Paula's Zombie Apocalypse - Chapters 1, 2, 3

by lizzierussell

Paula began the zombie apocalypse as a wife and mother working as a secretary in Washington, D.C. and living in Baltimore. She spent her last days of civilized civilization with a man that needed his ego stroked and have his coffee fetched. This is the start of Paula's backstory. Share Paula's journey as she makes her way to the Saviors. A fan-fiction story that takes place in T

Paula began the zombie apocalypse as a wife and mother working as a secretary in Washington, D.C. and living in Baltimore. She spent her last days of civilized civilization with a man that needed his ego stroked and have his coffee fetched. This is the start of Paula's backstory. Share Paula's journey as she makes her way to the Saviors.

A fan-fiction story that takes place in The Walking Dead Universe.

Eleven. That was her number. That was the number at which she stopped caring, stopped counting, when it stopped mattering.

It was on the 7:35 am Wednesday morning commuter train from Baltimore to D.C. where Paula's nose was buried deep into the book she was reading. She'd started this book, The Vampire Lestat, and she had burned two thirds of the way through it in the two days since she first opened it which was pretty surprising since the only time she had to herself was the hour train ride each way to and from work and a good chunk of that time could be taken up gabbing with her train buddy, Jeremy, sitting beside her. They had met about three years ago on the train ride home one Thursday evening and now met at the station in the morning and would meet on the fourth train down the tracks at night for the ride home.

"See the news last night?" Jeremy asked without looking up from his own book. No answer came from Paula. He elbowed her and asked again, "Did you see the news last night?"

Paula dropped her book into her lap reluctantly and looked over at him with annoyance, "Are you kidding? Cooking dinner, cleaning up after dinner, two loads of laundry, algebra homework, three bed-time books, five glasses of water, all for Olivia and the dog went out three times. News? No news. Nothing ever happens in my world unless it's me not getting something done and then the world comes to a halting stop." She rambled off sarcastically. She looked back at her book for one second and then turned to look at Jeremy and asked, "Why?"

"Just a weird, random thing. Some guy was eating another guy's face. The cops tased and then shot him a bunch of times but he didn't stop until one of them blew the guy's head off." Jeremy leaned over and said in a hushed excited tone.

"Did they actually show them doing all that?" Paula asked with a skeptical furrowed brow.

"Not up close, really and not the last shot. The reporter just described what happened. They said the guy was probably on one of those new designer drugs or something like that or he might have been an escapee from a psyche ward or something." Jeremy said while turning the page in his book and then they both buried their noses back into their respective stories. "By the way, remind me not to get married and have kids."

"Have you mentioned that to Janet yet?" Paula retorted with a hooked half smile.

"I tell you one thing and her another." They both giggled and Jeremy squished down in his seat again jamming his knees against the back of the seat in front of him. Jeremy was a 28 year-old hipster type in his version of business casual, black and gray v-neck sweater, black skinny jeans and his messenger bag that was between them. Jeremy was pretty cute with his short, light brown hair and blue eyes. If Paula had been ten years younger, he would have been just the sort of guy she'd be interested in. He was smart, funny and got her sarcasm but Paula was an old married lady of 38 with four girls at home and a grumpy, hardworking husband.

"Paula? Is that you?" Gil bellowed as Paula came through the door holding a tray with two coffees and bag with two bagels and strawberry cream cheese. It wasn't quite yet nine in the morning and Gil had likely been in the office since six.

"Yes, I – "

"Get your ass in here, will ya?" Gil cut her off without even looking up from his desk or wondering what she was about to say. Paula dropped her over-sized purse on her desk and rounded the corner into his office. She put the cardboard tray with the coffee down on his desk and pulled his cup out and set it before him. "I need this faxed over to the Commissioner's office tout de suite. Hurry up! Can you grab this?" Paula grabbed the folder from his meaty hand.

"You got all of this done this morning before I got in? You're amazing, Gil." She plastered on her you're a God among men smile and picked up the coffee tray and headed back to her desk grimacing the whole way. "Another fun day in paradise." She thought. "I'll be back with your bagel after I get those papers faxed over to the Commissioner's office." She said over her shoulder.

"Can you bring in the bagel first?" He yelled after her.

"Of course," She thought. "First things first. Let's get that fat face of yours fed."

When she was finally able to sit down at her desk, she took off her Nike's and put on a black pair of platform pumps. She fired up her desktop computer and waited for it to scroll through all its nonsense so she could log in and actually start working. She had a stack of transcription to get through which meant hours of listening to Gil nasally whine on about one case after another.

Her computer screen finally opened up business for a new day and she clicked on her email. Gil, Gil, spam, Gil, Marni, Macy's sale, Gil, Gil, Mom and that's the one she was looking for.

Paula's mother was up with the birds each day and part of her morning routine was to send her daughter an inspirational email. They might be poems, stories, meme's or an anecdote from an obstacle that someone they knew overcame. Today's submission was no different, an innocuous little fable about a carrot, an egg and coffee beans being plunged into hot water and what happens to them. The carrot becomes soft, the egg hard and the coffee beans change the water while remaining true to itself. Paula's mother told her that as a mother she could not risk being the carrot ever but depending on the day or circumstance she had to navigate the fine line of oscillating between the egg and the coffee beans.

Paula furrowed her brow and screwed up her mouth in thought. She didn't outright agree with her mother but did get her point. She wished she were strong enough to be the coffee beans. She didn't know how she could ever be the egg. She was a mother and a wife. She couldn't make her family happy if she was the egg, could she? Sadly, she decided that most often she was the carrot. She was a wife and mother with a lot on her plate. She really didn't have the luxury of being anything else.

Paula had overheard talk yesterday when she went out to pick up lunch but she honestly thought it was just a rehashing of the story that Jeremy had shared with her that morning. However, this morning while Paula was in the shower, the disc jockeys on K100 were talking about people eating other people and not cracking jokes like they normally did. Kevin, just getting home from work, popped his head into the bathroom to let her know that he was home. "Hey, Kev?' she yelled out through the shower curtain. "Have you heard anything about this people eating people thing that's been on the radio and tv?" She asked while massaging shampoo through her red, shoulder length hair.

"Not really. Lotta alarms going off last night at the plant and a couple of transformers blew. It was kinda crazier than normal."

"Huh, okay. Can you get the kids up? I'll be out in a second and I'll get their breakfasts going."

Paula came around the corner into the kitchen where her four girls sat around the table. They were either half awake with elbows on the table and their heads in their hands or loudly awake singing or chattering. Their chocolate lab, Hershey, was circling the table trying to get the attention of anyone of the girls. Kevin was asking the girls which cereal they wanted while in the background the television was babbling on about the weather. Paula pulled a carton of strawberries from the refrigerator. She stood at the kitchen island countertop and began slicing the strawberries into the bowls of cereal that Kevin had set out. "Kevin, here it is. Watch this! Kev, look!" Paula said as she grabbed the remote to turn up the volume.

"Officials in 27 states are reporting cannibalistic attacks on people by live people. Police and the Health Department have not declared a cause for these attacks and both are still investigating each of the cases." The female news anchor intoned in her non-distinct non-regional accent while on the television screen the same newsreel of police shooting at what looked like a man bent over a woman chewing on her arm played over and over again. His body absorbed and reacted to the shots but he continued on with his meal. "As of yet, there has been only one reported incident in the Baltimore area. Authorities are warning to proceed with extreme caution should you encounter any suspicious persons. The CDC has made no official statement other than they have experienced a heightened incidence of flu outbreak this year and continue to advise washing hands frequently."

Kevin and Paula exchanged looks while Kevin grabbed the cereal bowls and started setting them in front of the girls. Kevin nodded his head toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms and Paula headed toward their bedroom.

Paula was tucking her blouse into her skirt when Kevin came into the bedroom. "Look, I don't think it's a good idea for you to go in today. I just don't want you so far from home. I can't get there fast enough if I need to."

"Don't be silly. This isn't worth staying home over. They don't even know what it is and they didn't say it was happening in D.C." She walked over to the dresser and tilted her head to one side to put an earring on. "It's weird and kind of scary, I'll give you that but it probably has a lot more to do with people taking drugs," Paula stammered out, "or not taking them." She went to him and stood facing him holding onto his strong arms, "I love that you worry about me but I'll be fine." She kissed him and said, "I'll drop the girls off at school on my way to the train. You just go to bed and get some rest. I love you and I'll see you tonight." She kissed him again, squeezed up against him and hugged his six foot, stocky frame and went to get the girls ready for school.

He watched her leave the bedroom knowing that he knew more about what was going on than he told her. He'd been talking to a couple of cops he'd come across while he had been out working on the blown transformers in the night. Both had said something weird was going on and no one understood what was happening. Instead of going to bed as soon as everyone left he was off to the hardware and grocery stores to get supplies. From what the cops had said, he was thinking that he had some time to get things together before Paula got home that night. She would be okay going to work.

Normally, the train ride from Baltimore was a quiet affair in the morning, mostly hushed tones and the sound of the wheels squealing and grinding over the tracks and speeding over the miles toward D.C. Even the conductors tended to move through the train cars silently. However, this morning it was more than a bit different. People were talking to each other in more than hushed tones. Some of it was loud, some of it was animated and all of it was more than normal. Newspapers were being passed around and shared between passengers. One-sided conversations into cell phones and the constant tones signaling that texts were coming in hung in the air above everyone's heads. It was no different between Jeremy and Paula. They swapped news story tidbits that they found surfing the net with their cell phones. They leaned in on others conversations to get more information or gossip.

Paula's inner dialogue was screaming at her to just go home. She thought about getting the first train back to Baltimore as soon as this train reached D.C. without even telling Gil or going to the office to check in and then leave but to just go home. Whether she checked in with Gil or not and then not working today she was pretty sure that she would lose her job once this turned into nothing other than some bizarre anomaly and chances were that this would be some bizarre anomaly. Even when there were major snow storms Gil expected her in the office on time for the full day. At least snow was a known entity. Who knew what this was?

The last thing she needed to do was lose her job. The economy was still really bad with no improvement in sight and she and Kevin were always living paycheck to paycheck and that was looking at their finances optimistically. Compared with everyone they knew, they were the lucky ones because they both still had jobs. No, she had to go into the office no matter what.

The second she walked through the door Gil was bellowing for her. She dropped her big purse on her desk and went into his office and set down his coffee and bagel on his desk and listened to his instructions. When he finished she told him that she wanted to catch the 10:30am train back to Baltimore, she really needed to get back home. He didn't stop to ask why; Gil's response was that it was out of the question; too much had to get done today so she must stay. If that wasn't going to work he'd be perfectly happy to find someone else and given the current economic climate he didn't see that being as much of a problem.

Paula went back to her desk. She thought about calling Kevin but didn't want to wake him. In the end, she couldn't afford to lose her job over being unrealistically hysterical about a weird news story. If it was really that serious, the authorities would have told everyone to stay home. So, she busied herself with what needed to be done and stopped thinking about it.

Around noon, the lunch order was delivered and she chatted with the delivery boy for a little bit as usual. But, today he wasn't as jovial as he normally was. He had a serious, nothing but business attitude. It was clearly evident that he was preoccupied with something.

"Are you okay?" Paula asked. "You don't seem yourself."

"I am and I'm not. People are freaking out. Haven't you heard about the attacks that have been going on? Half the offices in this building have already cleared out. I've got all these sandwiches and stuff that I can't deliver. I heard through the grapevine that the President is already in the bunker and that the Senate and Congress and anyone else like them are being evacuated but no one is saying anything about it." He delivered in a deadpan monotone voice with twinges of panic laced throughout his words.

Paula looked at him wide-eyed and her mouth ajar. "Why are you still delivering lunch if it's that bad?"

"As soon as my girlfriend texts me that she's downstairs with the car, I'm outta here. And you should be, too!" Just as he said that his phone chimed and he read the text. "She's here. I'm gone." He started to push the cart out. "Mind if I leave this here? I'm not going to waste any time bringing this back down to the cafe. Good luck to you!" He grabbed his backpack stowed in the lower part of the cart and slung it onto his back. He left just as she was nodding her assent. She stood staring at the door as it shut behind him.

Paula walked over to the window and looked down the five stories to the street. It was busy with people going this way and that, nothing more than usual at the lunch hour at first glance. But there was something different down there. There were more than the usual numbers of black SUV's and in addition to that there were troop trucks and armed servicemen on the street. Busses were pulling up one behind the other.

She turned back and looked over at her bulletin board. She had taken her mother's inspirational message from yesterday and tacked it up on the board. Was she going to be the carrot, the egg or the coffee beans? So far, she'd really been nothing other than the carrot but she needed to buck up and transition to egg or coffee beans because there's no time for carrots today. Gil yelled for her before she could decide. She brought his lunch into his office.

"Paula, here's what we need to get done this afternoon. First, I want –"

"Gil, I need to talk to you. We need to talk about something else first." Gil looked at Paula with a stunned, blank face. Paula never interrupted him. If anything, she tended to hang on his every word. This was something new. "Gil, something is happening, something really strange. We have to get out of here while we still can."

"What the hell are you talking about? Are you still trying to get out of working today?" He looked at her with quizzical eyes and a creased forehead. He clasped his meaty hands over this nearly bald head and leaned back in his chair, sighed and said, "Okay, tell me. What's going on?"

"Haven't you heard or seen anything? People are eating people. People are living when they shouldn't. They are getting shot over and over again and they still keep going. They aren't dying. Jay, the lunch guy just left saying that the President is in the bunker and that the government is being evacuated out of the city. But no one is saying anything about that on the radio or television. We have to go. I have to get home to my family."

"What? Are you serious?" He asked and then laughed. "That's just ludicrous. People eating people and not dying when shot? What the hell are you talking about? It's some kind of joke." He responded while rubbing the smile on his already stubbly face.

Paula stared at him for what felt like an eternity with a myriad of thoughts running through her head. She was asking herself why she wasn't just leaving; why is this guy such a jackass; what is my family doing; why do I have to need this job so much that I'm afraid to just leave?

"Paula, I think – "

"Gil", she paused, "Get up and go look out the window. You'll see some of what I'm talking about." She got up and walked back to the window and Gil followed. There was even more going on than what she saw five minutes ago when she was at the window alone. There was a soldier shouting into a bullhorn barking out orders that others were carrying out. People were reacting to what he was saying because they stopped and in some cases backtracked and went into the buildings that were closest to them or moved in a direction that he indicated.

Their office door popped open with a rush and in came the building coordinator, Bobby. Bobby essentially confirmed what Jay had told Paula. Government officials were being moved out of the city as fast as possible by the National Guard. Once that was completed everyone else would be moved out street by street but until then everyone was to stay in place and not move. Anyone found on the street would be apprehended and/or shot. When Paula and Gil started to ask questions Bobby said that he couldn't answer them right now but would be back and if they needed anything to make a list and he'd try to get what they needed. He spotted the lunch cart and said, "Looks like you're set for food." He smirked and left them and went on with his rounds. Gil followed him out.

Paula went to her desk and grabbed her cell phone and called Kevin. Instead of being in bed he was out shopping for supplies. She wanted to know what he knew. He told her that he'd spoken with a couple of cops last night and they had told him something was coming their way that they didn't understand.

"I should have stayed home. Do you know what's going on here? I can't leave or I'll be shot! I should never have left." She said just above a whispering whimper.

"From talking to them, I thought we'd have more time." He pleaded. "You'll be safe there."

"Kevin, I'm scared. It's chaotic down in the street right now. I'm scared." Paula was near tears but willing herself to not cry. She knew it wouldn't help the situation and would only get Kevin mad at her. She looked up at the ceiling so that the tears would fall back into her eyes. With one finger, she wiped up toward her lashes to catch a tear that got away while trying to keep her mascara in place.

"Listen, honey, I'm almost done. I have one more quick stop to fill up the tank with gas. The girls will be home from school in about an hour. I'll have them each pack a bag real quick and then we'll leave and go to your parents. They know we're coming. You're on the way to Hartwood. I'll pick you up."

"But what if I can't get out or you can't get into D.C.?" She really was fighting back the panic.

"Sweetheart, just make sure your phone is charged. We'll keep in touch." Kevin said in the most reassuring voice he could muster. He knew she was on the verge of falling apart and that wouldn't help either one of them right now.

"But what if you can't get into the city?" She nearly screamed at him.

"Bunnybug, there is no way I'm not going to get you." He could hear in her voice that she was on the edge of losing it. She was just starting to come around from the miscarriage four months ago but she still had her moments, he thought. "You know what? You're right. We should have a secondary rally point."

"How about we meet at Independence and 22nd Southeast? I can come off the bridge and make a big circle. Think you can do that? All you have to do is cut over from A Street at some point." He listened and all he heard was her breathing. "Bunny? Did you hear me?"

"Yes, I know right where you mean." Paula took a deep breath and as she exhaled she said, "We're going to be okay. This will be all right. We can do this. I can do this."

"Sweets, you know maybe you should hop on Google Maps and print out a street map just in case so you have it with you."

"That's a good idea. I'll do that right now. Give me a call when you leave. I'll be ready. I love you, Kevin. See you soon." She sounded more confident and in control.

"I love you, too, hon. I'll see ya soon." Kevin hung up before she could say anything else. He needed to get that gas and get home before the girls got home from school.

Paula printed out a couple of different street maps and then went back to the window and looked down on the street. The only people on the street now were soldiers and people following soldiers in small groups. The soldiers led them to the first bus of a long line of busses along the street below. There was no meandering lunch traffic, just people with a purpose.

Gil came back in locking the door behind him and shrieking at her about not telling him about any of this sooner. It was her job to keep him informed of such things. "What do I pay you for?" He shouted at her.

