The problem with things that are broken is that they seldom if ever go back together. In this case the world was broken. The United States had been broken apart and dissolved for nearly a generation.

Several factions had tried over the years to pull the old republic from the ashes of the burnt up ground but far too much water had traveled over the dam, or under the bridge, or wherever it is that the damn water flows.

Hannah was now in her mid early thirties. She and David tried to lead humbly and quiet life for the most part in the Georgian Territories. The leaders of the territory left the two alone mostly except to make sure that Hannah took the medicine she had come to depend on as her size stabilizer. There was always talk about the day when they could no long provide her with the medicine.

With her presence in being known, the territory she called home was some of the most fought over land on the entire continent. As a result the Georgian Territory had grown more than a little weary of having her as a resident. That along with the continued manufacture of the medication she required taxed the small ragged nation without mercy. None the less they could not allow her to fall into the hands of someone who would use her as a weapon. So the nation's options were very limited to say the least.

She loved her home but Hannah was sure that it did not really resemble the land she had grown up in and come to age in. She often wondered about the day when the government either could no longer give her the medicine, or no longer wanted to. She fear that day because whenever that happened and for whatever reason she had no doubt that the world, even the broken down version of it that she lived in would come crashing down.

Hannah and David’s options were also pretty narrow as well. David had more or less fallen out of favor in the Capital of the band of old southern states, due to his push back against the territory becoming essentially a military state. So their connections had dwindled down to next to zero in the last ten years or so. They were more or less powerless to affect any kind of change in the territory, and the nation they called home had become essentially the bully on the block of the area around them. The territory had grown to include good parts of what were Alabama, and Florida. The territory was working to capture parts of Kentucky, and North Carolina so as to finally have a buffer zone between them and Hannah.

The ceaseless war though was causing more and more casualties since the further north they fought, the closer the Georgian armies came to the old republic and the military might that had been stored there. There were also rumors that the old CDC in the area had been repurposed into a weapons manufacturer.

With Hannah’s hometown being one of the most northern towns from the secured zone it was also home to the territories largest northern base of operations with a fort and a medical hospital. A hospital that David worked at, and that Hannah helped at.

After their shift one evening both David and Hannah sat on their front porch talking. “Are you sure that you don’t regret not having children David?”

It was a discussion that Hannah brought up with David on a pretty regular basis, and so he was ready to answer without any real hesitation. “Hannah, I don’t regret a single moment with you or our lives together. We can not help what it does to you. We can not change the fact that without it you would have out grown this world long ago and we would never have gotten the chance to grow old together.”

The two shared a laugh, if an uneasy one. Hannah sometimes mourned the fact that size stabilizer she took every single day also had the effect of acting as a form of birth control. It was a sad fact that if she wanted to be as she was she could also never have children. Of course she had never really felt the absence or lack of children in her life until the past couple of years.

The first grey hair in her head had sent her off the deep end about her own mortality and her inability to know of a life beyond her own. She had even thought about stopping her medicine just so she could have a child, but she knew that within days of stopping she would start to grow again.

The last thing the world need other than a giant woman roaming the earth was a almost equally large baby smashing its way across the globe. So she resigned herself to the fact that she would not have children. Still she regretted the idea that David would have no children of his own. Sometimes she thought of ending the marriage so he could go and find someone normal to have a family with. That idea hurt as badly as her not being able to have children and so she put that idea away just like she had put away so many other idea’s because of the way things had worked out.

The alarm from the hospital sounded and even though it was almost a mile away from their home they both heard it without any real problem. It was a high pitched sound that was designed to be heard at long distances.

Hannah looked at David and before a word was spoken the two stood up from their seats on the porch and began down the steps of their home and rushed toward the hospital.

In the past when the alarm had went off it had been because of some type of military incursion by a foreign force as some sort of raid or attempted invasion to either capture or kill Hannah.

Hannah figured that would be a possibility but with more area north of here secured than ever she had serious doubts about that being the case now. Still she began to steel herself against whatever it might be that she would see.

She had seen men blown open, and ripped apart. She had seen things that most people could not imagine. War made all of those things possible.

The closer they got to the hospital the more Hannah wondered just what was happening. People she knew were running away from the hospital instead of toward it. Most of the people in her old home town had been given some level of medical training since they were the staff for the military hospital.

Screams could be heard coming from each and every direction. Every face she met seemed to be covered in both fear and blood.

Could it be that the military had met its Waterloo and had lost control of the zone north of them? Could a full scale invasion be underway?

She stopped running and David who had been steps behind her stopped along her side. “Dear why did you stop running? We have to go and help those who are wounded. They are counting on us to keep our heads Hannah.”

