Heya guys! I'd just like to apologize for the horrific delay in updates and tell you that the first chapter is up! Hope you all enjoy it, and please don't forget to review. If your OC is in this story, let me know if I got their character right; if your OC isn't in the story, feel free to tell me what you think also! Feedback is always appreciated. ^^

I think I should tell you, though: I'll be starting work soon, so it'll take longer for me to update. I'll try to update once a week, but don't count on it. :/ Once every week and a half to two weeks is more likely.

Anyway, on with the chapter!

Had anyone living been in the street at that time, they would have first noticed the carnage literally spread across the area like so much wet paint; the pale gray of the cement sidewalks were stained a dull red-brown with gore that had been left uncleaned for many a day. Corpses – themselves the same mottled color as the curbstones on which they lay – lay motionless, the source of the filth caked on the ground. Their milky eyes stared unblinkingly ahead, seemingly unaware and yet accepting of the various bullets and gashes that had been the cause of their demise. A few of the dead were missing eyes altogether, faces obliterated in red-black masses of burns and caked blood; these unlucky souls were grouped mostly together, arranged in vaguely circular patterns around small scorched craters in the pavement.

A soft breeze blew through the silent urban morgue, somewhat lessening the putrid smell of rot. A plastic bag was dislodged from under the skeletal wreck of a burned car; spiraling end over end, it wafted across a large crimson blot on the sidewalk, its gauzy material unstained and pristine. It barely made ten feet before it blew against another car and was trapped, rustling quietly against the bloodstained metal. The wind died down and the bag slid to the blacktop. All was still.

Silence pressed in, oppressive and heavy as the stench that was quickly regaining its previous strength. Nothing else stirred, nothing made a single sound. It was as if the entire world itself had succumbed alongside the mutilated forms scattered around like trash.

Light dragging sounds trickled into the scene; a lone figure turned a corner and entered the narrow corridor of the street. Male or female – its hair had been ripped off, leaving only a shredded scalp, and the rest of it was too bloody and injured to tell – it wandered down the abandoned road, stopping occasionally to stare ahead at its surroundings with dull, unfocused, cataract eyes. Air bubbled from a vicious wound to its side; a flap of shredded, necrotic skin lost its battle with gravity, fell from the creature's side, and landed with a wet plop on the sidewalk. Seemingly unaware of the severity of its injury, the bloodied figure resumed its aimless walking with the same inane, mindless air. The plastic bag somehow found its way into the thing's path and was ground underfoot.

Suddenly, the hiss-crackle of static split the air, accompanied by the warbling of a radio being tuned. In the terse stillness of the street, the sound echoed like a thunderclap; the cacophony lasted for a few seconds before focusing into rhythmic, recognizable sound.

"Pleased to meet you; hope you guess my name, oh yeah.

Ah, what's puzzling you is the nature of my game, ah yeah—"

With a focus unbefitting its moronic, damaged appearance, the Infected whirled to face the source of the music. Across the street, a building sat primly among its looted and half-demolished brethren; the red cross on its closed, bolted door advertised safety and replenishment to all those still capable of reading and recognizing the sign. The rumble of a drum beat was coming from within, tinny and tinged with static.

Vacant face twisting into a horrific snarl, the creature charged for the source of the noise, its pounding footsteps joined by others that appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. The collective cries and shrieks of rage from the swiftly-growing mob swallowed up the music; from inside the safe house loud swearing could be heard. A small slot in the door opened up and the barrel of a gun poked out tentatively – several loud banging sounds interrupted the noise of the Horde and a few Infected dropped, falling and being trampled under the feet of their fellows. After a moment's hesitation, the gun muzzle was retracted and eerie silence came from within the building.

The Horde threw themselves upon the safe house door, pounding and scratching at the steel-reinforced wood with a ferocity previously seen only in the wildest of beasts. Swarming, they ripped, snarled, even bit at the one thing separating them from the irritating drone of the music and heavy breathing of their potential prey inside; under the combined force of their attack, the door began to buckle inward.

