Chapter 1

There was no need to look over my shoulder to see how fast the man chasing me was running. That is, of course, if you could still call him a man. I was putting every ounce of strength and stamina I had into running but he was slowly, inexorably reeling me in.

The bastard must've been a God damned track star, because I'm no slouch when it comes to running. There aren't very many people who can keep up with me. This guy, again though, was not only keeping up, he was catching up.

With the fence that I'd crawled through to reach the abandoned warehouse coming up swiftly, I decided to put him out of his misery. I began to slow down and he ran even faster. His speed was flat out and he gave away a lot of agility running that fast. His brain power was already depleted, so my next move took him totally by surprise.

As he started reaching out trying to grab me from behind, I suddenly just stopped and curled into a ball directly in front of him. My move was so sudden, that he had no chance to slow down or stop himself. He stumbled awkwardly over me and landed flat on his stomach on the ground.

I jumped up nimbly and stood over him. He growled in anger for about a second before I put him out of his misery by slamming the head of my flanged mace through his skull. The growling stopped immediately, but the body shuddered a few times. I quickly stepped back leaving my mace in his skull.

I drew the Katana strapped diagonally across my back just in case he was still alive. I watched for a few seconds and saw no signs of movement, so I sheathed the Katana and approached the body again. I tried to yank my mace out of the skull and couldn't.

Shit, that mace was one of my favorite weapons. It was an original piece from the fifteenth century. There was no way I was leaving without it. I put one foot on the man's neck and braced the other on the ground and pulled with all of my strength. The mace came free and brought a chunk of skull with it. I'd have to remove that once I got back to camp. I looked around me and saw several more of them but they were at least a hundred yards away. I laughed thinking about that, because I'm the only person I know who still uses the term yards. Most people have finally switched to the metric system as if any of that shit matters anymore.

I jogged quickly over to the fence and found the hole I'd cut in it and my wire cutters. I grabbed the cutters and ran over to my car. I knocked on the window and heard the electronic locks pop open.

As I opened the door, music loud enough to alert everyone in the area to our presence filled the air. I could hear angry growls from the people behind the fence.

"Took ya long enough," grinned my wife Dana. She continued to bop her head to the music as I sat down in the driver's seat and started the engine.

"Hey buddy, gas isn't rechargeable," she said. "And the sound of that motor will let everything in the area know where we are." I turned the music down, and grabbed her by her face.

"With the racket you're making, Dana," I said. "Everything in the area already knows we're here." I pulled her face gently to mine and kissed her. Her arms snaked around me and her mouth opened as her tongue sought and dueled with mine.

"I love you Jer," she said. "Sometimes..."

I just looked at her. "Sometimes I wish it was just the two of us. I wish we could just find our own little hidden safe zone and live out our lives without constantly scavenging and hunting for supplies for all of the others. I especially wish that at night," she said.

I looked at her crazily. Nights were the most dangerous times. It really was better to have more people around.

"Jer, I get tired of us having to have furtive sneaky sex," she said. "I just wish that we could just let it all hang out. I dream of you just pounding the shit out of me and me being free to scream out exactly how good it feels and exactly what I want you to do to me. God damn it we're married. We're supposed to fuck our brains out. It's natural. It's the way it's supposed to be."

"That was a long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away," I sighed. But she was right. I loved Dana more than I could ever express. We'd been married for three years and together for more than that but I could count on one hand the number of times that I'd been able to hear her screaming out her passion. It simply wasn't that kind of world anymore.

It wasn't really anyone's fault. There hadn't been a World War III. There hadn't been any kind of Biblical apocalypse, nor had Aliens taken over the planet. Our downfall had come about from a combination of very small things. It took a perfect storm of almost infinitely small proportions to take down our society.

Thirty years ago, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, medical science had started to track a growing number of viruses that were resistant to antibiotics. But modern medicine had also trained most of the populace worldwide to depend on medical care. If you got a cold or the flu, you weren't supposed to simply ride it out. Nope, you had to go to see a doctor so he or she could prescribe the latest and greatest antibiotic. In many cases, it didn't make sense. There was never a cure for the common cold. If you got a cold you simply had the virus for seven to ten days. The treatments simply made the misery of those seven to ten days easier.

