I woke up on a pier next to the water. I couldn’t remember anything from the past twenty-four hours (I learned later that it had been about that long). I didn’t know where I was or why I was there. All I knew was that I was wet and cold. I started yelling for anyone. I didn’t see anyone or hear anyone though. I walked up the pier until I saw the street. I realized that this was the St. Christopher Pier because I had driven by it dozens of times before. Everything seemed mostly normal. There were food stands and tourist shops and the it smelled like salt water. Only one thing was wrong. No one was there. Normally the place was packed. Even in the dead of winter there were still elderly couples feeding the pigeons. I knew something was wrong. I thought there was some kind of natural disaster like a hurricane. Those had happened occasionally before, but they usually didn’t reach my area. Something just seemed off. I kept yelling and walking up and down the pier. I saw something running in the distance. It looked human, but it wasn’t. I didn’t know at the time. I yelled out and it started running to me. As it got closer I noticed what it actually looked like. It appeared to be a rotting corpse. It kept running toward me until it was very close. I got scared and kicked it off the pier into the water. It sank like a rock. I bolted out of there. Whatever it was wanted me dead. Then suddenly as I entered the city I heard a voice.
“Hey, you ok,” he said.
I screamed, “Stay away from me.”
That was the last time I saw or heard another human for over a day. I ran and ran as fast as possible. I ended up in the woods just out of town. I sat down, exhausted, and I nodded off. I heard something rustling in a bush. I huddled into a ball, too scared to move. Then out of nowhere a small dog leaped from the bush. After realizing he wasn’t dangerous I went over and started talking to him. “Hey boy what’s your name,” I said quietly, “Hmm, you don’t have a collar… I guess I’ll call you, Otis.” I fell asleep again and I think Otis had some shut eye too. I awoke and Otis wasn’t there. I decided to call for him. I screamed Otis and he returned. This time he was carrying something though. A very shiny, very sharp crowbar. I decided to keep it. At that point I didn’t know what was really going on. I had just noticed how hungry and cold I was. I decided that since my house was on the other side of town that I would head back to the city and take a chance at finding that guy who had yelled at me. I did, after all, have a crowbar this time. Otis and I walked for about an hour until we heard gunshots. I saw an entire group of about 20 of those things (which I later learned the name of) going towards the shots. I went around and I peeked very slowly around the corner. I saw who had yelled at me as well as a pile of the things over where they were walking. I yelled something I can’t remember and a shot flew a few feet past my head. I yelled that I was the girl he’d seen earlier and that there was a dog with me. I told him not to shoot. I came around the corner and put my hands up.
He yelled in what I now noticed to be an extremely southern sounding accent “It really is you missie.”
“Yep, It’s me,” I said.
“You don’t look so good.”
At that moment I noticed my clothes were torn up pretty bad and I was covered in dirt.I yelled back “You don’t look so good yourself.” I wasn’t lying. He had scuffed up pants with dirt on them and he was partially covered in what I figured out to be blood.
“Well why don’t you run up here and come inside.”
I ran and Otis followed. We got there and stepped into what was once a hardware store. It had busted windows that were now boarded over. They had attached every type of lock known to man to the doors. There were a few chairs around. There were a lot of guns too and other weapons. He showed me around the place and quite a few people said hi. There was Max a 14 year old boy, Nathan and Brad two brothers of the ages 32 and 27 respectively, Chuck the 62 year old retired war veteran, Steven a 40 year old father of four, Bonnie a 35 year old woman, and last but not least John the 24 year old southern guy who I first met. After the meetings reality set in. We were a group of random strangers in a hardware store trying to survive these walking human corpses. I had so many questions at that moment, but I was so overwhelmed I could only ask one. “What..what are those things,” I say stuttering.
John says, “We don’t have an official name yet, but for now we call em’ the Infected.”
I mustered enough energy to keep asking questions. “What happened here.”
“About a day ago some people started running and biting people. We soon learned they were the Infected. They kept biting folks and then there was more than anyone could control. The two brothers who worked here got anyone who would listen inside. That’s how we got this ragtag group of misfits together. We collected as much supplies as possible and now we’re here.”
We talked about when I woke up on the pier and how I couldn’t remember anything while I sat there eating a can of peaches he gave me. We ended up deciding on the story that I rushed to one of the evacuation boats, hit something, got knocked out and fell in the water, and someone helped me up and left me there. That was when for the first time I remembered my family and friends. I asked “Does… does this mean that my family and friends are dead?”
