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  After a few moments, the man stood up from his family’s embrace and said simply, “Pack your things.”

  ◊◊◊

  Before my family was murdered, I had spent days hiding out with my family in our home. I had no idea how bad it had become in Cheney. Men roamed in packs, searching homes and stealing food. Police were present, but did not confront the groups or try to stop them. Apparently they felt that their presence would be enough to dissuade the gangs from killing while they plundered. This simple concept was met with mixed results.

  Alone and unarmed, I was easy pickings if caught in the open. I stayed low and out of the way as I searched for cover. Without television or Internet, I had no way of knowing how close the outbreak was, but I wouldn’t have to wait long.

  On my second day on the run, the town began to ring with the song of gunfire. Zombies had entered the city, hungry and desperate from their march up the I-90 corridor. Dozens of the dead were seen stomping down the main drags of the city, busting in doors and climbing through windows in a desperate play for food. Some were shot enough to slow them down, but bullets proved to be a poor zombie deterrent. A good shotgun was the only readily available firearm that could slow a zombie. Most didn’t use a shotgun though, and in a deadly blunder they followed Hollywood’s advice and tried the single shot to the brain. Most missed. Those whose aim proved true were horrified to find that their efforts were useless. They fired and fired their weapons as the zombies entered the houses and decimated everyone inside. Those who were not completely consumed rose as a zombie and continued the spread of the virus. Worse, those who were only bitten but made it out alive were forced to ride the transformation in real-time as their minds disintegrated and their bodies began to operate from some unknown power.

  You can always tell the zombies that aren’t quite done turning. They’re the ones with someone’s arm in their mouth and a tear in their eye.

  In hours, the city was a zombie hotbed. There seemed to be no place to get away from the zombie hordes. I resolved to find a route out of town and make my way to the Turnbull Refuge. As I did so, I mostly kept to the outskirts of town, where I could see zombies coming from a distance, and there were plenty of trees to hide in.

  This was before I knew that zombies couldn’t see well. This was before I knew that a horde hunted by smell, and that they could track a person from over a mile away.

  While approaching Badger Lake Road, I heard a truck coming from town and accelerating wildly. It flew past me in a blur, weaving all over the road and squealing its tires in the corners. Just out of eyeshot, the truck left the road and found a tree. The sound of the truck wrapping itself around that trunk was tremendous. I raced over to see what had happened, and found the truck easily. The driver was conscious, but clearly delirious. When I asked if I could help, he just looked and me and said in a distant voice, “It’s in my head.” When I asked what he thought was in his head, the driver pulled a gun from the door and repeated, “It’s in my head. I can feel it.” He then stuffed the barrel between his teeth and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went clean through his head and out the back window of the pickup. My feelings of mortification lasted for only a moment, before the sound of gunshots in the city brought me back. I searched his truck and took any supplies I could find. He had some food, but not much. I took his pistol and the box of ammo on the floorboard. I grabbed and shouldered his backpack without looking inside. I couldn’t stand to look into the hole he had made in his own head, so when I left I said thank you to his chest. I’ll never forget how the blood blended with the colors of his EWU sweatshirt. Shaking my thoughts clear, I hustled back to my course. Turnbull was a long way off on foot and the area was becoming more dangerous by the minute. I knew that if I stayed parallel to the road I would walk right into the heart of Turnbull and hopefully not be spotted.

  The cracks of gunfire were increasing in regularity behind me. Little did I know that while I was trying to get away from the city, the residents were winning the fight against the invading horde. A few clever rednecks had discovered that if you shoot out the legs of the zombies, you could pretty much walk right up and destroy one with a sledge or an axe. Posses were formed and dispatched to hunt down the invaders. Word spread quickly, and the residents of Cheney began to feel like this was a battle they could win. But there was a factor that most did not take into consideration.

  Some of the infected had made it past Cheney and landed directly in Spokane. The two hundred thousand residents of Spokane were now under attack. I can’t speak for what the city looked like just before the first wave hit, but I know what the result was. Spokane fell in a day. One zombie made four, and those four made fifteen, and those fifteen made a hundred, and so on and so on until the entire population was either dead or had fled. Thousands upon thousands of shufflers came pouring out of the wasted city and into the countryside. Soon, the whole east side of the state would be littered with the walking dead.

  ◊◊◊

  Steven kept his family on the back roads and away from the prying eyes of the town. Four Lakes wasn’t a big town by any standard, but there had been a frightening number of reports coming in about entire families being killed and robbed for supplies. With all of the stores having been bought out and then looted, people were turning from simple theft to violent crime in an effort to obtain the supplies they needed. No one knew how long this would last, so every crumb counted. Knowing that people would resort to disgusting measures, Steven had kept his movements subtle, never letting on what he was doing or allowing anyone see what his supply store looked like. His ultimate goal was to go completely unnoticed. Driving a crew cab diesel truck and pulling a 5th wheel trailer made that goal difficult to achieve, but he managed to get his family out of town without incident and have them on their way south to the hills and hunting grounds outside the cities.

