Chapter One

The bell over the diner door made a soft jingling sound and Jeanne Mason looked up. It was an older man, a bandage on his hand, he moved on wobbly legs toward the nearest table and all but fell into the booth. Dolores Johns her coworker moved toward him quickly with a glass of water to check on him. A moment later the man had collapsed on the floor and Dolores was yelling at Jeanne to call an ambulance.

With her heart racing she had dialed 911 and waited for it connect. The woman on the other end took her name and location and then told her someone was on the way, she asked if the man was breathing. Jeanne and Dolores confirmed he was not, and the woman asked them if they knew CPR, neither of them did. Jeanne told the woman she could hear the sirens and the dispatcher signed off. Then a strange thing happened, and it happened all at once.

First the man sat up, then he looked at Dolores. She gasped and started to smile talking to him, telling him how he gave her an awful fright, then the man was latching on to Dolores, biting her neck and ripping a chunk out of her. Dolores screamed, and before she knew what she was doing, Jeanne had a heavy metal pitcher in her hand and was bashing the man with it over the head. The first swing didn't seem to faze him much and he turned and bit Jeanne on the wrist. She pulled away only having been grazed. She hit him over and over until she heard his skull crack. She wasn't sure what had come over her, but she knew the man was dead when he slumped to the floor. Dolores was just sitting there holding her neck, screaming and crying.

A moment later the paramedics were filing in the front door with a police officer. Jeanne called the owner of the diner; he said he'd call someone to come in, but that she should close up until they got here. The police officer asked Jeanne what had happened, and Dolores tried to calm down and confirmed her story as she was packed into the ambulance. The paramedic assured Jeanne that Dolores would be fine, and Jeanne told Dolores she would come see her at the hospital.

Jeanne finally pried her fingers off the pitcher she had been holding. A cold chill was crawling up her spine. Something was wrong, very very wrong. After they had packed the man up in a body bag and carted him out of the diner, Jeanne worked to clean up the puddle of blood, but she could not shake that cold chill that was setting in. When another waitress, Charlene, arrived to take her place Jeanne grabbed her purse, ran by the grocery store and picked up as much canned food and bottled water as she could get her hands on as well as batteries and fuel for the lanterns. Then she went by her friend Nicky's place and picked up the girls.

The girls were Emma and Eve. Emma was a child some woman had left with Merle, while Eve was hers, her beautiful daughter with her boyfriend Daryl. She tucked the children into the car seats in the truck and headed into the deep back woods of Georgia, to the house She, Daryl, and his brother Merle shared.

Merle was always dragging Daryl off on some grand adventure, hunting down in the swamps of Louisiana, or poaching in the Appalachians, sometimes it was just taking the bikes down to Dayton. "Nothin' better an Free titties!" Merle always told her. Then he'd pack up the bikes and they would be off.

"I promise it's not gonna be fur long." Daryl had told her. "I jus gotta keep 'im outta trouble. You know how he gits. I'll be home soon." That had been over two years ago, and he had never made it home. So she kept taking care of Meryl's little one as well as her own. He had never called, never written, she assumed he had just…forgotten about her. At least he'd left her the truck.

Jeanne knew Daryl just as well as she knew Merle, they had grown up together. Jeanne's mother had run out on her daddy when she was five, and her daddy had drunk himself to death by the time she was eight. Daryl's daddy had been her daddy's best friend and had taken her in on the condition she took care of the boys, Merle almost fourteen, and Daryl a year older than she.

So she cooked and cleaned, washed and mended, and kept the house together. On weekends she went out hunting with the boys, then cleaned their kills and cooked them. Sometimes she was the reason they ate, when Daryl's daddy had drunk up all the grocery money. She could track better than Merle, better than Daryl sometimes, much to Daryl's chagrin. One day, after they had finished stringing up a deer Daryl had shot and she had tracked for a mile and a half, he grabbed her hand pulled her away, kissed her hard on the mouth and said "You and me, we're always gonna be together. You're my girl Jeanne." And from then on she had been.

Jeanne came back to the present when Emma made a sound in the back seat. "Emma, it's alright." Jeanne said softly, not sure what the girl was agitated about.

"That man was biting that woman!" She cried indignantly. Jeanne had no words.

