Solanum.

"I was only thirteen on Z day. It feels like ages ago, but it's really only been four years. I was reading in my room, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had just come out, I remember. The window was open because it was a hot July day and it was about 7:30pm. The sun was setting and casting a brilliant yellow glow across suburban Detroit. I heard the sounds of the weekend: children playing in the street, lawn mowers humming, air conditioning units buzzing on and off periodically. Their unified din put me in sort of trance as I turned each page of my book eagerly. I was forced to look away from my book when I noticed the neighbor across the street had left his lawnmower running and abandoned it, his name was Mr. Moore. Thinking it was nothing, I returned the the book. About ten minutes later I was distracted again when I heard the kids screaming and running back inside. Mr. Moore was chasing the kids, arms outstretched as if he was going to scoop the kids up in his arms. He couldn't catch up to the kids, he was just stumbling across the street. Alarmed, I ran downstairs to see more clearly. I opened the front door and there they were. About eight of them, all staring at me with they lifeless eyes, bite marks in various places. Most were on the neck or arms. I'd seen them so many times in movies and on tv that I didn't really register it to be real, that these four things in front of me were the undead. I think maybe it's best I don't talk about the rest right now. I get terrible dream when I talk about it for too long..

About three weeks after Z day, the government released a statement that what the country was experiencing in all 50 states was a mass breakout of Solanum. An infection that kills first, then takes over the brain in the form of an infection, completely controlling the now dead body. The press were calling them Zombies. It was almost comical at first, until you started seeing signs of outbreak everywhere. Not just North America anymore. The reason the infection hadn't spread all over the world in a couple days was that the government seemed to have a quarantine method planned out. And it was definitely planned out. All exits in and out of the continental U.S. were cutoff withing 12 hours of the first reportings of infection. You can't tell me that wasn't already thought up.

Whatever you call them, these were people who got infected (90% of the time through biting of the flesh) and died only to reanimate as a walking corpse, eager for the taste of the living.

These past four years it's certainly been a challenging. Living. That's all that drives me, the infection is thick on the urban ares but out here in the country, we only have about five or six attacks every two weeks or so. I stayed at camp Regis for about four months with my little brother. We were there the day it all went to hell, it all started when a hole was breached in the fence, something about a refugee family trying to leave. They were immediately mauled the second they got past the temporary haven of the fence gave us. Soldiers couldn't hold back the amount of infected that amassed around the breach. In the subsequent panic, I lost hold of my brother's grip. He was lost in the crowd.. I've been alone ever since."


-Journal entry: Z day +4 years, 8 months, 3 days.
(Sci Fi Entry 3.5?)