  Amy sat in the truck cab behind her mother so she could watch her father. His features had always seemed strong and comforting to the girl. Like a cartoon hero her father’s jawline was exaggerated and his broad chin had a discreet dimple at the tip. His nose was large but not protruding, and his forehead was constantly wrinkled with thought. The man’s thinning hair was short, neat, and only lightly dusted with grey at the temples. To his fellow man, Steven was the picture of leadership and guidance; the kind of man guys would follow into certain death. To Amy, her father had reach deity level. If there was any man on the planet that could keep them alive, it was her father.

  As that first day wore on, Steven kept the nose of his truck pointed south and was determined to continue driving until he stopped seeing cars. Despite his hopes, the further he drove from the city, the more cars they encountered. Cars would zoom by them at incredible speeds and disappear around corners, all traveling away from Spokane. They watched a truck with a slide-in camper dive into a corner too fast and tip over into the bushes, crashing onto its side and leaving a wide rut in its path. Before they got to the scene, the car in front of them had pulled-up, stopped, and were breaking the camper open. They were ignoring the passengers completely in favor of anything they could harvest from the living space. Despite the demands from his wife to just keep going, Steven debated stopping and helping the driver to protect his goods. His mind was changed for him when the driver crawled through the driver door window and began shooting at the looters.

  The sight horrified Amy, who had never been exposed to such feral acts of violence by human beings. What would have been reserved for only the most shocking pieces of fiction had now become a daily threat. She began to understand why her father had said that she would have to start performing beyond her years. All the girl wanted to do was hide and cry, but she looked into the eyes of her mother, father, and even her brothers, and saw a resolve to survive despite the odds. They all seemed determined to live, whereas she simply didn’t want to fight to live as much as she didn’t want to die. It all seemed like a cruel dream. She waited for the scene to fade and to awaken, blinded by the mornin
g sun streaming into her clean room. The whole outbreak would be a horrid nightmare, and life would go back to its previous perfect state. As if reading his little sister’s mind, her older brother, Thomas, reached across the sleeping frame of the youngest sibling to take Amy’s hand into his own. He lovingly clutched her palm and gave Amy a weak smile. She tried to return the smile, but instead she began to feel a sob rising in her throat. The sensation made her feel like a hopeless pawn in the hands of her emotions, which only made the tears form more quickly. Thomas shushed the tears gently and made circles with his thumb on the back of her hand. His lips mouthed the words, “We’ll be okay,” and his easy smile bloomed on his face again.

  Looking into Tom’s eyes, Amy wanted to believe him but she didn’t know how. The whole world seemed to be falling around them at an alarming rate. Would their lives always be filled with such scenes of violence and death? Would their days be measured by the miles they covered running and hiding, working to avoid the infected and living alike? This was no way to live in the mind of a girl, but facing her brother’s gaze, she felt that perhaps it was something she would learn to do.

  They had done little more than drive since abandoning their home, stopping only when they were sure that no one was around. This task was becoming increasingly difficult. The initial idea that living nomadically would keep them ahead of horde and human seemed like a novel one, but in practice it would seem that the concept was not original by any measure. Everywhere Steven drove his family, they found other wanderers who were scared, suspicious, and often armed. Turnbull turned out to be like a campground on Memorial Day weekend. Every available spot was taken and folks were living in perilous proximity to one another. On more than one occasion, shots could be heard reverberating off of the hills. Steven tried to keep his family calm and organized, but he was no fool. They were scared, including him. If a safe place could not be found, they would soon find themselves at the mercy of some roaming band.

  But in a world that was shrinking every day, the corners of which were being filled simultaneously with infected hordes and human refugees, where would they go?

  ◊◊◊

  It was the nighttime view of the Turnbull that finally did me in. I had climbed a ridge and was looking over the wilderness before me. Scattered across the darkened landscape were a thousand small fires flickering in their only dance. Turnbull had become more than a wildlife refuge. It had become an asylum for the running and the scared in Spokane Valley. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking at a massive birthday cake, just waiting to be cut up and consumed.

  And it was there, perched on that ridge, when I cracked. All of those souls, hiding in the hills and trees from an enemy that none knew how to stop, and I began to figure the odds. Spokane was a waste. Cheney was overrun. A wave of undead was washing over the state, cleansing the land of the living. My brother was dead. My parents were dead. Everything seemed to hit me at once. The mental barrier that had protected me from the truth of my situation collapsed in a sudden and alarming manner, laying all bare to the sun and the truth. I was going to die alone.

  So I wept. I cried for my family. I cried for my town. I cried for my lost and miserable situation. I felt despair for my life, and resolved that I was destined to die like the rest. The whole world was lost. At this point, how could it not be? The campfires began to blur and blend as the tears obscured my vision.

