Doyle leaps into action, tossing Seth his pistol, pulling a knife from his belt and running to the top of the stairs. I jump up, pulling back the slide on my Glock, hearing the satisfying click of the bullet.

I join Doyle by the stairs. He gives me an almost put-out look, then slowly starts down.

I follow, holding the Glock in both hands, aiming at the ground, my arms tense.

We enter the living room. It's clear. I follow Doyle into the den. And there we see them. Three dead things made it inside by falling through a rotted board on the window. More are trying to get in.

Doyle lunges forward and grabs hold of one, stabbing it in the eye. If he would get out of the way, I could just shoot them. Maybe. I make my way further into the room. Doyle is grabbing hold of a dead thing's neck when another grabs his shoulder. I aim at its head. If I miss, even by just a little, I could kill Doyle. The thing's trying to bite him. I pull the trigger. BOOM! Well, that loud noise is definitely not going to send the others away.

The dead thing repels backward. More are coming through the window. Doyle is covered in blood from where the thing's shoulder exploded. I missed its head. The dead things are all snarling and growling and it's horrible. I've never been this close to this many before.

Part of me is panicking. Another is screaming fight! And yet another part is yelling at me to run back upstairs.

Doyle stabs the dead thing I shot in the head. It falls as he moves on to another one. The window is still spewing out more dead things. There are too many.

"We have to go back!" I scream at Doyle as I take another shot at a dead thing trying to reach me.

He doesn't respond, but starts backing toward the living room again. I keep the Glock held high as I back away.

When we get back into the living room, he slams the double doors to the den closed. He leans against the doors, and then the dead things all clamor against it. Banging. Growling. Scratching.

"Get the chair!" He yells at me.

I grab the chair and rush it to him. He wedges it under the door handles.

"SETH!" Doyle runs up the stairs. The snarling of the dead things is getting louder.

I follow him.

"We gotta go!" He's yelling as he is running, his knife dripping blood on the stairs.

Seth appears in the bedroom doorway. "How many?"

Doyle shakes his head. "Too many. We gotta go."

"Get your stuff." Seth goes back into the bedroom. Doyle turns around and goes back downstairs.

I go into the bedroom and lift up my backpack.

Kacey has crawled out of bed and is starting to fold up her blankets. Seth is gathering weapons from a corner of the room. The rifle, pistol and knives from the log.

Doyle returns, the humungous backpack from downstairs on his back. Seth tosses his pistol back to him. Kacey looks disturbed at the sight of blood-covered-Doyle.

All right, I gotta hand it to them: They may be horrible at getting food and water, but they're pretty okay at collecting weapons.

I kneel down and help Kacey fold up her blankets. The constant roar from the zombies seems to be getting louder. I can hear the double doors creaking downstairs. Is that possible, or my imagination? It doesn't matter which, we just need to hurry up.

"Door's not gonna hold much longer," Doyle says, "Come on."

I stand up, holding three of the maybe six blankets on the floor.

"Those'll do," Seth says to me as he lifts Kacey onto his back, "Put 'em on Doyle's pack."

There are some Velcro straps on the top of his giant backpack. I roll one blanket around the other two, then strap them on.

Doyle puts his pistol in the waist of his jeans, and Seth hands him the rifle.

"Ready?" Seth looks from Doyle to me.

I nod. Doyle's answer is walking out the door.

Down the stairs, into the living room. The chair is still wedged on the doors. The doors are heaving, the pounding on the other side is horrible. Banging. Growling. Scratching.

I don't know how we're supposed to get out. The herd is all over the street. But Doyle, in the lead, heads straight for the back door in the kitchen.

He fiddles with the lock for a second before flinging the door open. He ushers all of us out before running out himself, closing the door behind him.

And we run.

                  +++++

We keep moving all day, only stopping long enough for Doyle to splash water from a creek on himself to wash the blood off, and then around noon to split a pack of crackers and water bottle three ways. Kacey still has the bottle and crackers I gave her earlier, and since she's sick, she gets her own stuff.

Seth tells us we'll set up camp around dusk and ration the food in the morning. I rip open a pack of crackers, and some of them spill out on the ground. Doyle lunges forward and snatches them up, cramming them in his mouth, dirt, grass, and all.

He looks worse-off than Seth. Thinner, more tired. He's only a couple years older than me, but circumstances have aged him beyond his years. He has dark circles under his eyes, his pale skin is stretched across his very prominent cheek bones, his fiery hair hangs below his shoulders in tangled mats, and the more I see him, the more I realize how emaciated he really is. He must still have some strength, though, to be able to carry that huge backpack.

