Prologue

Only Fourteen yet my entire life I found myself constantly hoping for a zombie apocalypse, I played zombie video games almost all day. Sitting at home I'd daydream about what would happen if a zombie attacked me through my open window. Maybe I always hoped for something like that because I wasn't happy with the current state of the world, how everything had laws and rules, or maybe it was because I wanted to fight people, scavenge, and kill zombies. I always thought I'd be amazing in one of those apocalyptic situations, I thought I paid attention to every little detail and thing. Even though I hoped for it I never expected my wish to come true.

My name is Nitro, that's not my actual name or birth name at least, truth is, I don’t know my birth name or remember it, my family is from somewhere in the UK, my dad either left or died when I was young and my mom took me to New York, United States, all I remember my name being is Nitro, other than 'son' which, honestly I thought was my real name until my mom started calling me something else that I never remembered. She didn't talk to me much anyway, her name was Marissa which I wasn't aware of for a long time because I always called her 'mom' like most kids. I have no idea what happened to my dad or why my mom left, which led me to believe that she killed him. My mom was a strange person, she never told me about her past, in fact, she rarely talked to me, she never got an actual job, she never did anything; she lived off of her friends and her ability to steal, I’m very surprised she had friends considering she hated me, her child, whenever she did talk to me, it was usually drunk talk about how shitty my father was.

What I considered home was a small blue house with one metal door that led inside and little to no windows, we had a mailbox but it was badly damaged and we never got mail because technically we didn't exist in America. When you walked in there was the kitchen we never used because we lives off food my mom stole or bought from fast-food restaurants with the fifteen dollars her friends would lend her out of pity, the kitchen was connected to the living room, the only thing separating them was a wall with a huge hole in it that was meant to be a doorway, we didn't have much furniture throughout the house, no fancy chairs, big beds or desks, what we did have were small bedside tables my mom could pick up from yard sales and mattresses without bed frames. The one thing I will never forget about that house was the tv, my only source of entertainment, one of my mom's old boyfriends felt extremely bad for us or maybe he just felt bad for my mom's lies, he bought us the tv, and for my tenth birthday he got me a gaming console, sadly my mom dumped him shortly after he gave her everything she wanted, money, clothes and booze, the same things her friends could supply her with but, refused to because they got around to knowing the real Marissa.

I couldn't go to school without proof that I exist, you know like a birth certificate or something, but my mom sent me to daycare every chance she got, probably so she could hook up with some guy so she could buy more stuff… for herself of course.

I still learned how to talk, read, write and do basic math; my mom's friends would give me their kid’s used school books and my mom never got me games or toys but always got me those thin paperback kids books that smelled weird. I did have alternatives to a real school, however, for example the church my mom sent me to with her friend's and boyfriend's kids, she sent me to church for the free food, heating system and bathrooms that didn't look like crack dens.

Daycare was another alternative, the place where I met my best friend, Serafina, the most outgoing person I've met, everyone loved her, a pretty, smart, and social girl with long, strawberry blonde hair and bright green eyes. Although the Serafina I knew wasn't the one everyone loved, people would describe her as sweet and gentle, but, with me, she always had something to talk about, she was bold around me, more outgoing than usual, and honestly kind of an asshole, but I'm completely fine with that, it makes her happy when she gets to be brave because her parents shielded her so much growing up.

When she was eleven years old her father was exposed for child pornography, we lived in a small town, so word spread quickly, kids at her school told her to run so she did even though I tried to stop her. Serafina stayed with her friends from school saying she was just sleeping over and had her mother’s permission, unfortunately when her older brother returned home from college her mother was rotting on the bathroom floor. Serafina didn't go back home and her brother never contacted her so in a way Serafina didn't know what happened to her mother, until she was given a foster home, they loved her and took care of her like family, although Serafina didn't feel the same way about them, one day Serafina got in a fight with her foster mom and she told Serafina about what happened to her mother, she didn't go to school for weeks and kids started rumoring that Serafina was murdered or offed herself. Although Serafina was very upset so was I, thinking she'd never come back.

The apocalypse started in March last year when I was thirteen and Serafina was twelve. My mom barely noticed or cared, she was so unmotivated that she couldn't care less if she died, she probably prayed that I would too. So Serafina and I left our parents, we stole my mom's wallet and took a train to New Hampshire while they were still available… New Hampshire, not the best idea. More people started moving to the smaller states, thinking there would be fewer zombies, they were wrong.