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[Author's Note: This is the first chapter of a novel (or novella, I'm not quite sure how long it would have turned out) I started a year or so ago. At some point two or three chapters later, I lost interest in the story and could not continue. I am currently doing a little editing to it to turn it into a short story. When I have that finished I will post it here. Enjoy!]

I: THE WALKING DEAD. JONESTOWN. OUT OF GAS.
THE BALLAD OF CRAIG LEWISTON. HARLOW.

-1-

John Goldsmith had been driving down I-95 towards Harlow for half an hour with no sign of them. At first, he thought this had been due to his wandering mind, which had been running backwards over the previous days. Then—for one brief moment—he had begun to think that “the walking dead” (as he called them) had not yet reached the city of Harlow, that maybe the infection had not spread this far. A great wave of relief washed over him. He had finally made it! He had found a place where the dead had not yet come to life! Then as that feeling of joy had firmed its grip on him, John Goldsmith saw his first walking dead since leaving Jonestown.
         It was off in the distance, about a mile off to his left in a large open stretch of farmland. It was alone, and that gave John some comfort.
         Maybe things aren’t as bad here, he thought. It couldn’t be as bad as Jonestown. Or Boston for that matter.
         That thought immediately led him back to Jonestown, the last town he had been. He had almost died back there, hadn’t he? Yes, he believed he had. Barely made it out, he thought to himself as the lone dead thing was now beginning to fall behind him. He had, as a matter of fact, barely made it out of Jonestown. Emily, his younger sister, had not been so lucky.
         What good would it do him to think about that now? Emily is dead. All of his family was dead, for that matter. Including his wife. All that remained of his former life—his former sanity—was his wedding ring, which he still wore. John Goldsmith looked down at it, shining dully in the sunlight on the ring finger of his left hand.
         I’m sorry, hon. I couldn't get to you in time.
         Too much time to spend thinking about death—your own included. Too many bad memories. Didn't do to dwell on them now.
         John Goldsmith sat behind the wheel of his dark red 1988 Toyota Corolla (not his car, that was back in Boston, stuck in the Big Dig, or as it was known to everyone in Boston The Big Leak) and stared into the distance. A highway sign passed on his right. It read Harlow, Exit 43, 10 Miles.
         Harlow. Would it be different? Would there be more of the living?
         John looked down at the dashboard and saw that he was running low on gas. The needle was close to the E.
         I’ll have to stop in Harlow. I might be able to make it another 10 miles.
         As that thought drifted from his mind, John Goldsmith turned his mind back to Jonestown and the last time he had to stop for gas.

-2-

Jonestown is just as dead as the last town John Goldsmith and his sister Emily traveled through. Every town since leaving their hometown of Exeter, Maine has been a ghost town. The only people left were the walking dead.
         It was back on Interstate 10, just two miles from Jonestown, that John Goldsmith notices that the Toyota they were driving was running low on gas. He tells his sister that they will have to stop soon.
         “That sign says that Jonestown is only two miles from here. Do we have enough gas to make it there?” Emily Goldsmith looks at her brother pleadingly, remembering how narrowly they escaped the tunnel in Boston—the last time they had had to find abandon their car and find a new one.
         “Yeah, we should make it into Jonestown,” John says, checking the gas gauge again.
         They pull off the highway, onto Exit 30 into Jonestown two minutes later. What they find when they reach the end of the ramp doesn’t surprise them. The streets of the small town are empty except for abandoned cars and bits of trash from overturned trashcans. If tumbleweeds blew across the road, you wouldn't be surprised.
         They drive for five minutes before they finally find a Mobile station. There are a few cars still parked in front of the store, and there is even a car still parked in front of the number 6 pump with the nozzle of the pump still sticking in the gas tank. John pulls the car into pump number 1 and kills the engine. He steps out of the car and approaches the pump. When he squeezes the handle on the pump he half expects no gas to come out; that the pumps are either bone dry or turned off. When a jet of gas (still smells fresh, too) shoots out he jumps and ends up soaking his feet in 87 grade.
         “Looks like there’s still gas left here,” he says, laughing a bit at himself as he wipes gas off his hand onto his pants. “I’ll fill us up; you go in and grab us some food. We’re running low.”
         Emily looks at him for a moment. “You're gonna give me the Ruger, right?” she asks.
         John pulls a silver Ruger from his belt and hands it to her. She checks the safety and stuffs it down the front of her belt.
         “Be careful,” John says. It’s the last thing he says to her.
         Emily tells him she'll be right back, throws him a smile and walks off into the Mobile Mart. She won’t be coming back out.

