Blake Holloway laid on his bed, counting each individual groove on the bedroom ceiling in silence.

Since his wife had passed just prior to the apocalypse to cancer, moments like these had become part of his morning ritual. It was as if he had been frozen in a catatonic state, unable to move from where he laid. On most days, at least prior to the apocalypse, the alarm clock would endlessly buzz until the oldest of his two children would come by to wake up her father and get him out of bed. What was once a proud, confident man was now broken and in shambles, marching only forward each day for his daughters—and even that was often a challenge for him.

A knock on the bedroom door. Blake tilted his head towards the noise, before eventually sitting upwards in the bed as his eldest entered the room to wake her father.

"It's time to get up."

Blake didn't offer a response, instead climbing out of bed without a word. He shuffled towards the bathroom, while his daughter went back downstairs, presumably to watch over her younger sister.

Shutting the door behind him, Blake readied himself a shower. He deliberately set the temperature on cold, letting the freezing water rush over his hair. It made him feel alive. That he wasn't just a hollow, discarded husk of a man. But most of all, it awoke something deep within him—an emotion he hadn't regularly felt in years.

For the first time since the birth of his youngest, he cried.

"It's time to get up."

Holly sighed as her father stumbled out of bed. She wasn't a stranger to his pain; just as he lost a wife, she and her sister both lost a mother. Deep down, though, Holly knew that their family couldn't keep going on like this, least they lose their father as well. She couldn't keep being the responsible parent of the house, especially now in a time like this. It hadn't been her father comforting her younger sister when the town seemed to explode last night, nor was it him ensuring that the three of them still had food to eat. No, it had all been Holly—a simple high school girl woefully unprepared to fill shoes too big for her.

The stress was getting to Holly, and it was certainly only going to get worse. There wasn't much more she could take.

Heading down the stairs to the kitchen, Holly took a seat at the dining table beside her sister, Morgan. She smiled at Morgan as she tried to think of something to talk about that didn't relate to their current situation. As much as Morgan had needed to know for her own safety, Holly dreaded telling her that the world was no more. That there were man-hungry zombies roaming everywhere in their hometown and beyond, eager to eat them alive.

They were things you just couldn't tell a five year old kid, Holly felt. It was better to shelter Morgan as best as she could from the outside world, not scare her to death with reality. She hardly understood why their mother was gone, what hope did Holly have to tell her the truth here?

"Mr. Fluffykins says thank you," Morgan broke the silence, pretending that her stuffed cat was eating a plate of instant mix pancakes. "Ohm-nom-nom-nom!" She continued, making fake "cat-eating-a-pancake" noises.

"Well, Mr. Fluffykins better eat it all. I worked very hard to make those pancakes, you know."

"But—"

"No butsies." Holly got up from the table, and opened the kitchen fridge. She pulled out a cannister of whipped cream, and gave it a slight shake. "Or else he won't get the last bit of whipped cream with them."

"F-Fine..."

"I thought that would get him to eat." Holly replied, smiling once more.

This wasn’t exactly what Hailee Graves expected.

In normal circumstances, she’d be in class, finishing up her senior year until June finally eclipsed Huddeen. Instead of being bored in her first class of the morning, however, she was stuck at home thinking. Her mother had gone out with her brother, to run some supplies to some families further away from the town center then they were. Because that’s what they were now. Survivors.

“Don’t go into town alone.” She muttered, throwing a baseball in the air as she sat on a bench outside, “Don’t get grabbed. No shit, Mom.”

She rolled her eyes as her hand swiped the ball out of the air.

She could be left alone at home, but she couldn’t go anywhere–especially not into town–by herself. A restriction her good old, totally always present, always reliable mother couldn’t really enforce but one Lee didn’t exactly have the moxie to challenge either. The warnings sounded eerily like the ones when she and a bunch of other kids went to the city for a concert. A small indie rock show. Though, this time the creepers were creepers. In stories like this, not that she read those kinds of stories, the mechanics and mythology of the monsters didn’t always make sense and sometimes they weren’t explained in the first place. At the end of the day, if she had to deal with a creep, she had a good softball bat at her feet if need be.

Creeps. Yeah, that was a name that could work. Felt less absurd than “zombie” or whatever. That’s what she’d call them.

“See one. Aim for the head.” She thought out loud as she threw the baseball up in the air again. “If they even come around.”

