𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐬.

𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦 .

They never tell you just how hard it is to be a single parent. One who works long hours and late shifts, who returns home to a dark house and two soundly sleeping children. They never tell you that these are the rare moments you get to see them, that you only get to watch them grow between shifts and odd days off.

As a doctor, Natalie Campbell was no stranger to these stolen moments, for while both her girls were born into the world of military that had encompassed much of her own life, it was just in the past couple of years that they'd really settled down. As hectic as her life was, she'd done everything she could help shape them into strong young women.

They never tell you how hard it is to balance work and family life when you are the only one capable of providing for your family.

They never prepared you to care for children when the world falls to shit, either, but you've been on your own for so long, how can you tell the difference?

They do tell you, however, that apocalypses always seem to come on hard and fast. It is a normal day and then the world suddenly shifts, dissolving into utter chaos. But that's wrong, isn't it?

The apocalypse isn't sudden, zombies do not just rain down from invisible airships in the middle of a warm summer morning, and you do not just wake up fighting to survive.

It is gradual, nearly unsuspecting. Rumors of a sickness that claims it's victims quickly, that seemingly spreads through the exchange of bodily fluids, bites and scratches. Human rabies, sources call it, and it's kept so hush that most people just come to see it as a joke, a scary story to tell their children. They don't tell you that the scientists have been keeping it under wraps for nearly half the year, but they have been, and it's more serious than anyone gives it credit for.

A typical day at work, dozens of friendly greetings offered to familiar faces, the same comfort of routine that there's always been. Until a patient comes in with a pretty gnarly bite mark and codes, until the same patient comes back to life, bites one of the nurses surrounding the body. Over and over again.

One dead body turns into ten and the numbers climb steadily after that.

Natalie Callaghan hadn't spent years as a doctor in the Air Force, as a trauma surgeon in the heart of Tennessee, for nothing. She had enough sense to monitor patients from a distance, after that, before fleeing from Nashville Memorial Hospital and never looking back.

Welcome to Day Zero.