"I'm sorry. I did try to say something this morn-," She was nearly cowering in response until she got a hold of herself and then switched gears and went from carrot to egg. "Wait a minute! Don't you come in here yelling at me! It's not my fault we're stuck up here. It's not like you would have done anything any differently. We'd still be stuck in here!" She yelled. "We'll be out of here soon enough." She said and then wondered to herself, "Or will we?"

"Get me some coffee." Gil retorted to put her in back in her place. She went into their kitchenette and made them both a cup. Gil was sitting on the couch in the reception area. Paula handed him the cup of coffee and sat opposite of him.

"Who did you talk to when you followed Bobby out?" Paula looked at him over the steam coming off the top of her coffee mug.

"I went next door to Martin's office. He said he'd been hearing rumblings about this for the last two weeks but didn't think anything would come of it because it sounded absolutely nuts."

"What had he heard?" He had Paula's complete attention. When he talked to her like she was an actual human being she found herself liking him and then hated herself for it.

"Martin's brother is a pathologist in Boston and they talk almost every day. He said his brother called him one night during his shift which was something he never did. He just needed to tell someone what he'd seen. Anyway, he was just starting an autopsy on a young male shooting victim. He hadn't made the first cut yet and all of a sudden the chest on the guy starts moving up and down and he hears some heavy breathing and then a moan. Now, he knew that every once in a blue moon someone wakes up in the morgue." Gil took a long sip of coffee and stared at the benign office art that hung across the room and then chuckled. "But that wasn't what was happening. At first he tried to talk to the man but there was no recognition of anything he was saying. His eyes looked funny, like they were whited out or glazed over or something like that. His skin was gray and cold to the touch.

"This thing lurched up and grabbed onto the pathology assistant and just bit into him, literally tore flesh right off the assistant. At that point, Martin's brother ran and got security. They had to kill the shooting victim to stop him. They tried to treat the assistant but he died the next morning. Later that day, they heard banging noises coming from the drawer he was in down in the morgue. With guns raised, they opened the drawer and he lunged out of it. They put him down before he could hurt anyone else.

"A team flew in from the CDC in Atlanta and that was the last anyone heard of it until yesterday." He looked at Paula and then looked away. Paula was stunned and her mind was racing. What was going on? They both sat sipping their coffee lost in their thoughts.

The silence was broken by gunshots and they both ran to the window and looked down. What they saw was the kind of stuff they had only had seen in movies. There were several soldiers lined up in various positions firing their guns at these people that were advancing slowly, in a staggering manner. Some of the people were lumbering and tripping over themselves but they continued down the street toward the soldiers and the busses they were still loading. People were screaming. The soldiers, the people, Paula and Gil saw that someone, they couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, had been attacked and was lying in the street screaming in agony. Paula had never heard anyone scream like that in her life. The window glass muffled the sound but still she could hear the primal heinous shrieking. Three other people were bent over this now bloody heap pulling at skin and flesh with their mouths and hands.

Two soldiers moved toward these beings huddled over their bloody meal. They fired on them and their bodies jerked when the bullets landed but they continued on ripping and chewing. One of the soldiers walked right up to one of them and fired point blank into its temple and its brains blew out the opposite side as the skull opened and its body just fell over and was still. At that point, the soldier fired on the remaining two monsters and the victim on the ground exploding one head full of gray matter after the other. When the other soldiers saw this they followed suit and put down the advancing straggling monsters that had once been people with jobs and families with humble or self-important lives with shots to the head. Bodies flew backwards from the impact of the bullets while pieces of bone, blood, brain and faces went in all different directions leaving a stump on shoulders in some cases and open cavities oozing brain matter and eye balls in others.

Tears rolled down Paula's face while Gil screamed, "This isn't happening! This isn't happening!" He ran into his office and slammed the door. Paula could hear noises coming from the office, whimpering, things being thrown around, incoherent talking, glass clinking and yelling. Paula's phone rang and she ran to answer it.

"Kevin! It's get-." She was interrupted by her 8 year-old daughter, Nancy, crying into the phone.

"Mommy! Something's wrong with Daddy. He's locked in the basement making noises and we can't get the door open." Paula could hear barking, banging, the girls screaming and crying and then growling and moaning underneath all of that.

"Give me the phone! Let me talk to Mom!" Paula could hear her oldest twin by three minutes, 11 year-old Lucy. Lucy was the most level-headed out of the four girls. Nancy handed her the phone and Lucy began, "Mom, Dad put a note on the basement door telling us not to try to open the door no matter what. He said that the SUV is packed with everything we need and to go to Nana and Poppup's. He said he loves us and will always love us and he said to tell you," and she broke down for just a second with a hitch her voice. She took a breath and then finished, "He said to tell you that when you fell from heaven it was the best day of his life."

Paula wanted to completely break down but she couldn't. A tear fell from one eye, slid down and hung on the edge of her jaw. She sniffled and took a deep breath. She had to stay strong and get her girls out of that house and away from that basement door. "Lucy, honey, I want you to listen to me very carefully and do exactly as I say."

"Okay, Mom. Tell me what to do."

"First, tell Margaret to get Nancy, Olivia and Hershey into the SUV. Do you see the keys to the SUV? Did Dad leave them on the table or hang them up by the side door?"

"They're on the kitchen table with Dad's wallet." Lucy said levelly.

"Good. Give the keys and the wallet to Margaret and tell her to wait for you in the SUV and to make sure Nancy and Olivia are strapped into their booster seats." Paula could hear the banging getting louder and the chaos of the two younger girls screaming and Hershey barking. "Go to my bedroom and find the book in the bottom right drawer of the dresser. Take the book with you. Then run like hell and get yourself to Nana and Poppup's house and don't stop for anything or anybody." Paula said with steely resolve.

"But I'm only 11 and can't drive!

"Well sweetheart, today is your lucky day!" Paula forced a smile through the biggest knot in her stomach. "You've driven bumper cars and go carts. Driving a car is just like that except don't hit anything on purpose and don't drive like you're on fire and you should be okay. You're tall enough to see over the dashboard." Paula chuckled at that for real.

"Okay Mom, I'm on it." Lucy laughed as well. "This will be fun."

"Yeah, it'll be fun. Okay, Lucy!" Paula said a little louder than normal. "I love you and I'm proud of you every day and tell your sisters the same. Now, listen to me very carefully. I want Margaret to call me every half hour once you get going. Do you understand me? Call me when you get to Nana and Poppup's and I'll see you as soon as I can get there."

"I love you Mom and I'll see you there!" And with that Paula disconnected the call.

Paula held the phone to her ear with her eyes closed tight and while her other hand held up her head. She started to cry and she screamed, "No, no, no!" and the phone dropped out of her hand falling to the carpeted floor with a muted thud and she pushed her hands up into her red hair grabbing it at the roots and screamed the loudest she'd ever screamed in her life.

Gil came running out of his office with a glass in his hand and liquor sloshing out of it. "What's going on? Is everything okay?" He huffed. His tie was loosened and the top two buttons of his dress shirt were undone. He checked that the office door was still locked and he walked over toward her. Paula had completely forgotten about Gil. She looked up at him with tear soaked eyes, black mascara rimming her eyes and running down her cheeks.

"No. Nothing's okay." And she burst out in another round of explosive, hysterical crying complete with projectile tears.

Gil went to her and stood awkwardly at her desk not really knowing what to do. There had always been an appropriate distance between the two of them. They laughed here and there and she idolized him at times but there was never physical contact between them that wasn't accidental.

He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder and she stood up quickly and hugged him tighter than a bear could have hugged him. She could smell the booze on his breath. After a few moments she relaxed her hold and he led her to one of the reception chairs and sat her down as he sat across from her. She told him that she thought Kevin had become one of those cannibalistic things they saw gunned down in the street earlier. He'd managed to lock himself away in the basement so the girls couldn't get to him or better yet, so he couldn't get to the girls. She told him that her girls were now barreling down Route 95 on their way to her parent's house in Hartwood, Virginia in Kevin's SUV with one of her eleven year-olds at the wheel. He laughed at the visual. She glared and then she laughed with him.

She walked back over to her desk and grabbed her cell phone. She wanted to call her mother to let her know that the girls were on their way and that Kevin would not be with them. She called her mother's cell phone and got an, "all circuits are busy" message. She called her Dad's cell phone and the landline and got the same response. She tried using the office phone to call and got a fast busy signal. She could feel the panic rising in her. If she couldn't find out if they were okay, how would she know when the girls got there? The girls! She hadn't heard from them yet. She dialed Kevin's cell phone and it rang twice and went busy. "Okay. Okay. Okay. O-", She was pacing between her desk and the wall holding her cell phone in one hand and pumping her hands up and down when Gil interrupted her.

"Paula, calm down. The circuits are probably just overloaded. We can just try back periodically." The last thing he wanted to happen was for her to start crying again and, "On that note," he thought, "I need to stay calm myself".

Gil looked toward the window. "It's dark out." He paused and then said, "I didn't eat lunch. Did you?" Paula nodded no. "Come on. Let's see what Jay left us." They both walked over to Jay's lunch delivery cart and started poking through it. There were bags with office numbers on them and then there were sandwiches, chips, sodas, water, candy, fruit and other things. "Looks like we've got enough food to last a few days." Gil remarked.

They both grabbed a few things and took them back to the reception area. They sat quietly and ate their sandwiches and the only sound was the crunching of chips, sporadic rapid gunfire and someone yelling through a bullhorn. They had been so wrapped up in what was going on within the confines of their office walls that they had forgotten they were part of a bigger picture, what was going on outside. They looked at each other. Neither of them wanted to get up and look out the window but they couldn't resist. They had to know what was going on outside.

They were not prepared for what they saw. No one could have been. The street lights had come on. In the dim light they could see bodies splayed here and there all over the street. Some were what appeared to have been healthy humans lying dead covered in blood with limbs missing, faces shredded apart and bellies ripped open spilling their contents onto the street. There were other bodies that were likely those that had inflicted that carnage. Most had multiple bullet wounds and some had heads nearly to completely blown off.

Gil gasped and went back into his office. He didn't close his door this time. He dropped down into his swivel chair very loudly. Paula heard the clink of glass against glass as Gil refreshed his drink. He leaned back in his chair and stared blankly at the ceiling.

Soldiers were scattered either still trying to corral people onto busses or cleaning up the corpses and moving them out of her view. However, it definitely didn't look like they were evacuating as many people at this point as they had been earlier and these people were far more eager to get on the busses and get out of there. Still the one soldier stood barking orders through the bullhorn but not as constant as earlier in the day. It looked more like their focus was setting up a perimeter using barriers to mark the boundaries.

Paula saw the barriers and instantly felt like a wild animal caught in a snare. How was she going to get out of here? Then something in the shadows, a quick flash, caught her eye. It was a man moving along the wall of the building diagonally across from her building. He was moving slowly, assessing the situation before making each move.

A shot rang out and he fell from the shadow of the building he was creeping against. The bullet went through a lens of the man's eyeglasses and left a dark blood spot on the wall where his head slammed against it from the impact of the bullet. Several soldiers moved toward the body cautiously. "Stevens, check and see if he is bit!" one yelled out. Stevens approached the body while several others covered him by pointing their automatic rifles at the body sprawled on his side, arms and legs askew, face up on the sidewalk. Stevens looked the body over, pulling up the man's shirt, rolling him over, lifting arms and examining the legs. "He's clean. No bites or scratches." Came the report. "Alright, get this one and all the others on the truck. We've gotta keep this street clear." Immediately the body was moved out of Paula's range of vision. Other soldiers were moving other bodies in the same direction.

Paula watched the whole scene unfold with rapt attention. She was looking for a way out of this office, a way to her parents so she could be with her children. She leaned her head against the glass of the window, closed her eyes and prayed that they were okay. On the best of days the drive was under two hours; she couldn't imagine what it would be today.

The soldiers were nearly done clearing the street of the fleshy detritus strewn across the unlikely battlefield. They would carry the bodies and pieces in the same direction which ended out of Paula's view. She strained to see but couldn't. She thought about leaving the office to find another vantage point but tracing the floor plan in her brain reminded her that they had no access to other sides of the building. They could only see East Capital Street.

Gil came out of his office still holding his drink and walked to the door, unlocked it and stood there for a second. "I'm going over to Martin's office. I need to talk to him. Lock this behind me." And he left.

She could tell he had a little bit of a buzz on. When he was going through his divorce seeing him buzzed happened fairly often. Marion was taking him for everything she could get. After being married to Gil, Marion had earned that and more, in Paula's humble opinion. After the papers were signed she seldom saw him like this; really only when he was stressed out over something and on those rare occasions it was only after five pm she'd see him with a drink. This whole unfolding of events was certainly something to be stressed out over.

She went back to her desk to grab her phone to try calling her girls and her parents again. She tried her parent's three lines and Kevin's phone and got the same results as earlier. Then it occurred to her to try Margaret and Lucy's phones. She dialed Margaret. "Mom!" Came a loud response. Paula sat down at her desk.

"Margaret! I can't believe I got through." Paula's heart was beating out of her chest and she felt an overwhelming sense of short lived relief while one tear trickled down her cheek. "Are you at Nana's yet?"

"No. We're just outside of Baltimore on 95 South." In the background, Paula could hear the other girls screaming to talk to her. "We've been trying to call you but the calls won't go through."

"Sweetheart, put me on speaker for a second." There was a pause and then the noise filled the phone. "Hi girls!" Paula was trying hard to not betray the fear and anxiety she was feeling. "Olivia, how are you doing honey?"

"I'm scared, Mommy. People are walking funny and they look scary and they have blood on 'em." Olivia was the youngest at six. When comparing pictures of Paula at the same age with Olivia right now, they looked like the same person, red curly hair and fine china features.

"I know. Those people aren't feeling very well, are they? I want you to stay away from them. I want you all to stay away from them. Nancy? Did you learn anything in school today?" Nancy was her little bookworm. She wore glasses and favored Kevin's side of the family with dark hair, a long nose, a dimpled chin and freckles across the tops of her cheeks.

"Not too much. We barely got through math class. Mommy, is Daddy one of those people?" Nancy's eighth birthday was last week. All the grandparents were supposed to be coming this weekend to celebrate. Paula didn't think that was going to happen.

Paula was pulling up the live traffic map on her computer. The internet was moving slow but it was still moving. She could see that Route 95 South was flashing red as was North and just about any road on the map. No one was going anywhere fast or at all.

"Listen to me girls; I'm not sure what's going on out there. Margaret, can you see if there is an exit far from where you are? Can you see any green signs?"

Margaret hit the window power button and stuck her head out and looked. "I see an exit and there are some cars going there."

"Okay. Lucy, get in the breakdown lane and go to that exit. If you have to drive on the grass to get off at that exit, then I want you to do it. I have a feeling that the cops are too busy to pull over an eleven year-old driving today. Is the GPS still working? Do you have Nana and Poppup's address plugged into it?"

"No."Margaret and Lucy both said but not in unison. An argument between Olivia and Nancy broke out in the backseat. "Shut up you guys!" Margaret yelled. "We need to listen to Mom." It went from loud to silence.

"Margaret, first I want you to put the address in. The phones aren't working too well but I think the GPS should still be working. After you get that in, get Daddy's map book that's in the pocket behind your seat. Tell Nancy to grab it for you." The map book came sailing over the top of the seat sliding down Margaret's front, over her lap and onto the floor.

"Thanks, Nancy. Got it." Margaret said somewhat sarcastically.

"Okay, quick before we get cut off. Margaret, map out a route using pretty much anything but Route 95. Stay on those secondary routes like Route 40 near our house. You know what I mean girls?" Paula could hear blaring horns and the jostling of the cargo in the SUV in the background as Lucy drove over uneven ground.

"Yep! The non-highway kinds with houses on them, right Mom?" Margaret asked while she was keying in the grandparent's address into the GPS.

"Exactly, sweetie. Lucy, keep the SUV moving south until Margaret gets the directions worked out. Use the compass thingy on the console."

"Mom, we're off the highway but I have to turn around and go the other way still. Traffic is better on this road." Lucy shouted.

"Here's something your Dad taught me. Odd number routes run north/south and even numbers go east/west. Can you remember that? Nana and Poppup live near Route 17 so shoot for that." Paula took a deep breath. "Okay, girls, listen up. Nancy and Olivia, do what Lucy and Margaret tell you to do. Remember that I love you and I'm so proud of you, especially right now." Paula very audibly hiccupped a sob. "Call me when you can and I will see you at Nana's!

A loud round of I love yous came back into Paula's ear. She could take no more and disconnected the phone. She dropped the phone on her desk and tried pulling a news website up on her computer but the internet was just hanging and the page wasn't loading.

There was a knock on the door and she called out asking who it was as she walked toward it and Gil's voice came back. She unlocked the door and opened it. He stood there, leaned forward and stretched his arm out putting his hand on the door frame. She stood back holding the door open as he looked at her. Finally, he spoke.

"They're death. Dead I mean." His voice was thick. "Both of them." He exhaled loudly and came into the office. Paula closed and locked the door behind him. He was just standing there and not doing the best job at it. Gil never got sloppy drunk, just a little buzzed. Paula could see that if he wasn't sloppy drunk then he was well on his way.

Paula grabbed his arm, "Come sit down." She guided him to one of the reception chairs. He was wobbly and his body felt heavy against her as she helped him to sit down without falling on the floor. She grabbed a can of ginger ale from the lunch cart, popped the top and set it down in front of him and sat down on the couch. "What happened?"

"I went over and walked in. I could hear the radio. Martin had it turned up loud. It was just emergency information playing over and over again. I didn't see Lisa right off and didn't think anything of it."

"Of course you didn't, you piece of shit. I'm surprised you even knew her name, you idiot." Paula thought.

"I went into Martin's office. He must have been looking out the window when he shot himself. I found Lisa in the kitchenette. He must have walked up behind her. He shot her in the back of the head. She couldn't have known it was coming."

