She didn’t know how long she had been there in the dark, but she knew it was long enough that her full bladder would no longer hold again. Whimpering, she crawled on her hands and knees, feeling out in front of her, until she found another corner of the basement to pee, and then pulled her panties back up and found her way back to her own little corner the same way..crouching and feeling her way. She could hear the other girl whimpering in yet another corner, and remembered how wild her eyes had looked when she was thrown, tumbling, down the stairs.

Hannah had not bothered to try and make contact with her. She had been in the cellar for a long time, she didn’t know how long, just that it was long enough to have seen two other girls thrown down there with her, and both of their sounds had faded into silence, and she had somehow managed to grasp the iron poker and ram them through their heads after they had died. Hannah didn’t know why she was still alive. After all, she had been bitten, and she had heard the gasps from others when it happened. So why was she still breathing?

All she knew was that for some reason she wasn’t dead yet and since her father had told her there was no heaven or hell, she wanted to live with a strength so strong it was almost an ache. She had eaten bugs and two rats, and drank the bottles of wine that were in the cellar with her, which she guessed were enough fluid to prevent dying of thirst, but still left her with a parched and aching throat.

Of course the ache could have been because of how much she had screamed when she killed the others thrown down in the cellar, or how afraid she was that they would bite her. And then when she was bitten, she figured it would only be a matter of days or hours before she too made those moaning sounds and wanted to eat people. But it hadn’t happened, and while she didn’t know the reason, she was grateful.

Hannah began to wonder about the other girl in the corner, who was quiet now. Was it time to kill her as well? Or would she not be strong enough this time? Finally, her curiousity got the better of her and she said “hello, hello….”

“I want my Mommy!” the voice tearfully declared from the other corner. Hannah sighed.she was a baby…probably no more than five or six, just a baby compared to Hannah’s 11. Hannah sighed, but realized that she had to at least try and make some effort to go to her…even if it meant just being closer with the poker when the change went over her. So she said “Hey, my name is Hannah, I’m coming to you”.

The girl sobbed and even in the near pitch blackness, Hannah could sense her fear…and her hope. “I’m Carrie”, she said, with a hiccup in the middle of a sob. Hannah drew closer to her and finally was there. The smaller girl grabbed her and held on, and Hannah for some odd reason, didn’t feel threatened, but began to rock her slowly, back and forth.

Then they both heard the moan and froze. It was coming from the only source of light, a dim and small window near the top of the basement, covered with years of dust and grime. The window shattered, and then arms began to stretch out through the hole that had been made. Carrie screamed and clutched hannah with a grip made strong by her total panic. Now the rotted arms were taking up what little light had been coming into the basement, and Hannah couldn’t tell if it was one or more zombies trying to squeeze into the narrow basement window. Then Hannah herself couldn’t help but scream as an oddly shaped form tumbled down into the basement.

Hannah didn’t want to move, but she knew her only chance was to act faster than the slow moving creatures. Experience had taught her that much. So she moved forward, the iron poker grasped firmly in her hands. As she got closer, she could see that the zombie had been somehow severed off fromthe waist down, but was still moaning and moving towards her in an almost crablike fashion. She stabbed at the creature with the poker with all the strength she had in her, and it went all the way through the zombie, with a few inches of the poker itself buried in the packed basement dirt.

With a sob of terror, she realized she had impaled the zombie in the neck, missing the head. Then, to her surprise, she saw Carrie come up to the zombie with one of the bottles of wine from the winerack, and hit it over the head with it. It wasn’t very effective in stopping the zombie, but the move did give Hannah enough time to back up from the zombie’s outstretched arms.

The zombie kept trying to move forward, but the poker impaling it held. At that point, Carrie looked up at the window and seeing the light from outside filter through gave her hope. She ran to the window, but no matter how high she jumped, she just couldn’t reach it. But then Hannah ran to the window as well, and shouted, “Here, let me help you up!”

Hannah held her hands together, and Carrie put her feet in them and jumped. She just made the window, and whimpered as her hands were cut by the broken glass of the window, but Hannah pushed her up higher by her butt, and the little girl made it through the window.

Hannah was glad Carrie had been able to get away, but realized she wasn’t likely to get out herself using the same method..there was no one to push her up. She then turned around to see that the zombie had managed to extricate itseslf from the poker, and was once more doing its crablike crawl towards her, and now was between her and the poker. She backed up agaiinst the wall the window was on, and gazed with terrified eyes at her approaching doom. Then she shrieked as arms grabbed her by the shoulders through the window and pulled her up.

Once her eyes had adjusted to the unfamiliar sunlight, she saw a large man in camoflauge and carrying what looked like a cross between a shovel and an axe. His scowling face scared her almost as much as the zombie had; he looked to her as if he wouldn’t think twice about lopping her head off if he was so inclined. While Hannah stared, the man picked up Carrie and held her on one hip, then with the weapon in his other hand, yelled out, “Come on, you don’t want to die here, do you?” He began to run away from the house whose basement had been her prison for so long, and Hannah ran as fast as she could to keep up. He may have looked mean and scary, but Hannah would take him over zombies, or even of being alone, any day of the week.

She had no idea where they were going, but figured anything had to be better than where she had been, so she followed the man, continuing to run as fast as she could, fighting the painful stitch in her side, and with that, she couldn’t help but begin to fall behind. With a foul curse, the big man in camo slide his odd looking weapon into a type of scabbard on his back, then scooped Hannah up on his other hip, and then continued to run, and all three could hear the maons in the distance of the zombies trying to catch up to them, but the moans were thankfully sounding further and further away.

He stopped at a ladder that was pulled down from a fire escape, climbed up it, then pulled the ladder up, doing the same with each ladder until they reached the rooftop, and he dropped them and they all sat back, panting for breath, safe for the time being.