At least she wouldn’t have to deal with her mom teaching 12th Grade English & Literature again. Having your mom as one of your teachers sucked. Though, having her as a survivor might’ve been worse. Whatever. Not like she could do anything about it.

There was no light streaming in through the open window when Patrick woke up.

He hadn’t felt his wife leave the bed, hadn’t smelt the fresh morning coffee that she had started, his exhaustion filling every bone in his body. Taking stock of what all they had had kept him up into the early hours of the morning, and even with the pure exhaustion he felt, his body wasn’t letting him rest. It was telling him to keep going, and as his mind turned, that was the only thing that he could think. Keep going.

Sitting up, his tired eyes trailed to his wife, standing motionless by the bedside window. She clutched a cup of coffee so hard her knuckles were white, and she was nearly shaking as her vacant eyes stared at one solitary place, unmoving. ”Margaret…” Patrick nearly whispered, hoping to not scare the woman. His wife remained deathly still.

Creeping out of bed, he first touched her side as he drew near, tentatively, as if touching her would have her burst into ash. When she remained as still as ever, he slowly wrapped his arms around her with his chest touching her back, enveloping her in a tight hug that he hoped would bring her out of her trance and into safety.

“It’s okay, Mar. It’s okay. We’re going to be okay,” Patrick spoke into her shoulder, his words muffled by her clothes. This wasn’t the first time he had had to comfort her like this, and it sure wouldn’t be the last. A sob ripped through her then, her coffee mug spilling from her hands as she turned into her husband. Comfort was the only thing that he could give her now, and he prayed that his words weren’t a lie.

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The sound of banging echoed around the kitchen. A bat sat on the kitchen table, the wood cracked in a few places, with nails sticking out from the barrel. Another bat sat in a young man’s lap, teeth gritting as he pounded another nail into it. Weapons were Tommy’s first priority. Whatever these things were, they had to be killable.

A wild explanative shot through the kitchen as when the hammer fell, it hit against thumb instead of nail. “God dammit!” His hand flailed around as the pain throbbed through it, subsiding slowly. He couldn’t hold a nail now, though, another string of curses slipping from his lips.

“You’re being annoying,” his eyes narrowed as he shot a glare towards his younger sister, Emily rolling her eyes as she moved towards the cabinets, beginning to search for her breakfast.

“At least I’m doing something to keep us safe. What are you doing?” Tommy fired back, putting his latest project onto the table. She mimicked his words, mocking him, but said nothing back to defend herself. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he stood up, picking up the bat he had finished, and made to leave the room when another figure stepped in his way. The Bailey Matriarch, his “step-grandmother”, gave him a long, hard look.

“Thomas-”

“It’s Tommy.”

A sigh left her lips as she shook her head. “You and I need to go into town.”

“What?” Tommy was beginning to shake his head, his mouth opening in protest, when a wrinkled hand lifted to silence him. His mouth set into a hard line, her eyes telling him that he wouldn’t really have a choice in the matter.

“The diner still has some food stock, we need to get to it,” she moved around Tommy, making her way to a cabinet, and began to pull out reusable tote bags. The young man just watched her, his grip tightening on the bat in his hands. His gaze drifted to his younger sister, Emily having stopped her scrounging now, their eyes locking. Her eyes said what her mouth wouldn’t; “be careful.”

There were no more words exchanged between the family - they all knew that this had to be done. Whatever food they could get, they needed to get, at whatever cost they had. Cynthia led Tommy through the living room and out the front door, into the world that had changed completely from what they once knew.

Jake Gauthier sat at the kitchen table staring out the back window into the tree line behind the house. His thoughts wandered to the friends he’d known for the past twenty years working for the railroad. First, it was the Springfield Terminal Railway owned by Pan Am, and then the name changed to Pan Am Railway and was finally bought out by CSXT earlier this summer. As long as he received a paycheck he didn’t care who owned the railroad.

They are all fucking gone,’ Jake thought to himself. Every friend he knew over the past twenty years was gone. Everyone he knew from the first battalion thirty-sixth infantry of the first armor division was gone too; at least the closer ones who he kept in touch with. This was the unit he served with in Germany and subsequently in Iraq. They were responsible for the Area of Operations just north of Baghdad, Iraq (The Green Zone) starting in May 2003 until his End of Time in Service (ETS) date sent him back to the world and Concord, New Hampshire.

