Serene dreams in a chaotic world. Pt 1

It's a beautiful sunny day. We're at the beach, playing in the water, soaking up the warm rays of the sun. The picnic sticks out particularly well in this story. I'm not sure why, it wasn't anything spectacular. Just a normal peanut butter and jelly sandwich kind of picnic. The kids building sandcastles, me closing my eyes and just taking all the sounds in of that wonderful day.....

I wake up in a cold sweat. Where am I? The room is spinning, and there is a putrid taste in my mouth. I realize that the event that just occurred is so far gone that it only exsists in my dreams now. Looking down at my sleeping children, pangs of agony ripped at my heart. I longed for them to have that day again. To go outside and see the sun shining again, to play on the beach and have sandy peanut butter sandwiches.... not this. This life of running, hiding from the dead, or undead rather. Having done a head count, I drifted back into sleep.

Now I'm hiking. when it all began. The outbreak. We had our portable radio, listening to it when the emergency broadcast came over the air. Amidst the waterfalls and trees, we learned the horrible situation.

A rustling woke me. I did another quick head count to see if the children were all there. They were. Okay. What was the noise? I hoped it wasn't one of the undead, seeking us out. I didn't have many shells left.. When the outbreak occurred, we raced the three hours home to get supplies. I had a small arsenal of weapons stockpiled (mostly rifles), but not a lot of ammo. The gun shops had been raided by the time we got to them. At first, the plan was to sit still, stay in the house and board it up. We survived a good many months that way, as the infection hadn't totally spread to our small town yet. Then came the day that we had to venture out to get
supplies. I didn't want to leave the kids home alone with the undead walking around. I figured if we died, we died together...My oldest was given a gun and shown how to use it. Broke my heart to equip my 12 year old with a gun, when she should have been doing her nails and hair, and hanging out with friends. Hell, most of her friends were dead now. I know, we had to
take care of a few of them.

I glanced around. through the streaks of light beaming in between the boards on the windows, I figured it was at least 11 a.m., not positive though, as my watch stopped working months before the outbreak. The sound again. What the hell was that? I quietly got up (so as not to stir the children and have them get panicky) and did a quick sweep of the cabin. Nothing. Then paranoia started... "Are they under the cabin? What if they can dig? What am I going to do?" The noise got more frantic. Sort of a scratch scratch scratch on the door. Ok, I can do this.
There were boards on the doors, but it was a full lite door so I could peer between the cracks. Slow movements. If they're out there, I don't want to alert them of my position. I peeked out the door, and got a surprise. Standing there was our family dog. A bloodhound.. he must have picked up our scent! How he managed to stay alive for months and not get attacked was beyond me. I
looked further to see if there were any undead around him. None. How strange. I carefully pried open the door and let him in. I let him wake the kids up, I know it would lift their spirits to see him. He ran up to them and started licking their faces, like it'd been mere hours since he'd last seen them. "Fred!" they exclaimed. He'd gotten skinny. Fred had always been a hearty
dog. He got two huge bowls of dog food a day, plus scraps. He had gotten out one day shortly after the outbreak, and ran away. I think he knew what was going on and sought refuge in the woods.

It was time to move again. The cabin was nice, but the supplies were running low. I gathered up the kids and what we had left for supplies and headed out. Our plan was to go where we had been at the time of the break out....at the furthest point north in Michigan. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I figured it was worth a shot, there were almost no people in that area, and if we did encounter too many undead I could always get a boat. They even had one of those glass
bottom boat tours.... I know they didn't have the tour running, most of the people probably ended up at St.Theresa. I'd gotten letters from some of my family that had been there, and they said it wasn't pretty there at all. Then one day, the letters just stopped coming. I figured it would happen, with all the stories circulating about the camp.

We started out fifteen miles south of the Mighty Mackinaw Bridge, the bridge that connects the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan. We walked across the five mile bridge hoping the whole way that we would not come across any zombies. The sight that we beheld was horrible. From the top of the two towers, people had hung themselves. Some had apparently been bitten,
they were squirming like a worm on a fishing hook. With ammo being limited, I hoped they would stay on their ropes and not come after us. It was a silent walk, even the kids kept strangely quiet.