The bright K-Mart sign shone over the parking lot, the M sputtering to stay lit. There was a spattering of cars in the silent area, some untouched, others crushed in with broken windows, scarlet blood caking the interior as well as the exterior. The distant sounds of screaming and growling did little to affect the eerie silence that engulfed the store's area. Some lights within had staid lit since the store's abandonment about three years ago. Since The T-Virus had begun it's reign of terror. The city had, for the most part, become the feeding ground of some of the smaller groups of the undead that had never made it out of the city, finding and killing whatever survivors were found in the small town that lay some hundred miles south of San Francisco.

The calming silence was broken the sound of tennis shoes smacking the pavement, a girl's harsh, sobbing breaths as she raced for the cover of the K-Mart. Behind her followed the slow moving, but ever progressing undead, twelve of them at least, all desperate for the first fresh flesh they had seen in weeks.

The girl came to a smashing halt against the glass doors, which she had expected to open for her automatically, but it looked like the electronics had long worn out. She beat at the doors frantically, despair flooding over her. She was dead, she knew it. Her heart pounded like a rabbit caught within the jaws of a hungry wolf, threatening to explode within her. She scratched futilely at the doors, before managing to slip her fingers into the slight space between them. Calling up all her reserves of strength after running for at least five miles, she pulled desperately at the doors, begging whatever power that be to let the door slide open enough for her to squeeze through. If she could get inside, she could find a place to hide. Though relentless, the undead were dumb, and never thought to look inside of something they could not see through.

Utter relief rushed through her as the doors gave way a foot or so. She slid her leg through the opening, but she could not get her hips and abdomen through. The undead drew closer, their growling and cawing stabbing her with terror. Desperately, she pushed with all her might at the doors, screaming as she pushed the sticky doors beyond her bodily capacity. Her muscles strained, and her shoulder joints screamed as she shoved the bones into the back of their sockets. She gasped when the doors gave way suddenly, allowing her to fall through. She tumbled to the ground, her body unable to catch it's own exhausted weight. She glanced at the pack of undead that drug, limped, and dragged itself towards her with a will. She realized she was screaming and scrambled to her feet, tripping and launched herself forward before gaining her balanced and running as best she could on legs that felt like led. The undead had not reached the doors yet as she darted clumsily down the isles of the ruined K-Mart in zigzag fashion looking desperately for a small cabinet to hide in.

She slid to a stop at a door towards the back of the store labeled "Employees Only". She turned the knob and slid inside, closing it as quietly as possible. A single light spattered feebly, allowing enough light to see a des with an over-turned computer and lamp. She scrambled over to the other side and found a cabinet on the backside, just large enough for her to squeeze into. Opening it, she shoved the papers and files packed within onto the floor and fought to fit her body into the enclosed space. She pulled at the bottom of the cabinet door and jerked lightly, activating the magnet that had held it closed before. There she waited, her breath harsh, despite her attempts to control it, her heart threatening to fail her, but there she waited for whatever destiny might bring her.

"Clair? Anything?" Carlos Olivera said quietly into his walkie-talkie as the convoy of trucks and survivors moved steadily through what seemed yet another forgotten and destroyed town. They had received transmissions over a crackling radio that there were survivors in this area, but they had yet to find any.

"Nothing," their leader's voice sounded despairingly over the little hand held radio. "We were too late. Again."

"Clair, we tried. We've just got to keep looking," Carlos's voice said softly.

"We've been trying. There's nothing. No one. We're the last."

"Clair…" Carlos began in a concerned voice, but their leader ignored him, pouring out emotion she had kept locked up for three years.

"Everything is dead but us. Even the earth is dying."

"Clair…"

"We're all going to die anyway. Why do we even bother looking?"

"Clair!" Carlos's voice was sharp, but he did not shout. It shocked Clair out of her stupor and she stopped.

"I'm sorry it's just…"

"No. Stop the truck. Look at that K-Mart. There's a small pack of them swarming into it." Clair stopped the lead truck and gazed out the cross-iron window towards the K-Mart. She counted ten outside, not quiet in the doors, and she was sure she saw another few move just inside the dim light of the interior beyond the doors.

"Is it worth checking out?"

"If this place is totally abandoned, there's no reason for them to swarm that way. There's got to be someone in there."

"Let's go."

