Noah opened his eyes to find himself staring up at the mattress of the top bunk. It was dark, except for the flickering light of burning fires outside.

And then he realized where he was.

He was back in jail.

Back in his little jail cell; laying on that same little bottom bunk he’d spent the past eight years.

He slowly pulled his self up until he was sitting on the edge of his bunk. On instinct he felt around under his mattress until he found the ragged pack of cigarettes that he kept between the mattress and the frame.

“Ain’t that something.” He heard a voice. “The world is crumbling all around you, and you’re hear sleeping your life away.”

Noah looked up to see a silhouetted figure standing at the opened door of his cell. He couldn’t see the man’s face at first, because of the bright glare of the fires behind him.

Noah wasn’t phased. He lit up a cigarette.

“What’s the world have to do with me?” he said, after a long drag. “I’m on my third strike. This room is my world.”

The man walked further into the cell, pulling out a pocket watch. “It’s funny. Everyone I visit usually takes me to a place they remember being happy. Someplace in their mind they retreat to when the real world gets too crazy.” The man smiled. “Sometimes it’s a park, or the beach, whatever.. But you. You bring us here. Jail.”

Noah chuckled. “Dude, I’ve been in and out of jail and juvi since I was a pre-teen.” He looked up at the man. “This is my happy place..”

And that’s when he saw it.

“Billy Dee?”

“No. But I get that a lot.” The man said smiling. “But I guess you can call me Bill.”

“That’s fucked up.” Noah laid back down. “Would’a been cool if Lando came to visit me.”

Bill laughed, in his Billy Dee Williams voice.

“Time’s running out, Mr. Peck.” He said. “I understand you feel like giving up. But too many lives depend on you and Sydney getting to move.”

The mention of Sydney sobers him up.

Bill continued. “You two need to stop pussy footin’. You need to head south. You have a couple days at the most before…”

“Before what?”

Bill leaned in close to Noah.

“Before this world reaches the point of no return.”

Noah’s mind began to clear. Her could hear the sounds of rioting in the Correctional Faciliy. Outside, thick patches of smoke filled the outside courtyard, with flamin pieces of paper and clothing floating by like caught on the wind.

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Noah said without looking at his visitor.

“Yes. Unfortunately it’s the only way I can contact you. This is definitely a dream, Mr. Peck. But it is also real.”

Noah looked up and saw Bill looking nervously at his watch.

“Things are happening. Things have been put into motion. You’re world is under attack. It’s being altered so that others can claim it.”

“Others who?”

Bill leaned in close. “Others who are not like you.”

The look in Bill’s eyes chilled Noah to the bone. Somehow, he could tell this.. Bill was not human.

“Who?”

<< Chapter 9   |   Chapter 11 >>

Lieutenant Clarence Tate lead his team of four out of Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, and out onto the streets of San Francisco. The retrieval transport that was scheduled to rescue them from the hospital never arrived.

They found it two blocks away at the corner of Jones and Sutter Street. The large gunmetal black van had been caught in the intersection, blocked three ways by a mass of abandoned cars. He speculated that when the transport came to this position, they probably got trapped by a horde following them. There were no roaming corpses in the area. The soldiers from the transport must’ve abandoned the vehicle and fled for their lives, with their monsters in pursuit.

After a few minutes of reconnaissance, he ordered everyone forward. They continued to move east on Sutter Street, which seemed to be the only route with no enemy presence. Their journey was trouble-free until they reached Grant Street. Ahead of them, Kearny Street was crawling with corpses who seem to have found a meal. Tate was hoping it wasn’t the Retrieval Team.

The only direction they had was to head south, down Grant Avenue. The journey was uneventful, until they reached the 3-way intersection of Grant, O’Farrell and Market Street.

Just as they arrived, Tate caught multiple movements just ahead. Using military hand instructions, he ordered his group to stop and hide. All five of them crouched behind a smoldering Mercedes S-Class 10 yards from the intersection.

Officer Hanna Johnson, an unusually tall Black woman positioned herself next to Tate.

“What do you see?” she whispered.

“Multiples at the intersection.” He unshouldered his P90 sub machine rifle. “I count four. Get the boys in position.”

Without another word, Hanna nodded and then signaled Officer Milwaukee an Officer Scott to find attack positions.

They both carefully and quietly moved out in opposite directions and found good line-of-sights for their targets. Once the three of them were in position, they looked back at Tate for the next call.

Ivana was amazed at the organized operation of signals and coordinated movements.

It was quiet.

Insanely quiet.

Back when the world was normal, you took for granted all the sounds of the city. Even at it’s quietest with no one around, there still was a good amount of background noise in the world. Now, there was nothing. You could hear the people next to you lightly breathing. You could hear the wind blowing trash as far as a block down the street.

Tate took another look out at their targets. The four corpses hadn’t moved. They stood scattered in-between the big traffic jam at the 3 way corner; 3 women and a small boy. He used finger gestures with each of his officers to designate their specific targets. One at a time, they nodded and opened their scopes on the head of their corpse.

While the officers set up their attack, Dr. Ivana couldn’t help but study the dead things in their unnatural habitat. All four stood slightly swaying with blank looks on their faces. It was the same look she saw from the drunks the Police use to deliver to the ER. She took mental notes on a few things. She wondered why they didn’t attack each other. She concluded their must be some type of recognition; maybe smell or body heat registration. They didn’t seem to have any higher brain functions. They didn’t use weapons. They didn’t know how to use door handles, or operate any type of complicated machinery. She knew she would need to study them more. That would require obtaining an active specimen to run tests on.

Dr. Creed came out of her thoughts just as Tate started a silent countdown with his fingers. When he reached 2, the four of them quickly rose to their feet in unison and each fired a silenced shot at their targets. All four of the corpses jerked at the same time when the bullets cracked open their skulls. The bodies fell to the ground with what seemed like giant thuds in the silent wind. The four soldiers quickly crouched down once again, just in case the noise brought more walkers to the intersection.

After a minute, Tate gestured for his team to move forward toward the intersection. The each reformed a tight group and quickly moved through the maze of automobiles. Their diamond formation was primarily to protect Ivana Creed. Tate took the front position, while Hanna brought up the rear, making sure they weren’t being followed. Officers Milwaukee and Scott were positioned on either side, with the Doctor at the center of the group. Earlier on, Tate had given her a gun; a pristine subcompact Glock G29. She held it in her sweaty left hand, but kept the safety enabled.

As they reached the intersection they they turned to head east on Market Street. With the others occupied, checking the targets they just shot up close, Ivana was the first to see them. She looked down the street in the direction they were traveling, and nearly felt her heart explode in her chest.

Officer Hanna Johnson was to first to hear the doctor’s gasp. She swung her P90 up from the corpse at her feet, in the direction the Doctor was facing and caught the frightening wall of silent corpses twenty yards away. The others followed suit just as the first corpse opened his mouth and let out a deafening wale.

“Run!” Tate yelled, yanking Ivana by the shoulder and pulling her west down Market Street. He could hear the sound of his team’s boots hitting the asphalt hard and the clamoring of the assault rifles as they weaved their way through the mass of cars. The sound of hellish moans increased as the mass of undead all slowly pushed their way after them.

Tate knew this was bad. He knew the dinner bell cry would carry like loudspeakers through the silent city and bring any and all walkers their way.

“We have to get out of their line of site!” he shouted to his team, as he turned north at the next street.

Those were the words the group heard Tate say as he raced around the corner and out of site. He had run ahead of the team, while the other three kept their cadence at a speed that Ivana could keep up with.

As the rest of the team raced around the corner, they nearly ran into a frozen Clearance Tate standing in the middle of the street. Ahead of them, was another wall of lumbering corpses coming directly at them. It was apparent the waling had started a tsunami of walking dead coming from all directions.

They all turned to retreat in the opposite direction when Tate heard Officer Scott call out.

“Sir!” he called to Tate, who had already reached the intersection.

Take looked back to see Officer Scott heading for the nearby subway entrance. The big Bay Area Rapid Transit logo had an arrow pointing down toward a stairwell. The others stopped and looked at Tate for orders.

The Lieutenant had to think fast. He wasn’t knowledgable about San Francisco. He had only been stationed there for a few weeks. If they went for the stairs and it led to a dead end, then they’d be done. But they couldn’t stay on the open streets. It was almost certain that corpses from all directions were heading their way.

“Fuck it! We go mass transit!” he ordered, pointing to the BART entrance.

Tate didn’t notice how close the first horde had gotten. It was the smell that woke him up. He turned to see a couple pair of arms almost at his neck.

“Shit!”. He started to peddle backwards. He tried to ready his gun, but his shoulder strap had gotten tangled with his elbow.

He fell on his ass.

That’s when he heard the sound of rifles with silencers firing from behind. The three corpses that were on him, jerked backwards and fell. He turned to see Scott and Milwaukee firing into the crowd. He staggered to his feet.

Officer Hanna Johnson was the first to descend the stairs toward the train station. As her feet shuffled down the steps, she noticed that she couldn’t see the bottom of the stairway. They led to total blackness. As she flipped on the flashlight on her P90, her right foot stubbed something soft. It sent her flying and falling into the darkness.

Ivana was right behind her, and saw the amputated leg on the steps that Hanna had tripped over. She saw the officer fly forward and twist into the darkness.

Hanna was dazed. She had hit the bottom of the stairs, head and left shoulder first. On instinct, she tried to tuck and roll. She was partially successful, as her body tumbled across the floor in the darkness, until she hit the wall. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was or what was happening. It was almost like her brain needed to reboot.

“Help!” she heard coming from a slight distance. The sound of Dr. Creed’s frantic cry woke her up, just as the moldy touch of rancid arms started to crawl across her body. The smell was unbearable. Moans and chattering teeth were all around her.

She started to flail uncontrollably. She felt something bite down on her calf, and panicked. She kicked violently and felt a skull implode inward around her boot heel.

“Their biting me! Their biting me!!!” she hysterically cried out, pushing herself along the floor away from the moans.

Suddenly, the darkness around her was filled with flickering red and white light. The the road flair came soaring from the top of the steps from Tate’s hand. It bounced of the back wall back wall of the stairwell and fell at the feet of the three walking corpses, and the one crawling corpse that had been feeling around for Hanna in the darkness.

