When Mar saw her former best friend running through the mansion while the zombies behind her tumbled through a broken window, she didn’t hesitate. In one fluid motion, she jerked her arm free of Allen’s grip, grabbed her brother with her free hand, and dashed out onto the wide back porch.

The sunlight caused her eyes to squint, but despite the chaos, she took a second to toss her shades on. She almost could have grinned when Benny did the same thing, but she didn’t have the time.

At once, the undead lumbered toward her. Instead of fighting, she took off ducking and weaving through them. Some luck stayed with her for they remained dispersed and she was able to make it past their questing fingers. One grabbed Benny’s tie-shirt and was rewarded with a quick spike, from her pick, through its skull.

Of course Allen called after her, but if she wasn’t disinterested already, the moaning of a few hundred zombies crowding into the mansion from the street would have been enough to keep her running. From the sounds of it Allen and Cindy had moved to follow her. She didn’t care. She might be pissed at them and probably would prefer never to lay eyes on either of them again, but at this point she didn’t what them dead, there were too few of them left to want anyone to perish under the dirty claws of the mindless walking corpses.

The mansion in which they stayed was separated from its neighbor, but a dry, cactus studded wash. She blew off heading to a new house and just took the wash north. Dust flew up from under her feet as she raced between the towering saguaros and prickly pear. The zombies grew sparse as she passed house after house.

Once she didn’t see any zombies at all, she took a moment to catch her breath and look behind her.

She saw Allen and Cindy just entering the wash. Allen waved his arm and shouted, “Go, just go!”

Then she gasped when she saw a hundred filth covered forms dump into the wash behind her former friends.

“Shouldn’t we help them?” Benny asked.

Mar voice remained low as she answered. “What could we do? Carry them, fight off a hundred stiffs. It’s all leg work now, little bro.”

Again, despite all she was upset about, she didn’t truly want Allen and Cindy to die, but she wasn’t going to wait up for them either. Mar and her brother took off at a half jog north. The sky stayed cloudless and the hot desert sun already sapped her malnourished strength from her limbs. Her bug-out bag grew heavier with every additional hundred yards they traveled.

It was looking like they might make it. Allen and Cindy were also closing the distance between the two groups while the undead had fallen behind.

But Mar was raised a poor kid in south Tucson. She didn’t know the upper foothills very well. She barely caught herself before the wash spilled down into a gutter. The gutter didn’t concern her, what did was the wide Sunrise Road that loomed before them. Wrecked cars and skeletons lined both sides of the four laned road, but the walking dead also lingered here. She counted at least fifty moving in small packs heading in both directions.

They hadn’t seen them yet, but this changed when Cindy yelled, “Don’t just stand there, keep going!”

As one, the undead turned their way while releasing loud moans. Soon these moans were answered by more zombies and they all began to stumble their way.

“Great job, you dumb a-hole, now our passage north is blocked for half a mile in either direction and we’re sandwich between them and that group behind us.” Mar looked from face to face. No one offered up any ideas and she saw nothing but terror lurking within their eyes.

“Fucking great.”

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

You can explore more of the Eternal Aftermath here!

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