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my pistol, and moved to the front door.  Whoever it was knocked again, louder, when I didn't respond.
                "Who is it?"
                "Sean Andrews," he said.  "We're having the meeting now."
                I hated the fact my mind went to dark places first.  Would he use that ploy to make me drop my guard so he could take me down?  Was he a threat to me and the boys?  Should I cooperate with any of my neighbors?  I barely knew any of them.
                I glanced at the wall clock.
                "It's not for another two hours," I shouted through the door.  He said something, but I couldn't understand.  My heart began to race.  I felt like he was playing me.  "What?  I didn't hear that."
                "More residents have arrived," he shouted.  "They report the situation is deteriorating faster and worse than we thought."
                I couldn't argue that.  My phone, TV, and all three radios stopped working at once.  That was a pretty bad "deterioration" of the situation in my book.
                "It would be easier to talk if you opened the door."
                Maybe I was being paranoid.  He seemed like a nice enough guy earlier.  Roger liked him.  So I lowered the pistol to my side and unlocked the door with my left hand.  When I cracked the door open and peeked out, he'd backed up a few steps to appear less threatening.
                "Are we okay?" he asked.
                He looked a lot different.  Sean had changed into hunting camouflage.  There was a pistol on his hip, and he carried an AR15 over his shoulder.  He was even wearing an olive drab USMC 8-point utility cap like my father-in-law always wore.
                Oddly enough, that bit of the familiar kind of made me want to trust him.
                "Sorry, I have two small children," I said.  "Maybe I'm being overprotective, but not sorry."
                That made him chuckle.  "Understood.  Are you going to attend the meeting?"
                "How bad is the situation?"
                "We've had a nuclear exchange that's knocked down the power grid.  Zombies are running amok.  The government has vanished, so no help coming," he said.  "So it's about what you'd expect during the apocalypse."
                I looked in the direction of Blue Ridge.  There was a lot of smoke in the valley, and fairly thick.  I couldn't actually see the city from our location, even in the best of circumstances, but I'd never seen so much dark smoke.
                "Nuclear exchange?  Was Blue Ridge nuked?"
                "That's what took out the TV, electricity, and phones," he said.  "Or the EMP burst from the nukes."  He paused to grin.  "If Blue Ridge was hit by a nuclear missile we'd be dead, too."
                I didn't know a nuke could do more than kill millions, and had no idea what an "EMP burst" could be, but he seemed confident and sure of his information.  I believed him.
                "We're still meeting at the model home?"  He nodded.  "Okay, I'll get the boys and meet you down there."
                "I'd feel better escorting you and your sons," he said.  "A few more zombies were killed trying to enter the community."
                I didn't hear any gunfire.  A vision of men beating the infected to death with bats flashed through my mind.  Sounded like a dreadful and dangerous way to deal with them.
                "Are you walking?"
                "Cars were knocked out just like the phones and TVs," he said.  "We're all walking now."
                I stared at the SUV a long second.  The world became a whole lot bigger without cars.  If the same thing happened all across the country, then Roger was going to have a hard time coming home.  The possibility that he'd never