1 CHAPTER 1

I was woken up by a loud thud and a sick, squelching sound. I got up with a haze and turned around to grab my axe only to find it gone. I sighed and grabbed my spear and pulled on a jacket seeing that it was still dark outside. I went out in time to see my brother Albus pulling an axe out of the zeds head he had a disgusted look on his face.

"It's been more than three months we've been doing this aren't you used to it by now?" I joked

He chuckled and replied "Used to what? Slaying people?"

"They are not people Al not anymore."

"It's okay Liam, give it a break." he said with a sigh.

Three months since we first had to kill just for us to live, it was like living as a gladiator just without the glory. We had set up a chart for the watch needless to say it has not been followed since its creation.

"My turn began an hour ago why didn't you wake me up" I asked.

"Because you were drooling worse than the walking dead " he said.

I was about to reply when a kind voice called out saying "If you two are ready to give each other a break I have breakfast for you". We went in the house to see our gran pouring a stew into bowls. With the tips of our hands numb from the cold we just held on to the hot bowls for a while.

I took a spoon to get started with the stew, it wasn't bad according to the regular apocalyptic food we had to eat from cans. I asked gran what was in the stew. She said "Even I don't know I just tossed in some cans of stuff and mixed it together with some spices". I nodded and went back to the stew.

"Speaking of cans we are running low on supplies" gran said.

Al and I both looked at each other with a sigh. Each trip we had planned to the supermarket had not gone, how do we say, peachy. We will go and check it out. The three of us live in a quiet residential area lucky for us there were not a lot of buildings in our locality although unlucky for us one of the only residential buildings was right in front of our society.

Al and I had cleared our bungalow complex of zombies in which we only had just about 20 or so zeds each of whom were trapped in their own houses at the time so it was easy pickings.

We had looted all of their houses and had managed to even find some produce thanks to the rooftop garden of one of our growling friends. We had agreed to just leave the garden as it was because taking care of it was too cumbersome.

As the sun peeked over the horizon I and Albus started gearing up for the raid, gran never came along with us because we went on bicycles and she wanted to stay at home in case any zeds came around. Al and I didn't have our driving license because we were underage. It wasn't like we didn't know how to drive but we had decided to save the car in case we ever get overrun and needed a quick escape.

We put our bicycles into gear and started heading towards the market. Bicycles were great because as long as it was oiled it made little to no noise which meant that the zeds on the road won't follow us as long as we were driving with a bit of distance between us and the zeds.

We reached the market and parked our bikes in front of the entrance facing towards the road in case of a swarm.

On entering we both took up certain aisles and then filled the backpacks up with the necessities. When I reached the canned meat isle I noticed the certain lack of zeds, this was supposed to be one of the biggest shopping centers there were but then why was it empty.

I looked back to see if I could see Albus but I found a melted, bloodied face staring back at me with blank, bloodshot, green glowing eyes. I wavered back and reached for the knife I kept tucked away at my waistband before I could attacked him the zed tackled me we both fell to the ground with a crash I rolled the zed onto its back and then I stabbed it right in its eye.

I kept stabbing away until it stopped moving. I just sat there staring at the blood on my hands and on my hoodie. I sat until I heard Albus running my way, his weapon drawn and a scared look upon his face.

"We need to leave before more come, you got everything you needed?" I asked

"Yes let's go" Al said

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We reached home Al was throwing concerned glances towards me. I ignored them and said that I was going for a bath. I got in and locked myself inside. I lifted my hoodie over my head with shaking hands to find a long scratch on my forearm and then I retched, throwing up my breakfast.