Undead

by Subtle Blatancy

The end of man has come. In the ruined city of Spokane, Washington, a few survivors struggle within the confines of a city of the Undead. Rated M for explicit language, explicit violence, and overt sexual themes.

The landscape was a desolate waste-land of ruined wrecks, burnt-out buildings, and the distant yet very real scent of death. In the wide pastel of remoteness, miles away, a large building burned. The column of smoke that it produced soared high into the sky, darkening the clouds and dampening the sun, that sun already cut by the dim grey cloud-cover.

A large building, three stories high, made of brick and lined with soaring off-white plaster, sat silently in the midst of the quiet decay. A wide stone stair-way led to a grand wooden double-door, and on those were plastered the curses and forecasting's of rebels and doomsayers with red paint and hateful scrawl. This time, this one time, the wild forecaster's of man's end had been right. And the apocalypse that had ensued was all-consuming.

A Zed stumbled into the middle of the street. His jaw fell at an awkward angle, and a limp piece of flesh dangled from his misshapen chin. Its eyes were forward, a thousand mile stare that saw everything and nothing at the same time. Somewhere, a cry went out. The creature snapped its head around. A cry for help. A cry of an animal in distress. A cry from food.

A cry from a human.

Its jaw dropped, its arms stiffened, and it began to turn its limp, deathless form toward the sound. On a level beyond the subconscious, this creature needed flesh. Its lust was so intense; it could have walked for miles in pursuit based off of that one noise. His low, constant moan would have attracted others. The others would attract more Zeds still. Soon, there would be a wave of undead limping toward that one poor soul, that one delicious meal.

But this Zed was going nowhere.

The zombie's jaw flew from its limp hold to the rest of its head as its cranium exploded in a mist of pink and red and white bone fragments. A half a second later, a soft, unobtrusive zip hung in the air, and faded without being noticed.

Calculated at what he thought to be four-hundred and ninety-four meters away, he silently watched the zombie fall to the ground and re-sighted for the event of an unsuccessful shot. Through the 4x-24x variable power adjustable scope, he saw that the Zed had been eliminated with a clean kill-shot to the head.

Up in his hide, now looking through his scope, the Scout-Sniper surveyed the city for any signs of the human. The scream sounded echoed and high-pitched, so it was at a distance. However if he could hear it, they couldn't have been far. He desperately hoped the man would walk in the right direction – by chance run into his field of view so that he could be saved.

Sitting underneath a cleverly concealed position inside the school, aimed out the cratered hole in the north-east wall and with a significant vantage over the city, he waited. Laid out on his stomach, rifle in the crook of his shoulder and all but invisible to anybody or anything, Gardener waited for the person who had made the noise to cry out again

Gardener waited patiently, barely moving, for over fifteen minutes. Time ticked by, twenty minutes, then thirty. His initial hope had dwindled. The Scout-Sniper removed himself from his position, and packed his gear. Underneath a heavy camouflage shroud, tucked away up in the three-story building, he sighed. He was about to retire inside his domain, resigning the yelp as the death scream of an unfortunate individual taken victim by Zack, when something held his attention. There was this nagging sense of urgency, a soldier's intuition warning him that something was about to happen; something bloody.

The Sniper looked out at the city once more, and saw, far away, a flicker of motion. It was quick, organic – not a Zed. He immediately reached down and pulled the set of binoculars from his waist-pouch at his hip. He brought his eyes up to the glass, and saw immediately what was moving so frantically through the ruins.

It was another human. Robert's heart skipped a beat as he witnessed his first uninfected human in over four months. He noted, with surprise, that the figure was female, but scoffed himself momentarily for the sexism. Using a Sniper's calm and calculation, the Marine assessed the situation from his vantage point.

He ran through the mental check-list:

Target: White Caucasian Female, approximate age 21 years.

Target's Physical State: Dire; needs immediate medical attention.

Target's Armament: Target appears to have sidearm, but does not engage Zeds.

Threat Level: Target in significant danger.

She ran with a limp, obviously injured in her right leg. A large gash was evident even from a distance through the binoculars, and blood soaked her pants from the injury. She held the bleeding thigh in pain, and her pistol hung loosely in her grip.

Robert sprang into action. He threw himself to the floor and immediately re-armed his rifle for engagement. He sighted up, and saw the woman surrounded by Zack. She seemed scared and confused.

On the ground next to her, the zombie he had killed earlier already laid deathly still. He instantly knew approximate range, and sighted up on the closest Zed limping toward the target. He adjusted his aim and brought his cross-hairs over the Zombie's head. He released his breath coolly and sent a silent, accurate shot over the roughly five-hundred meters of ground, and into his target's skull. The woman audibly screamed as the mist of brains spurted to her left.

Gardener aimed up again, looked briefly to confirm target elimination, and sighted up on the second Zed. He squeezed the trigger easily and a 7.62x51 M118LR 175 Grain match-grade bullet found the upper part of the target's head, sending frontal brain-lobe and skull-fragments sky-wards. The Sniper entered a trance, a brutal and delicate dance of death with his foes. He sent grey-matter sailing and could only watch the silent display of death, the sound being too far away to hear from his vantage.

He sighted up once more, having killed seven ghouls with seven head-shots at over five-hundred yards – a display of skill he wouldn't match again. The next Zed was closing in on the target, and he pulled the trigger back. A dull, metallic click was all the answer he received. He squeezed the trigger again, and then one more time. He withdrew his eye from the scope and assessed his weapon.

'Jammed', he thought to himself suddenly.

Moving quickly but with an innate sense of calm, the Marine once again lit up into motion.

He wouldn't lose another one.

Leaving his rifle aimed out the window harmlessly, the Sniper quickly grabbed the coil affixed to the wall just inside of the cratered edge of the hole. He didn't have time to strap in his harness, so he grabbed a steady hold, and leapt backwards off of the ledge, backwards into the cold, empty air.

His feet slammed home onto the wall of brick and plaster, and immediately he felt the impact jar up his legs. He kicked back against the wall with a vengeance; slinging his considerable weight into the air and flying down his repel line. In too-big leaps, he repelled down the wall this way, and his feet landed on the gravel ground of the enclosed air-conditioning area.

Just as his feet hit dirt, two gun shots from a pistol, a 9mm, cut across the morning air loud and clear. He immediately ran over to the black, wrought iron fence, dodging passed stacked desks and rusted, unused air-conditioning units.

With a tremendous heave, he reached up and hauled his body up and over the top of the spiked fencing. He propelled himself over the sharpened tips of the fencing, one of which caught and gashed his left leg heavily in the process.

He landed with tremendous weight on the ground, and kicked up a flare of dust as he shifted his weight to roll out of the fall. He immediately stood back up, and began to sprint toward the scene.

Across the vast distance, between two dead Zeds, the woman lay, motionless, covered in blood.

The Scout-Sniper, taken aback by the sight, let out a single, involuntary cry. He would have scorned himself for the breach of sound-protocol any other time. He ground to a halt, looking left and right for immediate threats from Zack. There were none. He was still panting heavily from the massive exertion of the long sprint.

The horde was growing, climbing from every crevice in the earth to come and devour these two poor, desperate souls.

A feeling of desperation, of fear and panic, gripped his entire chest in a vice like the claw of satin. His training forced him into movement. As the horde surrounded the inert form of the girl, Gardener forced his head to clear, suppressed his intense fear, and calmly began to deal with the situation.

From the Velcro holster at his right hip, he drew his side-arm with an heir of casual grace. He began to stalk forward as he lifted the silenced pistol to a firing position with an easy sort of experience.

The silenced M1911 MEU(SOC) .45 pistol coughed, and a single, lethal round found its fleshy target. The ghoul's head whipped back from the impact, and the body turned and hit the ground with a thump. Despite the silencer, most of the low-moaning Zeds turned their attention to this new, active flesh.

Robert took in a breath, and once again felt the pistol kick, smelled the gunpowder residue acutely in his nose as he felled another zombie. He walked continuously forward, the whole time. He hit one of them in the eye, and the spray jetted out the zombie's skull like a child's squirt-gun.

The horde was densely packed around the seemingly lifeless body. He fired again, and again, each shot sending another zombie to the dirt.

With a sudden growl of flesh-craving lust, the Zed nearest him reached out with its claw-like fingernails. Robert side-stepped quickly to avoid the attack, and placed his barrel to the temple of the Zed as he slid past. The trigger pull forced the silencer to physically tap the thing's head before the round penetrated the skull.

He turned and another zombie was already on top of him. He struggled to bring his pistol up, but the thing had latched onto his chest with its rotted hands. He placed the pistol underneath its jaw, but a dull click indicated empty when he pulled the trigger.

He swore loudly as the thing pushed back on him. He quickly spun, a desperate flop more than a skilled maneuver, and brought his knife out. The Marine used the momentum of his spin, sending the blade whirling into Zack's temple. He pulled on the serrated blade, but it wouldn't fully give, instead jutting half-out of the thing's head. He shimmied to avoid the spurt of blood that sprung in a stream from the wound.

Without his knife, he darted between the groaning undead, each time avoiding death by inches as slick, infected teeth gnashed at the air for his blood. Leaping, bounding, side-stepping, all the while he kept steadily forward. He ran over and with a tremendous shoulder check knocked the Zeds immediately around the girl away. He took a short moment to reload his pistol as he bent down at her side.

"C'mon, now," he urged, quickly but quietly, "We gotta get out of here." He said.

She did not respond. He could hear the low, continuous moan and the shuffling of stiff feet on hard ground.

"We've got to go now," he begged, "You alive?" He paused, waiting for an answer. "You gotta' do something, say something if you're alive."

Still, no response.

Very quietly, close up to her face, looking directly at her, he asked once more, pleaded, "Don't be dead. Not another one. Please…" He trailed off.

He held his gaze, looking at her face for a long moment.

She moaned softly. Just enough for him to hear.

"Fuck yes you're alive." He said, looking up and around at the number of zombies that had encroached whilst looking at the girl. "Let's get the fuck outta' here." He said, hoisting her up onto his shoulder with a grunt. He shook his head slightly at the dead-weight, and pointed his pistol loosely at the closest Zed between him and the School with his left hand. The shot, sloppy because of the weight and the left-handedness, almost went wide but caught Zack high-right. The Zombie spun backwards with the impact and oozed material on the dusty ground.

The Sniper, concerned with the enemy activity he would have attracted, sprinted back toward the school. The weight of the girl was heavy, but he kept running. A fire burned in his lungs, and his lips were so dry and cracked it felt like water evaporated right out of them. Without his accuracy, he had to wait until he got right up next to the Zeds to pop them.

He ran and ran, dodging lazy attack by Zack. The horde surrounded, drawing closer and closer. There was nothing he could do to fight them. Running was his only choice.

Nearing the end of the heavy pack of Zeds, he blew a chunk of head away from one of them, but the Zombie remained standing, unfazed. Unable to stop his run, he thought quickly and slammed into the Zed with his left shoulder, body tackling the thing with a tremendous yell of pain and anger.

His veins pumped acid and the fire in his lungs had spread to his whole body, just as much rage and adrenaline as the physical torture.

The uncoordinated Zombie went hurdling backwards, and the soldier with his precious cargo did a partially mid-air spin before slamming to the ground, hard, with his survivor. She yelped slightly as she landed on her injured right leg.

"Shit!" He said to himself. His heart was raging like the inferno of an incendiary grenade, adrenal glands spitting out chemical like milk. However in that moment of passion, desperation and terror, he seemed uncannily calm. They had always called him the Iceman.

"C'mon," He said as he began to lift her up again.

"No…" She said, partially conscious, "I can walk."

"You got it." He said simply. He squatted down, slung her right arm over his left shoulder, and the two limped back toward the school, Zack pursuing slowly in their wake. The moans behind them had risen to a soaring din of desire.

Slowly, they made their way back to the iron fencing, and both made it over the fence after a struggle, both grunting in pain as they helped each other over, Gardener doing most of the work.

He had to make her hold on to his front, wrapping her weak arms and legs around his torso, as he pulled them both slowly up the rope back into the safety of the building.

The effort to save her life was frantic and very much unlike Gardener. Where as usually his motions were calm and controlled, there was an element of nervous fear as he went through the motion quickly patching up her wounds. He was, however, still calmer than a Hindu Cow in his franticness.

Uncle Sam had spent lots of money to make sure this man knew how to deal with injury, and the training kicked in as soon as he needed it too.

