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  Rounding the corner, but still keeping her back to the wall, she thought maybe an infected had gotten in, or maybe it was a looter? But as she leaned around the wall and looked into the kitchen, her mouth parted at the scene before her.

  It wasn’t a stranger in her house, or an infected that had somehow broken in. No, it was her father standing in the center of the kitchen, right over her mother, and dark liquid dripping from the front of him. It might be too dark to see exactly what that fluid was, but she wasn’t a fool. It was blood, her father’s and her mother’s blood.

  And when her father leaned down, kicking glass that was on the ground across the room, and started to tear into her mother, eating her flesh, an involuntary gasp left Maya. The moonlight gave her a small glimpse of the carnage, and as much as she felt like losing it right now, just breaking down, she had to stay strong if she wanted to survive.

  Kill me if I turn. I don’t want to hurt you or your mother, or anyone else. I don’t want to live as a corpse.

  Her father’s words played through her mind over and over again, tearing her up, making her wish she were living a different life.

  Her father turned around swiftly, still huddled over Maya’s mother, and opened his mouth in a grisly display of gore. He screamed out, a gurgling, distorted sound that had chunks and fluid spewing from his mouth and down his chin. They held each other’s stares for several seconds, the wheezing coming from her father a reminder of the pain he’d endured while alive, and during his last moments on this planet.

  She backed away slowly, survival instinct taking over. She’d been prepared for this since her father came home with the bite, and although she’d dreaded this moment, she couldn’t back down. Maya had to do this for her father, to end his suffering.

  Turning and running toward the bathroom when her dad rose and started shuffling toward her, Maya slammed and locked the door for good measure, went over to the closet, pulled open the door, and pushed the hanging clothes away. She dropped to her knees and instantly saw what she was going after. Lying on the floor along with a box of shells beside it, was her father’s shotgun. The rifle was in the living room, the center of the house. She had weapons stashed throughout the home, for this particular situation, or if anyone tried fucking with her and her family.

  Maya grabbed the gun, checked the chamber to make sure it was full and ready to go, and closed her eyes, breathing out slowly. The sound of her dad coming closer, his feet dragging on the hardwood, had the tears coming fast and strong. Squeezing her eyes harder, telling herself she could do this, that she had to do this, she rose and turned to face the door just as the booming knocks came.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  She could picture her now dead father pounding a bloody fist on the door, smearing her mother’s blood over the wood, making it a grisly reminder of what the world had come to.

  Maya moved closer to it, her hands shaking, her mouth dry, and her throat tight. The pounding continued, matching the beat of her heart. She was a foot from the door now, and taking a deep breath, she lifted the gun and held it steady with both hands. She had two shells in the shotgun, and she wouldn’t waste them, wouldn’t make her father suffer more than he might be already.

  She didn’t know if the infected felt pain, if they even remembered anything of their former lives, but she did know one thing for sure—they didn’t get better. They decayed even more, their bodies rotting, slowly become nothing more than rancid, putrid flesh on bones.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered to herself, and then aiming where she thought her father’s head might be, she fired a shot off. The bullet tore through the wood, blasting away a chunk of it, and only a millisecond later she heard her father’s body slam against the opposite wall. She was shaking harder now, adrenaline pumping through her veins fast and hard, like a train about to slam right into a brick wall.

  She waited several moments, waiting to hear if he’d get up, start banging on the door again, or if he was still alive. She was crying heavily now, her vision blurring, the tears running down her cheeks.

  Wiping the wetness away, she lowered the gun to her side, took a deep, steadying breath, and looked out the door. But her vision was so blurry, and so much smoke still seemed to be in her eyes from her firing the gun that she couldn’t see clearly. She reached for the handle. The brass was cold, a stark contrast to how hot her body felt. Without thinking, because she didn’t want her dad to suffer any longer if he were still alive, she opened the door.

  Maya opened the door slowly, peering out through the crack, and seeing her father’s still body on the floor across from the door. Blood and chunks of his flesh was splattered along the wall, but as the seconds ticked by she saw the small twitching of her father’s fingers. She started choking up when she heard him gurgle out, and then he lifted his hand slowly. Even with half his face blown off he was still alive, the infection making the dead rise until their brains or spinal cords were severed and destroyed.

  Without postponing this, she lifted the gun, aimed it right between his eyes, and pulled the trigger. And just like that he was done—his life, the infection, and everything that had happened up until this moment snuffed out like a candle’s flame. She wanted to sink to the floor, to let her emotions claim her, but she had to check on her mother even though she knew what she’d find.

  Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Maya moved away from her dad and back into the bedroom. She grabbed a couple more bullets, popped out the empty shells, and reloaded. She then moved back down the hallway and into the kitchen. The electricity had gone out the first week the infection had spread, so now she relied on candles and flashlights. There was a flashlight on the counter, and she grabbed it and turned it on. But she didn’t shine the light on her mother’s body right away, needing to steel herself for what she’d see. After a long moment she lifted the light and shone it on her mom.

