The walk over to the house was longer than it should have been, on more than one occassion I had to put Abby down and kill a zombie, and it got more frequent as we neared the house. By the time we were on the my street, I had to duck into bushes and make sure Abby didn't let go of my hand.

She was a little trooper, she didn't blow the whistle again, knowing I was close enough it wasn't needed, but she did squeeze my hand when she saw something that shouldn't have been there. By the time we managed to get into the empty house next door to mine at least two other flares had gone off.

I set Abby down on the counter and barricaded everything but one window, "Okay Abby, I'm going to go make sure the coast is clear, don't come out for anyone you don't know, and don't come out for anyone who can't say your name," I paused, looking her in the eye, "can you do that for me?"

She nodded, and I pressed a kiss to her forehead before crawling out of the window, once I was out I ordered her to lock it, and she did. I turned away from her then, and made my way to the back side of the house. I had left Michael's bag behind, in case he went to find his sister in the house.

The back door was slightly ajar, and while it made me pause, I went in anyways. I could hear fighting, and all around the compound guns were going off, but it seemed whoever was fighting off the zombies that had swarmed out front were doing it with pure skill and not the aid of a gun. Which was good, because it meant that the noise wouldn't attract as much zombies.

Instinctively I wanted to run and help them fight, but I knew once the fight was over we'd need to have our bags ready. The compound was being infested, and the spare time I had to grab the bags now might not be available later.

With my mind made up I skipped over the steps and ran into each room, by the time all the bags were collected, I was barely able to walk with all the weight. Beck's bag was the heaviest, and I realized that mine was the lightest, and I wondered what stuff they had in their bags. My mind went to crazy stuff as I carefully walked down the stairs, Cody would have a whole gym in in, while Beck would have the entire ammory in it. Chester... well there would be basically everything from bandaid to a beanie, and it'd all be perfectly packed. Sam would have enough medical stuff to rival a hospital, and me? I had ... books.

I shook my head at the thought and set the bags down in the entryway. The fighting out front had stopped but I still heard struggling. My heart went to my throat at the thought that whoever had been fighting had just lost because I wasn't there to help them out.

I burst through the front door, not caring about the noise I made, and raised my bat to hit whatever was still moving. I nearly dropped my bat when I realized that Chester, Beck, and Cody all stood there among a bunch of permanently dead corpses, and Michael stood with them, holding Mabel, who was trying to get free from his iron grasp.

"What the fuck?" said Chester, looking up at me, "do you think you're doing?"

My mind went a little fuzzy as I tried to process his words, "huh?"

Cody frowned, "Kodi, why aren't you safe with the other kids?"

Those words slapped me across the face, harder than my step mother ever could.

I felt anger bubbling inside me, and while I knew I'd regret the words later, I couldn't stop them from falling out of my mouth, it was like a dam had just broken and he was about to get the full force of all of my frustration that I had been holding back.

"I'm not your sister, Cody," I growled out, "I'm not a little girl, and even if I was I wouldn't have expected you to treat me like one, putting me in a school with all the other kids because you think I'm incapable of fighting, well I am capable. I can stand up and fight back, maybe not when I was here, but out of everyone I would expect the person who taught me to fight, to believe that I could do it," I took a breath and went on, "so stop it. You didn't kill your sister, accidents happen, and you can't treat me like a piece of glass because I remind you of her," I had lowered the bat and was getting really upset now, "You can't treat me like glass because I've been tossed around and treated like absolute crap for most of my life, and I haven't broken yet."

Cody looked stunned, and I was breathing heavily. I couldn't meet the eyes of anyone else in the small group because I had forgotten they were here. Michael didn't need to know that I had been abused, and I didn't need to call Cody out in front of everyone, especially right now when we needed to be doing other stuff.

I watched as Cody stared at me, his surprise had quickly turned into a glare but now he was just nodding, "You're right, Kodi, I need to stop treating you like Stephanie. You're not her, and even if you were, she would be kicking my ass for being such an idiot," he said, eyes pleading with me to acknowledge his apology.