Presently, they were sat around a dully flickering fire within the building. Inside the school, they were in an open-aired atrium. The space was small, but housed the two survivors and all provision comfortably. Above, the stars glimmered in their steady multitudes. The moon's cold, white light was covered by the warm, red-orange glow of the fire. The air had the faintest smoky taste, an oaken, earthy aroma over by the fire.

In one corner of the long, skinny atrium, Gardener had pitched a large, olive-drab tarp between the walls and on a single peg to protect from the weather. The sound of a quietly humming generator drifted through the air, harmonizing with the crackle from the fire when the wood flared up at occasional intervals. The generator connected with two heaters, directed at his sleeping bag underneath the tarp-roof.

In the warm sleeping bag, head resting tranquilly on a small pillow, the injured girl slept deeply. Gardener was still covered in her blood, but he had washed his hands and face, and now sat just outside the light of the fire, watching her steadily rising and sinking form as she breathed in her sleep.

He was thankful that she had finally stabilized.

His gaze went back to her frequently, and an odd familiarity lingered in his mind of her face; her green eyes and straight, mahogany hair. For fear of seeming creepy, he tried to distract himself with cleaning and re-cleaning his rifle; he had fixed the jam quickly, and then lubricated the moving parts. He unpacked and packed his bag a number of times, and twice made a stroll around the third floor to look out the windows and check for any zombies aware of his presence. Fortunately, Zack had not noticed the bloody quarrel that had erupted outside of the school and, very thankfully, had not pursued them into the building.

He had checked her body for any bite-marks, fearful that he would have had to kill this still-living human for his own safety. Her clothes had been ragged and thin as paper from the tears. He, tentatively, took off her clothes to inspect for any bites. It was awkward looking over her body while she was unconscious, but he tried to check gently. In another display of alone awkwardness, he replaced her clothes, dressing her with a set of his woodland-camo pants and a too-large olive-drab shirt.

He tried not to think of her well-sculpted, mostly naked body as the evening progressed.

The early evening faded, and night was starting to encroach in-full. Robert toyed with the idea of putting out the fire, but because it was so far inside the building he knew the light wouldn't show out.

Just as the sun had faded entirely, and its yellow light existed in the sky only as a phantom of a memory, the girl awoke.

Her eyes parted hazily. The fog of sleep slid slowly off of her mind, and she looked up at the olive-drab green color directly above her. Eye's still clouded, she blinked a couple times. The color didn't go away. Her brow wrinkled in confusion. Suddenly, her eyes lit up. She shot up from the sleeping bag, all too aware of the fact that she had no idea where she was.

Gardener looked over his shoulder at the sudden activity. He immediately set down what he was working on to go over to her.

The girl shot up from the sleeping-bag, and immediately made a run for it – though where 'it' was she didn't exactly know. The Marine ran up behind her and grabbed her around the waist, locking her arms in place with his. The woman struggled furiously, screaming.

"Let go of me!" She said, teeth clenched tightly.

The girl continued to wriggle and writhe, trying desperately to get out of his iron grip. She didn't seem to want to stop, and occasional, angry bursts of gibberish emitted from her mouth as she struggled to break free.

"Calm down, calm down, calm down," he kept repeating. His face was emotionless, calm as ever.

The Marine became annoyed with her futile struggle, waiting for her to stop, and so took her arms and spun her around. He pushed her away from his body firmly, and lowered his head to look at her straight-on. It took her a few moments to stop moving. Breathing heavily, she looked up at his face, and the two locked eyes. He was a good deal taller, by a few inches at least.

"You good?" Gardener said. He raised his eyebrow quizzically.

She took in a deep, relaxing breath.

"Yeah. I think so." She said. She closed her eyes, and exhaled through her nose weakly.

"Sure?"

"Yes. I'm fine." She said. The thinness of her voice told otherwise. She looked down, breaking eye-contact.

He loosened his grip slightly, and she backed up. She held out her hands slightly to her sides, as if balancing, and she made her way shakily to the sleeping bag. She flopped down on top of it. And again closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths.

"You're Okay?" He said. He took a small step toward her, holding out his hand amiably.

She physically jumped, and emitted a brief yelp. Gardener immediately stepped back again.

"Sorry." He said quickly. He bit his lip and looked away from her.

Silence hung in the air. She broke it.

"No-no-no," She said, "Please come over. It's just that I'm still a little… jumpy." She said. She rubbed her forearm nervously, and looked down at her hands.

Slowly, taking caution, Gardener took a step toward her. She didn't flinch this time. He walked over, and slowly sat on the ground next to her. He crossed his legs and put his hands on his knees.

"I'm Robert. They call me R." He said. Robert extended his hand to shake, passively. He was pleased to see she didn't jump.

"Who are they?" She said. Robert thought about it for a moment. It was a slightly dark thought.

"Sorry. That was kind of grim." She said, frowning with concern. She held out her hand and put it in his. He shook it. "My name is Shelby. They mostly just call me Shelby."

"Whoever they are," Gardener said. He smirked weakly. Both laughed a little, but the awkward silence came back after the limp laugh fizzled out.

"Just so you know. I thought I'd clear the air. While you were sleeping, I took your clothes off and-"

"My God! You little-" Shelby began. She shirked back, and pulled the end of the sleeping bag over her legs and body with a tight fist. She looked down and noticed, for the first time, that she was wearing different clothes.

"No-no-no-no-no!" He said, foot very much in his mouth. "Shit, I didn't mean it like that at all! God no! It's just that you were covered in blood, soaked through, I," He paused. "I didn't want you to – you know, get…" He said. Gardener looked away nervously as he trailed off.

"A cold?" Shelby said. She gave him a massively judgmental look. The phrase seemed to scream of criticism and mocking disbelief, and her expression dripped with anger.

"Infected." He had looked her dead in the face.

Shelby took in a breath suddenly. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again.

The silence drifted back.

She reached out and touched his hand.

"Look, I'm sorry. You've been so nice to me, and the first thing I do is-" she said. Gardener shook his head easily. He reached over and grabbed her hand warmly.

"Don't worry about it. I'd have done the same thing, if I'd woke up… here." He said. He smiled, but the nervous retention was still hidden behind his teeth.

"Your sure?" Shelby asked.

"One-hundred percent." He said. He waited a moment; for a just a second, the smile was warm and natural. "I didn't, you know, do anything to you – for real."

"Thanks." She said, legitimately.

Gardener nodded to her, and then got up to tend to the fire.

It occurred to him a little later that she was probably ravenously hungry. He didn't know how long she'd been alone – for all he knew, the girl could've been days without food or water. He walked over to a supply crate, and pulled out a couple cans of Campbell's preservative-laced 'Chunky' stew. Usually he would eat the stuff cold, but he figured he'd treat the guest to a warm meal.

He mentally checked himself for referring to her as the 'guest'. She was a survivor, same as he was. Soon, she'd be up and active. With any luck, she'd be able to help him find more people, get a resistance going.

He left the cans on the metal grate over the fire, and went to grab a couple multi-tools with utensils on them. The soup was already hot, and he reached over and grabbed both the cans with his gloves on. He walked over, and noticed she'd, again, fallen back asleep.

Gardener figured the loss of blood or the lack of sleep and food, or both, were the reason behind her lethargy. He set down one of the cans gently, and softly nudged her to awake.

"Hmn?" She said lazily as she re-awoke. He handed her the can, and she grabbed at it immediately.

She put the can to her mouth and choked down a large gulp of the thick meat soup. She looked up, slight amounts of broth near her lips. R gave her a look. She giggled slightly, whipped her face with her hand, and took the proffered spoon-tool. They ate in relative silence. Food was a luxury, it seemed, in the post-apocalyptic zombie outbreak. After eating the entirety of their meals, Robert looked up at her again.

"So what's your story; how'd you get here? How'd you survive the outbreak?" He asked.

She seemed distracted at first; remote; cold. She didn't look at him.

"Shelby?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. She shook her head slightly and blinked, as if to clear her head. "Mostly luck, I guess. I'm a bad shot with a pistol."

"D'you see anybody else? Anybody we can rescue still in the city?" He asked. She waited for a moment, searching his eyes, contemplating; trouble stirred below the surface.

"I knew it." She said, declaratively. She nodded triumphantly.

"I'm sorry?"

"I knew I knew you from somewhere."

"Did you?" He said.

"High-School, here." She gestured around herself at the building.

The Lewis and Clark High School building was a veritable fortress. Its rugged, inner-city design had lent itself perfectly to Gardener's purposes, with its barred ground-level windows, sliding metal doors and extensive cooking and washing facilities.

"Holy shit - you're Shelby Hunter!" he said, grinning widely.

"Yeah!" She said, returning the same glowing smile.

He immediately reached out and hugged her. It was fairly abrupt. She wasn't sure which one of them was more surprised at the action. Shelby returned the hug tightly.

"Damn. Can't believe I didn't recognize you before now." He said, chuckling mildly.

"Me either – I must have just been so caught up in everything, and," She stopped, mid sentence, and gave him a warm, intimate look. "Robert Gardener. I knew you were familiar!" She said, hitting her knee.

"Kinda' the wrong place for a reunion. S'pose anybody else from our class made it?""They certainly weren't the…" She searched for the right wording, shaking her head thoughtfully, "most observant observers in the observatory." She said, shrugging widely.

Gardener laughed, "True." He looked at her. "Damn, Michelle Hunter. What'd you end up doing with yourself since? Before, y'know, all this?"

"College."

"Gonzaga?"

"No, actually; couldn't stand to be in this town any longer."

"I know what ya mean." He nodded his head in agreement.

"Ended up going to Cal-Arts." She said.

"Oh, yeah, I know the place. Lived right by there for a while, actually."

"Did you? How'd we never meet?"

"I, uh, got into a slightly different education program." He said.

"Whatever did happened to you? I leave Senior year and see you now all… decked out."

"Decked out?" He said, chuckling and raising an eyebrow playfully.

"Well, you know…" Shelby stammered. Gardener laughed.

"Marines." He said simply. "Scout-Sniper in Marine Reconnaissance."

"Really? Never would have thought…" she said, thoughtfully.

"What is that supposed to mean?" He asked, incredulous but joking.

"I'm just saying." She said. It was an old phrase the both of them had used to use.

They both laughed again.

The night wore on, and after a time catching up, a slightly odd event in the midst of a city of undead, Gardener stood once more and went to fetch some scratch-materials to make her a crutch. She had trouble walking what-with her leg wound, and they would have to leave eventually to get into the city. While having her use a crutch to do so would be inconvenient, it would at least get her moving around again in preparation for the withdrawal. As he stood, Shelby noticed his left leg.

"Jesus R, look at your leg!" She said, pointing at his left thigh. He looked down.

He had completely forgotten to take care of himself after the struggle of saving Shelby. He had assumed that the blood on his leg was just more of hers or of Zack's. He shrugged, grimacing slightly.

"You've gotta' clean that up, or something, don't you?"

"Yeah, probably." He chewed his tongue thoughtfully for a moment. "Eh, I'll do it later. I'm getting together some wood right now. Wait here."

The entire process didn't take overly long, and he walked back into the dim fire-light with the necessary materials. He told her he would rig the thing up in the morning, but that now sleep was essential for both of them. He took off his ripped BDU pants and withdrew a new pair.

In a slightly awkward situation, he asked Shelby to help him with cleaning and sewing up the wound. Because it was so far up his leg, he had to go pants-less for the duration of the operation.

After the long process of cleaning his wound with alcohol and sewing it up raggedly, he staggered around the site, put out the fire, loaded his rifle and gave his side-arm to Shelby.

The night was dark, and the stars were, as always, numerous in the immaculate sky.

The next morning, he began work on the crutch, early. It took little hardship, and Shelby was still asleep by the time he finished it. It occurred to him how early he had been waking up in the mornings. He wondered how the shortened sleep pattern would affect his combat efficiency.

He wondered how Shelby would affect his combat efficiency.

Eventually, she awoke, and they shared a quick breakfast. Nothing so elaborate as the previous night's meal; it was merely a couple of his many pre-packaged MRE's. After eating, he gestured over toward the crutch in the corner.

"Finished the stick, by the way." He said, feeling the morning chill and shaking his head to shake it away. Shelby looked over and noticed it.

"Oh. That was fast."

"Took a little over an hour."

"When'd you wake up?" She asked.

