Nicholas dreaded each day he awakened to find that the world he was living in hadn't been just a passing nightmare. It had all started with a cough that was going around town. A lot of people had come down with it. Those infected would cough their lungs out, day and night. It spiraled into shudders, fevers, vomiting. Eventually, blood replaced those tears, sweat, and vomit. No doctor could put their finger on it. No doctor could cure it. Then, those proclaimed dead started walking. Nicholas had always heard people wishing for a zombie apocalypse, he had even wanted one himself. He never thought it would come true. It was supposed to be impossible.

Not everyone that got sick rose from the dead. In fact, not everyone that got sick died. There wasn't a known cure for it, you just kind of had to let it run its course. Like a cold, except there were no medicines to ease the symptoms. When Nicholas' mother got sick, he hoped and prayed that she would be one of the few who got better.

It had been long since he and his sister carried his mother to the warehouse not too far into town. Their home had begun to be surrounded by the living dead, and they just weren't safe there anymore. It wouldn't be long, he figured, before they came after them again. They would find them, he knew. He just knew he had to protect his mother and sister.

To say the least, he was terrified. He was actually surprised he had lived so long. He wasn't someone like in the movies. He didn't have perfect aim and martial arts skills. He just knew how to hide. He knew how to run.

The weirdest part was, the zombies (for lack of a better term) didn't even want to eat the people they killed. They just wanted to infect. They wanted more people like them. They didn't need to eat anything to survive. They didn't need anything to survive. They just had the desire to kill.

On a fairly cool morning in autumn, Nicholas woke his ten-year-old sister, Alisa, and handed her his rifle.

"I'm going to look for people," he told her in a soft voice. "People who actually know stuff to survive. Please, stay awake and look out for mom. Alright?"

Alisa had nodded groggily and watched as he left the warehouse.

He felt so guilty, leaving his little sister alone with his ill mother. The guilt and worry gnawed at his stomach, making it twist and turn until he felt like he might puke. The morning seemed to be the only time where none of the zombies could be found. He went door to door, looking through houses that were unlocked and leaving the locked ones untouched. He gathered whatever tools and food he could find. He came to a house that seemed to be falling apart.

The door creaked open slowly, hanging off its hinged. He knocked on it lightly and then quietly called out, "Anyone here? I'm, uh, I'm not a zombie..."

What a god-awful bandage, was all Mattie could think, other than that she was so so so thankful that she hadn't broken a bone or snapped a tendon. It had just been a scrape, albeit a deep and nasty one. The apartment building had been almost completely overrun, and, well, there was just no other way. She'd made a rope out of her bedsheets, briefly considered hanging herself, and then used it to climb out of her window. Unfortunately it wasn't quite long enough and she'd fallen the rest of the way, inflicting a horribly-painful gash on her upper left leg.

After that, having attracted the zombies' attention with the sound of her muttered but very emotionally-charged swearing, she'd run, difficult as it was, and taken shelter in a house with a surprising amount of food left in the fridge. But instead of rationing it like a wise human being, she, in her miserable state, guzzled and devoured every edible thing she could find that hadn't spoiled, and then she'd lain on the couch, stolen one of the shirts that she assumed belonged to the previous house owner, tore it up and wrapped it around her oozing wound.

She was half asleep when a voice drifted through the door. Mattie bolted into an upright position and yelped, "Butter my ass and call me a pancake!"

"Uh...what?" Nicholas' eyebrows rose in shock. That was possibly the weirdest phrase he'd ever heard in his life. He peeked around the corner of the wall to his right and saw a young woman sitting on a couch with a makeshift bandage around her leg. He quickly retreated and felt an unwelcome adrenaline rush. "Oh God, you've been bitten."

"No I haven't," she said, straightening herself out and grabbing the crowbar that she'd left on the floor. "This was the price of not being bitten." Her legs wobbled just a little as she stood up. Maybe she'd lost more blood than it looked like. With a huff, she sat back down. "If it's food you want, I ate it all. Yeah, all of it." She glared at Nicholas, not trusting him, and looked at the 'bandage'. It was stained, but it looked like the blood had dried, so hopefully it had stopped.

