If you any have suggestions for the story, feel free to send me a message. Thank you to all those who are following the story (officially or unofficially) it means allot. :) Anyways, here is Chapter 4!

The work of removing the bodies was long and tedious, especially when they had to get Kira's down two flights of stairs. Such a slow process the bloodstains were all cleaned up by the time they finally managed to get Kira down from the top floor, not to mention get them outside.

They silently buried them both in the dark in their former neighbor's yard (they didn't want to dig up their own yard until it was absolutely necessary) with Kimi watching for any walking corpses nearby with Grandpa Lou's old semi-automatic .22 rifle.

Lou took her and Dil out a couple times to shoot at the range (Tommy was busy with some film project); going against both their parents' jurisdiction, but it was a really fun time, both of them appearing to be natural shooters.

And if they knew the dead would be rising, they would have gone any chance they got for practice. But even from those few short hour-sessions they were still the most "qualified" marksmen, meaning they were the handlers of the two firearms they managed to get their hands on, both of them coming from Lou's drawer.

None of them said any words for the deceased, at least not aloud. Chuckie was staring hopelessly out of his bedroom, his face illuminated by candlelight. Kimi turned away from his look of despair.

It wasn't that she didn't care for her parents, of course she did, but it was just she could see the world was only going to get worse from there and the faster she got her head into "survival mode" the better. "There'd be times for mourning later," She told herself, "But I need to focus on staying alive."

By the time Dil put down the last shovel of topsoil, the signs of morning were already creeping through the easing night sky.

Through bloodshot eyes bereft of sleep the four slowly made their way to the house, dragging shovels behind them ready to call it a night.

By the time they got up the sun was already high in the sky and, if Phil's former boy scout skills were correct, it must have been sometime around 1-ish.

Dragging themselves down the stairs, dressed in the same clothes as the night before they sat themselves down in the kitchen and helped themselves to some canned peaches and instant coffee.

Chuckie was sitting on the couch reading a paperback and humming to no one but himself. Not looking up from his book, he said, "You slept well," Smiling to himself as the four bedraggled 'grave diggers' walked in. "I bet you didn't even hear my hammering."

"Hammering?" Tommy asked, sitting down next to him, scratching his itchy head as the rest sat on the floor cross-legged yawning aloud.

"You haven't noticed, well remember how you always said we should get around to boarding up the windows if in case the dead find out we're in? Well, I took the early morning as an opportunity to do just that." Chuckie said with a beaming smile.

Tommy looked around and immediately saw what Chuckie was talking about. The windows were perfectly boarded up with one inch gaps between each board to allow a line of sight. It was perfect. "Awesome dude," Giving Chuckie a much earned high-five, his smile going wider at his sense of accomplishment, "How long were you up doing this?" Looking around at the new perimeter security.

"Only four or five hours," He said with a shrug as if it was nothing, "And I thought after this we could build some seven or eight foot tall fence around the front yard to keep those biters out of our lawn, and so that we can walk around and stuff without drawing their attention as much."

Wow, holy crap, who took that depressed kid and replaced him with this engineering genius! Tommy thought to himself as he nodded his head smiling, "Yeah, yeah…let's do it. Only thing we got to do is make sure we got enough 2-by-4s and nails to last for the whole thing."

Chuckie responded with a laugh, "I'm a step ahead of you; I already got all the materials," Sipping his coffee before turning the page of his book, "I drove your mini-van over to Rick's Hardware and stripped the place dry. We got more than enough to build a fence, maybe even enough to block off the whole road." Pointing to the mini-van parked out front loaded with hardware supplies from the cab to the roof.

"What?" Tommy blurted, "Do you know how dangerous that is?!" Infuriated with his friend, "Rick's is more than ELEVEN MILES AWAY. And to go by yourself, without telling anyone!"

"What are you so mad about?" Chuckie retorted, "I'm fine, as you can see, and we got all the stuff needed for building projects. You got a little shut eye and I put myself to use while you were catching some Z's. No harm done. I'm only trying to make myself useful for once." Putting his hands up in mock defense.

"Damn it, Chuckie. I would have been happy to go with you," Tommy said, "And what if you encountered some walker out there? Huh?"

Chuckie laughed again slightly, which made Tommy grow even more pissed, "Again, one step ahead of you. Inside the place were only two zombies: first one I took down with the bat when his back was turned and the other one was stuck under a pile of toppled over paint cans. I say again, no-biggie."

"Just," Tommy was too tired to deal with this, "Don't do it again, okay? I wouldn't want anything to happen to our 'engineer'." Tommy added mockingly, despite it was more humorous when he said it aloud.

"Of course…" Chuckie said with an exasperated breath, before turning back to The Catcher in the Rye.

"Hey Chuckie?" Phil asked Chuckie concerned, as the rest of the group seemingly dispersed.

Putting his book down, "Yeah Phil, what's up?"

His lips somewhat trembling, "Have you seen Lil?"

Chuckie pointed behind him to the plush chair near the screen door, on it sat Lil wrapped up in a blanket, staring blankly at the wall.

"God, how long has she been like that?" Phil probed, walking over next to his sister and giving her hug, which she seemingly didn't even react to, her eyes still glued to the wall.

"Since last night, I think she fell asleep for a little bit, but I can't be sure. I think she is just shell-shocked, there's a lot of crap going on these days." Looking back down at his paperback.

"You don't need to tell me," Phil said, checking her forehead like a concerned mother, "Do you think she'll get out of this…trance or whatever she's in?"

His eyes scrolling down the margins of the book, "Give her a day," Turning the page and speed-reading still, "She'll come around."

"I hope." Phil said, giving her a kiss on the forehead before going to find Tommy to figure out the plan of action.

Thanks for reading. All reviews are helpful! :) -Crocy98