Before her eyes could adjust to new light, Tate’s controlled bursts of gunfire ripped into the three walkers, knocking them silly and falling lifeless to the floor. Hanna pulled her sidearm and double-tapped two shots into the crawler moments later.

Milwaukee and Scott had made it to the the top of the steps, constantly firing shots into the two oncoming hordes, as Tate and Dr. Creed reached Hanna at the bottom of the steps.

“You Ok?” The Lieutenant asked.

“Fucker bit me!!” she hysterically yelled.

As the road flare started to die down, Ivana grabbed the tactical flashlight out of Tate’s belt and shined on Hanna’s leg to examine the wound.

She let out an encouraging sigh.

“Looks like there’s no damage. It didn’t get through your clothes.”

At the top of the stairs, Officer Milwaukee exhausted the second-to-last ammo magazine and let his P90 fall to his side.

“This is pointless.” He yelled.

The approaching hordes were only 5-10 yards away. He scanned all around until he looked up and saw the reinforced steel gate used to lock down the train station at night.

“Danny, help!” he yelled as he jumped up and grabbed the rolling gate. It started to slowly roll downward.

Officer Scott. Lowered his gun and helped.

With the two of them helping, the gate came thundering down and locked into clamps that were drilled into the asphalt sidewalk. The two officers managed to close the 4 attached Master Locks into place just as fingers started to reach through the gate at them. The gate gave a little movement space inward, but the two officers had already made their way down the steps to the others.

“That’ll hold ‘em.” Milwaukee said. “But at the same time, we don’t have the combo’s for those locks so we’re trapped.”

To the right of the stairwell, was yet another set up stairs and a parallel escalator leading down into the subway station.

“You good to walk on you’re own?” Tate asked Hanna, who braced against the wall and pulled herself up.

“Yeah, I’m good.” She replied. “Sorry. I lost it there, for a moment.”

Tate gathered himself and tried to focus on their next move, while the moans and smells of the undead came from upstairs. The road downward was going to be a lot more dangerous then the streets. They were going to have to journey down into the BART station; a darkened, confined space. There was no telling if there were ten walkers or a thousand down there.

“Alright fellas. Let’s get back in the game.” Tate pulled another a couple more road flares from his belt. “We’re going down in a diamond. Protect the Doctor. When we get down there, if it moves, clip it in the head, and keep moving.”

The two flares sprang to life and Tate tossed them down into the blackness. They all watched as the two flare stick bounced their way twenty yards down into the station. Right off, they could see three walking corpses slowly shuffling nowhere.

“Alright people, let’s move.”

The four officers raised their P90 Assault Rifles and quickly started to downward and into the station. The flickering red luminance of the burning flares lit up the undead targets like it was daylight. Immediately, the sounds of compressed rifle shots went off around Doctor Creed. Moments later, the three walkers ahead of them fell lifelessly to the floor.

The group moved deep into the station, revealing another darkened corridor to their right. More flares were tossed into the darkness. This time, there weren’t any other enemies. They made their way deeper into the station until they discovered mass of escalators and stairwells heading both upward and downward.

Officer Scott and Milwaukee found the transportation maps on the wall nearby. They both shined their flashlight on the large, intricate system map, while Tate And Hanna kept their eyes open for any movement in the area.

“Okay, we’re looking at the BART trains downstairs and the MUNI trains upstairs.” Officer Scott called out.

“We need to head west.” Tate said. “There’s a shopping center, somewhere. We got about an hour of daylight left.”

“The Westfield Mall looks like it’s the next BART station over. The station looks like it’s connect directly to the mall. A quick trip in the tunnel, and we should get there, no problem.”

Dr. Ivana grew even more nervous. “You mean we gotta go in to the tunnels?”

“That’s the plan. We move or die.”

<< Chapter 8 | Chapter 10 >>

Everything went black, yet she was still conscious. She still couldn’t breathe. The callused hand was still gripping for mouth and nose tight. She grabbed at the hand and started to flail her legs violently.

“Will you stop that shit!” the hot breath of a loud whisper pressed right against her ear.

The words startled her. She opened her eyes, to find herself in a strange place. It was a small room, dimly lit, due to the drawn blinds. She was positioned between two large desks, which had been pulled together at the edges like some type of ‘desk fort’. It must been an office.

“You need to be quiet!” the hot breath whispered again.

She listened to the voice. The moment she stopped flailing, the death grip on her mouth and nose loosened and slid away. Air filled her lungs, she gasped for breath. She looked up and behind her to see a familiar face staring back.

And with that, the cloudiness began the clear away from her mind. She knew where she was and what was happening.

Noah.. murderer.. the dead.. danger..

Noah pressed his finger to his lips, just like Bill did that last moment in her dream.

“Shhhhh. They’ll hear you.” his eyes left her and looked off in front of them.

Sydney followed his line of sight.

Out, past their ‘desk fort’, through the doorway and into the hallway, three animated corpses staggered back and forth.

One of them was a large Black man. He must’ve weighed close to 300 lbs. before his stomach was gutted. Now, you would see all the way through to his spine, which somehow was supporting his big girth. The other was a corpse so decayed and eroded, they couldn’t tell what it use to be.

“How’d they get in?” she whispered back to her partner, not taking her eyes off of the enemy.

Noah slowly push himself way from her to get some maneuvering room. “Through the front window. The crash woke me up.”

‘Time to go.’ she thought, pulling herself up and scanning the room.

She watched Noah sling the large weapons bag over his shoulder. He signed to her that they’d have to go out the window in the bathroom to their left. She nodded in agreement and slowly rose to her feet, trying to not draw any attention from the corpses just outside in the hall.

Noah lightly stepped into the bathtub and slowly opened the large glass window and peeped outside. The window led out into a small narrow alleyway littered with a few abandoned cars and rows of trash cans. Scattered throughout the alleyway, were about two dozen corpses lumbered up and down the walkway. He looked back at Sydney who was watching him intently from the other room. He shook his head and came back to her side.

“Alley’s too crowded.” He whispered. “We’re gonna have to get by Biggie over there and get to the roof.”

Noah moved out of the desk fort and creeped to the side of the door and crouched down.

Sydney looked around and found her M16-A1 Assault rifle at her feet in front of her. Just has she bent down and grabbed it by the “Picatinni” carrying handle on top, she heard the slight sound of shuffling.

She froze. Her heart leapt into her throat. She tried to stay quiet but could hear the slight sound of Noah climbing out the window in the distance.

‘Fuck!’ she thought to herself. She got a grip on her assault rifle and readied herself to stand up when she saw the saliva oozed off of the desk fort in front of her. She heard the hungry moan just in time to see the obese Black corpse’s eyes widening and arm starting to stretch down toward her.

She screamed when its fingers brushed her face. She tried to push back and stand up at the same time, but her balance gave away and she stumbled into the back-wall, slamming the back of her head into it.

She wanted to kick herself for making a sound. She knew what that meant. As she gained her composure, she opened her eyes just in time to see two more corpses joining the Black one.

‘On your feet, Moore!!’ she screamed inside her head. ‘ON YOUR FUCKIN’ FEET!’

Woozy, she used the butt of her rifle to steady her rise. The Black corpse was trying to climb over the desk fort, but having a hard time maneuvering. The other two were coming around the left side of the desks.

She raised her rifle to take a swing at Biggie, when she saw that Noah was already ahead of her. The wooden handle of his shotgun slammed into the side of the big corpse’s head. It staggered to its left and away from Sydney, allowing her to escape the desk fort and head to the door. Ahead of her were two more corpses who made their way into the hallway.

“We gotta move fast!” she called back to Noah, just as he fired a round into Biggie’s neck. It’s head popped into the wall and it’s body slumped to the floor.

Sydney fired a few controlled bursts into the two in the hallway, forcing them backwards. She bent her legs slightly and moved tactically into the hall; Noah close behind.

“Where are the stairs?” she called out, as she turned the corner and out of sight.

“Make a left at the office. It’s the door at the end of the..”

Just as Noah was about to turn left and the corridor junction, a rambling horde of corpses appeared on the right. He stopped in his tracks and began to backpedal, losing his footing and falling on his ass. He saw the flashes of Sydney’s gunfire tearing through the corpses as they entered the hall where she disappeared.

A group of the horde saw Noah trying to get to his feet and quickly shuffled his direction. He had no other option than to retreat.

“Get cover!” he heard Sydney call out over her gunfire.

Noah was already on his feet and snatching up his shotgun.

Sydney had made it to the end of the hall. She quickly turned and fired a series of quick bursts. The walkers in the front stumbled and fell. The others behind them simply crawled over them and kept coming. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and entered the stairwell. She grabbed the door knob and looked back, hoping to see some sign of Noah.

There was none.

“Shit!” she cried. She couldn’t wait any longer. “Get to the roof!” she called out, hoping he was still in ear-distance. She quickly shut the stairwell door behind her and  locked it tightly. The violent banging on the other side was violently loud.

Sydney made her way up the incredibly steep flight of stairs until she reached the door in the ceiling. She released the latch and pushed the small door outward and gloomy sunlight hit her in the face.

Directly below her, Noah barricaded himself back in the room where they started. He quickly pushed the desks in front of the door, just as the pounding started.

He sat in front of the barricaded door and caught his breath.

“This sucks.”

<< Chapter 7   |   Chapter 9 >>

Agent Langston Hughes sat quietly at the front entrance of the church. The fingers that only an hour ago were scratching under the door were now gone. The sounds of a thousand moans had died to just muffles in the distance.

He peered through the small space between the big church doors. He could see that the hordes that were on the front steps had dissipated. The one that remained was a partial body with no legs or arms. It laid 5 feet from the door. It’s one milky eye stared back at him. It’s mouth slowly chomping up and down, as if it was trying to talk.

Further in to the church, Camille sat in the front pew. Her small body was pressed into a fetal position. Her knees were pressed up to her chest, with her arms wrapped tightly around them to keep them there. She buried her face in her knees, with only her eyes visible. She stared at the now-dead corpse of Father Willard. Reggie had moved the body further into the shadows behind the podium and covered his head and torso with Langston’s coat.