"Earlier." He said simply, standing up. Both had finished their meals, and he took her empty tin and stashed it in a bag at the other end of the atrium before grabbing the crutch and taking it over. "Wanna' give it a go?" He asked.

"Is it… safe?" She said, eyeing the thing incredulously.

"I'm pretty sure…" He said, putting his weight on it. He flailed his other leg up in the air, and waved his arm around unsteadily.

He was a bulky man. She was convinced.

"Help me up." She asked, and stretched her hands out. He grabbed both of her hands with his free one, and hoisted her up. She collapsed under her injured leg, and slung her arms around Robert to help herself stay up.

"Woah, there!" He laughed. He looked straight down at her, Shelby's chin right on his chest.

"Sorry." She said sheepishly, trying the level herself out.

"S'alright. You good to try this out?" Robert asked.

"Definitely. For sure."

She reached out, and with an arm still on him for balance, stuck the crutch under her right arm. She leaned on it, and, pulling Robert along with her for support, began to limp across the atrium.

"There you go." He said, smiling at her success.

"This isn't too bad." She said, still slightly shaky, concentrating on her steps.

They strutted about the area a little more, and Robert pulled away from her, leaving her to balance on her own. She yelped lightly, but stabled out and took a few tentative, self-guided steps.

"You got it." He said. He was walking backwards, looking behind him occasionally to not run into anything on the ground. The two walked around the compound for a few minutes. She stumbled a few times, and he would reach out to catch her.

He turned around, and bent down to remove something from his path, still walking backwards.

"If you're going to fall, fall forwards." He said distractedly, moving the bag from under his feet. He heard a large crack.

He turned just in time to see Shelby falling at him, crutch broken, splinters flying in the air.

Shelby screamed as she fell, he yelped suddenly, and she flung herself forward. Tangled, the two lost balance together and fell to the ground. He landed flat on his back with an 'oof'. Shelby was right on top of him, legs on either side of him in what seemed to be a semi-straddle.

For a moment, both of them breathing hard from the sudden, minor, rush of adrenaline, they stared at each other, each looking into the other's eyes. Her face was centimeters from his, her straight, dark hair fallen around her face. He could feel her hot breath against his lips. Her soft, warm body was pressed against his, her thighs on the outside of his hips.

In what seemed like an eternity but what was really just a few seconds, both of them laid there, breathing heavily.

"Oh-my-god," She said, breaking the silence. She pushed herself off of him, and slung her uninjured leg over his body to dismount, "I lost my balance, and-"

"No, not at all, its fine." He said, recovering. Gardener felt a sudden desire to cover up a feeling of guilt. He slid his legs up and put his elbows on his knees. She sat with her legs sprawled out in front of her and with shoulders drooped and leaning back, supported by her arms.

The Marine reached over and pulled the splintered and broken crutch over to himself. He turned the broken thing over in his hand, shaking his head.

"Damn thing." He said. He shook his head, disappointed.

There was a silence.

Shelby looked over at him. On her face, there was a hint of playful glee. He returned the look, a smirk creeping along his lips. She giggled slightly, then he chuckled, and before a few moments they were both laughing loudly, heads to the sky.

After that, Robert checked his gear and grabbed his rifle. He told her that he would be back in a few; that he only had to make a circuit around the building to check for any unwanted attention or weak-points. She said she understood, and he crawled out of the small, Zed-proof door leading out of the atrium.

While he walked, he considered how fortunate he was to have saved this girl. He wouldn't have ever told anyone, but the nights and days in solitude had begun to eat at him, despite his training. Still, the nagging sensation that she would decrease his combat efficiency lingered, a dark and jealous feeling.

Walking over to a broken window, he cleared his throat and checked to see if there were any Zeds outside. Seeing nothing, he unbuttoned his BDU pants, and proceeded to urinate out the window. He let out a sigh of relief, and rocked back and fourth on his toes and heels.

He came back, and reported the all clear. He walked over to the covered area, and then sat down with his rifle and pistol in front of him on a cleaning mat. He began to disassemble and clean them while he talked.

"So," he began, "How'd you end up here for the outbreak?"

"Visiting family."

"Bull."

"Excuse me?"

"Bull. Nobody just visits family in the middle of July."

"Well…" She seemed tight-lipped.

"C'mon. Who're you hiding from?" He paused, cleaning his pistol all the while, then continued, "Nothing you were doing then matters. This thing, whatever it is, it's changed the world. Might sound bleak – but it's a new start." He looked up from his pistol; gave her a look with an eyebrow raised and a smirk, seeming to say 'You know I'm right'.

"So, what was Michelle Hunter doing back in good-ol' Spokane, Washington?"

"Just family. Nothing more."

He gave her a long, hard look, scanning below the surface.

"Alright. I'll buy it. For now." He slammed back the upper receiver on his M1911, and set it back down next to the unattached silencer.

"What about you?" She asked, "what brought you here?"

"I couldn't really tell you," he said, "sort of an irrational choice, come to think of it."

"How so?"

"I was in California when the shit-storm started."

"I heard you guys were mostly spared."

"Eh," he said, apathetically. "It was bad enough. I was at the base at Camp for most of the initial stages, so it was relatively safe where I was at. A lot of guys wanted to pack up for home though – protect their families and what-not; I get it – so our Commanding finally gave us the go-ahead to leave."

"You took all your stuff with you?" She asked, gesturing around at all of the various Military-Grade materials lying around.

"Some was authorized. Other things…" he gestured down at the parts of his rifle sitting on the matt below him while he worked some mechanism in his hand with a rag to clean it.

"What is that thing, anyway?" She asked. "What's it called?"

"The M14 Designated Marksman's Rifle." He stated, "Fires a 7.62 round, bigger than a lot of the stuff people have around here, the civilian models. It gets the job done."

The rifle, when assembled, was quite a feat of engineering. The original weapon was the M14, a relatively compact, semi-automatic rifle designed in the late 1950's. Since then, the Marine Corps found a need for an accurate, light-weight, large-caliber rifle. Taking the basic, old model of the M14, U.S.M.C. Gunsmiths enacted significant modifications, including new stock, upper-rail, new barrel, and improved sights, among many other things. Gardener's rifle in particular was Olive-Drab green, and had a Leupold Mark IV Day Scope with 4x-24x adjustable magnification. It was a work of art as far as weapons went, but not a one-of-a-kind by any means.

"I guess I just wanted to see if my family was alright." He said. He wasn't looking at the part he was cleaning. He considered his words.

"Were they?"

"Never found out; didn't find any of them." He said. He bit his lower lip, and didn't make eye-contact, instead seemed to stare miles away.

"I'm sorry." She said, legitimately.

"Don't be. I can handle myself."

"I wasn't talking about that. It's hard to lose family."

"Should be, shouldn't it?" He said. It wasn't necessarily directed at Shelby. His eyes watered, ever so slightly, at the edges. His breathing was deep and heavy. He didn't even seem to notice her there.

He paused. From his limitless stare, he finally made eye contact again. He smiled weakly.

"I'm sure they're fine. Most of 'em were smart people. They probably made it out alright."

"Wish I could say the same of mine." Shelby said, reflectively.

"That same family you just happened to be visiting, just for kicks, a few minutes ago?" He asked, grinning softly.

"Absolutely." She said, lifting her chin.

The rest of the day went on, for the most part, uneventfully. Gardener helped Shelby walk around the atrium, showed her where he had everything stowed. All of the supplies were stored with the typical efficiency of a Marine.

In one small box, he had all of his clothing and gear stowed in an organized fashion. In the crate below that, he had a healthy supply of ammunition for his weapons, as well as a couple other pistols and an old, dusty 12-gauge. A small stack of bills, cash wrapped in purple rubber-bands, was in the same crate.

A table, salvaged from the school itself, was covered in small, tin boxes filled with MRE's and other consumables. An emergency bug-out bag sat, unused, underneath this same table, snuggled up against three large, full jugs of water.

He went to work in trying to construct a new crutch for the rest of the day, and had a slightly more solid looking tool by the time the night rolled around. Shelby was already asleep. He hit the sack shortly after that.

The next morning hit, and he woke up first, as always, to run a perimeter of the building. The air was getting colder, and he put on his BDU jacket over his olive-drab undershirt. For whatever reason, he couldn't shake a kink in his neck, but he grabbed his rifle just the same and crawled out to inspect the school. He felt a sudden urge for a cigarette, and dug into a small, secluded area of one of the supply crates to grab one.

The habit of smoking was wildly discouraged for members of the Scout-Sniper community for many reasons, but he sometimes felt a yearning for the nicotine buzz. He thought about how cold the mornings were getting as he walked around the compound.

He thought about what the date was. It occurred to him that it must've been some time in November. That brought him to the chilling revelation that the outbreak must've hit California just over five months ago. It seemed so surreal, so much like a nightmarish dream. It was all so terrifying, like something out of a bad Hollywood movie. He shook the feeling and looked around the drab innards of his new domain.

The gun was loose in his hands, and the cigarette hung limply from his mouth. The smoke trickled from the end of it, and he acquired a long ash as he walked around the edge of the building, looking outside for Zack. He felt comfortable that nothing could get in. The basement was the last place to look.

The hallways on the bottom level, the basement, were always a labyrinth of dark; so little sunlight could get through the slit-windows that dotted the halls at very occasional intervals. The shadows were always long and wicked. All too suddenly, Robert noticed a rapid, unnatural breathing, rasping through the darkness. His footsteps sounded like anvils in his ears. The sound grew, from a distant idea to a very real, very vivid, strained repetition.

Then, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Gardener's heart began to pump. He felt blood start to course through his veins, cold and tense with vestiges of adrenaline. His hands suddenly felt clammy, impotent, on the composite fiber stock of his weapon.

But now there it was, at the far end of the hall. And it was making that noise. There was nothing to separate them but distance, air, and that long, dark tunnel. A single, defiant beam of silver-white morning light had found some crack in the walls, and it shown down, a sliver of a sliver, just in front of Robert.

This creature was beyond any life form he had ever encountered. Its shoulders heaved up and down with a rhythmic fury as air passed in and out, constant and impenetrable. The immutable black shrouded its features in darkness, but it appeared to the Sniper for all the world like the being was stringy, and raw.

The revelation came to him that this creature had no skin.

The cigarette fell from Robert's mouth. In what seemed like slow motion, the long ash shattered on the marble-esque tile floor, and the small, burning red ember inside sent the smallest of sparks as it collided.

With a great suddenness, the thing whipped around. In a flash, it was turned fully, and its eyes bore down with all the intensity and anger of a creature from hell. Across the long, dark hallway, Gardener could see those eyes; they weren't human any longer. They glowed like an animal's eyes, instinct and hatred.

He was wracked with terror, with those two impossible, flaming eyes locked onto his form at the end of the hallway. Its constant, repetitive heaving stopped suddenly. There was a low, immutable growl from its lipless, frothing mouth.

The thing at the end of the hallway suddenly let out an animalistic roar, a screech of attack unlike anything Robert had ever heard. Igniting like a current of electricity, the thing tore down the hall, its clawed feet sending shards of marble into the air with each pounding, impossibly quick bound.

"Holy shit!" Robert had time to say. Like a bucket of icy water, he awoke from his terrified trance. He wrenched his arms up and the rifle snapped to his shoulder faster than could be seen, and he squeezed the trigger three times in a desperate cluster of shots.

Screaming with a fury, the thing anticipated, and leapt into the air to avoid the obvious cluster of rounds. It bounded and smashed into the wall with its feet, leg-muscles rippling and tearing, then flexing its massive, vein-covered limbs to propel itself over to the other wall. It propelled it self once more, and again its barbed feet tore into the floor.

The marine tried desperately to get off a final shot. The bullet flew true, and the shot careened through the air and smashed into the creature's head. As chunks of flesh flew away, the monster didn't even break its pace. Thinking quickly, in one final attempt to save his life, the Marine swung his rifle butt with all his might, roaring like a man possessed as he did so.

Just as the creature passed through the solitary, illuminating beam of light, the rifle flew through the cold air.

The motion saved his life.

The creature collided with the butt of the weapon, knocking fanged teeth from its head. The beast collided with Robert with tremendous force still, and sent both figures flying through the air for two meters before slamming hard onto the ground.

Snarling and spitting, the fanged thing piled on top of him, wiggling its limbs furiously. With both its clawed hands, it grabbed onto the gun, and gnashed with its teeth centimeters from his face. Trying desperately to save his life, Robert suddenly let go with one hand from the gun, and reached down desperately for the jack-knife he kept in his boot. The creature lurched forward as it forced with in-human strength against him.

