The first fourteen days.
They remained locked inside their apartment. The News Channel had said that two nuclear reactors had gone critical because of the outbreak. People simply hadn't shown up for work. Large areas in two different states were now virtually unliveable due to the radiation leaks. It hadn't been long before the Government had issued orders to shut down all the remaining reactors, safety being the main concern.
For days they had sat by the window and observed as the world fell around them. Explosions resonated across the city and buildings collapsed, riots broke out as people trapped within the city searched for food and water. Churches were full of believers, searching for God or redemption in their end of days, and hospitals once the healing centres were now death traps. Areas assigned as shelters by the local police and government soon fell, infected locals had entered the buildings despite all precautions and died, turning overnight and attacking those around them. It seemed that nowhere was safe.
Radio stations informed that certain cities had totally lost containment and were being bombed with napalm, killing the dead and living alike, Atlanta had been one such city. Throughout the world more and more people fell to the same sickness that had spread across the US, health authorities were baffled by what had caused this and soon it was obvious no country had escaped.
Not long after, the few areas that still had power from other non-nuclear sources also went dark, the same happened to the gas supplies. There was nobody to man or maintain the structures so they simply failed. Before long even those small bits of information were gone as the generators that had supplied power ran out of fuel. One by one TV stations went offline and Radio stations followed suit, the only message you could now hear was the Emergency Broadcast continuously repeating on local radio bandwidth.
This is an emergency broadcast. Please stay in your homes, avoid the infected at all cost. Preserve your food and water and await further instructions. Stay indoors.
The power had gone down more than a week before. The police no longer patrolled the streets, the troops on the ground had either abandoned their posts, been moved elsewhere or were killed by the zombies, or bitters as Louise had started referring to them as.
They apartment block was eerily quiet now, the streets much the same with the only noise being the groans and shuffles of the dead. Sometimes you'd see movement from someone looking for food but not often and usually you would witness that person getting killed by the masses of biters on the streets.
Fourteen days had passed since the outbreak. They had run out of food the previous day and their water supplies weren't looking particularly healthy. They had been discussing how to proceed since the previous night.
"Louise we have to go out there and look for food. We can't stay here and live on oxygen alone." Cassandra pleaded.
"It's too dangerous Cassie. What if those things come after us?"
"We have no choice. There's a Wal-Mart not far from here, we can jump in the car and drive there. We can break in if we have to, get more supplies and come right back. I hate this as much as you, those things petrified me when they didn't exist imagine how I feel now. We have the Glock, the bat and those cleavers. If anything comes towards us we aim for the head. If the one at your lab died after you stabbed it with the scalpel then that means the head is the place to go native on." holding her younger sisters hand gently, offering reassurance.
"Please don't make me go out there Cassie, please." Louise begged, tears running down her face, her eyes big and round and full of terror.
Wiping the tears from her sister's face with a tissue, Cassie took a deep breath to steady her own nerves; she was as worried and scared but hugged her for a few moments before she spoke.
"The quicker we get this done the better. We don't want to get stuck out there after dark and the Wal-Mart may not have any food left if everyone else had thought of the same thing. Come on, we can do this!" What Cassandra didn't say is that soon they would be too weak to handle running around and fighting off the dead and then they would certainly die. If they didn't do this now they never would, that much Cassandra was sure of.
Grabbing their bags and slipping them firmly onto their shoulders the sisters moved the furniture away from the door of the apartment. The Glock slipped into the waistband of her trousers once more, the cleaver in her grasp as Cassie listened by the door. As she waited for her sister to give her the all clear Louise slipped her own knife into her belt, holding the bat between her hands.
"We need to be quiet; we don't want to attract the attention of the bitters." Cassandra whispered, looking through the peep hole of the door before gently opening it.
Sticking her head out, Cassandra looked both ways and listened carefully while assessing the hallway outside her apartment. It seemed clear but anything could be lurking in the corners. Leaving the apartment was scary and hard for both of them but they did it all the same, Louise locking the door behind her with her key. They both donned the leather jackets, despite the heat of Las Vegas, hoping that it afforded them that extra protection. Petrified, both of them, they slowly inched forward towards the stair well that would lead them out of the building, holding on to each others' hand for reassurance.
Their path had been clear all the way to door of the stair case, the elevators now useless. They had walked around fallen suitcases and clothes, forgotten in the rush to escape. Stepping over a teddy Cassandra averted her eyes and did her best to ignore it, she couldn't think of the children now or what fate they had suffered. Opening the fire door slowly, they stepped into the contained stairwell, thankful for the windows that illuminated their way down the steps. Doing this in the dark would have been a line neither could imagine crossing.