Nicholas again peeked around the corner, then he shook his head. "I'm not looking for food," he said. "I'm looking for survivors. For help. I've got my sister and my mom down the street." He paused, unsure of what exactly he was going to tell this stranger. He knew he couldn't tell her of his mother's illness because that would decrease the chance of him recruiting her into his "group," as he thought of it. "You can come with us. We're in a warehouse. It's got plenty of tools and a bit of food."

He bit his lip and shook his bag in front of him. "I've got food in here, too. I've been going from house to house looking for people, and I've taken whatever food I found."

Stepping around the wall and holding his hand out toward the young woman, he asked, "What do you say? I'll help you to the building and we can take a look at your wound. I'm Nicholas."

"Survivors, huh? Wouldn't I be just another mouth to feed?" asked Mattie, curious. Regardless of the doubt, she had to consider it. Being in a group would make her safer, so long as the illness didn't worm its way into anyone and then spread. And they had food, or so this Nicholas person claimed, which was a privilege she had wasted in a depressed eating binge that got her nowhere but in tears for the rest of the evening.

Suspiciously and carefully, she shook the man's hand and then used it to pull herself into a standing position. At first this made her dizzy, but she did her best to hide this. "I can walk on my own. It's just a scrape, I think. Oh, and my name's Mattie. I'm in, I guess, but don't cannibalize me if that's not too much to ask." She bent and snatched her crowbar off of the floor (just in case!) and then swiftly headed toward the door. No time to waste.

"I'd start eating bugs before I'd eat human meat," Nicholas cringed, following after her. "Um...I'd rather lead," he tried to say politely, though it came out a bit harsh. Regardless, he stepped in front of Mattie and decided it was best he didn't show any form of weakness. "You may be one more mouth to feed," he told her, "but you're also one more armed...person. To help kill the infected," he clarified, just in case she didn't understand.

It would only take them about ten or fifteen minutes to get back to the warehouse. In that time, there was a fifty percent chance they might encounter a living dead. Nicholas realized he hadn't brought any reliable weapons along, having left his rifle with his little sister. He glanced at Mattie's crowbar and hoped she hadn't noticed his own lack of a weapon. He was prone to last-minute decisions and disorganization. Preparations weren't his best suit.

"So, if you weren't bitten, what exactly did happen to your leg? You said it was to avoid being bitten..."

"Lead on," said Mattie, stepping aside to allow Nicholas ahead of her. She figured that he knew the way best and if they ran into any infected from the front, he'd be the first to be attacked. She didn't like the idea of human meat-shields but with everything she'd gone through already, she was not going to tolerate the idea of being bitten. There was also the chance that he might say something to offend her or creep her out, in which case she could give him a good whack with the crowbar from behind. She doubted the situation would call for that. When he asked what happened to her leg, she grinned a little and launched enthusiastically into story.

"Okay, so, I kinda holed myself up in an apartment while the world went to shit, right? Turns out that was the worst possible decision to have made! Those stinkers found their way up the freaking stairs, and they were trying to break in. So I barricade myself in, but I mean, these guys are like journalists when a celebrity's cheating, okay? And I'm running out of food, and I'm basically out of freaking water, and I'm like, 'How the hell am I gonna get out of here?' Bam. I've got a window. So I climb out of there, but the little rope I fashioned isn't long enough that I can get down without it hurting." She paused to take a breath. "Can't just hang on the wall of an apartment building with a bunch of goddamn zombies after me, so I hopped off. And I suck at landing on my feet, so, bam. I hit the asphalt and rolled a little, but I can't just stay there so I limp off to this house, pick all the rocks out of me and celebrate my flawless ability to survive by eating every thing in the house."

She hoped that her apparent pain tolerance would scare Nicholas out of trying anything funny, like going back on his word about not eating people.

Nicholas found himself staring into the distance as he walked, barely listening to Mattie speak. He often did this when a story was being drawn out more than it needed to be, or when he could already guess what the person was going to say next. Mattie seemed to a be a fairly awkward person - overenthusiastic and...odd in her language. He kind of thought that she would play the awkward geek role perfectly in a modern sitcom.

