Jane caressed her tattered bible, clutching it between her arms; praying. Sweat dripped from her wrinkled brow as her body shook incessantly. She had almost completely lost touch with reality; though it was a reality more horrific than any nightmare. Her once luscious blonde hair was now limp, lifeless, and dyed with ash and sut. Her eyes drooped down in exhaustion as the fatigue drained her body of all strength. Her clothes had been torn and burned. Her summer dress now barely clung to her bruised, aching flesh. She was surrounded on all sides by filth and destruction. Her home was ruined, her child was missing, and her husband...oh God her husband. She winced in agony as the memory of his murder played constantly through her mind in slow motion, every explicit detail shown to her with vivid imagery. For her, Hell was not a place, but a state of mind. The only light came through the shattered windows from the fires outside her crumbling house. It flickered like the dance of a small child, casting strange shadows to run about Janie's body. Her street was a wreck, houses lay in ruins like the memories of all those who had once lived in peace there. She found it hard to recall even one simple recollection before all of this had happened. The smell was putrid, it offended her olfactory senses beyond belief. Weeks of decaying meat, rotting bodies, burning charred flesh, and human waste swirled together in a malignant cloud of stagnant air.

She stared blankly into space, trying hard not to breathe in too much of the air, for when she did, she could feel the stinging odour pierce her brain and dissolve it like acid. There was absolutely nothing for her to do, but sit and wait. Wait for humans to win the war, wait for her husband to return to her, or wait to die. Only the latter seemed realistic. The war had been going on for almost a two months now, and humans were losing at an incredible rate. The war reeked of irony and apocalyptic prophecies. The Christian Religious Leaders had a field day when first the dead began rising from their graves. They wore their "Ha! We told you all you're sins would be punished!" attitude with great relish. That is, until that fateful Sunday when a horde of the living dead crashed through a communion ceremony and partially devoured all that lay inside the sanctuary. It was then that everyone truly realised, no one was safe. This had nothing to do with any kind of god or religion, it was purely a chemical reaction.

At first it was only the buried cadavers that were reanimated by the explosion -known affectionately as "The Necromancer". Reports were scattered and vague. Leave it to America to fuck up the whole goddamn planet. The government, for some strange reason, thought that their underground research with an experimental bio-chemical warhead would have no coercive reactions with life above ground. Well, in a way, they were right. While the explosion did not interrupt life above the soil, it sure as hell did interrupt death underneath it. All human carcasses within several hundred miles of the explosions were re-animated in a matter of days. Of course, not all the blame can be put on the American Government; for when other Powers of the world got their greedy hands on this weapon of war, they too did some underground experiments with the same necro-animating results. Russia, Germany, England....everyone. Armies of the undead soon spread out, covering every nation, every country, every town, every block, every fucking house. Governments using their newfound weapon on the dead seemed a little redundant, and slapped all of them with a new list of priorities that should've been there in the first place. Those without shelter or proper defences were killed easily and left partially devoured, only to rise again in undead agonising pain, to search for new hosts to infect.

The cycle continued viciously and before we knew what had hit us, humans were outnumbered by the millions. No one was prepared for this kind of warfare, bombs only created more dead, and bullets only slowed them down. It took 2000 years to build our clever little societies, and about 3 days for it to fall to pieces. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, in this case it was a deadly thing. It was the death of a world in which people could walk freely from their homes to their cars. A world where people worked for money and lived accordingly. Worries were "that meeting on Thursday" or "Can we afford that vacation", not "do we have enough ammo and food to survive another day." Money was worthless in the new society. It was a society of the dead, and with every passing moment the hope for mankind diminished. Every person killed, meant another soldier for the zombies. Most survivors were forced to become nomads, travelling from one dead town to the other, searching for anything useful. Families were split up, neighbours turned on one another. Fighting within our own species seemed almost idiotic, but it was suitably the path to our own destruction. We were disorganized and unprepared. Had we learned to work together instead of against one another, the plague would have been easily quashed. We were stronger, more resourceful, more intelligent, but those were qualities we only had in the past. The only thing that could get us out of this mess was the thing that got us into it, our 'big' brains. There were null resources and strength useless against facing 400 zombies.

Cities were deserted to ghost towns. Papers scattered the streets, cars burned endlessly, and those people lucky enough to get out of "Dead Territory" alive, had to worry about scavengers, looters, thieves, and most of all, survival. The cities had become too dangerous to even step foot in. Office buildings stood empty like hollow towers of steel, and the air was thick with black smoke and smog. There was no life. The dead aimlessly walked the streets in search of prey, and at night only there monotones groans could be heard through the chilling howl of the wind as it whistled through the empty streets like a siren's song. Looking out from a high building, all that could be seen was a sea of glowing green eyes, moving like fireflies against the blackness of the decaying city. Most people who made it out of the cities took shelter in rural and urban areas, but those too, were only temporary havens. It was a mathematical certainty, eventually everyone would be found, killed, and regressed to the living dead.

Even though they had little intelligence and strength, what the dead lacked in those areas, they more than made up for by their sheer numbers and virtual invincibility. There were several ways to immobilize them but only one known way to "kill" them, and most people knew it by now. It had been broadcast on every operational television and radio station. Alas, news media was a thing of the past now, nothing but "snow" fuzzed on the set uselessly; mocking the shortcomings of our narcissistic species. Electricity itself was scarce. The world had degenerated to a paelithic era. Everything had been off the air for several weeks, but the knowledge had already been spread, and it was our only hope.

The zombies seemed to function on an optical sense of motivation, meaning that their vision was what kept them animated. They hunted primarily from vision, though most were capable of auditory perception as well. Destroying the eyes, destroyed the virus' communication with the body. Like even the most primitive one-celled creature, they existed purely to procreate, and multiplied at incredible rates. The eyes; that was the way to kill them, but as many soon discovered this was not without its problems, due to a small cloud of noxious gas that was released from the punctured eye, infecting any who breathed it in; sort of an instinctive self-destruct mechanism. What we were left with was a virtual army of killing machines, protected by the "rape of Mother Nature" humans had bestowed upon them. In our vain attempt to become increasingly powerful, mankind had got exactly what it had wished for: an ultimate power; and our own existence was the price. Philosophically, perhaps we had become too smart for our own good. Maybe there was some God who decided to create a new race of humanoids; ones whose appetite was bigger than their brains. Who the hell were we trying to figure out and manipulate His area of expertise? Anything humans had accomplished seemed pitifully frivolous now. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, if these values had been put in proper perspective maybe we wouldn't have had to struggle for our own survival. Even the very air would soon become saturated by the noxious gases emitted from a destroyed zombie. Then the world would truly be dead.

