When the Dead Rise (Book 1): The Beginning by C.M. Fick

back to the living room.
    "Powell," Thomas' voice sounded grim, "you'd better come see this."
    Not wanting to go, but unable to stop himself, Powell holstered his gun, made his way down the hall, past the laundry and stopped cold. Thomas stood in front of the door to the garage where the portable phone was lying in a dry puddle of blood at his feet. Bloody handprints marked the inside of the door.
    "I'm sorry," Marcy said behind him. All three stood there staring at the blood until a loud thump came from upstairs, startling them all into action.
    "Marcy, you gather all the non-perishable food from the cupboards. Make sure to fill anything you can with water - we'll need lots of water." He turned to Thomas who stood with the shotgun in the crook of his arm. "My gun safe is in the closet of the laundry room." He pointed to the only door off the hallway. "The combination is twenty-four, eighty-three, o-one. Put everything in the duffle beside the safe and grab all the ammunition from the top shelf. Everything will need to go into the SUV in the garage." Thomas nodded, mumbling the combo to himself as he went. Marcy bit her lip and Powell patted her shoulder, trying to reassure the young girl although he didn't feel the same reassurance. "Go on, I'll go upstairs and see what's making that noise."
    At the bottom of the stairs, Powell stopped and listened. The bumping noise came again, but he couldn't tell where the sound was coming from. He pulled his gun and held it pointed at the ground as he walked up the steps, glad they didn't creak beneath his feet. Once he reached the top, Powell paused, took a deep breath and stepped into the hall. His wife stood in front of the closed bathroom door, dragging her fingers down its surface. She lurched forward and bumped into the door, stumbling back two steps before reaching out and dragging her fingers down the door again.
    When he cocked the gun, she turned and his heart stopped. Her long hair was bloody and matted. A chunk of it torn away from her temple. Her sleeveless, flowery dress revealed a nasty bite mark on her bicep and her eyes were that strange milky colour. A sob broke from Powell as his wife lurched towards him; he raised his gun and pulled the trigger.
    "Daddy?" Stevie's scared voice came from beyond the bathroom door and Powell's heart restarted.
    "Stevie? Are you okay? Is your sister with you?" Powell turned the knob but the door was locked. "Open the door son," he said in a calm tone; what he really wanted to do was break the door down.
    "Is mommy still out there?" he asked, almost too quietly for Powell to hear.
    "She is, but she can't hurt you or Gillian anymore. Open the door Stevie." The lock clicked, and the door swung wide, revealing his frightened children. He stepped into the bathroom wrapping them in his arms, not caring that they saw the tears streaming down his face. When he saw the nest they'd made in the bathtub with towels, he realized they'd spent the night trapped in the bathroom by their dead mother.
    "I'm so sorry I couldn't come home sooner." He placed one hand on Stevie's face and the other on Gillian's, looking at one then the other as if they were miracles. Gillian, who was eight and had grown out of the thumb sucking two years ago, now had her thumb placed securely in her mouth. Stevie's eyes looked like he'd grown into an old man over night; the boy was only twelve. "Can you tell me what happened?"
    "Gilly hasn't said a word since we locked ourselves in here," Stevie started.
    Powell looked at his daughter and asked, "Why don't you want to talk baby?" She only shook her head and buried her face into his shoulder, thumb still in her mouth. He turned back to his son. "What happened Stevie?"
    "We came home and mommy pulled into the garage as always. She closed the door but didn't see that someone came in before she closed it. We got out and went inside while mommy was getting the groceries from the trunk. She screamed..." Stevie got a distant look in