"Uh-huh," he hummed, as a vague signal that he was still "listening" to her. "Yeah, these...these things are pretty smart. I watched them kill my dad. They didn't even have the desire to, like, eat him or anything." He turned and looked at her, walking backward. "They're not like what you see in the movies. They don't feed. They just...kill."

He shrugged. "So far, nobody in my group has gotten hurt," he said, once again failing to mention his mother's illness. "I think I already told you, it's just me and my sister and, uh, my mom right now."

As they approached the metal building, Nicholas gestured at the door. "It's not even locked, but none of them have tried to get in yet. It's like they're pushed away from this place. I dunno what it is." He looked around cautiously, "And it doesn't seem like any of them are around here, right now, at least."

He knocked on the door as a warning for his sister, "Alisa, it's me. I brought someone."

To be completely honest, leaving his little sister alone with his infected mother wasn't the best idea Nicholas had ever thought up. He thought giving the ten-year-old girl a rifle would be enough protection for her, even though she'd never used a firearm in her life. Still, it was a shock when he opened the doors only to be charged at by Alisa, who was now a member of the living dead, along with their mother.

"Oh, shit!" he gasped, instinctively lifting his leg and kicking her back as far as he could. "Oh God, oops. Alisa, I'm sorry. Oh my God," he put his hands to his face and pulled the doors shut again, but Alisa opened them right back up.

While he managed to duck past her and into the warehouse, now he had his mother to worry about. He looked back at Mattie and saw Alisa heading for her as well, and of course, his rifle was not conveniently placed where he could just grab it and kill. No, it was all the way across the room.

Oh, God. How awful that this man had seen his father die. Mattie wasn't entirely sure what it was like exactly to even have a father, but it must have been traumatic to watch that. She, for once, was grateful that her parents had died before she ever got to know them. Her gait was relaxed, though, when Nicholas spoke about how no one in his group was hurt and that the infected didn't seem to like the warehouse. Now this was a place she could hang around!

Swiftly her mind was changed by a very pale-looking little girl lunging for her. "Jesus, Mary, Joseph and company!" she shrieked and dove sideways clumsily just in time to avoid a face-full of dead person teeth. After that there was no hesitation. The crowbar swung in a wide arc and connected with the girl's head, sending a splatter of old-smelling blood into the air and making the attacker sprawl pathetically on the ground. Not sure if the child would get up again, Mattie ran into the warehouse after Nicholas with her chest heaving. She wasn't thinking right now. She was just getting ready to bash more dead brains in.

Her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she spotted a gun of some sort on the far side, as well as an older woman. "I'll distract her!" she shouted, raised the crowbar, and charged.

"No!" Nicholas yelled. "I-I mean-" he didn't finish. Instead, he shut his mouth and made a dash for the rifle. He'd briefly wondered if Alisa survived, but by the blood stains on Mattie's clothes, he could determine otherwise.

"I'm sorry mom," he mumbled as he loaded the rifle. He lifted it up and aimed for his mother's head, finger off the trigger. He made an annoyed tsk sound, because Mattie was in the way. Then, he figured he shouldn't get annoyed because she was trying to help him. So he aimed, waited, and fired.

Only to miss.

His mother turned around, not paying Mattie anymore mind. She started after him and he cursed under his breath, quickly and clumsily trying to re-load this stupid, ancient, one-shot rifle that he didn't even remember where he got it from. He backed up, successfully reloaded the rifle, and shot his...mother right in the head.

After being hit, the woman stopped walking. She swayed a bit, and her eyes changed. She looked at Nicholas with a pained expression and said, "Nicholas? Why are you hurting me?" before dropping to the ground.

Mattie had gotten a couple of hits on the woman, but it was nothing like the single hit that had sent most of Alisa's head into the air. Her breath came heavily as she stared at the corpse on the ground in front of her. For a while, she was too shocked and horrified to say or do anything. Then a memory started to register, and her fingers tightened around the crowbar while her expression turned into a snarl.

"You said no one was hurt and that the damn things were pushed away from this place!" she shouted at Nicholas. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Deep breaths, Mattie. She struggled to keep her head clear enough not to try beating this man to death with the crowbar; after all he had a gun now. "I mean, I knew the people who weren't turned into zombies were screwed in the head, but you've probably hit humanity's new low." She backed toward the door.

