Day Zero - World Population 7.8 Billion

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AGNES LEFAY

"Where were you when the world ended?"

That is the one question you will always be asked and one answer you will always remember when you have survived a zombie apocalypse.

Me?

Technically, I didn't survive.

I'd just graduated veterinary school and moved in to my brand new one bedroom apartment.  To most this may not sound very exciting or special.  But to me, it was the world and everything I had worked my ass off for.

Just for a minute, let me take you back and give you the footnote version of my life. Back before I can remember -nineteen years to be exact- At the tender age of two I was abandoned by my loving parents on the steps of Saint Marys church in Mysterio, Alabama.  Wrapped in a grey angora blanket, a black Onyx locket and the clichéd take care of our precious daughter  letter pinned to my onesie.

Now I know what you're thinking, that for the next sixteen years of my life I was raised by strict nuns who never allowed me freedom and disciplined my unruly and rebellious ways in the name of the big man himself. 

Well, you couldn't be more wrong.  Those heartless bitches, instead of seeing me as the abandoned toddler I was.  Saw only the financial burden that came with raising a child and within the hour, had handed me over to the state where I spent the remaining years up until my eighteenth birthday in and out of foster and group homes.  Or at least that's what my file said when I had broken into the office of one of the group homes I was in whilst in between foster families (or foster fuckers as I liked to call them).

According to my very thick file, I was an unruly child and teen that nobody could seem to control, but the reality was that nobody really cared enough to even try.  I wasn't out of control, I was trying to take back control from the people that prayed on the weak and stole it from me.  All I was to the majority of my foster fuckers was either a pay check or a punching bag and the few good ones that I was placed with I didn't trust and quickly out stayed my welcome, after all, they were all nice in the beginning while the care workers were there through the settling in period.

There was only one constant in my life and that was Val.

Val, was the local waitress in the only diner in Mysterio.  She was another walking cliché that seemed to be the pattern with this town, it was one big cliché. 

She was a burly woman in her sixties, with a giant grey beehive, electric blue eyeshadow and more shocking pink lipstick on her teeth than on her lips.  Her voice gravelly from years of smoking, greeted every patron with a What do ya want  attitude.

To me, however, she was my home, my family and my saviour.

The first time I ran away from one of the nightmare families I was placed with, I walked into Ed's Diner at ten years old hungry, dirty and bruised.  I had taken a particularly vicious beating from my foster dad for using the last of the milk on my cereal without realising and he took his belt to my tiny frame to an almost state of unconsciousness.  I've never been able to eat Fruit Loops since. 

I struggled to sit on one of the high stools at the counter due to my battered behind and once I managed to get seated, the pain had me constantly adjusting my seat.  Without a word, Val took my hand, ignoring my flinch of mistrust and led me to bathroom in the back to clean the blood and tears from my bruised and swollen face.  Once I was cleaned she tucked me in to a booth and brought me a hot chocolate and a bowl of Ed's famous Clam Chowder  which I ate with gusto. Which was surprising due to the split lip I was sporting.

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