Free The Complex: (The Reanimates) by J. Rudolph Page B

exterior on all the time so to see her like this was heartbreaking.
                  I went inside to get some Ativan for Martha. As I pulled it up in a syringe, I looked over at Joey. He looked terrible. It was tearing him up to be that guy who had to deliver the bullet to one of our own.
                  "I shouldn't have let them go on the run" he said quietly. "I should have made them wait until our team came back then gone with them myself. Maybe Eric would be alive if I had."
                  "No one could have known, Joey. No one could have seen this."
                  "I should have. We are in a war zone right now and I'm the one trained to deal with war zones. I doubt anyone here has even been in one. We should have researched this. I should have been there to look over them. I've been trained."

 
    Aftermath Of The Bite
     
                  When the sound of that single shot cracked through the complex everyone knew what they needed. They needed the warm embrace of their loved ones. The sense of safety was gone. The sense of being alive and staying that way felt threatened.
                  I went upstairs to be with Martha and give her some meds that will help her sleep though the night. I held my tongue and didn't say what I had been trained to say. The platitudes of this will feel better in the morning or the ever popular he is in a better place were cold and hollow. I didn't say these things because she has lost her son and there are no cheery platitudes that would ever take away that sort of hurt. I slid the needle into her arm and pressed down on the plunger hoping it would help some. As it turned out, the injection worked well. She fell into a quiet sleep quickly. I walked away quietly. I couldn't bear the thought of waking her accidentally to start the hurt all over.
                  When I came down I noticed that people were carrying arm loads of canned and boxed foods. There were so many different things, I had no clue that they had gotten the stuff in the car when the hit came. I had imagined it in the parking lot not here. I was in shock. I was sure that going hungry was our punishment for sending a team out that was miserably unprepared.
                  "Pretty cool" said Tyreese. "He didn't die for nothing. He gave his life trying to scramble to get this in the car. That man was a hero."
                  Daniel and Trent looked like they had a heavy heart. "Build team finished a coffin." said Trent. "We also moved the body out of the medical unit to an empty one facing the garden."
                  Tanya came over and said "Garden team has started digging a hole. Will be deep enough in the morning."
                  DaWayne gruffly said in his best imitation of how someone speaks when they don't want to be caught crying "But those TV folks say you gotta burn the bodies. We burned that pile last night that came."
                  "Yeah that's what they said DaWayne. I can't do it. If someone in our family dies, and you are all my family now, we will bury them. If its one of those zombie things let 'em burn. I can't stand the idea of one of ours being treated like garbage." I think I was abundantly clear.
                  I needed to get to Drew and give him a hug. I needed to know and feel that my son was safe. Logically I knew that he was fine. Logically I knew that he was safe. For me, in that moment though, logical thinking had left the building as soon as Eric reanimated. I left the group that had gathered as they made plans for the funeral at dawn and went to the school unit where the kids were playing, hopefully being kept safely unaware of all that had just happened. They heard the gunshot but I hoped they all assumed that there was a zombie on the other side of the wall. When I opened up the door and stepped in, Drew jumped to his feet and wrapped his