I nodded, feeling a little deflated.

"That's touching," Mabel seethed.

I looked at her, focusing on her for the first time, and what I saw made me want to scream. Her hair was a mess, it had random bits of rice and flour clumps and her clothes were covered in wasted food and dirt. She had a cut on her collarbone, and looked a little wild.

I took a step towards her, the anger that I had wrongly dumped on Cody was bubbling back up towards Mabel, and this time it felt right. Before I could even make another move towards her, she screamed. Loud and high pitched. I cringed and grabbed at my ears, the bat clattered to the ground, adding to the noise. Beck shouted something, and that's all I could hear before the sounds of grunts and moans started to overpower everything else.

Zombies seemed to be flooding towards the house from all directions, and I heard Chester let out an impressive stream of curse words. I picked up the bat once more and Mabel started laughing really hard.

"Shut up!" I yelled at her.

Mabel laughed even harder, "oopsies.. I left the gate open," she said, and I momentarily forgot that I was bracing myself for a fight.

"What?"

Her eyes narrowed and she jerked her chin, making her red hair fall off her shoulder, "mom wants you," she said, her eyes looking glazed.

I flinched back, not noticing how the zombies had already gotten us, or how the boys were fighting and Mabel had been released because Michael was helping out. I didn't notice all of this because it felt as if I had been sucked back into the house that had caved in, back into the room where my only place to hide was the roof and attic space.

Back into the life where my half sister was my only ally and even then, she was more of an enemy. I was sucked back into the world where I cowered, kept my head down and didn't speak unless spoken to. Where if I was noticed I was being punished, where being a nobody was better than having any sort of happiness.

My bookshelf was my only friend, my journal was my only person to talk to, and my father pretended he was blind when he saw any proof of this.

"Kodi, Baby, on your left," a warm, familiar voice said. I wasn't sure who said it but it worked. The house faded away and reality came back.

Mabel kept rambling like a lunatic, and I wondered if maybe she was sick with what the others had, and was having hallucinations. The thoughts were pushed away from my brain as the immediate danger overtook all thoughts. I picked up the bat and swung to my left. The end caught the old zombie in the chin, and its neck cracked, head falling limply.

Another swing and the head flew off, flying with enough force to smack against the window. Blood splattered against it, and it left a nice spider web crack in the glass. I kicked the body, which was still standing like it wasn't sure what to do next, and it fell to the ground motionlessly. I moved onto the next target, which was shorter and almost looked bloated. Its face was sunken in and its skin had a green tint to it.

Instead of swinging the bat at it again, I hit it like I was trying to stab it with a sword. The first hit only made it stumble, and then it growled. I let out a squeak of surprise as it started to come after me again, and I slammed the bat into its face a few more times. It went down and I killed a few more before finally being able to look up again.

The guys are holding their own, but a new wave of zombies is closing in. We're out numbered, and I can see that Michael has already had to pull out his gun. I don't know what happened to his weapon but as I watch, he stops shooting and starts using the gun as a sort of blunt force weapon.

I'm about to shout at him, and toss him the bat or something, when I see Mabel out of the corner of my eye. She screams and sloppily punches at a zombie, her fist connecting with it's nose. It's like everything slows down and I can see it all but do nothing to prevent it.

Beck punches a zombie, and then he's yelling something. But it's not important, whatever has Mabel's mind makes her think she's a zombie. She starts growling and attacks Cody's back, he swears and shoves her off of him, into a group of zombies. They start going after her, but before any of them can bite her or even attack her, she's sunk her teeth into one of their arms and tore off a piece of flesh.

My stomach flips, and I twitch to help, but it's useless because the zombies ignore her. Like as soon as she became infected, she was one of them.

The world sped back up into real time, and Beck pointed his gun at me, pulling the trigger.