Free Colony Z: The Complete Collection (Vols. 1-4) by Luke Shephard

back of the line with Michael and Judith Marie. She would not argue with him; not now. Now she would learn what it was like to be an obedient wife. Her deepest fear was that, if she lost him, he would leave her and the children and never return. Her actions were that of a woman desperate for survival, not a woman who particularly cared for the barking orders of her husband.
                 
    She knew she had done nothing wrong. Sure, she maybe said too much when it came to what might have been. They hadn’t exactly been falling apart all that time ago, but they may as well have been. Sometimes she wondered if she would rather have a life in a normal world without him. If, in some alternate universe, she would be better off without Michael or Judith Marie. But she could not picture it. And the fact that her husband could put a fear into her such that she could not even explain.
                 
    From that night on, Hannah became more closed with her husband. It wasn’t until they had been on the island for several years and Helen had been born that she allowed herself to feel something for him again, and even then, she had spent so long playing the role she had been that there was no going back.
                 
    She had become a changed woman. A harder one. A stronger one.
                 
    But Owen was weakening.
     
                 

The first night, the Albion Tribe stayed in a small motel in what used to be Nashville, Tennessee. The large buildings and arenas were the perfect area for packs of zombies to stay during the daytime, and so they would not risk sleeping in a place like that.
                 
    They all packed into two rooms on the top floor. The children and Hannah were given a bed to sleep on, and the remaining women were to share the other three. It wasn’t a comfortable situation, but it was one the group had been used to before they were given the luxury of a school that was protected.
                 
    More than anything, the Albion Tribe was stealthy. Stealthy and quiet and unseen. The zombies were not like dogs. They could not smell fear, and they could not smell humans. In fact, Owen had discovered over time that they could remain in one place for several days at a time before they would be found at all.
                 
    He would not risk that here, but he was glad for the cushion of knowing they would not find them, if the tribe did everything right. Not tonight.
                 
    The rooms were not joined, and Owen put James in charge of the one across the hall. Each room held about fifteen people. Sleeping quarters were confined, but Owen had also found that spreading out was dangerous. Should anything attack, being parted could leave a small pocket of people unknowledgeable of the situation and vulnerable. Again, they had grown out of that while staying at the high school. Another mistake they would not be repeating.
                 
    Owen and James would sleep in front of the locked doors. When traveling, the watch-men often did not sleep at night, such was their anticipation of hearing footsteps in the hallway. It was especially difficult now that they had spent so much time away from the fear of the night, the terrifying sound of the groans and moans outside their windows. The chills that traveled up and down their spine when they heard a creak in the floor, assuming it meant death was coming.
                 
    Perhaps they were self-centered in believing they were the only survivors. But they would have been hard pressed to believe any other group of people could live this way. In fact, they had never seen another group of survivors in all of their travels. They certainly had enough trouble themselves, and they had been doing this for years. Owen and Hannah had started their company when the two of them were only sixteen years old.
                 
    Night fell.