Chapter One

          ……”Daddy, why does God allow bad things to happen, if he is so good?”, asked my son while we were in church. Father O’Laughlin began to preach about God’s everlasting love. I looked down at him, his eyes as wide as the moon. I smiled at him and stroked his cheek.     As I began to give him the best possible answer I could think of, two withered hands covered my mouth. A cold, dark void began to encompass the two of us. As I struggled with the monstrous hands against my mouth, two more of the hideous hands came out of the darkness, grabbing my wrists and pinning my arms at my sides. Struggling even harder now, I looked down at his sweet, innocent face. A lone tear began to roll down his left cheek. As he lifted his disappointed face to look at me, something grabbed him by the ankles, dragging him into the dark, cold abyss.

          “DADDY!!!!!!”, he screamed.

          I struggled against my bindings as he disappeared into the darkness surrounding me. My eyes raised in horror as a child’s scream echoed through the black……

    
……Screaming, I awoke inside the APX, sweat dripping off my brow. This all too realistic vision has plagued my sleep for the last five months. This is why sleep has become a stranger to me. I looked around, assessed my surroundings and noticed that my scream had not roused the men from their spots, casually keeping watch out the windows. Guess screams aren’t in short supply anymore.

We were trekking our way through Indiana. Unfortunately, we had not encountered a single sign of life out on the road since we left base camp. Out in these parts it seemed like there wasn’t much life for some time, fields overgrown and unattended, cars scattered across the highway. This was definitely a gloomy scene.

I pulled a cigarette out of my jacket, lit it and took a long, hard drag.

“Got another?”, said a voice off my right. It’s funny, up till now, I really had not conversed with any of my men since leaving base camp, yet I would trust them with my life! His name was Tim. He was mid 20’s, tall, good build. He took the cig from me, tapped it on his knee and lit it with much of the same finesse as James Dean did in “Rebel without a Cause”. “You know I never smoked or drank until all this shit started. Funny, world goes to hell and we still try to kill ourselves. That’s true irony!”, he stated as he stared at the butt between his fingers, “Where were you from?”

I looked at him. “I came from small town outside of Baltimore, Severn, MD. My family and I moved there when I got a job working for the Department of Defense in D.C. I’m originally from Virginia. And you?”, I asked.

He took the last drag from the smoke and died it out on the heel of his boot. He looked down at the floor with eyes like a timid child. Times like these always seemed to break even the strongest soul, down, make them weak. He just sat there looking at the floor for a minute. I knew that look all too well: Fear, Distress and Desperation. He took a deep breath, and began to speak in a voice so soft I almost couldn’t hear him. “I grew up on the south side of Chicago, a small suburb named Cicero. When I graduated high school, I went right into the police force. My father and grandfather were both cops. I was doing my patrol when the first of these maniacs hit the city. It was utter chaos! People being attacked and eaten right there in the streets! I tried to get as many survivors as I could out of the city and into the base camp, yet I still feel like I could have done so much more!”, he explained as he began to choke up. Besides Marcus and Todd, I was the oldest in our group. It’s so hard to believe that someone so young could have been that brave in this time of crisis.

Marcus was the only African American in our group. He was my first lieutenant and second in command. Todd was the second lieutenant. Tim, Ethan and Shane were all enlisted men, privates that had only been in service since the draft. We all had a job on this mission besides finding survivors, much like how the military was when the world was whole. Marcus was our engineer and control specialist. His job was make to make sure our weapons and vehicle were working properly. Todd was our sharpshooter. It was rumored around BCNC that he had a shot record of over 2,000 decedents in his stay at base. He was also the only when of active duty status when they came. Ethan was our technical whiz. He was in charge of our radio broadcasts and anything to do with the tech aspect of our job. Shane was demolitions. He made the boom-booms when things got hairy. Tim was our navigator. He was in charge of making sure our maps were updated and our route was the quickest way to point A. With me in charge, we seemed like a pretty good team.

Tim, having sat there silent for a minute, looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “When do you think this will all be over?”, he asked me, voice faltering with fear. I looked him dead in the eyes. My fear and tension also brewing and gave him the only answer I could find, “When God sees fit!”

Another hour had passed as we finally made our way through the fields of Michigan. All of us were tired and hungry by now, only sensible thing to do was stop for awhile, besides I could use a stretch. I opened the door, stepped out and that’s when I saw them: the first sign of any life out on the road, unfortunately, they weren’t alive! I called to the other men who came as quickly as they could. We assessed the scene. Amid the broken down vehicles along the highway stood ten to twelve of them, just standing there, not moving. They looked more like statues than the walking dead!

“What are they doing? Are they alive?”’ asked Shane.

“Can’t tell,”, replied Ethan, “maybe they sleep standing up?”

For a moment we just stared at them. The blank, motionless faces; the grey, decayed skin. “They don’t sleep!”, I interjected, and for one brief moment I felt sorry for them. They didn’t ask to be this way! They didn’t ask for the loss of free will, to roam the earth with one thought process: to consume the flesh of the living!

“They’re frozen.”, noticed Todd. He reminded me a lot of myself in Desert Storm: cold, unnerving and perceptive.

