"Eli wait!" Clare demands. You turn around to face her and she grabs your hand. She pulls you close to her and wraps her arms around your neck. Her big blue eyes stare up into yours. Raindrops splash loudly on the grass around you both. The rain is only a drizzle, not enough to put out the fires of the desolate town of Degrassi.

"Please don't go Eli," she pleads. Her big blue eyes scream your name, afraid for you. But no matter how loud her eyes or her lips scream, you have to go. Clare takes your head in both of her hands and kisses your lips deeply. "Please just stay here with me. We can wait things out in the Dot with the others. You don't have to do this."

You open your mouth to protest but stop when you hear a noise. The sound of feet slowly dragging across the wet grass fills your ears. Your right hand instinctively reaches for the pistol on your belt and you turn around. You see Mr. Leighton, the CEO of your computer graphics firm, limping toward you. Only, it's not Mr. Leighton anymore; he's a full out zombie. And the last time you two met, you'd broken his leg. Zombies just don't know when to stay down do they?

You grip the pistol tightly and pull it out of it's holster. You aim it at Mr. Leighton and wait. Come just a few feet closer, you think to yourself. You wait a few seconds until he's ten feet away from you and you pull the trigger. The gunshot fills the air. From where you stand, you can see blood dripping from the small bullet hole in his head. With a grunt, he falls face first into the ground.

You put the gun back in its holster on your belt and turn back to Clare. The drizzling rain has made her hair frizzy, but she stands with her arms crossed and still looks beautiful though she looks like she's ready to cry. "I have to go," you tell her. "I have to get to the other survivors. They sent a beacon and we're the only ones alive in town that can help them. If there's even the slightest chance I can save them then I'm gonna take it."

You step closer to her and brush her cheek with your fingertips. "I love you," you state honestly. "No one else is going to save those people out there, though, Clare. I don't want to leave you here, but I know you'll be safer here. There are four uninfected people in the Dot that can keep you safe. I love you so much, Clare, but I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you on my watch. That's why I need you to stay here." You kiss her deeply for a brief moment. "I promise I won't be long," you swear to her. She smiles weakly. "Come back alive," she commands.

You smile to her. "I wouldn't dream of anything else," you tell her. You give Clare one last kiss and watch her as she goes inside the mall. "I love you," you whisper to the wind.

You take a deep breath and sigh. "Time to go," you remind yourself. You make your way quickly to the army bus and lock all the doors and windows once inside. The other survivors are taking shelter on the other side of town in your old high school. You told yourself you'd never go back to Sun Valley High the day you graduated, but you never expected the zombie apocalypse to come to town.

As you drive through what's left of Degrassi, you take in the sights of the demolition. Cars sit burning on the sides of the road. Fire hydrants knocked over four days ago still explode with water. Buildings are falling apart and some zombies are patrolling the sidewalks. These zombies are okay though; they only want to go about their old lives as best they can. A police car sits in the middle of your office building, its lights flashing and sirens blaring loudly.

You pass through the industrial part of town and see the turn to get to Degrassi High. About twenty feet from the turn, you hear a loud banging noise on the top of the bus. Something the size of a fist starts denting the bus. Something tells you that it isn't a desperate citizen trying to get in.

You know you can't stop the bus, but you know you need to shake away the zombie. You make a sharp right on the road to Degrassi High. You look in your rear view mirror and see the body of the zombie rolling across the pavement. You smirk at your accomplishment and continue driving.

As you pull up to the high school, you see a hoard of zombies surrounding the front doors. At the sound of the bus' engine, they turn around and begin running toward you. You floor the bus and knock them down. The bus rattles and shakes as its wheels crush the skulls, bodies, and guts of undead citizens.

You stop the bus with the entrance door in front of the school doors. You turn off the ignition and rush out to the school. Before you head to the school, though, you make sure all the doors and windows are locked tightly on the bus.

Since zombies can't figure out how to open doors or work locks, the doors of the high school sit unlocked. You go inside and look around. No one is in the hallway. "Is anyone here?" you call loudly. You wait a few seconds and a girl about sixteen with curly brown hair and a face stained with blood and tears peers around the corner of the far end hall. She sees you and smiles nervously. "Are you hear to help us?" she ask hopefully.

You nod and she comes around the corner. She moves as fast as she can to get to you on crutches and you see she's missing everything below her right knee. You run the rest of the way to her to save her strength. "What's your name?" you ask her. "Anne," she answers without hesitation. "Okay Anne," you begin, "Are there any other people with you?" Anne shifts her weight and points with her free hand, crutch tucked under her arm, to the rest of the hall behind the lockers. "There are only four of us," she tells you. "The other three are hiding in the kitchen."

You think of how you want to do this. You remember that the cafeteria isn't far from where you stand. You want to hurry up and get the others so you can take them back to the mall, but you don't want to let Anne stay here by herself. And as if reading your mind, she pulls a concealed gun out from under her shirt. "I've only got four bullets," she states, "Don't take to long okay?"

You smirk and run down the hall, leaving Anne to fend for herself. As you enter the cafeteria, you hear two gun shots coming from the kitchen area. You run faster and see one man, brown-hair, maybe 6' 2", a little shaky, holding up a gun facing concealed figures on the ground. "What happened?" you ask loudly. The man jumps and turns around to face you. "They were zombies," he says quickly. "Th-they were coming after me."