When they reached the tenth floor they came across their first body, that of a man. The smell was putrid and they gagged as they tried to move past it and proceed down the stairs. Just as Louise made her way past it, the dead reached forward, grabbing her leg as it gnashed his teeth. Swinging her meat cleaver, Cassie buried it deep in the bitters skull. Collapsing on the step, the man stopped moving, now finally dead. It proved that she was right to say the brain was the part they needed to destroy but in that moment of realisation she looked up and saw her sister. She had gone deathly pale and looked like she could faint where she stood. Having removed the blade from the man's head she whipped it on his trouser leg since it was the less messy part of his clothing.
Enveloping her free hand around her sister's wrist she gently pulled her down several steps and away from the corpse, hoping that distance would alleviate the shock of what they had just seen but knowing they would have to face him again on the way back up.
"It's ok, Lulu." She told her reassuringly, using the pet name their parents had given her sister when she was a little girl. "Come on, let's get away from him."
Vigorously nodding her head, Louise followed her sister's lead. Two further floors had been covered when they cross another body, this time that of a woman. Before Cassandra even had the opportunity to deal with it Louise swung her bat at the woman's head, just as it started turning its head to look at them. The impact crushed the skull to a pulp, spraying them with blood and brain matter. This time Louise didn't shake or falter, flicking the bat she removed most of the goo from the surface and wiped it clean on the woman's dress as she walked past her. It was Louise who grabbed Cassandra and dragged her down the stairs this time.
They dealt with several more biters before they reached the bottom of the stair well where the parking garage was located, looking through the window of the fire door before opening it. Cassandra's SUV was parked directly in front of them, only ten feet or so away from where they stood. Using her key she unlocked the car, cursing the loud beep and flashing of lights that came with the expensive alarm, opening the door they made a run for it. In the underground garage, just one level below the main street, it was darker than they wanted but they made it to the Ford and jumped in, locking the doors behind them. They saw a number of dead roaming around, now drawn in their direction by the noise of their footsteps and the beeping of the car. Reversing quickly, Cassandra put some distance between them and the dead deciding they could deal with them when they returned.
The Wal-Mart wasn't far the building they lived in so they got there fairly quickly. Devastation was everywhere around them but the truly scary part was the sheer number of biters than roamed the streets. Making her way to the entrance of the store she saw the shutters had been ripped off, clearly others had the same idea as them but they still needed to go inside and search for food and water. Hoping that they wouldn't find any large groups of bitters they parked the car outside the front door, covering it with the length of the SUV and preventing anything else from easily entering the building. Louise opened her door and they leapt out of the car that way.
Taking out the zombies was still not great but they managed to do it, glad they were spaced out as they attacked them instead of several at once.
Before long they had reached the tinned section of the store. Not a lot remained, they grabbed what they could. Some tins of spam, tuna, fruit, sardines and the last few dented tins of beans and vegetables. They rushed to the next aisle and they found some packs of cup-a-soup, some instant noodles and more tinned pasta in sauce that had been abandoned on the floor. Not about to be picky Cassandra stuffed the tins in her bag as they searched more aisles for other supplies.
In the cereal department they found several cereal bars which they also collected, placing them in Louise's bag along with two remaining packs of cookies and several jars of peanut butter. Spotting a box of assorted chocolates Louise poured them in with the rest and was on her way to the aisle that dealt with powdered and long-life milk hoping she might get some when she turned around, coming face to face with a giant of a man.
A scream echoed in the empty store as a frightened Louise swung the bat towards the man as leaned backwards, preventing it from making contact with any part of his body. Spinning around Louise swung the bat again, this time hitting the man's arm. With a growl of pain the giant held onto her baseball bat and ripped it off her hands. He tried to speak to her but she couldn't listen, her heartbeat was so loud in her head and in her ears. She reached towards a bottle of booze from the shelf nearest to her and threw one at him. The man had clearly reached his limit for tolerance so when he escaped the flying bottle he wrapped his arm around her throat, squeezing and stopping her air supply just long enough for her to pass out. Just as he placed her on the floor Cassandra jumps on his back, hitting him with all her strength. She knew he wasn't a bitter but she wasn't about to watch a man kill her sister and do nothing. As she lifted the knife in her hand and prepared to bury it in his skull, a hard object impacted the back of her head.
Feeling her body turn to jelly Cassandra slid down the man's body and collapsing on the floor she lost consciousness; the last thing she saw was the face of another man. Nearly as large as the giant she had attacked, he had long blond hair, short matching beard and an icy stare than cooled her to the core.
She heard voices but she couldn't understand them as everything around her went silent and dark.