Paula was quietly crying. "Where have you been all this time, then?"

"I was sitting in Martin's office. He had such a brilliant legal mind and now there are pieces of it all over his Persian rug. He also had really good Scotch so I decided to have a drink with him." He paused and ran his hand through his hair and scratched the back of his head. "Well, I had a lot of drinks with him if I'm being homest. I mean honest. I even toasted to our fallen homies." He slurred with sarcastic laugh.

Paula let out a small, low laugh thinking of him acting like a gangster thug. "I think that's being pretty honest. Maybe I should make you some coffee." She got up and started toward the kitchenette. "What was the emergency broadcast saying?" She asked over her shoulder as she walked away.

He came up behind her and was on her in an instant grabbing at her, pawing her. "It's the end of the world."

"We don't know that! Get off of me!" She interjected and pushed him away from her. "What are you doing? What's wrong with you?" She screamed at him.

"There will be nothing left." He stared at her. "They're not coming for us. Kevin's gone. You know he's gone." He spit out at her and she wound her arm back like she was winding up for a pitch and brought it around to slap him across the face. He grabbed her arm on approach and twisted it behind her back turning her away from him and pushed her over to her desk. He bent her over the desk and he was bent over her back, spooning her.

"Who are you to hit me, you stupid bitch?" His seething voice coiled into her ear like smoke. The heavy smell of the Scotch was filling her nostrils. "Don't you get it?" He continued. "This is it and this is how it's going to go. I'm going to fuck you senseless and then I'm going to kill you and then kill myself. Like I said, Martin was brilliant; murder suicide was his best idea yet. We won't have to suffer at all." She was under him feeling the weight of his body on her and she was crying and breathing heavily. He had her right arm pinned behind her so high that she thought he was going to pull her arm out of its socket.

He pulled the back of her skirt up with his right hand and she started screaming and trying to push him off of her but the more she struggled the more he pulled on her right arm. When he started undoing his belt buckle, she started running her left hand over the drawers of her desk, trying to open the middle pen drawer where she kept her scissors. Her hand was rummaging through everything identifying and dismissing items by feel. All she wanted was to wrap her hands around the scissors but she couldn't find them.

"I have been dying to do this since the first day you walked into this office. You wanted it, too. I could see it in your eyes. That husband of yours didn't know what to do with you but I do. I do." He said over her crying and screaming.

"Don't do this! Gil, please! Don't!" She screamed over and over and he just kept up with his monologue as if she offered no resistance at all.

"You know something? You're going to love this. I'm going to give it to you so good you'll be wishing we'd been doing this all along." He kicked her legs apart and let his pants fall to the floor and the belt buckle hit with a thud. He pushed the back of her skirt up and pulled down her underwear. "Your skin is so soft." He purred into ear with his hot liquored breath.

When she felt his penis hit the back of her leg it set off the rage in her that she'd been suppressing not just from the second she met him but from the first second someone of the male persuasion stopped her from being in control of her self, her body, her life.

As Gil moved subtly backward so that he could enter her, she used that to twist her body to the right quickly and violently. Since he had a hold of her right arm with his left hand she was able to use that momentum to swing around in fluid motion and when she did, it caught him so off guard that he fell to his left taking her with him. Her left hand came swinging around with such speed and force that when the letter opener went into his neck just under his jaw it went in all the way to the handle. Blood splattered and splayed all over the wall, Gil and the front of Paula's shirt. It would be considered beautiful and artistic if it wasn't disgusting and sad.

He was down on one knee with his pants around his ankles, his penis hanging out of his underwear, gurgling blood and grabbing at the handle of the letter opener and holding his neck.

Paula stood up and pulled her skirt back down and her underwear up. She looked at him with searing hatred. "Let me get that for you." She put her foot on his shoulder, reached over and pulled the letter opener out of his neck and pushed him over to the floor.

Gil lay on the floor bleeding and whimpering. His last word was, "Why?"

One

Acknowledgements

You can never thank the people that read your manuscripts multiple times and provide valuable feedback enough. You just can't. But still, thank you Joe Keen, Mary D'Alba and Jennifer Smith. I stink at certain things that you are all very good at and I thank you. I thank you.

A big, huge thank you to Amanda Wood. The beautiful cover art is the result of Amanda's talent. I called her and told her very little about what I wanted and she interpreted that into exactly what I wanted.

Thank you to the people that made me fall in love with this character so much, making her so compelling that despite having a hatred for zombies I had to find out where she came from. She has started to tell me who she is and what she's been through and I can't wait for the rest of the journey.

Paula's Zombie Apocalypse

A Backstory - Two

After killing her boss, Gil, Paula wakes to find the zombie apocalypse in full swing. With her girls traversing the highways on their way to grandma's house, Paula needs find a way to meet them there. It's time for her to leave her office and get out of Washington, D.C. What lies ahead?

A fan-fiction story that was inspired by, parodies and takes place in The Walking Dead Universe.

Paula Russell

She stood looking down at him with the letter opener in her hand. Drops of blood ran down the length of the shaft and fell to the floor creating an inky red stain on the carpet. She felt a myriad of feelings with no one feeling reigning supreme over the other. Sadness, elation, horror, panic, ecstasy, bliss, despair and fear coursed through her body simultaneously. Suddenly, she doubled over and retched on Gil's pants. It happened so quickly she didn't have time to turn away.

"Well," she thought, "how long have I wanted to do something like this?" She mentally waved a hand over Gil and thought again, "all of this!"

Paula went into the restroom to rinse out her mouth. She turned on the faucet, scooped water into her hand and brought it to her mouth. She swished it around and spit out the gook that was left over and she not only saw pieces of her late lunch but something that looked like blood curling down toward the drain. She popped up and was shocked at what she saw in the mirror.

There was blood splatter all over her face and her blouse, evidence of her having stabbed Gil to death. She backed up abruptly and looked at her hands and saw that Gil's blood was there as well. She rushed back to the sink; pushing on the soap dispenser with such force it was amazing that it didn't come off the wall. She grabbed a wad of paper towels and shoved them under the running water wetting everything down forcing the soap into suds. She attacked her face and hands almost simultaneously in attempts to wash the murder off of her body while looking in the mirror to monitor her progress.

The sink was at once an angry bowl filled with thick and dark red ribbons of blood being washed off and then slowly calming until there were only pink tendrils racing to the drain. She dried her face and looked down at her blouse. She sat down on the toilet to think a minute and take inventory.

"Martin and Lisa are dead in a murder/suicide. Gil is dead. My husband, Kevin, is…is something not normal or maybe not even human anymore. My four girls are God knows where. God, I hope that they are at my mother's. I pray that they are at my mother's! People that aren't themselves and should be dead but instead are rising and eating live people. You can't kill them unless you shoot them in the head. Gil is dead. I killed Gil. I killed Gil! I FUCKING MURDERED GIL! I'm going to go to jail for this. I'll never see my family again unless there are bars between us. I'm not going to see my girls grow up. I won't be there for them. And I really think that Kevin must be one of those things now." She halved herself on the toilet so that her head was almost between her knees and she cried, sobbed, screamed loudly. She wrapped her hands around her head squeezing it and willing it to pop open, spilling her brains everywhere just to stop this pain. Her face was screwed up in anguish as she scrolled continuously through this roll call of the living and the dead. She fell to the cold tiled restroom floor and curled herself into the fetal position while she worked her way through these emotions.

Paula opened her eyes. Her lids were stuck together; she didn't realize that she'd fallen asleep. Given everything that had transpired it wasn't surprising that she slept and cried herself into that sleep. She had to get up. She had to figure out what to do next. She couldn't lie on this cold floor any longer. It was time. It was high time to decide what needed to be done and face the next step, face the consequences. After all, Gil was lying dead in the next room. Something had to be done about that.

She pulled her reluctant body up using the counter of the vanity. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the last of vestiges of mascara that she had left on her lashes. Between the crying and the scrubbing and the crying she was surprised she had anything left that could run down her face but run down her face it did making her look like a red-headed Alice Cooper. At that, she laughed. She had to. Grabbing another paper towel, lightly wetting it with water she wiped the black remnants from her face and gently wiped around her eyes careful not to cause anything that was left, as if there could be at this point, to run further.

She looked at her blouse. She took it off, crumpled it up and threw it in the trash can. She stood there in her bra and skirt and saw the remaining blood stains. Some had seeped through her blouse to her bra and skin and there were some, not a lot, a few small specks that had landed on her beige skirt.

Gil kept extra clothes in his office closet for when he worked late and fell asleep at his desk or spilled something on himself staining what he was wearing. She went into his closet and pulled out a white t-shirt and a white dress shirt still in dry cleaner's plastic and went back to the restroom. She cleaned up the remaining blood from her skin and skirt the best that she could. She put on the t-shirt and dress shirt and tucked them both into her skirt. They were both too big for her but they looked good enough for a perp walk when the police came to get her.

She walked to the window to look out at the street. It was after four in the morning but the street was lit up like Camden Yard for a night game. There wasn't much activity; just a couple soldiers at the ends of the street. In the distance, she could hear the sound of gunshots very faintly.

It occurred to her that no one had come for her and Gil and definitely not for Martin and Lisa. Theirs were the only office suites on the 5th floor and there was only one floor above them and that was under construction for new offices. She wondered what was happening on the other four floors of the building. She figured it was pretty likely that no one had come for anyone else in the building but she needed to confirm this.

At this point, with everyone that worked on this floor being dead except her, she realized it was time to go. She walked the long way around her desk in order to avoid Gil as much as possible so that she could change her shoes and get her purse. She pushed her chair out of the way and reached under her desk to grab her sneakers and her purse. As she stood up, she thought she heard some kind of breathy shudder but dismissed it because that was impossible.

Paula grabbed her cell phone and unplugged the charger from the wall and walked over to the couch with her sneakers and her purse and sat down. She took off her platform pumps. She thought she saw some movement across the room and looked squarely in that direction and saw nothing. She slipped on her sneakers and tied them. She sat for a second staring at Gil lying on the floor. She thought his body looked different so she walked over toward him to get a better look.

A long exhale escaped Gil's body. It sounded like it was coming from the depths of his body and it had a vocal tone to it at the end.

"Gil?" Paula asked and stepped forward with one foot, partially leaning over Gil's body. "Gil?" She asked again and there was no response. Paula stared at Gil looking for any sign of life despite knowing that there could not be. There was a large pool of blood that was shaped like a halo around Gil's upper body. "Gil?" Paula asked one more time and there was no response. She straightened up and then turned to grab her purse and coat that was hanging on the coat rack by the door.

As Paula took one full stride away from Gil, there was a very clear, very definite moan and Paula turned quickly to see Gil struggling to move. She rushed back to him and leaned over to touch him. As she reached her hand down to catch his attention, Gil turned his face toward Paula and what she saw horrified her worse than anything in her life ever had before. His face was slack and covered in congealed and crusty blood on the left side. His eyes were not focused in any way. Although he faced her and she was making direct contact with his eyes, his eyes seemed to look through her. He let out a low, long growl and Paula screamed and drew back away from him just as he was reaching for her. She backed away two steps and then ran for the door. Gil wasn't moving very quickly. He was crawling across the floor like a baby just figuring out this new motor skill.

Paula reached the door and struggled with the locks. She knew she had to unbolt the deadbolt first but still she went for the doorknob first which only had to be turned to be unlocked. She twisted the knob and pulled and the door wouldn't budge. She looked behind her and Gil was only five feet away and she shrieked and Gil moaned, "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" Paula finally realized her folly and twisted the deadbolt open and then turned the doorknob and the door opened. She ran through the door closing it behind her just as Gil reached it and started banging on the door. She screamed and cried, "Oh, fuck!" She realized that she'd left her purse with her cell phone and her coat on the other side of the door. She was certain that there were a million things that she was going to want in her purse but the only thing that she would need would be her cell phone. Without that phone there was no chance of contact with her daughters or parents.

Gil was banging on the door and growling, trapped inside the office. Paula stood in the hall, outside the door listening to what was going on inside. She cried and thought about what to do next. If that was what was out on the streets then she would need some kind of weapon to use against him if she was going to get her things. She thought that if Gil had a gun he would have brought it out and would more than likely have raped her because he could threaten to shoot her. Even if there was a gun in her office she couldn't go back in there for it without taking care of Gil first. There was definitely a gun in Martin's office but there were also two dead people in there as well. Were they like Gil now?

She walked to their office door and put her ear up against it and listened for any kind of noise. She heard nothing. She willed herself into bravery and opened the door very slowly. She listened but all she could hear was Gil behind her down the hall. In front of her, Martin's office was quite literally, deathly quiet.

Paula propped the door open by sliding one of the reception room chairs up against it. She walked to Lisa's desk and saw that Lisa's cell phone was sitting in plain sight. She grabbed it. The phone was a Blackberry just like hers so there would be no learning curve. She saw that the battery charge was at about three quarters charged. She dumped out Lisa's purse looking for the charger but didn't see one. The only phone number she knew by heart was her mother's house phone since it was the same phone number since Paula was a little girl. The cell phone was useless unless you knew the number you wanted to call and if a phone call actually went through. Not knowing any of the other phone numbers effectively put her out of touch with her daughters. She really needed to get her own cell phone.

On high alert for any type of sound, Paula cautiously headed to Martin's office. The last thing Paula wanted to do was to see either Martin or Lisa in their current states but she was going to have to see Martin if she was going to get his gun. As she stood in the doorway, she could see Martin's legs by the window, jutting out past the desk. She was going to have to walk over there to get the gun but she didn't want to. What if he moved? What if he suddenly became animated again like Gil and came after her?

She was going to have to go over there but she stood still glued to the floor. She knew the gun wouldn't magically appear in her hand. If she didn't go over there, she wasn't going to get the gun. She began walking very slowly and quietly over toward Martin. She reached him and stood at his feet looking for the gun. She saw both hands but neither held the gun nor were they near the gun. She wanted to start crying again but she didn't. Crying wasn't solving anything or getting anything done. Paula looked at the desk and saw the gun sitting on the corner across from the guest chairs. Gil must have picked it up and left it there when he came in here.

It was a black gun with a hard plastic-like grip. It looked like the type of gun police officers carried. Paula knew nothing about guns beyond what she saw in movies and on television. There was no knowing how many rounds were in the gun since she didn't know how many times Martin had fired it or even how many rounds the gun held. Paula picked up the gun very gingerly. She'd never held a gun before and was terrified that it would go off accidentally. It wasn't as heavy as she thought it would be, maybe less than two pounds, but the weight of it was more than she wanted to bear.

Thinking that she might need more ammunition, she put the gun back down on the desk and went around to the drawers and opened them and started sifting through them. In the bottom drawer she found a box half full of bullets. She grabbed the box and picked up the gun and went back out to Lisa's desk. She picked up Lisa's backpack and dumped it on the desk. She looked through the contents and put the Blackberry, notebook, pen and scarf back in the backpack leaving everything else on the desk. She put the box of bullets in the smaller outside pouch and zipped the backpack up.

Paula walked to the door and pushed the chair out of the way making sure that the door closed behind her and she walked back toward her office. Gil was still banging on the door. She needed her cell phone but would have to get through Gil to get it. She thought about how she was going to immobilize Gil. If she opened the door and tried to push him back and shoot him, he could attack her before she could do anything. Therefore, she was going to have to try to take him down through a closed door. The only thing she knew was that he was at the door and banging on it but she needed to figure out if he had stood up or was still on his knees and that would give her an idea of where his head was. She had learned from watching the soldiers that in order to stop Gil she was going to have to shoot him in the head. She might shoot all of the ammunition before she put him down but she had to get her cell phone. It was the only possibility of connection she had to her daughters. The phones were working unreliably but she had gotten through once. Hopefully, she'd get through again.

When Paula placed her hands on the door to get a sense of where Gil might be. It felt to her like Gil was banging lower on the door, about waist high on her. So Paula decided that was where she would shoot. She knew the door wasn't solid wood, metal or anything for that matter so she didn't anticipate much of a problem with the bullets being absorbed or ricocheting off and hitting her. Paula grabbed the grip of the gun with her right hand and cradled it in the palm of her left hand like she'd seen so many actors do. She focused on the center of the door about three feet up from the floor and squeezed the trigger. The gun popped up with force and she lost her footing a bit. Gil continued banging on the door.

Paula stepped up to the door and stooped to look through the bullet hole that she had just put through it and she saw Gil's blood-caked neck moving back and forth on the other side. She deduced that she likely fired over his shoulder since his neck seemed to still be intact. She went back to where she stood before and squeezed one eye shut while she moved the nose of the gun up about six inches. She decided to go for the center again. She squeezed the trigger, the gun went off and she listened. Still he banged. She repeated the process four more times and finally there was the thud of a body dropping to the floor followed by the silence of no more banging.

The door was evidence of Paula's target practice with six holes, two of which were very close together. Paula turned the doorknob and slowly pushed the door open only to be met with some unexpected resistance. She kept pushing the door open and was able to see that it was Gil's legs butting up against the door making it difficult to open. She pushed harder; his legs fell to the side enough so that she could get into the office.

Once through the door, the weight of Gil's legs pushed the door closed. This made Paula extremely uncomfortable, afraid that she couldn't make a quick escape and would be trapped. Given that half of Gil's head was missing, she didn't think he was going to be able to come after her but that didn't make her feel any better. After what she'd seen in the last twenty-four hours, anything could happen.

The couch was close to the door but not close enough that she could have just leaned in to grab her bag and coat. She had to step into the office. Once she had them in hand, she kicked Gil's legs to the side, pulled open the door, went back through and the door closed behind her.