Reggie sat in a pew opposite of Camille, massaging his wrist where handcuffs use to rest. The church was so deafly quiet and he wanted to say something to break the ice for the past half hour. But he could tell Camille was lost in her own world and Agent Hughes was in his Protect & Serve mode.

He finally spoke.

“Penny for your thoughts, Sister?” he quietly asked.

Her eyes quickly darted away from Father Willard’s corpse to him without blinking. He could tell he startled her.

“I’m sorry. What was that, Reginald?”

She kept her head down so he didn’t see her mouth move. The words were almost inaudible. But he liked that she called him Reginald..

She sounded like his sister.

“I.. Just wanted to know what you were thinking.” He replied a little softer.

Camille shook her head, but it looked more like a shiver than a ‘no’. He could see from the luminescence of the fires outside that her eyes were glassing over.

“I shot him.” She said softly.

Langston pulled his attention away from the door when he heard her speak.

“He died.. And then I killed him.”

Reggie didn’t know what to say. He was going to say:‘You did the right thing’, but she spoke before he could get it out.

“How does this happen?” she stood up. “Father Willard died. He was suppose to go to God. How could he come back as one of those things?”

“Because it wasn’t him.” Langston said, as he came and stood next to Reggie. “Whatever these things are, they aren’t people. They walk like people, but there’s nothing behind their eyes. They’re just.. Dead. But.. They’re still moving.”

Camille slowly removed her Nun’s habit to reveal her small frame in tight-fitting jeans and an oversized yellow tank top. She let the religious garb fall to the floor, and sat back down where she had been before.

“This is The Apocalypse, isn’t it?” Reggie asked. “The whole thing of.. people going to heaven and.. the dead rising thing.. all this shit is in the Bible, right?”

“Language, Reginald.” She shot back at him.

He apologized.

She continued.

“I don’t know. I don’t think the Scriptures are suppose to be this literal.” She turned and stared out the tall stained-glass window. She could barely make out the rambling corpses through the thickly-smoked glass. “My God is a God of love.” She spoke, with more conviction. “My God wouldn’t do this. This has to be something else.”

“I agree.” Said Langston. “With all due respect, I’m not a man of Faith. I always look for more practical explanations.”

“I’m open to suggestions.” She replied. “We’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Agent Langston Hughes pulled a small notepad out of his pocket. A small pencil was attached.

“Old School.” Reggie chuckled. “You heard of an iPhone, dude?”

Langston shook his head. “Paper don’t need power.” He started to scribble. “Okay. What do we know? For all intent and purposes, these.. Things are reanimated corpses. Dead Things.”

He glance over at Father Willard’s body. “The only thing that seems to put them down is decapitation, or a shot to the head.” He paused to finished scribbling. “This seems to be some type of contagion. Anybody who gets bit or scratched.. any type of fluid transfusion.. they die and then reanimate.”

“Not necessarily.” Camille chimed in. “There was a man who was hit by an ambulance when the chaos first started. He pretty much bled out on our steps. I could see through the door that nothing had touched him. Within a few minutes after he died, he was back up and walking.”

Langston nodded. “Okay. Not just bites. Maybe.. it’s airborne. Maybe it’s a virus that only becomes active after a person is dead.”

“That would need to be a pretty potent airborne virus.” Camille shook her head.

“It all sounds like bullshit.” Reggie smiled. “I’m sticking with The Armageddon.”

“Language, Reginald.” Camille warned him again.

“Okay. Let’s look at it from the other end, Sister. If we proceed with the notion of this being a literal representation of Revelations from the Bible, what are we missing?”

Camille sighed. “I don’t know. How far are we going with this thing? The Anti Christ. The Four Horsemen. Seven Signs..” She wiped her face. “I don’t know how it all would fit.”

“Alright. Let’s go with the Seven Signs. Can you recall if there were any news or rumors of any other signs happening prior to The World going to hell?”

“There have been claims of The Signs happening for as far back as we can remember.” She found her way back to her spot on the pew. “Like I said. I don’t think ‘the moon turning blood red’ meant that the moon would turn red. Just how The Scribes back then would have interpreted it.”

“So basically, we’re still at square one?” Langston put away his notepad.

Camille shrugged. “It would appear so. At least, until we find out more of what’s going on?”

“That would mean going outside.” Reggie scoffed. “I’m good being ignorant.”

<< Chapter 6   |   Chapter 8 >>

Sydney knew where she was, but she didn’t know how she got there. She was standing on one of the old turret spots at the Presidio in San Francisco. She remembered the place because her father use to take her there when she was a child. The skies were an unusually bright, deep blue with a splattering of small bright white clouds. A nice warm breeze made the tall grass growing around the circular cement turret foundations sway back and forth in unison.

Sydney stood on the center turret circle, staring off at the Golden Gate Bridge, and further out toward the San Francisco skyline. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She could hear the swaying grass and smell the sea water off the bay. The warm wind caressed her face and neck. It was the same feeling she felt back when her father took her here.

She exhaled and opened her eyes just in time to catch sight of him in her peripheral vision.

“This is it.” he said, as if talking to no one.

He was a Black man, standing around 6 feet tall. He wore a navy blue pin-striped suit and impeccable black loafers. He was alternating between looking at the San Francisco skyline and his pocket watch.

“This is it.” he said again, pointing to the skyline.

“What?” Sydney asked, looking at the man with a very familiar face.

He looked over to her, his eyes warm and inviting. “It!” he responded.

He was standing on the turret foundation next to hers, so she went to join him at his spot. Why? She didn’t know.

“What do you mean… it?” she said climbing the stairs and standing beside him.

“The Rapture.” he answered. “The Apocalypse? End Of The World? Book Of Revelations? This is it.” he pointed out toward San Francisco. “See?”

Sydney turned to look and saw what the familiar man was talking about.

From beneath the San Francisco skyline, hundreds of small white blurs of glowing whiteness began to rise into the air like bubbles in water. What first started in the downtown area then began to happen everywhere she could see. These small blurs were rising into the deep blue skies; lines of them stretching as far as the eye could see.

“What the hell is…” she was in mid sentence when she finally realized why he was so familiar.

She frowned in confusion. “Aren’t.. you.. Billy Dee Williams?”

“What?” the man asked, still looking at his watch.

“Billy Dee Williams. You’re Billy Dee Williams!”

“Billy Dee Williams? No. Well… at least not on the inside.” he responded. “I don’t know where this body came from”.

“Then who the fuck are you, and what the hell is all this?”

The man put his pocket watch away. “My name is.. well.. I guess you can call me.. Bill. I’m the caretaker.”

“Caretaker? Of what?”

“Of this!” he said throwing his arms into the air, the glowing blurs animating in the background.

“What is this?”

“I told you.” he pointed back to the skyline. “The Apocalypse… well, not really the Apocalypse. More like, what comes next.” He pointed to the heavens. “You see those lights? Those are the immortal souls of The Righteous. God’s calling his good and proper peeps home. That’s them on their way to the pearly gates.”

Slowly the warm breeze that made her nostalgic went away and was replaced by a cold shiver down her spine.

“So this is the Rapture? THE Rapture?” Sydney asked. “And those are all those church people on their way to Heaven?”

“Not all church people. Some of those Bible Thumpers were faking the funk, you know?” He jokingly poked her in the arm with his elbow. “Just because you put some coins in the collection plate, didn’t mean you got a spot on the flight home.” he turned to her, in a more serious manner. “Religious, non-religious, spiritual, aethiest… It didn’t matter what you believed. Only those who were pure at heart were able to be spared.”

“Be spared? From what?”

“From what is to come…”  he outstretch his hand toward the San Francisco skyline like one of the women on The Price Is Right, displaying the next showcase.

Immediately, the deep blue skies began to turn grey; as if there were clouds in the sky, but there were none. The sound of the rustling grass was replaced by the sound of emergency sirens blowing in a distance. The cries and screams from people followed. So faint, yet so frightening.

Sydney was confused. “What’s happening?”

“This world’s been abandoned by your God. Now the dead are rising to cleanse the Earth. To make way for the next God.”

“I don’t understand…”

Bill cut her off. “Listen to me, Sydney. We don’t have much time.” he said pulling out his pocket watch. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“Wrong way!? What way?! What… the… fuck… are you talking about?!”

“Things are gonna happen. The whole thing’s been set in motion. There’s nothing in this world or any other world that can change that.”

Bill jumped off of the turret and into the tall grass. Sydney was too confused to follow.

“Behold, the Pale Horse, my sweet Sydney Moore. Death has come home to roost, and he’s brought hell with him.”

Sydney became engrossed in her surroundings. Bill was trying to tell her something, but her senses were overwhelmed by the darkness slowly creeping over the city, and the faint moans of the undead coming from far off in the distance. The smell of charred wood began to sting her nose. She covered her mouth.

“Is this a dream, Bill? Please tell me I’m dreaming!”

Bill nodded. “Yes, you are dreaming. Unfortunately, reality’s about to make this shit look like a Disney movie.”

Sydney jumped down into the grass, but her legs buckled. She was on her knees in the grass, which was now a dead brown. She reached down and touch the blades and they withered in her palms, turning to dried ash and blowing away in the hot, humid wind.

Bill knelt down in front of her and lifted her chin with his finger until they were looking eye to eye.

“You need to head southeast, Sydney. And there isn’t much time.” he then stood up and towered over her, the blurred orbs still rising in the darkened grey atmosphere. “She still has her parents. But they won’t be her parents for much longer.”

Bill then turned and began to walk off.

“Wait!” Sydney called out. “Who’s ‘she’?”

Bill stopped and turned around. “That’s a topic for our next meeting.” he looked at his watch and smiled. “But right now, you’re out of time.”

Just as he smiled back, Sydney felt a rough, callused hand grab her nose and mouth tightly from behind. Her head was jerked back into another person’s body; his grip so tight, she almost couldn’t breathe.

The last thing she remembered was Bill waving goodbye to her with one hand and pressing his index finger to his lips with the other.

And then everything went black.

<< Chapter 5   |   Chapter 7 >>

Hot metal cut through flesh and bone.

Bullets ripped through bodies that should have fallen to the floor on impact.

But they kept coming.