Jake hefted the cup of coffee and sipped at the black liquid unspoiled by sugar or cream. A movement to his right startled him.

“Hey, Dad!” Jake Junior walked into the kitchen and by habit opened the refrigerator door. He found a bottle of milk that had not soured yet and retrieved it. Just before the 17-year-old high school senior was about to drink from the bottle, his father yelled at him.

“Get a glass you neanderthal!”

The teen lowered the bottle of milk and placed it on a counter to the right of the sink. He opened the cupboard door above the counter and pulled out a glass. He poured the milk and then searched for a bowl for some cereal. He then found a box of Cheerios and filled the bowl. He ate the cereal dry and drank the milk after sitting at the table across from his father.

“What do you think we should do, Dad?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. It is a good idea to find new locations to look for food. We could take my pickup truck to one of the neighboring towns and see if there are any goods to be had in the Walmart or a Hannaford’s.” Jake took another tug on the coffee. “You know, we should go on a hunting trip and bring back a deer.”

“It’s not hunting season, Dad.”

The father smiled at his son, “Jake, there is no such thing anymore. We can go hunting at any time. Just need to keep an eye out for those Creeps. That reminds me, we need to start carrying a sidearm all the time. Also, equip yourself with a quiet melee weapon and know how to use it. At least have something handy. You don’t know when you will need it.”

Jake Junior and Jake Senior continued to eat their breakfast when Jennifer Gauthier came into the kitchen. She sat down next to her father without saying a word. She has had a saddened expression for the past week or more.

“How’s it going punkin?” her father asked her.

“kay,” Jenn muttered. There was an uncomfortable silence at the kitchen table. “Have you heard from Aunt Leslie, Uncle John or Aunt Clarice, Dad?”

“No,” Jake spoke and went back to staring out the window.

“The cell phones are still working. Wouldn’t they text?”

“They would if they could.”

“How’s your leg treating you, Ted?”

“Healing fine. I’ll be walking again soon.” The older man motioned to his leg, as he pressed he bent his knee. “Just wish I didn’t total the truck.”

Davey Graves stood in the living room of Theodore Agnew, who before the apocalypse, pretty much had given the stability he needed since he left high school. As an old school handyman Ted had basically worked in the greater Concord-Manchester Area for over fifty years. Through him Davey had learned various home repair skills that were probably going to be useful in the world to come.

The younger man was a little worried about his mentor, though reality had been pretty kind all things considered. The car accident that broke the sixty-seven-year-old’s leg had been a little over a month ago, so nothing relating to the freak sickness that turned people rabid to be concerned about. Still, the old man was living alone with his granddaughter, Jenny, who herself had just turned fourteen. Even with all of Ted’s guns mounted on the wall, Davey couldn’t shake being worried about them and the people that lived away from Mulberry Street.

“Could be worse.”

The old man snorted, “Could be better.”

“We’ll come check on you in a few days. Don’t be afraid to reach out. We need you alive.”

The two men looked over to the left, where Davey’s mother, Lorrie, had finished putting away the supplies with help from Jenny. With box in hand, Davey knew it was time to get back home.

“Right.” Davey commented as the two Graves' family members made their way through the house's front door. “We heading straight back?”

His mom shook her head as she tossed the box in the back of the 2013 Toyota Tacoma. “I want to stop by the gas station, get anything else we need.”

“Think it's been hit since last time?”

“Might be. We only chained up the doors. Anyone with a pair of bolt cutters could get in. And that’s not even talking about the tanks.” She remarked as the two entered the Tacoma. “I hope not. We need the gas reserves to last as long as possible. But we aren’t the only survivors out there.”

Lorrie turned the key and with that they hit the road.

Holly knelt in front of the kitchen cabinets, turning the corner cabinet turnstile around and around in dismay. By now, Morgan had wandered off to the open concept's living room, clearly more interested in playing with her plastic tea set than bothering Holly with questions as to what she was doing. Holly preferred it that way; she didn't want to Morgan to know that the family was almost down to scraps. Whether or not Morgan actually knew what that meant was another question, but Holly felt it was better if her tiny, little head wasn't worried about such things. Like everything else that had happened in the last few weeks, it wasn't fair to her. Then again, it hadn't been exactly fair to any of them in the first place.