Nicholas dropped the rifle on the ground, staring at his dead, undead, then dead again mother. Her voice replayed those words over and over again in his head, even as he felt his face heat up with anger and humiliation at Mattie's string of obscenities. He took several deep breaths through his nose, trying to get his breathing and his anger under control. His head was fuzzy, his vision not blurred but not focused. He looked at Mattie as she backed toward the exit, and he felt like he might cry.

"Don't go," his voice betrayed him and he choked on his words. "My mom was sick. I didn't know this would happen. My sister..." he stopped, realizing now that everyone he knew was probably dead. He hadn't had the opportunity to check up on any of his other friends or relatives. He just knew that now, his immediate family was dead and there was a girl getting ready to haul tail out the door and down the street at any wrong move Nicholas made or wrong tone of voice he used.

"I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt," he said, rubbing his moist eyes with his fists. "God. I just wanted to save her."

He looked at Mattie, and again he begged, "Don't go..."

Mattie let out an angry huff and glared at Nicholas. Was she still angry? Absolutely. But at the same time, she had to admit that the guy had just lost both his sister and his mother in the course of a few minutes. She put her hand on her hip, not sure what to say to him, but feeling slightly less inclined to smash his face into a wall. For most, being alone was the worst feeling in the world, and as pissed off as she was she felt it would be way too cold to just leave him. And it was true, wanting to save his mother had been noble, even if it wasn't the the most practical decision.

Finally she spoke. "I don't exactly have anywhere to go, anyway. But don't lie again, alright? We could both have ended up just like them." Mattie knew she was going to have to deal with grieving on Nicholas' part now, and she had absolutely no experience or know-how with it. She took a deep breath. "We have to get the bodies away. And I need new clothes, preferably without any bloodstains." Her voice shook a little. She herself felt close to bursting into tears, but she'd do that later.

"Don't touch your face at all for now. It spreads that way," he muttered. Wearily, and feeling drained of all strength emotionally and physically, Nicholas grabbed his mother's hands and dragged her past Mattie and out into the street. Then, he followed the same procedure with his sister. He went back into the warehouse and retrieved a bottle of lighter fluid and a box of matches. Without hesitation, mostly because he didn't want to look at their lifeless bodies, he threw a lit match onto them and backed away when they burst into flames. He stared for only a minute before he turned around.

"Fire's what completely kills them," he told her. "Smashing their heads in and even shooting them in the head doesn't work, it only knocks them out. They get right back up within a few hours. Only if you take their heads off or burn them."

He nodded and walked past her, back into the building. He gathered the four backpacks that he, his mother, and his sister had been carrying (he carried two) and emptied them. His two machetes and a combat knife that he'd forgotten about clinked onto the floor. He put them in one of the bags, along with his rifle (which obviously stuck out of the top of the bag) and a small pile of remaining ammunition. He wasn't a big gun person so he had no idea what to do when he ran out of bullets.

Nicholas stuffed two of the blankets into another bag, careful not to put his mother's in with them. He managed to fit three bottles of water into the bag along with the blankets, then moved onto the next one. He crammed as many cans of Spam and black-eye peas out of two of the boxes he'd taken from the warehouse's shelves. In the next bag, he carefully put a few loafs of bread on top of a couple of boxes of macaroni and cheese (because he wasn't sure if they were ever going to have the opportunity to make the macaroni and cheese.)

He put the backpack with the canned foods on his back, and carried the one with the weapons in his hand. He looked at Mattie and said, "You can carry the other two. They're the lightest."

Mattie shuddered from her head to her toes. The fact that he brought it up made her face itch, and as with most itches, it took just about all of her willpower not to scratch at it. Her spine felt cold as she turned around and watched the bodies burn, the wretched smell swirling up into her nostrils. She leaned on the wall and watched Nicholas pack the backpacks through half-lidded eyes. She'd been hoping to sleep all day and just be too boring and lazy to attract anyone's attention. And then this had happened.