Multiple gun fragments ripped out of, and ricocheted through walking corpses on the ground floor of the lavishly decorated mega-mall. Bodies twitched with each blow and stumbled with pie-sized exit wounds exploding outward from within.

But they kept walking.

“Keep moving!” Anne screamed over the blaze of gunfire as she and her brother slowly moved across the dead-infested ground level toward the escalator. Her heart was full of vertigo. Moans of the undead bellowed around her. Voices too close, yet outside her peripheral vision made her flinch. Instinct told her to turn and retreat. But she fought the urge. She focused on the movement in front of her, and relied on her brother to watch her back.

Andrew’s shots were frantic and wild. He fired on anything that moved in his field of vision. Flower arrangements.. benches.. water fountains.. large windows.. everything seemed to catch his ammo, except the walking bodies that grew closer and closer.  He seemed to take more time reloading than shooting.

Anne’s shots, on the other hand were fewer and more precise. She waited for her targets to get within her optimal firing range, which was around 4 yards.

“I’m running out of bullets!” her brother said.

“Then stop shooting like a damn idiot!” she replied, dropping another two corpses with head-shots.

They quickly made it to the front of the escalator and stood back-to-back.

Anne focused on the oncoming threats, while Andrew surveyed their escape route. His eyes grew in shock as he watched the line of undead trying to walk down the stationary escalator, only to fall over themselves, completely blocking the stairs.

“What’s the word?!” she cried out, not taking her eyes off of the oncoming swarm.

They were being overwhelmed quickly.

Andrew tapped her shoulder and pointed upward.

“Traffic jam!” he replied.

Anne looked back and saw their escape route was compromised.

“Improvise!” she yelled.

Anne took off running with her brother in close pursuit.

In between the up and down escalators was a 2 foot stretch of space connecting them. The siblings both jumped up on the space and began running upward toward the second floor, quickly racing past the zombies, stumbling down both escalators on opposite sides.

As Anne reached the second floor, she leapt up and over the mound of bodies piled at the 2nd floor entrance of the escalators and landed on her feet dropping the three nearest ghouls with gunshots in the process. At that time, Andrew had just made it to the top, only to be met by a zombie who had made it to its feet and saw him coming. He sent a swift kick to its face, which sent the thing falling back to the floor.

Landing on his feet, he scanned the area for his sister, who was already on the move toward the giant Adriana Lima posters lining the Victoria’s Secret windows.

“Come on!” she called out, not even looking back to see where he was.

Anne made her way into Victoria’s Secret and scanned the aisles and lines of lingerie for any type of movement. A corpse, which was standing next to a mannequin suddenly reanimated and reached out for her. Without thinking, she aligned her aim with his left eye and fired. The back of his head exploded open and all over the naked mannequin.

Andrew made it into the store just as Anne disappeared into the lingerie masses. He quickly holstered his gun in his pocket and began to lock and secure the front entrance. The large glass front door swung shut effortlessly and he fastened the top, bottom and side locks. He managed to back up just as four corpses made it to the store. They began to slap and claw at the giant glass, leaving red, brown and black smudges.

Andrew quickly grabbed his gun again and returned his sights to the inside of the store. He heard a couple of shots coming from around the corner.

“Anne!” he called out, slowly making his way through the sexy clothing until he caught Anne’s ‘Afro Puffs’ bobbing over the sexy clothes racks. She was at the 2nd end of the store, locking the other entrance, identical to the one Andrew had just done.

“We’re secure.” she said, returning to his side. They made their way to the cash register in the back of the store and out of sight of both entrances.

The siblings collapsed on the floor, leaning against the base of the cashier’s island nook. They could hear corpses banging on both entranceway doors like stereo. The glass doors weren’t gonna hold them off for long.

They looked at each other and smiled.

“Fuck!” Andrew said. “How the hell did we just do that?” he held out his fist and his sister pounded his with her own.

“That was on some crazy-ass shit.” she replied, checking her revolver. The side-action cylinder loader popped open to reveal 5 empty bullet casings. She tossed it aside. “That’s it for that thing.”

“Here” Andrew said reaching into the large army duffle bag to slowly pull out the pristine Mossberg 500 Bullpup Shotgun. The sawed off, two-handle shotgun looked impressive. Andrew grabbed it by the rectangular handle resting on top of the barrel and passed it to his sister.

“I remember these…” she said, grabbing the front-handle with a smile. “Good Lord…”

“Yeah, I know!” Andrew handed her the two tubular ammo magazines. “Each of these have 8 shots. You load it here…”

“…I know how to load it, boy.” she cut him off. She looked down at the two 9 Milimeters at his side. “How are you doing?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “A clip for each one.”

“Drop one of them and just take the clip. No need to have them both.”

“What do you mean?” he answered, maybe a little too loud. “I’m on some John Woo dual-action shit!”

“Boy..” she answered, grabbing one of the guns. “..that’s bullshit.” she released the clip from the 2nd Taurus and tossed the actual gun aside. “You’re doing nothing but wasting ammo. Unless you’re ambidextrous or something, it’s not helping.”

“Ambid what?”

She rolled her eyes. “Both handed!”

“Gotcha.” He took the extra clip and put it in his pocket.

They both sat there for the next 5 minutes in silence. The tapping and clawing on both store entrances were growing louder. They knew the siblings were still in there. Sooner or later, the weight of all those bodies pushing against glass doors would be too much. Eventually, the glass would shatter and the undead would pile in like a wall of rotting flesh.

And that’s what Anne was counting on.

Finally, Anne peaked up at the back of the store and gazed upon the door with the ‘Employees Only’ sign taped on it. She then stared at the entrances. Both large windows were filled with corpses banging on them. But it still wasn’t enough.

She sat back down and grabbed her Mossberg.

“Are you ready to do this?” she asked her brother.

Andrew nodded frantically, but still had a look of shock on his face.

She grabbed him by the back of the neck. “Dude, it’s gonna be Okay. Those stupid things ain’t got shit on us.”

“I know.”

“You just have to be careful with your shots. Save your ammo and only go for headshots.”

“Okay.”

“The only way they can get you is if they touch you. So wait until you got the headshot before you shoot.”

“Got it.”

With a nod of confidence, they both split up and headed for the glass entranceways.

Anne wanted to laugh. Seeing all the bodies piled up and pressing against the glass doors and windows reminded her of those ‘Day After Christmas’ sales where women would trample each other for 20% off designer jeans. The roar of the moaning hordes sounded like the Golden State Warrior games their Foster Father use to take them to when they were young. She slowly approached the giant glass door, which looked like they were painted it with bile and flesh. The thick blurry liquid was caked thickly onto the glass, and rotting palms and fingers continually smeared it in an attempt to push it forward.

“Come on, motherfuckers.” she whispered under her breath.

At the other entrance, the activity wasn’t as frantic. That is, until Andrew decided to rile up the dead mob by pounding on the glass himself. The roars and moans outside grew intense as more and more came into view. The harsh silhouettes of countless bodies could be seen through the smears of bloody flesh covering the entire glass. By then, Andrew had backed away and found a seat on top of the ‘Customer Service’ desk.

“How’s it coming other there?” he heard Anne call out from the other side of the store.

“Shit’s about to get crazy!” he called back, tightening his grip on his pistol.

And that’s when Anne saw the first crack in the glass. A small fissure formed at the spot where the side lock-lever was fastened. The small cleft in the glass door grew larger with every pound of the glass from the undead mob.

Anne saw it and started to back away.

“It’s starting over here!” she called out to her brother.

Andrew turned to see Anne walking backwards from the other side of the store.

“It’s still holden over…” before he could finish his sentence, he heard the crack of glass. He returned to gaze forward to see a large fault in the large store window starting to grow and spread like a spider web.

“Oh.. there it goes.”

They both backed away from the respected entrances until they were back at the Cashier’s Nook.

“Stay here.” Anne told her brother. “I’m going to check the backdoor. If I’m not back when the glass doors break.. Run like a muthafucka.”

“Gotcha.” he replied under a nervous whimper.

Anne quickly dodged through the ‘On Sale’ clothes racks at the back of the store until she reached the door with the “Employees Only” sign on it. She tightened her grip on her Mossberg shotgun; her sweaty palms still gripping the handles tightly. With all the power she had, she sent her big right leather army booted leg thrusting at the large metal door handle. The lever pushed in harshly and the heavy reinforced door pushed violently outward.

She raised the shotgun and place the armrest firmly into her armpit, her hands gripping the trigger and front handles. She was ready for anything, or any thing that was going to walk through the door.

But nothing did.

And that was Anne’s plan. She knew the walking dead were like cows and sheep. They could be herded easily away from their escape route.

She slowly peaked out into the back narrow corridor which seem to lead back out to the main mall area on the second floor. She gazed down the 30 yard, dimly lit tunnel and saw nothing moving. She was about to call back to her brother when she heard the first glass shatter.

Andrew watched as his entrance window bursted open from the sheer weight of pushing hordes. Small glass fragments pushed forward as the large line of undead lost their balance and fell forward. As they fell face-first on the floor, large, jagged, stalactite glass shards rained down on the fallen bodies. The glass fragments cut deep into them.

“Oh shit..” Andrew whispered to himself and started to run toward the back door where his sister was waiting outside in the small corridor. As he reached the intersection aisle in the middle of the store, he glanced down at the other entrance. A spiderweb-like crack pattern on the giant window was almost covering the entire surface, but the glass was still holding.

“Fuck it.” he said raising his gun and firing two shots. He only needed the one shot. The first bullet imploded the wall the glass and full weight of the corpses fell forward to the floor.

“Come on!” Anne called out him.

He quickly joined her inside the narrow corridor. Pushing the heavy metal door shut behind him, Andrew followed his sister slowly down the dim walkway. Behind them, they could hear the undead who were now inside the ‘Victoria’s Secret’ store founding on the door they just closed. It was only a matter of time before one of them accidentally pushed to door handle open and quickly followed their escape.

Anne didn’t count on the door pounding being so loud. This was a crucial moment. If the sound drew other corpses to the corridor entrance, she and her brother would be easily trapped with nowhere to go. She picked up her pace, heading to the light of the mall’s open space.

