"Listen up, you country bumpkin, we are going to confiscate your weapons and secure the area, we've got our orders, now, do as you're told or else," Sergeant Cameron Steller said brusquely to the six-foot-tall, plump, short-haired African-American woman who stood before him. The gal looked like she had someday to say, and there was nothing the Sarge would enjoy more than to send her to a holding cell...
The last remnants of the U.S. Army in the Midwest, some five thousand soldiers strong, were doing their very best to stem the tide of people fleeing major urban areas like Dallas, Austin and Houston. There was an untold number of infected people among the refugees, and there was no way Sergeant Steller and his men would allow them to venture to the few un-infected areas left within the Lone Star State.
"Country doesn't automatically mean dumb, smartass," Rose Ellery said angrily as she struck the square-jawed military white dude, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. The fiery redhead had time to smirk victoriously at her fallen foe before the other soldiers grabbed her and threw her on the ground. As the soldiers began to kick the hell out of her, Rose thought of her beloved, right before she faded into oblivion...
Everyone remembers exactly where they were when news broke out that the dead began to rise, craving the flesh of the living. Rose Ellery was working at Kowalski's Diner in the City of Amarillo, Texas, when CNN broke the news on the tube. The reporter, a dapper little gentleman with silver hair and glasses seemed filled with dread as he delivered the news. It was one of CNN's last broadcasts, as it would turn out...
The world seemed so much simpler back then. This was before the zombie plague, before Trump and his cronies in Washington D.C. declared martial law, and before chaos engulfed the United States of America...and the rest of the world. Who could have imagined that ordinary Americans fleeing the zombie-infested major cities would find themselves facing an even more formidable enemy, the remnants of the U.S. government?
"Ladies and gentlemen, there's no other way to say it, so I'm just going to say it, the dead are coming back to life, this is not a joke," the reporter said, and that's when Rose almost dropped the tray that she was carrying over to former sheriff Justin Denton's table. The stocky, balding African-American former cop didn't seem to notice, for his eyes were glued to the TV.
"Well I'll be damned," Denton said, and then he crossed himself. Rose set the tray in front of him and the old man didn't even seem to notice. Rose looked at the TV, where scenes of carnage unfolded. Five guys were walking toward a cop, somewhere in Washington D.C. and as he fired shot after shot into them, they didn't even seem to notice. They kept advancing towards him, their faces blank, their mouths agape, their arms outstretched.
