Michelle Kilmer is a writer and designer living in Seattle, WA. When she is not writing she can be found playing video games, designing websites, singing and playing guitar, sewing, or dressing up in "full gore" to attend zombie events.

She is working on several projects including a follow-up to When the Dead, a super secret zombie story geared toward young adults, and a handful of sci-fi short stories that give her the creeps.

She lives with her husband, an attack hamster and a fear of the dark.

Rebecca Hansen is twin sister to Michelle and lover of everything zombie. The Spread is her first contribution to the genre.

When she isn't plotting gruesome fictional deaths she fancies hiking, painting and watching low budget and foreign horror movies. A seasoned special effects make-up artist, she turns willing subjects into the walking dead on the weekends.

She lives just north of Seattle with her boyfriend, three attack cats, a gun, axe, machete and small collection of knives.

Find out how Paul the deliveryman became infected and follow the plague as it continues to spread. Look for The Spread: A Zombie Short Story Collection and Michelle's full-length novel When the Dead on whenthedead.com ***

EXCERPT FROM : WHEN THE DEAD.

By MICHELLE KILMER THE INFECTION.

It starts with a cold sweat then a swift drop in body temperature that makes the teeth chatter. The skin feels itchy and hot but the insides are dying from the cold.

Then the numbness starts in the extremities. Finger tips, toes, up through the feet and hands into the legs and arms and finally the core. It cannot be rubbed out as the hands do not work anymore.

It reaches the chest and the ability to control the breathing is lost. Just before the last breath of air escapes the lungs, numbness reaches the head.

The eyes go crazy, the tongue limp. One cannot call out for help as the head falls on the chest. There is but a single moment for the dying self to think a final thought...

Why me?

But then . . . you aren't you anymore.

FUCKED.

"I can't understand what they're saying," Edward said as he slammed a fist down on the radio.

"You could try another station. That sounds like French they're speaking," his wife Moira suggested. She had wanted a television for a long time but Edward preferred the way the voices came floating from the speakers into the apartment. This meant that in the current situation though, they had to rely on the radio show hosts' graphic descriptions to give them any idea of what was going on in cities across the globe.

"The other stations keep replaying the same stuff. It's not getting any better; only worse," Edward grumbled.

"Then there's nothing we can do but make some tea and wait to see what happens next."

"It's happening everywhere," Isobel said to her mother over the phone. She had spent the morning reading news articles online. She had watched a clip of someone succumb to the infection on a CDC table, surrounded by plastic and strapped down like a criminal or lunatic.

"Things will be ok, Isobel! They have a carrier. It really is only a matter of time. If they can study it, they can find a cure or at least a vaccine. Try to keep this thing from spreading any further."

"It's too big already. The world is fucked. I've got to go." She hung up the phone not knowing it would be the last time she'd speak to her mother.

"On and on for three days, man; can't they talk about something else?" Vaughn turned off his television angrily. "Could have been aliens, maybe the government, maybe bio- terrorists? Shut up." He chucked a drained beer can at the black screen. "Just fix it and forget it!"

Vaughn was alone, as he often was, unless he paid for company. He was talking to himself. He probably couldn't even pay someone to listen to him. Especially when he was drunk and that was most of the time.

"Couldn't be bio-terrorists, they'd a laid claim to it. Been proud of the trouble they were causing. Pretty fancy stuff making dead people come back to life. It has to be the government; only group with enough funding and closed doors to pull this shit off."

The infection was quickly spreading. It had reached terrorist groups and government groups alike. It lay in thousands of sickbeds, it rode the bus, and it lived next door to many already. No one was immune from this unstoppable plague.

The number one cause for the spread of the disease was denial. It made no sense to anyone. News media could be blamed for the lies with headlines like It's impossible! Death is death, the final breath, and People Don't Come Back. They stay wherever it is that they went.

WILLOW BROOK APARTMENTS.

Willow Brook is a three-story building, four if you count the basement. Each floor has six two-bedroom apartments with identical floor plans.

The kitchen is to the left of the entry. It has an island that looks out on the dining room and living room. The first room on the right down the hallway is a second bedroom. Next is the laundry closet with a stacking washer/dryer unit. The last room on the right is the bathroom. At the end of the hall is a closet and the master bedroom is on the left.

All of the apartments look more or less like this save for differences in decor and varying levels of tidiness. The Willow Brook building is controlled access, meaning that if you don't have a key, someone has to buzz you in, or not.

THE FIRST DAY.

On the morning of the first day, the day that things would start to change for the residents of Willow Brook Apartments, things looked normal. When Isobel Shiffman looked outside it was almost too normal, right down to the happy thieving squirrel in the tree nearest her living room window.

Northgate is at the northern edge of Seattle and the nearest reports of the disease were further north in Everett and south in Tacoma, still far enough away for Isobel to brave the outdoors. Her mother had told her to stock up on food just in case things didn't clear up as quickly as she hoped. Isobel had gone shopping on Sunday and it was only Tuesday but her mother insisted.