Out in the hall, she knelt on the floor, opened the backpack and dumped the contents of her purse into it watching her blessed cell phone tumble in. She reached in when the last of her stuff was in the backpack and pulled out the phone. She put the gun and the cell phone in the smaller front pocket of the backpack so she could get to either quickly if needed. She slipped on her bulky coat and then the back pack over it. She went to the elevator, hit the down button and waited. Since there was no one calling for the elevator the car arrived almost immediately and that was something that never happened. She stepped inside and hit the first floor button not knowing what she would find once she got there. She knew she couldn't stay in her office or even seek refuge in Martin's. Since her key card only allowed her access to the lobby and her floor, there was nowhere else to go. "I know I'm risking my life," she thought, "if I leave the building, but what other choices do I have? I've got to at least try. I've got to get to my girls."

Once at the building's glass front door, she stood and looked out at the street. From the door, blood spatter colored the road and sides of buildings. From the fifth floor, the red color was muted and not so immediate and bright but, down here, at ground level in the new day's light, the gravity of what was unfolding was all too palpable. There were bodies and parts of bodies piled to the sides of most of the buildings.

Paula angled herself to see down the street to determine what might be the best direction to head in order to avoid soldiers and any monsters that might be roaming the street. She wondered just how many of each was out there.

As she was looking to her right, she slowly cracked the door open a bit. As she did that, a soldier suddenly appeared from the left as if materializing out of thin air. The suddenness of his arrival scared Paula so much that she screamed, jumped back and gasped.

"Ma'am! Ma'am, you've got to keep it down!" He said in a hushed, stern tone. "Noise attracts them and it's been quiet here the last hour. What are you trying to do?" The young weekend warrior asked. Yesterday, he was probably sitting in his college classroom or stocking shelves in a grocery store or playing with his Xbox or something benign like that but this morning, here he was in full battle regalia with his index finger resting just above the trigger of his big fat rifle. His red face looked tired. His uniform had splatters of blood speckled across his chest and there was a blob of something over the "h" in his name, Matthews, on his right breast. Paula didn't want to know what that was. It was enough to know that it was a fleshy, bloody color. Her imagination could go into overtime trying to figure out what it really was. "I need ya to stay in your building."

"I'm, I'm," she stammered. "I'm hungry and I was wondering, thinking maybe the coffee shop a few doors down might have some food. They might have some coffee." Paula tried to affect a look of need and helplessness that might endear her to him so that he would let her go.

"Wait here." He turned and walked a few steps from the door while he spoke into a microphone attached to an earpiece. Paula watched him scan the street while he stood there. Other soldiers could be seen placed at the end of the street to the right of the building. Paula couldn't see the other end of the street from where she was.

"Ma'am, come with me." He said as he opened the door wide enough for her to come through. "Stay with me and stay close to me. I'll take you to the coffee shop. I thought your building had been cleared. Is there anyone else in there?"

Paula thought that was a loaded question with an answer that she did not want to give truthfully. "I don't know. There was no one left on my floor," she answered but said "alive" in her mind, "and I don't have access to the others. I didn't see anyone else," She told Mathews while adding, "alive," to the end of the sentence again in her mind. She was walking as close to Matthews as she could without bumping into him or worse yet grabbing him like she was riding pillion behind him on a motorcycle.

Along the sidewalk and walls, she could see chipped cement and brick, debris and trash that normally wouldn't be strewn so carelessly and splashes of blood. Further down the street she could see a pile of what looked like giant, life-sized rag dolls that peeked out from under a tarp that blew up when the breeze caught it just right. The air smelled of things she couldn't completely recall smelling before. Was it decay or fertilizer? She couldn't tell. Some of it seemed familiar but she couldn't place it beyond knowing it could never be described as being pleasant.

They reached the coffee shop, Matthews opened to the door and she went in. "We should be evacuating the remaining buildings this morning. Get yourself something to eat and be ready to go." He smiled at her and walked off while she whispered loudly thanking him.

The coffee shop hardly had the normal morning buzz that it should have had on a Friday. There were people sleeping in the booths, others were huddled over coffee talking quietly and looking her up and down as she entered. Paula at once felt like she was back in high school on the first day of freshmen year. She was the new girl having just moved into town the weekend before and had the self-coconscious awareness of having all eyes on her.

"Paula! Over here!" A woman's voice found her ears while the voice's owner came across the shop and hugged her.

"Anne Marie, I'm so happy to see you!" Paula said in a rush. She held onto Anne Marie far longer than she would have normally because the human contact was comforting and grounding. Anne Marie grabbed Paula by the hand and led her to a back corner booth. The window above was broken letting the cool morning spring air flow in. There was a man Paula did not know leaning back in the corner of the booth asleep with his arms crossed over his chest.

"How long have you been in here? What the hell is going on?" Paula asked in a hushed tone so as not to wake the slumbering giant next to Anne Marie.

"Get yourself some coffee and something to eat and we'll talk. Doesn't look like we're going anywhere anytime soon." Anne Marie suggested.

When she came back to the booth with some food and coffee, she took off her coat before sitting down. Coming from the brisk, spring weather coolness of outside was in stark contrast to how much warmer it was inside with all these bodies. All these live bodies were giving off heat and all the associated unpleasant odors of those that have been cooped up together in one room for an extended period of time. Combining that with the smell of cooking food and the pungent wafts decay, gun powder and whatever else that was coming through the broken window above the table all swirling together in a brilliant symphony of smells clashing together like symbols making her feel like she would once again retch. She covered her mouth, putting her fingers under her nose and got control of herself.

Paula was introduced to Dan, now awake and running his hands through his hair trying to right it. There was a little tuft of hair sticking up on one side. He kept smoothing it down and it kept popping up. He had short dark blond hair that had receded into a mild widow's peak and was parted to the side. He had really dark brown eyes and a square jaw with a nice smile set into it.

The three of them sat in the booth eating breakfast and drinking coffee. Amid the background noise of the coffee shop with people talking and moving about, a television with a blank screen mounted high in a corner, played a woman's voice saying the same message over and over again. "Stay inside to avoid infected persons. Avoid contact with infected persons at all costs. Avoid bodily fluids such as saliva and blood. Wash your hands frequently. Do not attempt to help anyone you suspect of being infected. If a person in your home should become infected, avoid the infected person and leave your home immediately. Paint a red 'X' on the outside of the door making certain that the door is closed and seek shelter elsewhere. Do not enter any building with a red 'X' painted on the outside of it."

"I had just walked in here to pick up my lunch when the soldiers started yelling for everyone to take cover in the nearest building. It was so strange. They weren't there when I came into the coffee shop and then, just like that," she snapped her fingers for emphasis, "they were all over the place yelling and shouting with trucks and buses everywhere." Anne Marie's thick lips blew on the hot coffee before she took a sip extending her dainty pinky finger. "They kept telling us to be ready, that we'd be on the next truck or bus. But, that was yesterday."

"How did you end up here, Dan? Did you two already know each other?" Paula asked looking up from buttering her English muffin and reaching for the jelly packets.

"I was actually on one of the troop trucks. They said they were taking us south of the city to some evacuation camp. When we got to this block they told us to get off the trucks and move into the buildings. People were going into the office building next door and here. I figured I might fare better in a restaurant and more likely be fed." He said with a chuckle and was joined by both Paula and Anne Marie. "And that's how I met Anne Marie, here." He leaned over and bumped against Anne Marie.

"The National Guard gave the guy that owns the coffee shop a purchase order, so the food has kept coming. Some of us have taken turns cooking back there to give the guys a break. It's been really up and down in here with what's been going on outside." Anne Marie said.

"Did they tell you why they were getting you off the trucks?" Paula asked and sipped her coffee.

"Nope, just a lot of yelling and pointing. I saw them loading other folks onto our truck once I came in here and then that truck left. I honestly don't know what the difference was between us and them." Dan replied. "Where were you coming from, Paula?"

"The office building down the street a few doors. When I stuck my nose out, I was afraid I'd be shot on the spot." She paused as a thought occurred to her. She resumed with an exclamation of, "Oh my God! You saw all of it right outside that window! No wonder it's been up and down in here."

"I've never seen anything like it. Those things look like people, they were people, are they still people?" A tear jetted out of the corner of Anne Marie's right eye as she spoke. Paula reached across and held her hand. "They are walking like they are trying to figure out how to walk and then they just fall upon a person and rip their flesh right from their bodies. And then these people would scream like they are in the very pits of hell and can't get out." She reached for a napkin and wiped her nose. Anne Marie looked like a tough lady and seeing her cry surprised Paula. Any time Paula ran into Anne Marie, she was always jovial and happy.

"The one thing I've figured out," said Dan, "is that the only way to stop them is to shoot them in the head."

"I saw that, too," Paula added, "from my office window."

Their attention was suddenly drawn to the television mounted on the wall in the corner. The repeating message on a blank screen was replaced with audio and video showing people looting stores, killing one another over supplies and advancing groups of the infected being mowed down by military. In some frames the advancing cannibal animals looked to be overrunning those that were gunning them down. The frenzied melee was a mob of figures descending upon the fallen, seemingly gleeful and frantic as they pulled and gnawed at the skin and muscle of those poor forsaken happy meals. They devoured them like the grateful at Thanksgiving. Some turned up their faces as they chewed on the bloody meat.

Paula and Anne Marie got up from the booth and stood mesmerized by the images, clutching one another while staring in denial, horror and disbelief. "What is happening?" Anne Marie uttered in a low voice, almost to herself. Then as abruptly as the broadcast started it ended and returned to the "Stay inside to avoid infected persons...," message and a blank screen. They turned and went back to the booth and sat down.

Anne Marie was now crying harder with tears streaming down her face. "I'm so scared. I don't know what to do. What will happen to us?" She looked from Paula to Dan for solace and a real answer that she knew couldn't come. They were as stunned and as lost as she for an explanation that made sense. Dan's only response was to pull back his Barracuda jacket to show them both the butt of a gun sitting in a holster right under his arm.

"I'm ready if I need it." He paused. "If we need it. Stick with me."

"Oh, great!" Paula exclaimed in relief. "You know how to use a gun. Can you show me?" She reached into her, well actually, Lisa's backpack and pulled the gun out of the front pocket. She handed it over to Dan.

"Nice piece. This is a Glock 9mm." He pulled his gun out of the shoulder holster to show them. "This is a Glock 40. It's just a little bigger. Mostly cops and military carry the 40."

"Does that mean you are a cop?" Anne Marie interjected while blowing her nose.

"It means something." Dan answered with a smirk and continued on. He picked up Paula's gun. "See this button right here? Press on this and it'll release the clip." He pressed on the button and the clip slid out. "I see this only holds ten rounds. You from Massachusetts?"

"No." Paula answered making a confused face not understanding what he meant.

"To load, you just push the clip in and then grab the top of the gun, holding it like this with your index finger on the frame and forcefully pull it back. It puts a round in the chamber. Each shot will load another round in the chamber. You only have one round left."

"I have a box here." Paula's hand waded around through the backpack and pulled out the box of ammo and handed it to Dan. Dan started pushing bullets into the clip showing her how to do it.

"Where'd you get this gun?" Dan asked.

"The guy in the next office killed his secretary and himself. I figured he was done with it."

"Oh my God." Anne Marie said with a sigh. "That's horrible. What happened to your boss? Did he just leave you?"

"Sort of." Then Paula quickly added to change the subject, " So, is ten the most I can put in this clip?"

" Yes, but we can get you some bigger clips at some point. Do you have a weapon, Anne Marie?" Dan asked.

"No. I wouldn't even know where to get one let alone use it. Do you think I need one?"

"Who knows? I might be over reacting by asking but I can't help but think we've been overdue for something like this for a long time and this is as scary as anything I've ever imagined or experienced." Dan responded. "I don't know what's going on with us getting out of here but I know something is going to change and soon. It wouldn't be a bad idea for you girls to put some waters and some food in your bags just in case." Anne Marie and Paula exchanged concerned looks. "But don't be conspicuous about it." Paula got up and went to the counter and grabbed some waters and a couple muffins. She made it look like she was getting food for the table, grabbing a paper plate and some napkins.

The better part of the day had passed with them either swapping stories, napping and either Anne Marie or Paula tearing up. Paula was in the midst of explaining her last conversation with her girls when two soldiers came into the coffee shop and began instructing them in loud voices.

"Listen up! Everyone! You have five minutes to pack up everything, put on coats, shoes, whatever you have and be ready to go. You're next." The young soldier stood facing everyone with his hand on his rifle while it rested against his chest.

"Where are we going?" Someone yelled out.

"Be ready to go. We're getting you out of the city." The other soldier, a little older than the first, replied. They turned and went back to the street.

Inside the decibel level climbed with talking, shouting, shuffling and movement with people packing up. Paula hadn't been there long enough to unpack so she went to the counter and grabbed a few more muffins, three bagels and four bottles of spring water and handed them to Anne Marie and Dan to pack away. Dan was right; they had no idea where they were going or if there would be food or water when they got there. A few other people saw her doing this and did the same.

A soldier came back in and starting yelling at them to hurry and move outside to the truck on the street, that they needed to move fast. Before the first person made it out of the coffee shop, automatic gunfire started ringing out. Dan jumped up on the booth bench to look out the broken window and then quickly jumped down.

"We've got to get out of here!" he said to Paula and Anne Marie. "Follow me to the back. Maybe the alley is clear and we can get out. Stay close to me." They crossed the floor of the coffee shop to the back side of the counter and into the kitchen area and through a door into the backroom. There was a door between two stacks of boxes. Dan went to the door, turned the locks and slowly opened the door to look out and survey the area. A woman came from behind Dan and pushed him out into the alley and he fell to the ground. She jumped over him and her foot landed on his left hand. She ran down the alley toward the street screaming the whole way, turning a corner and then she was out of sight. Paula and Anne Marie were next to come out of the door and it was difficult to say that they came out on their own versus being driven out by others looking to escape the front of the building.

Dan had started to recover from the fall and Paula helped him up while Anne Marie shielded him from being trampled. While Paula and Dan were facing the direction that everyone was headed in, Anne Marie was looking at the other end of the street and what she saw was not anything anyone ever wanted to see.

"You guys, we've got to get moving. Those monsters are headed down here!" Paula and Dan followed Anne Marie's gaze. "We've got to get going! We've got to get going!" Anne Marie was screeching.

Paula faced her, turned her in the opposite direction and gripped each of Anne Marie's arms and said trying to calm her. "Anne Marie we're going to be okay. We're ahead of the game here. Aren't we, Dan?"

"We are. I've got a plan but we've got to get out of here first. If you're panicky on me it's only going to make it worse. Can you take a deep breath for me?" Anne Marie breathed in but before she started to exhale Paula grabbed her hand and started pulling her along.

Behind them about thirty yards were four people that weren't people any more. They were shuffling and staggering down the alleyway. One tripped over her own feet and then struggled to get back up. All were moaning and growling as they made their way. They weren't moving very quickly but it didn't make them any less terrifying.

Dan ran ahead toward some dumpsters that were against the buildings and started moving them across the back of the alley. "Hurry up! Come help me!" Dan yelled to the women and they picked up their pace and went to a second dumpster. "It doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to block the alley enough to slow them down." Dan moved the third one into place and it blocked the alley adequately enough to make it difficult for the motor skilled-challenged to get by. "Okay, let's go."

Instead of running full bore down the alley, they walked quickly and discussed their next steps. "Okay, so my car is parked all the way down by Independence and 4th. We have no idea what is in between here and there but I do know it's probably anything but good. I think we need to get in a car sooner rather than later. Either of you know how to hot wire a car?" Dan asked. Both Anne Marie and Paula responded that they didn't. "Then watch and learn." There was a box truck parked about three buildings down from where they were. "Follow me up to that truck." Dan ran ahead with the women following him. "Run round the other side to see if the passenger door is unlocked." And while they did that he went to the driver's side door. It was locked. Dan turned and looked around the alley for anything that could smash the window. He saw three bricks piled against the wall fifty feet away.

As he was running back to the box truck, he could see a lone figure ambling its way down the street toward them. The women came back over saying that the door was locked. He hit the window with the brick and it gave way sprinkling glass everywhere. He hopped up on the step, reached in and unlocked the door and opened it as he jumped down. He told Paula and Anne Marie to get in the truck and be careful of the glass.

Dan worked quickly pulling on some wires under the dash while he worked a jack knife out of his pocket. He cut two wires, pulled off some of the covering and twisted them together. He grabbed two other wires, pulled off some of the plastic covering and hit them together a few times and the truck started. He climbed up to the driver's seat, shifted the truck into gear and they started moving to the end of the street toward what they now could see was a disemboweled man in scrubs. Intestines hung to his thighs and swung to and fro as he shuffled toward them. Blood covered its face and half its scalp was ripped away with pieces of it hanging off his head. Dan ran the thing down with no hesitation, no pomp, no circumstance, just its head hitting the hood of the truck with a big thwack spraying blood all over the windshield and hood before it went under the wheels. Dan turned on the windshield wipers as Anne Marie looked in the side view mirror, "It's trying to get up!" She yelled.

"What? Are you kidding?" Paula yelled back trying to look in the side view mirror to see for herself. She saw it getting to its knees very slowly. "Oh my God! What the hell is that? What's happening? How can he do that? How is he not dead?"

"I don't know what the fuck that was but it wasn't human. They seem to have been at one time but they aren't now." Dan responded.

He swung the truck left onto the street in front of them and drove as fast as he could. There were bodies in the street, some of which he had no choice but to drive over. Anne Marie was repeating, "Oh no, oh no," over and over again and would throw in an "Oh my gawd!," for good measure here and there.

"Anne Marie? Listen to me. You've got to calm down. I need you, honey. I need you here. Do you hear me?" Dan said with a raised and calm voice while he slalomed down A Street. "Help her Paula."

