#1

He sat there staring out into the darkness that was now his nightmare. He couldn’t help but think how things weren’t always like this. In the darkness, something stirred beside him. Any other time, a moment like that would have caused for quiet a response from him. He knew who it was. She was sleeping. Probably the first real full sleep she has had in the two years since this all happened. Was that all it had been? Just two years? It seemed more like an eternity. As if they were the fallen angels cast down from heaven, this plague of un-death, punishment from the hands that once protected them.

The sun had set hours ago. Yet Sam wouldn’t even dare to think of sleeping right now. Sure, they were on the roof of this 45 story building. Height meant nothing to these creatures. They would smell him somehow and they would get to them. He had to be on his guard now; his senses were now responsible for more than just his life.


He was searching a little “mom and pop” grocery store, when she found him. Ironically he used to go to these stores looking for a date, and now, when it was the furthest thing from his mind, one falls into his lap. The canned goods isle was, like most stores, bare with a few cans left here and there, their edges busted, its rotten contents forced out of the cracks. With there being nothing to stock up on, he was about ready to leave, when he heard a noise. This noise wasn’t the kind that made him jump. It was still a noise and he left nothing to chance. The steps, they staggered, yet no sound of the scrapping, dragging feet he was used to hearing. There was the sound of breathing, though the person seemed almost out of it. Being cautions, that is what had kept him alive this long, and something he was about to forget right now. He looked around quickly, finding a cashier’s conveyer belt to hide behind, he sat and waited.

She sat up quickly. Where was she? She was in a bathroom stall, the kind were the walls went all the way from floor to ceiling. The door was pushed to; boards nailed to it, nothing short of a runaway car could break through there. It was slowly coming back to her now. She had run here, two days ago. The mob of death following her, she busted into the store, and found this spot. Someone else had prepped this place, but there was no-one around. She used it in their stead. She remembered nailing the boards to the door. Stopping with every pound of the hammer to try and figure out if she had given away her location. A simple groaning of the boards flexing under the force of the hammer sent chills down her back, causing her to stop even longer and listen. After the last nail had been driven, she sat back, closed her eyes for what only seemed like a minute and rested. She fell hard into a darkness full of horrors she had only seen in movies and never thought would be true life. Never did she dream that this could, would ever happen in a million years. Now here she was, waking up in a bathroom, her dress no more than a moving first aid bandage. What once was a beautiful floral, ankle length dress was now a tattered and torn knee high rag. Her stomach hurt from the lack of food she hadn’t had. How long had she been out? Two, maybe three days? As slowly as she had put up the boards, she returned them to the floor. Stopping once for a several minutes when she thought she heard footsteps. Dismissed as paranoia, she removed the last board and slowly opened the door. The crowbar firmly in hand, she slowly walked out into the store, knuckles white from clenching the metal.