Wagon Wheels
Chapter One~The Beginning
Staying alive after the fall of humanity is hard. Keeping others alive and well fed is even harder. I learned that the hard way. It seemed almost surreal, when the news first came. People were dying from some mysterious disease, and then coming back and attacking other people. It hit the larger cities first. As with any kind of illness, crowded conditions caused it to spread faster. But then, my town was hit. At the time, I was living with my husband, James, in a small Mississippi town when the plague came. We were expecting a baby, though I was only in the first trimester. Then, one day, there was a knock on our back door, almost timid, as if who ever was behind the wood was afraid to be caught. Of course, the fact that it was 11 o'clock at night in the middle of summer, with police cars passing every twenty minutes obviously didn't help. Upon opening the door, one of James's work friends was standing there. He hastely explained how a dseased man had attacked someone in town, and now, it was spreading like wildfire. His wife had been one of the casualties, which caused him to break down over the cup of hot chocolate I had made him. It was so late, but we had to start preparing, so I had a notepad and pen, making a list of what we needed to do and what we would need to pack.
By the time Tyler was passed out on the couch and James and I had finally gone to bed, it was nearly 2 a.m. We had no idea that something was very wrong. At some point in the confusion, Tyler had been injured. He didn't think anything of a small scratch on his arm. It wasn't noticable. The next day, we were packing up our car, me on the phone with my mother, telling her the plan. She told me that they had had attacks all over town as well (they lived 20 minutes down the road in the next town). We were on the way before 10. By, by the time we got there, the house had been deserted. Mom wouldn't answer her phone, and neither would anyone else. There was no sign of a break in, nor a struggle...like they had just up and left. With no other choice, we raided Mom's pantry for her pickled and canned goods.
After we cleared out the pantry, and I found the two guns my dad had hidden in his closet. From there, we drove to my grandfather's farm to make sure him and Grandma were alright. They were pretty isolated, so we figured they would be safe until we got there. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Grandpa's hunting dogs, Blu, Taco, and Trouble. I smiled, because if they were there and safe, then so were my grandparents, since he would never leave without them.
We were safe for a while. But, we knew it wouldn't last. So, after we saw the fist of the dead meandering throught he fields, we packed up everything, including the dogs and horses. By that time, Tyler had started up a fever. We tried everything to bring it down, but nothing helped. Finally, he passed out while trying to lead one of the horses into the trailer. We took him into the shade, and went back to work. That was a big mistake. As we were getting ready to leave, a snarl brought out attention back to the barn. Tyler stumbled out. Except...it wasn't Tyler, it was a walker, a dead shell of Tyler. It was coming straight for us. We managed to take him down before he managed to hurt anyone.