Paula grabbed Anne Marie's hand and held it tightly within her own. "We're okay, Anne Marie. We're good now. We're getting better. See? We're gonna be okay." She said in her soothing, motherly voice. "Shouldn't we cut over to Independence at some point before we hit Massachusetts Ave?" She turned and asked Dan. "There aren't many cars here but it might be a real cluster fuck once we get closer to Lincoln Park."

"You're right. I've just been continuing on since this seemed like the path of least resistance. Seems kind of strange that we're not seeing more people, soldiers, cars, those things." Dan said and emphasized the word things. "They must have gotten this part of the city pretty well cleared out or something."

"There goes 16th street. We need to turn on 15th or 14th to get across to Independence." Anne Marie pointed out.

"Feeling better?" Dan asked?

"Maybe." Anne Marie replied pursing her lips.

"Good enough for now. You're owed. We're all owed. My turn next, okay? Let's talk this out. Independence is a straight shot and that would be great if there's no problems but we can't count on that. My car is about ten blocks from here."

"Do we really need your car? We've got this truck. Can't we just take this out of the city?" Paula asked.

"Trust me. We're gonna want my car. I've got a couple rifles in the trunk and extra ammo."

"Why?" Both women said in unison looking at Dan and then Anne Marie asked, "Who are you?"

"Don't worry. I'm someone you want to know in a time like this. I was at the shooting range this weekend. I'm an army ranger, spent some time in Afghanistan. Totally normal stuff."

Three people came running out of a building as they passed. They were screaming for them to stop but Dan continued on.

"What are you doing? They need our help?" Anne Marie shouted.

"We can't stop. If we stop, we put ourselves at risk and we don't have the space. We only have so much time to get to my car and we don't know how much that time is."

Anne Marie was looking into the side view mirror watching events unfold behind them. "Never mind, one of them is down now and the other two…," she trailed off never finishing.

Dan turned onto 14th Street and stopped short. There was a car blocking most of the street. Just beyond the car was a large group of the gruesome beings meandering around the street in no particular direction. They turned toward the noise of the squealing tires and grinding brakes and started to move toward them.

Paula stared agog and Anne Marie was begging Dan to hurry while she told him that it looked clear behind them. Dan backed up and headed back down A Street and took Massachusetts Avenue when they reached it. They passed a few of the straggling roamers some of which were engaged in dining while others were looking for something to chew on. Paula saw that one was dressed in priestly vestments and had one arm missing. Other than that she thought he looked like he would have on any given Sunday; there wasn't a mark on him, just that vacant gaze peering out. Through Dan's broken window they could hear distant screaming and gun shots.

One car came screaming passed them from behind and headed the wrong way up East Capital Street and was out of sight. They turned onto 13th Street and continued toward Independence. They saw a man and woman running hand in hand down the street and they ducked in between buildings when they saw the truck coming. When they passed the couple the man was being attacked and devoured while the woman stood there screaming. She attempted to pull the beast off of the man but it turned its attention to her and she was next on the menu.

Along the way they drove past poor souls whom had been caught unawares doing what they normally did on a Thursday. Men in business suits ripped to shreds. Construction workers in hard hats, blood stained Carhartts and work boots, women with make up running down their faces and broken heels or torn nylons. They even encountered a small group of what looked like middle schoolers replete with backpacks that had probably been on a school field trip. What they all had in common were that they had all been irrevocably altered from the fabric of who they once were.

"Dan? Where are we going once we get your car?" Anne Marie asked.

"I was thinking that we could go to my house in Fairfax, Virginia. It's quiet there. I don't have a lot of neighbors. Maybe all this hasn't reached there or if it has, it's not as bad. Where do you girls live?"

"I live over the bridge in Arlington. I'm sure it's just as crazy. I've only been here for about a year. I moved down from Massachusetts for a guy. I broke up with him two weeks ago and he moved out last weekend. I don't have any friends here, pretty much everyone's back home. I had been thinking I would move back to Massachusetts."

"I live in Baltimore with my family. I guess now, I can probably say I used to live there. I need to get to Hartwood in Virginia. My parents are there," and then Paula added, "I hope my girls are, too."

"Anne Marie, you can stay with me as long as you want. Paula, we'll see what we can do about getting you to Hartwood but you're welcome to stay. Hartwood is only about an hour from my place. Well, on a good day it is but I think those may be behind us for a while." Dan said as they turned onto Independence Avenue which meant they had nine blocks to go to get to Dan's car. Several shots rang out behind them. One sounded like it went through the box of the truck. Paula and Anne Marie started screaming and Dan yelled for them to be quiet. Dan sped up and a shot a look to the driver's side view mirror. Looking quickly, he could see a man standing in the street with a rifle pointed in their direction. All Dan could do was put as much distance as possible between them.

They drove over several bodies in the road and the truck skidded a little bit on the last one from the gore sticking to the tires and they hit the back end of a car on the left side of the street. "Well, I guess one way or another that mirror would have been trashed." Dan quipped as his side view mirror broke off and was now just hanging and banging into the side of the truck. Two more shots were fired and a bullet hit one of the rear tires and the truck skidded and warbled back and forth across the road, hitting parked cars, standing, moving and prone bodies as it went. Dan slowed the truck down but did not stop and he was able to get the truck back under control.

"Can you see who's behind us?" Dan yelled.

"It looks like two kids with hoods over their heads with rifles." Anne Marie yelled back.

"Okay! We should be out of range soon enough. That last shot was probably just a lucky shot from that distance."

"I've never been fired at." Paula said.

"Welcome to Afghanistan, darlin'. You'll get used to it." Dan said with a smirk.

"How long were you there?" Anne Marie asked.

"I did three tours. Two back to back, came home for six months, the wife left so I went back."

"Kids?" Paula asked.

"Nope. Almost once but she miscarried. That's when she left and then I left."

"I'm sorry." Paula looked at him. "That happened to me about four months ago. It's a hard thing." Anne Marie put her hand over Paula's and they exchanged a glance.

"It is what it is and sometimes it's the best there is." Dan responded.

As they approached the intersection of North Carolina Avenue there was a large traffic jam that they were not likely to get through with any type of vehicle. Dan stopped the truck. "Well, ladies, looks like we're hoofin' it from here. Paula, where's your gun?"

"It's in the front pocket of my backpack."

"Okay, can you put it in the front pocket of your coat? Will it fit and stay in?"

Paula was wearing an oversized farmer's coat with big pockets sewn to the front. It was the perfect "mom" coat. It wasn't the most attractive looking thing but the pockets came in handy with four girls needing things. Sometimes she felt like more of a pack mule when she wore the coat with everything weighing her down. "It'll work."

"Okay, good. Don't pull it out unless you need to. I don't want anyone to know we have guns. What we know about these things is that they don't move too fast. A shot to the head and they stop. So spend your bullets wisely. Got it?"

"Yep. Got it. Oh! The soldier that brought me to the coffee shop said sound attracts them." Paula added.

"Okay, good. Let's move as fast as we can as quietly as we can. Once we get through this, we're only about four blocks down from my car. Stay with me and try not to get too close to buildings or cars if you can help it."

"I'm scared." Anne Marie said.

"I'm scared." Paula echoed.

"Ditto. We'll be fine. I've been through worse and I made it. We'll be fine." Dan lied but it didn't matter. "Afghanistan was a known entity compared to this." He thought. He had been scared there but this was like boogeyman scared.

They climbed out of the truck and started cautiously walking toward the tangled mess of assorted vehicles. There was a large cargo truck almost in the center that had been trying to turn left. Other vehicles penned it in. There were growling monsters in some of the vehicles reaching for them, reaching for some sort of release from the never ending hunger that was now the bane of their pitiful existence.

Some of the vehicles were empty or just looked that way. The trio started to pick their way through the tangled mess, watching each step, each other and errant hands reaching out from dark corners.

As Paula passed a Volvo station wagon with windows smeared with blood, a set of small hands banged against the glass and a small, snarling face appeared between the hands. Paula let out a gasp and started to silently cry but got a hold of herself. She had to focus on the task at hand. Dan turned and grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along. "You're doing great, kiddo. Just keep moving. You okay, Anne Marie?"

"I'm here. I'm doing." Anne Marie assured him but as soon as she said that she started screaming. Something had reached out and gripped her ankle. "Help me! Something's got me! Help!"

"Sshhhh! Quiet!" Dan whispered loudly putting his index finger to his mouth as he pushed around Paula to get her. "Paula, grab onto to her and keep her quiet." Paula held Anne Marie, putting a hand over her mouth with Anne Marie's eyes bulging out of her head while Dan stomped the lone hand wrapped around her ankle. Dried blood was crusted around the cuticles on the fingers that were gripping Anne Marie. Dan stomped three more times before the hand relaxed its hold and he pulled Anne Marie free.

Once they got on the other side of the big cargo truck, the pile up of vehicles was far less dense and they were free of the tangle in about thirty yards. Now they just had to watch out for the human and the no longer human.

In the middle of the street, they stopped and Dan knelt and examined Anne Marie's ankle. Thankfully, there were no marks or broken skin; she was okay and they continued on their way quickly and cautiously. They passed 7th Street leaving four more blocks for them to cover.

"We need to move as fast as we can. Anne Marie, are you going to be okay?" Dan asked.

"I got this." She replied.

"Gonna make it in those heels?"

"I got this." She replied determinedly.

They were moving at a fast trot through a largely residential area. Trash was strewn everywhere. They were approaching a woman with curlers in her hair, miraculously without one out of place, wearing a powder blue bathrobe open in the front exposing not only her underwear but one of her breasts hanging by a flap of skin. It looked like a chunk of flesh was missing from it. The remainder of her skin was marbled gray and her hazy eyes were fixed on Dan. Dan ran behind her and as she started to turn to face him. He pushed her and she fell to the ground face down. She was clearly not having a good day. They ran on as she struggled to get back up leaving her breast on the ground.

Along the way, they saw several more of these sick people. Luckily, they were able to outrun and out-maneuver them. So far, there hadn't been more than three bunched together and with them moving slowly, Dan, Paula and Anne Marie just had to run faster. Paula did come close to one and thought she'd try Dan's trick of trying to push it over. As she passed it, she pushed it in the chest and it felt kind of gushy. As it fell backward, Paula felt its hand scrape against her arm. It scared her enough that she decided not to try that again unless she absolutely had to.

"See the church up ahead on the left? When we get up there, turn right and my car is the first car on the right. Think we can make this last lap?" Dan asked.

"I can't wait to get these heels off. I need to get some sneakers or something." Anne Marie complained.

"But you make running in heels look like it could be an Olympic sport." Paula teased.

"Don't make me laugh." Anne Marie giggled anyway.

Dan reached into his front pocket and pulled out his car keys and started clicking on the key fob. Anne Marie was first around the corner and stood leaning on the car to take her shoes off.

"Hello." A male voice came from behind Anne Marie and she jumped. Dan and Paula turned the corner to see a soldier standing behind Anne Marie. His M16 was lying against his chest and he had a gun in his hand. "Hi. You guys with her?" He asked motioning with the gun..

"Yes." Dan answered and continued to walk toward the car slowly with Paula coming behind him.

"Great! M-m-mind if I hook up with you guys? I got separated from m-m-my unit." The soldier said. He was sweating but it couldn't have been warmer than fifty degrees and it was overcast. "It's really kind of nuts out here. You seen what's happening?"

"The weird people?" Paula asked.

"Yeah." He paused looked down and smiled. "Yeah, the weird people. They're weird alright. They ain't p-people anymore! Don't you know?" He looked up. He looked past Paula and Dan, raised his gun and fired. There was a shallow thud as a body fell to the ground. Paula and Dan turned to see it just as its head hit the pavement. "There goes one!" The soldier said and uttered a shallow laugh. "We gotta get out of here. Let's break the window and hot wire this car."

"No need." Dan said. "This is my car." He turned to Paula and whispered. "Sit behind him." They got into the car with Dan driving, Anne Marie behind him and Paula behind the soldier. "You got a name?" Dan asked and started the car.

"Hopkins, sir, reporting for duty!" He sarcastically saluted. "My name is Greg Hopkins." He rested his gun on his leg and shook Dan's hand. Hopkins' hand was so sweaty it was slick and gross to the touch.

"I'm Dan. That's Paula behind you and Anne Marie next to her." There was a round of niceties about meeting each other. Paula and Anne Marie exchanged funny looks with each other.

"Boy, am I glad I came across you guys. A lot of those du-d-dead heads are out there and there's more by the minute. Where ya all headed?" Hopkins asked.

"Dead heads? Why'd you call them dead heads?" Dan asked steering Hopkins away from getting an answer to his question.

"They're dead people. People die and they come back as these eaters. They eat people. You haven't seen that? I've seen it t-too much. Too much, I'll tell you. T-t-t-t-oo much." Hopkins said as they looked out the window.

"Why aren't you with your unit?" Dan prodded.

The response came after a long pause as Hopkins looked out the window. The car wended its way through streets that were strewn with debris and the dead and the dead eating the nearly and already dead. Hopkins croaked, "I don't know. It all fell apart." There was silence in the car as Dan and Paula waited for Hopkins to continue. Anne Marie had fallen asleep. Her head was bobbing, her neck tilted forward and swaying with the movement of the car as her chin rested on her chest. "I ran." He said. "Our lieutenant ordered us to kill everyone on the truck. There was no place to bring them. So that's what we did." He started sobbing and trying to talk but what he was saying could not be deciphered. The blubbering slowed and he took a deep breath, hawked up some phlegm, spit it out the window and resumed. "I had to climb up into that truck and put a bullet into each head to make sure there was no coming back. We had evacuated a daycare. It was all little kids and a couple of their teachers." Paula reached over and put her hand on his shoulder and he shrugged it off. "Don't touch me!" He yelled and Anne Marie was awake with a start. "You think that's gonna make it better? Nothing is ever gonna make it better again!"

"Calm down. Greg, you've got to calm down." Dan said soothingly.

Hopkins' hand gun had been resting on his leg until he jerked up and pointed it at Dan. "Don't tell me to calm down." Hopkins said through heavy breaths. "I've been calm through this whole thing." He said quietly. He put the gun back down on his leg and stared straight ahead and silence returned to the car. "At this point, I want to put everyone in a box and kick it over the Hoover Dam." He paused and looked at Dan. "Do you think that's still working?" He laughed and Dan laughed to humor him.

A woman was running down the street toward them waving her arms. Dan was slowing the car to avoid hitting her. "We can help her. There's room in the back, right?" Paula asked.

Up came the gun again. "Don't you stop for her. She's dead. She's as good as dead and she's probably already infected which is as good as dead." Dan picked up speed and swerved around her. Paula made eye contact with the woman as they passed her connecting with her desperation. The woman on the street could actually be safer than they were right now. She swiveled and looked at her through the back window to see the woman fall on her knees in the street in despair. Paula glanced at Anne Marie and saw one tear rolling down her face.

"Hopkins. Hopkins, what do you think?" Dan tried to draw Hopkins into feeling useful and out of controlling the situation. "Where do you think we can cross the Potomac? Any intel on that?" Dan said and looked at Hopkins.

"Well, they, ah…um, they…" He trailed off sounding like he might be intellectually vacant after his emotional breakdown. Hopkins took several deep audible breaths, wiped the sweat from his brow using his sleeve and then resumed breathing quietly. "They made several bridges one way across the river out of DC but they kept the Arlington Memorial Bridge closed to inbound DC traffic. They were evacuating all the big wigs over that bridge into Virginia but stopped using it at some point and just kept it closed and clear. We should try to go for that."

An hour later, they were over the bridge and moving through Arlington in Virginia. The sky had started to darken and Hopkins and Anne Marie had fallen asleep. Hopkins was snoring, loudly at times. Anne Marie was silent. Dan was doing his best to navigate around the obstacles like trash, crashes, random cars and former humans. They saw more of those, former humans, once they got over the bridge.

Paula scooted over on the back seat so that she could talk quietly with Dan. They discussed their thoughts on why there were so many on this side of the bridge. "I wonder if the rest of the world is as full of shufflers as it is around here?" Dan posed.

"Shufflers? Did you just call them shufflers?" Paula let out a dry laugh. "Yeah, I guess that's what they are but that sounds so benign considering all they seem to want to do is rip living flesh from living bone. It's getting darker. We need to make some kind of plan. Should we keep driving through the night?"

"Good question. I could go a while longer but we don't know what we're going to come up against in the dark and we should try to get as much sleep as possible. With things as they are, there's no telling how long it'll take to get to my house."

They were moving through a neighborhood that looked deserted with only one shuffling inhuman in sight. There was a crash blocking most of the street. Dan slowed the car and forced the tires up onto the sidewalk. A sleeping Hopkins started screaming and jerked awake gripping his handgun and looking wildly around the car. He settled the muzzle against the side of Dan's head. "You fucking low life piece of shit. You should've disobeyed those orders. Make me kill those kids. This next bullet is for you –

"Paula, go." Dan said.

"-just like all those ki-"

And that was it. Paula pulled her 9mm Glock out of the large pocket of her Farmer's coat that was great for holding lots of things when you have kids and fired the gun into Hopkins' head. A hole opened just above his ear and the impact yanked his head toward the windshield like it was on a string spraying gray matter and bone and blood over the cracks surrounding the exit hole of the bullet in the shatter resistant glass.

TWO

The art for this book is done by Amanda Wood. She takes my pretty much stick figure abominations, sometimes a few words, vague ideas and passages from my writing and then turns them into something amazing.

Take a look at this idea I had for the initial cover. Seriously, who draws zombies with a sad face like that? I think I did alright with the rest of body but I just can't draw faces and I figured that we never see happy-faced zombies.

I gave Amanda the passage where Dan drives over the zombie in the road and she gave me the picture you see next which was the first cover. After seeing it in print, we both decided it didn't have enough punch and Amanda started over. I added in the intestines that you see in the final version.