"Grahn! F'ckn Shit!" He stammered with teeth gritted like a clamp in his head. His fingers just skimmed the end of the knife. He felt the end of it brush against his fingertips, and he screamed in frustration. The beast gnawed at him just above his face.

Tears of absolute anger welled up in his eyes. He looked up at the beast, a face deformed and without skin but for patches of twisted, charred flesh and sinew and muscle contorted beyond recognition.

Robert screamed one final time, bellowed the roar of a hurricane, and his veins bulged and writhed under his skin with the exertion.

The knife flashed suddenly in the sliver beam of morning light. A wet, full sounding 'thwak' hung in the air.

A handle stuck defiantly out of its temple as he ran up the stairs with rifle in-hand. The thing laid there dead and bleeding, the pool of expanding liquid just now passing into the patch of light.

"Holy-shit-holy-shit-holy-shit-holy-shit-" he kept repeating to himself as he tore through the hallways, and burst into the atrium. "Shelby, wake the fuck up!" He said. His eyes were wide with fear, his jaw locked and tense.

She shot up immediately, panicked and with the side-arm held awkwardly in her grip.

He ran over to her, and embraced her intensely.

"Thank fucking god you're alright." He said, exasperated and shaking with the after-affects of the adrenaline.

She pushed him away, still holding on to his arms firmly.

"What do you mean? What the hell is wrong?" She asked. Her swearing seemed almost out of place.

"I thought, maybe, one of the things…" He said quickly, trailing off. His voice quavered and sounded like a puppy's whine. "… one of them could've been up here, and could have got to you, and..." He looked up at her, straight in the eyes. "It was so horrible."

"What, what was so horrid?"

He babbled something in a whimpered response. She grunted loudly and slapped him across the face.

Immediately, he stopped. He took a deep breath in, and let it out through his nose. He closed his eyes, and breathed in again. He exhaled shortly, and opened his eyes once more.

"Thanks. I needed that." He said, honestly. He hugged her again, holding her close. He broke the embrace.

"What happened? Where were you?"

"I was downstairs, checking for Zack."

"Zack?" She asked.

"You know,"

"And what happened?" She asked, pressing.

"There was something, one of them in the basement."

"And?"

"But it wasn't. It wasn't one of them. It was something…" He trailed off, looking off chillingly.

"Something what, Robert?"

He looked at her again.

"These things are changing Shelby. Adapting, Mutating, I don't know. That thing down there – I killed it – but it was more horrible then anything I've seen." He paused again. "I've got to clean it up."

"Here," she said, forcing her way out of the sleeping bag, "I'll help." He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"It's fine. Stay here."

"You sure?"

He nodded in response, and went to grab some gear to dispose of the body. He turned just as he left.

"Thanks for being here." He said. His smile was weak, but sincere.

"Should be me thanking you, right?"

He cleaned up the body and threw it off of the roof wrapped in a number of black garbage bags. After that, he helped Shelby walk around a little with the new crutch. The new one didn't break. A little later, he had her relax, and she found frivolous ways to entertain herself. Often she was seated atop his sleeping-bag. Her leg injury was constantly in need of re-dressing when she wasn't slowly creeping around the atrium.

All the while, he seemed shaken.

Gardener packed up his things, and prepped his gear for combat. He strapped on his belt and put his now thoroughly cleaned rifle on its shoulder strap.

"Where you headed?" Shelby asked, looking up at him. She was fiddling with the straps on her BDU pant's pocket.

"Out." He said simply.

"Excuse me? Out where?"

"Into the city. We need some provisions; we need to get you a weapon."

"Are you insane? You're not going out there, after what you told me this morning!"

"I'll be fine, I promise." He wasn't looking at her, still packing.

She paused, incensed. Shelby breathed in deeply through her nose, and exhaled.

"I was out there, Robert. It was bad, really bad. There's more than just…" She paused, struggling to find the words. She moved on. "There's looters and pirates and lunatics – dangerous people."

"I'm a looter, technically."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant." He looked at her, finally.

They paused for a moment. Neither spoke.

"I'll be fine."

"You sure?" She said, after a moment. She seemed malcontent.

He smirked softly, and walked over to where she was sitting on top of his sleeping bag. He squatted down behind, and put a hand reassuringly on her shoulder.

"I'm sure." She placed her hand comfortably on his. They didn't speak, but it was a numb, easy silence.

He got up suddenly, and gave his gear one final run-through. He mentally checked the list:

Rifle: Check.

Side-Arm: Check.

Ammunition: Check.

Knife: Check.

Radio: Check.

"If I'm not back before nightfall, don't worry," He said.

Gloves: Check.

Emergency Flare: Check.

Signaling Mirror: Check.

Map: Check.

"I might have to make camp somewhere." He said. "You need anything?"

Hat: Check.

Emergency MRE's: Check.

Water: Check.

"Yes," She said, after some thought, "I was thinking about planting something in these little dirt patches here." She said. She gestured at the two dead plants at the far end of the atrium, sitting in two separate tile-lined inlets filled with soil.

"Any particular kind?" He asked, pulling a strap across his chest, tightening his pack.

"Corn, maybe."

"Corn?"

"No," She said, thoughtfully, "Beans." She nodded at herself, satisfied with the choice.

"Sounds good. If I can snag some, I will. Any particular choice on new firearms?"

"I, ah…" She hesitated.

"No problem. I'll find something.

"If I don't come back by the second night," he started, but she cut him off.

"Hey, wait a minute R, you said…" She began waving her finger in the air.

"Just in case," He said simply, giving her a look. She shot him back an evil glare. "Yikes," he said, "That's an 'Eat-Shit' look if I ever saw one…" She smiled in spite of herself. "Like I was saying, if I don't come back, there should be enough food here to last you for a while. You're smart. You'll figure something out." He smiled at her, and cranked back the slide on the side of his gun, under the scope. He looked at her once more, sticking his old, worn, tan cap on his head over his radio head-set.

"You good?" He asked.

She nodded timidly. He noted she was collapsed on the sleeping bag.

He shook his head warmly, and walked over to her again. He bent down in front of her, and rubbed her back and shoulder lightly. "Sure?" He asked.

"It's just, you know…" She trailed off. Her eyes were red around the edges. She tried to hide it. "I don't want you to leave me." She spat out quickly, keeping her eyes down, seemingly embarrassed. She rubbed her hands together nervously.

He grabbed her hands in his, and pulled them up. She followed the hands, until he rested them on his chin. She looked him in the eyes, and he could just see tears starting to form. They held the gaze for a long moment.

Slowly, slower than both of them could've seen, Robert leaned forward. Shelby started to lean too, and both breathed heavily. In a force that neither of them could understand, their faces drew closer and closer together.

In a few moments, their lips were just outside the other's embrace. There was a tension, a static electricity in the air. They could both feel the friction, taste it like a metallic twang longing to be soothed; feel the electricity coursing and the magnetism pulling each one inexorably toward the other.

"No." He said. He pulled away. He realized his eyes had been shut. "Listen," He paused, "I'll be fine. Those things are so damn slow – there's nothing that could possibly go wrong."

He walked out without another word.

The city was dead. In the arms of apocalypse, that mother breathing doom, all semblance of civilization had vanished, as if whisked away as the astonishing final act of some lean, dark magician.

Everywhere, there was death. This was, however, not only in the form of the walking undead, prowling the carcass of the once thriving metropolis. Carved into every tree, sprawled on every street, plastered to every doorway and thrust onto every dark, cob-webbed corner, the frail, ghastly frame of a people, a civilization, haunted the buildings and crept into the heart of those last vestiges of life. It was as a swill, a cold, washing winter of deceit poured fourth from the very jaws of hell, that maw iron-clad and spewing death.

After the initial outbreak, the people had scattered. Some fled North, some West out to sea, fewer went South, and fewer still East. Spokane was left deserted, but still pocketed by large groups of humanity, banded together and struggling to survive. They lived together, and died together. It only took one accident for an entire barricade to fall – a hushed bite-victim, a sudden suicide, god forbid an actual Zed getting through.

It had been some time since the last major group had collapsed – it was a fair party of survivors maintaining vigil at the local Arena. From where he was at, Gardener had heard the sudden cacophony of noise, even so far away. He didn't see it with his own eyes, but the tremendous crash of thunder had led the Marine to believe that the structure had, somehow, collapsed. The sheer amount of terror and death that must have been there chilled him to his core. That day, he had valued his solitude, suddenly.

But the other end of that solitude, the being truly alone, terrified in the dark of night, stalking through a ruined city of the apocalypse, he did not value that.

At his current state, the Marine looked up at the sky. It was just before mid-day, and murky cloud-cover concealed the sky. The grey cast made everything seem neutral, and so he was able to stalk through the city with a greater level of concealment. This not only marginally helped with staying hidden from Zack, but greatly helped if human-on-human encounters occurred. He would have the chance to analyze the situation before initiating contact, and then do that only on his terms.

He held his rifle loosely in his arms. The butt of his rifle was partially up to his shoulder, ready to snap up at a moment's notice, but presently was easily handled and slack in his gloved grip. He noted the general chill of the air, and thought to himself again how it was now approaching winter. He wondered if the snow would fall this winter.

The train of thought brought him back to the incident that morning. He shook the memory of the experience from his mind, and paused to look at his surroundings. They were all clear.

A large store, labeled with large letters, 'The General Store' loomed in front of him. This place was of great value. It was a large store, with a great multitude of items ranging from sleeping-bags, cookware, and utilities, to essentials like ammunition and consumables. The store was raided early on in the outbreak, and most of the obvious items had been looted. He had been in the building before, and had tried to ignore the stains of blood – evidence of a quarrel between looters ended badly. This had warned him, and he was now very cautious about entering the building.

He found a suitable, slightly dilapidated patch of shrubs with a good view to the entrance to the building. The parking lot was empty, save for a single car that was always parked there. How the dull red, unmolested vehicle had survived the rash of stealings and lootings amazed him. Nothing, outwardly at least, seemed to be different with the compound. He adjusted his mic., and listened for any radio chatter. He figured any bands of humans resourceful enough to survive this long would have managed to use radios of some sort.

After a few minutes, after deeming the situation safe to begin and enter the building, he checked and waited for a patch of undead to pass before sprinting across a street and the parking lot into the open doors. The entrance had been forced a long time ago, and he passed over the threshold silently.

The inside of the building was cavernous, and lined with consuming dark. The doors at the front of the building offered short, bright shafts of the grey light the chance to enter the building, but in the far reaches of the store, there was little light to guide his movements, if any at all. The sensation of fear was very real in those dark reaches of the drafty building. An ominous, unholy stench caught in the nostrils and held on with its pungent aroma.

Robert flicked on the safety for his rifle, and slung it behind his shoulder. He withdrew his pistol and checked its chamber before catching the safety with his thumb. In the tight-quarters, his rifle, though shorter compared to other weapons, would prove overly-bulky in the event of aggressive contact in these Close-Quarters.

He took a mag-light from a cylindrical waist-pouch, and quickly screwed the thing into place at the front of his pistol.

Gardener took a deep breath, and started stalking through the inside of the building, gun held aloft straight and even.

The first area he went to was the gardening department. He searched around in the dark, and used bursts from his mag-light cautiously as to avoid detection when he needed to read a label. He snagged a large handful of bean seeds, as well as two useful-looking planting and gardening tools.

The Marine wasn't exactly sure what to grab. He'd never gardened anything before.

After the seeds, which he stored in a larger bag that hung off his belt, he moved on to the utensil department. He grabbed an extra bowl, saucer, and all-in-one multi-tool for Shelby. Before this, he had only one set of dishes. Thoughtfully, he grabbed another of the compact sets. 'Glass half full,' he thought to himself as he continued stalking around the store.

He ran through the mental check-list, and walked around the store grabbing a super-compact sleeping-bag, a handful of store-bought MRE's, and some warmer clothes for the girl. As always, he saved the weaponry for last. That was always the darkest part of the store. He stalked forward with a mostly full pack on his back.

As he crept slowly into the darkness, he could feel a cold draft slithering by his face. The odiferous stank seemed to grow. He didn't dare use his light. It would be an instant target indicator for Zack.

The store was absolutely silent. The only noise was the soft, barely audible footsteps of the Scout-Sniper's feet as he made his way, gun forward, to the back of the store. He controlled his breathing, keeping the noise to a minimum. Still, he felt like his foot-falls were as earthquakes, and his reserved exhales the gales of a horrid hurricane.