Like Isobel, the rest of the city driven by nagging mothers, packed into the grocery stores and left them in such a state of disarray that it was hard for her to navigate. The cart, even without the help of the wobbly right front wheel, kept running into things: cans of food, a bag of chips, some nylons, and other items strewn about. All of which were displaced far from their original aisle and shelf. She struggled with it until she found the secret to making the cart move was to put pressure on the left side of it with her foot. She went for some of the fresh food that everyone else was ignoring, figuring it could be eaten first and when it ran out or started to rot, whichever happened first, she'd break into the non- perishables (of which she had a lot).

She made it up to the only open checkout lane.

"How long did you buy for?" the nervous cashier asked.

"Um . . . I don't know. A week?" Isobel wasn't good at estimation or small talk. Her cart was full with what she knew was affordable for her budget and, more importantly, what she could carry up to her second floor apartment on her own. She hadn't been thinking about timelines.

"That won't be enough. The world is coming to an end."

"Ok. Well how long do you buy for when the world is coming to an end?" Isobel snapped at the cashier.

"Don't know," the cashier shrugged. "Do you want your receipt?"

"Sure."

On the way back home, the radio still reporting news from all over, documented the plague's movement. It crept slowly closer. Isobel turned the radio up and listened.

"Early this morning, a ferry full of people trying to get home to their families left Whidbey Island alive and well and arrived at the Edmonds ferry dock infected with the mysterious disease we've been seeing. They had somehow contracted the disease on the passage over the Puget Sound. Ferry officials at the Edmonds Pier heard no reports from the captain of the vessel that anything was wrong on the boat. The captain routinely steered the ship into port and the infected disembarked and started attacking people in the parking lot. It is suspected that at least twenty of the infected passengers made it out of the ferry terminal and into downtown Edmonds. Efforts to locate and apprehend them in order to contain the spread of the infection have been unsuccessful. Several injured passengers made it safely onto lifeboats before the ferry made it ashore, but they did not survive their wounds. The captain of the vessel has been detained for questioning at this time."

The program switched to weather and Isobel changed the station, desperate to find out just how close it had become.

"- determined that the perpetrator of a street fight in downtown Seattle, described by witnesses as a "drunken transient", was actually a person suffering from the infection. Police shot the man after he attempted to attack them. It is unknown how he came into contact with the disease. Attempts to identify the individual are ongoing, as his body appeared to be in a state of decomposition. The flesh of his fingertips was gone, rendering fingerprinting useless. Investigators are working with dental records-"

Isobel changed it again, looking for another news story and its location.

"A group of students started a riot on University Avenue in the U-District just after eleven a.m. Over fifty college students were injured in the event, four fatally. The group seemed to have no agenda and was only intent on causing destruction and harm to individuals. Sources at the scene noted that the group was not involved in looting or property damage. Most of the students fled the scene before they could be arrested and interrogated. Campus police had great difficulty dealing with the problem and are not commenting at this time. It is still unknown whether the perpetrators were rioting in response to the disease, or as a result of being infected with it."

Isobel's heart beat faster.

"A bloody scene at the Helene Madison Pool greeted Shoreline Police investigators midday today. A lifeguard interviewed said that a man had emerged from the men's locker room at the start of Public Swim and started attacking children in the shallow end of the pool. It took two lifeguards on staff to remove the man from the water and hold him while a third employee called the police. All of the children involved suffered only minor injuries. The pool has been shut down for investigation and sanitation reasons and will remain closed until further notice."

"That's just up the road," she said to herself.

Initial reports thought the disease spread and made people psychotic and violent; that the infected were living people with altered minds and an inability to differentiate right from wrong. Whatever the process, it only took one infected person to ruin everybody's day.

Approaching from all directions, the disease was soon upon Isobel's neighborhood and suddenly it was right in front of her in the form of a traffic accident. Someone had destroyed a bicyclist with an SUV. A deep cut in his abdomen sat open, displaying his intestines. One of his legs had been almost completely severed near the hip joint. He had not survived his injuries. The driver of the vehicle, a pale young woman in hysterics and leggings, was leaning over the dead man when he sat back up, guts spilling from his body, and bit her face, taking a chunk out of her cheek as she screamed for help. Isobel wasn't the only driver that swerved around the mess. She could still hear the woman's yelling as she sped the last three blocks home. There was nothing I could do to help the man or the woman, she thought over and over again, trying to calm her nerves and her conscience. The world was feeling much smaller to her; the troubles of it more her own now.

She pulled her car into the parking lot of Willow Brook and quickly lugged her two bags of groceries from the lot to the front door.

"Whroah roah wroooah! Roah!" A giant black poodle jumped into her making her scream and drop her food.

"Kiki, no! Get down! Bad dog, BAD DOG!" Sheila Brown from apartment 201 yelled, tugging roughly on her dog's leash and dragging it up the stairs.

"Oh, it's ok. I can pick it all up myself. Really, don't worry about it!" Isobel said to Sheila who was already out of earshot. "Thanks for the apology too, bitch."

