YEARS AFTER THE OUTBREAK...

As time progressed, the walls of Matheson seemed to rise into the heavens. In fact, one wouldn't even see them as walls. As far as anyone knew, this tower was their world and these walls were borders. Anywhere beyond it wasn't a place where humans belonged.

Matheson was no longer a shelter from the storm. It was an entirely new civilization built from the remnants of an old one. Shops and markets sprung up in the Commons, children played around without a care in the world, and people still found time to entertain themselves. The fact the Commons had a pub certainly helped.

Thus began the journey of maturity for the Cod Squad.

A year after their arrival in Matheson, thirteen-year-old Aaron and his friends gained a mild education from classes hastily set up by a few adults willing to help out the children. Mrs. Hecox found a job in the tower's library and continued to look after and feed her kids. They didn't make much friends, but all they needed was each other. Even if Natalya kept growing more reserved, even avoiding her own twin sister, Kat made a nice addition to the Cod Squad given her enigmatic background. And even after all those years, they hardly knew anything about her, except that she was glad she wasn't in London anymore.

But things changed after their second year in the tower. Due to a brief shortage in medical supplies, sickness was a recurring problem in the tower. People were so busy avoiding being infected by Deadmen, they seemed to forget other diseases still existed in the world. And sadly, it was Kat's fifteenth birthday the day poor Mrs. Hecox past away. Instead of a party, they attended a mass funeral for those who died of the sickness running rampant through the tower and said their final goodbyes to the one person that gave them hope.

The worst part was that burials were no longer done. In order to prevent reanimation, all corpses were cremated. The memory of Mrs. Hecox would live on inside a poorly-crafted urn like everyone else. But instead they asked the AIS officers to spread her ashes outside the tower to honor her for protecting them on their way to their new life.

Fourteen-year-olds Aaron, Nika, and Jonah along with Kat, who was a year older than them, were now alone. Even in a place as cramped as Matheson, Natalya was impossible to find, to the point they thought she had simply left the tower. They had no teacher, no mentor, and no guardian. They spent the next few months begging in the Commons for Ration Cards and getting sleep in a makeshift cube-shaped building in the Commons that functioned as an orphanage.

It wasn't until Aaron had the craziest idea of his life that he and his friends would be saved from starvation and neglect. "What if we became Deadman hunters?" he asked one night.

Since the Outbreak, the Anti-Infection Squad believed they had failed to fulfill their main purpose: to prevent infection. Now that all of England was swarming with Deadmen, they had more than enough proof this was a problem too big for them to handle. As a result, they reestablished themselves as the Dead Zone Infantry, a paramilitary group dedicated to exterminating the Deadmen and reclaiming the infested territory known as the Dead Zone. Colonel Schaefer had reopened their zombie-killing business through the DZI, and unsurprisingly the zombie-killing business was booming.

Jonah and Kat didn't hesitate to support Aaron's idea. They jumped up and down like joyful children as soon as he mentioned joining the DZI. However, Nika, proving herself to be the best shooter of the group during their escape from London, couldn't bring herself to join them. As monstrous and disgusting as those Deadmen were, she couldn't help but think about how they used to be people. Every time she killed one, she felt like she was murdering a puppet, something manipulated against its will by a more malevolent force. She passed on the idea and continued working in Matheson's library having developed a love for books thanks to Mrs. Hecox.

The two years of training began for Aaron, Jonah, and Kat. They were some of the youngest residents of Matheson Babel Tower permitted to travel beyond the walls. Every day they woke up, had unsatisfying small breakfasts, left the tower to run laps, had target practice, learned knowledge of the Deadmen no matter how unreliable it might've been, and went through extensive firearm training to prepare themselves for the war between the living and the dead. It was extremely exhausting and raised their mortality rates to the max, but it meant extra Ration Cards and more chances to explore the Dead Zone.

Once Aaron was sixteen, he and his friends went on their first official mission. For the first time ever, he'd be firing at targets that could move, attack, and bleed. He'd finally be able to set off explosives. He had the chance of being able to commit suicide via MercyMark, a small device that would instantly kill its wearer if he or she is already suffering from a fatal injury to prevent a slow, agonizing death. And if he were lucky, he'd be able to return home to Nika in one piece.

