Outbreak Scenario 32

Your daughter was born three years into the outbreak. She's seventeen now.

The "born-afters" sit around fires talking about the old world like it's mythology. None of the kids who were born during the outbreak believe in electric lights, highways, restaurants, and airplanes overhead. They think you're lying or crazy. Why would anyone build a world that fragile? Why didn't people just survive?

Fifteen of them gathered in the barn last night. You watched through the slats. Your daughter stood at the center, with an M16 slung across her back. She's talking about heading east to see what's really out there beyond the valley. All of the other children see her as their leader.

You remember cities. You remember the internet, coffee shops, traffic jams, and using your mobile phone. You remember when the dead got up and ate the world.

You overhear that they are leaving at dawn. Fifteen kids with scavenged rifles and twenty years of survival skills are going into territory you haven't scouted in a decade.

You…