Upstairs she put the groceries away with what was already in the cupboards. Her food situation looked much better to her now so for the rest of the first day she sat alone in the living room in front of the television, eyes glued to news report after bloody news report; ears listening intently to the speculation. Several times she hopped up to check that the door was locked. She was still having trouble mentally digesting what she'd seen on the road earlier. Maybe the bicyclist wasn't dead? Perhaps he was just knocked unconscious and when he came to, in all his pain and bewilderment, he lashed out? No story she made up explained how the man could be alive after suffering wounds so horrific, nor why he would want to bite the driver who shattered and shredded his body.

His guts were on the road, she kept coming back to this single sight, this undeniable fact. No one sits up with his guts on the road.

S.O.S.-LESS.

Many people still had a very strong sense that things would be ok because they had no contact with the disease yet. They were viewing the plague on televisions and computer screens, not in person. Their faith in the police force, that the uniformed men and women in affected areas could get things under control, was strong. Stronger still was the idea that all of the world's best scientists would be gathering in a sterile room at an undisclosed location, working day and night until they found the cause and then the cure. Hollywood had showed the citizens this response so this is what they demanded; what their minds had decided would happen - was happening. The population waited for quarantines and white- suited specialists with giant mobile labs but they didn't come. Many CDC labs had already been overrun with the dead.

As the day disappeared and night came, things were falling apart fast as the spread of the infection continued from one complacent and unprepared house to another. In Northgate strange noises filled the air, mixed with relentless emergency response sirens. Isobel turned off the television, filled the bathtub with water just in case it stopped running, cooked some pork chops and drowned out the horrible cacophony with her mp3 player.

Slowly she fell asleep. Around one in the morning the gunshots picked up and tore her from her rest. Unable to regain unconsciousness over the noise, Isobel turned the television back on. The dead weren't just coming back; they were definitely coming back hungry. Her mind returned to the bicyclist. He wasn't lashing out in anger; he was trying to bite her! The confirmation was terrifying. The attacks had spread so quickly that the infection had reached uncontainable levels. With one eye open, Isobel barely slept at all the rest of the first night.

THE SECOND DAY.

The second day of the plague was noisy. All this death is so much nosier than the daily grind of life, Rob Pace thought. Midday brought a motorcycle accident in the street out front of the building. He heard the bike speeding up the street, then a horn honk, some metal crashing on metal, and then yelling.

Rob looked outside. He saw the motorcyclist lying on the ground a few yards from his bike. He was dragging himself along the ground; his legs made useless in the crash. Rob noticed he wasn't yelling from the pain. The dead people that had appeared on the street overnight were slowly moving towards the maimed man.

"Get away! Stay back!" Rob heard him yell. "I have a gun!" And he did. The biker pulled it from inside his jacket and started recklessly shooting into the growing crowd. He took two down easily but he realized he wouldn't have enough bullets to kill them all. He turned the gun on himself.

"No!" Rob yelled from his apartment balcony. The man pulled the trigger before he was killed by one of the undead.

"What is it Dad?" Gabe, his seven-year-old son, had run to his side. Rob quickly threw a hand over his eyes.

"Something you shouldn't see."

"But I want to see it."

"You are only saying that because you don't know what it is."

"Well . . . yeah."

"And you'll never know." Rob found it within himself to laugh as he pulled his son away from the window.

TISSUE THIN.

It was easy to stay inside if you were anyone other than Jeff Brown. He hadn't been out of the apartment for almost a week due to the combination of a nasty cold he'd caught and then the infection that everyone else was catching. His desk job, providing technical support for a major software company, always drained his energy. He should have felt rested from the time off but he was tired.

His marriage to Sheila was crumbling; if you could call it a marriage to start with. She'd forced him into it ten years ago and he'd regretted that every day since. There was no communication and his wife loved her dog more than him. All this he was ok with though. The issue lay with being stuck inside with her for a week and for an indefinite length of time to come. He blew his nose into one of the last tissues they had in the house.

"Do you have to blow your nose so loud? It's disgusting!" Sheila yelled from the other room.

He could feel his patience grow thinner with every remark she made and every tense conversation they had; thoughts tugging at his brain of leaving or asking her to go instead. She could take her untrained dog with her, he fell asleep on the couch dreaming of it, used tissues scattered across his sick body.

THE DEVIL'S WORK "We just have to survive this. Please be patient, Edward. Life has thrown us more difficult things in the past," Moira tried to comfort her husband who had been pacing their first floor apartment for two days.

"Have you looked outside today? There's blood on the street and people everywhere."

"They aren't people anymore. Maybe you should stop looking if you don't like what you see."

"Folks on the radio are saying we should try to get somewhere safe."

"No place is safe! The army bases started turning people away and now they are dying at the closed front gates. The mega churches asked their congregations to gather for mass prayer in order to cast out the demons that possess everyone. Then they all got trapped in the buildings with the infection. The pews are covered in blood just like the street. NPR said the best course of action is to stay inside and lock the doors."

"That isn't action; that is inaction."

"So we don't change a thing then. Sit down and read your book."

A PROMISE.

Ben had been waiting for his girlfriend since yesterday. She lived a few cities away and he'd asked her to stay with him. He waited to hear the front door buzzer all day. He heard it a lot but when he answered the phone to see if it was Anna it was someone else. Today, all he heard was growling.