1 The Beginning Of The End

I remember the scene vividly. It was a clear September morning in Pinegrove, Florida. There was a slight breeze that made the heat just bearable. Me and my younger brother Micheal had just gotten back from playing basketball at a friend's house. That's when everything seemed to change.

Our mother was always gone on business trips so we were used to her not being there once we got home. She had left for Venice, Italy earlier that morning. Although something seemed off.

"Isn't today Saturday?" Micheal asked me

"Yeah," I replied. "Why isn't old man Makenzie mowing his yard?"

That was the first clue. A few hours later I received a call from James and Charles from down the street. They said that their parents hadn't returned home yet. We agreed to meet up to check out the situation.

"Hey, have you guys seen anything strange on the way here?"

"No, but we did notice that our neighbor wasn't mowing his yard this morning," I replied to James' question.

"Us too. We also saw some cars in a pileup on the other side of the main road. We were waiting to see some police cars show up but no one ever did." Charles explained.

We decided that since there were no adults around we might need to survive on our own for a while. We all went and explored all the empty houses in our neighborhoods. We were able to get a good amount of food and water that we believed would be able to last us until the end of whatever this was. Boy were we wrong.