Seth, on the other hand, still has a bit of meat on his bones, and more color in his skin. He's a little bit shorter than Doyle, but not by much. His chin and upper lip are covered in stubble, and his black hair falls in waves, nearly covering his eyes. He carries Kacey on his back, her arms wrapped gently around his neck.

Kacey is small for a ten-year-old, and practically skin on bones. She's pale from her sickness, but happy. She laughs and talks to Seth as he carries her, and I can see that they make each other happy. Probably being quite a few years apart has something to do with it. Siblings tend to be like that, I think, getting along better when one is much older than the other. But I wouldn't know. I'm an only child.

I walk behind them all, observing. Doyle, heaving the backpack up higher as it slides down for the hundredth time, just seems to drag along. He has a slight limp and he tends to keep the same expression on his face. A dull stare, of sorts, his mouth in a frown, his eyes tired.

Seth's expression is ever-changing – smiling, laughing (this time his laugh is pleasant), sometimes he gets a little sad when Kacey brings up something or someone that I assume is from their past life.

Kacey's hair is dark like his, and cut in a jagged bob. I wonder if Seth maybe cut it so that she wouldn't have to deal with it. If so, why didn't he cut Doyle's, too? Well, come to think of it, Doyle probably wouldn't let anybody come at him with a pair of scissors.

I have no idea what my hair looks like. I have no idea what any of me looks like, actually. I haven't seen my reflection since I went into this old Dollar General a couple months ago, walked into the bathroom and nearly had a heart attack because I looked like a freakin' '80s rock star. Have you ever seen one of those? If you haven't, you need to, just to understand what I'm sayin'. Ugh. But I do like '80s music, it's awesome, and my dad would sometimes – actually, I'm not reminiscing about Daddy. It makes me sad.

But I will tell you what I used to look like. I had long, wavy brown hair, and blueish/hazel-ish eyes. And my height was average, my weight was average, my face average. I do have a long nose, though, so there's that.

      +++++

At dusk we search for a decent place to bed down for the night. A creepy house, that was most definitely abandoned long before the "siege of monsters" becomes our temporary home.

After making sure it's clear, Doyle drops his pack on the floor and practically collapses in a corner, hugging his legs to his chest and burying his face in his knees.

Seth sets Kacey down gently, then starts getting things situated. He gets one of the blankets and wraps it around Kacey. It's starting to get very cold. I remove my backpack, take my coat from around my waist and slip it on.

Seth offers me a blanket, and I gratefully take it. Though I may wind up giving it to Kacey later.

He tries to give the last blanket to Doyle, who adamantly refuses to take it.

"Give it to your sister," He mumbles, waving Seth away. He seems utterly miserable, like he doesn't want to be alive at all. So why is he? Why hasn't he just let himself die? That's a pretty easy thing to do these days.

While Seth is wrapping Kacey up again, I study Doyle. He doesn't have a coat, just a plaid shirt that I assume is flannel, and his jeans look worn and thin. His sneakers have definitely seen better days.

Seth, again, has the better end of the deal. He's got a coat, a decent pair of jeans, and hiking boots. Kacey has a coat as well, though it looks much too big for her and has a dark stain on the front of it that looks suspiciously like....never mind.

Seth comes over to me. "I guess you've joined us?"

"I guess so," I reply. I guess so.

"Welcome," He says playfully, "And also, thanks for saving my life."

I laugh a little, "Actually, you saved mine."

"Call it even?" He asks, grinning. He seems pretty normal for somebody who's in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

"Sure," I say. I nod towards Doyle. "How long have you known him?"

"We went to the same school, had some classes together. When it all started he just kind of showed up at our house," Seth tells me, "I don't know why. I think he may have 'liked' my sister."

"Who, Kacey?" That's disgusting.

"No, no!" Seth says quickly, and then his happiness disappears as he says, "The other one."

I nod slowly, feeling sympathetic.

"She, uh...."

"Yeah." There's no need for him to say more. "Do you mind if I ask her name?"

A sad smile parts his lips as he says, "Miranda. She was right about your age. Had pink hair."

"I'm sorry," I say quietly, looking into his deep brown eyes.

He just kind of stares at his hands for a minute. Then he looks over at Kacey, who is already drifting off. "I still have her, though, and I'm not gonna lose her." Without another word, he leaves me and goes to sit down beside her.

I look over at Doyle. He is watching us, but turns away when he sees me looking at him, the last rays of sunlight setting his hair ablaze and letting me see the sadness in his hazel-explosion eyes before he hides them from me.