The Victoria’s Secret Employee door, slammed open and a hordes of undead pushed into the corridor, writhing and moaning and stumbling over themselves toward the two siblings.

“Shit! Let’s pick it up!” Anne called back to her brother, not taking her eyes off of the entrance ahead of them.

As she reached the end of the hall, a little girl with no forarms stumbled into the entrance. It’s eyes widened and it’s arm-stumps stretched out when it saw Anne walking into the light.

Anne was startled. She almost sprayed the dead child’s brain all over the store, but realized the sound would’ve nullified their plan of stealthily making it to the security office. Instead, she flipped her shotgun over and swung the butt of the rifle like a bat. The gunmetal handle struck the dead girl square in the temple, snapping her neck like a tree branch. It’s head swung down and then bounce off of it’s back, hanging off the body by it’s skin and tissue. It flipped over and rolled on the floor lifelessly.

“Which way?” she asked, as Andrew joined her into the light.

He pointed to a little room tucked away in the corner, next to the bathrooms.

They sprinted across the open area, jumping over the assorted bodies spread all about.

Anne was the first to reach the door.

Andrews was maybe ten steps behind his sister, when he passed a bloated female carcass laying between him and the security office. As he leapt over it, it’s arm flailed and caught his ankle in mid-air. He came down on his other foot the wrong way and twisted his ankle. He landed on his back and his head slammed onto the cool floor.

He was stunned. His ears were ringing. For a second he didn’t know where he was, or what was going on. That is, until he felt the a strong grip on his injured ankle.

The pain woke him up. His eye sprang open and he looked back to see the bloated woman pulling him toward her by his ankle. She moaned as she slowly pulled him closer. Her rancid jaws slowly chewing on air. Her eyes staring widely had his ankle.

Snap out of it, fool! he thought to himself. He quickly raised his gun and aimed for the corpse’s head

As Anne reached down and twisted the door knob to the security office, she heard a series of gunshots behind her. She quickly turned to see her brother on the floor in the grip of an obese ghoul.

“Shit!” She looked further off in the distance and saw that the Victoria’s Secret mob had made it out of the corridor and were now pouring out into the light.

She raised her Moss-burg shotgun and aimed for her brother’s captor. She brought the corpse into her sights, but hesitated because she feared she would hit her brother. After all, she knew that her shotgun was a precise weapon. It would spray it’s ammo in a wide disbursal area, and surely would hit Andrew in the process.

During that hesitation, she didn’t notice the door of the security office creeping open behind her. She smelled it’s hot breath first. It wrapped it’s arms around her waist and bit down on the back of her shoulder.

“No!!” she screamed as it locked down and bit deeper. “Andrew!!!” she called out as it started to drag her into the office.

Her brother looked just in time to see the thing taking her down.

Adrenaline kicked in. Andrew no longer felt the pain in his ankle. He sent his other foot slamming into the head of his obese captor. It let his ankle go, and he rolled over onto his knees. He sent one last shot at the ghoul’s head. But he didn’t wait to see if his shot was successful. He was already on his feet and hobbling toward the security office.

He saw the flash of a shotgun blast go off in security office.

“Anne!!” he screamed as he stumbled into the small room.

<< Chapter 4 | Chapter 6 >>

Dr. Ivana Creed was freezing her tits off in the large freezer down in the basement. It was the first place she thought of during her retreat. She and the Orderly, (she thought his name was Tim), had been the only two people to make it out of The Trauma Unit when the bodies started to reanimate.

Earlier that day, they were coming in a dozen at a time. Injured people with severe gashes and chunks bitten out of them. All their stories were nearly the name. They had been bitten or mauled by other people. It was mass hysteria in the streets. Badly deformed, crazed people attacking anyone within arms reach.

Ivana had been overwhelmed from the start. As only one of three Doctors on duty for the early morning shift, she wasn’t use to that type of mass-exodus from the streets. The nurses did their best, overloading the beds and putting everyone else wherever there was space. All they could do was sterilize and dress the wounds and move on the next patient.

But something was wrong.

Too many people were still dying.

Everyone was dying.

In the span of 90 minutes, she counted 73 men, women and children that came through the Emergency Room Entrance. And all of those people ended up dead… or on their way to dying. Chances are they would’ve died, if the dead didn’t reanimate and start to feed on them.

She recalled the first corpse to attack was a Japanese teenager who had her right arm nearly torn off by her own brother and mother. Dr. Creed had the unfortunate task of amputating. The surgery seemed to go well, but the girl wouldn’t stop bleeding.

She died ten minutes later.

After pronouncing the death, Dr. Creed went on to the next patient, an elderly man who’s cheek was gnawed off by his imvilid wife. In the process of patching him up, she turned to call out for assistance, when she came face to face with the young Japanese girl who had recently died. But now, she was standing in the middle of the ER. The stump where were arm use the be was bleeding out. Saliva drooled from the side of her mouth. She swayed in her spot, as if she didn’t know what the do next.

“Christ!” Dr. Creed called out.

And that’s when the girl looked up and focused her milky white eyes directly at the doctor. The thing screamed at the top of it’s lungs and lunged for the Doctor. Its grip fastened onto Dr. Creed’s medical coat. The one hand held tight to Ivana as she shuffled backwards, dragging the dead thing into the lobby with her.

Out of nowhere, an Orderly grabbed the dead girl around the neck from behind and pulled her off of the doctor. That’s when the girl focused her attention on him and locked her bite down deep onto his forearm. He screamed as it ripped and thrashed until the skin, muscle and tendons came ripping from the bones. He let go of the girl and cradled his wound, trying to stop the splattering blood from escaping.

Dr. Creed thought fast. She removed the coat and used it to wrap the Orderly’s wound. She was ready to call out for assistance when something grabbed her ankle like a vice grip. She screamed and looked down to see the Japanese zombie girl dragging and pulling her mouth toward the Doctor’s exposed ankle. She felt the thing’s lips and tongue touch her skin, when the Orderly sent his size 14″ basketball sneaker into the zombie’s face. It’s head pushed back and its neck snapped. Its grip slipped from the Doctor’s ankle.

“We got to get the fuck out of here!” Tim said, grabbing the Doctor by the arm and pulling her toward the door leading to the stairwell.

Ivana wanted to protest. She was a doctor and at that moment, people were dying. She wanted to tell Tim that she couldn’t just leave all those people.

And then she turned to look back at the Emergency Room. She saw the horror that was taking place. The entire area was covered with thick, dark blood and torn flesh. Bodies were lying everywhere, while those who still moved were eating the placid ones.

This was madness. And in that moment of madness, self preservation took over. She turned away from the death orgy and followed Tim, into the stairwell.

When they reached the ground level, they stopped to catch their breath. Ahead of them was the exit which led into the parking lot, and more steps leading down into the S.C.F. (Storage & Containment Facility).

They had a decision to make.

“Let me take a look at that arm.” Ivana said, catching her breath.

“No!!” Tim cried snatching his wound back. “We gotta get the fuck out of hear first!!!”

“Calm down.” she said. “We’re safe for the moment.”

“Fuck you, Doc!” he shouted back. “How the fuck can I be calm!? Did you see that back there?!?” he held up his wounded forearm. “You see what that thing did to me?” he wanted to cry. “Fuckin’ zombies! Those were muthafucking zombies!!”

“There’s no such thing as zombies.” Dr. Creed said. “There has to be another explanation.”

“Don’t try it, Doc!! You saw that girl! She DIED!!! And then she came back, and then she took a chunk out of my arm!!!!” Tim headed for the exit. “That’s zombies…”

Tim wasn’t going to wait for the Doctor to make a decision. To her dismay, he headed for the door marked with the big red EXIT sign over it. He pushed it open and they both staggered out into the open parking lot.

With their eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight, they didn’t make it five yards when they stopped dead in their tracks. Dr. Creed hadn’t noticed it before, but the city’s loud air-raid emergency siren was screaming in the air. Out beyond the thick trees planted around the hospital, large bellows of black smoke rose into the sky. The sound of emergency trucks and police cars raced back and forth. A military helicopter rushed overhead. And in front of them, maybe ten yards away was a thick wall of lumbering corpses, arm outstretched and reaching for them.

“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh my fucking shit!!!” Tim shouted as he turned to the Doctor.

“We gotta go back in! Hide in the basement!” At first Tim was focused on Dr. Creed, who was so terrified, she didn’t hear a word he said. But then he focused behind her on the Exit door that was slowly closing behind them.

“The door!!! The door!!!” he pushed her until she came back to her senses.

They both bolted back toward the door. Tim managed to jam his ‘good’ arm into the doorframe just before it closed. They both quickly ran back into the stairwell and slammed the door behind them. Almost immediately, a cluster of muffled banging started from the other side of the door. They both just stared at the door for a minute, trying to figure out what next to do.

“Ok.” Dr. Creed said nodding her head toward Tim. “Zombies, it is.”

“Fuckin’ A” Tim replied. “What now?”

“Let me think…” she whispered, wiping the sweat from her face. She took a good look at Tim, who’s wound dressing was drenched with blood. He was shivering. His eyes were fluttering. She knew he was going into shock.

She clapped her hands together hard. “Stay with me!”

Tim straightened up.

“We can’t go back up, or outside. So we head down into the S.C.F.”

Tim’s eye bulged. “Containment? The Morgue?” he laughed nervously. “So we’re gonna run from the dead people, into the place were we keep all the dead people?”

Dr. Creed started walking down the stairs. “It’s not all bodies down there. It’s mostly bio-cultures that need to stay on ice and away from civilians. At least most the bodies down there are in locked drawers. We should be safe in there. We’ll lock ourselves in one of the large medical coolers. The door’s 10 inches thick. We’ll stay there until the authorities get a handle one this.”

They both descended to the bottom level of the hospital and found themselves in the deserted basement. They made their way down the main corridor and made a series of left turns down narrower corridors to reach their destination. The Doctor paid close attention as they passed the Morgue. To the left was the ‘storage’ room; 94 body-sized drawers filled to capacity with corpses. To the right were about a dozen bodies neatly arranged on gurneys. They were covered with tarps and their feet were exposed, displaying their toe tags for easy access. All in all, there were over a hundred bodies surrounding them, just waiting to reanimate and attack them.