Even the President of the United States wasn't safe from the plague. Government officials, decorated officers and special agents were all sent to an underground shelter for safety, little did they know it was to be their death tomb. One of the medical examiners had breathed in the toxic fumes from a zombie's eye. For fear of his life he did not tell anyone, the effects were still unknown; but they soon found out, when he too became undead and caused a chain reaction of infection too horrible to even speak of. Army men and agents were locked in their refuge to die as the undead horde slowly and methodically spilled into every single crevice of the base. Some men shot themselves for hope of final rest, others could be heard trying to claw their way out of their little rooms as the dead closed in and surrounded them, robotically tearing them apart, their teeth grinding into any poor soul's flesh like a pack of wild wolves. Screams were heard for days, then slowly, one by one, the separated few that had survived the massacre, heard less and less. There was no escape.

Victor puffed out a cynical laugh as he read the news about the recent chemical warhead that had been detonated under American soil only a few days ago.

"How the hell can those bastards in congress justify these kinds of blatant tyrannical tests of power, and have the nerve to charge us for it? I have a bomb that will blow up half the world. Yeah? Well, I have a bomb that will cause so much nuclear pollution that even your kid's kids will need to wear gasmasks." He laughed to himself in bitterness. Victor was convinced the whole world was corrupt and going to Hell. Not that he actually believed in Heaven or Hell, he just figured Hell was the world he would be living in very shortly.

"Take it easy big guy. You're starting to sound like my grandfather," Shelly said as she patted Victor's knee and let out a smile. She had a way of bringing him out of whatever ill mood he was in, simply by patting his knee.

There was a brief silence between the two lovers before both exchanged a look of humour and laughed out loud. Victor continued to drive his black sports car, squinting to see through the mist that seemed to be rising from the ground. The rain pelted heavily on the car before diminishing into a light shower as they continued to drive into the afternoon sky. He was a good-looking man, in his mid thirties, with slick black hair and vibrant blue eyes. Shelly was thankful to be engaged to such a man. She too was also good looking, although she had had some bad relationships in the past with insensitive men. The sun continued to peek through the clouds every once and a while, and eventually the storm phased into a slight sun shower.

"Do you want a Dorito?" Shelly asked as she indulged in the bag of freshly opened corn chips.

"No thanks. I'd rather have a beer."

Sensing that Victor was a bit apprehensive she spoke with a soothing voice and again patted his knee.

"Listen Victor, I know you are a little nervous about telling my parents about us, but believe me, they are nuts about you. They'll be thrilled! My parents don't care that you're an author and I'm a doctor, they know you're a good man, career status doesn't mean a thing, and so it shouldn't. Trust me."

Victor turned his head and looked deeply into Shelly's sincere green eyes. Upon noticing a large hand print on his knee made from cheesy powder (the kind found distinctly on Doritos), he laughed.

"Geese Shelly, You sure know how to leave your mark on people."

She looked down at his knee noticing the mark she had made with her grubby fingers, and when she let out her wonderful laugh, it completely disarmed any tensions Victor may have had left about the big day.

As the couple approached the heart of the small town they took a break from chatting, and admired the quaint scenery. There were convenience stores every block or so; pool halls, bars, two supermarkets, and the odd car dealership. It was a fairly small town, but they had everything a big town had, just on a smaller scale. The streets were scattered with people scurrying about with their own little problems and their own little agendas. In the olden days people actually knew the names of their neighbours, but with the build of a small "modern" community, comes the building of giant social walls as well. After all, it’s the nature of the world, or at least, the nature of humans.

About ten minutes into their drive through main street there became fewer and fewer people, and it seemed more like a small town again. The road turned to dirt, there were more trees, and the buildings looked older and more run down. The two began to get hungry for some real food; Doritos and gum just would not do. Shelly spotted a small little diner at a nearby intersection.

"Oh! Let's stop there, it would be so fun to mingle and relax with the people in the diner, instead of always having to push your way to a table, like in the city."

Victor made the turn into the diner’s parking lot. On closer inspection many motorcycles and a large gang of people in some sort of dispute made Victor pull away like a reflex to danger being exercised. Shelly and him exchanged a look of worry as the couple continued back on their original course.

"That's okay, my parent's house is only another hour away, I can hold out until then. How 'bout you?"

Victor did not answer. Thoughts of doubt and fear clouded his mind from all concentration. What was he doing here? Was he good enough for Shelly? Marriage was a huge commitment, was he ready for it? A sudden yell from Shelly finally pulled him out of his meditation, only in time to see three solid metal newspaper stands crash right into the front of his car. There was a quick and violent jolt, and then, there was stillness.

Steam rose from the bent hood, adding to the heat. The twisted front end of the car looked more like a Piccaso than an automobile. Sweat poured from every orifice of his body. He shook himself out of his daze and as his memory returned to him a horrible feeling of terror ran through his veins, making him go numb. Shelly. In a fit of panic his trembling hands felt for his seatbelt through the smoke. If anything happened to her, he would never be able to forgive himself. Amidst all of the confusion and blindness, a warm hand reached onto Victor's lap, and as if sending a sedative throughout his body, he finally could relax for the moment.

"Are you okay?" She asked him as she cleared away some of the smoke by waving her left hand in front of her face.

"I'm fine. You?"

"Just great!" She said sarcastically, "maybe we should've taken our chances with all the commotion at the diner."

A great laughter could be heard from inside the bent car, they were thankful to be alive. Finally the two made their way outside of the car to investigate the damages. Victor rubbed his black hair as he tried to evaluate their situation. It was painful at first, like seeing his own child get hurt (if he had one). This was not going to be cheap. The painting job alone would cost more than the repair itself. Shelly stood aside him, quietly observing Victor, who quietly observed his car. Finally reality set in and he felt very fortunate that no one was hurt. He grabbed Shelly in a welcomed embrace as they stood for a moment reflecting on the many experiences they had had together, and hopefully all the others they would spend as a couple.

"There's a convenience store right over there. Let's go get something to eat and call the auto club." Shelly's stomach growled in anticipation. She had actually been extremely hungry.

The rusted bell atop the store door clanked a monotonous ring as the couple entered. Behind the counter stood a large man with a bushy black beard and a red plaid jacket on. He eyed the obvious "out-of-towners" and then peered at their car on his lot, before putting his head back into a pair of headphones. He had cameras set up all over the perimeter of the place, as well as inside (being a wannabe military man and all). A police scanner sat on his counter, which he listened to when business was slow, and apparently it was, for he listened to it with great interest. It was a lot cooler inside the shop, there were fridges filled with every kind of beverage one could imagine. The shelves that surrounded most of the perimeter of the store were packed with cereals, fruit, vegetables and other canned foods. There were several magazines on the rack (most of which were back issues of GUNS AND AMMO.) Victor puffed out another cynical laugh at the stereotypical surroundings. To their left came the sounds of violent gunshots and painful moans. Jake, a local boy stood glued to a video game called CRYPT KILLER; pumping in quarters like he was made of them. His body moved in sync with the game, making him looking almost ridiculous, of course his backward hat and sagging pants also did a fine job of that. Mrs. Mary Beneth walked around the aisles, apparently shopping for food in her pink outfit with fake white pearls. She was an old lady, typically nice and friendly looking. She was a chilling reminder of the way life used to be before lap dances and laptops. Victor stood and watched her go about her merry way, humming to herself a song that she had just made up. Shelly head straight for the hot dog sign, her mouth watering at the sight of the juicy wieners being cooked. As she opened the door of the heater to get a hot dog, the store clerk took off his headphones in a hurry, moved his giant body from the counter, and approached Victor with an unnerving urgency. At first Victor's defences made him buckle up and tighten his fists, then, he could see by the man's eyes that there was a real situation at hand. He spoke to Victor in a quiet controlled tone of voice. "You folks better get outa here right now."