You walk up to the man and look at the bodies on the floor. You see twin redhead girls lying in a giant pool of blood, bullet wounds in both of their foreheads. Their skin looks normal, not cracked and decaying like a zombie's. Both of their mouths are open, exposing white teeth that zombies wouldn't have. You kneel down and reach for one of the girl's wrists. It's warm. Even if the girls were recent zombies, their skin temperatures would have dropped the instant they turned.

You turn back to the man and find the loaded barrel of his gun in your face. He knows that you know his lie. "I got bit out in the parking lot," he states. You sense a bit of his hysteria in his voice. "They were going to kill me. But I know the cure to stop the transformation. They wanted to kill me before I could make it. As you can see, I wasn't about to let that happen." You stay in the spot you're knelt in, afraid to move. "Just put the gun down," you advise. "I promise I won't hurt you. I'll let you find the cure. Just put your gun down." He keeps the gun pointed at you. "You're lying!" he shouts. He opens his mouth to speak again but is interrupted by a gunshot. Blood splatters onto your face and the man falls to the floor in front of you. You shoot up, keeping your eyes on him.

You look up and see Clare holding a smoking shot gun by her side in her right hand maybe twenty feet from you. You run to her and kiss her deeply. "I told you to stay at the mall," you remind her. She looks down at the ground somberly. "Someone was infected and we didn't know it," she tells you. "I was the only one who made out safely." You wrap your arms around her tightly and hold her for a few moments. She rests her head on your chest. She hugs you just as tight, but not as long. She knows you both have to keep moving. "We have to get out of here, Eli," she tells you.

You take her hand and start running back toward Anne near the school's entrance. You stop running when you see her lying dead on the floor in front of the lockers. Her crutches lay smashed through a door of the entrance. Her intestines lay around her torn body in a small pool of her own blood. A trail of blood starts at her body and leads outside the school. "She was just fine when I left her," Clare whispers mortified.

You bring her hand to your lips and kiss it softly, not taking your eyes off of Anne's corpse. "It's okay," you assure her quietly. You move slowly around Anne to avoid her blood and walk with Clare to the front entrance. As you begin walking outside to the army bus, you hear sounds of oncoming footsteps. You gently tug Clare's hand and begin walking faster toward the bus. As soon as you step foot on the bottom step after unlocking the door, Clare screams bloody murder.

You turn around to find her trying to pry away an attacking zombie. You pull out your pistol and aim, but Clare keeps getting in the way. "I can't get a clear shot!" you exclaim. Clare manages to put the zombie's back to you so you can get a good shot. You take the opportunity and fire at the back of the zombie's head. Blood splatters onto Clare's face and she shrieks as the zombie's corpse falls to the ground.

You pull her close to you and kiss her passionately, uncaring of the blood on both your faces. Clare pulls away from you just enough so she can speak. "Let's go," she suggests. She steps over the zombie's corpse and gets on the bus. You follow her and lock the door behind you as she sits on her knees in the seat behind the driver's chair. You get in the driver's seat and start the ignition. You wait until you pull away from the school before you begin to speak.

"I'm glad you're okay, Clare," you tell her. She doesn't respond. "I guess we'll go into the next few towns over to see who all's still okay. And after we get rid of all the zombies we can help repopulate the world." You turn around and smile at Clare who's sitting with her head bent. "How does that sound to you?"

Clare's head shoots up to face you and you jump, swerving the bus a little. Black rings encompass her eyes, making the socket look caved inside her head. The skin on her cheeks is peeling and oozing blood. The color of her skin has faded to a pale gray and her eyes are a dark red. She opens her mouth and emits a loud screech, allowing you to see her cracked yellow teeth held together by bloody gums. She lunges at you and you turn around trying to dodge her. Her teeth lodge deep into your neck and you scream in pain. As you try to fend her off, you lose control of the bus. Her teeth grind deeper into your neck and you can feel the blood spraying into her mouth. Your foot hits the accelerator harder as you begin to writhe in pain. A second later, the bus smashes into a tree.

The engine explodes and catches on fire. Clare is thrown onto the engine when the bus crashes and she begins to burn along with the engine. She screeches more as her undead body goes up in flames and you look away from her, holding the part of your neck she bit and squeezing your eyes shut.

When Clare finally stops screeching, you stagger off of the bus. You don't need to look at her; you know she's already dead. The second true love you'd ever known had been turned into a zombie and burned to a crisp. And now, you were infected with zombie blood.

You fall to your knees crying silently to yourself. You refuse to let yourself become a zombie; you know what you must do.

You take the pistol from its holster on your belt and hold it up to your right temple. You start sobbing louder and you feel the tears streaming down your face. Your true love, your friends, your family, they're all gone. You have nothing left to live for. On top of that, you can feel the zombie blood coursing through your veins. You let out one last scream of agony and sorrow. You pull the trigger and hear the deafening bang of your pistol, but feel nothing.

You open your eyes and find yourself laying in your sweat on your bed staring at the ceiling. You sigh in relief and start panting. It was all just a dream...