The First Days (As the World Dies 1)

"Ricky, go with your sister," she answered firmly. "Douglas, give me Angie. "

The man began to weep as he neared his wife. She looked as good as dead, looking worse by the moment. Reluctantly, he held out the small, precious bundle to her.

"Now, go with our other kids to safety. Go!" Catherine held her daughter tightly to her, cradling her head against her shoulder. "Go!"

Jenni motioned to the kids to get on the bus and they obeyed. They looked shell-shocked and terrified, but they obeyed. Curtis took hold of Douglas' arm and guided him to the bus. The man could not take his eyes off his wife and child.

"If we can get them to a doctor…" he mumbled.

Curtis shoved him up into the bus and climbed in after him.

Catherine stared at Jenni sadly and her grip tightened on her daughter as the small form began to thrash and growl. Blood splattered across her cheek and lips as she gripped the child close.

Jenni raised the rifle and the woman looked down at her undead child that was tearing away at her breast. She nodded tears on her cheeks.

"Catherine! Catherine!"

Jenni could hear the woman's husband and children screaming.

She fired.

The first shot stilled the child and tore a hole through Catherine's chest.

The woman was falling when the second bullet caught her and ripped the top of her head off.

Jenni turned and got onto the bus in silence. She looked at the father who was clutching his children to him and weeping. She gazed at the two kids who were near hysterics as they clung to their father.

Curtis was pale and had tears in his eyes. Bill looked calm and resigned to it all.

Jenni slammed the door shut and leaned against it. Tears slid down her own cheeks as she thought of her dead children and once more felt the sting of their deaths. She hated the world in that moment. Hated everything about it. How it stole children from parents and parents from children. She never wanted to experience this again. Never wanted to see a family torn apart by this plague of living death. But she knew that she would and it made her angry.

If she could help it, she would never let it happen again.

"When we get back, I'm going to hug Jason so tight," Jenni said softly to Bill.

He nodded at her and put the bus in gear and they started the return trip back to the fort.

2. The Quiet Before The Storm

Katie walked up the stairs to one of the main platforms overlooking the new entry point. The sun was setting and the construction crew was working hard until the last shards of light faded.

It was coming along quickly, with the construction crew working around the clock. It was rough going and stressful. There had been a few attacks by zombies, but the guards had managed them with no loss of life. As the days wore on and small raiding parties went out into the town (always within a few blocks of the fort) to salvage what they could, a trickle of survivors began to arrive. They were usually pale shadows of the people they had been, near starvation, and sometimes severely dehydrated.

Belinda, the town librarian, had hunkered down with a stack of medical books and tried hard to make do with the supplies that had come in from the local drugstore and the convenience store. She wanted desperately for them to raid the clinic, but Juan had explained that the clinic was packed to the gills with zombies. If they went into the clinic, it would have to be carefully planned out and loss of life would have to be expected.

Katie rubbed the tip of her nose and sighed. Her face was slowly healing and now there was just a pale swath of green and purple bruising. Her lip had healed and the soreness was fading. But she still felt battered and bruised from that huge battle. The terror she had felt plus the raw energy of the kills, and shooting that man and just not giving a damn.

That still haunted her. She had killed him and not cared. At first, she had not been certain why she had found it so easy to pull the trigger, then after her dream, she had understood.

After someone was bitten, the end result was inevitable. To put them out of their misery quickly and efficiently was not only humane, but also necessary for the safety of all. She knew that, of course, in theory. But the sheer horror of knowing that Lydia was still out there, undead, destroying other lives, was too much to bear if she gave it too much thought.

Looking over what had been accomplished so far, Katie couldn't help but smile. The outline of the enormous lock system was up. A sturdy, high wall, three feet thick, extended the length of a block and a half. They had blocked both ends of the block to construct the wall with the storage containers and other heavy equipment. They had gone into each empty, abandoned building to make sure it clear. The wall had gone up as fast as they could get it up. The abandoned businesses had not been incorporated into the fort due to their dilapidated condition, but the wall had been built right up against them.

Travis explained they planned to use the rooftops for sentry duty. Any entrances to the roofs of these buildings had been cemented over. Nothing or no one could get up on top of the buildings or scale the wall. Fire escapes had been dismantled and the parts moved into the fort. Everything that could be used was being salvaged.

The new gates were being tested. They had been giving the workers some trouble, but it seemed the problem had been solved. The second set of gates would be going up soon inside the long narrow entry point. Already a fence was being constructed to keep guards safe and slow the zombies down in case of infiltration.

"Looking good, isn't it?" Travis joined her and smiled.