The Day the World Ended
Ashville, North Carolina - The Quinn House
Caitlyn Quinn woke up to the sound of her phone buzzing. It was 6:47 AM, and the screen was flooded with notifications. News Alerts. Emergency broadcasts. Texts from friends she hadn't talked to in months.
She was eighteen years old, home alone, and something was very, very wrong.
Her father was in Iraq. Marcus Quinn, United States Marine Corps, was three thousand miles away, serving his last tour before retirement. She hadn't heard from him in two weeks. No calls, no texts, no emails. That was normal. He was in the field, doing whatever Marines did. She'd learned not to worry.
She grabbed her phone and read the first message.
BREAKING: MULTIPLE INCIDENTS REPORTED AT AREA HOSPITALS. AUTHORITIES URGE RESIDENTS TO SHELTER IN PLACE.
The second was from her neighbor, Mrs. Miller: "Caitlyn, lock your doors. Something is happening. I can hear screaming."
The third was from an unknown number: "They're attacking people. Run."
Caitlyn threw off the covers and ran to the window.
The street was chaos.
Cars were abandoned at odd angles, doors open, some still running. A woman in a bathrobe staggered down the sidewalk, her face blank, her mouth hanging open. Behind her, a man in work boots followed, his shirt soaked with something dark. He wasn't walking right. Too stiff, too mechanical.
She grabbed her father's rifle from the closet, the bolt-action Remington he'd taught her to shoot with. He'd taught her when she was eleven. "Stay light, baby girl," he'd said. "Heavy feet get you killed."
She loaded the magazine and chambered a round.
She tried calling her father. The call didn't go through. She tried texting. The message failed.
She was alone.
The screaming started an hour later.
It came from next door. Mrs. Miller's house. Caitlyn crept to the window. Mr. Miller had been a kind man. Now his face was slack, his eyes filmed over, his mouth open in a wet, rattling moan. He grabbed his wife. His teeth found her neck.
Caitlyn stumbled back, her hand over her mouth. Then another figure shambled up her driveway. A teenager, face blank, eyes white. He reached her front door and started pounding.
She moved to the back door, slipped out and ran.
For two weeks, she survived on the move. She slept in ditches, in sheds, in the back of abandoned cars. She scavenged what she could. She got canned food, bottled water, a first aid kit. She killed when she had to, but mostly she ran.
Her father's voice echoed in her head. Stay light. Heavy feet get you killed.
She stayed light.
On the fourteenth day, she found the farmhouse.
It was set back from the road, surrounded by overgrown fields and thick woods. The family was dead, she found their bones in the basement, huddled together, waiting for help that never came. She buried them in the garden, said a few words, and moved in.
The farmhouse became her world.
There was a well that still worked. A wood-burning stove. A pantry with canned goods that lasted months. And in the barn, buried under a tarp, she found a Ford F-250. The tires were flat, the battery almost dead, but the engine turned over when she tried it.
She had made a promise to herself: get it running. Survive. Wait for her father.
Six months passed. She turned nineteen alone, eating stale crackers and drinking well water. She had fixed the truck with a new battery from a salvage yard, tires from another abandoned truck, and countless hours of learning as she went. The Ford ran.
She used it for supply runs. She started hunting deer with her father's rifle. He taught her to butcher, to preserve, to waste nothing. The dead came and went. She killed them when they got too close.
And every night, she sat by the radio, listening, hoping.
For months, there was only static.
A year had passed. She was nineteen, almost twenty.
She sat on the porch of the farmhouse, her father's rifle across her lap, and watched the sun set over the mountains. The Ford was parked in the barn, fueled and ready. She still hadn't heard from her father. She didn't know if he was alive.
But she was still alive.
And then, one day, the radio crackled with a voice. A man named Jimmy, talking to a man named Marcus. Coordinates. A plan.
She listened. She packed. She drove.
The road ahead was long and dark. But she wasn't alone anymore.