  The gag reflex was instant, and she turned and threw up, unable to keep down what little contents she had in her stomach. After she threw up, she wiped her mouth, her tears strong, her pain so monumental she felt like she’d die from it. Reaching out for a towel on the counter, she wiped her mouth again, trying to force herself not to cry. Straightening, she turned and faced what remained of her mother. It was disgusting the amount of flesh her infected father had eaten, and although her mother’s body was in ruins on the ground, the head was intact, and therefore Maya knew the infection would claim her eventually.

  Aiming the gun at her mother’s head, and closing her eyes, she pulled the trigger. The bullet being fired had her ears ringing, but it was the sound of her soul breaking that was the loudest.

  She fell to her knees then, her sobs body-wracking, her breath stalling, and Maya wished that fate wasn’t a scornful bitch. She’d lost the only family she had in this now miserable world, and the thought of facing the destruction of civilization alone was too much to even think about.

  Sherman butted his head up against her arm, and she ran her hand over his smooth body.

  “It’s just you and I now, boy,” she said and started crying harder.

  Even when the world is the darkest, you have to remember that you aren’t dead.

  The words her mother used to say to her rang through her mind, and she knew she couldn’t let this destroy her. There was already enough carnage in this world, and it would only be getting worse. She had to stay strong, not just for the memory of her parents, but for herself as well.

  Chapter Three

  Two weeks later

  In the two weeks since Marius had left the bunker and ventured out into the world, he’d killed a handful of infected. But it wasn’t the infected that kept him up a night, plaguing his thoughts. It was the fact he’d also had to kill a “healthy” human, one who had tried stealing his pack while Marius had napped in the forest after a long day of walking.

  It was that death that had him exhausted because he couldn’t sleep at night. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the other man�
�s eyes widen as Marius plunged the blade in his gut. He didn’t have any other options, though, not when a knife had been pulled on him, too.

  This was a new world, one where it was kill or be killed, stay alive or be a corpse.

  He set up camp in the middle of the woods, far from the road he’d been traveling on. It was safer that way, better to stay hidden from the infected, and anyone that wanted to steal his shit and cut his throat.

  The fire he’d started was small, the smoke slight as it rose up to the treetops. He sat on an overturned log and reached for his backpack. He was running dangerously low on supplies, and hadn’t found anything to scavenge. The few houses he’d passed had been ransacked and all supplies taken. And the stench of death had filled them.

  Things had gone downhill in the last two weeks, the infection spreading far quicker than any of the scientists had anticipated. In the beginning people hadn’t understood what was happening, hadn’t realized that their loved ones that had the virus were not the same. They’d tried to help them, tried to bring them back.

  There was no going back.

  So, in the beginning the infection had spread like wildfire, especially in the parts of the city thick with population.

  He grabbed a can of beans out from his pack, and pushed around the remaining supplies he had. He needed to find a place that was more secure, a place where he could live, grow his own food, survive.

  Marius had wanted to help people, to come to the surface and see if he could rectify, in some small way, the damage he’d been a part of, but there was no help he could give. The ones that weren’t sick were crazed, untrustworthy, and the infected were to the point their bodies were rotting at a frighteningly quick rate.

  He took out his hunting knife, the one he sharpened every night, making sure it could cut through flesh like it was a scorching knife going through a stick of butter. Puncturing the top of the can, he cut enough of it that he could pry the lid open. With no utensils, because that was the least of his worries, Marius started eating the beans with his fingers, scooping them out and staring at the fire.

  The wood crackled as the flames licked at them, and his thoughts moved to a world that had been clean, free of infection, where everything had been taken for granted. He’d taken so many things for granted. He was sure everyone had. The little things that he’d once had, the things he hadn’t really paid attention to that made life easier, seemed like a treasure now.

  He had wanted to do so much with his life, had wanted to get married, have a family, and provide for them.

  Family.

  It had been the one thing he hadn’t really had while growing up. It was one of the reasons he’d gone to school, saturated himself with everything scholastic. That way he didn’t have to think about anything or anyone, didn’t have to realize he was really alone.

  After eating Marius made sure his shit was packed up in case he had to make a quick getaway, and then he laid out a blanket in front of the fire. Staring at the flames as he lay on the material, his head resting in his hand, all Marius thought was how maybe he should have stayed in the bunker with Brandon.

  But no, he knew he couldn’t have stayed there. He would have been ready to tear out of his skin, and he and Brandon would have probably gone after each other because of cabin fever.

  Closing his eyes, letting sleep claim him, Marius let the world vanish around him as the only peace he ever felt—the one he found when dreaming—swept over him.

  ****

  It had taken Maya fourteen days and nights to finally reach where she’d been headed. Her car had run out of gas halfway through the trip, and it had taken triple the time frame it normally would have because she’d had to walk the rest of the way. But she’d kept to the back roads, not about to cut through the city even if it would have shaved some time off her trip.

