April 5, 2011: Somewhere over San Navarro, CA
3:00 AM

My name's Danny Riviera and until a few days ago, I was just like you. I worked five days a week, owned a car, paid my taxes, went out to the bar with the buddies on Fridays. I had a decent job as a salesman for a Verizon Wireless dealer in the downtown district where half my day consisted of selling people bullshit and the other half being yelled at by angry customers. I loved baseball and hockey, my two favorite teams being the San Francisco Giants and San Jose Sharks respectively. I was just your average Joe, nothing special, nothing to write home about.

And then that all went to hell.

Now I'm sitting in the back of a US Army Black Hawk helicopter, a warm blanket over my shoulders. Two door gunners, both clad in dark khaki jumpsuits are busy firing their floor-mounted miniguns down into what appear to be masses of people filling the streets. But I know better. Those things down there aren't people anymore; I don't even know what to call them. All I know is they die when you shoot them and I've killed too many of them to care.

According to what the crew chief and pilots have told me, this "infection" as they call it is expanding rapidly. San Navarro was the first outbreak in the Central Valley, but there were also reports of infection around the country, around the state, even around the world. From what the CDC has been able to determine, it's some form of virus that kills most of the brain's living tissue, reducing a human being to little more than our primary brain functions. It can be spread through coming into contact with infected blood, saliva, or tissue, but thankfully it's not airborne. Not yet anyways.

Before the television and radio went off the air in San Navarro, the governor declared martial law in California and mobilized the National Guard. He was then taken by helicopter to Travis Air Force Base where he was supposed to be evacuated via military aircraft to a "secure location." Before this could be accomplished however, the base was overrun and contact with his entourage was lost. National Guard and police units have been simultaneously trying to fight the infection and evacuate as many civilians as possible, although apparently this has become a "giant clusterfuck," as the pilot so eloquently put it. This helicopter is part of the 120th Air Wing of the Nevada National Guard and its destination is Moffett Field in Mountain View, CA.

You can also cross Sacramento, the San Joaquin Valley, and most of the East Bay off your list of habitable places to live. That is unless you like living next door to neighbors that would prefer to eat you alive. The Army has managed to hold back the Infected east of San Jose, although that line is in danger of collapsing at any moment. Civilians are being evacuated by whatever boats can be commandeered and there are aircraft constantly flying in and out of San Jose and San Francisco airports. The Navy is currently in the process of shelling areas overrun by the Infected and SEAL demolition teams are currently in the process of blowing the cross-bay bridges to slow the Infected down. Slowing the infected has proven to be little more than a temporary measure as the military are also fighting smaller secondary infections that are occurring behind their lines in many cases. In other words, the safe zones are not really all that safe.

The bone-vibrating bass of the miniguns cuts through the helicopter's cabin, nearly drowning out the sound of the rest of the crewmen trying to navigate this bird to safety. I poke my head out through the open doors of our transport and look down at the city below us. Only a few hours ago, this was one of California's major cities and a huge metropolitan hub for the West Coast. Population of 425,000. Now it's Corpseville. Where the dead walk and being alive is a liability.

I used to think zombies were something to laugh at. Jesus, I mean how seriously could you take a topic that was located somewhere between Overactive Imagination and Never Fucking Going to Happen? I watched 28 Days Later and Night of the Living Dead. I played games like Resident Evil. I even read World War Z at the request of a friend who thought the book was awesome and recommended it to me. And I still laughed it off as nothing more than a plot element. "It could never really happen. Zombies walking the earth? This could never come true, dude."

Ah, but it did. The sight of seeing your friends, co-workers, and family being torn to shreds by hideous caricatures of humanity is enough to make even the most cynical man believe.

If you asked me how this happened, I really couldn't tell you. I could relate countless stories of how myself and a few other lucky survivors fought our way through Hell to reach safety. I could spin tales about all the people we had to kill, all the times we thought we were done for, and even the people we lost. But I couldn't tell you how this whole goddamn shitty mess came to be. No fucking way.

There could be a million reasons behind why this happened. Maybe it was some sort of virus or plague. Or maybe Judgment Day's finally come, the day when evil will engulf the world. Hell maybe it's all a big joke and some Hollywood asshole will pop out of a cake and tell me to smile, that I'm on television.

But I can't worry about that now.

All I can do is try and make it to safety. I can't spare the time or the energy to dwell on theoretical situations or focus on the fucking philosophy of it all. I just need to live. I need to survive. And I will.

I've come too far to die now.