Chapter 1
The outbreak was nothing how Lizzie would have expected. In the movies it's always quick– one moment a young hero is introduced and the next alarms are blaring, news stations are spewing warnings, and people are in complete chaos. But this was slow. Painfully slow.
Jane and Lizzie Bennet spent the first month of the epidemic held up in their apartment complex as the hourly government sponsored broadcasts suggested.
"STAY INSIDE," the ads shrieked from the Bennet sisters' only television set that they kept on at all hours, always waiting for good news but only ever receiving bad. "DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES UNTIL THE NATIONWIDE LOCKDOWN IS LIFTED."
"SHUT UP," Lizzie screamed, throwing the pillow she had been hugging at the dusty, out-dated TV.
Her outburst earned a stern look from her older sister. Jane wasn't one for yelling or violence, even when it involved a pillow.
"What," Lizzie said, harsher than she meant, "we've been here for weeks, we're almost out of food and we have no idea where the rest of our family is, or if they're even alive."
Jane's eyes fell to her hands twiddling in lap, trying to avoid Lizzie's stare. Jane was strong but also a bit of an optimist about their current predicament, whereas Lizzie has never been one to shy away from the reality of a situation. Therefore, this conversation was one they had often.
"They're alive," Jane said firmly. "But we can't leave, Lizzie, not when they're still telling us that there's a possibility they can get the situation under control."
Lizzie shook her head, unable to muster up the energy to have this argument again. Jane wouldn't budge and Lizzie didn't have the traction to really get her sister on same page. As of now they still had water, food, and power and unless they ran out of one of three, Lizzie figured she was stuck – much to her dismay.
It's not like Lizzie was rearing to go out unprepared into a world that her and her sister no longer knew, a world now populated with more living-dead than living. But she hated waiting out day after day with nothing to do but sit and worry about whether her parents, her sisters and her best friend were alive or not.
An hour later the sisters were in their respective rooms, spending some much needed time alone getting ready for bed when the next broadcast was scheduled to air.
But it didn't.
The quiet frightened Lizzie more than the ravenous moans she heard outside her window at night. She crept into the common room of their small apartment finding only white static coming from the box that has kept her sister's hope alive for the last month.
She moved towards the TV, prepared to fix what she hoped was a small fluke with the wiring when everything went dark. Only the moon lit the city of Austin outside their window and even its light seemed dimmed by the way the world has darkened over the past month.
"Lizzie," Jane whispered, her voice sounding strained. "this is – "
Lizzie assumed her sister was about to say "bad" but the word didn't leave her lips before things got much, much worse.
A loud bang made the sisters turn toward their fortunately double bolted door.
"Open up, girlies," a deep, Texan drawl crooned from the other side of the threshold. "The fun just started."
He was echoed by chuckles from what sounded like two other men. Lizzie recognized the voice that spoke as one that belonged to the middle-aged man that lived in the small apartment in the basement, a guy that always looked at her the wrong way as they crossed paths in laundry room.
She looked at Jane and saw the same fear that Lizzie knew was obvious in her own eyes.
"Get your stuff," Lizzie told her sister sternly. "We're getting out of here. Tonight."
"Lizzie – " Jane was cut off again by yet another bang and her eyes darted nervously to the door for a second time. She didn't want to leave. This apartment was their asylum, their safe place away from the dangers of today's world – human or not. But Jane couldn't help but acknowledge that an asylum without power and soon without food and water, was not much of an asylum at all.
Lizzie watched as her sister moved swiftly to her respective bedroom only to reappear moments later with a backpack and a baseball bat.
"Let's do this."