So what a lot of people did was to go to work while still sick. They had to go to work because they saved their sick days for vacations and sporting events or entertainment. It just didn't make sense. Why would anyone go to work while they were sick, so they could stay home and go out while they were really well?. People back then were crazy.

Anyway, it may not have made sense, but it made dollars. The drug companies were constantly finding all kinds of drugs and antibiotics to treat more and more of the symptoms. It got to the point where no one wanted to have even the slightest discomfort. If you had a runny nose, you didn't need a tissue, you needed an antibiotic. If you had a headache, you needed a narcotic. An entire generation of pain free wimps got us to that point.

The researchers warned us. They told us that the strains of viruses were beginning to mutate into super-bugs that couldn't be taken down with antibiotics. Society refused to listen. "They'll come up with something," they always said. And the drug companies did. They always came up with something. Ten years ago in 2020, the first Mega-virus was discovered. It was called Ambubola. The weird thing about it was that unlike the Ebola virus that it was mutated from, it didn't eat tissues. It was called Ambubola for short but it really meant Ambulant Ebola. Ambulant meaning that after the virus killed you, you were still moving around. The cases of Ambubola were few and far between. Patients stricken with the disease were not dangerous. They were simply medical curiosities.

After all, most of them were brain-dead. They had no desires, no agenda and no motivation. They simply stood up and moved. A few years later though, as the Ambubola virus continued to mutate and combine with other viruses, something awful happened; and that's where the perfect shit storm occurred.

It was the worst possible outcome. Think about it, if Ambubola had combined with the common cold then we'd have a few harmless dead patients that stood up and sniffled and sneezed, which again would have been no big deal. But when Ambubola combined with Rabies we got hell on earth. Rabies was relatively slow acting. Ambubola sped that up. Rabies, once it reaches the brain is characterized with aggression, paranoia, foaming at the mouth and the desire to bite. The disease is also transferred through that bite.

Rabid Ambubola or RAB, as we call it, spread quickly. We believe that it was created by cross-contamination in a European hospital that was doing research into both Ambubola and Rabies. I've heard several different stories about how it happened. The most plausible seems to be that a patient who'd unknowingly had rabies, which takes months for the symptoms to show up got an organ transplant from a cadaver. The donor cadaver had been from a person with AB.

The AB sped up the rabies. The patient bit several people in the hospital. Before anyone knew what was going on, the disease made it into the wild. There were hundreds of cases within the first few days. There thousands by the end of the week and it was global buy the end of the first month.

There was, of course, widespread panic. Governments tried to contain it. They tried quarantines and sending in troops, all of which failed. Society soon fell. Countries became a thing of the past. With everyone fighting to survive, the old rules no longer applied. I've heard about cities and places starting up again, but usually they fail. There have been places that started with a few people who walled themselves off from the rest of the world. They grow their own food and do everything they have to do to stay clean and secure. But they always fail. It only takes one person to bring them down.

There are trillions of infected people who go out looking for fresh blood in large herd-like gatherings. The people in these groups resemble and act like a type of zombie. There are difference between them and traditional zombies though. The RABS as we call them, are not slow shuffling creatures who eat blood and brains. They have all of the physical attributes that they always had. So a RAB that looks like an old lady, has all of the strength and speed of that old lady. A God damned track star like the one that just chased me is going to still be as quick as hell. I once ran into a RAB that used to be a fucking basketball player. The asshole leaped over two other people to try to bite me. Of course, the worst one I've ever taken on had to have been a professional wrestler. I saw that bastard jump off of a car, do a flip and body slam one of the guys in our group. Once he bit the guy, it was over.

