Chapter 1: It Must Begin

Three days.

That's how much time they have until they run out of food, 'they' being about 7 people in Paul's house. Paul was a middle-aged, average family man, who was an accountant before the outbreak. He had a wife, Jennifer, and a son, Grayson. Paul seemed to be the leader of their small group, co-leading with his wife. They tried to effectively barricade their house to hold out until help arrived, but this amounted to nothing more than blocking off all but one exit and hiding out in their basement. The three of them didn't seem to have that much of a chance as a small group of survivors, but they did bring in a family across the street, though, so they have a decent sized group now. Paul was about six feet tall, 190 pounds, and rather intelligent for his age. No one would have expected him to be a leader, but now that he was, no one could argue. Jennifer was about half a foot shorter than him, with long black hair and a well rounded face. She was relatively thin now, due to the little food provisions, but before the apocalypse hit she was thick, by her own accord. Grayson was your average 17 year old kid, not very striking in any sense. His grades held up in school pretty well, and he was by far no idiot, but his looks and personality were on the low side of the scale. Not to imply his personality was bad or rude, but just that he was often quiet and self reserved. His brown hair and overall average build didn't catch any eyes, but perhaps that was a good thing.

The second family was led by Jacob, a tough-guy who had little striking character. He was strict, hard headed, but overall a guy you could trust on. His wife Maddie was shorter than Jennifer, but was in a fit shape, especially in the apocalypse. They had two small children, John, 8, and Katie, 4. John had signs of developing genius, showing a promising future, while Katie was still more focused on things such as playing.

It was about 45 days after the first infection, and roughly 30 days since all power cut off to homes from the main power-lines. They were trapped in a suburb roughly 5 miles from a city called Rayleigh in North Carolina, and that city had fallen within a week of the initial infection. Paul and Grayson, in their attempts to kill time, had written in a small notebook little ideas or theories on why this had happened.

First one was obviously some sort of global warfare or terrorist attack on the United States. But Paul ruled that out immediately, as following the outbreak, there had been no report or sign of global tensions or major attack. However, Grayson thought that perhaps it was a sneak attack. However, an issue with that is that he had read that the disease was spreading around the Eastern Hemisphere as well, so the first theory was weak. Their second theory was a government experiment gone wrong in hopes of being the first to achieve the power that the first theory held, but they couldn't prove anything to back that up. A third theory was perhaps the act of God, but Grayson couldn't understand why God would cause such a disaster to occur; Paul couldn't disagree.

While brainstorming these ideas, Paul went upstairs and soon his son followed. Most of them stayed in the basement with the supplies while Paul normally managed things upstairs, away from the others, so he could be alone in his thoughts. Grayson wandered up the stairs to see his dad with some weapons laid out on the table. One was a crowbar, another a knife, a different, particularly larger knife, and finally: a gun. An M9 to be exact. The gun belonged Jacob, who had claimed to have it for a few years prior to the apocapyse. Grayson never bothered to ask why the man had a gun, but the man never set off an alarm of being dangerous.

"Grayson," Paul said. "We're going to go raid the houses around us for some extra supplies, since we're running thin."

"We only have three days of food left." Grayson commented. "Some of it isn't even that good, either."

"Of course it isn't." Jacob said. "None of this shit is good." Grayson felt a sting from the simplicity of his comment, but he soon shrugged it off.

"Jacob, relax." Paul sharply replied. "There's no need to be a dick about the obvious, got me? Now, Grayson, these are our best weapons against the things out there. Take the crowbar and one of the smaller knives. I'll be taking the larger knife and Jacob's going to take the M9 and his own knife."

"Where are we going?" Grayson asked, picking up the weapons and getting a feel for their weight. Paul anxiously stared at him, as so far Grayson had not even been outside since the power went out. He had no idea how the world outside of his basement had developed.

"About a block over," Paul began to explain, "the houses have remained mostly untouched, as far as we can tell. We're gonna try to get at least 3 houses today, maybe more if the pickings are slim." Paul opened the door to the basement, and yelled down, "We'll be back!" With the sound of farewells behind him, Paul moved a dresser in front of the door in the case that a walker came in, and then led the trio outside.

The first thing the group noticed was the silence. Without the hum of the electric street lights and the usual bustling of cars, it was almost completely silent other than their steps. The second thing was the smell-it was atrocious. Multiple walkers laid on the ground, killed in previous altercations.

"God, I don't think i'll ever get used to this smell." Paul grumbled.

"The government will get this cleaned up soon." Jacob replied.

"You still think they're even around? It's been over a month, I would have imagined something would have happened." Paul retorted, a slight annoyance in his voice. "It seems like we're on our own." To this, Jacob got quiet. The walk was mostly empty, actually, until they reached the street. Two walkers were about 30 feet from each other, both scuffling around. Paul ran up to one and quickly jabbed its skull, causing it to moan and then turn silent. The second one began to scuffle toward them, to which Paul turned to Grayson. "Want your first kill? It's easy."

"No," Grayson said, his body beginning to shake. "I don't want to kill unless I have to."

"Fair enough. I didn't want you to anyway. Killing these things still feels...wrong. Jacob, you know what I mean?"

"Sort of. These assholes have killed the rest of my family and probably my wife's family, so I don't have too much sympathy." Jacob stated as he stabbed the second one in the head. "How many do you think there are?"

"More than enough." Paul replied, leading them to a small house on the right of the street. Jiggling the handle, Paul sighed as he wandered around the house, all doors locked. Finally, he came back to the front. "Grayson, we'll cover you, but you're gonna have to smash the window and climb in and open the door."

"Why not just smash the door knob?" Grayson asked.

"There's no guarantee the door will open and then we may have just hurt the door more than anything." Paul answered. "Let's hurry up." Grayson, unsure of his abilities to handle the task, took a stroll to the window and immediately bashed it with his crowbar. A large shatter echoed through the neighborhood, but it didn't appear to draw any immediate attention.

Grayson cleaned up the glass shards on the bottom of the window sill and slowly lowered himself into the house. It was dark as all the blinds were closed, and the smell was horrid. In the chair was a man whose head was blown off with a pistol, similar to Jacob's. Grayson went to the door immediately and unlocked it, and then the three began to search. Paul took the gun as his own, happy that his small weaponry advanced.

The next half hour was spent searching the home. They found some boxes of cereal, three cans of assorted foods, and a box of chips. Searching the garage, they found it mostly empty but it held a few items, such as gas cans and assorted tools. Paul gladly took what he could and left for home-if things continued this way, they may just make it out alive.