Heart of Fire- ON HOLD

I

**Thank you so much to numerals for the beautiful cover!**

Chapter One

"The sky's pretty."

I take my eyes off the road and glance at the four year old girl riding shotgun in my Dodge Ram pickup truck.

"It is Emma, but you know that's not a good thing," I tell her.

She frowns, trying to recall what I taught her, "Green sky means acid rain storm."

"That's right, Emma. When the sky starts turning green that means it's going to start pouring acid rain soon. And what happens if you're outside during an acid rain storm?"

"You die!" she exclaims, proud to know this answer.

She should. I've been drilling her since I found her when she was only one year old. I've been her acting mother ever since that day, and I've been making damn sure she'll be able to survive this hell we call life.

5 years ago, there was a catastrophic, life changing event. Literally. The passer-byers I've met since then have told me that the event was being referred to as "The Explosion." Fitting name, since the life that I knew as a 13 year old girl exploded, and left just pieces and fragments that I have been scrambling to hold on to as a lifeline ever since.

No one really knows exactly what happened. The most popular theory is that a supernova too close to earth exploded, leaving disaster in its wake. The atmosphere was ripped open, killing a vast majority of the earth's population.

The following days were horrible, but the aftershock was even worse. Theory is, people caught outside that didn't initially die from the Explosion were exposed to a type of radiation, turning them into mindless, rotting, blood-thirsters. These zombie-like creatures are hideous, and have an unquenchable thirst for human blood. They're deaf and dumb, so they rely on their animal like sense of smell and blurry, unclear sight to lead them to their prey: us.

They've been called "Rotters," and are killed by a shot to the brain, but it's best to decapitate them, just to be safe. It's not even that hard to rip their heads from their neck. Their rotting skin makes it pretty easy to pop their head off; if you can avoid being bitten. Their bite is infectious, and if you don't die from it, you become one of them; a fate that no one ever wants to endure.

It's funny. Years and years before the Explosion, I remember hearing about those people who preached that the 'end is near,' that the 'zombie apocalypse is upon us,' and that we should prepare our 'zombie apocalypse survival kits.' I wonder how those people are doing now.

I was 13 and a half when I killed my first Rotter. She looked just like a zombie version of my mother. Even though logically I knew it wasn't her, I still hesitated when I should've killed her. I've never killed anything in my life, never even been able to step on a spider. The thought of killing a person, especially one that reminded me of my mom, made me want to puke my guts out then cry for days. Though, Rotters aren't people.

My dad was distracted, busy fighting off the hordes of Rotters that surrounded us in a pharmacy we were raiding. Somewhere during the fight we were separated, leaving me one on one with this Rotter.

I looked at the gun I held in my shaking hands, then back into her slightly blind eyes with yellow pus oozing out. I saw no humanity, no emotion; just pure hatred, hunger, and blood-lust.

When this Rotter that looked so much like my mother pounced at me with pure malevolence, something in me just snapped. As I raised that gun and shoved a bullet deep in her brain with steady hands, it's like I symbolically killed the girl I was before the Explosion.

No more was I a girl that stepped off the sidewalk to walk around an ant hill. Gone was the girl that nursed baby-birds back to health and cried when the school bully fried bugs with a magnifying glass. I was a survivor. I shut off my emotions and did what I had to do to live, and I've been living that way ever since.

I walked over to that Rotter laying on the floor, brought my boot down to her neck, and watched her head pop off like a bottle cap.

I remember my dad being so proud of me, so happy that I learned that hesitating was for the weak. We walked out of that pharmacy hand in hand, and he deemed that it was time he taught me to hunt.

Until this time, my dad was teaching me to use guns and shoot at inanimate objects, just to practice aim and get used to pulling the trigger; I was never able to participate in his hunts.

There were few people that lived after the explosion and didn't turn into Rotters, and those in my town that did banned together. Including my dad and I, this created a group of 10 in total, from the initial 316,765 that lived there before the Explosion. The 9 adults in the group loved our town, seeing it as a symbol of life before shit hit the fan, and decided to continue life there, doing what they had to in order to protect it and us.

They went on "hunts," which I had to attend since we never split up, but I never had enough guts to participate in. They would get high up on a vantage point, usually a roof, and set up their guns. They used this as an opportunity to teach the non-hunters in the group how to shoot, how to use a gun, and how to aim, while simultaneously killing Rotters.

The next hunt, I didn't stand near my dad and think about life before the Explosion. I didn't daydream about a hero riding in and saving us all from this crappy life. I learned the hard way that no one will save you, and no one can save you except yourself.

I listened avidly to my dad's and everyone else's advice on technique and how to improve my shooting. I killed Rotters mercilessly, experimenting with different guns and perfecting my aim.

"Are we there yet, Cami?" comes a voice from beside me.

I look back to Emma, "Almost, sweetheart."

Innocent, little, 4 year old Emma. She's only ever known this life. This is not a world anyone should grow up in, but it's the only life we'll ever know. Sometimes I don't know what's worse: never knowing how wonderful life was before the Explosion, or experiencing that life and living with the knowledge that you'll never be able to live like that again.

An acquaintance told me about a Wal-Mart she stumbled across about a 4 hour drive from the new town where I live. She said it was in a town where everyone died, so it wasn't raided in the 5 years since the Explosion. The earth's population was pretty much non-existent, so it's pretty common to find non-raided stores.

I have a pretty big stock-pile at home, but you can never have too much supplies. I noticed the sky turning a slight green color this morning, and knew an acid rain storm was coming. Usually, once the sky starts turning green, you have a week to prepare before the green clouds crack open and acid rain beats down unforgivingly.

If exposed to the rain, you die immediately. There is no quickly running from the house to the car in this rain. When it starts to rain, you're stuck where you are. It could last anywhere from 2-4 weeks without lightening up, so it's best to be well prepared and stocked up before it starts to rain.

For some reason, the acid rain doesn't kill the Rotters. Maybe it's because they're already dead and rotting, but they can be exposed to the rain and still live, if you call it living. They are slowed down though. The acid rain takes a lot of their strength from them and causes them to use a lot of effort in order to move. I've never heard of a Rotter attack during an acid rain storm.

When I saw the green sky and heard about the un-raided Wal-Mart, I immediately strapped Emma into her booster seat in the passenger side of my pickup, and headed to the Wal-Mart to stock up. The sky just turned green today, so we should have about a week before it starts raining. I plan to be back home before dinner tonight, so we have plenty of time before being stuck inside for weeks.

I see the Wal-Mart and pull into the deserted parking lot. There are two Rotters staggering around near where I parked the truck.

I take off my seat belt and open my door. "Hold on a second, Emma."

As I get out of the truck and shoot the two straggling Rotters without so much as batting an eyelash, I wonder if my dad would be proud of me if he was still alive. I like to think he would. Carlo was a survivor, and I was daddy's little girl.