Then when he told her to carry the lighter backpacks--was that a jab?-- she threw aside her blood-spattered crowbar with a loud metallic clatter. "You saying I'm weak, you little asshole? Give me one of the heavier ones. We're equals." With that, she snatched the weapon-filled backpack from his hand and shouldered it. Then she grabbed one of the lighter backpacks and headed outside. She still wasn't quite sure if she wanted to trek around with this guy, but since he had entrusted her with two packs full of supplies she felt kind of stuck with him.

The weight of the pack made her grunt with effort, but her stubborn expression made it clear that she wouldn't take any other option.

Nicholas felt a lump in his throat, discourage by the miscommunication. "I just- I didn't want to make you-" he sighed, giving up. He hadn't meant her any harm at all. He just wanted to carry the heavier ones so that she wouldn't have to. Not to mention, she unnecessarily, once again, used obscenities and then proceeded to insult him.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, feeling his chest ache. He had no one now, and Mattie didn't seem to like him. It was understandable, he reckoned. He did lie to her. He really didn't mean her any harm, though. So, now he was stuck with a girl that seemed to hate him, after just having to burn the bodies of his ten year old sister and his mother. He took a deep breath through his nose, shut his eyes for a brief moment, and then started walking down the street.

"There's a refuge camp around here somewhere. Or, so I heard. After half the population of this town got infected, I heard something about it on the radio. I didn't pay attention to it, though. I guess I should have. I just thought my dad was gonna take care of everything." He shrugged. "But we see how that turned out."

He felt shivers down his spine. It was weird to be walking out in the open. This part of town didn't have many trees around. It was pretty much open fields for what seemed like miles, but really wasn't that far. There wasn't a single living, dead, or undead body in sight. Where had all the infected gone?

"Do you think they die?" he asked her, briefly looking over his shoulder. "Come up here beside me."

Grudgingly, Mattie followed him, wondering about the refuge camp. She hadn't had access to radio for a long time, so she hadn't heard anything about it, and she wished that she had. She told herself to be a little easier on Nicholas, and followed (in no apparent hurry) to stand beside him. She sighed, feeling that she would have to speak calmly at this point or risk being turned away.

"They must die," she said, but with a tinge of uncertainty; these things were like nothing she'd ever seen or experienced, and not in a good way. "Whatever's infecting them turns their own body against itself, and if that happens I'm sure everything would fail. Maybe it's like...a ramped-up version of rabies." She hesitated. "Then again, if you shoot a rabid dog in the head, it stays dead... so I don't know."

She changed the subject, as she wasn't very keen on speculating something so unsettling. "It's either we find the camp or head to the country and live off the land, if it hasn't been overrun. And keep in mind...living in groups can help, but if one person gets sick, it's very likely to spread. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it's already full of zombies. Not all these people are careful about who they let in. If they are careful, I'm not getting in, not like this," she added, gesturing to the round splotches of blood on her shirt.

"Yeah, I know," he said, referring to her comment about her soiled clothing. "We're gonna find you something to wear. Let's just kind of get moving a bit. I know it's probably disgusting," he looked over at her. "Here, let's try here."

They hadn't walked very far, but Nicholas randomly chose a house to stop in. He imagined that Mattie was very uncomfortable in her blood-stained clothing. He wouldn't want to be walking around wearing them, either.

Mattie hurried inside the house and breathed a sigh of relief at the thought of different clothes. She went up some stairs in search of a closet, found a woman's bedroom, and rummaged through her wardrobe. Without a second thought as to whether or not she'd been followed, she pulled on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a jean jacket that looked a little stupid but which Mattie wore regardless. Then she grabbed a pair of sunglasses and put those on.

Next stop: Bathroom. She found some makeup-removal wipes and went through all of them to get the blood droplets off of her skin, tested to sink to see if it worked (it didn't), and investigated the woman's makeup collection (it looked awful). "Boom! I'm a new person now," she said loudly as she headed back down the stairs, but then she made a stop in the laundry room. There had to be some, come on, come on... and there it was! A bottle of unscented bleach.

Mattie grabbed the container and nodded satisfied at its weight; it seemed at least half full to her. She stuffed it into one of the backpacks and turned her head. "I'm good, unless you want to loot the place. It's pretty untouched."