Stopping RABs isn't really too much harder than killing any other person. Since the virus is transmitted through the system by the blood, you can cut them severely enough that they bleed out and they'll die. But that, in some cases, can take a long time to happen and during it, they'll still try to bite you. The best ways are to decapitate them or destroy the brain.

Once a person is bitten, there's only one way to save them. There is no vaccine, no serum and no cure for RAB. The only method that works is amputation and that's only effective if the bite is on an extremity.

There are rumors of a cure. I've heard that scientists have developed a genetic retrovirus that can rewrite an affected person's DNA and eliminate the virus. But to tell you the truth it just sounds like bullshit to me. I keep running into people here that say that there are RAB free places in Europe or Asia. I also run into people from Europe who've come here because they were told that the US or what's left of it, is a RAB free zone.

For now, we just keep doing the same things we always do. We hunt for supplies and check each other often.

As we head back to camp from our latest forage, the thrumming of my car's exhaust system is a pleasant sound. My car is an antique. It's a 2012 Mustang GT. It's left over from when Detroit resurrected the muscle car era. The motor puts out 412 horsepower and the car is ungodly fast. It's also ungodly loud, so most of the time I don't use the motor. My car has also been retrofitted with small electric motors that run on lithium ion batteries in EV mode. When I use the motor, it recharges the batteries. The car's roof, hood and trunk deck lid are solar panels that also recharge the batteries on sunny days.

Normally I run in EV mode. I do that because it's far quieter. I have no need to let packs of RABs know that we're in the area. But I also run EV because I can only get gas when I find it. It isn't difficult to find gas but I have to go through all the effort of pumping it out of the tanks of what used to be gas stations. I've heard that in the old days, all you had to do was to show up at a station and wave a little card and you could put gas in your tank just by sticking a nozzle in your fuel door. I really don't believe that though.

I take a look over at Dana. She's still singing along to some song that she found on the Mustang's huge hard drive full of music. There are literally thousands of songs on it. Most of the music is from 20 or 30 years ago. Dana really likes the category they called "Pop." I really like both the "Metal," songs and the "Rock and Roll" songs. I also like some of the "Country," songs. Neither of us liked the ones they called "Rap," though. It just seemed like a bunch of angry people shouting at each other and complaining about their God damned problems. The "Punk," songs were the same way. Maybe that's why they called them "Punks."

I looked at the center console's display to see what song Dana was listening to. It was a song called, "Walking on Sunshine." I wondered what the hell that even meant.

"Dana, that woman was probably dead before you were born," I laughed. "I doubt that she's walking on anything."

Dana, like my car, is one of a kind. She's short with short brown hair and brown eyes. She has an exotic caste to her face. Her family was originally from Mexico she tells me. She has barely average sized breasts, but I love her thick legs and her ass. Dana's ass is a work of art. I get hard just thinking about it.

I let my hand settle down onto one of her thighs and inch my fingers inwards. She grabs my hand and stops it before it gets to its destination.

"Oh," she says smiling. "You're insulting this poor woman for walking on sunshine, but at the same time your fingers are walking towards pussy."

"Are you trying to stop that woman from walking on sunshine?" I asked.

"Hell no," she says. "I'm singing right along with her."

"Then why are trying to stop my fingers?" I asked. "You should be going along with me too."

"I love you Jer," she says seriously. "So I'm never going to stop your fingers. I just wanted to open up for them. You can do whatever you want and I'll just keep on singing."

"Is that what you call that?" I asked playfully. That was one quip too many and Dana's ample legs snapped shut with the finality of a steel trap. She grabbed my hand and placed it in my own lap. Dana is as cute as they come but she sings like the sound of a rusty gate swinging shut. For some reason though, she doesn't realize it.

"Fuck you Jerry," she snaps. "I sound just like the recording and you know it. You're just jealous of me. Some day when they start paying people to sing again, I'm going to be famous and rich."

"Yeah," I said. "Because when they start paying people to sing again, they'll pay you to shut the fuck up."

"How cold is it going to be tonight?" she asked.

