End Chapter 1, Beginning of 2:

Cont.....“Well, we’re almost…down.” The plane landed and came screeching to a halt.
Katrina opened her eyes and braced herself on the seat in front of her.

When the plane came to a final stop the passengers started to stir. Chris stood up to let Katrina through. She reached for her backpack wedged at the back of the over-head compartment. At five foot she was too short to reach so Chris—more afraid the backpack was heavier than Katrina-- immediately stood up to grab it. Katrina took it from him and threw it over her right shoulder with ease. “Thank you” she averted his gaze feeling embarrassed to appear so weak.

When they were in the terminal he ran up beside Katrina. He was surprised how small she looked standing beside his six-foot, one hundred and seventy pound frame. “Do you have family or someone picking you up?”
“No. Mama doesn’t have a car. Do you want to share one?”
“Um, No I don’t think that would be the smart thing to do since we’re going to the same place.” Chris and Katrina smiled at each other.
“Well, I’m not 25 yet, so there’s the extra insurance if I get it, but—“
“Oh, yeah, don’t worry, I’ll get it.” Chris replied.
“I’ll give you cash.”
“Yeah. No problem.”
They arrived at baggage claim and there was an awkward pause in the conversation. Katrina decided to vacate.
“OK, well, I’ll just go wait out front since I already have my bag.”
“Alright. I’ll meet you outside.”
Without anymore conversation Katrina walked out the doors and Chris walked over to the turnstile. Everything Katrina had been saying was starting to sink in; The dead alive…infected? What have I got myself into? She had to have been pulling my leg. I’ll get to the bottom of it when we get there. Chris couldn’t stop pondering the possible definitions as he was waiting for his suitcase to come. His heart-rate rose noticeably. What could it mean? Zombies? Impossible. She said ‘hungry’--Vampires? Somehow even more impossible! Chris watched his suitcase coast past him already turning around the corner.
“Shit!” He ran up to it and pulled it onto the ground. As he pulled the bag up and over his shoulder, his eyes followed a pair of legs like twin towers. They were the longest, most slender legs and they were walking away from him. As his eyes followed the legs up farther, he noticed the body attached to them. A plaid skirt was bouncing off her butt; just barely keeping it PG. Her top looked like something from Gap Kids. She had natural blond hair that almost reached her elbows and swam across her back with each step. Chris could only imagine how beautiful she could be. She walked through the doors with no luggage. It was the late girl from his plane. He composed himself and walked to the car rental booth.






2.
Chris pulled the small compact car up to the waiting area. His eyes searched for the small frame and dark hair he now knew as Katrina. Once he spotted her he pulled along the curb close to where she was waiting. She was not-so-elegantly smoking a cigarette; pulling the cigarette from her lips resembled pulling a dagger from her throat before she spit the smoke out of her mouth a few seconds later. Chris put his palm faced down on the horn when he noticed the slender blonde from the airplane and baggage claim walk up to Katrina. She was just as beautiful as he imagined. Her features were perfectly proportioned as if Mattel modeled Barbie after her. He waited long enough to see Katrina give the blonde a cigarette, they exchanged a few words and the conversation ended quickly with a small hug. Katrina looked like she was in pain; her eyes were squeezed shut and her body was very stiff. She knows her? Chris wondered before he realized: She did say there were a few of the evacuated on the flight.
When the Blonde left, Katrina looked around for Chris. Trying to be a gentleman and not wanting to draw attention to the fact he had been sitting in his car watching their personal exchange, he stepped out of the car and walked towards Katrina, she gave a wave and picked up her backpack.
“No, no, don’t worry about it; I got it!” Chris hurried towards her and grabbed the bag from her grasp.
“I wish you’d stop doing that. I can carry it. But thanks.” She threw her cigarette on the ground and squashed it like a poisonous bug.
Chris threw her bag in the trunk and they proceeded on their way. “The car company gave me a map but I assume you might know your way a bit better?”
“Not really to be honest.” She took the map from him. “I didn’t leave the Forest Hills area all that often.”
“Oh, OK.” Chris opened her door for her before hopping into the driver’s seat.
Katrina switched on the radio and started flipping through the stations until she found one that satisfied her taste. She sat back in her seat and watched the passing landscape.
“So, how old were you when you were evacuated?” Not a direct point, but he figured he would start off easy.

Katrina moved her eyes from the flat landscape and looked straight ahead at the road. “I was eighteen when everything started, but I wasn’t evacuated until I turned nineteen, six months later.”
“Oh, So your twenty two?”
“You sound surprised!” She acknowledged.
“Well, honestly I thought you were a lot younger than that.”
“Hmmm, well I suppose I can take that as a compliment. How old are you Chris? I know you’re at least 25.”
He liked that she used his name. “I’ll be twenty six in a few days” They needed to get back to the subject at hand.
“So when did you graduate then? How long have you been trying to be a journalist for?” Katrina was not helping.
“I just graduated last year, but it wasn’t anything special and I wasn’t top of the class or anything. Technically I’m not a journalist. I went to school for Business Management. I needed a job and my dad knows a guy who has started a small entertainment type newspaper. There are only a few writers on the paper. I was lucky because I’ve known him since I was little. The bad part is that everyone in the office knows it. I practically had to kiss the chief’s ass just to get this story and prove I’m not there on a favor.”
“Hmm.” She started pulling at loose threads on the hem of her shirt.
“OK, so what happened to you? You can’t just leave me hanging with a ‘dead-undead’ situation. What does that mean?”
After an excruciating long pause:
“Alright.” She finally said. “I’ll tell you what I know but it happened so fast and I haven’t exactly tried or wanted to remember.” She took a deep breath. “I was evacuated when the death toll reached just under half of Forest Hills. The infection continued on for almost two years after that, but it was dwindled down to only a newly infected person once or twice a month.”
“How did they get it under control?”
“The people that I told you about, that patrolled the streets and went into the forest to find the infected—they took care of them.”
“What did the watchmen do with them when they found them?”
“Killed them.” Katrina cleared her throat.
“But, you said that technically they were still alive. Isn’t that murder?”
“They were still alive in the sense that they could be drowned, burned, starved to dead or shot. What ever would kill a normal person. They had a disease that no normal human should be able to live on, let alone walk around and kill people. So no, it wasn’t murder. And the town decided it was our only option for prevention.” She paused for a second to take her sunglasses out of her backpack. “Besides, there isn’t much you can do help when they get into that state.”

“They couldn’t quarantine it before it spread past say: ten?” He asked.
“It was already too late. And half the time people didn’t know they were infected. Everything happened so quickly. Once it got into public places like schools and hospitals it wasn’t long before all the people were infected.”
Chris tried to swallow the lump out of his throat but it didn’t seem to go down. “How…how did you know if you were infected?”
“You could be transformed in minutes if you were attacked viciously or if you bitten or something you would start to feel the symptoms within twenty four hours. But if the person just scratched you and they weren’t obviously infected, it could take you weeks to show any symptoms—if you got any at all. Now, I know your next question is going to be ‘what are the symptoms exactly and what do you become’.” Katrina rubbed her face and in one swift motion pulled her hair back and fastened it with a clip. “First of all, you become something… something not alive, or certainly far from an alive human being. Like a Zombie. .”
Chris threw a quick glance at her to see if she was joking. Katrina noticed and read the look. “Like I said you’d be better off to talk to an actual Doctor. The best way I can describe it is from the conversation I over-heard from my parents when they were talking about my younger cousin. She got infected in the very beginning.”
Katrina looked at Chris, her eyes rhetorically asking if he wanted her to continue.