The first news reports were in agreement that it started with a rabbit.

The whole world has gone to shit because of Bugs fucking Bunny. Well, to be truthfully honest, Bugs Bunny and the lethal brainfarts of a laboratory full of stereotypical mad scientists each rabidly intent on creating some sort of magical cure for the Aids virus. Like a plot out of a terrible movie, they messed with Mother Nature and that unforgiving harridan came back to take a big wholesome chunk out of their, then everyone else's, throats.  That little buck-toothed carrot-muncher made a break for freedom one sunny Friday afternoon bringing with him, hoppity-friggin-hop, the most contagious disease ever to visit the human race.

This B-virus, as it became known, rapidly tore a swathe through the general populace. Flu-like symptoms lasted for around a week then people started dropping like flies. Overloaded hospitals crumbled under the onslaught, unsubstantiated reports of military personnel drafted into shovelling bodies into mass graves beamed around the globe, news of country after country succumbing to the further spread of the virus. Families destroyed, friends and loved ones swiftly taken away. Chaos reigned for a while and the world went mad. Almost a third of the entire worlds population lost their lives over a period of six crazy weeks. Then...it just stopped. As we all breathed a collected shaky sigh, took the time to mourn our dead and tried to piece the broken parts of our lives back together those same, previously cursed upon, scientists were now praised for halting the supposed end of the world with their fortunate discovery of a supposed vaccine.

Six weeks later the shit really hit the fanen masse, the dead began to rise. Not your normal run of the mill un-dead either mind. True, they all craved the succulent pulsating brain of the living but these bastards were not the mindless shambling idiots that we had all come to know and love (?) from numerous films and books. These rotting corpses worked together in groups, communicating with each other - damn, I even saw one of those fuckers drive a bus full of its own kind once straight through the walls of a barricaded school  to get to the goods inside. The degree of intelligence displayed by them surprised us all. Those not succumbing to a grisly death at the hands of the newly rose invariably became infected and unknowingly passed the now mutated virus on. We had no chance really. The sucker punch of the first strain took the fight out of us - the second strain nearly wiped us out completely.  The dead walked the earth eating a crimson path through the remaining survivors. The supply of fresh living human flesh waned for them in time as our numbers swiftly dwindled. The animals followed as a poor substitute...then marine life...then insects. Without the nourishment of brains these creatures began to shrivel up further then die once again - this time forever.

But one group remain. I believed that I had outlasted them. On the run for the past three years I have managed to elude them at every turn. Before last night I had not seen them for a year. A good year. A year during which I had learned to sleep again, to pass an hour in the day without seeing my three sweet innocent children devoured before my unbelieving eyes, without hearing the gargled screams of my beautiful wife echoing in the deafening silence.

I stand at the window staring down at the only point of attack against my veritable fortress, shotgun in hand, cigarette jutting from the corner of my mouth. Smoke lazily drifts to the rafters. I realize that it is going to be a long night...

I remain motionless unblinking at the window as the last embers of the sun disappear behind the hill...

Let them come.