But they never did. Every body on that level remained still. She filed the mental note away and refocused her attention on Tim. They had just made it to the backroom with the large storage cooler when he finally gave in to fatigue and his injuries. He collapsed a few yards away from the large refrigerated room.

As he lay there dying, a million thoughts ran through Dr. Creed’s head. Why was he dying so quickly? Did he lose that much blood? Was it a viral outbreak? Was it contageous?

She comforted him for as long as he breathed. His look of fear stared back at her.

“It bit me.” he whispered to no one. His eyes darted around the room as if expecting something to come for him. “I don’t want to be a zombie…”

Suddenly, far in the distance she heard a ‘snapping’ sound. It was faint, but still made her jump. She knew what it was. It was the door handle to the entrance. Someone or something had just made it downstairs.

“I don’t want to be a zombie…” he kept muttering under his breath. By this time, his eyes were rolling in the back of his head.

“Shhhhh…” she whispered. “It’s ok.”

There was another sound echoing off in the distance. Something kicked something. Whatever it was, it was heading in their direction. She wanted to drag the Tim into the frig and close it behind them. But it would be a waste of time and energy for her. She held Tim’s good hand and he held on for dear life until his last breath escaped from his mouth.

His head slumped away from her and his body seemed to become twice as heavy.

She gently laid his body down to the floor and then promptly backed away.

Something kicked something again. It was too close for comfort.

She knew she had to make a plan.

She looked at her watch and then started the stopwatch function. As soon as the ticking began, she made her way into the large containment frig and quietly closed the thick door behind her. She peered out of the small glass window and watched Tim’s body. She needed a benchmark on the time of reanimation. With the Japanese girl, it took ten minutes. But when all hell broke loose in the ER, the bodies seemed to reanimate almost instantly. Was there a correlation between how you died and if/when you reanimate? Was this a virus being passed from body to body, or was it something that was airborne; maybe in the food or drinking water?

And then it started.

At three minutes and twelve seconds, dead Tim’s legs started to twitch.

Ivana jumped. A whimper escaped her lips.

At three minutes, thirty seven seconds, the reanimated corpse sat up. It’s milky white eyes scanned the area until they focused on Ivana, peering out through the freezer door window.

Dead Tim pulled itself to its feet and started to shuffle over to the freezer door.

Ivana backed away a few steps as the reanimated corpse pressed his face against the window. Again, it’s eyes locked on her as it started to pound on the door. With every strike, she flinched. With every forceful hammer, she came closer and closer to crying.

“I’m so sorry, Tim.” she whispered. “I’m sorry you’re a zombie.”

He moaned as if answering her.

She looked around the freezer for something to use as a weapon. She knew there was a good chance that no one would find her in the basement. She didn’t think Tim would go away on his own either, so she’d have to fight her way pass him and out into the streets.

Scanning her surroundings, she focused on pieces of rebar that were evenly spread out on an aluminum shelf and used to reinforce the surface for large blocks of ice. She started to push an ice block over when she noticed the pounding on the door had stopped. She looked back at the window, just in time to see Dead Tim turning around and walking away from the window.

Something else had caught his attention. Flashlight beams were dancing in the room outside.

“Someone else is down here!” she said to herself. “The dead don’t use flashlights…”

She was going to have to act fast. She pushed over the first ice block to a thunder crash and grabbed one of the exposed pieces of rebar. She stood and made her way slowly toward to the door.

Suddenly, she was brought to an abrupt halt by a loud gunshot, which was followed by the small window suddenly being painted with red and what looked like flesh and brain matter. Her heart raced. She didn’t know what was going on or what was going to happen next. She dropped the rebar and started to pace back and forth.

She looked up at the window again and saw what she thought was a gloved hand wiping away all the blood. Afterwards a flashlight beam and a pairs eyes peered into the freezer.

“Oh shit.” she whispered.

“I think we got another one!” she heard a muffled voice come from outside. There were more muffled voices and three other sets of eyes taking turns peering in.

She walked to the door and looked out the small window to see four armed soldiers standing in the room, guns raised at the freezer door.

Ivana slowly pushed the door open and walked out with her hands up.

“Don’t shoot.” she said.

“You a zombie?” the Black female soldier asked her. She then noticed that they weren’t soldiers. They had to be in their teens. They were too young to be military.

“No.” she answered with a frantic stutter. “I’m a doctor.”

The teen soldier smiled. “It’s ok, ma’am. We’re the calvary.” He shouldered his Belgium FN P90 and put out his hand. “I’m Lieutenant Clarence Tate. Field X.O.”

She took his hand. “Dr. Ivana Creed.” She let out a feeble sigh. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’ll have to debrief later. You’re the only uninfected person we’ve found this extraction mission and we need to get you out of here. ASAP.” He looked back at his team. “Call it in.”

The shortest of the bunch, a pudgy redhead kid talked into the two-way handset attached to his chest. “This is Private Milwaukee; Rainbow Alpha Team, requesting immediate extraction.”

Another brown-haired kid soldier came to Ivana with a large flashlight and searched her body.

“Sorry.” Charence said. “We have to check for bites.”

“No problem” Ivana replied raising her arms in the air and slowly turning around.

“She’s clean.” the brown-haired soldier said packing his light away and grabbing his rifle.

“Good.” the Lieutenant said as he  turned to the Doctor. “We’re gonna lead you out through the side exit door on the ground level.”

“But that goes out to the parking lot. Those things are all over the parking lot.”

“Don’t worry. We cleared it out. They’ll be a transport vehicle waiting for use about 30 feet from…”

While Lieutenant Clarence Tate was telling Ivana what they were going to do, he could still hear Private Milwaukee repeating his extraction request for the seventh time.

He turned to Clarence with a worrisome look. “I’m getting no response.”

Camille sat at the far end of the front pew, watching the dancing flames from outside through extra tall stained glassed windows. The silhouettes of the lumbering corpses passed through the flame’s luminescence. The tall shadows crawled inside the huge cathedral’s walls on the opposite end. She stared out the windows with an almost hypnotic gaze. Her brain tried to process what was happening.

The dead were coming back to life. They were getting up and eating the living. And those bodies would in-turn rise and continue the cycle.

Camille was ripped from her native Thailand and brought to San Francisco as part of the sex slave industry when she was eleven years old. For the next eight years she was bought and used and kept on a tight leash by her oppressors. In that time, she lost her innocence, her spirit, and her faith in life and love. At nineteen she made her move and escaped from the system, only to find herself on the streets and once again turning to selling herself to pay the bills and eat.

And then she met Father Willard.

He was the man who found her on the streets after being beaten, and brought her to the church. He clothed her and fed her and gave her nothing but kindness. He talked to her about The Word Of God without preaching to her. And when she quietly left his care after a week without letting anyone know, she felt horrible. And when she had no other place to go and wound up at the church’s door once again, he took her in without any chastisement or ill will. He just told her she was welcomed to come and go as she pleased and when she needed help or needed to talk, that God would be there to help her through him. It took months and months of gentle care and friendship before she accepted the fact that Father Willard wanted to help her. He was a man who didn’t want to take advantage of her. He wasn’t a man who wanted to rip her clothes off and use her. He was a simple man of God who wanted to just help her. And it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever felt.

That is why she fell in love with Father Willard. And that is why she inevitably gave her body and soul to The Lord.

Camille was just finishing up her second year as a novice under the Catholic faith and was coming close to taking her permanent vows and full inclusion into the Sisterhood, when she decided to take a week to come and visit Father Willard. She wanted to show him what she had done with her life. She wanted to get that all encompassing approval from him, like one would crave from her father.

And she got that from him. She’d gotten the whole show. The smile, the teary eyes, the sense of gratification… it was all there. And she reveled in it. She opened her heart and let his love wash over her. And when he hugged her and blessed her and said he loved her like a daughter, she cried. She let all those emotional walls she’d built up crumble and she cried like a baby. It felt wonderful.

And then the dead rose.

And Father Willard was bitten.

And now Father Willard was going to die.

“How is he doing, Reginald?” she quietly asked, not taking her eyes away from the stained glass window.

Reginald ‘Reggie” Pratt’s unsavory hulking frame sat on the front stage steps, next to the fallen Father Willard’s body. At 6′ 6″ and weighing in at 310 lbs., Reggie was an intimidating figure. And he used that intimidation to his advantage. For years, he’d been the Mexican Mafia’s main extortionist in San Diego and Los Angeles. That is, until he was apprehended by Special Agent Langston Hughes in Sacramento, trying to evade a murder charge. And now he sat there on the stage next to the podium, with a pair of stainless steel handcuffs on his wrists and watching the dying Priest.

Reggie leaned over Father Willard and examined his neck wound.

“Not so good, Sister.” he replied to Camille. “He’s breathing real fast now. And the rag on his neck is all bloody.” he sighed. He was a little frustrated. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“My jacket’s right next to you.” Langston’s booming voice came from the back entrance. “Use that.”

Langston Hughes stood in the center aisle in the back of the church staring at the double doors as they swayed back and forth as the masses of undead corpses tried their best to gain entrance into the giant building. Bloody decayed fingertips pushed their way through the space between the door and the floor, trying to get a grip. Stained blood and flesh smeared the area. The sound of fingernails scratching against the wood was almost maddening. No matter what the cost… no matter what happened to their bodies… the corpses didn’t care. They had one single minded goal; to get inside the church where the meat was.

The Joplin, Missouri born Federal Agent was named after the Black writer/poet James Mercer Langston Hughes. His parents had dreams of him becoming a lawyer or doctor. But for Langston, law enforcement seemed to call him. He felt like he needed to make a difference. So the title of Special Agent meant the world to him.

He’d spent the past 4 and a half months tracking Reggie Pratt after he skipped bail on a murder charge. After apprehending the fugitive in Sacramento, they were on their way back to Los Angeles. They’d made it into San Francisco when the dead rose.

All hell had broken out in the city. The streets in the downtown area had become so congested with frantic people and walking corpses, they could do nothing else except find refuge in the large Catholic church down the street.

By the time they made it to the front door, the entire congregation had exited the church and spilled out into the streets. Langston knew that was a mistake. He quickly dragged the handcuffed Reggie with him into the church and locked the doors behind them.

