ALIVE: The Aftermath Chronicles (Book 1)

Chapter 1 - BLOODSHOT

One crosshair draws down steady over a ravenous horde. The dead stagger, not focusing their shining yellow eyes on much of anything. Somehow, they still manage to find the living, as if they're drawn in by some supernatural force to destroy what's left with beating hearts.

Finger steady on the trigger, he could take his shot. Instead, he passes the scope over every one of them. That crosshair lingers longer on the female zombie with dark hair and freckled skin. Taking in their rotting faces, he passes onto the next and then the following carefully.

"Doyle?"

His name sounds from the left, where the scars from shrapnel pucker the flesh around his ear. He doesn't turn or acknowledge the call since it falls on his deaf side.

Her voice drops into silence, and he's honed sight on what he's aimed. There's no mistaking that distant movement, of course. A sound meant nothing anymore, especially the ones below the decibels of screams.

The sway of the dead stumble yet always manages to find footing for their next meal should a chase call for such. It's been a while since his own run from the chase. Only recently had he stopped bolting up in the middle of the night thinking another race had found him.

These walls were different from that of District 1. They were stronger, taller, built to keep the infected out. The red brick layer down Doyle's watchtower, matching the other towers surrounding the colony on all sides. All around, it's a fortress against beating zombie fists and raiders.

The sounds of the dead muffled through the bricks, but up here on Doyle's watchtower, he sees reality. These sounds from the dead, he can still make out from his good ear that the bomb blast failed to take out with the other.

He takes his shot onto the dark-haired zombie, once a woman, with half of her face chewed off. The bullets always seemed to ring louder with this one in particular and the others that resembled it.

The press of weight against the worn wood below his knees draws his attention. He knows who it is before his eyes find her, and he's blinded by the dying sun that glares in his eyes.

Her hair is a halo of red in this light. Doyle's trained eyes struggle to adjust to the changed depth of field. He blinks when his eyes adjust, then returns to stare down his scope.

Her face is free from upset splotches, and no blood stained her clothing. There was no little Abby clutched to her side or in her arms, and she was smiling.

Everything, seemingly, was fine. So why was Sophie here? Why did she visit him every night, every shift, before curfew went into effect?

He returns to his job and blows the head off of another infected. He watches it fall to its knees, and then he exhales as it plops like a sack of flour into the grass.

"They've doubled since yesterday," he says to her.

From the corner of his eye, he can see her wiping at the hair that refused to settle against the slight breeze. She kneels to his level, and it causes him to tense. Why? He wasn't sure himself.

She replies, "Think he'll take your suggestion this time? Or will he just leave them here to eventually get into our new home?"

It's been about eighty days or so since they arrived here, and like most places in his life, Doyle hesitates to call it home. All this was temporary, but that cynical ideology seemed lost on Sophie. He imagined all she wanted was a home, and Doyle didn't have the heart, yet, to tell her that was an out-of-date hope to have.

Sophie, Abby, and the strange Doctor, Elisa Martin, were the sole survivors of the fall of District 1. Williams, his fellow soldier, died in the helicopter crash beyond the field where Doyle shot down zombies daily. The collision into this protected District 4 land caught the attention of those from these watchtowers. Russell and his men found them inches from death while the infected reached for them in the mangled chopper.