Hannah looked down at her sweet husband “David don’t you understand the line has fallen whoever has defeated our men are surely coming for me. We have to get out of here. We won’t be safe here much longer.”

David grabbed his large wife’s hand and tried to pull her along with him “Don’t you see that is all the more reason to get to the hospital. We have to try and get as much of your medication as we possibly can. The hospital will also be the most secure place in the territory. While I may not love all these jack booted thugs they do their jobs. They will hold onto this area with everything they have until more reinforcements can arrive.”

His reasoning was sound but from the crowd that was fleeing the area around the hospital Hannah doubted what he said in her mind but followed along with him because after all he was her husband. She wouldn’t leave him not now not ever.

As they reached the hospital block gun fire began to breakout as screams could be heard from inside the building. The husband and wife duo looked at each other.

True doubt was starting to show on David’s face as though he was starting to understand that maybe help would not be coming as quickly as he had hoped, and that maybe it had been a mistake to come to the hospital after all.

“Oh sweet Jesus, they aren’t dropping” they heard as automatic gunfire sounded through the hospital.

Hannah looked at David “what in the hell is going on here?”

David could only shrug his shoulder as blood curtling screams replaced some of the gun fire. They each started up the stairs of the building when a man in uniform came rushing out of the dark building blood pouring from his arm and neck as his rifle hung over his shoulder.

The man tumbled over and fell down the stairs audibly breaking bones as he crashed down the steps. More blood started to run down the steps as man started to bleed out on the steps.

As David and Hannah rushed to the man’s side they noticed what appeared to be several savage looking bite marks covering his neck and right arm. Blood oozed out of each ragged piece of flesh.

The man gasped for breath in Hannah’s arms as David went to work trying to stop the bleeding. “The bastards just wouldn’t go down. I emptied three clips into this one and he just kept coming, even when the bullets ripped him in half the torso just kept coming.”

Hannah tried her best to calm the hysterical man but his breathing was worsening and she knew that this soldier didn’t have very long left. He had lost too much blood. She needed to know something though and so she asked the dying man a question that she hoped he could answer.

“Who did this too you?” She was afraid she knew the answer, but she had to know for sure.

The man with a last shallow breath answered her worst fears “they did, the ones who wouldn’t go down…”

The gunfire which had been a constant since she and David had first arrived in the area was started to peter out, but the screams and now moans from inside were only increasing in their pace and severity.
Hannah took David by the hand and pulled him away from the dead man on the ground “He’s gone, baby. We have got to get out of here.”

“Hannah, we can’t leave. I’m a doctor, I have to try and help these people” David replied as he pulled away from his wife’s powerful grip.

This was one of the things she loved about David, but it was also the one thing that was going to get him and her killed if he didn’t get a move on. “Didn’t you hear what he said” she asked a reluctant David. “Can’t you hear what is going on around us. This place is lost. If we don’t go right now we will be lost right along with them.”

Just at that moment people began stumbling out of the front door of the hospital. Each moaning a sicking moan. Eyes blank and uncomprehending. Mouths opening and closing rapidly as if trying to eat the very air itself. Their teeth chattered each time they brought their teeth together.

Hannah knew what they were when she saw them. She had seen the movies growing up. She recognized a zombie, in the actual flesh when she saw one. Fear coursed through her veins her adrenaline started to kick into high gear.

She grabbed her much smaller husband by the arm and started to drag him away from the stairs just as the dead man they had been helping reached up and tore a chunk of meat out of David’s right forearm, and would not let go.

David screamed at the very top of his lung capacity as he tried in vain to pull away from the thing that was gnawing on his arm like it was a side of beef.

Hannah’s heart sank in that very moment. She knew what that meant. He husband of over ten years was going to die, he was going to become one of these horrible monsters. Her heart started beating so much faster than it had in years.

She pulled on David with all of her considerable might and freed him from the grip of the dead man who now struggled to get to it’s feet only it could not since it had broken so many important bones on it’s initial fall down the stairs moments before back when it was a living and breathing man, and not the dead eye thing it had become.  

Hannah wasn’t sure what she would be able to do with David. She couldn’t save him, and she could leave him behind either. She scooped him up into her arms and began trying to run back to their home a mile away.

As she did so she passed several more of the dead things that had escaped the hospital earlier as living being but now had loved ones and friends pinned beneath them and were doing their level best to eat every last piece of meat from their bones.

She tried to avert her eyes. David was starting to lose consciousness as she arrived back home. “Don’t you close your eyes” she yelled at him as she sat him down on the couch in the living room.

