PART ONE

FEED

"Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law is wrong it

learned to walk with out having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,

it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

when no one else ever cared."

The worst feeling in the world is not knowing that you have no more bullets or no more weapons to use, it's the feeling that you know that your time is up, and you have to make peace with your dead in those last few seconds. At least, that's what people who have been through that have told me. I don't know what that really feels like and perhaps I never will. Perhaps I'll be one of the lucky ones to not have to face that problem of almost dying. If my reputation of being "the girl who never misses" is any indication of my future, we may never see me in that position.

- Taken from We Are Not What You Think We Are,

the blog of Mia Fernandez, April 14, 2039

I lounged on the roof of my trusty jeep, a lukewarm beer in one hand and my pistol in the other, my stereo blasting Daft Punk as loud as my jeep's stereo would go. Hey, if people were watching, they might as well be entertained with some decent before the rising music. Drinking on the job wasn't usually allowed but that was a conversation I would be having after I returned to the office. Besides, the viewers loved me, don't really know why since I considered myself rather boring to watch but they tuned in in their thousands every time I went out.

They would get what they wanted; a teenage girl in a vest and shorts with a beer or two, kicking some zombie ass. What wasn't to love? Girls loved it because fuck yeah; girl power. Guys loved it for well, you know. Tits and ass was all they cared about and boy, did I deliver.

From the horizon, I saw a group of zombies shuffling towards me; from what I could see, I guessed there was around fifteen of them. Finally, I might get some action today. I wasn't in any rush, so I finished my beer, throwing the bottle in front of me and watched it smash into a million tiny pieces on the road in front of me. I slid off the roof of my jeep, my feet landing on the uneven pathway.

The song changed to the most ironic song that could play, an old classic of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. An obvious choice to go with while killing the undead but the real ironic side comes with my age – being in my late teens meant playing a lot of music that revolved around songs about teenagers or had teenagers in the title.

I'm sure a lot of the older generation of men who watched appreciated the grunge music that frequently popped up in my stereo. The idea that men who were old enough to be my father watched me was unsettling at first, but it was one of the things I had to get used to. Being an Irwin; you had to be the face of your brand and give people something to root for. It was like one of those books I read when I was still in training; The Hunger Games, it was called. I won't go into detail about what the book was about but being an Irwin sometimes reminded me that my life was sort of a Hunger Game. I played a dangerous game every time I stepped out onto the field and if I made one small mistake, I would quench someone's hunger.

"Mia, turn that damn music off and focus! It's bad enough you've been drinking!" the voice in my ear sounded irritated and slightly panicked – a stark contrast to my calm and collected self.

I bit back a laugh as I stretched out my muscles and cracked my knuckles – a bad habit I'd picked up over the years, but it helped me get into the zone. "That would be a negative, Sparky. Gotta keep those viewers happy, plus, this song is a classic – don't know why you're complaining."

Sparky was my technical boss, but he acted more like my dad rather than my boss most of the time; always making sure I was eating properly, I got a decent amount of sleep and heavily opposed of my drinking – while I was out in the field and in general.

I never really got to know my real parents; both of them died when I was two and I was placed in foster care soon after. Funnily enough, the zombies didn't get them – it was a car accident. I was in the backseat and asleep when my parent's car collided with another head-on. Funnily enough, the car seat my mom had placed me in – the one that I hated and threw tantrums about whenever I was placed in – was the only thing that saved my life. Memories of them and that night are fuzzy, like a dream, sometimes I'm convinced they were just a dream. But the only things that reminded me that they were real were a couple of photographs and a necklace that once belonged to my mother which I wore almost every day.

Before you start to weep for me; I don't miss them. You don't miss what you never really had. I don't really miss any of the foster families I had either, as soon as they found out their foster daughter wanted to be an Irwin at the age of twelve, it was out on the streets for little Mia.

Once that came around, I started looking for anyone who would want to train an Irwin – or at least give a twelve-year-old a job so she could earn some money to get herself out of the town. That was when I met Sparky – real name; Louis Palmer, editor and chief of After The Rising, a small site that's only claim to fame was being one of the only sites operating in Oklahoma at the time.

Sparky found me going through his trash, hoping to find some food but found nothing. He was pissed off at first, but when he realised that I was just trying to survive, he felt bad for me – even when I told him to shove his sympathy up his ass.

