Severed-In the Beginning- Volume One Read Free

zombies have had so much more time to multiply and spread. They are out there somewhere.
    Something outside is not my real fear.
    My real fears are here.
    What if something happens to the baby? I hate to say it, but stillborn would be like being born as a zombie. Worse, what if Liz dies delivering the baby and she becomes one of them?
    My life would end.
    My real fears are about the future.
    I love my girls, but sorry Gladys, sorry Holly. I love Liz more. My life would be over if anything happened to her. I’ve killed too many of those monsters and lost too many more to them. I will not be responsible for creating one.
    Liz doesn’t see it like that. She thinks we live in the Garden of Eden. She already has a name picked out, but I’m not going to write it down. I’m superstitious, I guess. In five years, I haven’t seen a pregnant woman or a baby. Gladys and Holly are the youngest kids I know and Gladys is about to turn eleven.
    I know the world will end if someone doesn’t have a baby, though. Besides, it’s hard to resist the practice.
     
    May 20 th
    I’ve thought about it a little more and know the world will not end. Humans may end, but not the world. Nature keeps going. The Earth keeps spinning. I’ve noticed that the trees seem to be getting bigger. Greener, if that’s possible.
    After the big deal I made to Liz about keeping the girls away from Matthew, I went to talk to him. He thinks all the decaying bodies roaming the planet are putting off huge amounts of carbon dioxide. He says that is super-feeding the plants.
    I never had a biology or chemistry class, so I didn’t get it. What’s the big deal if the trees and plants grow bigger? He explained that it would put more oxygen into the atmosphere and other things would grow bigger. The things that eat the plants will grow bigger. The whole food chain would be affected. He says that it has been happening for a while now and that he saw an eighteen foot alligator on the east side of the lake last week. I lived in Florida my whole life and the biggest gator I ever heard of was fourteen feet.
    That’s big, but I’m not worried about alligators. They stay away from the hotel. He said I should worry about the birds. That didn’t make sense. I thought most of the birds died off back when everything fell apart. He explained the earth had been oxygen rich once before, back in the days of dinosaurs. He says we should worry when the birds come back.
    Every morning since then, when I get up, I check the wide, empty parking lot for walkers and then I stare at the sky. Liz caught me this evening and I told her I was watching the sunset. She thinks I’m romantic.
    It’s funny how the sun never changes. Regardless of what’s happening down here, the sun still does its own thing. It looks the same now as it did when I was five.
     
    July 12 th
    Haven’t felt like writing, but I have something to write about now.
    It happened.
    Maybe I did it on purpose, looking back at my last entry. I’m not sure. Matthew would say I’m expressing my right as a human to create. I might say it was an accident. Either way, Liz is starting to show. She says that means she is already at least eight weeks pregnant.
    I don’t know if I’m ready for this.
    I’ve known for a few days, but I felt putting it on paper would make it too real.
    Still, I had something else to write about today.
    The first zombie in over a year came stumbling across that huge parking lot that used to be filled with rental cars and RV’s. The creature did not pay attention to the faded yellow lines. It was not coming to feed. It was trying to escape.
    Three seagulls, bigger than any I’ve ever seen, circled high in the air. They would swoop down, one at a time, nipping at the walking corpse with their beaks and claws. Even with its eyes pecked out of its skull, the creature kept moving forward, getting closer to the glass doors at the front of the hotel.
    We watched the giant birds shred the zombie from