"Dana, how the hell am I supposed to know that?" I asked. "I assume it'll be just like last night. Maybe it'll be a little bit warmer. Maybe it'll be a little bit colder."

"So how exactly did you stay warm last night?" she asked.

"You and I snuggled up in a blanket together like we always do," I said.

"So how are you going to stay warm tonight?" she asked. "Your smart assed mouth has just earned you a night alone."

"Okay," I said casually. "That's fine."

"What do you mean that's fine?" she asked.

"You know," I said. "If it's a warm night, there won't be any problems. I won't need some woman with a giant ass rubbing against me and constantly whispering nasty things in my ears. On the other hand, if it's a cold night, I'm sure the group will look at things and figure out what to do. What with you being the best singer in the group, I'm sure they won't want you to get cold and damage your voice. Our survival does depend a lot on your singing. And in my case, since I'm one of the strongest and fastest men we have, and also one of the better fighters, they won't let me suffer much either."

She looked at me and her mouth dropped open. "What are you talking about Jerry?" she asked.

"Well, I'm sure that one of the other women would sleep with me," I said. I could see anger flash across her eyes.

"I'm sure that I'd kill any bitch that even tried to lie down with you too," she snapped.

"Oh, so you'd rather have me freeze to death than enjoy a comfortable night of rest?" I asked in mock shock.

"I just don't want you sticking your dick where it doesn't belong," she hissed.

"Where does it belong?" I asked.

"In me Jerry," she said, grabbing my hand. "That's the only place it should ever be."

"But if you're unavailable..." I began. "And after all it would only be sex. There wouldn't be any emotional attachment. It would just be for warmth, you know..."

"Jerry, have you ever had sex with anyone other than me?" she hissed angrily.

"Of course not," I said. "But after tonight that may have changed. And maybe by tomorrow you'll have tried someone else too. Maybe we won't even be together anymore."

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" she screamed. "That will never happen. So whoever it is you're fantasizing about, you'd better keep her in your mind and to yourself while you're fucking me. Because if it ever becomes anything else..." I cut her off.

"I only fantasize about you, dummy," I said. "You're the only woman I have in mind."

"Well, I have been with a couple of other men before we got together," she said. "And I didn't like it. I love it with you though, Jer. Sometimes it's all I can think about."

"You're all I ever think about," I said.

"Even with my giant ass?" she whined, grabbing my hand.

"Dana, stop being silly," I said. "I love your ass and you know it. I can hardly keep my hands off of it or anything else."

"I know that Jerry," she smirked. "But I still like hearing it. If you're nice for the rest of the day, I might change my mind about sleeping with you." This time I kept my mouth shut. I think my sarcastic expression blew it for me though.

"What the hell are you smirking about?" she asked smiling.

"I was just trying to imagine a night with your legs not spread and me not between them," I laughed. "I don't think we've had many of those since we've met." She punched me in the shoulder just as we drove up to the wall of our camp.

As my car drove in front of the wall, the gate opened immediately. Two men stood next to the doors of the car and looked over both of us as we got out. I rolled up my pants so they could look at my legs and see that there were no bite marks. To speed things up I just took my jacket and sweater off. Several women walking by stopped and looked. I smiled and put my clothes back on. Dana grumbled and started to take her own top off.

"She doesn't need to," I said. "She never got out of the car."

One of the guys just stared at Dana. "Why didn't you just say so?" he asked.

"I just figured if Jerry is going to give every bitch in camp a free show, I might as well give one too," she said angrily.

"Dana, if you're giving our free shows, don't start from the top, pull your pants down," he quipped. "That's what I want to see."

"Do you want to see it badly enough to get cut?" I asked. He quickly climbed the ladder back to his perch on the wall.

"What's the matter, Honey?" asked Dana. "Are you jealous?"

"Nope," I said. "I'm not the type that gets jealous. I get over it and move on."