Acknowledgements

My big fear with this section is forgetting someone. I'm going to start with Amanda Wood. I gave her a nervous breakdown with this chapter while she was trying to create the artwork. Thankfully, we worked through it and she created a beautiful Anne Marie and zombie man. After a long vacation in Maine, Amanda discovered that drawing zombies is a lot of fun. Thanks dude!

Most of the writing of this chapter took place in an old haunted house in Vermont while filming a movie about a haunting. Lisa Zierenburg read the chapter over and over again and helped Paula kill Hopkins. Thanks dude!

Jeff Kingsbury, Joe Keen and youtube helped with gun stuff. I know what I know from watching movies and television just like Paula. The Massachusetts reference is a nod to Joe. Jeff helped me with the soldier weaponry stuff. Thanks dudes!

Many thanks are owed to google and youtube. Google was an excellent mapping source for Washington, D.C. and Virginia. It was a lot of fun mapping Paula, Anne Marie and Dan's escape looking at the actual surroundings. Youtube taught me how to hotwire a car. Look out! You just might see me skulking through your driveway some night.

Paula finally makes it out of Washington, D.C. The old world is still unraveling and it's a challenge to make sense of it all. What's normal now? Paula is in a race to find her girls. She can't do it alone but who's along to help?

A fan-fiction story that was inspired by, parodies and takes place in The Walking Dead Universe.

"We can stay here for a while and ride this thing out. I've got some supplies that'll last us a couple weeks, maybe a month." Dan said as they pulled into his driveway and up to his house. "Let me just tell you that was normally about an hour long commute for me."

"See? That's the problem. You still think there's such a thing as normal." Came Lizzie's sardonic response.

"You know, Dan, it doesn't smell so bad here." Anne Marie commented from the backseat. "That death smell has been so thick everywhere it's nice to get some kind of a break. Maybe it's all the trees soaking the stink up."

"Or maybe it's cuz we're down this long dirt road, a long driveway and the closest house is like a mile away." Kenya said sarcastically. "Whatever the reason is I'm just glad. That stank is a bit much and I need a break from it." She paused and scratched her head. "And I need to get this weave out yesterday! With all the crap flying around, I don't want to get blood, guts and brains hanging in my hair."

They first encountered Kenya three days ago at a small women's sportswear store on the outskirts of Arlington. Lizzie and Anne Marie had been dressed for a day at the office when everything went to pot. Anne Marie had to ditch her high heels before she broke an ankle running for her life.

The store was part of a strip mall with three other stores, convenience, cell phone, pizza shop and the sporting goods store. The front windows of the cell phone store were broken and papers were strewn about and blowing everywhere. There were several stumbling stiffs slowly meandering aimlessly around the front of the building when they pulled up.

"You gonna be okay?" Dan asked as he looked across the front seat at Lizzie. She had been silent since shooting Hopkins. If she had hesitated Dan would likely have been killed instead. It didn't make her feel any better given that there didn't seem like there was another way out of it, the same way it felt with Gil. It was her or them and it wasn't going to be her. What started the water works for her was when her cell phone rang and she saw that it was the girls. It rang twice then stopped and she hadn't been able to get a call through since that point. "Do you think you can handle this, get past those shufflers and into that store?"

"Yeah." She responded with a voice rumbling like gravel in her throat. "I refilled the clip and I'm ready."

"Anne Marie, you've still got Hopkins' gun, right?" Anne Marie nodded in the affirmative and Dan continued, "Great. Stay behind me or Lizzie. Unless you have a clear shot just try to push them away. Got it? Ready?" Dan parked the car facing away from the storefronts in the parking lot. "Listen, if it comes to it, there's a spare key under the front driver's side fender. But what can go wrong?" He asked and chuckled.

"Right." Lizzie responded flatly smirking at him. Lizzie often felt ill at ease and intimidated around handsome men but those were the old days. She didn't have time for that now. Dan was just a man she was surviving with.

Before they even got out of the car, the cannibal animals were advancing toward them. They moved quickly to the door of the sportswear store. Dan pulled the handle and the door was locked. He broke the window with butt of his gun, reached in, unlocked the door and opened it. With Lizzie and Anne Marie right behind him, he edged his way into the store and saw that it appeared to be empty. "Come on and close that door behind you." They moved into the store closing the door behind them as hands beat against the remaining glass. One dead beast had caught its hand on a jagged piece in the gaping hole of broken glass and struggled to free itself. Dan moved a clothing rack in front of the door. The smell of death wafted into the store with growls and moans riding on it.

Lizzie and Anne Marie set about the store looking for suitable clothing to change into. Dan asked them what their shoe sizes were and went back into the storeroom to find pairs of hiking boots that might fit them. He was sorting through boxes and shelves looking for hiking boots and anything that could be of use when he heard something fall in the office behind him and what sounded like a gasp following it. Dan looked up and approached the door cautiously with his gun drawn. Turning the doorknob and slowly inching in, at first glance there seemed to be no one in there until he noticed a sneaker peaking out behind a file cabinet. "Do you want to come out?" The sneaker twitched. "I'm harmless, if you're harmless." Dan said.

A hand emerged along the side of the cabinet followed by a teenage girl's head with a terrified look of apprehension. She had tears rolling down her face as she looked at Dan wide eyed. "It okay, darlin'." Dan said soothingly. "Can you show me your other hand just to put me at ease and come on out of there?"

"Are you going to shoot me?" She asked haltingly. "You said you're harmless if I'm harmless but you're pointing your gun at me and I'm harmless." She added moving out from behind the filing cabinet with her hands in the air.

"No, no." Dan said softly. He lowered his gun to his side despite being ready to use it if needed. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize. With everything going on, I'm not too relaxed. My name is Dan."

"I'm Kenya. I work here."

"I hope you're getting hazard pay right now." Dan said with a smile. Kenya laughed and walked to the middle of the small office. "Think you could help me find some boots for my two friends? They're out front finding some more appropriate clothes." She nodded and they went to the racks and found the sizes that Lizzie and Anne Marie needed.

They brought a bunch of boxes out to the front of the store and dropped them down in front of a bench. Lizzie and Anne Marie were decked out in nearly identical outfits of jeans, button down shirts and jackets. Both were packing larger backpacks with additional outfits. "Did you see underwear around here anywhere?" Anne Marie called out.

Kenya's eyes were transfixed on the disfigured faces looking in at them through the broken glass of the store's front door. There was even the severed hand of a ghoul hanging by a tendon caught in the crevice between two sharp shards of glass. "Um, if you look over in the back left corner you will find some." Kenya responded while putting the boot boxes down by some benches.

"Ladies, meet Kenya. She's been stuck here for the last week and living off of the vending machines in the back." Dan said as he came out behind her with more boxes.

"I never thought I'd say it in a million years but I'm sick of candy and soda!" Kenya announced smiling.

"We may all be sick of it before this is all over." Anne Marie responded.

Lizzie and Anne Marie each found a pair of boots that fit and Kenya packed a bag. They exchanged what passed as pleasantries in this burgeoning new world like, what were you doing when it really hit, have you seen any of them up close? The elephant in the room was avoiding far worse questions like when was your last phone call or text, what's the worst thing you've had to do and the question no one wanted to think about, where is your family and are they still alive?

"I'm ready if everyone else is." Lizzie said as she walked over toward the door and covered her nose. Her closer proximity excited the small group of cannibal animals. Dinner was close. The stench of death was weighing heavier on the air as days slipped away into history in this scary new world. Despite the smell becoming the norm there were instances, like this one, when the stench was a sharp, so heavy that the air was unbreathable. There is nothing to do but recoil, gag and walk away. "They're grouped around the door. Is there a back way out of here so we can get back to the car?"

"Yeah," replied Kenya, "there's a door right out of the stockroom. We go out there and right around the building."

"We need to be careful opening that backdoor. With no windows back there, we don't know what's waiting for us. Kenya, what's it look like back there?"

"The dumpster is back there and that's where everyone that works here parks."

"Doesn't sound so bad." Anne Marie said looking from Dan to Lizzie. "Do you have any kind of weapon, Kenya? A gun, knife, something?"

"Like I told you guys, I've been here since last Friday when I rode my bike here from," she paused and looked down, "away from my mother."

"Alright, let's look around for something for you." Dan said while passing by her rubbing her arm. "Does this store sell knives or any kind of weapons?"

"No, really just clothing and footwear and a few small gadgets." Kenya replied.

Dan found a toolbox and took a hammer from and gave it to Kenya telling her not engage with them unless she absolutely had to and then either knock them down or hit them as hard as she could in the head.

"Try to stay between us as we run to the car. Don't be afraid. Just be fast." Lizzie said to Kenya.

Dan cracked open the door as slowly and quietly as he possibly could peering out and listening for any sign of what he called shufflers. He saw nothing and heard little so he gingerly widened the mouth of the door and stepped out with Anne Marie following him, then Kenya and Lizzie ending the line. She held onto the door and closed it as silently as possible. They began quickly picking their way to the end of the building.

Out of the silence came a screaming voice, "Hey! Wait up!" They turned to see who was calling after them with Lizzie putting a finger up to her mouth to signal to this young woman to quiet down. "Kenya? Is that you? Wait for me!" She continued yelling. As she ran by the dumpster, a hand reached out from beneath it and the young woman tripped and fell. She began screaming as she attempted to crawl away and regain her feet but the thing held onto her foot t rying to get it into its mouth.

"Amy!" Kenya yelled and ran back to her and grabbed her arms and started to pull. Amy kicked to try to loosen the grip on her foot. Lizzie ran up to them and stabbed the thing through its temple and it ceased movement. It, because that's all it was now, was so mangled and damaged there was no discerning its former identity. Kenya helped Amy up and they ran to catch up with Anne Marie and Dan waiting for them at the corner of the building.

"There are four of them coming up the side right now. We just have to keep our distance from them. We move faster than them. It's just a game of tag and we don't want to be it." Dan smiled, "We can do this!" and he then ran around the corner with the four women following him.

They turned the last corner and stopped short. The good news was that the car was only fifty feet away from them. The bad news was that there were at least fifteen former living creatures shambling between them and the car and the four cannibal animals they just ran past were now turned round pursuing them in their slow, staggering gait.

"Looks like if we run wide around the front of the car we can get in on the far side. Don't you think?" Anne Marie posed.

"Good idea. Let's try it. Ready?" Lizzie asked looking at everyone. "Let's go!" They all took off running in a wide arc around the car. Dan saw a clear path and ran straight for the driver's side door and was able to get into the car and get it started. Lizzie was next, having made it through the gauntlet and into the front passenger seat.

Lizzie saw that a few of the bloody beasts were closing in on the car. She got up leaning over the seat to open the back door. Kenya came in like a bullet bouncing off of the opposite passenger door to break her flying trajectory. Anne Marie was almost to the car and close behind her was Amy.

Just as Anne Marie was getting into the car, one of those inhuman beasts grabbed Amy with both hands from behind planting its jaw on her and biting a chunk out of her right shoulder. She reached out and grabbed Anne Marie's arm pulling her back out of the car. Anne Marie began frantically screaming in a high pitched wail for help.

The bloody flesh from Amy's shoulder draped over her chest flopping and useless as she screamed and tried to pull away from the monster while still holding onto Anne Marie like hand was a vice grip with the one working arm that she had left. Anne Marie was doing her best to untangle herself from Amy's grasp. Kenya sat frozen by the event unfolding in front of her glued into place in the backseat. Dan was screaming to Anne Marie to get in the car. Lizzie looked down at her feet and then grabbed her gun from the pocket of her big barn coat, rolled down the window and shot the beast in the head sending skull fragments and brain in every direction as the thing slumped to the ground on its side. Amy screamed and went down with it. Anne Marie shook free and dove into the car. Amy sat up grabbing her bitten shoulder. Lizzie took aim again and then she shot Amy squarely through her nose as she looked Lizzie in the face. Amy's head went crashing backwards to the pavement.

THREE

Anne Marie slammed the door closed as she flew into the car. Dan peeled out of the parking lot and onto the road leaving a gap of space being filled in with remnants of what once was humanity.

"She wasn't one of us." Lizzie said staring blankly ahead at the road. "She was never going to be one of us."

"What are you talking about?" Kenya yelled. "We could have saved her. I knew her. I knew her!"

Anne Marie screeched through her spilling tears, "This is what it is now. That girl was never coming back from that bite."

"You didn't have to shoot her, Lizzie! You could have let her be. You didn't have to shoot her like that." Kenya said through sobs.

Lizzie turned in the seat to face Kenya sitting behind her. "I did her a mercy." She said sternly while a tear from each eye tracked down her face rolling over her porcelain cheeks to her jaw line. "She couldn't come with us and those things would have just ripped her apart while she was still living. And then," Lizzie paused, "and then if there was anything left when they were through eating her, she would get up and do the same to someone else that was unlucky enough to cross paths with her." She paused once more and then emphasized each word saying, "I did her a mercy." Lizzie continued to look Kenya directly in the face for a moment looking for understanding, hoping for forgiveness, praying for absolution before turning back around to stare out the windshield.

There was only the noise of the engine turning and the tires eating up the road while the four passengers rode in stony silence.

"I know." Kenya issued in a barely audible voice and then much louder, "I know. I'm sorry. This is all so crazy." She leaned over and put her head on Anne Marie's shoulder as Anne Marie put an arm around her and they wept quietly. "I have been in that store since Friday. When I got home the day before my mother was already like that and I got on my bike and went to the only place I had to go to. I saw those things walking around, some coming after me or trying to, eating people but I didn't know what happened to the people they were eating. I don't even know how my mother ended up like that."

Anne Marie was stroking her hair while she asked, "Didn't you see anything on the news about this, hear anything on the radio?

"I started getting news alerts about it online." Dan said lifting his eyes to the review mirror looking at Anne Marie and Kenya in the back seat.

"The commuter rail was abuzz with it on Wednesday and Thursday." Lizzie added.

"Guys, I'm just a kid. I don't watch the news. I went to school and then straight to work almost every day at the store and when I got home, I would do homework. I gossip with my friends about who's hookin' up mostly because my friends are too stupid to talk about anything else and I was too busy to get involved in anything but work and school. It was just me and my mom and I needed to help out with the bills." Lizzie turned around and smiled at her consolingly.

"I've got to throw some stuff together and get moving. I've gotta find my girls." Lizzie said to them all as they followed Dan into the house.

"I know. I know you do but you need to rest." Dan said as he put his bags down on the living room floor. "We've been traveling for three days with little sleep and scavenged junk food and warm soda. If you don't get some real sleep you won't stand a chance." Lizzie stared hard at him knowing he was right and not wanting to know that he was.

"He's right." Anne Marie said.

"I know he's right!" Lizzie screamed. "Those are my girls and they are out there alone in this madness!" She fell to the floor on her knees weeping heavily. "I know he's right, but those are my girls." She managed to get out. Anne Marie knelt down beside her and hugged her; Kenya sat on the sofa and reached across to put her hand on her shoulder. Dan stood staring at them in awkward silence understanding what she felt but knowing that leaving right away was not the right move.

"Look, we're all over tired, filthy and hungry. Let's get cleaned up. I'm going out to the barn to start my generator so you'll have some hot water and then I'll look around in the kitchen to see what we can make up for some kind of decent meal." Lizzie stood and touched his hand and walked into the kitchen with Anne Marie and Kenya in tow.

Lizzie didn't want to wait for the water to heat up. She stood in a cold water shower running over her goose-pimpled skin hoping it would numb the fear and heart ache that she felt deep to her core. She put her face into the cold spray and willed it to numb her, to wake her, to make all of this go away. She stepped back out of the spraying water and nothing had changed. There was no respite and there wouldn't be until she had her girls with her and knew that they were safe. That's the best it would ever be again. She got out, got dressed and tried to compose herself into looking human again after watching her filth, broken dreams and the loss of her first world complacency wash down a drain and into the unknown.

Lizzie looked through Dan's refrigerator but everything had gone bad with the electricity having gone out days ago leaving a putrid smell of rotting food. That's what the world was now; varying degrees of the worst smells ever imagined or feared. While she showered, Dan had gotten his generator working so she was able to cook with the electric stove. She put some soda cans in the freezer to try and chill them even just a little bit for the dinner she was making.

Kenya popped into the kitchen with a pair of scissors. "Do you think you can cut this weave out for me? I'm grossed out thinking about getting blood and guts stuck in my hair."

"Sure." Lizzie pulled a chair away from the table. "Have a seat." Kenya handed her the scissors and sat down.

Kenya reached up to the top of her head and felt around. "You ever do this before?"

Lizzie shook her head no while emitting a guttural, "Nuh-uh."

"Okay. See where my finger is right here? There's a thread. Find that and just cut and loop it out. See it?"

"Yep. Let me know if I hurt you." Lizzie warned and began cutting. Kenya would point to different locations to guide Lizzie's work.

"You know, it figures. I just got this weave last week and this was the good hair. I was looking forward to looking on point for a while." Kenya said disgruntled. "I knew I shouldnta spent that money. My mom," she stopped and took a breath and sniffled, "my mom talked me into it. She split it with me. We should have put the money toward the electric bill. We could have gotten ahead. Oops!"

"Did I get you?" Lizzie asked swinging her face around to Kenya's.

"Nah, just pulled a little. Don't worry. My mom wanted me to get it since I got straight A's last term. She always does stuff like that for me. I think she would have even if I didn't get all A's."

Lizzie put the sections of hair on the table as she freed Kenya's head from them and exposed the frayed braids underneath. Once the entire weave was out, Lizzie ran her hands over Kenya's head pulling on threads and smoothing out the hair. "Okay. All set!" Lizzie said with a smile.