He said, “Well I don’t wanna say give up all hope, but the reality of the situation is that there’s a good chance. Please don’t tell anyone else I said that… especially that kid or the dad. I told you cause’ I knew you can take it. I sense you’re a strong girl. Thing is I’m not sad cause’ I ain’t never had a real family in my life. Just stay strong ok.”
I want to say “Ok I’ll be alright.” but before I can I burst into tears. I lay down on the floor in the storage room and start bawling. John tries to help, but it doesn’t work. Otis comes in and snuggles up to me and I kind of manage a half smile for a second before I go back to crying. I lay there with Otis and cried myself to sleep. I thought It was bad then, but it only got worse… much worse.

I woke up about 8:15 that morning and Otis was still laying there snuggled up to me. I realized I was now covered in one of those fire smothering blankets. I peeked out of the storage room and noticed that Max and John were the only ones up. Otis and I walked over to see what they were doing. I said, “Hey” which made them both jump until they realized it was me. They greeted me back and I stood there and saw that they were sitting in chairs with a bucket turned upside down in between them. They had a checkerboard on the bucket and were halfway through a game. I walked around admiring our “Home Sweet Home” and as I was noticing just how stocked with food, water, guns, and ammunition this place was I bumped into Bonnie. We talked about our pasts. I told her what little there was to tell. I am an only child who’s grown up in this town all her life. Bonnie had something a little more interesting. She was the middle child of four brothers who had been  born in Kansas, grew up in Rhode Island, and somehow ended up here. I kept looking around. I cracked open a door and saw Steven the father. I looked more until I found a lone storage room. I peeked in and I saw Chuck sitting in his wheelchair looking at a photo. I walked over and leaned over his shoulder. It was a woman only a couple years younger than him. She was wearing a birthday hat and smiling. “Who is she?” I asked.
“She was my my wife,” said Chuck.
“Was?”
“Well, she would still be if it weren’t for those creatures.”
He started swearing at the sky. He cursed at the Infected and he cursed God with every word you could ever imagine. What happened?” I asked.
“My wife Linda and me were driving along the road when we hit one of those Infected. I got out and she helped me to this place she got bit on the way and you know what happens when you’re bit.”
“Oh… I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice.
“You got nothing to be sorry for.” said Chuck also in a low voice.
Suddenly John yelled my name and said that he needed me. I ran off to the other room where I was greeted by Nathan. He told me to go through another door into the employee waiting room. “What do you need?” I said.
“Help me bandage these wounds,” responded John
I looked down and I saw Brad laying on the floor. I looked at his legs and they were cut up pretty bad. There was a huge gash on the side of his leg. “What happened to him?” I asked.
“They got cut up when he hopped some barbed wire after getting cornered by some Infected and he hit some sharp metal on the ground when he hopped over,” responded John.
At that moment Brad let out a scream that was pretty loud. John told him it was the disinfectant and I helped him finish the bandages. Brad was going to be ok. He just wasn’t running fast for a couple of days. Although we didn’t know at the time this was a very bad thing.
After a few hours of waiting around playing board games, eating canned food, and chatting with everyone including Otis, John decided that he should take a peek outside. He ran back in immediately and started screaming to pack everything and get ready to run. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
He catches his breath and starts with, “There’s at least one or two hundred of the Infected outside. They’re coming from both angles and we’re gonna have to take the ladder to the roof. Grab everything. Guns, ammo, food, water, and anything else useful.”
I whisper, “What about Chuck, he can’t climb.”
“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about that.” John whispers back.
“Maybe we can fight our way through,” whispers Bonnie.
Just as John is about to say no way the door and windows start getting pounded on. I go and grab a backpack full of supplies and I carry Otis to the roof. Some people start going up there and that’s when Chuck rolls around with a semi-automatic weapon in his hands. I scream “What are you doing?”
Chuck responds with, “I’m going to stall these darn Infected as long as I possibly can. I ain’t got nothing to live for anyway.”
I’m about to say, “No, we’re all getting out of this,” but I realize that he wouldn’t listen. I just thank him and give him a hug. I’m about to start crying and then the window barriers come down and a couple of the door locks break. He tells me to run and although I don’t want to leave him I know I don’t have a choice. I run for the ladder and John pulls me up just in time. We start jumping onto the other buildings that are just a couple of feet from each other just as the gunfire starts to die down. We all get to the end of the buildings and shuffle down some stairs on the side of the last one. John peeks around the corner and although Chuck was able to put a dent into the horde of Infected it wouldn’t be enough. John starts whispering that the horde is headed this way and that we better be ready for a bloodbath. He throws me a pistol. Although I’ve never used a pistol before I knew that I was about to learn… real quick. The horde corners us in the alley beside the last building and we start unloading rounds. I was pretty shaky at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly. We shoot an opening through the Infected and get ready to run. Except Chuck all of us  got out of there mostly ok… or so I thought.