She sighed, cursing herself for not going shopping just prior to the fallout. At least with pancakes it was just a case of mix and water, but sooner than later they'd be hard pressed to cook anything else.

Maybe Lee's mom can spare something...

Holly dwindled on the idea. She didn't wish to put more pressure on their next door neighbors, given the circumstances. Asking for food meant more mouths to feed, and it wasn't exactly like they could freely visit a store right now. Yet on the other hand, the two families had always been there for each other throughout the thick and thin. If there was one family or person she could have faith in to help her out, it would be the Graves.

Pushing herself back up to her feet, Holly closed the cabinet and approached the front door. She gripped the handle, hesitant to twist it. Ever since the apocalypse had started, Holly hadn't ventured long outside. One wrong step and you were zombie chow, being ripped apart by your former neighbors. Who knew what lurked outside that very door? The very thought of it made Holly shudder in cautionary fear.

She shot a momentary glance towards the umbrella stand beside the door. Playing it safe was wise, Holly felt, as she grabbed an umbrella from the stand. It might've not been the best weapon to defend herself, but the pointy end could at least fend the hungry undead away from her, not unlike a spear.

"Morgan, sweetie," Holly spoke, her grip on the umbrella tightening. "I'll be right back. Stay inside and keep an eye on dad, okay?"

"'kay!" Morgan responded, more focused on her make-believe tea party than anything else.

It hadn't been an answer Holly was satisfied with, but she knew she couldn't expect much more from a five year old. Taking a deep breath as she opened the front door, Holly hoped Morgan would be okay by herself, if only for a few minutes. Surely tea parties had to be more interesting than wandering off on her own and getting into trouble—they had to be.

It was the crying that woke him up. Luca rolled over in his twin-sized bed, his pillow being pulled over his head to try to drown out the noise of his mother crying, but it was still there. It swam in his head, a constant reminder of what the world had become. Out of everyone he knew, his mother was taking it the hardest, and it was up to Tommy and his grandma to take over supporting the family while his father was busy tending to his mom. Surely there was more he could do, too…

Throwing the pillow against the wall his bed rested against, Luca got up and got dressed. The crying had quieted by now, but he could hear very faint voices through the wall that separated his room and the master bedroom. Seemed like his dad was still in comfort mode.

Dressed and ready, the sound of an old car engine humming to life drew Luca to the window, and he watched for a moment as Tommy’s old 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix Sedan pulled out of their driveway, and rushed down the street, towards Huddeen. Trying to contain any bit of fear welling up inside of him, Luca turned and raced down the stairs, into the kitchen. He had to have left a note, right? He wasn’t just leaving them. Right?

Emily greeted him in the kitchen, the older sister still wondering what exactly she should have for breakfast. She didn’t seem worried. “Where did Tommy go?” Luca kept his voice as steady as he could, his sister’s calm demeanor already calming his own worried heart.

“Well good morning,” Emily finally pulled out a bowl, pouring some cereal in it. “Tommy and Grandma went into town. Grandma said that there should still be some stock in the diner, although I think this is the last of it,” she was pulling down a second bowl, waving the box of cereal at Luca, who only gave a tiny nod. With a sigh, Luca sunk into one of the kitchen chairs, his hand reaching to poke the nails on the baseball bat that was left behind.

Silence filled the kitchen as Emily poured half of the usual amount of milk in both bowls, eyeing how much they had left, before she placed the bowl gently in front of Luca. The silence was replaced with the clinking of spoons against ceramic bowl, the pair finishing their breakfast before Luca spoke up again. “Do you…Do you think we’re going to be okay?” He wouldn’t meet Emily’s gaze. She stared at him for a moment, before she looked away, her hands resting in her lap as she tried to find the words to comfort him. What could she say, though?

“Luca,” she started, before she sighed. “We’re going to be okay, but only if we stick together,” he looked up to her smiling face, and she moved to his side of the table, hugging him lightly. The siblings stayed like that for a while, before Emily pulled away, taking her younger brother’s bowl with her. Luca remained sat at the table, staring out of the large windows that looked out into the front yard. He slowly moved to perch himself on the couch that looked directly through those windows, watching the outside gray world. His sister’s words had done very little to ease the anxiety rising in his chest.