The large burly man continued his way to the back of the shop, and returned bearing a large shot gun, that seemed almost like a pellet gun when he held it with his giant hands. Mrs. Beneth, Jake and Shelly were unaware of anything. The storeowner called out to everyone as he loaded his gun. "Awright, listen up folks. Jake, Mrs. Beneth, mam'," he nodded at Shelly before continuing, "there's some problem at the diner, me and a few boys ar' gonna go help out."

Shelly looked at Victor with fear and confusion in her eyes. He looked at her with a look of calmness and control. Similar to her knee patting, Victor could calm Shelly down by a simple look. She felt safe with Victor, if he was calm and in control, she knew she would be okay. For a second she hesitated, confused if she should put down her hot dog, but she dropped it after a brief thought and scurried over to Victor, her hunger subsided for the moment. Just before leaving the store he looked back at Jake who was still into his video game. "Jake! You behave yourself ya hear? 'Less I tell your moma you been acting up."

Without removing his fixed eyes from the screen he waved his hand in underwhelmed agreement. "yeah, yeah!"

Shelly and Victor moved apart to make room for the man. As he passed them he looked over, sizing them up one last time before he spoke. "I'll be back in 'bout twenty minutes, then we can talk 'bout your lil' car problem and my lil' newspaper problem. K?" He left the shop with a feeling of confidence. Partly because he had a huge-ass gun in his hand, and partly because he knew the couple wouldn't be going anywhere on foot, even if they did try and lift his store (which he doubted they would from his estimation of their clothes and appearance), where would they go?

The diner was in plain view of the store, so Victor and Shelly watched in curiosity as the large storekeeper thumped his way across the street to the diner.

"I wonder what's going on?" Shelly whispered.

"Well, I guess we're about to find out."

Suddenly the dirt streets became filled with people running in every which direction. Victor's heart began to pump as did Shelly's. What was all the commotion about? Some people jumped in cars trying to drive away. Some people grabbed their guns and ran back into the buildings they had come out from. Fear struck the couple as they watched glass break at the diner as shots rang loud into the blue sky. By now Mrs. Beneth had joined the two at the window. Shelly looked at the confused old lady. "Do you know what's going on?" She asked.

"I was about to ask you the same thing" The old lady responded dully.

Meanwhile, Jake had wandered from his game to see what al the commotion was about. The four looked in confused panic as people came running out of the diner screaming and bloody, followed only seconds behind by staggering and obviously injured folks. Ted the Storeowner came running from the diner, pushing the dazed people out of the way before making a clean getaway. Shelly watched in horror as the man proceeded to shoot the injured folks who looked liked they were after him. With their arms outstretched they staggered for him with open jaw and wide eyes, seeming to crave for any piece of him them could get their hands on. Something was morbidly wrong.

"What is he doing? Who are those people?" she yelled frantically, but everyone was too locked in the commotion to speak or even listen to her inane question.

The four made room as Ted came crashing through the store door, panicking and out of breath, and sending the bell flying across the room. He stoop over his gun trying to catch his breath as the door came slamming behind him. He wheezed and gasped for air as he continued to rest. Words began puffing out of his exhausted mouth, too incoherent to understand. Seeing that he was trying to communicate something, Victor rested his hand on Ted's back, and spoke in his controlling voice.

"Now, take a deep breath and pronounce your words slowly. What it is?" The urgency and fear in his voice slipped out, but the overall command was accepted, and again the man tried to speak.

"The...trouble..." He gasped for more air before continuing. Men that big were not meant to move that fast. "...They...killed....George. They....killed.....all of 'em...."

The Victor's heart sank to the floor and his blood ran cold. Jake's jaw dropped in ignorant excitement, while Mrs. Beneth clutched her heart as if to keep it beating. Shelly's face went a pale white as she listened to the man, hanging on every word as if her life depended on it.

"When I got there...the place was covered in blood." His face bent in horrid remembrance, but he continued to tell his tale to the two strangers, Jake, and Mrs. Beneth. "Those...people, they looked at me...like I was lunch." His lips began to pout and his eyes filled with tears. "There were like twenty of 'em, they faces was falling apart and they moved real slow. They was dead...I tell you right here as I stand under God. I shot at 'em with ma' gun, but it only pushed 'em back like a gust of wind."

A piercing-cold feeling crawled underneath Victor's skin as he realized how close Shelly and he had actually been to death. He thanked his instincts and vowed to listen to them more often in the future. Shelly grabbed Victor's hand and almost squeezed it right off. Still, in the back of his mind, Victor thought maybe Ted was exaggerating, but this was only his natural instinct from his brain to keep some sort of order and rational inside his head. Having all the physics and laws of life and death broken could result in a major withdrawal from all reality and eventual psychosis.

Jake's loud squeaky voice sent shivers up Shelly's spine as he yelled to the group, who were busy giving each other bizarre looks of confusion.

"Ted.....they're coming!"

Ted twisted his head around to see a group of six or seven of the attackers within reach of his shop. When Victor finally laid eyes on one close up, he knew Ted had not been exaggerating, these things were walking human corpses. They were dead, but they were walking right towards him. Their pale bodies were horribly disfigured, blood dripped from fresh wounds on some, while others looked like they had endured the final stages of decomposition. They slowly staggered their way towards the door, gaining a bigger following every step they took. Their teeth were yellow and bent, their eyes were deep in their sockets. Their skin was a discoloured yellowish-green, cracking, wrinkled flesh powered the lifeless creatures. A moan bellowed out from within their deepest bowls in a cacophony of hunger. They varied as much as any person did from each other except they all were unusually skinny. Some were nude and their genitals had grossly shrivelled, while others wore everyday common clothing, just dusty, stained in blood or torn.

Dead police officers walked around the diner, their eyes looking upwards in dull awareness. Dried blood stained their neatly pressed uniforms and their mouths remained wide open like one might do after severe brain damage. Their pistols dangled uselessly from their index finger, empty and obviously ineffective. One staggered by that had obviously met with one of Ted's shotgun blasts, as his chest was blasted wide open and burn marks encompassed the wound around the edges. It's shattered ribs and torn lungs could be seen, while half his face had been mutilated by bullets, and fleshy chunks hung from his face exposing the bare skull. To stare into their tranced, hollow eyes was to stare into the face of pure horror. The mere sight of their deformed skeletal faces made them shiver in uncontrollable terror and disgust.

