Formerly a stay-at-home mom of two, Lily now faces her ultimate demise in a world shredded by the undead. The zombie apocalypse has hit home. Staying alive will take more than the strength to kill the monsters who took her family. Special thanks to Faried, Paul, Michael, Angela, Dad, and my own, personalized fan base. This book is not intended for children.

The Survival of Lillith Dane

By J. M. Newman

Abbott Press

Copyright © 2012 J. M. Newman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-0609-1

Chapter One

Jumpstarted

My family and I moved into the nearest refuge – the local high school. I had a husband then and two boys aged three and one. Some local law enforcement standing in for the lost government swore to us that we would be safe. We were skeptical, but we took the chance anyway. Frank, my husband, and I thought; "What's the worst that could happen?"

Worst case scenario; I figured we would all die together, and go to heaven together.

The men in charge started killing off the old and sick first. They did it discretely, using overdoses of pain medicines so that we wouldn't get angry or rise up against them. They started recruiting the healthy, strong young men as new armies that were really mostly just slaughtered by the zombies, the infected, the undead. Whatever one chose to call them, they were mindless killing machines that tore victims apart and ate them. If there was enough of a victim left behind, they too became infected. My husband was not a soldier, he was sick. He had a debilitating disease and when all the old were gone he dropped to the bottom of their priority list.

I tried to teach my boys that when Daddy was gone, it was because he was working to keep us safe. In a way, I believed that he was. Of course my oldest cried and was scared; I tried to comfort him, but how could I? I was scared too, and I cried. I tried not to, but I did. I could take solace only in thinking that their pain wouldn't last and that, over time, they would be happy again.

Hundreds of survivors moved into the school with us at first, but after a month there was only about seventy-five of us left . With our numbers significantly reduced, and all of our strongest and smartest defenders sent out to the slaughter, it was just the weak women and children left behind. It was only a matter of time. Still, we thought we would be okay. Still, we held onto the hope that God wouldn't let our children die.

We were wrong.

* * *

How I got out of there is still largely a mystery to me. I've heard people describe enraged spells of wild violence. They might say, "I just saw red and when I snapped out of it, I was covered in blood! I swear, I don't know what happened!" Saw red ... Yeah, I suppose that could be the easiest way to describe what I did. I saw red. It was the middle of the night. My three year old was screaming and crying, and when I looked over, suddenly, I saw red.

I escaped somehow with two other women and a teenage boy. I didn't mean to. I wasn't intending to survive. I wanted to die with my boys. I wanted to see my husband in heaven and feel good again. Apparently, that wasn't in God's plan for me.

The others I escaped with were Janie, age thirty-one. She had lost three little girls. One of them was just a little baby, only a few months old, suffering already from colic. Then there was Alexa, nineteen, and Evan, seventeen. They were brother and sister. Their parents were among the old and sick who had been killed with "mercy".

The four of us ran until we couldn't anymore. We were miles away from the school when we finally stopped and caught our breaths in a place surrounded by trees and a narrow creek. Evan guessed we weren't far from his house on the outskirts of town. Th ere was nothing around us immediately, so we stopped to rest there for a while.

"We can't just stay here," said Evan. He had once been heavily immersed in the zombie lore of popular culture. "If it's just us now, we need stuff like supplies and gear."

"There's no way it's just us," said Alexa. "I refuse to believe we are the last living beings on this planet!" She was starting to hyperventilate, and stood up immediately after attempting to sit down.

"Calm down, Lex," Evan began, motioning for her to sit back down. "You're probably right, we can't be the last beings on the planet, but we're going to have to go find whoever else has survived. They're not going to come looking for us."

I nodded, choosing to remain silent.

"With the high school overrun like that, they'll think we all died," said Janie solemnly.

There was some silence for a while as we all soaked it in. Janie burst into uncontrollable tears. Her heart was in so much pain. She clutched at her chestas if to rip it out and sank to her knees on the cold forest ground. I felt the need to wrap my arm around her shoulders. I felt like maybe she needed to know she wasn't alone; maybe she needed to know I felt her pain too.

But I did nothing. I froze and felt a hard lump stuck in the base of my throat. I glued my eyes to the ground, and fought my own breakdown. In the end, it didn't matter if Janie suffered alone or with me, we were both still suffering. Hugs couldn't cure that kind of pain, and I had never been much of a "people person."

The sun was starting to rise over the hills in the distance. Zombies were not particularly night creatures, but the daylight would be beneficial. We had to take advantage of it.

"What kind of neighborhood did you live in?" I asked Evan.

"Small, but sufficient," he replied. Our minds instantly clicked; we were on the same page. He knew, as I did, what it would take for us to keep surviving, and where we were going to find it. That would make things slightly less difficult.

"Lead us there," I said.

Supplies; basic human necessities for life. We would need water, food, and weapons; at the very least. Our best option was to try and fi nd what we needed in the abandoned houses of the nearby neighborhood. Plans started forming in my head as Janie and I started walking behind Evan and his sister. I quickly assessed what we already had compared to what we were going to need.

Water? None. There was the creek beside us, but God only knew what was floating in it. It was probably contaminated, and we couldn't take that risk if we were going to survive.

Food? None that I knew of. I suppose it was possible one of my new "friends" was carrying some snack in his or her pocket, but I wasn't and I couldn't rely on the people to share what they had. The world had changed. Life had become survival of the fittest, whether we liked it or not.

Weapons? Evan was carrying a bloody aluminum baseball bat. Alexa had her father's pistol in her waistband, but it had no ammo. Janie and I had nothing, further perplexing me on the details of my escape from the high school. I pondered for a long time whether or not I wanted to remember. Glimpses came back to me, but I shut them down reflexively. A lot of people were killed that night. I didn't want to remember watching them all die so that I could live.

It wasn't long before we were looking at houses. We entered the small neighborhood through one backyard. Nobody was around. The place looked the same as it had a year before, when it had been abandoned. As if the owners simply vanished. In a way, they did. Whether they were in the community that ran to the refuge or were killed, they were gone and they'd left everything behind that meant something to them before.

The first backyard we entered had a small tool shed. It was shut with nothing but thin nylon rope that was easily untied, though there wasn't much inside that we could use. Janie tried to take the chainsaw, but found it was a bit too heavy for her to just carry around, so she left it behind. Evan grabbed a flashlight. I found a long handled axe in the shed and a sledgehammer leaning against the side. Both were a bit heavy, but they would do the trick for a while if we could get used to the...