Maybe it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime, but it was going to happen.
It was only a matter of time now.
The plan was simple: wait while the undead died off, play it smart, don’t get killed, and take out as many of the bastards as you could while you still had breath left in you.
Yeah, it was going to happen.
I helped throw another body onto the pile we’d made right on the outskirts of Midtown, thinking of all the things that had happened to us recently.
We’d lost so many people that we cared about.
We’d taken in more than thirty survivors since the day Tex had shown up with little Rose strapped to his back.
We’d cleared the entire area surrounding the base and had reinforced the perimeter fences.
We’d also begun building brick walls around it; soon we’d be able to go topside just because we wanted to see the sunset and we wouldn’t have to worry about the undead overtaking the base.
Earlier in the day we’d seen a very official group of soldiers enter the base and immediately shut themselves up in meetings with Major Tillman and Captain Parsons, another sign that things were changing for the good.
We’d grown as a group and we’d caught a teensy glimpse of what the future could be.
The future didn’t look quite as bleak as it had two months before.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that any of us were naïve enough to think that the days of death and sorrow were completely behind us, but I would say that we were all firmly on the very difficult road to believing that we had a chance.
A chance was really all that anyone could ask for.
We had so much work to do to make the world a safer place for our future, for our children’s future. And the absolute truth was that the world would never be the same as it had been before.
Humanity would never be the same.
But humanity had survived overwhelming loss and damning odds to come out on top.
I could only pray that we would continue to do so.
I wiped my brow and turned away from the pile of undead to stare at the “Welcome to Midtown” sign a few feet away with a smile on my face.
Jude came up behind me and followed my gaze to the sign.
“What are you thinking, Mel?” he asked, rubbing his hand along the back of my neck, lifting the ponytail off of my hot and sticky neck to let the air hit it.
“I’m thinking how much has changed since the last time I saw that sign,” I said.
“I’m thinking about how much has changed since I walked into town by myself three days after my dad died.”
“He’d be so proud of you,” Jude said.
I glanced up to the blue sky above me and heard a bird singing a sweet tune in the distance.
“Yes he would be,” I answered. “And he’d have loved you.”
I looked over at Jude and he smiled at me, his eyes twinkling with love and happiness. I felt another one of the rips my heart and soul had suffered over the years mend itself.
Oh, the scars would always be there, but they would be only a faded memory instead of a gaping wound.
We both got back to work making the world a little safer, a little more worth living for.
We were no longer a people without hope—a people without the promise of light at the conclusion of a seemingly never-ending tunnel filled with death and darkness.
We were beginning to have hope again.
Where there is hope, there is life.
And that’s more than any of us had had in a very long time.
THE END
If you enjoyed the “State Of” duology, you may enjoy my new zombie apocalypse serial, Confessions of a Dying World. Coming to Amazon & Kindle Unlimited in October 2020!
State of | Book 2 | State of Ruin Page 19