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Once everything was sealed off the navy landed a small team of marines in to the "secure zone" that appeared to be well supplied. It worked spectacularly, everything going off without a hitch, no casualties and eventually no survivors. By the time the destroyers were in position in the rivers there were millions of zombies at the walls trying to claw their way through the five inches of concrete the army had placed across the park.

At nine a.m. precisely the gunboats opened fire, the thunderous hundred and twenty millimetre guns pulverising everything outside the walls into a fine red mist. It rained down for almost an hour, infecting everything it touched. The newly infected inside the wall finishing off anyone smart enough to get into their hazmat gear before the barrage occurred. I shook my head in disbelief at the stupidity of it all glad to be leaving all that behind me. Do you blame me for believing I would be better on my own after that?

Once a large portion of the populace was infected airborne infection rates dropped dramatically, zombies not breathing or coughing couldn’t spread the virus by that means. Strangely enough animals weren’t affected by the virus. Once I was walking through a park on the outskirts of a large city, it was dusky evening after a beautiful sunny day and about time for me to find some shelter for the night and I came across a tree full of birds chirping and nesting all for a small audience of zombies silently watching the commotion from the base of the tree.

It was beautiful in its sadness, to see all that was the human race reduced to staring at a bunch of birds hoping for a snack. All of the secondary infection zones were soldiers, survivalists or weekend warriors who thought they could take on the entire mindless horde. Once I deserted from the army, I became one of those people I speak so disdainfully about. I foolishly believed I could survive better alone after the disaster the army turned out to be. I gathered a small pack, plenty of ammo and set off in search of a place to call home, preferably a place without zombies.

In my travels through the wasteland that used to be the United States I came across several home made fortresses, a lone zombie or a small collection of zombies clawing away at the inside of the fortifications. Too many video games and movies the action hero hacks his way through the infected throng, blowing them to bits with grenades as he passes. Too bad nobody was able to warn these poor souls before the televisions and radios went dark that blood contact was enough, they may have taken greater care, adopted different strategies and they may have still been alive today.

I saw far too many of these lonely bastions as I passed from place to place that I finally realised it was going to take a group effort, not a large group mind you but a group none the less. After the massacre in Battery Park it was generally accepted that the best option was to form pockets of resistance and try to retake the United States piece by piece rather than mass a large force and try to sweep the country clean but that effort didn’t get very far either. Once everyone had broken up into small groups a lot of them lost communication with each other and simply vanished into the night.

Things started to degrade very quickly after that news could only be spread by radio or signals and once the batteries went flat and the power finally went out everyone lost communication. The only way to talk to the nearest group was to send a runner, half the time they disappeared never to be seen again, sometimes we were lucky and could put them out of their misery as they shambled towards the walls.

I stumbled upon a small group of these survivors as I was travelling through South Carolina and decided I might settle down for a little while. They had inhabited one of the many old forts left behind by people long past. It had high walls, deep trenches, could be repaired with the local sand and had plenty of room for everyone. There were 30 people there, all rough survival types from all walks of life and that’s also where I met Katherine. After the disaster at battery park the army started to disintegrate, soldiers realising that survival might be easier as a single unit rather than as a large group.  I was eventually a member of one of these pockets and I was also a former soldier. As things broke down and central command was lost things got real bad. No supplies were coming in so we had to head out during the day and forage what we could find, we did manage to grow some food but it wasn’t nearly enough. We heard stories from nearby groups that some people farther north had turned to cannibalism and were raiding the surrounding countryside for "food".

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