ZOMBIE BOOKS

completely in favor of anything they could harvest from the living space.  Despite the demands from his wife to just keep going, Steven debated stopping and helping the driver to protect his goods.  His mind was changed for him when the driver crawled through the driver door window and began shooting at the looters.
The sight horrified Amy, who had never been exposed to such feral acts of violence by human beings.  What would have been reserved for only the most shocking pieces of fiction had now become a daily threat.  She began to understand why her father had said that she would have to start performing beyond her years.  All the girl wanted to do was hide and cry, but she looked into the eyes of her mother, father, and even her brothers, and saw a resolve to survive despite the odds.  They all seemed determined to live, whereas she simply didn’t want to fight to live as much as she didn’t want to die.  It all seemed like a cruel dream.  She waited for the scene to fade and to awaken, blinded by the morning sun streaming into her clean room.  The whole outbreak would be a horrid nightmare, and life would go back to its previous perfect state.  As if reading his little sister’s mind, her older brother, Thomas, reached across the sleeping frame of the youngest sibling to take Amy’s hand into his own.  He lovingly clutched her palm and gave Amy a weak smile.  She tried to return the smile, but instead she began to feel a sob rising in her throat.  The sensation made her feel like a hopeless pawn in the hands of her emotions, which only made the tears form more quickly.  Thomas shushed the tears gently and made circles with his thumb on the back of her hand.  His lips mouthed the words, “We’ll be okay,” and his easy smile bloomed on his face again.
Looking into Tom’s eyes, Amy wanted to believe him but she didn’t know how.  The whole world seemed to be falling around them at an alarming rate.  Would their lives always be filled with such scenes of violence and death?  Would their days be measured by the miles they covered running and hiding, working to avoid the infected and living alike?  This was no way to live in the mind of a girl, but facing her brother’s gaze, she felt that perhaps it was something she would learn to do.
They had done little more than drive since abandoning their home, stopping only when they were sure that no one was around.  This task was becoming increasingly difficult.  The initial idea that living nomadically would keep them ahead of horde and human seemed like a novel one, but in practice it would seem that the concept was not original by any measure.  Everywhere Steven drove his family, they found other wanderers who were scared, suspicious, and often armed.  Turnbull turned out to be like a campground on Memorial Day weekend.  Every available spot was taken and folks were living in perilous proximity to one another.  On more than one occasion, shots could be heard reverberating off of the hills.  Steven tried to keep his family calm and organized, but he was no fool.  They were scared, including him.  If a safe place could not be found, they would soon find themselves at the mercy of some roaming band.
But in a world that was shrinking every day, the corners of which were being filled simultaneously with infected hordes and human refugees, where would they go?
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It was the nighttime view of the Turnbull that finally did me in.  I had climbed a ridge and was looking over the wilderness before me.  Scattered across the darkened landscape were a thousand small fires flickering in their only dance.  Turnbull had become more than a wildlife refuge.  It had become an asylum for the running and the scared in Spokane Valley.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking at a massive birthday cake, just waiting to be cut up and consumed.
And it was there, perched on that ridge, when I cracked.  All of those souls, hiding in the hills and trees from an enemy that none knew how to stop, and I began to figure the odds.  Spokane was a waste.  Cheney was overrun.  A wave of undead was washing over the state, cleansing the land of the living.  My brother was dead.  My parents were dead.  Everything seemed to hit me at once.  The mental barrier that had protected me from the truth of my situation collapsed in a sudden and alarming manner, laying all bare to the sun and the truth.  I was going to die alone.
So I wept.  I cried for my family.  I cried for my town.  I cried for my lost and miserable situation.  I felt despair for my life, and resolved that I was destined to die like the rest.  The whole world was lost.  At this point, how could it not be?  The campfires began to blur and blend as the tears obscured my vision.
And then came the screaming.  It snapped me back, but made my grief even worse at the same time.  From my right, sparks were flying and shots were being fired, but it was the desperate shrieks that filled the range.  One after the next, zombies flooded the campsites and laid waste to everything in their path.  Every person caught was consumed.  The horde could not be seen in the darkness, but by the sound of it the host must have been in the thousands.  In the nearest camp I could make out dark figures crawling over the landscape.  A dozen would fall on a human, only to have hundreds more come jogging after them and fall upon the next unprotected evacuee.  RVs were torn open and boarded.  Windows were smashed out of cars and the inhabitants were consumed to the song of terrified squealing.  I watched a man excitedly try to