"Don't look." She told Emma as Eve began to cry.

The trip to the house was long and nerve racking as she took the old long dirt road, then the leaf covered path that lead off toward the shack they called home. She got the girls inside and unpacked the truck before going out and boarding up the windows and reinforcing the door. She had no idea what was happening but she was sure it could be nothing good. Once inside she cleaned and wrapped her wrist, then she packed up all her gear, as well as the gear for the children, then she made supper, and they ate in agitated silence.

After putting the girls to bed she turned on the old radio and listened to the news. Reports were coming in about people biting other people, people dying and coming back, people attacking other people. No one was certain what was going on; no one knew anything other than that people were not staying dead. Cold shivers racked Jeanne as she lay on the narrow bed in her dark room and listened to the night noise of the woods around her. They had at least a month's worth of food and water; she hoped all of the craziness would blow over by then. She knew she wouldn't have her job anymore, but she could hunt, she could get food, and the well was clean. They would make it until she found another job. Winter would be hard, but they would survive.

The next morning the news was the same. And for two weeks it continued, then one day Jeanne turned on the news and there was nothing, she tried other stations but there was mostly static. That made her nervous. The media was shutting down, what was going on out there? Her sheltered little world was fast becoming frightening and secluded, a remote island in a hurricane.

Another week passed before her world was shattered. The wound on her wrist had healed without incident, a light fever and a bit of puss, but then it had closed up and she had been fine. As she was washing dishes in the sink she heard a thud at the door. It startled her and she went to look through the small crack in the wood that gave her just enough to see outside.

There at the door, in her uniform was Dolores, a very dead Dolores. Jeanne made a soft sound then backed away. The gaping bite on her neck had festered, her skin a pallid gray, her hands hook like, and her skin pulled back from black rotting teeth. Jeanne knew from the news reports that the bites seemed to be the trigger for this thing, whatever it was. This disease, this plague, it was carried through bites or scratches. She had been terrified when she had heard that on the news, but her wrist had healed, and she had not suffered the kind of fever that seemed to come with the bites.

Dolores banged into the door again and Emma came running in, Eve hot on her heels. "What's dat Mommy?" Eve asked. Jeanne made a soft "shh" sound.

Then knelt down next to her girls and whispered just barely "We have to be quiet. Let's go to your room." She said picking Eve up and taking Emma's hand. There room was a small broom closet sized alcove with a door, with an ancient bunk bed and a small chest, at the very center of the house. She took the girls in and got them settled. Then she whispered again. "Emma, I want you to stay right here. Do not come out of here, no matter what you hear. I will come get you, until then do not come out. Do you understand?" Jeanne asked as she tucked a couple of boxes of pop tarts into the top dresser drawer and several bottles of water on top. Emma nodded. "Ok what do you do?"

"I stay in here with Evie and we don't come out no matter what we hear, until you come get us." Jeanne nodded. She kissed the girls softly on the forehead, then closed the door to their room and bolted it from the outside. She went to the dresser in her room, dug through the top drawer, sifting through her panties and slips, and found the revolver Daryl had always kept there for emergencies. She popped it open checked to make sure I was loaded, then swung it closed and spun the cylinder, then removed the safety, and cocked the hammer.

She moved to the door and looked out. Dolores was still there, but now there was another one, a man in a lab coat and with blood all over him, he had a gaping wound on his side, his skin a sickly gray, his ankle obviously broken. Jeanne took a deep breath, according to the news and her previous experience she knew she had to shoot them in the head. She took another deep breath and threw open the door, she took a quick shot at Dolores catching her right between the eyes, then stepped out and shot the doctor in the side of the head before he could turn toward her.

Just as she was turning to go back into the house she heard another one moaning and shuffling toward her. She turned and shot at him, but he stumbled at the last moment and she missed. It only took her a second to take another shot. That one caught him in the face, blowing his brain to bits through the back of his head. The whole ordeal had only taken three minutes, but it had felt like a hundred years.

She quickly went back inside and closed the door reinforcing it with the steel bars. Then she went to her room, took three deep breaths, tucked the gun into the back of her jeans and pulled her shirt over it, before going and getting the girls. That night Jeanne slept huddled with the children in their small room.