-3-

The door of the Mobile Mart opens and Emily walks in, the silver Ruger stuffed down the front of her pants. As soon as she walks in, the smell hits her. She recognizes the smell right away. They have been through enough towns by now for her to know it without thinking. It is the smell of the dead.
         Emily walks over to the counter and is about to reach over to get a couple plastic bags when she sees the dead man on the floor. He is sitting slumped against the back wall; a .357 Magnum is lying limply in his right hand, his brains dried up on the wall behind him. Lying on his chest is a small piece of paper. It simply says:

I can’t take it anymore.

         He obviously took his own life rather than face the creatures she and her brother have come to know as the walking dead. Emily Goldsmith stares for a moment into the clerk’s vacant, dead eyes, then hurriedly grabs a handful of plastic bags from just underneath the counter.
         She grabs the essentials (all junk food, of course, what would they need with real food; they had been to a few grocery stores already and most of it was spoiled or going bad anyway) and stuffs them into the bags. She walks to the back of the store to the freezers and glances at the different drinks.
         I can’t wait to get out of this place . . . out of this town, she thinks. I don't have a good feeling about this place. She opens one door, takes out two bottles of Starbuck’s iced coffee, and puts them in a bag.
         Oh stop being so paranoid. You have had this feeling in every town you’ve been in since leaving home. Since leaving Boston, really. And has anything bad happened to you or your brother? No, it hasn’t.
         Emily opens another cooler and reaches in for a few bottles of water. She doesn’t hear the dead thing coming up behind her.

-4-

The creature that used to be Craig Lewiston in his former life heard the voices from outside, heard the door to the Mobile Mart open, and heard the human walking around the store. It had been starving. It hadn’t eaten anyone in four days; the last human that had come this way was lying in a heap in the southeast corner of the backroom, torn to pieces. That unfortunate man, whose name had been Michael Pillman, would never be coming back to life the way that Craig Lewiston had. There was the Mobile Mart manager, but he had taken his own life. To things like Craig Lewiston and the rest of the walking dead, the manager’s flesh and his blood were tainted.
         The former Craig Lewiston drags himself to the backroom door, peers through the scratched and dented plastic window, and sees its dinner. In its former life, Craig Lewiston might have wanted to score with the young woman in question, but since being bitten less than three weeks before, the only thoughts running though its mind concerned food. And this one looked quite delicious, it thought. It waits until Emily Goldsmith opened the door to the cooler with the Starbuck’s iced coffees and makes its move.
         The thing moves slowly up the aisle as Emily Goldsmith opens the door to the cooler right across from it, the one containing the bottles of Pepsi and Mountain Dew. It begins to move faster, its hunger hitting it full force now. Drool (containing the virus that spreads this terrible disease) drips from its chin. It’s almost upon her now, just a few more steps.
         The former Craig Lewiston—once a young man of twenty-two, who had worked a shit job as part of the night crew at a twenty-four hour grocery store, who had only gotten laid once in his life, and who if you were to ask him now would probably say (if he could speak, that is) that his life was much better, much simpler now—finally reaches his dinner just as she closes the door of the cooler.
         Emily Goldsmith finally sees the thing behind her reflected in the glass of the cooler door, but has no time to react. It's on her too quickly. She drops the bags and tries to reach for the gun in her belt, but only succeeds in tripping over the bags she just dropped. She falls to the floor and the thing is immediately on her. It grabs her on the shoulders, pinning her down, and before she can try for the gun a second time, sinks its teeth into her neck, biting her three times in quick succession. She screams as blood begins to pump out of her neck.
         She gives up on the gun and with all the strength she can gather pushes the ravenous thing off her.
         Her last thought is Where’s my brother?

-5-

John Goldsmith has just finished filling the gas tank when he hears his sister scream from inside the gas station store. He doesn’t even have to wonder what has happened. He knows all ready. He drops the nozzle and hose to the ground and runs towards the Mobil Mart door, the baseball bat clutched in his hand. All he can think is let my sister be ok.