Inside, a young man – his eyes clear and blue-gray, his blood free of the Infection – backed away from the rapidly-failing barrier. He clutched the worn metal and wood of this shotgun close to his chest, obscuring the smiling bear logo of his favorite pre-Infection band, the Grateful Dead. The jollity of the garment clashed grimly with his expression as he swore and looked frantically to the back of the room, voice trembling and thick with a Boston accent.

"Ah shit. Shit – they're fucking coming, fucking coming into here – oh god I'm fucking dead –"

For every shot he fired at the cracked wood and swarming bodies outside, the moans of several more Infected answered; this was a full-on Horde attack. The viral monsters kept throwing themselves into the range of this shotgun, the disease rushing through their veins only serving to drive them to greater and greater anger and to further ignore the nonfatal shots to their limbs that the man couldn't help but make. In his panic, he kept missing the mark – the door was nearly gone.

The top half of something that had once been a man – businessman, by the look of his ragged, filthy suit – pushed through the widened gap between doorframe and door. A gnarled hand stretched out for the Survivor, snagging the material of his pants leg. The Grateful Dead fan fell to the ground and was dragged closer to the forest of arms worming their way into the safe house; though he kept firing, he could feel death working its fingers through the wild shock of his hair, breathing a horrible graveyard smell into his face, calling to him with the sound of the Infected and the high-pitched beeping of a pipe bomb –

Realization struck and the Survivor ducked, holding his bandaged arms over his head and flattening himself into the cold tile of the floor as a loud explosion rocked the building. The businessman-Infected flinched and cried out, mouth working in a loud dying declamation before it suddenly stopped and fell limp – frenzied attack machine turned mostly harmless deadweight in a few milliseconds. Its arms and head hung down from where it was lodged in the door and outside, the smell of burning flesh was horrible.

Unperturbed by the now-finished battle, the radio went on calmly playing its music. The speakers had accumulated a thin coating of gray drywall dust in the wake of the explosion.

"–have some sympathy, and some taste

use all your well-learned politesse—"

As the lone man lay there, hardly daring to believe his good luck – a pipe bomb? Where the hell had that pipe bomb come from? That honestly couldn't mean – the corpse slid down to the tiled floor. The handle of the doorknob turned; a loud voice, female and full of cold authority, interrupted the rock rhythm of the Rolling Stones.

"If anyone alive is in there, would you kindly open the damn door and shut that goddamn radio off?"

"– soul to waste, ooh yeah!

But what's puzzling you is the, nature of my game, ah yeah!"

The man could see three silhouettes hovering outside; eyes narrowing, he snatched up his shotgun and slowly got to his feet, checking soundlessly to see if there were still bullets in the gun. There were.

A second female voice sighed wearily and countered the first. "Oh shut up Cassidy, it's not like this is bad music –"

The first voice cut in again, sounding more irritated than ever. "It's the Rolling Stones, of course it is! They're the most overhyped, unoriginal band of the century. Of course you wouldn't know that—"

"Oh really? What else wouldn't I know, Ms. Frigid Lawyer—"

Another voice, calmer and deeper, male most likely, cut into the ornery conversation. The slight twang of a Southern accent was apparent in the few words it uttered as a slightly broader shadow inched closer to the door. "Guys, don't yell. You may bring in more of them." The tone of the new man's voice became kind, coaxing. "Hello? Is anyone in there?" A knock – of all things, a knock – came at the door. "Hello? We're not Infected, there's no need to worry yerself."

The young man inside wasn't having any of that. He backed up to where the radio sat on a table, fiddling with the power cord and yanking it out of the wall. The song was silenced mid-beat. Outside, the trio – what he could see of them, anyway – stiffened. He expected that – had to be dangerous, they had to be.