Alison sat cramped and exhausted within the small cabinet, her heart still racing, but her breath easier to take. Not that it mattered. If they found her, breathing was the last of her worries. She could hear a few of them clambering and growling about just outside the office door. She fought o hold her breathing in check, clutching her cut arm in an attempt to stop the smell from guiding them to her. It had been her sliced arm, which had alerted them of her presence, and set her on the run again. Three weeks ago, the Virus had taken over her city, and her family of a Mother and two sisters had been killed, along with her best friend Shila. She had managed to hide under her house for two days before emerging and periodically running from the creatures. Now she could only wonder how much longer she would survive. She had only managed to scrounge trashcans for food, and thus found only three meals in those three weeks. The last one had been two days ago…

Loud bangs and shots rang out, causing her to gasp and her heart to skip a beat. Guns… did that mean people? Real, live people? Her heart raced with the knowledge that the last time she had heard those noises, it had been the law enforcement attempting to off the creatures one by one by machine gun. Then again, for all she knew, K-Mart may sell guns and the undead must has gotten into them. Her heart raced and pounded painfully, her gut twisting with the decision: leave her hiding place in hopes of finding people that could help her and chance facing nothing but the undead by mistake or stay and give herself a ninety-percent chance of surviving this time.

Voices shouting incoherently above the cries and snarls and guns made her decision for her. Opening the cabinet ever so cautiously, she eased herself out of the desk-pocket and crept to the door, listening for sounds of near by undead. A shot smashed through the door, startling her unto her backside, a short scream emitting from her mouth. Another shot rang out and the sick squirting sound of blood and brains splattering against the door churned her stomach before the door smashed open.

A tall man that looked to be of either Hispanic or Israeli heritage looked down at her, a large machinegun supported in his hands. He was decked out for battle, his hips slung heavy with ammo over his camouflage pants, intimidating large army boots adorning his feet at her eye level. A hand freed itself from his gun and he held it out for her.

"You ok?" he asked as she took his large hand. She failed to answer, but gave in to her overwhelming need to attach to herself to a living, caring human being. Using his hand as leverage, she flung herself against him, hugging onto his hips, hard ammo and all, fiercely. She had seen that he was tall, but she was struck by just how tall when she realized her twelve-year-old frame only just topped his waistline. "I'll take that as a yes," the man answered himself, gently trying to pry her from his side. Before he could manage this, she hugged on tighter and screamed as an undead crawled towards them in the dim light, one leg dangling behind it, it's arms outstretched for them. Her savior swung about, uncaring for her extra weight and fired the gun off with abandon. The undead fell to the tile floor, it's gruesome head obliterated. He looked back down at her. "Look, K-Mart, we gotta go. Can you keep up?" Unwilling to leave the first human side she had known in three weeks, she nodded eagerly and grasped onto the man's battle-hot hand.

Carlos glanced down at her, be decided not to unglue her again unless necessary. This kid was small and terrified. He didn't blame her for being desperate to remain in contact.

"Ok, You can hold on, K-Mart, but if one of those bastards comes along, you have to let go so I can shoot." The girl whimpered an ok, and he set off at a hasty jog, shouting into his walkie-talkie. "Clair, guys, everybody, let's go. I've got the survivor."

"Over," came the answer from various voices.

They got to the entrance doors, the others taking up Carlos's flanks at an equally brisk jog.

"All twelve dead," Clair informed him, but never slowing her pace. "But we don't know if there are more around."

"Let's hit the trucks then," Carlos answered as they reached the parked convoy, opening up the bus doors for the girl to join the other children they had gather over the past three years. The girl again glued herself to Carlos's side, shaking her head violently.

"No," she whispered. "Let me stay with you, please?"

Alison gazed up at the man that had been the first safety she had known in what seemed like forever, feeling as though she would die if she did not have his protection.

"Don't you want to be with the other children? They are all friendly, I promise." Alison shook her head again.

"No," she answered simply. "Please."

Any other day, he would have found a child of twelve or so acting this way to be pathetic and annoying, but this one struck a cord for him. He sighed and turned away, assuming she would follow and opened the cab door to his truck. She indeed scrambled in without delay, and he settled in, shutting the door.

"All set?" he asked into the Walkie-Talkie.

"Let's hit it."

"Move it out."