I told him I wanted to be an Irwin, but nobody wanted to train a twelve-year-old girl who lived on the streets, especially one as foul mouthed as I was. Somehow, Sparky decided that he wanted me on his team – he saw that I had balls and I wasn't afraid to get what I wanted so he took me on.

Later on, I'd asked him why he did that. He'd answered that he'd always wanted a daughter, and when his wife left him, he put his whole life into the site, so I supposedly filled the void where his wife and imaginary kid would've been.

Long story short, I owe Sparky my life and he basically owes me his.

"You're going to get yourself killed – I mean it this time!" Sparky shouted into my earpiece, the panic clear in his voice as he furiously typed into his computer. I didn't blame him for getting pissed off, I was known for disobeying rules and doing something dumb while out on the field. Sparky knew this too well and scare tactics didn't do much damage anymore, so he would just have to wait until something went wrong for me to stop with the bullshit and actually pay attention to what was happening in front of me.

I shut out Sparky's voice, knowing that it would only distract me and picked up the hunting rifle that was on the front seat, turning down my music a little. The zombies were getting closer and I could hear their groans and the shuffling of their feet and I knew I had less than thirty seconds before I needed to start firing.

I wasn't worried. Yet. Worrying only distracted you from the job and distraction meant death. Distraction was not an option, and neither was death. Fine by me.

I checked my gun quickly before I got into position a few meters in front of my jeep, facing the zombies head-on and began firing.

Whenever I fired a gun, my heart stopped. No matter how many years I had fired a gun, or how many times I had done it; I always had the same reaction. My heart would just stop, and I felt powerful for the only time in my life. I missed that feeling every time I was at the office and I had to write up reports or had nothing planned for the day.

There wasn't a better feeling than firing a gun at a zombie. Not sex, not love but the feeling that I was in control and firing a gun at something.

Before the rising, that would've been a sign I was an anti-social psychopath who was destined to shoot up a high school. I probably would've been arrested for even admitting those thoughts and feelings and thrown in jail before I even had a chance to justify myself.

Thank god for the rising, am I right?

The last of the infected was in front of me now, the rest of the group laid in almost perfect sequence on the ground, one bullet in the centre of their foreheads. Hey, when they said I never missed, they weren't joking. I had thought about saying something to the zombie before I killed him, but I couldn't think of anything notable enough in that time.

And besides, I was getting bored and I wanted to get home and spend the rest of my day in bed and not have to worry about anything. Well, after I'd get an earful from Sparky about drinking on the job and generally being a stupid idiot with everything I do.

I rolled my eyes, pulling the trigger and the zombie fell to the floor mere millimetres from my boots. I looked at his body for a moment before I rested my rifle over my shoulder and made my way back to my jeep, throwing the rifle inside before moving back to the roof the grab my pistol that I had left up there, throwing that inside with the rifle before climbing inside and slamming the door after me.

I sat in the jeep for a good few minutes, the stereo still playing pre-rising music that I still hadn't turned off. Instead of playing some loud rock song, it was instead playing a ballad where a girl was singing about wanting her lover to stay.

I frowned and turned off my stereo before I did something stupid – like cry. I never cry. Well, that's a lie. I cry a lot but not in front of people. After all the years of killing zombies, it does take a toll on people's mental health. The only way I get through it is to remind myself that they're no longer people and that my job was to exterminate them.

But I was still killing people and once the feeling of being unstoppable and powerful was gone and I'd killed all of them, the reality of what I've just done hits me.

I dove my hand into the glove compartment to grab a blood test and frantically opened it and pressed my finger down on the sharp and sterile needle. I placed the blood test on the seat beside me, not looking at it as it ran the test. I never looked at the test anymore. If you've been out in the field for as long as I have, you learn to never look at the test directly until its finished.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lights flash from green to red, back to green then back to red before finally remaining on green, meaning that I was clean. I dove my hand back into the glove compartment and brought out a decontamination bag and threw the kit inside before sealing it and placing it back on the passenger's seat.

No matter how numb I felt, protocol still had to happen.

I strapped in before I turned the keys in the ignition and drove off back home, my eyes focused only on the empty road ahead of me.

"Mia, are you okay?" Sparky's voice came through my ear and gave me a slight sense of comfort but not enough for me to be "okay". I'd probably need decades of therapy to be "okay".

"I'm fine," I replied sharply. "Just on my way back now."