Mrs. Beneth screamed as a fist came crashing through the store window across from them. The growls of the zombie were much louder as it tried to stick its head it the hole. The group scattered in fear. Shelly clung onto Victor as he stood paralysed with dread. Jake jumped back and hid in a corner, while Mrs. Beneth fainted and fell on the ground. Ted rushed over to the penetrated area. Taking aim with a smaller gun he had got from behind the counter, he unloaded the full nine rounds into the zombies arm and face. It pushed him far enough back that Ted could push over the magazine rack to block a big portion of the hole. There wasn't even time for him to enjoy his mini-victory, for the seven who had originally been on there case, began banging on the glass door. Shelly cried a sobering scream as Victor looked at the groaning fleshy carcasses with paralysing fear. His limbs stiffened up and froze at their very sight.

"It's okay Shelly. They aren't strong enough to break the plexi-glass."

Jake sprung to life and curled his lip in terror. "What the hell are they? What do they want?"

No one could answer him.

Victor looked over at the storeowner, "Hey!"

"The name's Ted." He replied

"Hey Ted, So what's the plan?"

Feeling an overwhelming sense of authority and drama, Ted began to thrive on the situation, while curious in its own way, it seemed to be beneficial to the group. Victor could tell Ted wouldn't lose his cool too easily.

"Well first we gotta' check the phones right. Then we gotta block as many weak spots in the glass with the shelves."

Victor looked confused and began to panic.

"Wait a second. You mean we're staying here? I'm not locking myself into this death trap, don't you have a car or something?

"Yeah. Do you wanna try and start it?" Ted pointed to the television monitors behind the counter.

Victor ran up, letting go of Shelly, and watched on the monitor as about four zombies encircled the man's car; Victor wasn't sure if it was just simple curiosity or if these zombies had some sort of plan.

"B'sides. I aint gonna let a couple of brain dead fucks, run me outta my own business. I been living here all m'life and I'm stayin' here and fight'n." There was strict determination and conviction in his voice, Victor knew it was pointless to argue. "Shoot. We got food, drinks, guns, protection, cameras...Hell we got everything we need to rough it out right here. Where you gonna drive to?"

Victor was surprised at how much sense the man made. After a moment of thought, he decided to formally introduce himself. "The name's Victor. This is my fiancé Shelly." He held out his hand and Shelly accepted it, holding it tenaciously. "I guess you're right, but we don't even know the situation yet, this could just be an isolated incident. Plus, who the hell knows how many of those things there are out there. Maybe the cops will come and this whole thing will be cleared up in no time."

"Were you listening to me? I said those things don't die. They already dead, so how's you gonna stop'em? It's gonna take a hell of a lot more than a few po-lice officers to stop these things." As he spoke he ran behind the counter to check the phone lines. The image of the dead officers seeped into Victor’s mind, saturating his hopes with doubt.

"Dead." He said holding the silent receiver to his head.

Their faces dropped even more. Again Jake sprang to life.

"Well are you sure it's dead?"

Ted looked at Jake with obvious knowledge of Jake's condescending remark. He spoke with appropriate tone. "I know what a dead phone sounds like." Jake looked away in helpless anger.

"Just bloody great! Hell, having the phones working would be too easy now wouldn't it." Victor said as he looked over to Shelly who had let go of him to help Mrs. Beneth wake up.

As if hit by a stroke of genius Ted ran over to the police scanner, unplugged the headphones and turned up the volume so everyone could hear.

"Unit four please respond. Unit four this is dispatch please acknowledge." The group held their breath for a response. The banging and moaning on the door faded into the background as they focus intently on the scanner.

Suddenly a voice broke the silence in a fit of panic "This is unit four. We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack. Several officers down, unknown numbers of perps. Issue a code red. Code red." The man's voice was distorted and muffled.

"Unit four please remain on the line I'm connecting you to the head office." The women's voice on the other end seemed calm and inhuman as the man pleated for back up.

"There's no time! They're everywhere, the whole goddamn town is infested with these things. Our guns are having no effect. I repeat, no effect. Send everyone you got down here right now, call the FBI for Christ sake. If we don't..." There was a loud 'clunk' noise as the police radio dropped and the man's voice seemed farther away. "Oh shit!" There were gunshots, then a scream, then a horrible sound of feasting, like a million rats eating one another. His scream lasted only a few seconds before the CB cut out, but those seconds were enough to stop the blood in every person listening.

"Unit four please respond." There was only dead air.

"Unit four please respond!" Sounding frustrated, the dispatcher tried other officers.

"Unit one come in, what is your current position? ...Unit one...." Nothing but fuzz.

"Unit two come in..." Fuzz.

"Unit three?" The women's voice was getting more nervous and finally showed signs of being human.

"Any unit please respond....Chuck? Dave? What's going on out there?" Victor and Ted looked up at each other with grim expression. "Hey..who are you? You can't...oh my God!!!!"

Quickly flipping off the radio, the large man fought back the tears for his companions. Suddenly anger rose in his body and his face went bright red. Shelly helped Mrs. Beneth up who screamed again at the site of the zombies pressed up against the door like sharks trying to free themselves from their aquarium.

Ted looked at Victor with vigilance, this is where the passiveness stopped. He reached underneath the counter and after a minute of thumps and bumps he reappeared with two new guns and a large hunting knife. Victor's jaw dropped in amazement and an uncanny feeling of hope filled his body like a jolt of electricity. Shelly almost dropped poor Mrs. Beneth at the sight the weapons. Finally, Jake too rejoined the group. With the forming of some solidarity and protection, the group's hope of survival was raised.

"Have either of you two ever handled a gun?"

Victor spoke with confident sarcasm.

"C'mon Ted, this is America. People are practically born with guns in their hands."

Shelly let out a small smile, as did Ted, but it was quickly washed away with the thumping of their hungry predators.

"Well alright then." The first, a long skinny rifle that had been kept in perfect condition, was given to Shelly; while the other was a beautiful silver colt python handgun, which he handed to Victor. "Ammo is under the counter, lock and load'em up." He pulled more shotgun shells from his jacket and loaded them into his gun while making his way over to Jake.

Jake was obvious in his disappointment about not getting a gun, and as he was handed the large knife he looked at it like he was being handed a soggy noodle for protection.

"Oh great. When one of those things comes near me I'll be sure to try and remember which end to stick in them." he said with cynicism dripping from his tone of voice. His comment went unacknowledged.

"Mrs. Beneth, you stay close with me, okay?" even though he was a large burly man, Ted seemed to have a very sensitive side to him. Putting his right arm around the old woman, he brought her behind the counter, with his gun laying limp in his other hand.