  The city was just too dangerous, and she’d heard, when the radio had still been working, that the cities were overrun with looters and infected. In those thickly populated areas the disease spread quickly, taking the lives of those that used to be “normal”.

  The road hadn’t been hard, and she had only seen one infected, but that was one too many, especially with the image of her father and lifeless mother to haunt her dreams. What she’d been more afraid of were the healthy humans that now had the run of a lawless land. Rape was probably common, she assumed, given the fact the population was diminished so much. Women had to be a commodity now, too, or at least she figured so from any post-apocalyptic movies she’d seen.

  The images in her head of women being taken as sex slaves, used by various men for their own sexual gratification, had everything inside of her on alert, fearing everyone and trusting no one.

  She’d stayed to the trees, walked during the day, and had camped at night in any “safe” place she could find. Maya was tired, her feet had blisters on them, and she was filthy. But she was alive and finally at her destination, and that’s all that mattered.

  Maya had been deep in the woods for the better part of a day, and the wired gate that went around the house, which had been put up when she was just a child by her father, still stood strong. She needed that gate to help her in keeping this place, her new home, safe.

  Before all of this had gone down with the infection, her family’s plan had been to come to this exact place. They’d waited, stocked up on supplies, weapons, not knowing how long the infection would last, or if help in the form of their government—the ones that had unleashed this hell on Earth to begin with—would come. They’d bided their time until things calmed, were taken care of, or at least they’d hoped on the latter. But her father had then been bitten shortly after everything, and their plans had changed drastically.

  Everything’s different.

  The two-story log cabin had been built before she was even born by her grandfather, was sturdy, protected by the forest and gate, and was her new home. But they’d come here when things had been okay in the world.

  She was high in the mountains, miles from the town below, from civilization, and she felt her safety rise tenfold. The house itself had a natural well, a fully stocked pond—or she hoped it was still stocked—and sat on three acres. The woods surrounded all four sides of the house, and in the back she knew there was a functioning greenhouse. Yes, this had been their retreat, where they’d needed to be in order to stay alive and wait everything out.

  But she was here now, and she had to make things right if she wanted to see this through. She wouldn’t be someone’s whore, and she wouldn’t be a walking corpse. She’d stay alive.

  Maya reached for the loaded gun strapped to her thigh, and advanced on the house. She needed to make sure it was safe before she went inside.

  Moving around to the side, she grabbed a handful of pebbles and crouched behind some thick foliage. Maya tossed them toward one of the windows, and crouched even lower to the ground, waiting to see if a healthy human would come out, or if an infected would stumble toward her because of the noise.

  She waited for several minutes, and then tossed more pebbles to the window. After silence and nothingness greeted her, she was confident that the home was vacant, but still held her gun at the ready. Standing, she adjusted her bag on her back and shoulder, and breathed a sigh. She was here, her new home.

  “Come on, Sherman,” she said and whistled for her dog, who came trotting out of the woods and stopped beside her. She reached down and stroked his head, knowing that she could make this work, could survive. She didn’t have a choice, but she could make the best of it.

  Chapter Four

  Marius pushed away the overgrown branches, held a firm grip on his knife, and was on alert. It had been several weeks of him trekking north, not coming across anything but a few infected that he’d taken out swiftly. He knew they were no longer human, knew that even if they could feel anything, which he highly doubted, he was putting them out of their misery.

  The sun was going to set in the next hour or so, and he didn’t feel confident i
n setting up camp. What he needed to do was get to higher ground, maybe ascend to the mountains. But that logic would most likely have him getting further away from supplies, if there were any to be found.

  There might be lakes higher up, ones with fish.

  His stomach clenched at the thought. He was now surviving off crackers and the little water he had left, and if he didn’t find some substantial food soon he didn’t know how much longer he could last.

  For the next forty-five minutes he climbed higher and higher, going over rocky terrain before it smoothed out and became softer with fallen leaves, patches of flora, and the trees surrounding him. Sweat covered him, and he kept adjusting his bag on his back. The sound of a twig snapping in the distance had him stopping, holding his breath, and turning to survey the land. The trees were thick, blocking out a lot around him, but he listened, trying to hear anything out of the ordinary.

  There might be animals scurrying about, but he didn’t take any chances. Reaching at the small of his back, he pulled out the handgun he had tucked there, and kept scanning the area. The animals didn’t seem to be affected by the infection, for whatever reason, but that was good news for the healthy. That meant they could still hunt and find food in the wild.

  When he didn’t see or hear anything, he turned back around and started moving up the mountain again. The air was getting thinner, and with the exertion he was putting out it made breathing hard. And then the land leveled out, the trees thinned, and he was walking comfortably. For another twenty minutes he trekked through the forest. It was then, as he reached a cleared out valley, that he saw a large farmhouse.

  Fencing was all the way around it, thick wire fencing that would do well at keeping out the infected. He could also see from this angle a pond in the back, possibly stocked with fish, or so he hoped, trying to stay optimistic. A small greenhouse was close to the house, and there was even what looked like a coop and stable, but he didn’t see any animals within them.