It didn't take long before he was submerged in the darkness.

He paused to try and let his eyes adjust, but there was so little light in the darkness there, that solitary figure wreathed in shadows at the pit of a cavern. His face was set in unyielding stone. He heard a noise, then. It was not his own. It was some low, constant din. It rose and fell quickly, like the waves at a choppy sea, but was subtle and undeniable all at the same time.

Again, the Sniper moved forward. As he walked toward the back of the store, the noise grew; it sounded heavier and heavier with each forward step into the darkness. In his chest, his heart pounded with the brutal throng of a tribal drum. He feared that the noise of his heart, booming in his ears furiously, would alert the noise as to his presence.

As he stalked through the dark, he considered what the noise could be – maybe it was just some heater, or generator gone awry. But his mind wandered darkly. Was it Zack? Some wild animal? His footsteps fell heavier and heavier as the darkness encroached. He navigated the walkways, past the knife and bow section mostly by memory.

At long last, he stepped into the long aisle, the glass case broken, but still dotted with those firearms not stolen. The blackness was all consuming. The noise was clear and loud, and it sounded like some demon rasping through multiple mouths filled with fangs. The smell of decaying flesh and some horrible stench he could not place thronged within his nose, clutched onto his sinuses like a vice-clamp and making his eyes water.

He couldn't see his nose in front of his face; such was the degree of darkness, the sunlight only a glimmer of a memory in his mind and eyes.

Slowly, very slowly, he reached and placed his cold, clammy hands on his weapon. His finger-tips touched the darkened mag-light. He twisted the tip, sending a brilliant, white beam of fluorescent illumination cutting through the abominable darkness.

He immediately wished he hadn't.

Standing in a huddle of three, all facing inwards at each other and creating the noise, that horrible noise he now understood to be some hideous rasping, panting, breath, were three more of the monsters from the basement. Skin decayed and hung limply from their muscled flesh. Their shoulders rose and fell rapidly as they took air in and out.

And there stood Gardener, gun held in place as by an ice sculpture, his heart exploding through his chest and throat and ears with every wrenching pound, a cold sweat creeping down his neck and head.

For a moment, he had the initiative. His brain went through the animalist strokes – fight or flight.

The Marine turned around and began sprinting for the door. He heard the trio scream a hideous harmony of death as they pursued their new meal.

His light flashed brightly, and as he sprinted across the store the beam flickered wildly in the air, held in his one hand as his legs pumped like an engine.

Suddenly, one of the things was in front of him. It had ascended from what seemed like thin air, and in his momentum the Scout-Sniper couldn't halt himself. He leapt into the air and fired his pistol with wild squeezes from the trigger.

His bodily momentum flung both the hunter and the hunted backwards, and as they careened through the sky he placed his pistol under the thing's head and pulled the trigger over and over. Blood flew everywhere in their wake as the shots were sent spiraling through the creature's head with each trigger pull.

They slammed to the ground and the creature let out a final, gasping noise. The Scout-Sniper rolled and sprinted, again, for the doorway. Behind him, the beast lay dead with six holes though his skull.

Only, as he neared the light, he knew that all was not over. Standing there in the doorway, one of the beasts had anticipated his escape. It stood there with fibrous muscles rippling and howled with a furry.

Immediately, the Recon Operative threw himself into one of the isles. Just as he did so, one of the beasts tore through the walkway where he had just been standing. He couldn't see it, but he heard the thing scream, and turn around. Slowly, his gun held aloft, the Marine began to slide his way silently out of the isle. The beast walked forward with heavy clawed feet.

The Marine thought how many shots he had left in his weapon. He had fired six, and his weapon held seven in the mag, one in the chamber. He had only two shots to deal with the things. He doubted he'd live long enough to get a chance to re-load.

The creature took the last meter of the distance between him and the isle Gardener was in with a bound and a scream. It rounded about, facing down the isle, a fire in its belly begging for prey. Its jaw hinged open hideously and flecks of spittle flew from his fanged mouth.

The thing stared down an empty isle.

Breathing heavily, standing with his back toward the end of the isle's long, tall rack stacked with merchandise, Gardener waited in terror.

He heard the thing stalking again. It seemed as if the creature was smelling, sniffing the air for some sign of his presence. Gardener made his way over to a tall display with a four-wheel-oriented ATV/Cart. The block the vehicle was sitting on, usually a spinning display, was tall enough to conceal the Marine if he squatted.

The creature ripped around the end of the first isle Gardener had been in, but, again, screamed at phantoms. With an innate animalistic hunter-sense, the creature began sniffing the air, and walking steadily toward the large vehicle-block. This creature took its heavy steps, and crept up along the right side. Gardener was trapped – if he moved too soon, the thing would see him and pounce; if he moved too late, the creature would rip around the corner and devour him that way.

Adrenaline coursed through his veins. His mind was scattered and the massive, pounding drum in his chest roared now more than ever.

He never got the chance to think.

With suddenness, the creature wheeled around the side of the structure, screaming with a rage un-adulterated and furious with a crazed lust for flesh. Its jaw was wide enough to fit a human head and its fangs dripped with its own blood where the creature had cut itself with its own teeth. The sound was tremendous, and its blood-shot eyes were filled with the fire of an expanding star exploding into the atmosphere.

Behind the display, nothing was there.

From behind the creature, a noise came, just above a whisper.

"Got you, mutha'-fucka'." Gardener said. He smirked. The creature screamed one final time before the Marine pulled the trigger, and the gun at the base of the creature's skull went off. Its roar ended in a garbled spasm of bloody twitches.

The Marine took the chance to re-load his weapon. He cherished the slight increase in weight he felt in his hand, and suddenly placed a great value on the worth of his side-arm. But, for the last ghoul, its head and dog-like, deformed ears perked upwards at its brethren's scream of death, the side-arm was put away.

A muffled cough.

A large thump.

Holding his silenced rifle in his arms, Gardener gracefully leapt over the dead form in the doorway with a sniper's bullet-wound in its eye.

The Scout-Sniper immediately made himself scarce from the scene. Zack would be crawling all around the area in a short time, and wherever Zack was en-masse, he didn't want to be.

Gardener worked his way through the ruins, and then found a suitable, two-story building. He carefully checked the building, and walked inside with his pistol drawn. There weren't any Zeds inside.

Up in the second floor, all of the building's doors locked behind him, the Scout-Sniper took a moment to relax. He realized how hungry he was, and pulled one of his two self-brought MRE's from his bag. The food, as always, was bland and mostly tasteless. He enjoyed every bight; he could've easily been dead.

He considered his options. He felt that getting some weaponry was important – he doubted Shelby could use the 12-gauge with any great effect, especially with her leg as it was. His first option was to go home and say better-luck-next-time. His other option was to find his way to one of the local gun-shops in town. Those places were usually dangerous because all manner of vagrants and looters always held up there. He had learned to avoid those places early on.

Not willing to fail in his objective, Gardener checked his weaponry, picked up his gear, and exited the building, headed for the nearest civilian armory.

As he walked, he tried to keep his mind off of what had happened just before he left. It felt wrong to him. In the Corps, they had always told him to not have any intimate relations what-so-ever with fellow team-members. That was why squads were generally designated into either all male, or all female. In FORECON, in fact, only males were allowed.

So, in regards to Shelby, he had to consider her a member of his team. If anything between them was to happen, that could threaten maximum effectiveness. He felt a vague, distant feeling about how this was impersonal and cold. He disregarded the feeling, tucked it away, as the Corp had taught him.

After a time of stalking through the ruins, avoiding Zack wherever he went, the Scout-Sniper finally neared the part of town with the Gun-Shop. Immediately, and to his great dismay, he heard gunshots.

He tuned in his mic. as he stalked the ruins toward the small-arms fire.

He neared a safe distance from the sounds, and found a vantage point from where to view the enemy. He scorned himself mentally for referring to them as 'the enemy'. It was a bad habit now – these people could be the most help he'd find.

On his radio he found nothing, so he turned off the mic. after getting annoyed with the static noise.

He immediately began taking mental notes, falling back into an easy, familiar sniper's routine. Without thinking, he began to classify them the same way he had been taught to classify insurgent operators pre-infestation.

Number of Operators: Approx. a dozen; exact figures unknown.

Armament: Heavily armed; fortified in position.

Threat Level: Dangerous; advance with caution.

Leadership: Male; mid-to-late thirties; leather vest, beard, pony-tail; slightly balding.

The Sniper decided that the best means of approach would be to signal them from a distance and identify if they were hostile or not. He hoped for the best, but, silently, expected the worst.

Gardener scanned around for a suitable thing to write on, and eventually found an old filing cabinet on the ground, partially filled with water. He managed to find a stack of papers that were dry, and he produced a Sharpie from a pouch. He held the cap in his mouth as he wrote with large, capital letters on the back of the papers:

ATTENTION:

I AM A FELLOW SURVIVOR. I HAVE REASON TO BELIVE YOU ARE A THREAT TO MYCONTINUED WELL-BEING. CAN I SAFELY COME DOWN TO INITIATE PEACEFUL CONTACT?

-R.G.

After writing the note, he crept up as close to the group as he could. He found the task incredibly easy. The Scout-Sniper school had taught him how to approach a hostile force covertly. These individuals were untrained, very distracted, and provided lots of ambient noise. This only made his task easier.

He dropped the stack of paper with the note in an obvious location, and withdrew from the area. He moved away from the communiqué, and set up a make-shift, concealed position.

The Scout-Sniper sighted up, and sent a silent shot over toward where he had placed the note. The shot hit a metal hull from a vehicle and ricocheted loudly. Almost immediately, the group of men started yelling and firing guns randomly. After a time, the biker-looking leader calmed them down, and sent three men to go get the note.

To their immediate surprise, it wasn't farther than thirty meters from the store. They had allowed Gardener in that close.

Through his binoculars, the Scout-Sniper watched as the men read the note aloud several times and talked it over. Their leader looked angry, and after a few minutes walked out a few feet from his men and started firing an automatic weapon of some sort into the air. He yelled, but Gardener couldn't make out what he was saying. Something aggressive, he assumed.

Then, something happened that Gardener did not expect.

In a blur of motion, the men around the store started shuffling around and yelling loudly. The Sniper noted how occasionally Zack would show up, and a man on top of the building with a gun would blow the zombie's brains out.

From inside the building, two men came out, roughly pulling a girl between them. She was in a tattered pink tank-top, and she was bound tightly by the hands, with her feet connected just loose enough to allow her to walk. Her mouth was gagged with a cloth. She was blonde and covered in blood, presumably her own.

The leader walked up to the girl, and grabbed her by her dirty, long, blond hair. He wrenched her head up, and Gardener could see the look of pain on her face. She was crying; it looked like she was trying to yell through the gag.

The leader held his sub-machinegun up to her head. He yelled. He dug the barrel into her temple, and she screamed even more. He reached over with his free hand and ripped the gag from her mouth. She screamed and cried.

He held his hand up and puffed his chest, challenging the man who had written the note to come out.

Then, without warning, he turned his full attention to the girl, dug his gun into her temple, and pulled the trigger.

A hundred meters away, Gardener swore.

"Holy shit." He said to himself. "Holy fucking shit." He repeated. Vengeance on his mind, he brought up his rifle and sighted through the scope.

One of the men was laughing whole-heartedly at the frail, dead form. One of the men was already moving the body away from their leader. It looked as if they were stripping it. Gardener didn't want to know what they were going to do to her body in the back rooms.

The man laughing threw his head up in the air with hilarity. Then, without warning, it exploded. In an expanding fountain of thick, red goo, his skull just fractured into a million pieces. As the scene broke into turmoil, Gardener sighted up for another kill.

The next target was the man on the roof. It was the most immediately threatening figure. It wasn't hard to hit him – he was still, his head swiveling around in terror and confusion.

Gardener fired again, but the target was moving too quickly. He changed direction suddenly, and the shot went wide. The Scout-Sniper reminded himself that he didn't need head-shots. The next shot he fired found a fleshy chunk of chest. The man hit the ground and writhed.

The Sniper was all too calm eliminating these humans. But, he rationalized; they needed to pay for their actions. What they had done was despicable. He sat in his hide, and sent silent shots though the air, to find parcels of flesh to dig into. It didn't take long before all of the vagrants had run inside the building, unable to find their attacker. A man stood inside, his head obviously exposed in the window. After he dropped, dead, chunks of his face coating the others inside, the men stayed away from the barred windows.

