

Her usually perfectly pressed blue summer shift was now wrinkled, caked with dirt and blood. Her white hair, always carefully curled, now hung greasy and limp past her frail, bony shoulders. Havers was outside her shop, mindlessly shuffling the same ten-foot stretch over and over again.

Today, like every other day for the past two weeks, the former Mrs. Only today she wasn’t sweeping the sidewalk, wasn’t greeting her customers and passersby with kind words and a smile. Havers, a once kind and elderly woman who’d owned the children’s clothing shop directly across the way, was out front as usual. It was the same horrifying scene that had greeted me every day for two weeks now. And if the people were still actually people instead of the infection-carrying, cannibalistic, reanimated corpses they now were. Swallowing hard, I gripped the windowsill and gradually pulled myself up until I could see the world outside my prison.įrom my vantage point within the top floor of my five-story apartment building, I could easily view the row of shops and independent boutiques below, the afternoon summer sun illuminating the street and the several dozen people milling about.įrom far enough away, it could almost be considered picturesque, just another beautiful summer day in Pearl River, New York…if the walls of the buildings weren’t blackened and charred, the doors and windows weren’t busted, and the merchandise that was once for sale wasn’t scattered, broken and shattered, across the sidewalk and street. My heart pounding, I quickly skittered right and then left, much like a crab, until I’d reached the row of windows.

Like clockwork, several boards moaned in protest as my weight touched down up on them. Dropping down on all fours, careful not to settle heavily on any of the creaky floorboards, I crawled slowly across my living room.
