Zack was sitting on the couch, absently rubbing his fingers along the silk edge of a blanket, as his eyes studied the pile of furniture sitting in front of the door to their suite. Carey's large dresser was the centerpiece of the creation, fronted by Zack's dresser and topped with the trunk from the foot of Cody's bed. Two Louisville Slugger baseball bats leaned against the wall near the pile.

His eyes traveled from the door to the kitchen and took in the collection of pots and pans and pitchers and bottles and anything else they could find filled with water sitting on every available inch of counter space. And the bathtub, too, he reminded himself. They'd filled that up as well after the enormity of the situation began to emerge.

Zack turned his head a bit further and saw his brother standing in front of the patio door. He had one hand pushing the curtain far enough away from the glass to catch a glimpse of the scene on the street many many floors below. Cody would shake his head now and then at what he saw but aside from that remained motionless. Occasional flickers of orange light slid across his face.

"It's getting worse out there, Zack. They're everywhere now. There's got to be hundreds of them." He cupped his hands around his face and leaned closer to the glass.

"Come away from there, Cody. You've seen enough for the night," Zack told him after another minute. Cody slowly let the curtain fall back into place and stepped away.

"There's another fire out there. A big one this time," Cody told his brother. "I think it's somewhere over by our school but I'm not sure."

Under normal circumstances, Zack would have rejoiced at the idea of his school catching fire and being reduced to piles of ash and lumps of melted plastic. Circumstances were anything but normal now and hadn't been for almost a week, though. His eyes drifted to the phone as part of his brain told him to call 911. "Yeah, who's going to put it out?" he whispered softly. The only sirens either boy had heard in the last three days were random car alarms.

"Hmm?" Cody asked as he joined Zack on the couch.

"Nothing. Just talking to myself a little. Still trying to make sense of all that," Zack said, gesturing toward the window. "I can't figure out how this could have happened and I still can't make myself believe it's actually happening."

"I gave up trying to figure out how it happened," Cody told him. "It's so...insane I can't even put it to words. I don't even think insane is a strong enough word to describe it." He sank deeper into the cushions and leaned up against his brother. Zack put an arm around Cody's shoulders and felt his brother settle closer.

Zack picked up the remote control and aimed it at the television. He flipped through channel after channel, finding either blank screens or test patterns on nearly all of them. A few channels, mainly the news outlets, remained broadcasting despite the outbreak and did their best to provide updates and videos from around the country and world. The channel Zack finally stopped on was showing a shaky clip of a city street filled with aimlessly ambling bodies.

"We've hidden ourselves in the burned out wreckage of what I think used to be a restaurant," a man squatting slightly beside and behind the spider-webbed remains of a glass window said softly into his mic. "There's probably, what would you say, Frank? Two hundred? Two fifty now? Yeah, maybe even three hundred of these things in the middle of downtown." The reporter went quiet and the cameraman panned around. Hundreds of blood-spattered and disfigured bodies filled the screen.

"They've been steadily growing in number since the sun began going down. Some of them wander off in their separate ways but others always seem to arrive and take their place. That one, the one in the blue shirt – Frank? Did you hear that?" The reporter turned to look behind the cameraman and his shock-widened eyes were caught in the middle of the television's screen. "Shit! Get to the truck, Frank! They got in behind us." The image started to jump all over the screen as both men tried to scramble to their feet. "Come on, Frank! Forget the damn camera! We've got to get out of here!" Moans and grunts filled the audio as the camera fell to the floor, landing perfectly to catch the reporter going down under a pile of clawing hands and gnashing teeth. A mumbled oh fuck was heard, followed two seconds later by a gunshot. The camera shook as a body fell close by and the lens showed a growing pool of blood before the video mercifully ended.

"I'd like to deeply apologize for that last piece," the anchor said from his desk when he returned to the screen. "We just received that from our bureau in Baltimore and no one had previewed it yet. Had we, I promise you we would have given warning for its intensity." The fuming anchor threw a perfectly undisguised scowl at everyone behind the camera. "We're going to take a short break and when we return, we'll have a representative live from the CDC with their latest update on the situation."

Cody's horrified mind kept replaying the sound of the gunshot as he tried to focus on the short break. He tried to imagine turning a gun on himself like that and his skin crawled. The anchor reappeared and turned his attention to a monitor and the interview began. They watched and listened, hoping for any new information about what the hell was going on. The minutes passed and their hopes faded as it became clear that this was simply another rehash of what had been said for the last five days: We're confident that we'll soon have the situation under control and We are still in charge. Nothing new.

"That's enough. Turn it off, Zack."

"Yeah," Zack shook his head and hit the power button. "Do you believe anything they're saying, Cody?"

"Not a single bit except for when they say they still don't know what it is. Everything else is a lie. If they had everything under control there wouldn't be a fire burning in the middle of Boston. If they were in charge we wouldn't be essentially trapped in a hotel surrounded by a sea of zombies. They would have sent the Army in and got us out of here. But they're not so they can't. And do you know what gets me the most?"