Just then another window was broken. The moans of the dead became louder again as another carcass tried to reach its way inside the building frantically. Shelly and Victor stood horrified. It was the corpse of a young girl, who had just recently been killed. A large bite mark tattooed her neck and looked badly infected as the skin directly surrounding it was black and bruised. Shelly's neck hurt just looking at the gapping wound. Her screams were higher pitched then most and rang in Shelly's head as if the cries of a girl trapped under a car tire. They were horrible. The dead girl's eyes had clouded over with a translucent green film that only served to further distance her appearance from human. She moaned in agonising pain, tirelessly swinging her bony arm like a pendulum and clawing at air with her fingers that looked more like blood stained knives. What really made Shelly cringe, was the girl's face. She appeared to have been quite pretty before her death, her once pouty lips were curled in anger and beard a mouthful of yellow-stained teeth. She looked no older than sixteen-years-old. The flesh on her face was wrinkled like she had lived a million lifetimes, and her sunken cheeks hugged the frame of her skull, defining it with horrible accuracy. Shelly broke from within Victor's realm of safety to closer examine the poor girl who met her untimely death in such a cruel way.

As if speaking to herself out loud, she proceeded to instinctively analyse the girl's medical condition. She spoke with scientific fascination and dread simultaneously. "The infected bite seems to be the source of her cannibalistic behaviour. Even though by definition cannibalism refers to a same-species relationship, and I'm not so sure these things are even human at all." She looked closer at the lifelessness in the girl's eyes. "It seems to be some sort of virus, resulting in reanimation of dead flesh. This...." She choked on her own words getting too excited at the medical find. "This...this is incredible."

Victor rushed over to Shelly who stood staring at the ghoul only inches away from its reach. "Why are they attacking us?"

"I don't know." She rubbed the sides of her head with her two forefingers, trying to ponder the possibilities. "Well, logically, they seem to be acting like a virus on a larger scale."

This comment caught the attention of Ted, who stood crouched over his monitors, watching the horde of zombies aimlessly walk the perimeter. He wondered how the rest of the town was doing and how many more of those creatures there were. He pried himself from the televisions and walked over to Shelly. "Whut's that mean?"

Shelly turned around finally, making eye contact with the whole group. "Virus', by nature, are parasites. They constantly reproduce themselves by attacking and feeding off of their hosts, which in our case is.....us. They're vultures. Leeches. They infect anything they see. I can't say for sure, but it looks like all this is the result of the virus' infectious nature. Look how skinny all the victims are. When a person is sick, it's normal for the human body to begin to consume it's own fatty-tissues in a last attempt at nourishment. That would explain their appearance. But this of course would only be a futile attempt by the body to fight off the virus. If I'm right about this......" Her jaw dropped as her brain laid out the entire details for her, "then....this virus is more deadly then anything we've ever seen."

The group stood dumbfounded at the analytical exactness of Shelly's more-than-plausible theory. She startled the group by jolting over to the other side of the store where the four zombies continued to bang in their transient state. Then she continued her examination with the overwhelming speed of a runaway Mack truck. Thoughts were flying into her head faster then she could spit them out. Her ecstatic speech continued at the front door, using the plexiglass as sort of a cage to examine the subjects safely.

"But...these ones over here...." she repeated herself, "..these ones over here...they don't seem to have any visible bite marks or scratches." The wheels in her head came to a grinding halt. "..And look how deformed they are. They've been mutated by some kind of gas, resulting in drastic radiation poisoning. Look at how their muscles tensed up and contorted, that's a normal reaction to certain types of gases. And..my god....that's it!!!" She placed her hand on her chest as if gasping for air. "That's it...of course..."

"What's it?" Asked Mrs. Beneth.

"Look at their clothes. They are all old and dusty. And look at the dirt under their fingernails. It's like they climbed right out from their own graves..." Suddenly the morbid truth of what was truly taking place struck her. Her skin seemed to want to leap right off from her body like icicles stuck down her back.

Shelly's answers flew over the group's head like a gust of wind. Victor grasped some of it, but needed a clearer answer. "So then, What you're saying....is that some kind of radiation made......"

Shelly finished his sentence for him. "...The dead....come back to life."

CHAPTER 5

"Try not t' shoot. r' else it'll attract more attention." Ted shouted at Victor who pointed his gun at the girl zombie who by now had attracted the attention of another of her kind.

Meanwhile, while the others were busy fighting, something caught the eye of Mrs. Beneth. Her eyes widened in disbelieve and her hands began to shake.

"Henry?" She questioned rhetorically to herself. "Is that my Henry? But...you can't be walking around." Her eyes glazed-over with a detached sense of reality, as she slowly crept up to the door looking right past the four undead, who banged at the door in frustration. Off in the near distance stumbled an old looking man whose skin had putrefied to a bruised-carcinogenic-yellow, and whose loosely clad burial suit slid down at his ankles exposing his bare, almost skeletal body. His fingers had been frozen in a painfully contorted manner, and his face had been deformed by the chemicals in the explosion. Despite his physically grotesque features, it was still Mrs. Beneth's dead husband of over sixty-five years. Her heart thumped to the point where she thought it was going to burst out from her chest. She could not believe what she was seeing. She called his name out, but the others were too busy at the other end of the store to notice. Slowly and eerily he twisted his neck around to face her from across the street, staring at her with eyes filled only with death. His eyes lit up with the prospect of consumption as he tried to stagger his nude body across the street, arms outstretched to keep balance.

By now yet a third zombie had joined the previous ones in hopes of trying to enter the small shop through the broken window (obviously the concept of physics seemed to escape them). Finally in a fit of rage Ted pointed his shotgun at one of the creatures. Victor, Jake and Shelly all took cover behind him as Ted squeezed the trigger, unloading a mess of bullets into it's deformed head. Pieces of the zombie's head flew everywhere accompanied by the appropriate innards of the human skull, but not before a small puff of green gas blew out from the opened head like yoke spilling from a cracked egg. Ted coughed as the gas surrounded his head like a swarm of flies and invaded his lungs with the unwillingness of a vicious raping. In his ever-resilient fashion, Ted shook off the initial gaseous attack and proceeded to destroy the other undead heathens in the same manner, this time however, he ducked away from the small cloud that eventually dispersed in a matter of seconds. No one mentioned the incident, least of all Ted, but everyone took note and the room became weighted with an overwhelming feeling of despair. Breathing in that gas couldn't have been good for him. Quickly Victor rejoined Ted, and together they pushed over the food shelf to cover the huge hole in the window. Cans of soup and boxes of macaroni and cheese spilled on the floor with little concern from the group.

