A Stephen King novel meets A Game of Thrones. A cold fog is sweeping through the town. Anyone it touches, anyone who walks into it, is taken by the cold and they cannot ever leave. They can only move within the confines of the ever-expanding, cold fog.

Vans and removal trucks speed along the street. They growl and swerve as they race to get out of town.

I am in a position of responsibility, perhaps the sheriff. In my attempts to protect people, I end up standing in the street with the fog approaching. I end up walking into it. Just a few feet.

An unseen wind blows through me. It chills my ribs and my spine. I imagine leaves and dust blowing between my bones. My flesh feels as insubstantial as air.

I look back at my team and other onlookers.

"Get back!" I say as the fog continues to creep toward them.

After a few more seconds, the fog stops. It roils, but doesn't advance any further.

In the mist, like the white walkers in A Game of Thrones, trapped people wonder within the fog. They are wearing what they were wearing when it enveloped them.

I'm in uniform. That's me in uniform forever. 

I don't feel like I'm losing my mind yet. The others, however, look gone mentally. I wonder how long that takes. I wonder what that feels like.

A man straight out of a Stephen King novel approaches through the fog. He is wearing brown, leather boots. Something about me being captured has changed things and, talking to the people outside the fog, he offers a truce between his fog and the rest of the world.

As long as no-one tries to get anyone out of the fog, he says, he'll let the rest of the world survive. Anyone who enters the fog of their own volition, however, will be his.

"How come you can turn into a werewolf AND other things?" someone asks. It seems impertinent, like, unnecessary right now.

"I shapeshift into a wolf," he answers quickly. "From my wolf form, I can shapeshift into many things."

He moves on quickly, physically, as if to avoid questioning. It seems like we've found a plot hole in the story and he wants to gloss over it.

Gone, the evil man lets us mull over his deal.

I consider my life in the cold.

It's not as cold as I thought it would be.

But it does look like forever.

Those in the fog have given up, but those on the other side are trying to think of solutions. I admire them and I think I might be in a unique position to help from here.

The girls are sort of milling about outside the hut, waiting for something to happen, when Jane spots a zombie.

She turns to look at the other women, but they haven't seen it. As a result, she isn't sure if she's seeing what she thinks she's seeing. She looks back. She sees what looks very much like a zombie climbing out of a window.

It is about six foot six, male, with broad shoulders. It's wearing a plaid shirt that is ripped and wet. It's face is ... it's face is sort of the wrong shape, more like Darth Siddius than a person, though she doesn't know that because she's never seen Star Wars. And she never will.

The zombie spots her, but it doesn't hesitate the way that she does. Instead, it strides towards her, grabs her by the shoulders, and proceeds to attempt to bite off the top of her head.

She still doesn't scream.

People are still busy, preparing for a zombie invasion that they don't really believe will come.

Her brain finally kicks in, the brain that the zombie is trying to eat. Her brain tells her that this is a definitely, really a zombie, but she still doesn't scream, because to sceam would make it real. If she screams, she thinks, she's dead.

Fortunately, somebody sees the struggle and soon there are four people, armed, pulling the zombie from her and hitting it and stabbing it.

"Why didn't you call for help?" Lisa says, her face wet with sweat.

Jane is in shock.

Lisa shakes her head.

"You finally got one," Vinnie the leader says, looking from the corpse to Lisa. "We could do with more women like you," Vinnie says.

"There are no women in the zombie patrols," Lisa says.

"So start your own," says Vinnie.

"Where would I patrol?" asks Lisa.

"You can have the whole of Scotland," Vinnie says. "I've got to move out."

He means him and the majority of his troops.

He probably has orders from London, Lisa thinks.

"Get to it," he says with a smile before walking away. It's not an order. It's the only thing he's ever said to her as an equal, as a friend. 

It's funny in this new world. People look at you in the eye and they see you, they listen to what you have to say, because they know that you're probably going to be dead in the next 120 hours. Every exchange might be your last or theirs. And yet people still end conversations with things like: "Go to work" and "Get to it." Nobody says "I love you" anymore. That's the kind of thing you say as you're bleeding out.

Vinnie walks away in his big military jacket and boots, carrying more dust in their creases than is left on the road.

Lisa stands there in her red, cotton, sleeveless blouse and jeans; bare arms, bare hands, holding a bloody rake.

She looks at the dead zombie. She looks at the other women: strong, together, afraid.

In that moment, it becomes real: this is the first all-woman zombie patrol.

It will be the first of many such units throughout the country, but she doesn't know that yet. She won't be dead in the next 120 hours, and she doesn't know that either. Even Jane, who almost had a zombie bite into her skull because she couldn't scream, even Jane survives a few more weeks.

"What now?" asks Sandy.

Lisa creates two teams to check the house, while a third team checks the perimeter. The others should either be doing a stock check of weapons, including potential weapons — see rake — or attending to Jane's mental state. The orders spill out of her mouth, as if by reflex.

The women get to it.