After a few minutes of waiting, Gardener turned on his mic. He scanned through the channels, and heard voices. It was the men from the gun-shop. He couldn't fathom how he had not heard them on his mic before. He dismissed it as some equipment fluke, and listened in on the radio chatter.

The men inside the building begged for a moment of peace. They apologized profusely and begged him to stop. After listening for a while, Gardener finally broke his radio silence.

'This is R.G.' He called in. 'What the Fuck.'

'Listen you fucking psychopath! If you don't reveal yourself immediately, we will find you, and we will fuck you up!'

'I don't think this is the way you should be treating somebody with a rifle pointed at you.' Gardener responded.

'Fuck you!' The response came back. 'How many of you are there? Five, six tops? We will destroy you!'

'Alright.' Gardener said calmly, a slight, wolfish grin creeping along his lips. 'Is this your leader? The man with the jacket and the bald spot and the pony-tail? Hm?'

Silence came back.

'Oh… yes, we can see you. Think you're safe inside your fucking building? Think the fuck again.'

'Fuck you!'

'What did I just say about swearing at the mother-fucker with a gun pointed at your fat fucking head! Hm? You wanna' go you Hill-Billy Hells Angels fuck-up? Step outside. See where that shit gets you. I will blow your fucking brains out.'

Again, there was only silence.

'Now, I need some things from your building." He said, now calmed. "Unfortunately, I have this strange feeling you don't want to give me any of the things I want. So, you have one of two choices. Option one: you stay in the building, and me and my buddies take shots through the walls until you're all dead,'

'Fucker.'

'Thank you.' Gardener said. 'Or, you can exit the building in a nice, orderly manner. Don't forget to leave me your weapons.'

'Fuck you, man! We'll get fucking killed without our shit!' The voice sounded like somebody else speaking up.

'Oh, Option one is it?' Gardner said, sarcastically.

'Do it, then, you fuck-face! You ain't got the balls!'

Casually, Gardener settled his rifle and sent a shot through the window. He didn't hit anybody. Commotion flared within the building as the broken glass shattered down on them.

His voice sounded frail over the intercom. It was a new speaker. 'Alright, fuck me! We're out of here man…' the transmission trickled out into a number of whines. Gardener clicked off his radio.

After a few moments, the men started walking out of building. They seemed pissed, but their hands were in the air. The Marine let a self-satisfied smirk cross his face. He sighted up again, and fired at the heels of one of the men walking out. He wasn't sure if it was a hit, but the desired affect was the same – the men broke from their orderly line and scattered into the ruins.

Gardener waited a few minutes before advancing into the area.

The Sniper stalked through the now-abandoned zone just outside the shop, and reached the abandoned store before a few minutes. He noticed that the ground was littered with spent shell-casings, and thought to himself idly how it was such a waste of brass. He noted with satisfaction the dead bodies lying around from his accurate fire. Fortunately for him, all of the Zeds had left in pursuit when the vagabonds went running.

Still, leery of their trustworthiness, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and withdrew his side-arm. He stepped over the wide-open threshold of the building with his weapon held acutely in his grip. His eyes stayed glued on the sights as the silencer-tip of the barrel swiveled to view the room. Gardener noted the additional corpse inside, that of the man he'd killed from his hidden vantage.

Slowly, he stepped through the room. He cringed widely as glass crunched under his heavy boots. He passed over the shards, and made his way, slowly, to the counter. He carefully went to the hinged, waist-level door that was usually locked with a chain. He slowly opened the chipped wood plank, and then whipped around the counter. The area behind the counter was empty.

Satisfied, the Sniper immediately went back over to the door. He closed it, and noted the iron-barred windows on it and around the shop. To their credit, the men had chosen a decent place to fortify from.

"Lets see," He said, mumbling softly to himself, "What have we here…"

The place was in surprisingly good stock. The men, as instructed, had left their weaponry. That aside, it seemed, somehow, as if this store had avoided a large deal of the looting; weapon-Shops were typically the hardest hit, in Gardener's experience.

"What can that damn girl shoot?" Robert asked himself.

The choice was hard. She was small, and so a bulky shotgun wouldn't do – the wide-spread shot wasn't hugely useful anyway, the sound-factor aside. He briefly considered grabbing one of the obviously stolen automatic weapons that the armed men had left. After a moment of thought, he surmised that the ammo-use of it would exceed its uses.

He couldn't decide, so he moved over to the ammo section. He had enough ammunition for his rifle, but his pistol was running low. He searched through the boxes, by this time an unorganized rabble of shells and boxes destroyed by the men in their sloppy, lazy searches for ammunition. Finally, he found the appropriate caliber; he stuffed a few handfuls of the .45 ammo into his already mostly full bag.

There was a silenced pistol on the counter, obviously an illegal addition to a civilian weapon. It was a jet-black 9mm Beretta. The silencer was sleek.

The Marine walked back over to the rows of weapons. His eyes eventually settled on a Bushmaster .223 caliber carbine. It was a civilian model, and he didn't bother to check the exact make. He tied the weapon to his bag and moved over to search for more ammo. He squeezed in as much ammunition as could fit.

He looked around the store once more, and scanned the isles for anything else he could think of to add. By chance, one of the pink .22 rifles caught his attention. Smirking, he walked over to grab it. The thing was tiny – meant for small women or children. It was a hot-pink color, and fired a very small .22 caliber round.

He walked out the store with the rifle attached to his bag, looking forward to giving it to Shelby as a joke.

As he left, the sniper checked his surroundings once more, and then cast his eyes up to the sky. The cloud-cover made it difficult to tell, but it seemed as if the sun would go down soon. It was winter, the Sniper concluded, and that meant it would go down quickly.

He wondered how badly it would shake Shelby for him not to come back that night. He figured the risks of traveling through the city at night far outweighed any mental or emotional trauma he might bring by coming back the next day. Without warning, the clouds overhead started to drizzle. The precipitation was cold, and it felt good on Gardeners face. He tilted his head up to embrace the drops, and it occurred to him how hot he was.

After the rain started, he had made up his mind. He left the area, dead bodies and shell-casings and all, to look for a shelter for the night. After a bit of walking, the Sniper decided the two story building he had found earlier suited his needs well, and he wandered around slightly before finding it again.

As he locked the doors behind him, he thought about how careless he had become recently with his in-city behavior.

Gardener wanted to wake up early the next day, so he wolfed down another MRE to tide him over. Before re-arming his rifle for sleep, he re-packed his bag to fit all of the new loot more easily.

Perhaps more soundly then he should have, the Marine drifted off into an easy sleep.

Outside, as night encroached, the light, grey drizzle turned into a rain. Somewhere, very distantly, the flash and bang of lighting and thunder resonated. In his subconscious, Gardener heard the sound of rain tapping on the roof. He heard sporadic, hard-hitting sounds. Then, there was another patting sound, this time the sound of feet, coming up stairs. Then, the sounds of a door's lock being undone.

Gardener suddenly awoke, and his wide, white eyes stared up at the empty, black ceiling above him. His heart raced in his chest suddenly. There was a musky, metallic smell, and rust seemed to cling to his tongue and throat.

He realized he had been holding his breath, and he released it slowly. For whatever reason, the Marine had thought one of the things had gotten in. He scorned himself for the foolishness. He closed his eyes in relief, and opened them again.

There was a man standing above him, the butt of a rifle hanging above Gardener's face. The rifle-butt came down, and the Marine blacked out.

He remembered being wet, soaked in rain and covered in mud. He was being dragged through the streets, and he could remember the pain as his knees dragged across the gravel and broken asphalt.

Consciousness came back to him in flickering moments. Everything was dark, even when he was level-headed enough to see. He would moan in detest, his body too weak to try and break free, everything sore to the bone.

He very much remembered the kicks and rifle-butts to the gut and groin. He could feel his eyes puff up and his nose bleed. The watery blood dripped off of his lips and chin as he was pulled through the dark city.

With a startling clarity, he woke up once more. The cold water from the dumped bucket washed over his face, stinging the open wounds there.

Gardener screamed, mostly gibberish. "Holy fuckin' shit! Let me go!" He yelled. He could feel the pain all over his body. He looked at his wrists and ankles, and found that he was constricted to a desk with thick, grainy rope. The ties cut into his skin and grated upon it whenever he struggled to break free.
"Hey there Mister." A voice said from the darkness.

"Who the fuck are you? Let me go - I swear to god I'll cut your fucking balls off!" He said. Spit flecked out of his dry, cracked lips. Desperation quavered in his voice.

"Now, now, now – a man once told me not to use foul language to the person with a gun pointed at your head."

"Holy-fucking-shit." Robert grunted, one word.

"Of course, at the time, I had thought that there were many mother-fuckers with guns pointed at my head, ready to fucking blow it off." The voice stepped out of the darkness. It was the ring-leader, with his pony-tail, beard, and leather jacket.

"Well who the fuck has the power now? Huh? Who's got the mother-fucking gun." He said, moving up just to within centimeters of Gardener's face. His face was backwards to Gardener, strapped onto the table.

The Scout-Sniper wasn't sure which direction the cold barrel up against his head was facing.

"Listen, just calm down," Robert tried to say. The man reared back and smacked him in the nose with the base of his pistol's handle. There was an audible crack.

"Calm down, you say?" The man screamed. He pounded his chest like an ape. "Calm the fuck down?" He repeated. "You see, I was calm. Now you've gone and pissed me off!" Again, he lurched back and brought the handle cracking down onto Gardener's face.

There was a silence. Beyond the grunts of pain, Gardener didn't respond.

The man gestured out of his line of sight. "Cut him down." He said casually.

Scruffy looking men with automatic weapons emerged from the shadows of R's vision, and cut the ropes with vicious hacks of machetes or knives.

The Sniper did not resist when they grabbed him and threw him into a chair, and then tied his arms and legs to the arm-rests and chair-legs. The light dangling above his head, intensely bright and golden-yellow, glared with the intended effect. Gardener realized he was naked from the chest up. He still had his BDU pants, but he also lacked boots or socks.

He heard a door close as the men left. The door's locking mechanism sounded. The leader walked back, just outside the cone of light that shone down brightly on Gardener, obscuring his captor's features.

"So," the man said, "How ya' doin'?"

Gardener remained silent, a look of stone on his face.

"Remember who has the mother-fucking gun here asshole!" He yelled. The gun made a clacking noise as he waved it in the air.

Still, the Marine remained silent.

"Big, tough mother-fucker, hm?" The man reached behind him, casually, grabbing something on a table. "How fucking tough are you now!" He yelled. He whipped a baseball bat across Gardener's bare chest with a shocking suddenness.

Gardener screamed in pain as the crushing blow shattered the force of the bat on his bare skin. The sound reverberated.

"Oh, so you can make noise?" The man said, laughing wildly.

"Fuck you." The Marine spat, teeth clenched and his eyes watering with the pain.

"What was that?" said the leader, bending down and placing his ear next the Marine's mouth.

"You fucking heard me." Gardener grumbled. Without warning, the man with the gun suddenly wheeled around again and smashed the Marine in the nose with the weapon.

"Fuck you!!" Gardener wailed, over and over. The pain in his nasal cavity was tremendous. It was badly broken.

"Fuck me?" the man yelled? He smashed the Marine across the face again. "Fuck you!"

The Marine sat in the chair, all of his muscles taught and tense from the incredible amounts of pain coursing through his body. Nerve receptors fired wildly and sent shocking lances of pain through his flesh.

"So," The man said, calmly. He set the gun down on the table behind him, and grabbed a thick, wooden board. There were a number of rusted, bent nails sticking out of one end. "Who is this 'Shelby'?"

Gardener looked up at him. "How the fuck do you know about her?" He demanded.

"Oh, you couldn't talk about anything else when we carried you here; when you were on the table too." He snorted. "Shelby, you've gotta run," He imitated in a whiney, nasally voice, "and Get out, you'll be safer outside the city."

The Marine screamed, and shook his body violently trying to break the bonds that held it in place. His roar was furious, and the rubbing rope made his skin raw. "I swear to fucking god if you place one finger on that girl I will fucking destroy you!" He bellowed, jaw clenched and more of the same bloody saliva flying from his lips.

The man brought his plank back, and rammed the end of it like a battering ram into Gardener's gut. Gardener screamed, and began to hack and cough violently through grunts of pain. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you…" He kept repeating.