Kenya got up and hugged Lizzie to thank her and then grabbed up the hair and threw it in the trash barrel. "I hope Dan has an electric shaver I can use. I think I might want to cut my hair off." She said as she walked out of the kitchen.

The other two girls cycled through the shower with Dan finishing up last. By the time they were all dressed, Lizzie had prepared a small feast of spaghetti with a choice of a tomato sauce with canned meat or garlic in an olive oil sauce with canned shrimp. They all sat and filled their bellies like it was a Thanksgiving meal and it was a sort of thanksgiving for just making it this far and it not eating some meal scratched together from a looted vending machine.

"So, Kenya, what's with the knit cap?" Dan said smiling.

"My head is cold. I shaved off my hair and took it really low." Kenya responded repositioning the black and gray striped winter hat that framed her pretty face. "I'm sorry, Anne Marie, but seeing that bloody piece of something hanging from the back of your hair after we stopped at that gas station just so absolutely grossed me out that I couldn't wait to get that weave out and my hair off."

"I know! That was disgusting. Who would think a head could explode like that?" Anne Marie said cringing and laughing at the same time.

"Yeah! Next time, maybe call 'Heads!' first, Dan." Lizzie added and they all busted out in laughter.

"I would have if it wasn't all so fast." Dan threw back looking down at his plate giggling.

They laughed, ate and talked more about the cannibal animals that they'd managed to best in the three days on the road. Dan told them that they were really handling themselves pretty good considering that they were just civilians a week ago. He told them that he could have used them on his tours in Afghanistan.

"We can leave Anne Marie and Kenya here while you and I go out to get your girls. We could be back within a week if getting here from DC is any indication." Dan said.

"I don't want to be here by myself." Anne Marie shot back with a panicky voice.

"I'll be here with you." Kenya retorted. "We'll be okay. There's nothing around here and we'll be safe. Besides after a few days on the road with you guys, I've got some skills."

"I like your cocky optimism but I don't want to put any of my newfound skills to use with just the two of us here." Anne Marie responded. "With more and more of these things wandering around we could be overrun with just the two of us."

"You guys will be fine. Truth is, I'd rather we all go but I don't want to put you two at risk when it's not necessary." Lizzie paused and looked at Anne Marie and continued, "I think you could use a rest. Some of the crap we've seen and done was a bit much. I'd be staying here if I didn't have to go."

"It's settled. I'm going to go see about a few things and then I'm off to bed. Great meal and I hate to eat and run but I just want to sleep for the next ten years or so." Dan stood his tall frame up, grabbed his dishes and said over his shoulder, "Good night ladies. Rest up and we'll talk in the morning." He rubbed Kenya's head on the way out of the dining room setting her hat askew.

Lizzie started gathering the plates and scraping off the meal's residue from Anne Marie's and then Kenya's plate onto her own. There wasn't much left since this was the first real meal any of them had eaten in over a week. Anne Marie made it clear to Lizzie that she was not to clean up and after some resistance Lizzie folded and went into the den and curled up with a blanket on Dan's weathered and broken in leather couch. She sunk into the soft cushions and was asleep soon after closing her eyes.

Lizzie woke to hearing what sounded like Dan scream from somewhere outside. She jumped off the couch and ran into the hall where she was met by Anne Marie. From where they stood, they could see that both of the front and back doors were closed.

"I think it came from out back of the house." Anne Marie said. They crept toward the backdoor and Anne Marie peaked out the window pushing the curtain aside as little as possible. The rising sun's light stunned Anne Marie's sleepy eyes making her squint a little. "There's another car out there. I didn't hear it pull up."

"Don't move. I'll get my gun and we'll go look." Lizzie went into the living room and sifted through their bags looking for her coat to grab her gun. She returned to the kitchen to see that Anne Marie was gone and the back door was open.

Lizzie pulled back the top of the gun to make sure that there was a bullet in the chamber in case she needed it. She walked through the back door and out into the back yard and headed to the open door of the barn. She did her best to move as quickly and as quietly as she could. As she approached she could hear Anne Marie calling Dan's name and she heard a low, gruff male voice telling Anne Marie to get up and away from the guy on the ground. He yelled at her to take her clothes off right now. Anne Marie began screaming, "No!" repeatedly and then sobbing after Lizzie thought she heard Anne Marie being hit. Lizzie moved to the side of the barn just outside of the door hoping she was out of sight. She listened intently to determine where they might be in the barn before she ventured inside.

"Come on! Get up and get those clothes off before I rip them off. Don't make me hurt you more than I have to. You know what? Stay down there. No need wasting your energy when you're just gonna end up back down there." Said the gruff voice again with what sounded like the unbuckling of a belt. "I've got a better idea." He said and it was answered by the high-voiced cackling of another man and Anne Marie crying as she absorbed a punch.

I t sounded to Lizzie like they were on the left side of the barn. Lizzie took a deep breath and steeled herself into action. She stepped around the threshold of the barn to the interior and pointed the gun in front of her. Beyond her aim she saw two men with their backs to her, one short, stocky with blond hair in a short pony tail and the other just a bit taller and scrawny. Both wore heavy black leather jackets and really filthy jeans. Anne Marie was on the floor in front of them curled up on her side. The neck of her t-shirt had been ripped away exposing her bra and bare skin. She had a bloody face and was crying uncontrollably begging them to stop. The lanky man walked around her and kicked her in the back. The stocky man bent over and grabbed Anne Marie's arm trying to get her onto her back.

"Take your hands off of her and move over toward the wall, now! Both of you!" Lizzie yelled at them.

"Looks like our lucky day here, Chucky boy." The stocky one said with a leer. "There's a broad for each of us and one to spare." As he finished a shot rang out coming from behind Lizzie. The scrawny guy grabbed his shoulder and stumbled backwards, losing his balance. He fell hard on his butt screaming that he'd been shot. Lizzie saw Kenya out of the corner of her right eye stepping up to stand beside her with a gun hanging by her side.

"Anne Marie, stay on the floor!" Lizzie said.

"What the fuck?" The stocky man was yelling when Lizzie shot him in the upper chest and he fell to the barn's wooden floor on top of Anne Marie who skittered away from him instantly. The lanky man got up, regained his feet and started to run at Kenya. Lizzie shot him at point blank in the chest before he reached Kenya. He crumpled over falling onto Lizzie and she stepped back to let him drop to the floor landing on his knees with his face planted on the wooden planks, no longer moving, no longer breathing, just a gurgling sound coming from somewhere beneath his face.

Anne Marie had backed into a corner and Kenya ran over to her and began talking softly to her trying to help her to stand.

Lizzie walked to the stocky man lying on his back. He was looking up at her grabbing his chest with his left hand as blood oozed out around his fingers darkening his dirty shirt into an indelible stain. With his right hand he reached up feebly clawing at Lizzie. Slowly she knelt beside him batting way his groping hand with her left hand as she put the muzzle of the Glock in her other hand against his temple. He increased his efforts to stop her but was too weak to do much other than to turn his head away. She pulled the trigger and he was gone. Just before the blood poured out of the hole the bullet made in the back of his head, she saw the pearly white of his skull. The sight of the bone pulled the contents of Lizzie's stomach out of its digestive pouch. As she vomited her mind started singing an old Crystal Gayle song changing the words to, "Don't it make my blond hair red," instead of brown eyes blue.

FOUR * FIVE

From a kneeling position, she sat down resting her behind on her feet, crossed at the ankles. She sat for a moment and then she turned to look at Anne Marie and Kenya. She crawled over to them. "Are you okay?" She asked stroking Anne Marie's hair away from her face.

"They stabbed me." Anne Marie moved her hand from her side to show them the spot of blood around a ripped open hole in the shirt. Lizzie pulled up her shirt and wiped away the blood.

"Thank God!" Lizzie loudly sighed in relief. "It's not too bad at all, not very deep. We can patch this up, no problem. Kenya, you showed up just in time. You okay?"

"Yeah, I never fired a gun before. I never wanted to fire one."

"Hey!" Dan called softly from a few feet away and the women went and kneeled by his side. He was dead by the time they got to him. He had been stabbed several times in the stomach and chest. The front off his shirt was torn and saturated with his blood. A puddle had begun pooling beneath him.

"Dan?" Kenya called and shook him but there was no response.

"I think he's gone." Lizzie said looking at his now relaxed and handsome features. The whole time they were with him, Lizzie never once saw him get anxious or scared. He was always calm, handling it all very matter-of-factly.

"Oh no!" Anne Marie cried and bent over him. "Dan!" Her body shook with grief.

"We've got to take care of him and that other guy, too." Lizzie said.

"I'll see if I can find some kind of blade. That knife has to be around here somewhere." Kenya said and got up and started looking around.

"Anne Marie, come on. We have to get out of here. We need to get back inside the house before it's too late." Lizzie cooed to her and helped her to her feet. "I'm sure there's something crawling its way to us outside right now with all the noise we've made."

Kenya came back over to them holding an chisel and a hammer. "I couldn't find the knife they had but this should work."

"Take her inside. I take care of them." Lizzie took the tools and shifting Anne Marie to Kenya. With Anne Marie leaning on Kenya, they wobbled out of the barn to the house.

L izzie went to the scrawny man and stood over him. She pushed him over with her foot so that he fell onto his side. A string of congealed blood connected his mouth to the puddle pooled onto the floor. She knelt beside him and placed the chisel against his temple, raised the hammer and brought it down feeling the tool meet little resistance. "Big surprise," she thought, "not much in there." Then she went to Dan.

She walked into the house. Anne Marie sat at the table with her head in her hands sobbing hysterically and talking inaudibly. Lizzie sat down beside her and hugged her and they cried together. When the tears slowed, Lizzie sat back holding onto Anne Marie's hands and said, "We need to get out of here. I have to start looking for my girls and I was hoping there'd be more time to plan but we can't do it here. I don't want to risk being overrun by the dead or by the living looking for us." Kenya came into the kitchen and told them that she was packed and ready to go. "Great! I'm going to dress Anne Marie's wound. While I'm doing that, Kenya can you pack up a bag with food in it and make sure you grab a can opener and some utensils. See if you can find a good knife for each of us."

Kenya set about getting the task done. Lizzie stood up and pulled Anne Marie to her feet and brought her into the bathroom. Lizzie sat the woman on the toilet and set about cleaning and bandaging the knife wound on Anne Marie's side. Once Lizzie finished she brought Anne Marie to the room she had slept in and told her to change into some fresh clothes. Lizzie went back to the living room, dug out a change of clothes for herself, changed and headed to the bathroom to wash up. On the way, she decided to check in on Anne Marie. Peaking in, Lizzie saw her just sitting on the bed with her hands resting at her side.

Anne Marie looked up at her and said, "I can't do it. I'm not going. It's too much. I don't want to be raped or have my body ripped apart while I'm still breathing or some other heinous thing. I don't want any of this. What kind of life is this now? What is the best I can hope for? I think I just got that, you and Kenya coming in the nick of time." As Lizzie crossed the room to go to her, Anne Marie lifted Dan's big Glock to her temple and pulled the trigger. Her body slumped on the bed with Anne Marie's hand gripping the gun's handle as a cadaveric spasm set in.

They had been on the road most of the day in Dan's Camry headed toward Lizzie's mother's house. Kenya said that since her mother was all she had there was nowhere else she needed or wanted to go so she might as well go wherever Lizzie went. Lizzie had told her girls to stay off of I-95 South since it would likely get gridlocked but to use the secondary routes instead. They both decided it might be best to check Lizzie's mother's house first and then work their way north from there if the girls hadn't arrived. Since she'd told them that their grandmother's house was right off route 17, they were going to concentrate on that area. Lizzie was trying to stay optimistic. There was always a chance that they could have made it before everything went to complete shit.

Throughout the day, Lizzie had tried calling the cell phones and her mother's land line but her phone couldn't make outgoing calls. She had Kenya on the lookout for a payphone just in case that might still be working but they hadn't seen one. Without a working phone of any type she had no way of getting in touch with anyone now that the days of modern technology were over. It was going to essentially be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It was a daunting and terrifying thought. She refused to even consider that she may never find them.

There were about fifty miles between Dan's and Lizzie's mother's house and so far, they had driven about 25 of those miles. Lizzie didn't dare drive too fast since roadblocks of various construct such as vehicular accidents, fallen trees, parts of buildings and cars came along all too frequently. There were bodies of humans and animals ripped apart littering the roads. One such instance, bizarrely enough, was a dead elephant.

Lizzie and Kenya stopped the car and got out to look at the elephant. They had seen a lot in the last week or so that didn't make sense given what they knew of the natural world but an elephant lying by the side of the road? Now, that was really different. "What the hell is an elephant doing out here?" Lizzie asked as they approached the back of the elephant lying on its side near the edge of the road. From this vantage point, its body looked to be untouched.

"It's still alive." Kenya said excitedly. "It's still breathing. I can see its stomach moving." She began to walk around to the other side of the pachyderm. Its belly had been ripped open. The blood-caked contents splayed about it like a Saturday morning yard sale between its outstretched legs. There was big blobby something that looked like it was probably an organ. It had a huge bite taken out of it and was wrapped in a length of intestine.

"I don't know how it could be with all its guts on the street like they are." Lizzie said as she stepped over the trunk following Kenya to the other side of the elephant.

They stood about ten feet away from it marveling at the fact that in the disaster that was now their world somehow, there was an elephant in front of them and that somehow, despite all the bodily damage, it really did look like the elephant was still alive. Lizzie stepped forward and bent over to stroke the elephant's head to comfort it.

"In Biology class, we learned that an elephant nerve cell can be three feet in length. Shit!" Kenya screamed. "Oh, I'm sorry about my mouth! I'm sorry but look!" Kenya pointed to the elephant's open belly and out came a blood covered three fingered hand followed by a knee. Whatever was inside the elephant moved the sides of the elephant's skin as it moved around just like an expectant mother can track her baby's movement when she sees an arm or leg push against the confines of her belly to shift position.

"Let's get out of here!" Lizzie yelled and they ran back to the car.

"I wasn't sticking around to see what that was." Kenya said as she shut the door and put on her seatbelt. As Lizzie shifted the car into gear, they saw that it was a little kid or rather had been a little kid until something else had ripped one of its arms off and changed it into something that would crawl inside of a dead elephant's belly in order to eat its way out. The kid-beast's countenance was deep red and glistening in the midday sun as it looked at them drive by it, reaching after them with its three-fingered hand.

After driving for another hour and only covering about two miles due to having to find alternate routes or slowly moving around a block in the road or needing to get out and clear the road, they decided they needed to find a place to sleep for the night.

They found a little house clustered in a cul-de-sac. They pulled the car around to the back of the house to hide it from the street. Lizzie had taken off her coat and balled it around her fist to break a window in the back door to unlock it when Kenya reached past her quickly and tried the knob finding that it was unlocked.

They entered calling out to see if anyone was there and at first heard silence and then something dropped to the floor down the hall. Lizzie put her gun up ready to fire at whatever came at them and Kenya had pulled out a chef's knife that she'd taken from Dan's house since she'd stupidly left Dan's Glock in the car. They heard nothing so they advanced through the kitchen toward the hall where they saw a fluffy black cat sitting on his haunches looking up at them with big green eyes.

"Aw, hey there little guy. Aren't you just the cutest?" Lizzie said as she squatted down and stretched out her hand. The cat got up, rubbed against Lizzie's hand and then curled around her legs purring loudly. "I wonder when the last time was that you were fed. Let's see if we can find you something." Lizzie got up and walked back to the kitchen and started opening cabinets. "Hopefully, we can find something for dinner." She said to Kenya who also started opening cabinets.

They munched on peanut butter and crackers until they were full and then pulled out all the portable, non-perishable food that they could find to be packed up tomorrow. They set about securing the house, locking doors, pulling shades and closing the draperies and blinds. Instead of sleeping in separate rooms they decided to sleep in the master bedroom together more out of fear and comfort than anything else.

"Strange we didn't see one living person at all today." Kenya mused.

"You're right. I guess I was so blown away by that elephant that I forgot all about it. Did we really see an elephant?"

"Yep, yes we did." Kenya responded.

"If tomorrow is anything like today, we should be able to make it to my mother's house."

"What are your daughters like?" Kenya asked turning on her side to face Lizzie. There was moonlight coming through a crack between the vertical blinds and the window frame. It was just enough light that she could make out the silhouette of Lizzie's face two feet away from her.

Lizzie took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. "I wish I had a cigarette."

"I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't but I've been thinking it's a good time to start. The way things are going, it probably won't be what kills me." She let out a dry laugh and then took another deep breath. On the exhale she began, "Kevin and I met on St. Patrick's Day at a karaoke bar. I first noticed him when he got up to sing 'Rockin' Robin'. He was so funny, a real entertainer. Well, next thing we know, we're pregnant with twins. Lucy and Margaret were born about nine months and two weeks after we met. We got married New Years Eve at 6pm and the girls came along eight hours later at 2:14 and 2:17 in the morning on New Year's Day. I don't know if it was the lobster dinner or the honeymooning that finally brought them. I thought that they would never come out. Lucy was first and then three minutes later, Margaret. They are identical twins with subtle differences. They both have my red hair but Lucy's is bone straight while Margaret's has a wave to it. Lucy has Kevin's freckles and Margaret has my pale skin. They think so much alike sometimes that they can finish each other's sentences. They can be so different that Lucy is logical and level-headed and Margaret can be flighty at times. They have as many similarities as they do differences."

"Thankfully, Nancy didn't come along for three years, well after the twins were out of diapers. She has Kevin's dark, curly hair and olive skin but she looks more like me. Actually, it's almost like Kevin had very little to do the baby making since the girls mostly look like me. Nancy is scared of her own shadow. I can't imagine that she's taking all of this too well. She tries so hard and works so hard at everything and then still only does okay. The one thing about her that I really respect is that she's not a quitter. She just keeps going until she does whatever she's trying to do."

