BROKEN

Chapter 1 - Lauren

"I have an idea," I blurted out before my brain woke up could tell me to shut the hell up. Ten pairs of tired, hungry and desperate eyes all turned towards me. Could this slightly crazy idea I have actually save my rag tag family? These are people that I may not have ever considered to be friends, were as important to me now as my own blood family and at this point in time, they were also my lifeline. My parents and brothers are hopefully still alive in New England where I am from, but when the world fell apart, I was driving home to Connecticut after visiting friends in Florida. I had made it only as far as Georgia, when alone and scared I got stuck in a huge traffic jam of people trying to escape the madness. The highway was a sea of cars going absolutely nowhere. There I got to know some of the people in the cars around me. We bonded out of desperation and the need to survive. We learned quickly that you could not stay alive on your own but always needed someone to have your back. The undead were unpredictable and deadly. That was at least eighteen months ago, and a few of us have been together ever since.

"What is it?" Rick asked warily running his hand through his hair. He's our guy. The one we listen to and the man we've have been following since almost the beginning. He'd do anything in his power to keep us together and alive. He was a no-nonsense ex-cop who was a natural born leader.

"My family has two vacation cabins in western Virginia. They've been in the family for generations. They should be still there... I think."

"I thought you were from Connecticut?" Maggie asked. Maggie was the sister I never had. She's the only one that I could have been friends with back before this crazy virus started turning people into monsters. I loved her easy going, level headed style of dealing with everything.

"I was... I mean I am, but my great-grandfather was from West Virginia. He was a coal mine owner who made a shit load of money and then got out of the business. He moved to Virginia, bought about a couple hundred acres in on the outskirts of the Appalachian Mountains and built a house to raise his family. My grandfather added a separate bunkhouse to accommodate the growing numbers, and eventually, my father upgraded them both to really beautiful vacation cabins. We would spend summers and holidays there." Everyone seemed interested, so I continued. "No one really lives within four or five miles of us and town is about fifteen miles away, so it's pretty isolated. There's plenty of hunting in the area, and the lake was always chock full of fish." I realized I was rattling on as my nerves took over. I looked at everyone and saw hope flash into their tired eyes.

"I haven't been to the cabins in a couple of years, but my family's been there, plus Dad always had a guy keeping an eye on them. If we can get there, we may have a place to live." There I had laid all of my cards on the table.

Rick immediately started plying me with questions, so I knew he was interested. How far away is this? How isolated? Can it sustain all of us?

"Abraham, where your maps?" I asked. He rummaged through his pack and found the one for Virginia. After Alexandria fell, we had stayed in Virginia but kept on the move trying to find a safe place to stay. So far we hadn't found anything that was good for us that lasted longer than a couple days. It was exhausting going from house to house all the time. The most we had was a week in one place, but that had been overrun, and we hightailed it out of there. 

"Where is it?" he asked. Abraham's military background made him our perfect navigator.

"Let me see," I said. We spread the worn map over the hood of one of the cars that we used. I had to get my bearings on where everything was since I normally traveled from the north down to Virginia. "Here" I pointed a town on the western side of the state. "This is it...Danville."