"ANTIDOTE"....Chapter One

There was a time when all was peaceful in this valley, but tonight changed all that.
Tonight there was a vile smell in the air, the smell of walking death. There was a wailing in the distance, the horrible sounds of despair mixed with madness. But the sound nor the smell could prepare you for what your eyes would never let your mind forget.

“Come on Charlie, this thing ain’t gonna hold forever!” Bill feverishly explained to the dog as he shoves the dining room chair under the doorknob. “Them God Damned zombies have found another way in!” Charlie whimpers in acknowledgment of what Bill said.” Sounds like they crawled through the basement window! We gotta get out to the barn and get up in the loft. Them bastards can’t get us in the barn!” BANG…The front door bursts open with a flood of flesh-devouring corpses, maggots and earthworms pouring from their faces. “Shit, they’re inside!” Bill says while he fumbles around with the shotgun shells. He finishes loading his trusty 12 gauge automatic and picks the Basset Hound up by his collar. Bill looks around one more time in the kitchen, and thinks to himself about the time when Charlie was a pup and chewed the leg up on the chair that is now barricading the door.” Well Charlie ‘ol boy, we pass this way but once, and we sure made a go outta this one!” Snickered Bill.




Out the kitchen door and across the back porch Bill ran with gun in one hand and dog in the other. Down the steps and into the yard, Bill doesn’t look back until he reaches the barn. He puts down Charlie so he can lift the heavy beam securing the door, the giant double doors swing open to reveal an empty barn, except for some straw and a few farming tools. There used to be animals here but the super-flu saw to it that Bill would have to struggle without them. Bill never even thought about the animals. He leaned the shotgun against the wall on the inside of the barn and Charlie followed him in. Bill grabbed the beam from outside and brought in to secure the doors from the inside. As he pulled the huge doors together he could see those monsters ravaging the house in search for him. He wrestles the heavy beam into the thick, iron hooks and picks up the shotgun and dog and climbs the ladder up to the loft and pulls the ladder up.




Bill’s daughter Katie used to play in the loft, and it’s exactly the way she left it. Straw bails stacked into a makeshift fort and things lying around you’d think were left by a boy. Katie was as tough as any boy. Growing up around here would make “Butter” tough! Katie joined the Air Force when she graduated high school. She served 12 years as MP and she let her re-entry expire when her mom died so she could care for her dad. She had been home for 2 months when the Super-Flu had begun spreading.

Everyone thought they were safe, tucked quietly away in this Mountain Valley, forgotten by time and the technology. The remnants of what used to be a Booming Coal mining town has become nothing more than a “good place to retire” or a “nice place to visit”. Katie had left for Charlotte NC this morning. Said she heard of a “Camp St. Teresa”, some sort of “safe place”, said she could get us passports because of her military status. The earliest she could make it back would be morning…this is going to be one hell of a night…