As Long as You Need

The basement’s unfinished, it’s walls and floor concrete. No windows.

And the staircase leading up to the main floor is simple lumber, decades old lumber at that. Half the boards were half-rotted anyway. Knocking them out with a fire axe took minutes.

Lucky every home has a fire axe nowadays, hey?

So when one of the bastards bit Cynthia, we had a safe place to put her. We weren’t perfectly comfortable with the situation, but we knew if we’d put her down for good you’d freak out. And we couldn’t put you through it. You’d been through so much already, with your parents and Jerry and all. So we put her down in the basement.

The constant moaning down there took some getting used to, but as we’ve all learned since the initial outbreaks a person can eventually get used to anything.

And so we got on with our lives.

For a while.

But the outbreak’s getting worse, and now people are talking about the local emergency services being suspended indefinitely. And if they are, without the police and the militias anyone who stays behind doesn’t stand a chance in the hell this city’s about to become.

Please, stop. Stop crying, I know. Please?

Listen, I know you don’t want to hear any of this, but you knew storing Cynthia in the basement was only every going to be a temporary fix. Calm down! You need to get your head together, we need to get out of here, and she needs to be left behind.

I’ll pack, you go downstairs and say your goodbyes.

Take as long as you need. But not too long.