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heavier than she remembered.
    “Mrs Spears?” she whimpered, a last-ditch effort to prove that this was all some sort of insane misunderstanding. “Are you...alive in there? Somewhere?”
    The decaying body that had once been Nancy’s elderly neighbor groaned, a long and horrible noise that would haunt Nancy’s nightmares for a long, long time. It raised one arm, set two wide, empty eyes on its prey, and began to shamble forward. The movement was slow, and the implication of it was truly awful.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs Spears,” Nancy whispered.
    With all the power she could muster, she drew a wide arch and swung. The katana connected with a thump into the creature’s neck. Blood splattered across the floor, and the zombie stumbled to the side, but it wasn’t a killing blow. Nancy pulled back and swung again, this time missing the neck and hitting the side of the face. More blood, and the head whipped to one side from the force, but the feet continued to shuffle forward.
    The sight of her elderly neighbor, bleeding more than anyone had a right to bleed, with huge chunks missing from her neck and face - and yet still advancing - broke something in Nancy’s mind at that moment. She leaped forward and swung straight down, onto the skull. The sword almost got stuck, but she wrenched it free as Mrs Spears’ hands groped forward. Blood sprayed in every direction as Nancy slammed the sword down again, and again, and again, and again...
    The creature hadn’t moved for a good two minutes before Nancy stopped hacking its body to pieces. There was blood everywhere, hunks and splatters of bone and brain covering the floor, but she kept swinging and swinging, until she realized that the high-pitched shriek in her ears was her own voice. Finally, reluctantly, she forced herself to stop.
    Her throat was raw, her breath ragged, and her neighbor’s bodily fluids were splattered all over her bare torso.
    Methodically, she cleaned off her sword and body with the remaining tatters of her top, quietly chose a sports bra and a black t-shirt from her dresser, pulled her hair up into a tight bun on top of her head, and snatched the key ring out of the pants on the edge of her bed. Then she left her apartment behind for the last time, to the steady thud...thud...thud... and scritch, scratch of the creatures trying to claw their way through her door.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Terri-Lynn was weeping in a ball on the floor when Nancy returned to her apartment. When the sobbing woman saw her friend slipping in through the window she let out a cry of fear, thinking perhaps that Nancy had become one of them . Nancy ignored the cry and strode forward to yank her neighbor up off the floor. “Let’s go,” she said, and shoved the carving knife into Terri-Lynn’s trembling hand.
    They moved very slowly down the fire escape, wary of attracting the attention of the crowd of creatures below. Terri-Lynn held the knife up near her chest and stayed very close to Nancy. Nancy reflected with an inward groan that the other woman would probably end up stabbing her in the back by accident. Her triumph over Mrs Spears had given her a little burst of confidence, and inversely a niggling sense of annoyance at her tear-streaked friend.
    The building in which they lived didn’t have a parking garage, so the tenants fought for the good spots on the street. Nancy, due to her frequent closing shifts at the bar, didn’t get the good spots very often. She could see her car from here, but it was two buildings down and on the opposite side of the road. She swallowed a lump in her throat. When they made it down to the road they were going to have to run for it as fast as they could. Nancy wondered if Terri-Lynn had it in her to run. The woman barely seemed to be able to walk at the moment.
    A half-ton truck suddenly came careening around the four-way stop three buildings up the road. The women watched with grimaces as it shrieked by at full tilt,