Mar grabbed her little brother’s hand and looked on in horror as the zombies from the road poured into the opening to the wash.

“Come on, back this way!” Allen yelled and the four of them retreated back the way they came. It only took a hundred feet of jogging before they saw the first pack they had fled from stumbling at them from the south.

Mar didn’t bother to discuss tactics. She hauled her brother along to the west until she came to a six foot high adobe wall. Her breath came in short gasps, but she was able to say, “Benny, I’m going to climb up first and see if it is safe. Then I’ll haul you up.”

He only nodded.

Her upper strength had never been good, but she was able to get her little teenaged body up onto the top of the wall. She was just about to check the yard when a fist grabbed a handful of her long hair. The pain was quickly followed by a moan of hunger. She wanted to pull away, but didn’t want to lose a fistful of her hair.

Looking into the yard she saw far more zombies than it should have held. Easily twenty undead lumbered over to join the one that held her. “Shit, I sure can pick em.”

Drawing the pick out of her belt, she lined the point up to one of the big zombie’s eyes as it moved in for a bite. She wacked at him, but the angle proved awkward and it didn’t drive in enough to take the thing down. In a moment of panic she struggled to brace the back of the pick against the adobe wall. An embarrassingly girlie cry escape her lips as its yellowed teeth moved toward her shoulder, but at the last moment, the pick’s back caught on the wall and the strength of the zombie’s lunge drove the pick deeper into its skull. Its eyes lost all focus as it toppled over, but Mar cursed when it took her weapon with it.

She was about to leap off, when she saw that the others, including Benny, had all climbed up onto the wall. Looking back she saw why. The two groups of undead had converged on their position and they had little choice but to follow her no matter how dangerous it might be.

“Err, come on then,” she said while standing up on the foot wide wall. The zombies within the yard stumbled toward them, but the survivors followed Mar example and soon they were moving along the top of the wall. Some of the zombies broke away to try to cut them off and Mar hurried her speed pushing past the boundaries of safety.

Then she spied something odd before her. A wide plank was balanced on the wall and the other end went into a hole that had been made in the side of the house the wall surrounded. As she approached it looked like if someone balanced on the plank they could make it to the house and climb in through a window on the building’s second floor.

Dealing with other people made her more nervous than the zombies, but as the two packs began to surround the outer walls and the zombies inside the wall homed in on them, she felt she had little choice.

Maybe there isn’t even anyone there, she thought to herself as she led the way onto the plank and toward the house.

The window above the plank loomed open. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the sun was beginning to dip behind the Tucson Mountains to the west and the insides of the house had grown dark. She pushed on anyway.

As she reached the window, a masked figure moved in the darkness. Its sudden appearance startled her and she began to tumble off the plank into the waiting mouths below. But right before she fell, the man’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

Despite her building horror, she rolled her eyes. “Somebody’s seen too many movies.”

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Check each weekend for another episode in Mar’s fight to survive the Eternal Aftermath

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You can explore more of the Eternal Aftermath here!

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