Honey || Daryl Dixon

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In the beginning, they said it could be cured.

The bitten were sent to the hospital, the infected were sent to the CDC. They discovered, sometime after the bitten became the infected and started ripping chunks out of their doctors and fellow patients with their teeth, that a bite passes on the infection.

A bite, a scratch, physical exposure — it's what passes on the infection. Then you become like them; one of the infected.

It wasn't long after that that they started telling us to stay indoors. Call in sick to work, lock the windows, lock the doors. Get enough food in for the week, maybe two, make sure your bills are paid and don't go out again.

Wait for it to blow over, they said. Wait for more information. Wait for the authorities to call an evacuation, or wait for them to tell you it's okay to go outside again.

Wait.

The final broadcast they showed on television didn't instil much hope for the rest of us. It didn't give much advice, other than the usual 'stay indoors, stay away from people' rhetoric. It repeated that the CDC were still working on a vaccine. They informed residents that there was vandalism going on throughout the city as if it wasn't residents that were committing the vandalism. Traffic clogged up the highways due to the amount of people trying to force their way out of the city. It told us that the military were coming in and they're working to solve the problem.

Mostly it stressed the danger of the infected. They don't feel pain. In fact, they don't feel anything. You could shoot them nine times in the chest and they'd still get up. Head shots, the news told us, always aim for the head. Damage to the brain is what puts them down. The lone reporter ended with a god bless you all, may you have safe passage in this world and the next.

There wasn't another live coverage after that. The radios were playing the same broadcast over and over for a while. The same god bless you bullshit. Wishes of safe passage. Repeating mantras of only damage to the brain can put them down.

It's been a month since then. Nothing much has changed. The infected still wander around eating whomever takes their fancy. They show no signs of the human beings they were before. The cities are the worst. All the 'stay indoors' crap turned out to be the worst advice they could've given, considering the groups of infected that trapeze around Atlanta with bite marks decorating their skin. Atlanta became a breeding ground for the infected. Their numbers doubled, tripled even, every day.

Only the ones who got out lived: someone should've told them. The highways were packed with cars. People were desperate to get as far out of the city as possible — they're the smart ones. They were the people who recognised that the news has done nothing but get things wrong for years so it's probably not the best idea to follow it's instruction during a crisis situation.

A few days after that last broadcast the military came, as promised, and the bombs were dropped. Atlanta went up in flames: the smoke could be seen for miles.

I watched it from the highway off route 49. The car was parked — there wasn't a chance that anybody was moving that night — behind a green Volkswagen, foreign vehicles on all sides of it. It was mayhem and no one had any clue what was going on. There was barely any space to move anywhere.

"Mommy?"

There's too many people outside. Car doors left open, empty vehicles abandoned. They're all running around aimlessly, shouting for lost loved ones and crying about the injustice of it all.