The door clicked open as Mrs. Beneth turned the lock on the front door with her arthritis plagued hands. There was absolutely no concern for the four monsters that excitedly awaited the door to open, leaning flat against the door, fists pounding, and drooling down the front. Her eyes were set focussed on Henry, she still could not believe it. Her Henry could never be one of those people. He would come and scoop her up into his strong arms and protect her from everything. His fuzzy grey beard would tickle her lips as he kissed her like he had on their wedding night. Such passion, such conviction, such love; no one could ever take those memories away, and now, maybe she would have a few more with him.

"God has sent you back to me." she said to herself as the doors flung open with a loud crash.

Ted looked back first, followed by the others. They could not believe their eyes. Mrs. Beneth had let in four more zombies. The pure look of enigma and disbelief washed over the group who desperately tried to rationalize the old woman's disturbing behaviour. Victor leaped over to the other side of the store, pushing Jake out of the way who stood ready with his knife, but it was too late.

Spilling into the store, the dead bodies fell flat on their faces. Mrs. Beneth saw her opportunity and one leg after the other, climbed over the impaired zombies, free from her "convenience" confinement. One particularly fragile zombie's head smashed open like a broken jar of spaghetti sauce. The green gas clouded up then dissipated as little spiders and creepy crawlers slithered out of the decapitated body and off into the corners of the store. That left three more who were not so old, and not so fragile.

Outside was a war zone. Cars were bent around poles, drivers heeled over the steering wheels or some sat trying to free themselves from their fatal crash in order to walk among the other dead. Buildings had been broken into, and shattered glass paved the ground. Gunshots could be heard off in the distance, but the horrible screams of the dying and the dead, muffled them into mere "poofs". The dead's moans seemed to come from every direction. The diner was completely deserted of life; sounds of footsteps on broken glass, and moving shadows were the only things that stirred within it. To the left of Ted's shop there was a run down gas station that had been abandoned right from the beginning of the epidemic. A few scattered dead walk aimlessly in their unbalanced gait. Some dragged their legs across the dirt road like they no longer worked, others arms were bent clutching their chest, stuck into place by rigour-mortis Others still, walked with surprising ease, yet they had most likely recently been reanimated so their motor skills had not failed them. The town had been destroyed in a matter of minutes. The eerie stillness was contrasted only by the slow monotonous footsteps of the dead. Signs swung in the wind creaking like in old western movies at high noon.

Mrs. Beneth walked towards her dead husband Henry, tearing from the utopian feeling of being reunited with her lost love. As she approached the dead man other zombies began to stir and take notice. Shuffles in the dirt became louder, like rats coming out for a midnight frenzy. Blood chilling moans of arousal encompassed the area. Mrs. Beneth paid no attention to anything but Henry. His beard was a lot longer than she remember it being. Frothy drool was stuck all over it and dripping from his mouth like a rabid dog.

Inside, Victor ran to the TV monitors to examine the perimeter outside and by now all three zombies had been destroyed and the front doors relocked. Victor's palms turned clammy, his head got ice-cold as the blood rushed from it. His jaw dropped in unspeakable dread. Jake and Shelly turned to look at him.

"What is it mister?" Asked Jake with a squeak in his voice. Shelly was just about to ask that question also.

He said nothing, only continued to watch the monitors with eyes wide open and jaw unhinged.

"Victor!" Shelly yelled. Finally he snapped from his daze and looked at the two. "What is it Victor? More?"

What he said next was burned into Shelly's mind forever. Victor spoke with all hope lost in his voice, tears ran down his cheek from the sides of his eyes. Shelly's heart sank into her feet, her stomach turned, and an unspeakable fear stabbed her vocal chords, almost choking her as she listened.

"They're coming right for us." He paused then raised his voice, "she's leading them straight to us!"

"How many?" Asked Ted who was busy trying to secure the other windows with his shelves, but had overheard.

"There....there's hundreds of them. They're everywhere. My God, they're fucking everywhere!"

Ted immediately dropped what he was doing and ran over to see. The screens were filled with zombies of all shapes and sizes. They were everywhere, coming out like ants in hiding; teeth bared and ready to kill. Like starving animals forced to fight for their food they came staggering from all sides, flooding the black and white monitors with grotesque glimpses of rotting bodies and faces that seemed eerily inhuman. They understood nothing but death. A little microscopic virus used the human dead body as its vessel of existence. It did not care about a mother taking a bite out of her own child. Nor did it care about a recently graduated doctor being torn limb from limb by a horde of bloodthirsty cadavers. It only knew how to do one thing: exist.

The sun was beginning to set and soon it would be dark; now was time for action. Mrs. Beneth’s scream cut through the group like sheers. They watched using the cameras for eyes as she was bitten by her husband’s corpse. His eyes seemed to light up hauntingly with glee as he gnawed at her neck.

Ted looked away, then slowly walked away and continued reinforcing the windows. As he pushed another shelf over a window his pants almost fell down. He looked at himself using the beverage fridge as a mirror. He had lost several inches from his body. His arms looked skinnier, weaker. His face seemed longer and more slender. He tightening up his belt and set through the last notch in it. He had never in his life had to use the last notch of any belt. A rush of numbing fear ran through his aching body. He was becoming one of them. He pictured himself walking dead around in a trance, blood dripping from his mouth and his eyes covered in a green film; the very thought made him nauseous. He was determined to beat this thing. No little bug was going to get the better of him.

Pulling up his pants once more he continued to push the shelf but with no avail. He could feel the strength draining from his body, as if weak from hunger. Taking another deep breath he tried to move the shelf again, but still he could not do it. Jake ran over and helped him, and together they pushed another shelf over to block a window. Most of the windows had been barricaded, with all the interruptions and uncertainty, not much work had been accomplished. The group was down to four. Jake seemed to grip the situation fairly well now that the immediate danger had subsided. The thought of his parents never even crossed his mind, until he moved the second magazine shelf and noticed a picture of a family on one of the covers. Ted comforted the distraught boy as Victor stood behind the counter, still looking at the rotting horde of dead walking past the cameras.

"Ted!" Victor said from across the room.

He pulled his head up from his intimate discussion with Jake to answer. "Yeah Vic?"

"We better do something. Fast! They're surrounding the whole god damn building." Victor's voice was in a panic. His idiosyncratic calm-voice was no more, Shelly was becoming just as petrified and numb as Jake. Pounding on the walls around them confirmed the urgency of the situation as if the very foundation were crumbling to the ground. Glass trinkets behind the counter began falling off the shelf like an earthquake was hitting. The rumbling of hundreds of bodies scratching and clawing at the building separated by only four thin walls forced the group to meet up in the centre of the store, desperate, and with no place to hide.

Windows broke around them, sending a myriad of glass shooting towards them. Only half the windows in the shop remained unprotected, and they were about to break. Their defences had been penetrated and they were grossly outnumbered with little protection. All the food and protection the convenience store had once offered was useless. They could no longer stay in the building. The dead could smell their living bodies. As they huddled around one another, the window barricades rocked back and forth and arms shot out from the sides, trying with what little strength they had, to push them over. It would only be a matter of timing before their numbers eventually pushed them right through the very walls. Shelly raised her voice over the loud chaotic thrashings of the dead.

