Chapter 1: The Beginning

I write this to maintain sanity during a time when sanity is all that keeps mine and my family's heads above water. Nobody knows how this all started, nobody saw it coming. This was the kind of thing you saw on TV in sci-fi films before the world of fiction became a reality. This is the reality we live in now. The world went to shit in a matter of weeks. What's to be expected when the world's finest men and women are ripped to shreds by flesh-eating monsters? The kinds of things you tell stories about around a campfire as a teenager. When there's nobody left to protect and serve you, where do you turn? When death is lurking around every corner, what route do you take? All questions I wish I had the answer to. All questions nobody I've met could answer. Maybe, if I run through it all from the beginning I'll be able to conjure up some kind of sense from it.

My name is Dustin Morton, I grew up in a small town. I moved to California to persue my dream of being an entertainer. I never made it to Hollywood, but I made a steady enough living to support my moderately sized family. We never went a day without food, shelter, or clothes on our backs.

3 years after I moved out here my parents decided to come and buy a small condo on the other side of town. During the time when I was alone out here, I found a beautiful woman who later became my wife. She made everything seem better, even if it wasn't. She passed away about a year before all this started. Cancer, it's a monster lurking in the shadows waiting for it's time to strike.

The day this whole shit storm started, I had just gotten out of bed to a news reporter on the TV next to my bed standing in the middle of a road screaming about some "new plague", I figured it was just some new story to cause mass hysteria so I turned it off. It was a Saturday so I didn't have to wake the kids up for school.

I made my way downstairs to the kitchen to start making breakfast. I was about to make the kids' favorite, pancakes; It's been tradition in my house ever since me and my wife got together that every Saturday morning I'd wake up before anyone else and start working on breakfast. I was mixing the batter when, over the music I was playing, I heard footsteps. I ducked down behind the island in the center of the kitchen. The steps continued to approach me and right as they got to the kitchen island I jumped out and grabbed the figure who was also crouching on the opposite side and screamed

"Gotcha sucker!" I screamed as my son and I both bursted into laughter at the act.

"I love you, dad."

"I love you too, kid." I held him close to my chest, knowing that in a few years these moments would be gone. He'd be a teenager.

"Are you making pancakes?" He asked with a smile.

"Yessir, blueberry or chocolate chip?"

"Ummmmmmm, neither. I want regular pancakes with just syrup."

"I think I can make that happen." I smiled at him and continued mixing the batter.

45 minutes later the entire family was in the dining room watching cartoons.  A news reporter flashed onto the screen and was screaming "Everyone stay indoors, there has been a plague that has swept the city in a matter of hours! Symptoms are violence, sores on the skin, paleness, and they're gonna try to fucking eat you! Please, for the love of God, stay indoors!" The screen went black, I didn't know what to think, what to say.

"Are you guys like, playing a prank on me? If so it's pretty elaborate." I asked. Everyone shook their head in unison.

"Alright, well, kids go play. I need to talk to your aunts." The children ran to their toy room and I adjusted myself to a more serious position.

"Dustin, what the hell is going on?" Mary, my sister, asked.

"If I knew don't you think I'd have said something." We were already starting to get heated, not a good sign.

"Wait, hold up. Let's try to stay level-headed, we are apparently in the middle of a crisis. Let's try to figure out what we know." I've never been too good in this type of situation. I've never been a leader, usually more of a follower. "We know that they're either actual fucking zombies, or something close to it. We know that we were told to stay indoors and everyone who hasn't done what they were told in movies and TV shows ended up dead. We know that if we do have to leave the house we have the means to survive, I took those survival classes when I was younger so we'll be pretty set. We know that it hasn't spread to this part of the state yet. The only thing we can do is wait." I tried to put on my tough face so my family wouldn't be as scared, I don't know if it worked, I was basically pissing myself. I'm not good at this kind of thing, I know I've said it before, I can't lead, it isn't my thing. My family needs me, they need me to make decisions, to tell them what to do. How do I do that when I don't even know what the next step is. I hope I don't end up regretting staying indoors.

2 Hours Later

We were sitting on the couch in the foyer stuck in fearful silence. I stood and began pacing the length of the room.

"Can you sit down or something, please, you're making me even more nervous than I already am." My other sister, Kaylee said after about 10 minutes of me walking and staring blankly into space.

I attempted to distract all of us from the situation at hand by turning on the TV again, maybe there'd be some new development in the previous story. I changed the channel over to the news and a reporter was standing in the middle of the road.

"Here you can see the damage that the-these things are capable of! God, please help us all!" The news reporter's audio cut out as he continued yelling into the microphone.

Kaylee began breathing heavily and hyperventilating.

"What's wrong" I asked. She pointed behind the reporter. I quickly realized, that's Ethan's house he's standing in front of, that's just up the street.