And now, here they were.

Stuck behind enemy lines.

Waiting for an entire city of dead to brake in and devour them all.

Reggie got up and walked over to grab the Agent’s coat.

“Mr. Pratt?” Langston called out, still not taking his eyes off of the door. “Can I have a moment, Please?” The hulking man bypassed the coat laying on the pew and slowly lumbered to the back of the church toward his capturer.

Reverend Willard coughed loudly which brought Camille out of her stoic gaze. She turned to see her Father’s frail body writhing on the stage. Her eyes grew teary. She’d spent the last 20 minutes staring away from him trying to get the thought of his imminent death out of her head. She’d focused on the ghastly apparitions dancing in the stained-glass windows intently, hoping he’d pass on without her noticing.

But she couldn’t do it. In the faith, she’d been taught to embrace the pain of others. To give them comfort in their most dire times. This was a test of her faith. It had to be. In order for her to truly embrace herself as an agent of God, she would have to face her greatest fear; watching the only man she had ever loved die in front of her.

She slowly approached him and knelt beside him. Father Willard had removed the bloody cloth from his neck wound and the large gaping hole was bleeding out. The old man seemed incredibly pale, contrasted against the splatters of blood on his face.

Camille started getting choked up. Tears ran down her face but she refused to lose her composure. She couldn’t break down in his presence. If he was going to die here, he would do it in the knowledge that she was finally worthy of being a Servant of God.

Father Willard was weak and in terrible pain. His face showed it. He frowned and his visage was distorted. But when his eyes met hers; when he finally gazed on her face for the last time, the frown dissipated. The scrunched eyes softened and grew large. It almost looked like he was smiling.

“Beautiful.” she thought he heard him whisper.

“Shhhhh.” she quietly called back with a tearful smile. “It’s ok. It’s all going to be ok.”

“Beautiful…” he whispered again. “…Angel.”

That’s when she lost it.

She began to cry uncontrollably. She put her hand over his bloody wound. It was all she could do. She knew he only had moments left and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do.

“Don’t be sad, my Camille.” he whispered his last words. “My God is calling me…” And it was as if his face froze in mid sentence. His weak eyes became dead eyes, glassed over and instead of staring at her, they stared through her.

“Go to God.” she whispered back as him as she placed her fingers onto his eyelids and pulled them downward to close them. She said a quick, heartfelt prayer over his body and then leaned down and kissed his cold forehead.

In the back of the church, Reggie had reached Langston and, he too had to stare at the commotion going on under the door. The little fingers from four hands where feverishly clawing under the door-space, trying to get some type of leverage on the door.

“Those fuckin’ things really wanna get in here.” Reggie said.

“Yep.” Agent Hughes replied, still entranced with the fingertips squeezing under the door.

“Can they do it? I mean, can they get in here?”

“No. I don’t think so. No leverage. They’d have a better chance by all pushing on the door, but even that’s a stretch.” Langston rubbed his eyes. “I’m not concerned with them getting in. I’m trying to figure out how we’re gonna get out.”

“Can we just wait it out? Won’t they just get tired and go try and find other people to eat?”

“Could happen. But it all comes down to which one of us can hold out longer without food.” he turned to Reggie, reaching into his pocket.

At the front of the church, Camille walked to the front pew and grabbed Agent Hughes’ coat. She looked up and saw the two men in the back having a conversation at the door. She was glad they were there with her. She’d be the last person to admit that she needed others. She’d barely talked to the two of them since they’d locked up the church. She didn’t want to feel alone during the end of the world.

She walked back to Father Willard’s body and gently draped the coat over its head and chest.

And that’s when his arm twitched.

“Show me your hands.” Langston said to Reggie.

Reggie sighed, raising his arms forward to show the handcuffs tightly bound around his wrists.

Langston grabbed one of his wrists to expose the keyhole and proceeded to unlock Reggie’s wrists. The metal cuffs dropped to the floor, leaving the convict’s red-bruised wrists free to breathe.

Reggie rubbed them. “What? You letting me go?”

The Agent looked back down at the fingers scratching under the door. “I think it’s a moot point now. Both of our situations are kinda on hold until the dead go back to being dead.” he looked up at the big man. “Besides, shit’s about to get real hairy around here, and we need as many bodies fighting with us instead of against us. Even murderers.”

“Alleged murderer, muthafucka.” Reggie shot back.

“Alleged…” Langston started to smile, when he noticed that Sister Camille had reach them.

Both Langston and Reggie stared at her as she slowly walked backwards, her gaze fixed on the front of the church where she had just come from. They both turned to see what she was staring at.

At the front of the church, right next to the podium, Father Willard’s legs were twitching. His hands were moving around like he was making snow angels. Camille’s widened intense eyes were fixated on the flailing body.

She had just laid the Father to rest. She knew it was stupid to think it, but she was praying he wouldn’t come back. How could God allow the body of someone so good and pure to come back and feed on his people?

The corpse finally got it’s footing and its arms braced the floor. A horrified Camille watched as the dead thing started to push itself upright. As the body sat up, Agent Langston’s coat began to slowly slide off its face.

‘Dear God…’ Camille screamed inside her head. ‘I don’t want to see this. Please, God. Don’t let this happen. Don’t let this happen to him.’

The body was now sitting completely upright. They could see its head under the coat looking left and right. As the head moved more and more, the coat slid more and more downward.

Camille’s hands began to tremble. She bit her bottom lip.

Her Father Willard was coming back to her.

Her heart jumped out of her chest and her breathing became extremely erratic.

‘I don’t want to see… I don’t want to see… I don’t want to see… I don’t want to see… I don’t want to see…’

Finally, the coat slid off of Father Willard’s head and rolled into his lap.

The air in the trio’s lungs escaped them simultaneously. The gruesome sight of what use to be Father Willard sucked all the air out of the room.

Reggie and Langston heard a soft whimper escape Sister Camille’s lips.

Even though he had been dead for only a few minutes, Father Willard’s face was almost porcelain-white. It was as if all the blood from his body had been drained and his skin was a sickly opaque, revealing his bloodless flesh underneath. The expression on his face was a cross between anger and hunger; his gaze transfixed completely on Camille’s little frame.

Reggie was so nervous, he had to say something.

“O.k. I didn’t see this coming.” came out. When Langston looked up a him with a puzzled look on his face, he could only look back at him and shrug his shoulders.

“That was sarcasm.” he followed.

Agent Hughes shook his head and began to draw his revolver from his shoulder holster, when Camille’s little hand outreached in front of his chest.

“Give me your side-arm. Agent Hughes.” she spoke without breaking her connected gaze with the corpse.

Langston shook his head. “Don’t worry, Sister. I got this.”

“No!” she said with trembling lips. “This is me. It has to be me.”

Langston hesitated giving up his gun. But Camille kept her hand out in front of him. In a non-verbal way, she wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer.

She finally broke her gaze and looked up at Agent Hughes.

“I promised him God wouldn’t let him come back like this.”

After a brief moment, Langston agreed and slowly placed the gun correctly in Camille’s palm.

“When you’re ready to shoot, release the safety… here…”

She interrupted. “I know how to use a gun, Agent Hughes.”

With that, she locked eyes once again with the dead corpse that use to be her Father Willard. During all this time, it didn’t move. Your typical corpse would have stood and came after them. But dead Father Willard was different. He sat there with that hideous look in his face; his mouth moving like he was talking, or chewing…

Sister Camille slowly approached the corpse, locking the deadly round into the gun’s chamber. Her pistol-hand fell to her side as she reached the front pew, a couple meters away from the podium.

Dead father Willard still sat there looking up at her; his mouth constantly moving. Camille took a deep breath and raised the gun and put the corpse’s head in her sights.

“I’m sorry.” she whispered to him. “God didn’t do this. I’m so so sorry…” With that , she exhaled and slowly squeezed the trigger.

And then it happened….

Right before she heard the blast from the gun… right before the kick from the shot and that feeling of her shoulder being ripped out of it’s socket.

Something came from Father Willard. Something planned especially for her.

A message.

A terrifying message.

Dead Father Willard’s head popped open with a thunderous blast. The body twisted to its left side and blew back onto the stage.

Startled, Camille dropped the gun and covered her mouth with her hands. She began to back up from the body, when she bumped right into Reggie Pratt, who had come to her aid after she fired the shot. She quickly turned and grabbed him and held him.

He could feel her shocked whimper, so he wrapped his enormous arms around her in a tight embrace. She needed to find someplace safe, and it was Reggie’s arms at that moment.

Langston walked up and grabbed his gun off of the floor.

The commotion at the front door grew louder. More fingers clambered under the doorframe. Louder muffled moans creeped in from outside.

Special Agent Langston Hughes knew this situation wasn’t going to end well.

<< Chapter 2 | Chapter 4 >>

It stood at the edge of the hall, swaying back and forth as if it was in a trance of some kind. Its silhouette backlit by the open doorway, radiated with sunlight peering through the indoor mall’s vaulted-glass ceilings.

The Twins waited in anticipation, each crouched behind a stack of boxes at the other end of the corridor. They occasionally peaked out and watched the dead thing with extreme caution. It stared back at them as if it sensed their presence; peered back into the blackened corridor with dead eyes, hungering, once again for the taste of human flesh.

“What did you call this again?” Andrew whispered across the narrow hall to his sister.

“Huh?” Anne replied, daring to take her eyes off of the enemy for a second.

“I said, what do you call this? This situation again?”

“Oh.” Anne shook her head. “A clusterfuck.”

“Clusterfuck.” Andrew smiled. “Got it.”

She started to smile back, when she heard the distant sound of shuffling feet. She drew her gaze back to the dead thing ahead of them and found that it had started to stumble in their direction.

“Weapon check.” She whispered.

Andrew responded from memory. “Four clips for the 9mm, and 16 shells for the Mossberg.”

The shuffling grew closer.

Anne jerked her OTs-38 Silent Revolver hard to the right and the side-action ammo-cylinder popped open. She shook it and let the emptly bullet casing fall to the floor. Out of her pocket, she pulled a 5-round SP-4 ammunition cartridge and slid it into the gun’s ammo cylinder.