"We thought we were done after Nancy and then our youngest, Olivia, was born. Kevin loved that name. He wanted to use it on one of the first three but none of them looked like an Olivia until Olivia came along. She is so smart and absolutely fearless. Nothing stops her. The first time I've ever heard her say she was scared was when all this happened. This would scare anybody."

"Kenya, do you think-," she stopped mid-sentence when she saw that Kenya was asleep. She looked sweet, like none of the horrible things going on were happening, like she didn't have a care in the world. Her dark lids were shut over her beautiful, big brown eyes.

The black, fluffy cat was curled up sleeping wedged in between the blankets, boxes and bags in the back seat. After much debate, Lizzie and Kenya decided that they didn't have the heart to leave the cat behind in the house even if they left out all the cat food they could find. They thought he would have a better chance even if in the end they had to let him go. They named him Spencer.

They had driven ten or so miles when they saw three people with heavy backpacks up ahead walking down the middle of the road. Lizzie pulled up slowly behind them and the trio moved to the side. Lizzie lowered her window and yelled out, "Hey there! Can you tell me what town we're in?

The trio consisted of a man and woman, both in their early forties and a teen-aged girl of about fifteen that stood taller than both the man and the woman. They all stared at the women in the car, hesitant to speak as they sized up the situation. The woman looked at the man who was stepping back. "You're just about to leave Calverton." The woman said with slight southern twang.

"Um, okay." Lizzie responded while trying to run through in her mind how much further they needed to go. "Thanks. Have you been on the road long?"

"Since this morning." The woman said. "You?"

"Us, too. We're headed to Hartwood. You?" Lizzie asked.

"Jolene, let's go." The man said sternly.

"We heard there's a refugee center in Fredericksburg so, we're headed there." The woman offered.

"We can shift some stuff and drive you as far as Hartwood." Lizzie offered.

"No thank you ma'am." The man answered. He was too young to have such a gaunt, sunken face. He had to have been skinny before the outbreak and now he looked like he'd lost more weight than he could afford to lose. "We're fine as we are. We'll get a car later on down the road if there is one to be had."

"Do you need some food? We have some can goods to share." Lizzie offered while Kenya started poking around for some in the backseat.

"No ma'am. We're fine. Thanks anyway." The man responded sternly.

"Okay. Good luck. Stay safe." Lizzie said and drove on. "We'll stop when they are out of sight and we'll leave some on the side of the road."

"Good idea."

Along the next five miles they saw cannibal animals moving along the side of the road shuffling and lurching in yards, parking lots and woods in ones and twos but no other living, breathing humans.

"Dan and I talked about this before you came along. He was calling them 'Shufflers.' I was thinking more like 'Dead Heads' like the followers of the Grateful Dead." Lizzie said with a slight smile.

"Do you really think that they are grateful?" Kenya asked with a quizzical look and Lizzie laughed at her.

"No! You know, The Grateful Dead?" Kenya just looked at her shaking her head while Lizzie laughed. "Now you are making me feel old, kid! My dad was a Dead Head. He loved the Grateful Dead. They were a rock group that came out of Haight Ashbury in the 60's. Guess it's just before your time. You must be a Bieber fan. Are you a Belieber Kenya?" Lizzie teased.

"Are you kidding me? You need to wash your mouth out with soap or better yet, cut out your tongue. I hope some fan girl got him. Let me say this in one word, um-no! Oh my god," she said punctuating each syllable, "I am all about Ludacris and Mary J Blige. Give me some credit, will ya?" Kenya responded laughing.

"I'm so sorry!" Lizzie said in an exaggerated way. "My three older girls just love Justin Bieber. Me? I've had enough of him."

"Well, I don't think he's going to be much of a problem anymore." Kenya said laughing and then said soberly. "I wonder what happened to all of the famous people."

"I guess we'll never know. There's no one left to tell us." Lizzie paused looking intently ahead through the windshield. "What is that? I think something's happening up there."

"I think I see some kids!" Kenya yelled. "Hurry up! We can save them!"

Lizzie floored it and stopped within ten feet of the melee. It was a woman with three young children. They could hear the woman yelling at the children to run but only one did, a young girl of about 8 or 9. The other two stood still staring agog at the three monsters staggering toward them as the woman frantically swung her arms and pushed at one sunken-faced ghoul, knocking it down while the other two were able to set their teeth into the flesh of the two youngsters.

The third child, a young girl, waited about fifty feet down the road screaming but all Lizzie and Kenya saw was her open mouth as the screaming coming from immediately in front of them had their complete attention.

Lizzie and Kenya jumped out of the car with guns in hand. "Make each shot count, Kenya. Fire from as close as possible." Lizzie yelled as they ran toward the fight. Lizzie shot both of the dead heads that were chewing on the children, both little girls. One of the monsters still had sunglasses on because they were strapped around the back of its head. Lizzie had shot one of the lenses out. The other beast was so damaged and ripped apart; Lizzie couldn't easily tell if it was male or female, just that it had an arm hanging by a tendon at the elbow. Both had done so much damage to the children that it would be too late to do anything for them but to put them out of their misery. Both of their bellies were ripped open with intestines, organs and blood everywhere leaving their rib cages exposed.

Kenya took down the geek chewing on the woman. The girls were, at the very least, unconscious and still the mother was conscious and suffering. At least she could stop it from happening.

"Take care of my children." The woman whispered.

Lizzie knelt down to hear her better. "Don't…let…us…end up…like them." She paused and then hissed, "Pleeeeease!" She said it like air was being released from a balloon.

Lizzie looked up at Kenya and then looked past her. Her attention was finally attracted to the screaming of the third girl. She could have been screaming the whole time, they didn't hear until just now. She was now running toward them with a cannibal animal after her. Lizzie had looked up just in time to see the thing with its filthy, bloody hands grab onto the girl's arm and bring it to its mouth. Its blond, stringy and blood-stained hair fell over its face when it bent over and ripped part of the girl's deltoid muscle and all of the bicep away from the humerus bone. The girl folded and the thing let go of her while it stood there devouring the flesh.

"Kenya, can you grab your knife and take care of these three? I go take care of her."

"On it." Kenya replied as she shoved her gun down into the waistband in the front of her pants and ran back to the car for her knife.

Lizzie slowly walked up to the preoccupied dead head and put a bullet in its head over its ear and it fell like a bag of rocks being dropped from a balcony. She walked over to the girl and sat down beside her on the road and brushed her hair back from her face. Lizzie pulled the girl into her arms. The girl looked up into Lizzie's face crying.

"It bit me." She sobbed. "He gave me an ouchy." The girl looked like she was seven or eight years old. She had dark brown hair with bangs that framed her face. She was covered with blood and was slippery, making it hard for Lizzie to hold onto her.

"I know, honey. You're going to be okay. What's your name sweetie?" Lizzie asked while she cradled the girl.

"Cindy. Is my mom okay?" The girl's eyes bore into Lizzie like they were imploring her turn back time.

"That's such a pretty name. We're gonna put you all in our car and drive far away from this place." Lizzie lied. Kenya finished with the woman and her children and came over to Lizzie and Cindy. Lizzie looked up at her and mouthed, "Knife." Kenya handed her the knife and Lizzie gripped the bloody, sticky handle. She shifted Cindy to raise her upper body. "Just close your eyes. I'm going to move you in a minute. That's my friend Kenya and she's going to bring the car over here. Okay?" Cindy nodded her consent.

Lizzie brought the knife up to the base at the back of Cindy's skull and started pushing it in slowly. When Cindy started whimpering she pushed it in quickly until the hilt of the knife hit her skull. Cindy went limp. It was over. She was gone. Lizzie sat with the child in her lap, looking up at the sky and crying with her eyes wide open. The tears rolled down her face burning her skin as they went.

Lizzie, we've got to go. There's more coming. We got to go right now." Kenya said levelly.

"Okay." Lizzie said getting up slowly with Cindy in her arms. She looked around. "I think we have just enough time to get them out of the street if we hurry."

In the car, they drove staring ahead expressionlessly as if they saw nothing, had done nothing.

"The mother was dead by the time I had to do it. I'm glad of that." Kenya confessed.

"Me, too." Lizzie floored the gas pedal and swerved into two dead heads sending them reeling and bouncing off the front driver's side fender and onto the street behind them. "I'm calling them dead heads. That's all they really are now, right?"

Spencer meowed in agreement. Kenya reached into the backseat, grabbed the cat and put him on her lap. She petted him and he purred.

They'd been driving for nearly an hour after leaving the woman and children behind. To lighten the mood and take their minds off of the little family, Kenya had been sharing her love of high school dating gossip. She hadn't been much of a participant since her former life consisted mostly of working and studying. She had a major crush on a boy in her math class. She had been hoping that he would get her telepathic messages to ask her to the senior prom.

"In a way, I'm kind of glad that I haven't had to deal with dating yet." Kenya said.

"Why not?"

"Well, one, since no one will ever date again in human history I won't have to worry about what I'm missing and two? Well, two is a bit embarrassing and it makes a lot of sense that it's number two. I'm kinda gassy." Kenya confessed sheepishly. "I have been known to commit random acts of unexpected flatulence many, many times."

Lizzie burst out laughing.

"But now that I think of it, I can't remember the last time that happened." Kenya said in wonderment to Lizzie's hysterical laughter. "Maybe it has to do with eating crackers and stuff that comes out of cans?

"If anything, I think food coming from cans would make you toot even more." Lizzie said.

"Toot! You said toot." Kenya said and then snorted laughter.

"It just sounds better than fart." Lizzie said laughingly but then abruptly floored the gas pedal until stopping short behind a sports utility vehicle. Spencer got spooked and jumped into the backseat.

"What's wrong? What are you doing?" Kenya yelled.

"I think that's my Jeep." Lizzie replied as she jumped out of the car and ran to the SUV. The lift gate was open. Lizzie reached up and pulled it down to see the license plate. It said, "Buck 1"; her face was at first sheer elation and then it quickly plummeted to frantic concern as she began rushing to the driver's door. "This is my car! Where are they?" She yelled as she opened the door. Kenya followed her through the maze that the contents of the SUV created strewn about the ground around the vehicle.

Lizzie saw food wrappers on the floor and that the keys were still in the ignition. She got in and turned the ignition and nothing happened. She looked at the gas gauge. "They ran out of gas." She announced to Kenya and pulled the keys out of the ignition and put them in her coat pocket. She heard them hit her gun. She looked at the dash board and saw that there was just Velcro where the GPS normally was. They must have taken it with them. She turned and peered into the back seat and saw more food wrappers and a blanket but nothing else. She sat back in the seat and sighed.

"Anything?" Kenya asked as she came to the open door holding a rolled up sleeping bag.

"Nope." Lizzie responded and got out of the truck and walked to the back of it. She knelt down on one knee in front of a box and opened it while Kenya continued to sift through things. Inside the box was the book that she had told Lucy to get. She opened the book to reveal that instead of pages as expected it was actually a hollowed out space concealing a gun and some loose bullets.

Kenya approached her saying, "We should take some of this stuff with us. What's that?"

Lizzie lifted the gun from out of the book and turned it over in her hand, the nickel finish glinting in the sun. "This was my father's. His father gave it to him when he went off to Vietnam. After my father didn't have any sons, he gave it to Kevin as a wedding gift to his first son-in-law. This is a .357 Magnum Colt Python." She looked at the gun thoughtfully. "I have heard about this gun my whole life but this is the first time I've ever held it."

"Seriously? I guess you finally have the balls required to hold it." Kenya sarcastically responded walking toward the car with some of the salvaged items.

Lizzie nodded her head in agreement and put the gun back into the box as the ammunition rolled around. She heard a gurgle and a hiss. Lizzie looked up to see Nancy walking around the back end corner of the SUV. Nancy's mouth was caked in blood, some dried, some glistening wet. Her arms were outstretched reaching for Lizzie. Nancy had a large bite wound starting on her shoulder running up to her neck with blood stains cascading down the front of her shirt. Her dead, glazed eyes oozing puss offered no glimmer of recognition at the sight of her mother.

Lizzie's face crumpled up squeezing out projectile tears and she dropped the book into the box below it and stretched her arms out to Nancy. Nancy continued on a direct path to Lizzie's arms as Lizzie kept repeating, "No. Nancy, no," over and over through her anguished sobs.

"Lizzie, you can't!" Kenya yelled as she walked up to Nancy and put Dan's gun against Nancy's temple and pulled the trigger. Nancy dropped to the ground as if no longer being held up by puppet strings. Lizzie lunged after Nancy to break her fall but didn't get there in time.

She picked up her little girl's body and pulled her close. Nancy's head rolled back away from Lizzie as if she was repulsed by Lizzie's embrace. Lizzie shifted Nancy's body so that she was cradling the girl. She looked down into her baby's bloody, dead and puffy face with the open glazed over non-seeing eyes and puss seeping from them. No recognition. None.

L izzie saw her precious infant with a full head of dark hair and the brilliant blue eyes of a newborn. She saw Kevin holding Nancy for the first time, bathed by moonlight coming through a hospital window. She heard Kevin gush over one of his kids taking after him. At her birth, Nancy could have been Kevin's twin but as she grew, her features favored Lizzie's more and more save for her dark hair and olive skin.

She saw Nancy on her first day of first grade proudly climbing the school bus steps following her two older sisters. Later in the day, Lucy and Margaret told her how Nancy had a meltdown when finding out that they were not all in the same class. Nancy was so upset that Lucy was able to stay with her for the first hour until she could finally slip away and leave Nancy on her own.

Where Lizzie's other girls pushed the limits and ran toward risk and excitement, Nancy just didn't. She much preferred to live the life that she imagined while her nose was buried in her books. Nancy was Mommy's little introverted angel. Finding Nancy like this didn't surprise Lizzie but it devastated her knowing her sweet and timid little girl died feeling sheer terror.

"Lizzie, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." Kenya was repeating over and over. When she said, "I had to do it." Lizzie was snapped from her stupor. She looked up at Kenya standing over the dead child and grieving mother and nodded her head in understanding. Kenya held the gun in her sweaty palm wishing she were anywhere but here not having done what she just did.

The SUV had been abandoned by a copse between two houses. Kenya saw that two dead heads were making their way through the trees toward them drawn by the gunshot and the crying. They anxiously moved toward their meal.

"Lizzie," Kenya said and rested her hand on Lizzie's shoulder. Lizzie turned her face to Kenya, it was red, tear stained with swollen eyes waiting for Kenya to speak. "We have to go. We're not safe here."

"I can't leave her."

"We can put her in the SUV. You have three more girls out there that need you. We have to go now." Kenya said calmly.

The animated corpses were moving closer. One had fallen and was struggling to regain its feet. The other banged into a tree, nearly fell but righted itself. Nothing was going to deter it.

Kenya helped Lizzie to her feet while still holding Nancy. Kenya pushed the lift gate up a little higher and Lizzie gently placed Nancy inside the truck on top of some boxes and covered her over with a blanket. Kenya pulled Lizzie back out of the way and closed the lift gate.

Kenya took Lizzie by the arm and pulled her toward the car, around the open passenger door and put her in the front seat. As Kenya walked around the car to the driver's seat, she picked up some of the salvage and threw it into the backseat.

This was the first time Kenya had ever driven a car, a mute point now. She wove a little bit instead of driving straight and was unsteady on the gas pedal but she was getting used to the car.

Once again, they were driving in silence. Kenya expected for Lizzie to be crying but instead there was nothing. Lizzie looked out the window watching the scenery slowly pass by.

"Did I ever tell you how I met Anne Marie?" Lizzie asked.

"No. Never came up. How did you meet her?"

"About six months ago, I was walking to the train after work. I was taking my usual shortcut when I saw this woman walking toward me. A guy came up behind her and tried to take off with her purse but she wouldn't let go. Instead, she turned around and clocked the guy really good in the face and he nearly fell. Then she started swinging her purse at him again and again and with these really powerful blows. I thought she must have had a brick in her purse. When she had him on the ground, she started kicking him and ended up stabbing him in the leg with her stiletto heel. She was doing all this on stilettos! I just thought, 'that is one tough lady.' The guy was writhing on the ground grabbing his bleeding leg while she stood over him screaming at him. I stayed with her until the police arrived.

"The next day, I saw her in the coffee shop and I asked her what the hell she had in her purse. She told me she was carrying about sixty dollars in change that her boyfriend wanted her to deposit at the bank at lunch time but she never made it. From then on, we met for lunch at least once a week.

"If you had asked me then who I thought couldn't be rattled by anything, someone that could make it through all this with no problem? I would have said Anne Marie, no question. She was just so tough and she just crumbled almost from the beginning."

"I wish that she had stuck it out." Kenya said in a soft voice. "I liked her."

"Me, too." Lizzie said on an exhale. She looked back out the window again resting her head on the headrest. "I wanted to see my baby's face. I looked but I didn't see her. She wasn't there."

Acknowledgements

Again I have to start with Amanda Wood. She is continuing to knock it out of the park and really pushed herself to do more for this chapter. She's really finding her style and I can't wait to see what we come up with together. Thanks dude!

Leaned on Joe Keen and Jeff Kingsbury and google for gun info again. I'm learning more and more and it is very interesting. There were things that nagged me about Paula calling out Rick's Python. What average woman can call a gun through binoculars on sight? There had to be some story to that and I've found the answer. Thanks dudes!

I introduced a new character this chapter, Kenya. Kenya is based on a former student of mine, Lindsey Anthony. She has allowed me to ask candid questions about hair care and directed me toward helpful resources. She is Kenya! You will get to know Kenya in the coming chapters. I hope you love her as much as I do.

Lastly, I'd like to thank Jennifer Smith for…something.