We walked most of the morning, stopping only once to take a drink and refill our bottles at a creek along the road. Just before noon, we found our first farmhouse. Small farms like this dotted middle and northern Michigan. This one was tiny, just a single story, no more than a couple rooms, and painted in a faded blue paint.

Most of the crop, it looked like corn, was withered and the house appeared empty but we stopped anyway. Evan took point and we cleared the house, now moving in a much more organized fashion than our previous haphazard attempts. We struck gold with the pantry, flour, salt, sugar, and oil. I made the mistake of opening the fridge, and a smell escaped that would have knocked me down before, but compared to recent experience it wasn’t that bad.

“Grab the lemon juice. We need the vitamin C,” Evan said.

I stuffed the green bottle in my pocket while we went outside where we found a small garden. It looked as though it was mostly dead but Lauren said, “There might be some left.” And she found several small carrots in the ground most likely kept alive by rain. I helped her dig through the garden while Evan kept watch. We dug through the dirt, using our hands and a garden hoe. We were able to gather enough carrots and potatoes to fill a small cloth sack and I hung the new found food over my shoulder.

Next to the garden was the woodpile and Evan grabbed an axe from the stump in front of it. He hefted it in his hand, and rubbed his finger along the edge. “This’ll work,” he said.

We found two more houses later that day, but both we empty of anything useful. One was bore the scars of a large attack, several of the windows were broken, and the railing was pulled from the porch. Bodies, some no more than skeletons, were spread across the front lawn, and some of the farmland was burned.

The other, a larger house but on a smaller plot of land, it was empty, a complete absence of anyone, as if the house was abandoned. Everyone, and everything was gone, vanished.

We pressed on. Around 4 o’clock, I had left my watch in my room at our house, we started looking for a suitable campsite, when I heard the unmistakable crack of gunfire. The three of us stopped, it was the first unnatural sound any of us had heard in weeks. There were two more cracks echoing through the trees.

“It sounds like it’s coming from over there,” Evan said pointing down a dirt road that split from the highway on which we were walking. He broke into a run, and I looked at Lauren, who shrugged her shoulders. We followed Evan.

About a quarter mile into the woods, the road nearly disappeared into an unrecognizable tangle of weeds but the path through the trees remained. Two more shots were fired, and Evan was sprinting now, making it hard for Lauren and I to keep up. Our surroundings were basically forest, but next to an old pine tree was a rusted, bent mailbox, and the remnants of a driveway. We followed the path, pushing through the weeds, and grass, and small saplings, until it cleared revealing another farmhouse, but this one had a small horde attacking it. A legion of pallid bodies, shuffling together like a school disturbing fish, mobbed the house. There was a man on the porch loading a shotgun, the porch was turned into a rudimentary barricade, but the infected were starting to overwhelm it.

“Back you devils,” said the man.

I caught up with Evan, who was kneeling at the edge of the forest removing his pack. He checked his two pistols, one the silenced pistol I gave him, and the other the much larger and louder .45 he had. He nocked an arrow, “You two don’t have to come, but I’m doing this.” Normally, his face was blank, but now his jaw was clenched, and his eyes carried an intensity I had never seen before. He nocked an arrow, and ran towards the house.

The man on the porch, his shotgun loaded, fired several times into the crowd of bodies on his doorstep, some fell, but the majority advanced on his house. They made it to his steps, hastily blocked by fence posts.

Evan pulled out his pistol, the loud one, and fired. Bang, Bang, Bang, three precise shots, but only one body went down. But, his method worked, some of the infected broke off from the main group, now fixed on Evan. He picked up his bow, and picked off the infected people, one at a time, seven arrows for six bodies.

“We have to help him,” Lauren said, and she ran towards the fight, machete in hand.

I was the last one at the battle, and I set up farther out, trying to steady the rifle. I switched on the sight, and watched the small red dot on the back of a woman’s head.

“Just like swatting flies,” I said aloud.

The small rifle jumped to life, and small red clouds appeared as I tracked different victims. It started to get repetitive, see dot, shoot, see dot, shoot, until ten infected bodies fell to the ground.

Attracted by the commotion, the horde turned our direction, and the old man stood on his porch watching the procession of zombies march to their own demise. We cut them down. Evan switched to the axe, swinging it in a wide arc, sometimes taking two out at a time. Lauren was next to him taking on single zombies as they approached Evan.

I was surprised at how Lauren held her own, and was struck by the surreal scene of my sister cutting down zombies, some taller than she was. I watched as she expertly cut off one’s arms and then took one home run swing at its head, this one larger than most of the others. Its bulbous, grim face almost looked like it was smiling with its twisted lips, when the thin metal blade connected with its jaw. But, it had the last laugh when the force of the blow lodged the blade in too deep and as it fell ripped the blade from Lauren’s hands.

Lauren stood among the dead, weaponless. She tried to pry the blade from the fallen man but it was stuck. One advanced on her, small and skinny but still menacing, and the hulking white flesh outstretched its arms. Two more were behind her, I raised the rifle but the only thing it propelled was the devastating click of an empty magazine. I reached in my pocket, but I had left the spare clip with my pack in the woods. I stood heartbroken watching my sister surrounded. I had let her down again.

I started running, pulling out my pistol. I was too far for an accurate shot, especially while running, and the zombies were closing in. In my peripheral vision, I saw something flying towards the thin zombie, and its head exploded as the large chunk of metal buried itself into the side of its head. The momentum of Evan’s axe caused the creature to fall sideways, and I looked at Evan, who was already pulling his pistol out, and with two quick shots, dispatched the other two. He dropped the pistol and pulled out the silenced one. There were a dozen left, still trying to attack Evan, and he opened fire. The man on the porch fired as well, his shotgun roaring, and I joined them.

Afterwards, I could only smell gunpowder and death, and Evan and Lauren stood among the fallen herd of zombies.