I miss my fluffy lil bastard.

But she was just so loud.

My baby meant well when she started barking as they passed by our apartment complex.

The undead don't have good hearing, but Echo had a set of lungs like no other. From my third floor apartment they could still hear her.

They flooded the building lobby and poured through the stairwell entrance in droves.

As I scrambled around my one room apartment stuffing things into my old school bag, I could feel the carpeted floor beneath me rumble as they quickly closed in on the third floor entrance.

No matter how much I begged Echo, she just wouldn't shut up. I stuffed that rediculous pup into the pocket of my hoodie and threw open the window that led to the fire escape. Echo wouldn't stop squirming and whining as I awkwardly legged it over the window sill, my bag snagging on the window in the process.

I cursed under my breath as I tried to get loose.

That’s when they started banging on my front door.

Trying to get in.

I managed to free myself and slam the window shut behind me. My front door burst open as I frantically climbed toward the alleyway below.

Halfway down the fire escape, I heard the rattle of someone following me down. I looked up to see the couple from 4B stuck on their landing.

The horde had burst through the window in a shower of glass shards and were spilling out onto the third floor landing.  I heard their screams pierce through the rumbling chaos. I didn't have to look up as I jumped down to the alley below to know what happened to them.  The sickening squelch of tearing flesh and snapping bones reverberated down the alleyway.

My stomach still turns thinking about it.

Echo squirmed around even more as I ran toward the back of the complex— the front was cut off by the stragglers that still shuffled about.  I hooked a right and barreled down the connecting alley. But as I turned, I saw to my horror that the undead were pushing one another off the landing in an attempt to get to me. The sound of their impact with the concrete was followed by that of bodies dragging themselves down the alley.

Nobody is lucky enough for that to have stopped them once they're on your trail.

I managed to make it the three blocks that stretch out between my apartment complex and the nearby restaurant district before the little luck that I started out with ran short.

As I ran through the intersection of two alleys, I was knocked over by a figure darting around the adjacent corner. I go to take a swing at them with my bag when I heard him curse before jerking me to my feet by the collar of my hoodie and yanking me in the direction I had already been running in before he got in my way.

Now, I'm not proud of the phrasing but I said something along the lines of, "Get your hands off of me you future Happy Meal!" Before ripping free from his grip and breaking right down a different alley.

Only to find myself cut off by a cluster of them chowing down on some unlucky soul.

I'm forced to back to the same path as the Happy Meal. He gave me somewhat of a smug chuckle when he noticed that I caught up to him.

HM knocked over a pile of moving crates and trash that we passed in an attempt to slow down the steadily growing stampede right behind us.

The noise drew the attention of even more zombies and we found ourselves quickly being surrounded.

We looked around frantically for an escape. The only thing we could get to was a dingy green dumpster. But it was better than the present alternative, so we both yanked open the rusty side hatch and clambered inside. HM closed the hatch seconds before the first wave of them slammed into the side.

It was only after we had trapped ourselves in our new smelly confinement's that I realized what was wrong.

Echo wasn't in my hoodie pocket anymore.

She was gone.

I grabbed HM by his jacket and yanked him down to where I could get in his face, "Did you see a little pug run away when you knocked me over earlier?"

"What's so important about some dumb dog? We have bigger issues here!" He shouted as he gestured to the clawing and banging that shook the metal walls around us.

"Screw the zombies!! They'll lose interest in a couple of hours when some other unlucky idiot catches their attention. I have to keep that dog safe! So I'm gonna ask one last time. Do you know what direction Echo ran off in?"

HM knocked my hands away and scoffed, "Yeah, I saw your dumb mutt take off towards Jefferson Street. If it hasn't already been eaten-which it probably has been- she's probably under a parked car or in the park. That's where my nephew's dog always ran away to." HM groaned as he slowly sat down on a relatively dry bag of garbage.

"Are you okay?" I asked as I looked over the man who was my temporary companion while I was stuck in here. I couldn't see much because of the lack of light, but he had a tall and wide frame.

HM let out a dry chuckle, "I may not look it sweetheart, but I am way too old to be doing all this running and fighting crap still. I retired so I wouldn't have to deal with this shit anymore."

"Okay, three things. One, only my dad can call me Sweetheart. Two, it's not like anybody asked for the world to end so please get over yourself. And three, you might be a lot older than me but there's no way you're retired from anything."

I sat down on the opposite side of the dumpster with my hands tucked into the now almost entirely empty hoodie pocket. I gripped the small butterfly knife that my uncle jack gave me as a graduation present in my left hand, "By the way Happy Meal, you gotta name?"

HM shook his head at me, "Okay, if I can't call you Sweetheart, you gotta cut the Happy Meal crap. The name's Daniel Wilmont, but most people call me Monty."

End of Page 1

To be continued in:

Page 2: The Birth Of Jason