“Yes, I noticed that too.”, I said, “Let’s keep moving!”

As we all climbed aboard the vehicle, I couldn’t help think about the advantage we had over them with the cold. Something told me this might be a small, silver lining. As the engine roared to life, I sat down and a small smile came across my face.

We moved forward, full speed toward the frozen bodies standing in the road. We a loud thump, thump, thump we plowed through cars and corpses. With each body shattering and the crunching under our wheels, I could feel my stomach turn. To me, this seemed so inhumane!, Inhumane? Was it not inhumane to see those animals break into the church my family and I were attending, and attack all those innocent people, including my wife and son, when the world fell out? I closed my eyes as the last of them fell beneath our wheels, drifting off to the hum of the engine and cheer of my comrades. Oh what a cruel, cruel world!

……”Daddy, why is God so mad?”, my son’s voice wafted up through the upper balconies of the church I was in again, “Why is he so angry?” I looked around to find the church completely empty, except for the few coats, hats and purses that littered the pews. Seemed like everyone left in a hurry! “Hello????????”, I called out. No answer! Other than the belongings, everyone was gone! I ran to the back of the church. The echoes of the wind wisped through the open space. A lump began to form in the back of my throat. I tried the door, I wanted out! Damn! Locked! As I struggled, pulling on the door, yanking and yanking with all my might, my son’s soft voice called at me from behind. “Daddy?”, he softly whispered. I turned to look at him, as a tear ran down my cheek. There he was, only it wasn’t him exactly. I mean it was him, just different! His skin was pale and gray, in some spots horribly decayed. His hair was matted with dry, brown blood from the wound on his head. His eyes, oh his eyes, were extremely bloodshot and evil looking, almost as gray as his skin. He just stared at me with those eyes! As I looked down at him, I could feel the lump in my throat rising. Tears began to well up in the corners of my eyes. He raised his tiny hand and pointed it directly at me. “It’s your fault, Daddy! It’s your fault God is mad!!!!!!!!”, he screamed at me. The tears began to fall in buckets from my eyes as I stared at him. I dropped to my knees, head in hands, and shook my head with such force I thought I was going to snap my neck! “No!”, I sobbed into my hands, “I did everything I could! I…did…everything…I…could!!!!!” My head began to feel heavy. Anger began to build from somewhere deep inside the pit of my stomach. My teeth began to grind. With one last ounce of strength, I shot my head up toward the ceiling, teeth barred, and shouted with every breath I had left, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO……

……OOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!” I was still screaming as Tim shook me awake. “We’re almost there.”, he explained, “You ok?”

“Yeah, fine keep your eyes peeled!”, I ordered. I looked at my watch, 13:25, wow I couldn’t believe I slept, even if it was plagued once again. I stood up, stretched, and peered out the windows at a small town that reminded me of back home. It was Ann Arbor, or what was left of it anyway. What used to be a vibrant college town, was now reduced to nothing. Broken down cars, litter all over and broken store fronts from looters taking what they needed to survive was all that was left up business 94 into the heart of town.

We made a left on Main Street to see if anything was up near the college hospital, maybe, survivors had made it to there and sheltered themselves. I kept hoping for a sign of people we weren’t seeing, survivors with hope of rescue. My heart began to race and a cold shiver washed over me as the eerie new ghost town moved past my window.

“Marcus stop!”, I ordered. As we came to halt, he jumped out of the driver’s seat to join us at the window. “What is it?”, he asked, looking at me like with disdain. “Look, there!”, I pointed to our right. What looked like dried blood or mud were written the words “ALIVE INSIDE” across the front of a giant white building there on Main. It was the first national bank. “What do you think, sir?”, Tim asked. “I’m not positive, but I’m willing to bet my left nut that there is at least one person in there!”, I replied.

“How can you be sure?”

“I’ve seen it before! Found the same scene back in Old Chicago. Giant sign scrawled across the front of Union Station. I worked my way inside, fighting off those things and following the signs down into the massive train tunnels. There, alone on a split track, was a solitary passenger car with the final sign on it, “ALIVE INSIDE”. I broke in, scanned the area for life and found nothing but death! It was nothing but dead people strewn about the seats.  As I was about to leave, I heard the slow and raspy breaths of something in the back. Moving slowly to the back, I came across a small boy, not more than 10, peering over the seats, staring in shock……”, I faltered as the words left my mouth.

“What if you’re wrong, sir, no offence, what if they’re in there?”, interjected Todd, “What if your leading us into hell?”

“Then we go in guns blazing! I just know there is someone in there, and I can’t just leave them behind! Suit up! Let’s move out!”, I ordered. And with that, my warriors were ready for anything. Protection for us was a must! Not knowing how or why the disease spread, we had to remain ever vigilant. We knew bites caused people to change, but was it airborne? Was it in the water, the walls, and the ground? Until we knew what we were dealing with or how it spread, we remained ready! We gathered up outside the APX. I ordered the men to form up, two by three, Marcus and I leading the charge toward the front of the bank. We scanned the area, side by side. All seemed clear! I looked at the men, the fear and adrenaline on their faces said it all. With one raise of my hand, M16’s grasped firmly, we moved toward our goal in side step formation.