Footsteps echoed amongst the mysteriously empty walkways of the public shopping malls, shopping windows shattered in fragments on the ground, the mannequins stripped of all their inanimate belongings, an intense smell lingering in the air indistinguishable to many.
"Sempai," Kaname Madoka quivered, hiding behind her elder, Tomoe Mami.
"What's wrong?" Mami questioned, her bright golden magical girl outfit a marvelous contrast to the destroyed mall, magical musket in hand.
"Where are we going? We've been walking around for easily 30 minutes." Madoka replied. "Plus I stepped in something sticky."
Mami brushed off the last comment, as she had unfortunately known that once she took sight of the source, that it was definitely bodily.
"Well we can't survive forever by staying in one place." The blonde explained, the drill-hair bouncing with every step. "Especially not when we don't know where we are. This could be a Witch's barrier for all we know."
Madoka tugged on the blonde's puffy sleeve and was standing before a neon-colored orange poster labeled "Report the sick. CEDA."
"What's this?" Madoka asked curiously. "What's a CEDA?"
"I'm not overly sure. Report the sick?"
"There's sick people?"
"I suppose so? Whatever this CEDA is, they seem to be important to this cause." Mami replied, and grasped Madoka's wrist, trailing her away from the poster. Without a magical girl setup, Madoka was practically defenseless. "Come on, let's find a way out of here, none of these shops look open."
"No one got bit, right? Isn't that how this works?" A man in a stained white suit remarked, surrounded by 3 others in an elevator going down.
"I didn't." Replied a young man with knotted black hair and a baseball cap, holding a bloodied crowbar in one hand, remnants of what appeared to be human pieces on the sharp tip.
"Let's at least get aqquainted." A larger, black man suggested, stretching out his fingers between two pistols. "My friends called me Coach. I guess y'all can do the same."
"Good work out there, Coach." Went the last of the party, a darker skinned young woman with a bright pink Depeche Mode t-shirt, hands gripped shakenly on the grip of a Desert Eagle. "Name's Rochelle. What about you two?"
"Name's Nick." Went the white suit man. "Don't bother learning it, I don't plan on sticking around long."
"Dude, that's not cool." The baseball hat-wearing man spoke grumpily. "Either way, M'name's Ellis. Some people like to call me Ell, but I prefer Ellis 'cuz Ell kinda sounds like a girl's name…"
The group sat in silence.
"…But I guess if you wanna call me Ell you can." He concluded.
"Well at least we got that settled." Nick sighed, tugging at his shirt collar. "Shit, is it getting hot in here?"
Moments after Nick had said that, the elevator had come to a screeching halt and thick smoke began to fill it.
"Well, looks like we're going out." Coach mentioned.
"Allow me, then." Ellis optimistically jumped, jamming the crowbar he held into the shut doors, prying them open. Flames instantly shot inside.
"Goddammit!" Nick shouted. "Out!"
The quartet had jumped out to find a Mac-10 submachine gun, oddly silenced, lying on the floor.
"Guns!" Ellis grinned. "Now ain't that a sight for sore eyes."
"There's only one… Who's a good shot?" Rochelle noted, grimly.
"You're the best shot of us all so far, girl." Coach kindly replied. "We'll find some more."
Rochelle had picked up the mini-machine gun and began firing into the flames, the rest of the party following close behind. This was just the second week post-infection. Zombie Appocolypse had come true, but unlike all horror movies, not everything had a strict diet for human flesh. Ellis, Rochelle, Coach, and Nick were a few survivors, one of few. They hadn't seen a single human being other than each other in the last week not try to eat them alive, and life was difficult; but things were about to get much tougher.
Evening had fallen, and the stars rose brightly above in the sky. Akemi Homura sat on a rooftop, watching down at the stumbling messes that was once the human race crumbling across the street, lost and confused. She took a deep breath of the cold, Pennsylvania air and shut her eyes and laid back, the rooftop of this building much higher up than what the locals called "Zombies" roamed.
"You're awfully calm." A mysteriously upbeat tone had noted.
"Incubator. I'm shocked you followed us." Homura responded, neither opening her eyes nor rising from her back, legs still dangling over the side.
"Why so relaxed? Shouldn't you be finding a way out?"
"A witch had trapped us all in her barrier, and when we had killed her, it sent us here."
The cat-creature said nothing.
"Pennsylvania, America, hm? Not a completely awful place to be, I had always wanted to visit other countries."
"And of your friends?"
"I shall find them in due time. First I must locate a survival party, for these creatures may prove to be a dangerous adversary alone." She sighed, letting her eyes flutter back open. "Now for the time being, I no longer require your foresight."
The ravenette then pulled a .357 Magnum and blasted the creature away at point-blank range. She grinned and rose to her feet, jumping off the building.
"Did anybody hear that?" A young woman in a pink hoodie cried, her teammates around her lifting their heads slighty.
"Are you sure you're not just hearing things? Buildings are kinda still falling down, you know." A fierce, motorcycle biker, arms filled with tattoos had remarked, with a chuckle.
"What about you, Louis?" The hoodie woman looked over at her other teammate.
"I definitely heard something. Sounded like a gunshot." A black man responded, in a store uniform with an extremely loose tie and torn pants.
"That was definitely a revolver. I know that sound." The last teammate added, an old man with a thick, graying beard and an old military uniform.
"Memories of 'Nam, Bill?" The Biker laughed.
"That's no laughing manner, boy." The old man snapped back.
"I'd say we at least try to find the source." The hoodie woman insisted.
"Zoey, you want us to go into more danger than we are already in, because you had a hunch?" The Biker frowned. "I hate this plan."
"Francis, you hate everything." Bill retorted.
"Well it's true." Francis agreed.
"Zoey's got a point though. We could use a fifth member if there's more than just us out there."
"Thanks, Bill." Zoey smiled. "Come on, Mercy Hospital can wait."