"I don't think you understand the whole idea of pleasing your god-damned captor!" The leader yelled, and spun around the stick in the air. He smashed the thing across Gardener's chest. The nails had been forward.

The scream that came out of his mouth was a cry of pain he had never made before, and would never make again. Tears, mixed with blood and saliva, rolled down his cheeks and chin as he fought the insurmountable pain pounding through his chest, feeling those acute stab-wounds on his right pectoral muscle.

"What the fuck do you want!" He yelled. "I'll fucking tell you anything! Let me go! Just let me fucking go!" He said. Gardener was defeated, pleading, but his anger was like a fire in hell within his chest.

"Where's your fucking girl!" The man demanded. "I know you've got a nice stash of ammo and supplies hidden up somewhere, and sitting pretty in a building with your broad too."

"She's not just some fucking broad you dumb-fuck!" Robert screamed. The man yelled even louder, and reached behind him to grab the gun. He brought the thing down and put it directly on Gardener's right arm, just below the shoulder.

He pulled the trigger.

Flesh and blood and sinuous fibers went flying through the air as the scream of pain reverberated. Gardener kept screaming and screaming. The pain was intense. He felt like somebody had taken a branding iron and stabbed his bone, prodding at the marrow.

"C'mon now, asshole," the man yelled, "Tell me quick enough and we may just shoot her nice and quick-like instead of raping her first! Oh, I can hear her now, crying out for you to save her as I put some foul shit up inside!" He commanded over the incredible screams of pain.

"FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!" Gardener kept screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Tell us where the fuck she is, tell us now, TELL US!" The man would yell back, both voices rising and rising and rising.

The yelling reverberated in the hollow corners; a fiery flame of passion burnt the inside of the room like a flaming furnace in the heart of a volcano. The two face each other, bellowing at the top of their lungs, words flying out of their mouths like streams of magma, burning red-hot with hatred and passion and anger.

"You fucking asshole! You incestuous mother-screwing fuck-face! Your mother was a goddamn whore for raising you!" Gardener bellowed. His entire body was flexed. He shook and rattled, and his bones bent and his organs were crushed as his muscles tore themselves apart struggling to break free.

"That's fucking too far!" The man bellowed right back.

He pulled a knife from his waist-band and raised it above his head. He brought the knife down with a furry, and it sliced through Gardener's upper leg, where blood began to well almost immediately.

But, just then, something completely strange happened.

For some inexplicable reason, Gardener didn't scream. The man was practically in his face, their noses almost touching. Sweat dripped from them both like it was s pouring salt-water. They were both breathing heavily, just looking at each other with the same, fiery hate in their eyes.

"Big fucking mistake, ass-hole." Gardener said calmly.

With a startling suddenness, the Marine slung his arm through the air, catching the man in the face with a tremendous hook before wrapping his forearm around his fat, exposed neck. The man struggled to get free, and he twisted and convulsed as the forearm compressed tighter and tighter.

The constrictor snake around his air-passage kept pressing in, locked shut like a vice and squeezing in with the immutable force of an industrial compacter. The man, fear wild in his eyes, spit drooling down his face and onto the Recon Operative's arm, kicked wildly with his legs like some thing possessed. His thrashing epitomized, his animal instinct lighting up as he realized how horrible and righteous his death truly was. He realized, too late, that he was dealing with a far-superior physical species.

His convulsions started to become less frequent, less violent. His eyes were red with tears and extreme stress as blood vessels popped. Blood and snot rolled down from his nose and bubbles of blood grew and popped at the nostrils.

The man's leg kicked one final time. Then, he was still. Absolutely still.

Behind him, Gardener's face was that of an iron grotesque, a visage of passion and fury. In that moment, with such hatred in his eyes, it looked as if he could breathe fire, like smoke could come from his nostrils, like he was some serpent king, capable of dealing death without hesitation.

Gardener released the limp body, and sat there, motionless save for his heavy, pained breathing. After a few still moments, he reached down with his right arm – free from the rope restrictions, to pull the knife from his leg. He winced, clenched his teeth, and pulled sharply. The blade came out, and he grimaced with the pain.

He looked down at the arm rest with the rope still on it. Somewhere in his intense fury, he'd managed to writhe his hand free. He could still see patches of flesh where the bristled rope had cut his wrist and hand.

Methodically, feeling every single cell in his body hurt, he reached across and began to help his left hand loose. After that, he bent down and untied his two feet.

He stood up, and, though painful, it felt good to be beyond the constraints. He stood there for a moment, his breathing deep and choked occasionally with blood. His immaculate, sculpted body glistened with sweat, and was now covered with bloody, open wounds. His fists were clenched tightly and jaw locked from the pain.

The room was dark, but he was able to look around after getting out of the intense spot-light. He was relieved, ever so slightly, to see that all of his weaponry and most of his clothes were in the same room. He assumed that he'd been kidnapped and brought here with all his loot; they hadn't even bothered to put his belongings in a separate room. He shrugged, but found the motion immediately painful and vowed not to do it again for a long while.

As he walked over the dead body on the floor, he kicked it once for good measure. He swore, and then spat on it.

On the table, his things were clumped up in disarray. He pulled on his gear, starting with his undershirt and ending with his harness, slowly, each new item more painful than the last. He snorted in mocking hatred at the stupidity of these men; his rifle wasn't even unloaded, with a shot even still in the chamber. He had left his hat and head-set in his bag, the contents of which he had lost, seemingly the only items stolen from him. He noted with displeasure that the pink .22 rifle was also gone. He used his harness to attach the Bushmaster .223 and the silenced Berretta to his person, and fit as much ammo for these as he could fit comfortably in his now-empty bag and pockets.

After gathering all of his gear, he looked around the room. It felt like he was in a shipping container, but he had no idea where he was, or even whether it was day or night. There was one door, which looked like a Do-it-yourself job cut into metal. Evidentially, it was at least partially soundproofed. Out of habit, he checked his side-arm, and then brought his rifle up to his shoulder.

Slowly, cautiously, he tilted open the door.

Outside, there wasn't a single soul. It was late-afternoon by what he could tell, but the cloud-cover was back, along with the light drizzle. He turned, painfully, and looked at the building he was just in. It was, just as he had predicted, a shipping container. He shook his head to clear the fogginess that his pain caused, and started to pick his way silently across the ground, observing his surroundings.

It looked as if he was within the confines of a human-constructed, make-shift fortress. These vagrants seemingly had taken over a small area of a few city blocks, and fortified the perimeter of it. As he walked, Gardener saw walls made of useless, stacked vehicles and hastily laid cement, along with all other manner of trash. While very unattractive, it obviously did a fine job of keeping Zack out. Gardener wondered how solid their security was within the compound.

His eyes were constantly peeled for activity. His ears were waiting for the slightest indication of a threat to make him vanish into the shadows. Stalking through the seeming safe-zone, Gardener only assumed the rain and dim lighting could only help him stay concealed. There was a noise of somebody yelling loudly; drunkenly. He barely had time to see the door open a few meters in front of him before the Scout-Sniper was moving. Gardener darted into the shadows. He had to mentally check himself to stifle the pain as he ducked into the alley.

After just a few seconds, two men walked, drunken and happy, past his hide. His heart beat heavily, and he willed it to stop – it hurt too much. He waited a good long while, and listened for further indication of threats. There were none. As he emerged, sneakily, from his hide, he wondered how much time he had before somebody entered the container where he was supposed to be held. He decided not to think about it, and kept moving.

As he did so, he noticed the surroundings. The establishment seemed more legitimate then it had at first. He surmised that the area he stalked through currently was a tenement zone, where the men lived, slept, and ate. Farther away, a slight din of voices could be heard over the feint patter of rain and the softest of winds that blew. He assumed the noise was originated from some sort of recreational zone within the area. The capabilities of these men seemed to grow with every new detail, every step further into their realm.

After a few minutes of cautious, careful movement, the Sniper came up to a large, open area. It was an intersection where four main roads that divided the tenements met. It was approximately fifteen to twenty meters across. He had decided to head north, and this seemed to be the most obvious way. Silently, the sniper weighed the risk level. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, and again brought out the silenced pistol.

"Fuck it." He said under his breath.

With quickness that surprised even him, considering his injuries, he sprinted across the open intersection. But he wouldn't make it across.

Just to spite his luck so far, somebody stepped out of the corner building. He had on an old, dirty shirt, and held a mug of some warm drink that steamed in the cold drizzle. The man looked up to see the figure sprinting across the area.

"Hey!" He yelled, seeing the drawn gun. He dropped the mug he was holding and went for the revolver at his side.

Gardener looked over to see the man raise a gun. The Sniper swept his own gun up and across deftly. The exchange of gunfire was short and deadly.

Two shots rang out, one the loud report of the revolver, the other Gardener's silenced pistol a half-second later. Two fleshy, dull 'thwaks' sounded as rounds impacted in soft flesh.

The man, his revolver flying from his hand, fell backwards from a silenced shot to head. He yelped but the lifeless noise left his throat as soon as he hit the dirt, the air forced from his lungs. Gardener had taken a shot to the left shoulder that had spun him around and sent him to the ground, flat on his stomach.

Dust on his face, he grunted and winced at the pain.

"Shit." He said, simply. He knew that these vagrants would be crawling all over the place at the sound of the gunshot.

Immediately, he pulled himself up and made a full sprint out of the open. He could already hear the people closest to the scene coming out with weapons drawn and voices loud. He figured he'd have a couple minutes, tops, before the entire establishment was aware of him.

He began to book it through the apartments. North was his only objective and he hoped dearly he could find a door or gap in their walls to escape.

What he found was town square.

He was running so fast he nearly threw himself into the open, but the Sniper stopped and changed direction just in time. He watched from between a dumpster and an old, overgrown bush as men ran by with weapons, toward where he had just been.

Gardener knew that he needed to get out, but the timing had to be perfect to make a run for better cover. He waited for large groups to pass, and weighed his options for concealments as they ran by. He felt his pulse soaring as the threat of discovery loomed with every passing man.

A large group jogged by, and Gardener seized the opportunity. The Sniper sprinted out of the bushes and darted across a few meters of open ground. For a few moments, he was utterly exposed. He saw an open door to his left, and darted inside.

Two people were in the room. One was an old male, the other a female of similar age. The male had a weapon, what looked to be an old AK-style weapon. The Sniper didn't have time to think.

He immediately raised his pistol and put two in his chest and one in his head. The lady dropped shortly after he did. They hadn't had the time to cry out. Deftly, without thinking, the Marine re-loaded his cartridge. Hitting the wall and crouching, Gardener inched his way toward the door. He tried not to think of the dead bodies in the room with him.

He peeked out. A large courtyard was just outside the open door, and he could see the details of this town square area much clearer now. Gardener witnessed as more and more men ran toward the source of the gun-shot from earlier. Most seemed to carry extremely illegal weapons.

Then again, he thought to himself, I just killed two innocent people. He banished the thought – he didn't have time to think; only time to act. He waited again for a couple of men to run past, shouting something incomprehensible. He darted out back into the open, immediately searching for his new hide. Again, the sniper was totally in the open, just hoping that nobody would spot him as he lunged across the dusty earth.

The sun was just starting to go down. He leapt into another open door. He was silently thankful that this time the house was clear. His mind raced frantically. The pain made his brain slow. His body hurt all over, in ways he hadn't known before. The area seemed sparse. The runners were occasional at best. He wondered if it would be beneficial for him to wait until sun-down to make his move for the exit.

Just as he was thinking, somebody ran in the open door. The struggle was bloody and brief.

The sudden assailant who had run in immediately saw the armed Gardener. He screamed loudly, and attempted to bring his rifle to bear. It was an old bolt action. The Marine sprung into action, propelling himself through the air with a great push from his legs. The rifle fired harmlessly inside the building, and the men went down with Gardener's sudden body-tackle.

Both landed hard, and immediately the Recon Marine went for the knife at his harness. He reached for what wasn't there. He turned his head, exposed himself for a moment. A fist slammed up into his jaw, and he flew back off of his opponent. The man seized the initiative, and pinned the Marine to the ground. His hands were wrapped around Gardener's throat.

Trying desperately to get out of the intense hold, the Sniper grabbed the man's hands. He gagged with the extreme pressure on his throat, and was unable to move the man's body weight. He reached up and slapped without affect at the man's face, which merely took the attacks and pressed down harder.

