Free Dying Days 6 by Armand Rosamilia Page B

she figured Texas and a few other places had more per capita, but Florida should have some. So far ammo and weapons were still tough to find, and the obvious places like gun shops and Walmart were cleaned out early.
    Darlene wondered how other countries had fared. Was this a worldwide epidemic, or had other countries simply closed their borders and written the United States off? What if North Korea was even now attacking the West Coast and taking over chunks of our land? Foreigners might be killing the remaining Americans and taking all of the resources that were left.
    She needed ammo and food.
    Her backpacks had been left in the office park and the group had already split up her things. She supposed none of it was really hers anymore. Finders keepers was the way of the world now. As long as she had her Desert Eagle, she'd make due.
    Zombies wandering in the area ignored her and she didn't have the energy anymore to take the time to destroy each of them. Could she really make a dent in the zombie population? It seemed like the smarter zombies were doing the job for her anyway.
    Her focus needed to be on moving forward and finding her baby.
    Darlene wondered when the last real meal she'd had was. The snacks in the office had been great but she hadn't eaten much more lately. Her fear was she didn't need food anymore, or sleep, and she was even now turning into a monster. As much as the power and the talents would do her well, all she wanted to be was human. What if she turned into something akin to The Lich Lord and gained not only superhuman strength and crazy powers but his bloodlust and megalomaniacal mindset?
    She thought about all of this and more as she kept walking, using the abandoned cars both for cover and landmarks to keep heading in the right direction.
    Every now and then a zombie would inadvertently get too close and she'd put it down but there was no fun in it anymore. She was invisible and they weren't much of a threat individually anyway.
    The only way she could change the world would be to find her baby. Nothing else mattered to Darlene.
    An eighteen-wheeler, overturned in the median, offered shade for a few minutes. The doors to the cargo area had been ripped off and scattered.
    Someone had placed a mattress and furniture inside, perhaps to live for awhile.
    Darlene had her Desert Eagle out, scanning the area for movement. If someone was still living in the truck, they'd have spotted her a mile away.
    The back of the truck was packed with more furniture, stacked high and some still in boxes. It was a furniture delivery truck someone had come upon and made the most out of it, although living in the center of a highway wasn't the best spot.
    If it was up to Darlene, she would've moved the furniture into the trees on either side of the road and set up a camp instead of being so exposed.
    It was the quickest way to die, and as she got closer she saw she was, unfortunately, right.
    It looked like at least three bodies just past the mattress, but it was hard to tell with so many parts and so much dried blood.
    Darlene decided not to explore. She didn't think finding supplies was worth seeing the faces of the dead so close and personal.
    Had these people been ambushed inside the truck as they were setting it up, trying to find a semblance of order and home? Darlene hoped whoever they were they had been dead before their brains had had a chance to comprehend they were about to die.
    Darlene wondered why she was feeling so nostalgic and worried about the world around her lately. She knew part of it was her missing baby but the other part was the death of John and everyone else she knew. Not just her father in Maine but everyone she'd met in her lifetime before and after the world had turned upside down.
    "Suck it up, Cupcake," she said out loud, something her father used to say when she was a kid and whining about how unfair her life was. Major events for a five year old like not getting to stay up past bedtime or