“I got two clips for this fuckin’ thing after this. That’s it.” She raised the gunmetal black hand piece with the extended silencer. “This ain’t gonna get us too far.”

Clusterfuck

“We ain’t got much choice. We can go through the mall and deal with a hundred meat puppets. Or we can go back outside and deal with a hundred thousand.

The shuffling grew closer… faster…

Anne sighed. “Clusterfuck..”

She quickly stood and took aim on the dead thing that was now about ten yards away. The corpse moaned, and reached out to grab her just as Anne exhaled and gently squeezed the trigger. The small caliber bullet cleanly cut through the bridge of its nose, causing it’s head to snap back and it’s body to fall to the floor.

She crouched back behind the boxes. “I guess we don’t have much of a choice.”

Andrew pulled out the mall map he lifted from the display case at the entrance.

“The Security Office is on the 3rd floor right above us. If we’re lucky, they let the rent-a-cops carry guns. There might be stuff we can take.”

“You still think there’s anything useful left up in there?”

“Fuck it. I know we really don’t have anything to lose.”

Andrew’s eyes grew glassy. He took a deep breath.

“What if one of those Walkie-Talkies are in here?”

Anne strugged her shoulders. “Then we’re fucked.”

They heard more shuffling at the end of the hall.

“Clusterfuck..” they both whispered in unison.

Anne was the first to swing around and up from her cover. She immediately saw that there were two corpses shuffling down the hall toward them. She steadied her aim on the closest zombie, waiting for it to get within 5 yards for a kill shot. As she began to squeeze the trigger, two shots popped from behind her. The first shot ricocheted off of the wall and rocketed out into the mall, shattering the large window of the Mrs. Fields Cookie Shop. The second bullet caught the closest zombie in the neck, causing its head to fall back backwards and dangle from its neck by a thick piece of skin.

It kept coming, arms stretched and no head in sight. Yet, it still moaned and seemed to be on course for Anne. From behind, Andy passed his sister and kicked the corpse so hard, it stumbled backward and crashed into the second zombie. The boy immediate moved in ontop of both corpses and fired a shot into each zombie’s head.

“What the fuck, dude?!” Anne called out.

“What?” he replied. “It was gonna bite you!”

“I could’a handled that myself! Besides, the idea was to do his quickly and quietly! You just let every meat puppet in hear know where their next meal is!”

“Shit.” the boy looked frazzled. “I’m sorry.”

Anne grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him closer. “Get your head out of your ass, bro! We gotta get the fuck out of here!”

They once again raised their guns in unison and quickly made their way down through the darkened corridor, and toward the blindly lit doorway.

The siblings exited the hallway and stepped into the giant circular food court of the 6 story mall. The shock hit them like a brick wall. They both expected there to be a large amount of zombies populating the building. But actually seeing the slow, lumbering corpses stumbling around effortlessly on EVERY floor of the mall sent a shock of panic running through them.

They were everywhere. Spread out evenly, as if they were window shopping.

That is, until the first one spotted the brother and sister in the food court.

It was a child, maybe 4 or 5 years of age wearing a pair of loose cargo shorts and a floral patterned tank top. When it spotted the siblings scanning the area in shock, its eyes widened and its arms reached out for them from across the room. It made a moan which sounded more like the snarl of an angry Chihuahua.

But it must have been some sort of communication, because every zombie in the immediate area turned in their direction. And the response flowed through the mall like a tsunami. The incredible chorus of moans echoes throughout that mall on every level.

Anne knew they were fucked.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit…” Andrew was mumbling.

Anne had to think quick. “What store has the biggest window?”

“Uh… The Victoria Secret and the Suncoast Video.”

“Which one if closest?”

“Vickie’s on the third floor…” he pointed with his gun upward at the pink and red neon sign with Adriana Lima’s busty poster staring back down at them. “Right there.”

The Victoria’s Secret was six stores down from the escalator situated in the center of the mall.

“Okay.” Anne sighed. “I think I have a plan…”

<< Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 >>

“I’m out!“ Noah shouted as his .38 popped its last round in the horde of advancing bodies. He stood inside the cab of a red ’72 Ford Impala, trying to focus on what his next move would be.

Across the street, standing on the door of a Hummer turned on it’s side, Sydney chose her shots carefully. The assault rifle she lifted from the gun shop a half a mile away was clean and accurate, but low on ammunition.

“Just drop it.“ she called over calmly and tossed him the camouflage duffle bag she had slung over her shoulder.

For her, “Desert Storm“ took over. Her military training masked her fear, like the military had taught her. At the first sign of the walking dead, she had plotted her kill zone thoroughly. She found her targets within the crosshairs and nailed each body with precision kill-shots to the chest and stomach.

They fell just like she expected them to…

…and then, got back up again.

It was only when she started shooting them in the head, that the bodies stayed down.

Noah dove into the duffle bag and found a pair of Glock 26′s packed in their original casings. He slid a 13-round clip into each of them and stuffed 6 extra clips into his pockets.

“Head shots..“ he heard her say. “Make ‘em count.“

Noah and Sydney took turns with quick concise shots. Nearly each hit was a skull shot. And even though they dropped their share of bodies, there were more and more pouring into the streets.

“This isn’t good.“ he said as he dropped his empty clips and reloaded. “This isn’t good!“

“Shit! Move!“ Sydney ordered as she scanned the streets on both ends. There was no escape. Both the east and west lanes on Bush street were packed with corpses. Moaning, stumbling zombies; their arms out-stretched for the last two living bodies in the immediate area.

What they lacked in mobility, they made up for in sheer numbers. They poured into the streets from all crevices; the undead, risen from their sleep. How and why it happened, no one could say. The day started like any other Sunday morning. But instead of waking to the sound of sports and religious programming, everyone gathered around televisions, websites and radios alike to witness the horror of crazed figures attacking anything that moved.

Killing them..

Eating them..

Noah slung the duffle bag over his shoulder and followed his retreating partner off of the cars and into the street. Arms reached for them, clawing at their clothes. The two of them ducked and dodged the immobile hordes and made their way to a section of the sidewalk that was cordoned off by a diesel truck and two police cars. They quickly climbed the truck’s turned-over underbelly and crossed the trailer to find themselves safely protected by the wreckage and in front of a small clothing store with a big canopy sign that said “AMBIENCE“.

Arms stretched through the cracks in the automobile barricade, trying to grab their prey. Sydney backed away until her back pushed up against the large glass store window.

“Let’s get cover!“ she shouted. She raised the butt of her rifle to smash in the window, when Noah grabbed her arm.

“Wait.“ he said, pointing to the door, which was slightly ajar. “I’m getting the store clerk didn’t have time to lock up.“

They both slithered into the darkened store, guns raised.

Noah held his right arm out and bent at 90 degrees in front of his chest; a flashlight pointing out in front of him. His gun hand rested on top, parallel with the flashlight. He’d seen Mulder and Scully do that on ‘X-Files’. He kept his knees slightly bent so he could maneuver at a moments notice.

Sydney widened her eyes, trying to adjust to the darkness, when she saw movement off to the side of the main counter. It was a woman, peaking at them from behind the counter. Her eyes stared at them with brightened shock.

“Oh shit.“ Sydney said lowering her gun and going to help the woman. As she bent down to survey the woman’s injuries, she glanced in the direction of the fallen woman’s legs…

…or at least where her legs should’ve been.

Thats when the brighten look of fear turned into an inhuman snarl. The woman’s face frowned up and she swiped at Sydney with the two fingers she had left on her right hand. The fingers caught under Sydney’s vest and locked in as the zombie pulled herself up to rip out her throat.

In a flash Noah was in the mix. He’d brought the ghoul’s momentum to a dead halt by grabbing her thick maine of overly permed hair.

Sydney sent a series of palm thrusts under the corpse’s chin until she let go. And as the woman turned her attention to Noah, snapping at the hand that held her, he brought the barrel of his Gloxk to it’s eye socket and pulled the trigger.

The body dropped lifeless to the floor.

Noah slowly rose the gun’s sight up from the corpse to put it and the flashlight’s radius directly on Sydney.

“You bit?“ he asked.

“Don’t know.“ she replied.

She didn’t sweat the fact that he’d drawn his gun on her. They had a pact. They were partners. And if one of them was infected, they wouldn’t be allow the other to turn. They’d handle it right then and there.

No questions.

Sydney took off her vest and allowed Noah to survey her body.

“You’re clean.“ he said holstering his gun. “What the fuck was that?“

“I know!“ she replied. “I’m just tired. Wasn’t thinking straight.“

“Well wake up.“ he said, pulling a tourist map of San Francisco out of the duffle bag. “You’re too fucking hot for me to be killing, and shit.“

She laughed and shook her head. “Yeah. Judging from the activity outside, I might be the hottest fucking woman on the planet right about now.“

“Oh no.“ Noah replied. “Did you see that little Philly with the pink dress and Knee-high socks? Smoking hot! Sure, she only had one arm and no bottom lip, but still… HOT!“

“WOW.. It’s the end of the world and men are still pigs.“

He smiled. “Plus, no teeth? I’m just saying…“

“Oh my God, can you shut up and bring the light here?“ she replied opening a tourist map and spreading it out on the table. “Now, where are we?“

Noah traced their steps. “We were here on Polk… traveled up to Bush and out to Levenworth… We should be here.“

Sydney studied their position. “Okay, we’re about four miles out. The last known address of the Doc was at a hotel a couple blocks off of the Wharf.“

“You think he’s still alive?“

“I don’t know. Don’t care, either. What we need is his access keycard.“

“And then where do we go?“

Sydney lured at him. “You know I can’t tell you that yet.“

Noah sighed in frustration. “Come on, girl! Haven’t i proved you can trust me?“

She laughed. “Hell no. You’re a thief and a murder. And sure, we kinda need each other at the moment. But i don’t know you from shit. And i’m not gonna have you stabbing me in the back once you get all the answers.“ she folded up the map and stuffed it into the duffle bag. “You wanna get out of this alive, Lee? You’re gonna have to stick with me and do as I say.“

“Whatever you say, Boss.“ he grinned. He was gonna enjoy screwing her over.

“Whatever you say…“

<< Intro | Chapter 2 >>