Gardener's face got red, and he looked around frantically. He caught the sight of his side-arm just outside his reach. He flailed his arm out, and was just unable to reach it. The weapon danced at his fingertips.

The attacker let out a satisfied snort.

Through the choke, Gardener let out a gurgled yell, and stretched his arm up. His hand grasped the pistol, and he brought the barrel up under the man's head.

He barely had a chance to scream 'No' before Gardener pulled the trigger and sent his brains onto the ceiling. The viscous matter drizzled down on him slowly.

"Holy shit," he said between gasps, "Holy, fucking, shit." He tried to shake it off, and he rolled himself up to rest his back on the wall. He reached for his pistol, and held it firmly in his hand. He swallowed hard to relieve the pain in his neck, and he gained his wits enough to dart back outside. Gambling, he was now exposed once more.

Somebody had already heard the fight. The moment Gardener walked outside, automatic fire lit up the ground and building around him. Huge clods of dirt and dry-wall cascaded into the air as the heavy rounds demolished the surroundings. His feet kicking up high into the air, trying desperately to avoid the fire, Gardener sprinted behind the corner of a building. Shots zinged past him, just beyond the edge of the building, or clipping the edge and sending chunks skyward. He heard the men in the courtyard yell.

The Marine thought quickly and immediately ran along the edge of the building. At the back, a door was shut. He kicked it in, and rushed in with his gun raised. There was nobody in the room.

Suddenly, through the front door, one of his assailants burst through. Screaming, the man let out a burst from his weapon, an automatic machine-gun of some sort. Gardener quickly leapt into the air and rolled on the ground. In his wake, wooden shards cascaded into the air as the bullets tore gaping holes into everything. He brought himself back up quickly, and fired a quick trio of shots, one of which landed in his attacker's head. The man dropped squeezing the trigger, and bullets ricocheted off the walls.

"Holy shit!" Gardener yelled, covering his head with his hands. "Just fucking die!" He looked up from covering his head, and saw his opponent dead. Just then, another one of the men from the outside came in the forced back door, a failed attempt to sneak up behind him.

He had just enough time to turn his head around before his brains came out his ear.

"God-Dammit!" The Marine yelled. He sprinted out the back door, heading toward the wall behind the first row of buildings. He heard heavy footsteps as men stormed the upstairs building he had just been in. The Marine heard a woman scream, and gunshots sounded. He shook his head and kept moving.

He saw an opportunity to get a vantage on the courtyard. He snuck up to a fencepost overgrown by a scraggily bush. Through the leafy shrub, he saw two men with weapons, scanning the houses like prairie-dogs.

He grabbed on to the short barrier in front of him and flung his body over. He hit the dust and rolled just as fire erupted and sent splinters flying from the bush he had just occupied. Rolling up and running, the Marine immediately found his target – the two men, one with what was definitely an AK-47, the other holding a shotgun of some kind.

The Marine shot for the man with the shotgun first, and caught him with high and in the shoulder. The man fell back, and squeezed the trigger, firing off a burst of pellets into the building behind him. Running, holding his pistol across his body with his right hand, Gardener shot again, this time hitting his opponent square in the chest. The man dropped silently, collapsing to the ground.

Miraculously, the courtyard was clear. The sun was very much growing darker and darker. The rain had picked up since earlier.

The sniper ran into another building – again empty – and ran up the stairs. He shut the door behind him this time. He felt as if he'd lost some ammunition, but didn't have time to check it. Gardener took the opportunity to reload, switching out his cartridge once more.

He knew that he needed to get out as soon as possible. All the gun-fire would send the angered mobs to his new location.

He just couldn't win.

Thinking on his toes, he looked at a window, dirty and covered in grime. He pulled it open with a grunt, and saw the rooftop of the next building over, less than a meter above his head. He pulled his feet on the window-sill, grabbed his bag, and steadied his hands on the wall.

With a grunt and an extreme jolt of pain, he grabbed onto the ledge of the next building over. He pulled his body up, and slung his leg over the edge. He then forced the rest of his weight up, and rolled, flat on his back, on the gravely roof. He looked up at the sky. In the room he had just left, he heard voices.

He was gone from the edge before the men checked the open window. He kept low, and avoided the swarms of men and women below him. He heard them, could see the image below of all of them swarming, like ants to a kill. They yelled and screamed, and occasionally fired into the air.

Finally, Gardener reached the furthermost building – it was affixed to the wall. He leapt and landed, shakily, on the barricade of stacked cars. He looked around, and his heart stopped. He saw a boy staring up at him from below. He pointed his pistol at the child, and held it there for a moment.

The rain had begun to fall heavily. Gardener was soaked. The anthill below writhed and festered, but only the small boy noticed him. And there those two stood, one on top of a wall of trash and cement, the other looking up harmlessly. His finger was poised on the trigger. His silencer-barrel was aimed at the child. He could kill him, and nobody would know, right then and there. If he didn't, he knew for sure the child would alert his fellows. The pain wracking through his body was impossible to cope with.

Gardener leapt off the opposite side of the wall, fearing the consequences of what he had just done. He wondered, dully, if his choice would haunt him.

The sun was now very close to being fully down. Darkness began to creep back into the world. But Gardener couldn't make a run for it yet. There were men crawling around outside, now. The fight had been going on for just over two hours, and Gardener was absolutely exhausted. He was hidden inside a burnt out car's shell. The rain fell down in sheets. He was so close to being able to run to freedom now, he could taste it in his soul, feel it in his bones.

Silently, the Marine ran through what the D.I.'s at boot camp had taught him about Guerilla Warfare. He couldn't remember the details. He attributed it to the stress. And the pain – that pain which rippled up his body with every movement, and stung each time the rain hit a wound.

He waited until there were no vagrants near him to quickly exit the vehicle and run into the ruins.

The coast was clear, for just a moment. He ran into a broken building, and darted behind a wall. A group of three armed men ran by. They were shouting and disoriented. He waited until they passed by, and then he silently pursued them. He followed them across the rubble for a few meters, and then took a knee behind a short, stone wall-fragment. He aimed his pistol. It coughed, inaudible in nature's din, and one of the hunters dropped. The other two went screaming, weapons all but abandoned.

Suddenly, he heard a screaming behind him.

Gardener turned just in time to see an attacker who had snuck up behind him. The crazed man held a machete aloft, its dull metal dripping with water. Gardener swore suddenly. The man began to bring his arm down, but the Marine twisted his torso to avoid the blow. The blade caught him a glancing blow on his arm, slicing a gash that began to bleed. The Sniper yelled in pain. The man was over-extended form the slice, and Gardener quickly brought his knee up and caught the man in the stomach. He keeled over, and the Marine twisted his attacker's wrist, wrenching the man's blade away as the attacker yelped. He again brought his knee up, this time into the kneeled man's nose. The adversary fell flat on his back.

The man looked up at him, eyes blurred in the rain, and he screamed suddenly. There was an animalistic terror in his scream, and he cried pathetically.

With an incredible, two handed arch, the Marine slung the machete blade down, cutting a huge, rending gash in his attacker's chest. The man screamed as Gardener brought up the machete again, and again slammed it down. Blood flew from the rusted blade as the Marine hacked away at the screaming body. The man's final scream ended in a gurgle rent cartilage and spurting blood.

Gardener stood over the still, dead form. The man looked up at him, with vacant eyes crusted and afraid. It was all Gardener could do, just stand there, dumbly, and look at that lifeless, dead form; watch what he had done to another human being.

A gunshot rang out. It was a single, solitary gunshot. Gardener looked down. Blood welled from a whole just above his right hip. He wasn't sure if he was more shocked at the wound or at the fact that he couldn't feel it.

Slowly, he turned around.

Standing there, grinning maliciously, stood the Ring-Leader.

"You asshole. You faked it." Gardener said, in shock. His eyes were wide, fear and shock, numbness and still a grip on reality all too acute. The rain fell. Thunder rolled in the distance. Through the feint light, he could almost see his foe. The night was approaching without respite.

The man let out a horrible, horrible laugh. Triumphantly, he began to speak, in a mocking tone, like a cruel father to his incompetent son.

"You see, what you failed to realize, is,"

Gardener shot him in the head.

The smoking silencer barrel sizzled in the pouring rain. His vision was foggy and a grizzled grimace was sculpted onto his face. The Marine turned his back, and left.

The rain poured as he stumbled home, through the ruins. Zombies followed him, but he would stand and shoot at them, sometimes taking more than one shot to down the beasts. His head was filled with all kinds of nothing – the blood-loss and the pain were so intense. He was dizzy and clear-headed all at the same time; sane and completely off his rocker.

The lighting came in after the rain. Its flash was bright, and it illuminated the moonless night with every tremendous flash. The thunder rolled like the roar of the gods.

It took him hours to reach the school. The night was pitch-dark when he finally found his domain once more.

He stumbled into the building. His clothes were drenched in water and blood. Ruggedly, he shambled through the first-floor of his domain. He left a trail wherever he went. As he moved, he took off his pack; after that, his belt, and then his gloves. He took off his soaking BDU jacket and tossed it on the floor.

Just like he had told her, he found her on the third floor, huddled with a weapon and a number of blankets, staying out of the rain. He ascended the last flight of stairs and closed the door behind him.

In a silhouette, standing there, he breathed heavily.

Shelby immediately shot up; unable to identify who it was that had just gotten in. She was terrified. She began to slide further back, trying somehow to get farther into the corner than she was already. The man took a step forward, slowly, staggering; one step, then another, then another. In the darkness of night, it was impossible to tell who it was. The rain outside bombarded the building.

"Who are you!" Shelby screamed. She was holding a pistol in her grip. It looked too-big and impotent. The man kept forward. "Stop where you are! I swear to god I'll shoot you!" She screamed. The terror in her voice was evident. "Don't take another God-Damned step!" She screeched. She pulled back the hammer of the pistol. The click it made was full and very real.

Standing next to a dark window, the figure stopped.

Suddenly, the lighting outside flashed.

Robert Gardener's face was illuminated for a few moments by the strobe of white lightning.

"Jesus-fucking-Christ!" Shelby said, throwing the gun down. She threw off her covers, and immediately got up.

Gardener opened his arms, easily, without thinking.

Shelby immediately came up and embraced him. She threw her arms around his middle and pressed her face up against his chest. He hugged her back, his arms sore and wet and bloody.

She pushed back from him.

"Where the fuck were you!" She screamed. He didn't respond. "You didn't show up! After that first night, you didn't show!" She pounded on his chest. He winced. "I can't believe you, you asshole, I was so scared, and you were gone, and… and…" her tangent trickled off. "My god; what the hell happened to you? You're covered in blood, and – is that a gunshot wound?"

"Yeah." He said, honestly. He didn't have enough in him to say anything more.

"How did you get shot?" She asked. He just closed his eyes. "What the hell!" She proclaimed, generally. Her voice was filled with anger, yet quavering with fear.

Gardener opened his eyes again. He pulled her in tight to him. He looked down to see her face.

"Shelby," He said. He looked right into her bright, beautiful eyes.

"Yes?" She said.

"You good?"

"Yeah," She said, weakly, "I think so."

He reached around with his arms, and his warm embrace drifted down the graceful arch of her back. He danced his fingers slowly downward, until they rested gently, just above her hips. She immediately closed her eyes and arched her back. Her mouth opened just slightly, releasing a soft whimper. He applied pressure, forcing her body into his.

She longed for his lips against hers, wanted to taste and feel and be felt. Her body tingled, grew hot with the anticipation.

He tilted his head, and dug his lips onto hers. Unable to prevent it, she moaned, ever-so-slightly. His arm slid up her back, and rested just at the base of her neck. The sensation was impossible – her supple lips, soft and warm and eager against his.

Outside, the storm raged.

The lightning cried out, brilliant flashes of heat and intensity, brief and powerful. The bolts of light twisted, bucked and arched, wild and brutal and animal.

The thunder rolled a steady, pounding beat. It resounded like the thumping rhythm of a tribal drum, constant and inexorable.

Now, the rain still fell heavily; the thunder had stopped, now only an occasional rumble that rolled over the distant hills. The distinct sound of two warm bodies, drenched in sweat, breathing heavily, rose just above the intense rain that pattered on the roof.

Those two naked bodies tangled among each other, exposed to the open, cool air of the open halls. Body-parts mingled with arms and legs resting haphazardly among each other, torsos overlapping carelessly in rest, the two drifted off into an inescapable, much-needed sleep together.