawn. "I hate them zombies," he murmured. She clicked her tongue softly and rubbed his shoulders comfortingly. "Mom, d'ya think we'd still get ta play at Whisperin' Oak, even with the zombies an' all?" he asked sleepily. "I wonder if Cody or Eric or Billy's already there. They should be, right? Since we had to go a lil' later than 'em 'cos you had ta work."

"I'm sure they're there waiting for us right now, Max. Now go back to sleep, okay? The sooner we get up the sooner we get to meet 'em."

"Mmm hmm." Within moments, he'd fallen back to sleep. She reached for her backpack and took out a map of Georgia that she had packed with her before leaving Hawkinsville.

It was supposed to be a fun trip to an amusement park over the weekend with the rest of Max's soccer team, who had been stoked to go there ever since their English teacher told them that the roller coaster ride was haunted. Despite not really liking the other soccer moms who were, unlike her, Georgia natives and had fond memories of the park, she had grudgingly agreed to go and carpool some of the kids. The night before they were to go she'd gotten a call from her boss, telling her she was needed at work the next day. She had had half a mind to tell him to forget about the trip; if he was good she would screw his college fund and bring him to Disneyland next summer. But the look on his face – God, she hadn't seen him so disappointed since that cartoon about a bald kid who could bend air or whatever ended its run on TV. And surprisingly, the other moms had offered to stay a night at a motel near the park so that Max could still have fun at the park with all his friends even though he would be a day late. And to pacify the other kids, they could have one extra day trying out all the rides. An unfortunately faultless win-win situation.

Then joy of all joys, smack in the middle of the interstate, the apocalypse hit them. That was only two days ago. She remembered everything. The freeway was insanely packed on her side of the road, enviously free on the other. The midday sun beat down on the windscreen, making her tired, grumpy, and somewhat sleepy. Max had been oblivious to them all, sitting at the back and playing a game on her aged cellphone. The traffic was so bad that it seemed that the entire South Georgia was heading up north for some unknown reason.

The distant whirring of a chopper in the sky caught her attention somewhat as it seemed to approach her ancient station wagon from behind. Great, she had thought dryly, and to rub it in our faces, here comes a bunch of I-know-way-too-much news reporters to cover our misery. If the radio wasn't bust, or if she only had had the time and money to fix it, she could have turned it on to figure out what the hell was wrong. She could have heard that the flu had come from upstate and was seizing the Southern states. She could have known that the chopper overhead was one of the many that were voluntarily evacuating people from Savannah, where an outbreak had hit, and was hitting hard.

She watched as the chopper flew past her car, rolling her eyes and wishing that she could be airlifted up, up and away from the traffic jam too. Just before she looked away though, the chopper suddenly assumed a downward trajectory. Panicked honks and screams erupted. The cars ahead had nowhere to maneuver. She saw, to her horror, as the chopper nosedived and spiraled into a magnificent crashlanding about ten cars away from her, right into the middle of traffic.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and told Max, who was still oblivious to it all, to stay in the car. She and several other equally horrified drivers, got out of their cars and rushed for the site of the accident, both out of concern and curiosity. She hadn't even covered half the distance to the fallen chopper when the people further upstream burst into screams and shrieks and started turning around and running in the opposite direction from the chopper. Before she could even register what was going on, she was pushed and shoved.

"RUN DAMMIT RUN!" someone hollered not too far away. She whipped her head around to see what the hell the fuss was about and, amidst the panic and screams, nearly stopped in her tracks. Climbing out from the wreckage of the chopper were people all right, but something wasn't right with them. Their faces were bloody not from the impact of the crash, but because they were bleeding their mouths and eyes out. She saw a guy in a singlet with his hand twisted grotesquely, obviously broken, but he didn't seem fazed a bit. They were all oblivious to their injuries, but what was worse, they were actually RUNNING towards them, their bloody mouths curled up in animal-like snarls. Some had managed to grab hold of several of the fleeing people and were clawing, tearing, ripping them apart.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath. Then as they got close enough for her to see the crazed look in their eyes: "SHIT!" She turned on her heels and ran for her life back to her car and to her son, pushing and shoving blindly and without remorse until she got into her station wagon and slammed the door shut.

"Mom! What's going on?" asked Max, his eyes wide with fear and confusion.

"Hold on!" she screamed as she revved up the engine and reversed abruptly, ramming the back of her car into the minivan behind her, which instantly caused the alarm to go off. The roars and shrieks and moans of the monsters that had been chasing them grew louder. "Apeshit!" she swore as she restarted her car and put the old, clunky gear handle into first gear. The monsters sprinted madly towards them, howling and screaming with rage just as she floored it, yanked the car to the right and rammed through the divider and landed with a bump on the other side of the road and sped away.

Since then, life had been nothing short of a nightmare, and she hadn't slept a wink. Every town they went to in hopes of finding help or refuge was either in the process of being overrun by those dastardly creatures, or had already been completely wiped out. By the fourth town, she had already given up hope of finding anything resembling civility. When she had pieced together the truth from what stray newspaper pages she could find, it was too late to call the government or whatever for help or evacuation. One by one, her link to civilization died: her cellphone, Max's MP3 player, and even her station wagon, when it had finally run out of gas.

Back in the room she had holed herself up in with Max, she fought back the urge to scream, not out of fear or panic, but from frustration. Will there be an end to this? If so, when the hell will it come?

Author's note: Urm, I don't think that ended well, haha. It's something that I had to get out of my system anyways. If it's any good let me know, and I'll continue with the next chapter (well there IS a reference to Whispering Oaks XP). If not then let this remain a oneshot. Thanks and do review! =D