"We've got to get out of here! Its no use staying, they know we're here now!"

"We need a plan, and we need one fast." Victor yelled as the noise continued to get louder and louder, pushing the human boundaries of endurance.

Jake's mind was about to snap: the insane banging outside the walls, the loud growls that grew louder every second as more and more corpses pressed their decaying bodies against the cracking windows; it was too much to take. Without a word he swiped the gun from Victor's hand and pointed it at his own head, taking small desperate steps backwards from the group. The sound of more shattered glass froze Ted in horror. The backroom. He had forgot to lock the backroom door. How on earth could he have been so stupid? He tried to make excuses to himself but it made no difference now. The lights began to flicker and in one quick moment, they were out. The sun had almost settled and the red sky still gave sufficient light, but soon it would be pitch black out, with only the green incandescent eyes of the dead piercing through the thick wall of darkness.

Ted tried to talk some sense into the boy who had become a nervous wreck in a split second. "Jake! Listen to me boy. You can't kill ya' self. That aint gonna stop these things from getting ya!"

"Yeah, well at least I won't have to feel it when they...." he sobbed as he spoke, "..they...eat me!" Tears poured down the boy's burning red cheeks as he pulled back on the hammer of the gun.

Shelly stepped in the conversation and opened her arms in a welcoming gesture like hostage negotiators do to try and calm the victim down. In her 'doctor' tone of voice she explained the reality of the situation to him as quickly as possible.

"Listen Jake. When those things get in here and find you lying dead, they're still going to infect you, and then, who knows what you'll be feeling. You'll wake up from the dead and walk around like them." She stopped and let the gravity of her words sink in. "Do you want to be one of them Jake? Do you?"

The frantic boy nervously panned his eyes back and forth across the room. The two men stood silently watching him. Time was running short. The back door flung open and standing in the orange light of the setting sun was Mrs. Beneth's dead body. The flesh on her neck had been torn away and the dried spray of blood stained her deformed face; bite marks could still be made out. Her left foot stood crooked as she staggered onwards toward the group, followed closely behind by her husband Henry and a few other dead townsfolk. To their right, bodies began flooding into the broken windows like water on a sinking ship. Still, Jake contemplated taking his own life. Shelly aimed her gun, closing her eyes and squeezing the trigger, she shot at Mrs. Beneth's corpse to try and buy them more time. The bullet shattered her right cheek, but resiliently she continued to limp towards the group, unphased by the fatal wound she had just received. The ineffectiveness of Shelly's attack stunned her in a frozen state of fear. For the first time since the whole thing began, she actually realized her own mortality. This could be the place she would die in. The "fight" in her wasn't going to let her go, but her rational mind nagged her with images of her own death. She looked at Victor for comfort, but he too, was well aware of the potential countdown of his existence. The only thing left to do was fight. Her body ached and her muscles seemed knotted like a rope. Her body longed to just fall on the floor and give up, but she would not be won that easily. The time for action was upon them. No hesitation was possible if they were going to survive this nightmare.

More zombies filtered in from the left like bags of rotted fruit, splatting on the floor, then slowly getting up again, exhaling a dull moan. Victor saw his chance and grabbed the gun from Jake's hands with one quick swipe. The boy was stunned, but the luxury of time was something he didn't have to contemplate the situation. The horde slowly encompassed the group, forcing them to back into the front corner. Shots were fired by all three adults at the few that had enter from the front windows. Bullets flew through the air making contact in a dead nurses' stomach, and one hitting a bottle of lighter fluid that lay on the shelf behind her. In a tiny explosion worthy of a Rambo movie, flames engulfed the dead like a shower of napalm. A horrible noise came from them, a noise that the group of four survivors had never heard before; the noise was a scream of pain. The ear-piercing shriek echoed through the dusk sky like a wonderful trumpet of victory. Similar to the shrieks of animals in wildlife, the other zombies backed away from the fire as if cringing away from their nemesis. This cleared a path straight out the front door and it was now or never. A small plan was formed, and the group quickly made their way towards the door, avoiding the few zombies that continued to screech in pain, though they still tried to claw even in their blindness, blazed in a coat of fire. The stench was horrid. Every fibre in the group's beings cringed in morbid revulsion as clouds upon clouds of thick black smoke encompassed them, smelling of burning flesh and stinging their eyes.

Fumbling through the blackness of the clouds Ted smacked flat into something. The door was still locked, he felt for the key and finally unlocked the door, shouting back to the group, "okay! This is it! When ya get outside keeping on moving. Don't stop! They're gonna be everywhere!"

The door flung open. Ted was forced back into the group as more zombies fell obliviously to the ground, cracking some of their skulls. Holding their breath the group used the incapacitated carcasses as steps and quickly stepped out into the dusk-lit fresh air. Gasping for breath Shelly leaned on Victor for support. Her legs were giving way as exhaustion plagued her like two-ton weights tied to her appendages. Her hair frizzed in font of her eyes from the smoggy air, almost blinding her. Jake followed quickly behind her, desperately clutching Shelly's shirt like a blindman to a seeing-eye-dog.

Outside, the smoke from the shop blew off with the wind, restoring the group's visibility. As they continued to steadily jog away from the store, Ted looked back one last time as he left his old life behind. He was horrified to actually see the amount of zombies that surrounded his shop. Their numbers were in the hundreds, all banging on the walls that obstructed their path. Like monkeys who desperately try to crack nuts when all they had to do was use a rock, these disease infested human-shells only tried to destroy their obstacles instead of getting around it.

Images zoomed by Victor's vision, disorienting him with a blur of pictures. flashes of Shelly. Flashes of dead bodies. Flashes of smoke. It happened all too fast, his brain could no longer keep up with his eyes. As Ted continued to briskly walk away from the shop, his mind froze up. Like a jolt of electricity, an unexplainable fear shot through him as he forgot his own name, where he was going, what he was doing, and who he was with. Jake ran beside Shelly now and huddled close with the group as they dogged the scattered bodies of the walking dead. Most of the zombies in the area had converged around the shop in hopes of living victims.

After a few minutes of brisk jogging and dodging the dead's slow advances, the group had finally spaced themselves and had wandered into a part of town where little activity was present. The town was in shambles, windows were broke, doors flung open and shut in the wind, bodies littered the dirt streets like newspapers, most, awaiting the reanimation process. The empty calls of the human dead cried out like pleas of forgiveness to God himself. Poor aimless bodies, perhaps envious and jealous by what the living had. They were soulless shells. Forced to walk the face of the earth forever. The people they had once been were not the people they were now; they were not even people. Dull, lifeless, mere animated flesh, but perhaps they held the weapon that mankind did not: unity. They worked as one towards a common goal and were effective in achieving it. Maybe those researchers had reawakened a micro-organism that had laid dormant for thousands of billions of years. It had outlived the dinosaurs and it would outlive the humans, even though the term "outlive" was a paradox.