She looked at me strangely and laughed nervously. Then she grabbed my hand and we headed towards the house we shared. Before we got very far, I saw Sven heading in our direction. Sven also known as Sven the Elder was the leader of our group. Sven didn't lead us because he was the best fighter or the best tactician, but because he had a habit of knowing what decisions would be good for the majority of the group. He was also diplomatic enough to explain why some of his decisions were the correct ones.

"Jerry," he said as he intercepted us. "Did you find anything we can use?"

"There were several buildings there," I said. "I didn't get a chance to go inside of them because there were just too many RABs. But I saw a gas station and what looked like a supermarket." He nodded.

"Sven," I said. "This could be a really big deal for us because it's relatively close. The reason we haven't seen it before is because it's one of those small cul de sac towns that you have to get off of the freeway to find. There are no signs on the freeway to even tell you that the town exists. And there's a chain link fence that completely surrounds the town. It looks like the residents tried to keep people out, but instead they just ended up sealing themselves in. There's a hell of a lot of them in there."

"We'll pass," he said. "It just sounds too dangerous."

"I don't know," I said. "The windows in both that gas station and the supermarket are intact. That means that there's a good chance that there's a lot of stuff we could use in there."

"We'd probably lose a lot of people trying to get in there and try to get it too," he said. "We're lucky the two of you weren't hurt going in there."

"I didn't go in there," said Dana. "He never lets me do anything even remotely dangerous. I just spotted for him and spoke to him over the com link to let him know if he was in danger and..."

Sven looked at me crazily. "You went in there alone?" he asked. I just nodded.

"But you're our best scout and probably our best fighter. What would have happened to the rest of us if something had happened to you?" he asked.

"Come on Sven, I was in no danger," I said. "As soon as I made contact, I booked. I didn't try to fight, I just booked. Only one of them was able to keep up with me. That fucker was quick too. I'm telling you he had to have been a track star before..."

"Had to have been?" asked Sven lifting an eyebrow.

"Well, him and my mace didn't really get along," I said. "They had a head to head meeting and his head wasn't as persuasive as the head of my mace, so he lost." Sven just walked away shaking his head.

On our way to our house, we stopped off in the square in the center of town. Women were grilling all kinds of meat over a huge grill. There were vegetables and fruits too. There were even some small cakes and pies tonight. That was something I'd never seen in our camp before. They must have a new cook.

Dana and I grabbed a plate each and filled it with food. Dana also grabbed a pie. I reached for a cup and some of the fruit juice they served but Dana stopped me.

"We still have "B" at home," she reminded me. Our community was relatively well off. We sent all kind of scavengers and scouts out on a daily basis. We sent out long parties and short parties. The long parties went out and were gone for days or weeks at a time. They took things to trade for the supplies they thought we might need. Sometimes they took people to trade services that other communities might need.

We had a large group of skilled metal workers, cooks, and others. We even had an electrician and a computer repair guy. Computers were no longer networked. The cell towers and transmission cables had long since fallen into disrepair. We were fortunate though to have radios and push to talk phones that still worked.

I'm supposedly a fighter, but I also serve as a short range scout. I go out for very short expeditions scouting. The community shares in everything we find. Everyone works for the good of the community. So after a hard day of looking around to find new things and map out areas that we should avoid, Dana and I could grab as much food as we wanted. Common sense did dictate that we shouldn't take more than we could eat though. No one went hungry in our community as long as anyone had food, so there was no need for hoarding. Any behavior that was detrimental to the group was deemed illegal. If you did something illegal you had to go to court where a group of five would decide what to do about the infraction. If it was a more serious matter, the entire group would talk it over after dinner and vote. That usually only happened in cases where the infraction was so severe, that being expelled from the group was possible.

If a person was expelled, he or she was given enough food and water to last for a day. He or she was photographed, tattooed with an X on their shoulder and put outside of the wall at sunrise. They were never allowed to return for any reason although there have been a couple of cases were exceptions were made.

Dana looked at me as she mentioned the "B." It was what we called beer. We'd found some a few weeks ago and had of course turned most of it over to the community, but we'd kept a few cases for ourselves. We hadn't kept enough to consider it hoarding, and beer wasn't an item that was necessary for survival so it wasn't a bad thing. Sven had come by our place several times to relax and have a drink; as had the rest of our close friends who knew about it.

