It had gotten dangerous since the dead started coming back to life, it wasn’t long before vicious hordes began roaming the earth and Jimmy had always known it would likely be the end for him if they discovered his hideaway.

You couldn’t reason with them, you couldn’t fight them, and you could only run for so long.

His best guess was that he had been spotted getting gas, he had snuck down to town from the old family cabin at night when they thinned out to fill the two plastic Jerry cans with enough fuel to keep him hale for another week, but he must have been spotted, and once one saw you it was only a matter of time before they began to gather together to force their way into whatever shelter you had found for yourself, and then that was it.

The alarm he had rigged up on the old gate was his first warning, the grainy feed from the cheap black and white camera gave him a good look as they forced their way past the now broken wooden framed gate. It had never been meant to keep them out, just guide away the few that came wandering up on their own.

Jimmy thought about trying to hold them off with the old rifle his grandfather had kept for hunting, but he knew he would only be able to drop a few before he was overwhelmed, and besides, no matter how bad of a danger they were, he just couldn’t bring himself to put them down.

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It was the fact he was still bundled up from his trip to town that made his decision, the diver's suit would protect him fairly well, and the seal around the face mask wasn't as good as he liked, but it was the best compromise he could make between safety and function.

He wasn’t sure if his plan would work, but it was the only one he had.

It was nearly a half hour after they must have reached the cabin before the small group that had broken off reached the stream.

"Dam Earl looks like he must have run for it."

“Yep, can’t believe it was smart enough to keep itself refrigerated with all them air conditioners. Wonder how he managed to keep his generator fueled up?”

"Bobby said the kid who works the midnight shift at the Get and Go had seen someone filling up gas cans at night every now and then. The kid never figured out it was one of them because he stays locked up in the cashier's booth all night and it always paid at the pump with a credit card."

“Huh, they must have got a name for it then”

“Yep, it used to be Jim Patterson, that mortician from Seattle. That was his family's cabin back up the hill, fella must have headed out here and started keeping himself chilled down pretty good, or else he would have been falling apart like the other ones by now.”

"Huh. Well let's head back, if it's up and gone, it's somebody else's problem."

Jimmy creeped out from the water a few minutes later, as he had thought, breathing was just a reflex action for his kind. The cabin was lost to him but the chilled waters of the mountain stream could keep him nearly as cold as the air conditioned cabin, and the overlapping layers of saran wrap below the divers suit seem to be keeping the embalming fluids in. As long as he kept the rot and the insects out, he would be able to last for years, decades if need be.

Every day more people died, and now that the panic was starting to fade as people realized that the risen dead had no interest in eating anyone’s brains, it would soon become possible for him to come in from the cold.