He simply groaned in reply. Hannah left him there and went back to the door securing it as best she could. She took notice however that her run back home had drawn the attention of several of the corpses and so they were shambling their way toward her house at that moment.

Her heartbeat was picking up more speed. She knew that wasn’t good because if it continued to climb even her medicine wouldn’t be able to stop her from growing. Stress was a trigger for her growth and well the dead deciding to get up and walk around was pretty damn stressful to her.

She heard David get up from the couch behind her. She turned and saw the light gone from his eyes, and his mouth making the same unnerving movements the other freshly turned had made back at the hospital.

Tears threatened to run down her face but in that moment she felt an old feeling that she had not felt in over ten years. She felt her bones crack as they started to grow longer. Her growth had always seemed like a major inconvenience but now that the world seemed destined to end not at her hand after all she welcomed it.

It might be the only thing that would save her. She just hoped she would grow fast enough to keep from being able to be turned into one of those things. David’s body shuffled across the living room floor toward her as her pant legs grew tighter around her legs while also rising up her increasing in size calves.

Her shirt creeped up her midsection leaving it exposed while the few buttons at the top of the shirt started to pop off of her chest as her breasts grew along with the rest of her. She was pretty sure she was over teen feet tall now. As David’s body got closer to her it reached out to bit her and so she grabbed it and threw the body of her former husband across the room and through the front door. It’s teeth had been unable to break her skin as it had chomped down on her hand.

His body spilled down the steps knocking a majority of the things outside of her house down to the ground in a sickening wet thud.

Her shoes ripped apart easily, she wanted to cry a little over that because they may have been the very last women’s size fifteen Converse tennis shoes in the entire world. Her ankle ripped the trademark star apart as it burst through the side of the old worn in shoe, as her toes pushed through the front of the shoe.

Hannah was starting to fill up the large open room she was in as she crossed the twelve foot mark. She had lived in this house also for over ten years. Lot of good memories were held there inside of those walls.

Of course at the moment the walls meant very little to her. They were just an obstacle to be hurtled. She would have to outgrow the house so she could be outside and then she could start to go to work on those things that had taken her life away from her.

Her pant legs ripped up the sides and across her backside as it grew larger as well. Her shirt sleeves had risen up as high on her arms as they could and now were splitting apart at the seams as well.

Hannah pressed her swollen chest against the front wall of the house along with placing her huge hands just abreast from her chest pushed with all of her might. With a little strain the wall gave way bringing much of the house down on top of her. She picked up a large piece of lumber broke off pieces that had been attached to it.

In truth the piece of wood had one been a truss beam that had held up the roof. Now though in her still growing hands it was a club. At nearly fifteen feet tall she was no longer scared of what was going on outside of her destroyed home.

The dead things started coming at her from every direction and with ease she used her newly minted club to bash the things away from her. She sent broken bodies in every direction most continued to get back up however and come back for her.

From her new height she could see fires burning throughout the town. Screams rang out in every direction so much pain and so much fear. Hannah wanted to help everyone but at the moment the smell of death was just simply too strong in the air. Too many people had been lost.

So Hannah kept swatting the zombie horde at her feet. Smashing as many of the bodies as she could stepping on and crushing as many as she could under her immense weight. Still they kept coming.

She had no idea how long this went on but soone darkness seemed to fall over her old home town. Fires raged out of control, smoke filled the air, screams were almost as thick as the screams.

Her club had broken a few different times and now she was left with just her body as a weapon. She had topped out at twenty some odd feet in height. She was for all intensive purposes nude. Her super long legs and feet were covered muck and mire of the dead things.

A few survivors had sought her out and stayed as close to her as they could. Hannah knew that would not last long because she would have to sleep at some point and then those few who were left would have to fend for themselves as she tried to recharge her body.

Of course recharging her body would not be easy since at her new massive height she would require much more food than what would be available. It really was a pretty shitty situation. She had lost so much that day. Of course so had everyone else.

Her thoughts were broken as the sound of a helicopter flying nearby caused her attention to be drawn there. The small survivors on the ground shouted out in relief hoping that at last they would be saved.

Hannah briefly hoped for the same thing. Right up until the moment when she noticed that it was a gun ship and that it was firing at the people around her feet and then her.

Nothing every really changed. Even now with everything falling apart around them, with the dead walking around and trying to eat people. The military was again trying to kill her. Hannah’s hell on earth had returned from beyond and climbed out of it’s long ago forgotten grave to consume her.

Even though she had allowed the growth to overtake her body once more it was so she could help people. Only the people didn’t seem to care. To those that clung to power she was still just a threat to them. Maybe even a larger threat than the swarm of dead eating the city beneath her gigantic body.