Their first mission—the reclamation of a village called Chipping—didn't go as smoothly as anyone hoped. The DZI had identified Deadmen by two categories: Commoners and Abnormals. Commoners were quick but predictable. All they wanted to do was attack any clean human on sight. One shot to the head would be the end of that. Abnormals, however, were a different story. Characterized by sentience and some form of physical anomaly that worked to their advantage, they were extremely dangerous and infamous for killing entire squadrons of soldiers. And unfortunately for Aaron, Jonah, and Kat, they encountered an Abnormal on the first day.

The Spring-heeled Jack. A creature known for its genius-level intellect, talons, and its ability to jump incredibly high thanks to its kangaroo-like hind legs. It was able to detect almost all of the DZI's traps and explosives and even managed to use a few against them. It didn't even care about taking a bite out of the soldiers. It would usually blow or slice off a limb and leave them to die. It took the destruction of an entire high-rise to take the beast down by burying it in loads of rubble. And while it was finally a relief now that it was dead, it still took the sacrifice of forty-one DZI lives to kill it.

They mourned their losses and celebrated the reclamation of their new territory. Granted, Shaw had to quickly shut them up since their loud celebration could've attracted more Deadmen, so they took their party back into the buses. Aaron snatched a flower from the ground for Nika before finally boarding the bus, where they resumed their celebration of their bittersweet victory.

Once they returned to headquarters, Aaron showered off the rubble and Deadman blood before paying a visit to his now-girlfriend Nika. When he knocked on her door and she opened up, she couldn't have been happier to see him, even shedding tears of joy since they both feared the day he'd enter the Dead Zone. He handed her the flower, which he thought would've been a simple yet still kindhearted gesture. This "simple gesture" earned them both their first kiss.

And like that flower, their love for each other blossomed from that day on. They would greet each other as if they had been separated for years, embracing each other and never letting go. They would slow dance together in their flats without a care in the world. Sometimes they would be more playful, messing with each other's hair or comfortably snuggling together in bed. And their bond grew so strong, they would occasionally spend the night in each other's flats, almost forgetting entirely about their other friends as they'd happily wake up the next morning in the arms of the one they loved most. Unfortunately for them, they could only share a flat if they were either married or over eighteen years of age, so their visits were only temporary.

Jonah attempted to start something with Natalya and Kat and failed on both accounts. Natalya was too bitter to maintain her friendships, let alone a romance. Even when crowded together with hundreds of other people in one building, she couldn't help but feel isolated now that she was distant from her old friends. She felt replaced by Aaron since he had become the most important person in her sister's life. Kat, however, simply showed no interest in Jonah. The two would flirt with each other often, but they couldn't take the idea of them in a romantic relationship seriously. They stayed close but never too close.

After their first mission, Aaron couldn't find anything else that could energize him as much as a day in the outside world. Every time he took out a Deadman, he felt like he was redeeming himself of one of the many mistakes he's made throughout his lifetime. One kill, he had forgiven himself for never reuniting with his older brother. Another kill, he had avenged Mr. Hecox. The third kill, Mrs. Hecox got her justice. And so on.

But ever since he joined the DZI, he couldn't help but feel a little anxious about the load of information he was learning, especially from such a seemingly unreliable source. Lavinia Dyer, the psychotic woman drenched in Deadman blood he saw exit the car with Schaefer, was imprisoned ever since day one. Schaefer tried to get rid of her by leaving her out in the Dead Zone, but she slowly became an expert in dealing with the Deadmen. In fact, she was so good at surviving that her discoveries ended up fueling Matheson's research on the Deadmen. Through her they learned that Deadmen are weak against fire, had zero response to pain, and their blood could be used as camouflage. That was the only thing that prevented her from being executed by the DZI.

While the DZI was astonished by her surprising amount of research and the fact she was out in the Dead Zone without a weapon, only Schaefer knew of her association with the Abnormals. He tried to get as much information out of her involving Bloodletter, but she had nothing. All she knew was that he had disappeared into the Forest of Bowland, probably preparing to strike just as they were. Any other knowledge of the Abnormals was shared among the other Babel Towers scattered throughout England via long risky journeys by truck.

It amused Schaefer how they still couldn't figure out the cause of the Deadmen's rise, no matter how hard they researched. Their creator was right there in Matheson the whole time, known only as a witness to their creation and a hero for saving many people from their plight. He just sat back and watched as they'd try to figure out the biggest mystery of their time.

Unfortunately for him, Aaron was closing in on the solution. Several months after his eighteenth birthday, his fifty-third and final mission with the DZI was the day his life began to fall apart. And soon, so would the rest of his world.

END OF PART 2