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came fast and deep.  My lungs burned with each gulp of icy air.  My heartbeat pounded in my chest as the sound of blood pumping through my body filled my ears.  I listened to the throng pushing against the fence in my former yard. It still held, but I did not want to bet my life on how long.  The support beams and pickets were cracking, and once it gave way there would only be one more fence between me and a multitude of hungry dead.
    It goes without saying, I needed to move.
    I took a quick assessment of the yard.  The area was barren, except for the corpses littering the ground.  There was the skull splitting shed, but that would be a little cumbersome to carry around.  Looking inside seemed the better choice.
    I stepped over the remains of my permanently dead sparring partners and opened the shed.  The previous owners had not locked it when they moved away.  I hoped to find something a bit sturdier than a broken table leg.  A machete would have been perfect.  I wouldn’t have complained about a baseball bat or a chainsaw either.  Maybe my previous neighbors were members of a secret underground militia, and the shed was actually a weapons cache.
    A bazooka would have been awesome.
    Instead, I found a bare floor, an old sand bucket, and an inflatable seahorse pool toy.  Last but not least, something with little red eyes glaring back at me from a dark corner of the shed.  Seeing as I was trying my best not to get bitten by anything man, beast, or otherwise that night, I closed the door and left Beady Eyes to its own devices.
    I went to the gate that led to the commons area, cringing at the loud snap of the iron latch popping open.  The gate creaked open a couple inches, giving me a slight view of what lay beyond.  Seeing nothing, I pushed the gate halfway open, and stopped.  Three faces immediately snapped their attention to me, and what I saw was a punch in the solar plexus of my soul.
    The little girl looked like my own daughter.  She had longer hair, but to anyone who didn’t know them, they could be sisters.  She held a stuffed rabbit in one hand, leaving a trail in the snow as she dragged it behind her.  She wore a little pink night gown, adorned with princesses on the front.  Her skin still held a rosy hue in her cheeks, and there was still a hint of blue in her whitening eyes.  From the looks of it, it had not been long since she had changed.  Next to her were her parents, their eyes similar to their daughter’s.
    Mary and Joe were old friends.  They were the first to welcome us into the neighborhood just moments after the truck had parked in front of our two-story townhome.  It was a cool October day when we arrived.  Rain had been falling for the better part of the morning, turning to a light mist by the time we opened the door for the movers.  They came out in spite of the gloomy day to welcome us with hot coffee and donuts.  That sparked a friendship that would last eight pleasant years.
    Joe and I spent many Sundays, throwing back cold ones watching football and debating the merits of offense versus defense.  That was when we were not talking about the hockey powerhouse that is, or was, the Blackhawks.
    Our summers were spent on home improvement projects, backyard barbecues, and fishing trips when we could break away.  We spent many nights drinking wine and smoking cigars around the outdoor fireplace behind my house.  That was before the fireplace suffered what Abby liked to call a “Dan moment”.
    Abby and Mary became pregnant so close together that Joe and I were never entirely convinced that it wasn’t planned.  We couldn’t prove it, but we decided it had to be voodoo or some sort of black magic.  They chose the same hospital, the same OB/GYN, and if it had been their choice they would have delivered the same day.
    Mary went into labor prematurely, delivering two months early.  Abby never left her side until Mary’s baby, Madelyn, was deemed healthy enough to come