When all the dead folks rose up and started to eat at the living, everybody thought it was the end of times. You know, like the preachers used to talk about. But it really wasn't like that. No, not really. Everything changed, but nothing ended.
Not yet, anyway.
Oh, at first it was all a big deal. The dead caught us all off guard. Nothing like this had happened in centuries, except what you hear about down in those little islands around Florida.
They came back all at once this time, and they came back to attack you personally, because they can remember.
No matter where they are, they remember where they live. That's where they go every time. They will go hundreds of miles to do it.
It's an instinct, like with birds.
It's what I expect Barbara to do some day.
People got killed in waves. The first wave were the people that got killed right out of the gate. In that first attack.
The second wave were the people who weren't meant to survive on their own, without our government helping them.
The third wave was the wars. All the little ones, and then the big one. A bomb got dropped on Kansas City, a couple of hours north of here, and took it all out.... People still getting sick from it. A couple of more bombs came down in Canada, and one more in Mexico City.
The last wave to die were the people that got sick from the new diseases that spread, and from the radiation from the bombs.
I heard, all together, about nine billion people died. And all of them had to be killed again.
But none of that really matters around here. We just all banded together and built our shelters in the towns and the woods, and did what we do. We hunt and fish and grow whatever, and trade with the neighbors for whatever else we need.
We just survived, like we always do.