-6-

In fact, Emily Goldsmith is not ok. Her brother John knows this before he even enters the store, and he sees it once he reaches the back corner of the store.
         The former Craig Lewiston is on her, its teeth gnashing and foamy, dripping saliva running from its mouth like a rabid dog. John can see the bite marks in his sister’s neck and the blood pumping from them. The gun is still in his sister’s belt, and the bags of food lie on the floor a few feet behind them. He sees all of this in the span of two seconds.
         Craig Lewiston that-was looks up and sees that he has more food standing ten feet in front of him. A crazed, bloodthirsty smile comes across the young mans face.
         John Goldsmith doesn’t give the dead thing hovering over his sister the chance to move. He runs at him, raising the baseball bat in the air, and swings it down connecting with Craig Lewiston's skull. There is a dull cracking sound and the former Craig Lewiston flies backwards onto the floor.
         John is on him in a second and brings the bat down five more times, caving in the creatures skull, screaming at the top of his lungs.
         When he finally regains himself, John looks down at the thing he has killed. Its entire forehead is crushed inward. The skin—the color of which very closely resembles old, yellowed newspaper—has split open down the center of its face and blood and brains ooze out the cracks.
         John staggers into the corner and vomits then goes to his sister.
         Emily Goldsmith lies on the floor, her face pale, and a large pool of blood forming underneath her neck and head. Red infection lines have already begun to spread around the bite marks on her neck.
         John kneels over her and reaches towards her neck, but doesn’t touch her; afraid the blood seeping out of her neck might be infected. He knows there is nothing he can do for his sister now.
         “Em, I’m so sorry,” he says. He takes her hands in his. “I should have come in here myself.”
         She gives him a look that says “it’s not your fault.” She takes his hand and wraps it limply around the butt of the gun still tucked in her belt. She squeezes his hand and stares deep into his eyes. You know what you need to do.
         John closes his eyes for a moment, then looks back at his sister, tears in his eyes. He reaches for the Ruger, pulls it from her belt, and aims it at her head. She closes her eyes just as he pulls the trigger. The sound is deafening. The only people who hear it other than John Goldsmith are dead.
         And hungry.

-7-

In the end, he had to leave her there. He spends an hour sitting in the corner of the gas station convenience store staring at his dead sister. When the shock of having to kill his own sister finally wears off, John stands and walks out the door, deciding to find a hardware store nearby, pick up a shovel and a spade and bury his sister. He gets no more than two steps out the door when he sees the first dead thing. Then another. And another. He realizes there are too many of them and that he doesn’t have the time to bury his sister. He takes one last look at the convenience store, at the last resting place of his sister, and gets in the car.

-8-

A beeping sound snapped John out of his rather vivid memory (he swore he could hear the gunshot still ringing in his ear).He looked down at the dashboard and saw that the gas gauge was at the far edge of empty. He wasn’t going to make it much further in this car.
         A few hundred feet in the distance, he saw another road sign, this one reading: Harlow Exit 43 7 miles.
         There’s no way I’m going to make it into town, he thought as he felt the car start to wind down.
         He was able to push the Toyota another slow, lurching mile before it finally gave up, sputtering its final gasp as it curved over to the side of the road. John killed the engine and sat motionless for a few moments, staring off into the distance. At the crest of a hill off to his right, John saw a group of five or six dead people wandering aimlessly, obviously searching for some kind of food.
         All I have to do, he thought, is walk right towards them and let them have me. He knew that he couldn’t, though, and took a deep breath and let it slowly pass through his lips.
         John Goldsmith opened the door, picked up the Ruger, stuffed it in his belt, secured his backpack over his shoulders and headed down the road towards Harlow. Off in the distance, the group of dead people began walking towards him.

-9-

It was approaching eleven o’clock when John reached exit forty-three. He had run into a small amount of trouble with the group of zombies. It took about ten minutes for them to catch up with each other, and when the zombies had been no more than two hundred feet from him they broke out into a frenzied run. John waited until the group of five had gotten within fifty feet of him, and then drew the Ruger and fired one shot each into their heads, three of which he hit right between their eyes. He was getting good at this
         (a little too good)
         since the dead had first started to come alive.
         John walked down the off ramp and into the town of Harlow. As he reached the end of the off ramp, he could see the town off in the distance. In front of him was about a mile and a half stretch of road leading into the town proper. He could see various shops and stores, a gas station and a bank. There were cars broken down in the middle of the street, and he could see some cars abandoned in a few parking lots.
         In other words, it looked like every other town John Goldsmith had been in since leaving home. Completely deserted.
         “There won’t be anyone here,” he said without knowing he was going to say it out loud.
         He stood for a moment at the end of the off ramp, looking out towards the business district of the town of Harlow. He checked his watch and saw it had just reached 11:00 A.M.
         Maybe this town will be different. Maybe I will find someone here, someone living. Or maybe I’ll finally die here.
         With that, John Goldsmith set off into the town of Harlow.