"What?"

He turned slightly and faced Zack. "They won't call them zombies even though that's exactly what they are. The only thing they could be. Not a single person on the news has used the word once since it all started." Cody became animated and Zack put a hand out to calm him down.

"Easy, Cody. Don't get all worked up about it," Zack told him. "I think you're right, though," he said after he considered it for a moment.

"I know I am. Not once."

"Maybe they can't say it. Like someone told them not to."

"Possibly. But that's still stupid. What's calling them what they really are going to do that seeing them out there hasn't already done? Freak us out more? Not likely." Cody sat back against the couch and pushed his hair back. "It just irks me."

"Okay, Cody. I get it. It makes you mad. Now chill out already."

The boys sat in relative quiet for the next little while until it began to get closer and closer to ten o'clock. Zack got up and retrieved his phone from the charger and brought it back over and set it on the arm of the couch. Cody kept checking his watch and Zack's eyes continually drifted to the clock on the wall while they waited for the phone to ring. And waited.

"She'll call, Cody. It's probably still pretty crazy in the safe zone," Zack offered as the hands on the clock neared half past ten.

"That's probably it," Cody said, hiding his apprehension. They'd been able to communicate with their mother with relatively few problems for the first few days after everything went to hell but it became much harder when part of New York City's power grid went down, taking most of the city's hundreds of cell towers with it. Carey had to find spots with working landlines or cell coverage while remaining as invisible as possible. The problems were supposed to have been alleviated once the survivors were rounded up and put in a improvised safe zone, but the twins hadn't seen much improvement. Carey had told them it took nearly an hour to get through to them earlier that afternoon.

"Her phone might have finally died so she just needs to find someone with a phone that works," Zack continued, but Cody had already concluded that he was trying to reassure himself more than his brother. "Or a charger. Maybe it's charging now, Cody. Or she might be waiting in line to use one of the army's phones."

"I know, Zack. She'll call when she can." Cody took up the role of comforting brother and put an arm around Zack's shoulders while he tried to figure how incredibly long the odds were of his mother leaving for a day in a recording studio in Manhattan at the same time as the appearance of the wave of zombies. "Impossibly long," he said to no one.

"What's impossibly long?" Cody explained and Zack nodded. "I always said her singing could raise the dead."

"Terrible joke," Cody forced a laugh and they both fell silent. He picked the remote up after a moment and flicked the television back on. Boston had gone dark the night before but they still had electricity thanks to the Tipton's balky old emergency generator. How much longer would that last? Cody guessed no more than another day, maybe two if they were lucky.

"We still need to find flashlights," he told Zack as the idea occurred to him.

"There's one in Mom's closet, isn't there?"

"I think so but I'm not sure. We should look in the other suites, Zack. On this floor at least."

"Mom told us not to leave the suite, remember?" Zack's voice took on a slight edge.

Cody held his tongue, not wanting to get into another argument about it. They were going to have to leave the hotel eventually, he knew it. Probably sooner than later. Zack had to know it, too, but he wouldn't admit it for some reason. Cody couldn't understand his brother's sudden willingness to listen to rules after fourteen years of disobeying them at nearly any chance he got, especially since it had been Zack's idea when they'd left the suite twice before. "Okay. We'll find Mom's and then see what happens." That seemed to appease Zack and they both let the subject drop for the time being.

Cody eventually went back to CNN and hit mute, not wanting to hear more recycled news but needing something to keep his mind occupied for a while. His eyes were drawn to the crawl at the bottom of the screen as new outbreaks scrolled across. St Paul – confirmed. Boise – confirmed. Raleigh – confirmed. Dallas – confirmed. The list went on but Cody's attention wavered until a blue map of the United States came up on the screen. Cody hit the mute button again.

"...shows the progression of the outbreak," a voice said a split second before the view changed to a shot of a grey-headed man in front of a large, wall-sized touch screen. "I'll set it in motion," he said, pressing an icon and stepped back. The twins watched as a few seemingly random red points around the eastern seaboard began to grow and swallow more and more of the map as time went on. When it finished, very little of the country was still blue.

"As you see, it spread with incredible rapidity," the anchor said as he played it again. "All the major cities on the east coast were infected within a day and a half and it spread across the country to the west coast in another two days."

Cody stopped listening as the man went on. How much longer could they stay in the hotel? They had food for two or three more days, maybe five if they stretched it. Plenty of water for the time being. Once the food was gone, they'd have to sneak down to the kitchen and hope they could find more. And if they couldn't? If the lower levels were full of zombies or had already been looted? Cody suppressed a shiver as he thought about having to go out on the streets. Where would they go if they had to leave?

"Wolf, I hate to interrupt but we have breaking news," a voice said from off screen. The camera panned over to a desk with a harried looking man behind it. Breaking News appeared in a box to the man's right only to be replaced with NYC Safe Zone Collapses. Cody's eyes went wide and he distantly heard Zack drop the phone on the floor beside him.