  And then came the screaming. It snapped me back, but made my grief even worse at the same time. From my right, sparks were flying and shots were being fired, but it was the desperate shrieks that filled the range. One after the next, zombies flooded the campsites and laid waste to everything in their path. Every person caught was consumed. The horde could not be seen in the darkness, but by the sound of it the host must have been in the thousands. In the nearest camp I could make out dark figures crawling over the landscape. A dozen would fall on a human, only to have hundreds more come jogging after them and fall upon the next unprotected evacuee. RVs were torn open and boarded. Windows were smashed out of cars and the inhabitants were consumed to the song of terrified squealing. I watched a man excitedly try to stand his ground. Bat in hand, he acted as though he were some doper at a homerun derby, crashing one zombie head after the next; the sickening thud of the wooden bat against the dead weight of the zombies’ heads. In the end, he was surrounded and swarmed like all the rest, with the undead falling upon him like ants at a picnic.

  So I ran. Direction didn’t matter. My course was not important. I put the sounds of death and annihilation at my back and fled in the opposite direction. It wasn’t survival. It wasn’t planned. I wasn’t thinking at all. I just couldn’t be in that spot any longer. I had to be as far from those monsters as I could get. In my mind, everyone in that range was as good as dead, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. My pace was sporadic with bursts of running followed by fast walking. Tired, hungry, cold, and feeling alone, I just kept running. From the sounds. From the people. From my experiences. From the world.

  Weeks ago, when life was normal, I was shunned as a worthless loser by those in my community. Living in a college town and being a high school dropout doesn’t get you far in people’s eyes. Now, I would give just about anything for that level of recognition. To be looked upon as a fellow human, even if it was only to decide that I was a less important human, would be infinitely better than living alone in a world of brain-thirsty monsters.

  And that’s when the hatred began to blossom. I wasn’t sure how long I had been stomping while I marched, but when I realized I was, I didn’t care. Zombies had ruined my life. My family was dead because of the outbreak. My home was gone. My life was irrecoverable; irretrievable.

  Someone had to pay.

  ◊◊◊

  All of the radio stations had been out for days now, so there was no news from Spokane or anywhere else for that matter. No one knew what was happening in the world, but that didn’t matter, really. The only world that mattered was the small one that made up his family’s daily reality. Turnbull had been too crowded for his liking so he had moved his household east of the range and wandered into the dirt. During the night, at the first sounds of gunshots, he had decided to close camp and flee. A couple of shots were to be expected. Dozens of shots taken in apparently random bursts made Steven nervous. The sounds of gunfire became more prevalent as he prepared and it became clear that something massive was happening, so he had to leave the area. Away from the noise and away from the chaos. The man had no intention of getting caught up in a slaughter, regardless of who won.

  Amy was sleeping when her father gathered the family and told them to get in the truck. She had been dreaming, and it had begun as a sweet respite from the last two weeks. In her dream, the girl was on a date with Matthew Heinzman, the cutest junior at Cheney High. He had taken her on a drive outside of town. The window was down and his shaggy hair was dancing in the wind of the open road. Something in her yearned to touch him, and to be touched by him. His carefree smile warmed her heart as he drove, one-handed, through the little roads littering the land outside of town. She laughed in response to the joy welling within her, and Matthew shot her his best look. A small part of her melted, and she moved in closer. Amy reached out her hand to stroke his hair. When she drew back, the sight of Matthew’s head left her petrified. Portions of his scalp have sloughed away, exposing a bloody skull. Bit by bit the skin slid from his head, like wax from a candle, until all that remained was a bloody skull still smiling at her. She screamed, and the skull dove at her, mouth open and eager.

  Her father had shaken her awake before she was eaten by the bloody skull, but the damage had been done. Sleep would not come now.

  How could she live like this?

  Her mother was whispering loving words to her little brother. He father and Tom were closing up the trailer. Amy knew that without them, she had nothing, and was as good as dead. Family was all that was left. The world was lost. The game was over. It was run or be eaten. So
she climbed into the truck with her family, and they ran.

  CHAPTER 4

  My Favorite Weapon

  Late summer in eastern Washington means the heats sticks around well after dark. The dry ground soaks in the sun all day, and radiates it into the night. The zombies don’t seem to care, though. They wander around the downtown area, looking in shops, trying doors, and sticking random things in their mouths. They squabble with each other and whine a lot; particularly so if they’re hungry. In many ways, they’re like toddlers. That is, if you ignore the fact that they are sporadically violent cannibals which come in any human size or age, and lack the ability for human empathy or any other emotion for that matter.

  God I hate them.

  Two weeks ago I watched my family being murdered in our driveway. My mother, father, and brother were killed by a group of men from Cheney.

  Not zombies, mind you. They were living, walking, ‘we’re all in this together,’ true blue American breathers.

  People, just like me.

  They were scared and looking for provisions. The zombie presence had made everyone a little nutsy. I was mad at the men who attacked my family, and if I should see them again, who knows what I would end up doing to them? But deep down, I know who’s really to blame.

  The zombies.

  They are the reason we are all living in terror. They are the reason people are behaving like animals. They are the reason my family is gone; my home is gone; my life is gone.

  Something has to be done.

  The zombies may not have chosen their fate of infection, but they’re the ones that are infecting the rest of the living world. If all the zombies were dead and gone, then people could begin to recover and life could start to go back to the way it was. Mothers and fathers and siblings and grandparents, they could all start building their families again. The world would never be the same, but it would be better than the wasteland it is becoming.