I smiled at her and nodded. As we left the cooking area, a couple of men asked if we wanted to share the details of the hunt we'd just done. One of them was one of the metal workers who were constantly after me.

"Tomorrow," I said. "Tonight I just want to get home, eat and get to bed."

"I'll bet," he laughed, looking at Dana.

"If I were you, I'd probably never get out of bed," he said and laughed.

Dana and I got back to our small house near the main gate. As she opened the door, I handed her my plate and went back to the car. I hooked my recharge cable up to the car and topped off the fuel tank. I liked to have my car full at all times just in case. I also kept a small supply of non-perishable food in the car, also just in case.

The real reason I'd gone back to the car though was to retrieve my mace. Once I got done eating, I needed to clean it and get the chunks of embedded skull off of the mace.

As I walked into the house, Dana was already sitting at the table. She'd also gotten comfortable as she called it. She'd taken her pants off and I could see her thick beautiful legs under the small table.

As she smiled at me, I knew immediately what was on her mind. I sat down next to her and started to eat. We didn't say a word. We just smiled at each other and ate faster and faster, knowing that as soon as we were done, we'd begin.

Before either of us was done eating, someone knocked at our door. "Shit," hissed Dana. "Haven't you told Sven that when the door is closed we don't want visitors?"

I just smiled and went to the door. I opened the door and an absolutely beautiful young woman walked in. She smelled like she'd just taken a bath in roses or something. I was absolutely shocked. Dana stood up immediately.

"Hi," said the woman.

"Hi," I said back, still confused.

"I'm here," she said smiling and staring at me and then she looked around the house.

"Uhm, you're here for what exactly?" I asked.

"I'm here for you," she said.

"The fuck you are," screamed Dana. The woman looked at Dana standing there in her panties and then back at me. Dana stood there glowering at her.

"Is she your sister?" asked the woman.

"Why the fuck are you here?" asked Dana.

"He told me to stop by after I got settled," said the woman. She didn't even look at Dana. It was almost as if she considered Dana not worth her trouble.

"Uhm, when did I say that exactly?" I asked.

"Four days ago, you were out on the road," she began. "A bunch of RABs were chasing my mother and me. My mother couldn't really run and I was trying to hold them off by picking them off one by one so we could get away. I shot as many of them as I could, but there were still three or four of them left when I ran out of bullets. You came along in that yellow car. You got out of the car just as one of them was about to grab my mom. You kicked him in the chest and then slashed his throat with a dagger." She was still smiling even as she recalled the incident.

"You grabbed my rifle from me and crushed the skull of the next one with its stock. You plunged the barrel of the gun through the next one's chest and then jumped up and brought your dagger straight down through the last one's skull." She smiled even brighter as she recounted that.

"That's one blood thirsty bitch," hissed Dana.

"Then you brought my mom and me here, to this settlement," she smiled again. "We were starving and dehydrated when you brought us in. We were covered in dirt and grime and afraid of everything we saw. I tried to thank you and you said I didn't need to. I told you that I had to pay you back for what you'd done for us. You told me to talk to you after I'd had a few days to get my strength back. Well, here I am," she said.

I didn't remember the girl as being this pretty. In fact, when I'd saved her and her mother, I'd thought they were two older women. They were both covered from head to toe, like the women from Arabia were in the old days.

As I looked at the woman now though, I could see why she would have tried to stay covered up. She was beautiful. She had the greenest eyes I've ever seen. Her long, pretty, blond hair seemed to flare out with every twitch of her head. She was probably three or four inches taller than Dana and definitely thinner. Her legs were longer and also thinner than Dana's but still well-proportioned. Her ass, though smaller, was also beautifully shaped. Her waist seemed impossibly tiny and it roared upwards into generous breasts that seemed to be unrestrained under the short dress she wore.