Dark Days

Sanctuary

©JRF2016

The days roll on and we are happy despite our shortage on food and water. Darrick and Conner were always out hunting but food seemed to getting more and more scarce. I was standing on the porch staring out across the little piece of land we have now claimed as our own when Reid walks up behind me and slides his arms around my waist. "What are you thinking about?" He whispers into my ear. "Do you think we are really safe? Can we just stay here and survive, no live?" He turns me around and looks into my eyes, smiling. "If it's what you want, I will do everything in my power to make it work." He kisses my lips tenderly. I start chuckling as he stares at me, "So Chief, you'd rope the moon if I asked you to?" He nods and kisses me again this time a little deeper. "Aww man," Conner groans as he stands in the doorway, arm propped above his head as he leans on the door frame, "Ever since you two made up you been so damn lovey dovey, I think I'm gonna blow chunks all over the both of ya." Reid breaks the kiss turns his head toward the sound of Conner's voice. He cocks that eye up at him, "Nobody said you had to watch."

"Oh, but Sheriff, I like to watch," Conner snickers and licks his lips. Reid turns back to me as I was trying to hold in my laughter. "Don't encourage him, Rachel." Reid scolds.

I was on watch with Conner tonight and we were pacing back and forth along the wall. Silence fills the night between us. Well, somewhat of a silence fills the air between us. The corpses growling just over that fence seem to be louder than usual. Conner had the binoculars with the night vision on and staring out across the field, "Shit!" He snarls.

"What is it Conner?"

"Shit, Shit, SHIT!" He grows louder. "We need to get the others and get the hell outta here!" I look at him confused, "Look." I take the binoculars and look through them and my heart stops. "Shit," I mumble repeating Conner's reaction. A horde of dead stretching out as far to the left and the right as we could see just making their way over the hill on the other side of that field. The sea of dead seemed endless as more and more came over that hill. "Yeah, no way we can fight that," Conner says, "We need to leave now." I nod in agreement as we both run to get our family. Everyone grabs what they could carry and we slip out the back door and start moving away from our most recent home and away from the horde making its way toward it.

We were on the road for days and between the heat and lack of food and water everyone was getting weaker. We kept moving regardless but we were weary and broken. "Mommy, I'm hungry," Grace whines. "I know baby. We'll find something soon I promise," I reassure her and then mumble under my breath, "I hope." Reid walks up beside me putting his arm around my waist and kissing Grace on the head. "We'll be okay," he whispers to both of us and then locks eyes with me.

Thedays rolled into weeks as we travel north, the plan was to get to Fort Benningin Georgia. It was the closest military installation of any significant sizeand we figured if anyone had a stockpile of supplies the military would. Makessense right? Unfortunately, when we got there we realized we weren't the onlyones that had had that idea. We found a few supplies that hadn't been looted,stuff that had been hidden, but it was not much at all. We were running on whatever we could scrounge up and our bodies were getting weaker. I was holding Grace close to my chest as she seems to sleep more and more. Charlie walks up to me, "Let me take her, Rachel." I smile at him. He could look me in the eyes now. He's grown so much. "You need a break too. I can take her for a while."

"Thank you Charlie," I say as I hand over his little sister. I stop in my tracks looking up the road a little. "What's wrong?" Charlie asks as Reid picks up his pace to check on me. I point to the center of the road just a few hundred feet ahead of us. Something up there was moving toward us and it was coming fast.  Whatever it is it is low to the ground and gaining speed.  When it got close enough we could see it was a pack of wild dogs, not just any wild dogs either. As they got even closer I noticed that yellow color in their eyes. They were dead too. My heart starts racing, the undead humans we can outrun but undead dogs, how are we going to get away from them? They stop right in front of us growling. They had that insatiable hunger too. Reid, Darrick and Conner move in front of us and draw their pistols.  Three shots ring out scaring Grace awake in Charlie's arms and the dogs were on the ground. Reid looks back at us then back at the dogs. "It affects animals too I guess? I never thought about that, guess because we've never run into any dead ones?"