Day One (Book 1): Alive by Michael Mcdonald Page B

rush like nothing I had ever felt before. I was fully alive and was in perfect harmony with all of my senses. I was alive. I smiled and felt the weight fade from my shoulders.
    The two Men, confronted by the screaming thing, fled into the woods behind the gas station with it hot on their trail. Survival depended upon them either being able to outrun it or lose it within the darkness and heavy undergrowth. Each of them hated the stranger even more for his actions, what he had caused them to face and for leaving them stranded. They both wanted revenge and if they ever had the opportunity, they would exact it upon him and whoever else had been with him.
    I rushed down the interstate, unclear of where the National Guard had set up their containment area. I imagined it being right off the onramp close to the gas stations and the empowering lights, yet I had already traveled several miles with no signs of life in front or behind me. The world appeared to have been evacuated to some unknown planet elsewhere, leaving me, Kember and the two Thugs behind. That was not a comforting feeling by any means.
    “Where the hell is this damn place?” I asked aloud. “Did I go the wrong way or was it all bullshit to begin with?” That last question stuck in my mind more than anything. If this wasn’t an isolated case, like I was beginning to think, there was a good chance they could have been over run, or maybe they just packed up and moved when things got out of hand...
    My so called luck was dripping away like a spilled cup of milk. 
    The yellow line quietly slipped beneath the SUV as we drove down the interstate in search of some allusive containment center that I was sure would never be found, nor had it ever been there probably. The Officer had just told me that to simply save my life and nothing more. So if that had been the case, which I was positive of now, where would we go? If the problem wasn’t local, then going to a large city would be a disastrous idea.
    I let off the accelerator and the SUV began to slow from seventy down to sixty, then on toward fifty miles an hour. My mind was racing faster than we were traveling and I had to catch up to it. In the middle of nowhere on a desolate interstate I suddenly came upon a group of cars stalled in the middle of the road. Fear registered upon my face as death stared blankly back at me. I slammed on the brakes and swerved, yet none of that worked, I braced for impact. The fear of sustaining a serious injury in the crash coursed through my mind like electricity and grew as I thought about Kember being injured, as well.
    A metal pole smashed through the windshield, missing my head by mere inches. The crash was sudden, instant, and, absolute… then silence.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Three.
     
    I awoke to hear a muffled noise behind me. My vision was blurry and my head felt like a metal pole had gone all the way through it, instead of missing me and I had lived. I strained my neck forward, feeling the bones crunch as I moved. My neck is broken I thought. I’m going to be paralyzed from the neck down and I’ll sit here for days until I die. More than that, I will get to watch, as well as hear, my daughter dying also. I wanted to move my hand but was scared to try, knowing that if it didn’t move we were screwed. It was the fear that kept me from moving it. The fear of the unknown and my rampant thoughts, along with the anticipation of it all were too much.
    Without warning, I shifted my attention to the backseat to see Kember awake and looking at me with an odd expression painted on her face. She had been crying as I could see the tears on her cheeks as well as the redness around her eyes. But for how long? “It’s okay, baby. We’re still alive and kicking… I think.”
    Kember, didn’t see it that way as she had been strapped into her car seat and awoke to find her daddy slumped over in the front seat and after several attempts at trying to get his attention with no success,