"Run! THEY'RE RIGHT ON TOP OF US!!!"

No time for anything else. I run. Nothing else to do. Just have to get away. You can't fight them when they are up close. They are just too strong. Too... hungry. It's strange to be running again. Familiar. Almost Comfortable. Sounds strange doesn't it? Running through the woods with a pack of flesh hungry zombies after me and I'm starting to feel at home for the first time in almost three years. Takes me back to the time before we settled down. The time after the rise. It seemed like we were always running. Always trying to find some place to hide for the night, find enough supplies to keep us going for just another day.

It was scary. It was dangerous. I hated every minute of it. But in all the pain and chaos and terror, I knew I was alive. That seems to be the common thread of stories I've heard. The feeling of being ALIVE. The riding of the razors edge. I guess the ability to ride that was what separated the survivors from the meat. Some of the most unlikely people managed to survive. And some of the people you pegged as sure-fire winners ended up feeding the dead.

Huh, I remember this one chick we ran into, a week or so after the rise started. She went on and on about how this was the best thing to ever happen. The Dead walking, people dying, horrors happening every moment and she was celebrating. Some bullshit about how this death was great. How she could finally be alone in perfect solitude. I saw her a couple days later. She did not seem to be so happy, and certainly was not alone. She was screaming as they were tearing her apart. About how "it wasn't supposed to be this way. Not to me!", after a couple moments she stopped with that, and just begged for someone to save her. For anything to make the pain stop. We just kept moving. Nothing we could do for her. She was already dead. Once they get their teeth into you it's all over. She was just one more living dead girl in waiting.

Anyway, the running lasted about a year and a half. Moving from place to place. Sometimes finding a safe haven, only to have to move again in a few weeks or months. Our group would grow and shrink as we would meet other survivors and then lose a few to the horde. But we were always moving. Always on edge. It took its toll on many of us. Some people just snapped. Hell, I doubt any of us were really sane.

Then one day we found the enclave. It was this walled city. Seems that some people knew that something was going to hit the fan. They had built this self contained town out in the middle of nowhere. 20 foot wall, fields, hydroponic bays, forges, a small ammunition factory and most important of all a library with most everything that had been published in the last hundred years. Everything to survive and thrive in the post-zombie world.

I was hard adjusting to life there. It was safe. No worrying about where your next meal would be coming from or if the dead would find your hiding spot. Settled life was strange, almost terrifying at times. But I adjusted. I managed to settle down. I fell in love. I had a child. I should of known it was too good to be true.

I still don't know exactly what happened. I was taking my turn on patrol. We were just coming back to the enclave. I’d had a bad feeling all day. Like something terrible had happened. I had not felt like that since the day of the rise. I could see the others were bothered to. The first real sign we had was the smoke. Pillars of the black stuff was rising above the hills. Double-Timing it we got in sight a couple hours before sun down. It was like the rise all over again. The gates were swinging open and there were fires everywhere. We could see the Dead swarming over everything.

I pulled out my Binoculars, trying to find some sign of human life. I searched, but all I could see were the lurching forms of the Zombies. Finally I spotted something on the roof of a burning building. With tears blurring my vision I saw.. I saw my best friend, my lifemate break the most important rule of them all. Always save a round for yourself. I saw my love place a shotgun against our child's head and pull the trigger. My last sight was of a warrior descending into the flames, to see how many could be made to die before the end.

So now, we move. We run, we hunt, we live. It really is the best of times and the worst of times. And maybe, just maybe I'll live long enough to bring into this world the last flower on my lost love. Maybe I will live long enough to bring another small life into this World of the Dead.