"You don't have to put up the strong front with me, Mia. I've turned the cameras off so it's just you and me now and if you wanna talk-"

"I said that I'm fine." I snapped, my grip on the steering wheel growing tighter, so tight that I was afraid that I might break it. "Just drop it, Louis."

I only ever used his real name if we were in important situations or if I was annoyed at him and wanted him to shut up. He seemed to have got the message fairly quickly and dropped the subject of how I was feeling and started another conversation. "You have an email in your inbox, by the way. Arrived a couple of hours ago, while you were in the field."

My eyebrow raised a little, my interest slowly piquing. "From who?" I asked.

"It's from," he paused for a moment and I could tell he was going through things on one of the many devices he had on him. "The Mason's?"

My heart skipped a beat and I almost stopped the car completely, just in shock. "The Mason's?"

"Are there any other Mason's?" I could tell he was smiling just by the tone of his voice, but I didn't mind that.

"Holy shit." I whispered, unable to stop my smile from spreading across my face, all feelings of sadness gone. "What does it say?"

"Holy shit indeed, young Padawan." Sparky joked, chuckling a little at his little joke. Before I had a chance to tell him off for using dated references from before I was born, he spoke up again. "From what it says, they like you a lot and they've seen a few of your clips and they want to offer you a job with them."

I stopped the car then, the tyres screeching to a halt as I did. "Wait, what? Did I just hear you correctly or am I losing my shit, Sparky? Did you just say they want me to work with them?" I adjusted myself in my seat, my heart hammering inside my chest.

"You did hear me correctly, Mia. They want you on their team; to be their bodyguard to be exact."

My excitement dwindled a little at that – their bodyguard? Why the hell do they need protecting?

Almost right on cue, Sparky spoke up again to answer my unspoken question.

"When they go out in the field, they usually just want more people around to give them a better heads up for when they're in deep shit. So, a member of their team found you and well, here we are."

I sat there for a few moments, thinking over everything Sparky had just said. If I took this job, it would mean the end of my current one – right? No more streaming, no more going out into the field solo and playing loud music whenever I wanted. No more Sparky to tell me off.

Did I really want this?

"You okay over there?" Sparky's voice brought me back to the situation at hand, causing my head to snap forwards, the bones in my neck cracking as I did.

"Just dandy." I sighed, sinking down in my seat a little.

"Listen, kiddo, I know it's not exactly what you were expecting but this is a really big opportunity for you. I know you don't want to hear it but where you are right now is a dead-end site in a dead-end town with no place to go if it goes down; this is your chance for something bigger. And besides, how long have you been telling me how you want to be part of the Masons site?"

"At least two years, Sparky."

"Exactly. So, it's all up to you in the end, but I think you should take this job. I won't reply to the email until you get back and we talk properly about your future; think about it on the way home, okay? Drive safely."

I smiled a little, sitting up straighter in my seat. "Okay, Sparky. I'll see you back at the office – talk later." I removed the ear piece from my ear and sat there in my seat for a few minutes, debating my options in my head.

On one hand; I get to join the team of my dreams and finally get to meet the famous Masons and get to work with them on a personal level – rather than just as an expendable Irwin who thinks she's the shit and treats everyone around her like trash like some bloggers have described me as.

But on the other hand; I would have to leave the place I've called home for the past nineteen years of my life. I would have to pack up everything I could fit into a couple of suitcases and go to California on my own to work with people I'd never even formally talked to before.

But this was my dream. And I couldn't just turn them down because I was too afraid to take a chance and follow my heart. I had already known my decision, I had known all along; I was going to take that job and I was going to completely annihilate everyone – well, not literally. Figuratively.

I smirked to myself as I turned the stereo back on, blasting some pre-rising 90's grunge, mouthing aggressively along to the lyrics as I pressed down hard on the accelerator. With one hand on the steering wheel, I used the other to pull my hair out of the high ponytail I had kept it in to keep my almost elbow length hair out of my face. Having long hair wasn't exactly encouraged when working in the field, but honestly, I'd rather go down guns blazing with a horde of the undead than cut it off.

Too intense?

Probably.

Did I care?

Not really.

Note

And that is the first chapter done! I might have gotten a little carried away with it but oh well, I don't think the other chapters will be this long, but who knows. If there's a different spelling to certain words, I apologise, I'm English so a few words will be spelt in the English way – hopefully, you guys won't mind too much. But if it does bother you, just let me know and I'll go back and edit it.

Until next time;

Lorna.