My head came up at the sound of voices in the hall. I tensed my legs, preparing to pounce. The door opened to reveal a middle aged man with a knife in one hand and flashlight in the other.

"It's clear," he whispered to someone out of sight.

A thirty year old woman stepped into the large room, a bundle of pens stuck together with duct tape in her left, sharpened plastic in her right. She was looking behind her as she stepped in, saying something that not even I could hear.

Smiling to myself, I crawled through a hole in the wall into an adjacent room the little girl was just walking in, shuffling over to a desk and crouching behind it. I was shaking with glee as I crawled to a good spot to jump. She noticed me a little to late as my claws dug into her soft flesh, blood pumping out over my arms.

Her screams were muffled and gurgled as I put a hand over her mouth, head biting into her neck.

Just then I heard the woman call softly, "Tanya, come on out now. It's okay. There's no bad monster guys."

When the girl didn't answer, the woman walked into the room, a worried expression clouding her face. "Tanya? Tanya are you here sweetie? Where you at?"

Her gaze drifted over to us, where the door illuminated me perfectly from the side. I pulled my head back, muscle hanging from my jaw. She couldn't stifle a scream as I stood, growling from deep in my throat.

She charged forward, bringing both her weapons down from overhead. Before I could move, a long cord burst through the back window and wrapped itself around her waist. No, not a cord, but a tongue!

My savoir pulled the Human out the window, who screamed the entire time. Just then, the old man burst into the room. He threw his knife, barely nicking the Smoker's tongue. A small, faint cry of pain reached my ears.

I jumped forward, tackling the man to the ground just as he pulled out another knife.

My eyes went wide as the weapon descended and stabbed deep into my neck. A scream tore from my lips, scaring the Human and causing him to jerk the knife out and stab me yet again. When he pulled it out the second time, I grabbed his arm and simply pulled, free hand cutting it off at the shoulder. He staggered back, blood spurting from his open socket.

A low growl emitted from the back of my throat as I jumped forward, ready to finish my meal.

The Smoker came through the now-broken window. Part of his tongue was hanging out, and I noticed a small trickle of blood running from the side, about halfway down. "Bloody," he said.

"He stabbed me. Had to make him pay," I replied, shrugging and standing up, with my knees bent.

"Was there anyone else out there?"

"Not that I'm aware of. It seemed to be just those three."

"Three?"

"A little girl, whom I quickly devoured."

He nodded. "So what now?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm going to another city, where there will be more Humans. I think we've just about exhausted them from this place."

Without waiting for a reply, I crawled off, heading out the front door. Almost immediately, I was swept up in the tide of Common Infected heading East. Growling in anger, I jumped up, catching a window sill. I launched myself higher and followed the crowd. A grimace came upon me when I saw where they were running.

Three Humans sat behind a barricade of cars, which were supported by sandbags and a few blocks of concrete, and standing atop boxes or the tops of smaller cars, firing over the barrier. I measured the height of the barrier; about seven feet tall.

A Boomer hobbled onto the roof next to mine. I looked over at him and began quickly forming a plan.

"I have a plan to get them. You want to help?" I asked, jumping onto his roof.

The Boomer looked up at me and shrugged, creating a sickening sloshing sound from deep in his stomach.

"Okay? Go ahead and get a Smoker."

He nodded and hobbled off, only to return five minutes later, a small Smoker in tow. "He'll help."

"Okay, here's the plan. Boom, you spray your stuff all over them. Smoker, you take the girl. I recognize the man, he did me wrong when I was still a Human, so I'll take him. The third will probably be too blind and scared to save her companions, so we'll let the Common taker her. Wait until the Boomer barfs on them, got it?"

He nodded and walked off, jumping off the side of the roof and disappearing among the crowd of Infected, making his way to another rooftop.

"I'm thinking that he'll jump the gun," the Boomer said, staring at the lone Mutated Infected among the Commons.

I ignored him and jumped to a building closer to the barricade while my counter-parts got in position, smoker somewhere on a fire escape, Boomer looking out of a window directly beside the Humans. Suddenly, a long tongue shot out of an alley and wrapped itself around one of the girls, dragging her back.

A stream of puke lashed out and struck only one of the Humans, the female. I jumped and landed on the male. I felt a sharp pain erupt in my shoulder as I crushed the man beneath my weight. He cried out for help and tried to hit me with the butt of his machine gun.

I ducked and raked a claw across his stomach. He rolled back, a scream erupting from his lungs. He came up and put a three-round burst into my stomach. I doubled over for a split second, anger replacing the burning pain.

The blinded female had backed up into the sandbags, knocking them over. Common Infected quickly grabbed her before the sandbags crushed her.

Once again, I pounced on the man, taking him to the ground yet again. This time, though, I cut the wrist of the hand holding his weapon. Then, I preceded to chop his arms off at the elbows. When that was done, I jumped up onto the fire escape the Smoker was using. The Human was on top of him, choking him with his own tongue.

I simply walked up behind her and dug my claws into her neck and bottom of her spine. With a simple turn and heave, she was sent flying over the rail, down to the ground below.

After checking to make sure she wouldn't move, I turned on the Smoker. He was coughing vehemently and shrugged when he finally stopped. My lip curled up in a snarl. I had half a mind to do the same to him that I did to the Human male.

"What is wrong with you?" I snarled. "You wouldn't have almost died if you had waited!"

"I'm sorry, it's just that, well, she would have been my first kill. I turned barely a week ago, and since then I have been strolling the streets, waiting for someone to show themselves," he replied, scratching the back of his head.

I sighed and jumped away, going to look for the Boomer. I found him watching the Common eat the Human's pink flesh.

"Good job. I'm fixing to go to a different city, the food here is getting scarce, and if you want, you can travel with me. We make a good team," I offered.

He nodded and asked, "What will we do with the Smoker?"

"We can take him with us, but he just turned a week ago, that's why he jumped the gun. We will need to train him when and where to attack, who to avoid and things like that."

We gathered up the Smoker and left the city, heading to a Military base set up in the north. A smile found its way to my face as I thought of the amount of food we were about to eat, and the fun we would have with killing the Humans.