We had been running for little over hour when we realized we were safe. We were on a path outside town that led to a nice little nature reserve. We got there and everything seemed fine. We opened some food and began eating. Brad didn’t eat though. Nathan went to check on him and that’s when he made an announcement.  
He stood up and said, “Everyone, I guess it’s time for me to tell you. I was well… bitten on the way out.”
Except Nathan who already knew everyone including me let out a gasp. We all had questions but he began to answer them.
He started with, “I was lagging behind you guys and one of the Infected in the alley wasn’t dead nabbed my leg. It got a bite on me and I should have told you sooner, but I was scared. Now I just want to spend my last days with you guys.”
We all decided it best to honor his wishes. Over the next couple of days we stayed in this cabin-house thing on the hiking trail. Brad started getting a cough. Then came a bad fever as well as a few other symptoms. After the third day we knew what was going to happen. Nathan decided it was his job to do it. He carried brad out to the woods. There was one gunshot and everybody shuddered when they heard it. Nathan returned and we all just didn’t talk for a while. The only thing that was said was that we had a plan to leave at first light tomorrow. It was really tragic that we had lost another member of our group, and I wish I could say that was the last casualty, but it wasn’t… not even close.

We left the camp as soon as there was enough sun to see the ground. We all walked for about four hours until we found something. We saw a huge cabin. It was made of logs and chopped wood with two stories. John was in the lead of the group so he alerted us.
John yelled from the front shouting out, “Hey, guys I think found a cabin. It’s just over the trees, maybe a couple more miles.”
Everyone in the group seemed really relieved. I was just hoping for something other than beans, peaches, or granola bars to be in there. We were walking on a gravel road that had diverged off of the one from the hiking trail. That was when we say a car. It was crashed into a tree. We all got closer to the car and that’s when we saw four kids and a mom. They all had one bullet in their heads. We didn’t who they were. Steven did.
When he caught up to the car he screamed, then he started sobbing, and then he said, “These… these kids and the woman… they’re my kids and my wife. Oh God… oh God… why… why.” before he returned to tears. He collected some personal things from the car while we waited around the corner.
About half an hour passed before we got to the cabin. We all filed in and checked the cabinets. They were filled with mountains of food. There were a few guns and some ammunitions boxes too. We found a couple other things like medical supplies and an axe. This was all great, but we found one prize possession. A military grade walkie talkie. It only had one setting we assumed it was on a military station. We tried it, but to no avail. We all decided on rooms just as it was getting dark. Someone had to take a watch shift though. Steven insisted. We all argued, but we had no luck. Everyone, except Steven who was guarding, fell asleep almost immediately.
At about 10 o'clock we all heard a single gunshot. One loud boom in the night. We all rushed down to the first floor. We looked everywhere inside. Then we checked outside. There he was. Steven was laying on the ground in a pool of blood. There was a bullet hole in his head. A revolver layed next to him.There was one bullet missing. John and Nathan tried to blame themselves. Deep down they knew it wasn’t their fault. They just needed someone to blame. The talked about how they should have forced him to just sleep. Bonnie told them how he would have done it anyways. She was right. He was just a grief stricken guy in a bad situation that had lost the only thing he had. His family. We moved him and barely went back to sleep.
About six o'clock that morning we heard some yelling outside. One guy had a Russian accent, the other was John. I woke everyone up and we all grabbed a gun. We rushed down the stairs as quickly as possible. We all started waving guns around. Everyone was there except Max and Otis who were locked in a room upstairs. There were six Russians and four of us. Five of them had guns, so it was a mostly even fight. The firing started as soon as Bonnie, Nathan, and I got beside John. It was a really quick firefight, but it felt like it lasted for hours. When it was over and the dust had settled we looked at the damages. Every one of the Russians was lying on the ground. They were all as dead as a rock. We thought we were ok. Nathan had been shot in the side, but it passed straight through. Everything seemed to be fine until we saw Bonnie. Her entire midsection was loaded with lead. Over a clip of one of the Russians assault rifle ammo had pierced through her stomach. I could see entrails and blood… so much blood. The worst thing was that she was alive. We all went over to her.
She started mumbling, “Am, am I ok?”
I wasn’t going to lie so I said, “No, Bonnie but you’re going somewhere better ok.”
“Oh ok.”
“Goodbye.”
“One last thing…”
“What is it.”
“You keep that kid safe alright…”
She was dead. I didn’t even have the time to tell her that I would. I vowed to myself that day that I was going to keep Max safe… no matter what.