The group blindly rounded a corner and there standing in front of them like an angelic symbol of hope, was a police cruiser with its lights on and still running. The red and blue lights danced around the small gathering of old buildings making it feel more like a dream then reality. No zombies lurked about which made the group feel uneasy. There was a stagnant period of uncanny stillness that had not been felt since the entire incident began. Nothing was happening. As they approached the car they examined their situation. Jake was the first to speak.

"Where is everyone?"

"Maybe there is nobody." Victor spoke with pessimism as he scuffled along the dirt road regrouping with the rest who had stopped to rest.

Jake looked at Ted for some positive reaction, but Ted only looked down in sad agreement. By now Ted's body had become noticeably thin and his face drooped in malignantly pale sorrow. His once active and positive attitude was being crushed by the parasite that lurked in his body somewhere. It would even be suffice to say his human soul was being devoured. At that very moment all his bodies white blood cells were desperately trying to fend off the invincible virus that spread itself with every heartbeat.

Shelly dropped on the dusty ground in a wondrous feeling of rest. A smile crept on her dirty face as her tired body seemed to turn to stone and lay still trying to rejuvenate itself. Her ears tuned out the conversation as her mind soaked up the utopian state of pause. Jake spoke again with increasing volume and hysterics in his voice.

"What do you mean? How could we be the only people left? What about Chris? Amy? My parents? Somebody's got to be here!" He paused for a moment, walking out from the circle of people and scanning the residential windows above the shops for any sign of life, and before Victor could even begin to explain the rapidity of the disease, Jake was yelling at the top of his lungs for anyone who could hear his high-pitched, mid-pubescent, squealing voice.

"Is anyone out there? Please! Answer Me!" He had lost control yet again. His screams echoed through the empty streets like cannon shots, seeming to shake the very windows of the surrounding shops. His shout for help seemed almost deafening to Victor who covered his ears in unprepared reaction. Every single hair on his body stood on end, as if someone had run their nails down a chalkboard. He screamed and covered his ears in a futile attempt to make the noise stop. Ted reacted within a second, grabbing the boy, whirling him around and covering his burning red mouth.

"What the hell's thu' matter with you? When he said nobodies here he meant everyone probably left town! Yellin' like that s'only gonna give us away!" He tried to control his raging anger, he knew all too well that Jake had done what the rest of the group had only felt like doing. He was scared, alone, and tired. A bitter taste salivated into the sick man's mouth. He fought the tears back as he spoke to Jake for he knew that chances were, that very few got out alive. For a moment there was only the howl of the chilling wind carrying the death moans of the walking dead in the distance could be heard. Shelly and Victor held each other on the dirt ground while Jake and Ted looked through each other with the knowledge of the others feelings. There was no movement for what seemed like a lifetime. The creaking of the old buildings ominously mimicked the stillness of a cemetery, calling attention to the actual deafening silence that emanated from the once fully alive town. Shelly and Victor touched heads with one another, speaking softly to one another, sharing their feelings for one another as if it were the last chance they would get to do it.

A sharp opaque moan shot through the silence. All four survivors stood together, facing the direction of the sound. To their horror, another moan similar to the previous, tore the stillness like a piece of paper. More and more growls, moans, screams, and whimpers filled the night air with the symphony of the dead. Footsteps pounded like thunder, drumming on the ground like a tremor and stirring the dust that similarly lay still once. The storm of living dead dragged, stepped, and stumbled their way around the corner to come face to face with the group of four that had alluded them. They became noticeably excited when they spotted the four huddled together like a neat package. Gripping tension held Shelly speechless and evidently everyone else as well. Without so much as a word the group ran for the police cruiser. The gap between the dead and the living was no more than mere feet. Shelly ran for the steering wheel instinctively and Ted nor Victor had the time to argue with her and Jake hopped in the passenger side. Ted clumsily plunged himself into the backseat along with Victor. No sooner had Shelly’s shaking hands felt for the shift-stick, did the horde of zombies engulf the car within their masses of rotting flesh and bone.

Jake’s fears were unprecedented, the young boy feared never seeing another birthday again. His mind raced through images of happier times. He desperately tried not to look right into the eyes of the dead, their ghastly images burned themselves into his memory. The way they looked at him with anger and frustration, the way they tried with all their power to grab one single chunk of flesh from him. Their loud bangs and thumps came from every section of the car. The car began to shake violently within the rowdy crowd. Every single window in the car was plastered with a virtual collage of dead faces all peering in at the four. Shelly could feel their cold lifeless green eyes penetrating inside of her, violating her very being like one thousand sick perverts all leering at her naked flesh. She wrapped her arms around her chest in a failed sense of security and yelled for Victor at the top of her lungs.

Victor lunged forward, trying to keep his balance as the car shook more violently to the point where it was almost about to flip over. Once enough momentum was built up the car would flip over, shattering the windows and leaving the group helplessly hanging upside-down like targets for the dead to reach in and pull them apart piece by bloody piece. Victor clawed at the steel cage that separated the front seats from the back ones.

"Shelly for god sakes move the car!" He yelled at her with no emotion in voice other than dread. His soothing voice would do no good in the situation.

Shelly turned around with eyes wide open as if just waking up from a nightmare, but she could only be so lucky. In the back of the car, Ted’s vision was fading rapidly as if by the second. His body felt cold, numb and clammy. His breathes became quicker as the very skin around his chest seemed to tighten around itself. He could feel death begin to seep into his veins like morphine. Suddenly, his limbs jolted without his control, spasmodically jerking like electricity surged through his weakened body. No sooner had this happened did a seething horde of contorted hands smash through the right rear window next to Victor, forcing him to lean next to Ted to avoid their claws. The smell of rotting bodies wafted through the police cruiser like a thick fog. Jake screamed as the army of rotting arms smacked against the steel cage in anger. Noises more ferocious than any wild creature came from within their throats, trying in whatever way they could to express their frustration verbally.

Finally Ted’s body relaxed and seemed almost lifeless, as if the very blood that ran though his body had been drained, or replaced by something far more internecine. Shelly put the car in drive and step harshly on the pedal trying with her shaking hands to plow through the veritable barricade of walking dead bodies. With only the aid of the cruiser’s headlights, the group drove out of the town into unknown vast wastelands. Who knew how many of those things there were or what exactly they were. Finally there was a moment of peace among the group as the slow monotones hum of the road soothed their aching tired bodies. Victor looked to Ted with a smile as the tired man slept soundly. Shelly stared at the road in front of her with blank expression, trying to make sense of everything she had just been through. Jake sunk back in his chair looking up at the night sky, thinking of his mother and father. As the road began to clear and less and less buildings could be seen the group finally for the first time, felt safe.

A bright green glow shined from within the cruiser.