"Oh no," Cody said softly, his mouth agape.

"That's where Mom is. Please tell me it's not!" Zack begged. Cody couldn't.

"We've just received word," the man at the desk announced, "that the newly formed safe zone set up in New York City has been overrun. Do we have the video? Is it ready? Parents, if you have small children around, I strongly advise you to have them leave the room." The anchor went quiet as he gave time. "Roll it."

The video started with a sweeping shot of dozens of desert camouflaged vehicles sitting behind a huge fence of cement, chain link, and razor wire. Outside the fence was a good twenty feet of open space contained by another fence. People were sitting around on anything they could find, everything from plastic jugs and oil barrels to cinder blocks and empty ammunition crates, eating from military MREs and talking quietly. The camera zoomed in on one bedraggled woman and for a second both boys thought it was their mother.

"Is that...no, it's not," Zack said, sitting back down after nearly jumping to his feet. The relative quiet of the video continued for another few seconds before a shout broke it.

"They're gathering on the outer wall!" The camera jumped to the left to show countless bodies pressing against the fence. The picture zoomed in and Cody swore he saw one of the zombies biting the chain link before it panned away. "Get them off the fence!" an authoritative voice yelled and less than a second later red streaks of light reached out to the mass of zombies. The bullets found their mark but did little but make most of the zombies twitch.

"They won't go down!" Someone yelled, followed almost immediately by "They've breached the outer wall!" A large section of the outer fence began falling inward and was trampled down by hundreds of the undead. As they watched, explosions went off in the midst of the zombies, blowing gaping holes in their lines that quickly reformed as more and more spilled into the gap.

"Mines," Cody said softly as another went off. A mangled leg fell from the sky a dozen feet from the camera and it momentarily panned down before zooming back to the wall. Almost as one, every gun that could be brought to bear on the breach opened up. The camera focused on a tank rumbling from behind a handful of temporary tents. The soldier in the tank's cupola took aim and its flame-belching machine gun lit up the night. Cody's mind warped at the thought of an Abrahms in the middle of New York City.

"Why isn't the big gun shooting, Cody?" Zack asked in a voice that made Cody wish he'd sent Zack out of the room.

"It's too close for the-" Cody stopped in mid-sentence as the interior fence began to bow under the weight of hundreds upon hundreds of zombies. "Oh no," he said as it reached the tipping point and began to fall. Cody snapped his jaw shut as dozens of screams and the ignition of diesel engines filled the audio. Dozens of panicked survivors ran in all directions, a few heeding soldiers' calls to trucks and other vehicles, most oblivious to them. The camera shook as the tank's big gun did finally open up but by then it was too late.

"What...what about Mom?" Zack asked, a look of terror on his face crossing his face.

"I don't know, Zack. I really don't."

"She's okay, right? You think she's okay?"

The last few seconds of the video ran though his mind. "Zack...I...I'm sure she is." He laid his head on the back of the couch and looked up at the ceiling and did his best not to cry.

"What now, Cody? What do we do?"

"I think it's time we leave." Zack didn't respond for a handful of heartbeats.

"Yeah, I guess it is." Cody could see how crushed he was. He'd been banking on Carey's eventual return from New York City, waiting for the happy ending, and now that he could see that it wasn't going to happen, it had broken him. Cody could see his eyes growing wet. "Not much left for us in Boston, is there?"

"No, there isn't."

"It's not fair, Cody. She was just supposed to be gone for a day! And when she came back we were going to celebrate!" The anguish in Zack's voice hurt Cody's heart.

"I know, Zack, I know."

"Why?" Zack's tough outer shell had cracked earlier and now it was shattering. "Why?" he turned and buried his face in the couch and began pounding the cushion. One last why? came out in a strangled yelp before he dissolved in sobs. Cody reached out to pull him close and after a few seconds of resisting, Zack let him and hugged back just as tightly. It was nearly midnight before either boy let go.

"You okay?" Cody asked as he looked his brother over.

"Yeah," Zack told him as he rubbed his red eyes. "I don't think I have any tears left for now."

"Neither do I," Cody sniffed. "Sorry about your shoulder."

Zack looked down and smiled a shaky smile. "Better than drool, I guess." Cody smiled with him. "We're on our own now, aren't we?"

"Pretty much."

"So where do we go, Cody?"

"Somewhere south. Maybe west. Away from here, that's for sure. What about Aunt Jolene's farm?"

"That's...a long way from here," Zack said with a whistle.

"I know. It's also about in the dead center of the middle of nowhere. No big cities, no thousands of zombies."

"We haven't been there in years. Do you even remember where it is?"

"Sort of. I know Mom has the address in her little book," Cody told him.

"I guess that's as good as anywhere else right now. When do we leave?"

I've wanted to do a zombie story with the TSL characters for years and I decided it was time. Hope you enjoy it.