Even though we were all depressed, we knew we had to keep going. Though we didn’t really have a choice. However, everyone decided to stay one more night. I managed to get some sleep, only because I convinced myself it could only get better. It almost did… almost.

We had been hiking north the entire time. We were hoping to hit some military base in a major city. Maybe someplace like New York. We tried to stay away from any big cities we saw unless there might be valuables, survivors, or a military camp. We had had no luck yet. The walkie hadn’t helped either. Nathan was still hurt from the gunshot in his side. We kept our hopes up though. For about a day everything was calm. We had seen a few Infected, but managed to silence them with minimal effort. Everything was fine until about two days our encounter with the Russians. We were all doing fine until we got too close.
We had found a large city with potential for military activity. It also had potential for Infected activity. One scouting mission we got too close to the city and the Infected heard us. There was five hundred or more. The started coming our way. We all bolted for it until we were trapped between the herd and an iced over lake. It was thin, but we had to run. We bolted across with Nathan shuffling by in the back. We got to the other side and that’s when the ice under Nathan’s feet cracked. He fell deep into the freezing water. He yelled and managed to get to the surface. He flopped up and lay there until an Infected fell in the water behind him. It dragged Nathan down to the bottom of the lake. I don’t know what killed him. The hypothermia, the Infected, or drowning. All I know is that he was one of the bravest men I ever met.
Although times were tough, we knew we had to keep going. At this point it was only Max, John, Otis, and me left. It was hard to keep going, but we trudged on. We found some nice trees just a hundred yards into the woods. We set up camp there and we all had a meal. Everyone drifted off to sleep around eight and that almost scared me. We were so used to death that it didn’t even bother us that much anymore.
At about twelve that night a crackling noise woke us all up. It was the walkie. We all listened carefully.
The walkie crackles on until we hear a man say, “We will be picking up any survivors at the top of the Bunderly Hotel. Repeat, we will be picking up any survivors at the top of the Bunderly Hotel.”
We had all seen that hotel. It was on the fourth scouting mission. We knew we had to get there… and fast. We packed our stuff and got ready to head into the city. We all started running and running and running.
We were about halfway there when we saw the herd of Infected that had gotten Nathan killed. I wanted to start unloading bullets, but I knew that would only waste ammo, and attract more attentions. We continued our sprint towards the hotel. We had to pop a few of the Infected on the way, but we tried to just run.
We were about in the middle of a four way when I saw it. The hotel wasn’t that far away. Everything was going fine except that we had been cornered. All four streets were blocked by the Infected.
That’s when John told me, “Give the boy a gun, we’re going to need all the firepower we can to get to the hotel entrance.”
I leaned over and handed Max a gun while I said, “You’re going to have to help shoot the Infected. Remember to not aim at us and to keep your arms down.”
He nodded back and that’s when we started shooting our way to the hotel. Max’s shots were missing a lot at first, but then he started helping us through. We all made a quick run for the  hotel. We got inside just as the first Infected were catching up. We headed for the roof. We had to run up the stairs because at this point there weren’t many places that still had electricity. We were being followed by the hundreds of walkers. Max, who was carrying Otis, got up to the roof first. I followed, but we couldn’t get on the roof. The door was locked by a key. It wasn’t until John, who had been fighting off the Infected, got up there that we could get through. He kicked in the door and just as the Infected were about to corner us.
We got to the roof and as the Infected were cornering us we heard the helicopter. It extended a rope and I had Max climb us while he was carrying Otis. John and I climbed up, but all of the Infected held the small chopper down. John did something crazy. He hopped down to another part of the roof and started yelling and shooting.
Then he looked at me and yelled, “I love you.”
I looked back down and shouted, “I love you too.”
I don’t know if he heard me, but I know he died happy. He had gotten me and Max all the way to safety. I knew right then that was what he wanted to do all along. After that I ended up here in the base.
“Thank you for the time miss.” says the same male voice from earlier.
“Thank you for saving me, but why do you need this again?” responds Riley Winters.
“We’re keeping up with everyone’s story, just in case the human race makes it out of this mess.” responds the male voice.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you around Officer Roy Williams,” says Riley.
“I guess I’ll see you too,” responds Officer Roy Williams.

That was everything that was on the cassette tape I grabbed on my way out of the overrun military base. It was one of the three things I grabbed including a small hatchet and Otis the dog. I never did see Riley Winters again though. I suppose she ended up like everyone else does eventually… dead. But right now though I’m getting ahead of myself. I have one thing I need to say first. My name is Max Carter, I am 19 years old, I was born August 9th, 1951 and this is my story………….

To Be Continued…