The outsider pushed gently at the door, opening it a crack; a rounded, seemingly impossibly calm face pushed its way into the room. Dark brown hair bushed out around a calm continence slightly covered by facial hair; light gray eyes met the other's bluer ones and widened. "Who—"

Before the sentence could be finished, the Grateful Dead fan brought his shotgun up and aimed it at the unknown face. His voice wasn't as cold as the first woman's had been, but it still held the necessary authority. "Back the fuck up now! Right fucking now before I fucking shoot ya in your fucking face!"

"Shit!" The other man's head vanished from view; the sounds of guns being drawn and safeties being taken off clicked ominously, the actual sounds almost describing the tension in the air. The door was slammed shut again as voices were raised.

"Dave, what the hell is—"

"He's got a gun. Guys, back yerselves up now, before –Cassidy, don't!"

The door was kicked inward and an older woman stepped inside, her heels clicking and avoiding the slumped corpse of the dead Infected – it was apparent now that his lower body had been incinerated by the bomb along with most of the other Infected outside. Her features twisted into a look of heavy disdain, she brushed ash from the fabric of her black skirt and glared at the Grateful Dead fan; the rapidly-fading light from the sun reflected dimly on the whiteness of her blouse, spotted and stained as it was with the all-too-familiar red of dried gore. Before he could analyze any more of her appearance, however, his attention was instantly captured by the cold, shiny steel of the gun in her hand.

As he froze, the woman smiled thinly. "Are you going to put that gun down and come outside, or am I going to shoot you? I asked politely for you to open the door and turn off the radio," Quickly, her pale eyes darted to the dead radio in the corner, then flicked back to him. "You've done one out of the two, which doesn't put me in a very good mood. So if you don't listen, I may very well just shoot you and ignore the fact that I just wasted a perfectly good pipe bomb saving your unappreciative ass."

The other woman – she had lighter brown hair – mulishly rolled her eyes. Angrily she muttered, "It was my pipe bomb to begin with." The stocky man next to her nudged her in the ribs, nodding slowly. Both of them had their guns drawn.

There was no way he could take on three people with guns, the man realized. Slowly, he lowered the shotgun and fixed the blue bandanna tied around his head – it had slipped uncomfortably close to his eyes during the commotion and was partially obscuring his sight. Warily, he stepped outside, nerves frayed and ready to snap into action at any second. As he exited the safe house and stepped out onto the even more bloody pavement, the fear became too great for him to bear it silently.

"Alright, you got me outside. You try any funny business, and I swear to God I'll – I'll –"

The older woman – Cassidy – raised an eyebrow. "You'll what, Baa-sten? What is a guy with your Taxachusetts accent doing here in the South?"

"That's none of your damn business." His hands tightened around the trigger – he could shoot this Cassidy woman now and maybe duck as the others retaliated –

The man must have noticed, because he shouldered Cassidy aside – not too unkindly – and raised his hands. "Fine, fine. Suit yerself – jus' put the gun down. We're all friends here."

Cassidy snorted, while the other young woman in the back tried her best to look agreeable and kind with what looked like a pistol and a blood-caked baseball bat in both her hands. It was her who spoke next. "Yeah…I mean, hey. I'm Charlie. What's your name?" Catching her peers' expressions, she frowned. "What? If we're trying to be nice and all, we've gotta introduce ourselves –"

"To the guy who's trying to kill us?" Cassidy rolled her eyes and glared at first Charlie, than the other person in their group. After a pointed look from the man, she relented. "Fine. The name's Cassidy. I'd shake your hand if you weren't just trying to shoot me."

"Dave." It was the stocky man who actually extended a hand for the Grateful Dead fan to shake, smiling warmly. "Grateful Dead, huh? I like their music." When the newcomer refused to take his hands off the gun he was holding, much less shake, he sighed. It seemed like the narrow-eyed distrust was seriously depressing him. "What's your name? Do you have a name?"

After quickly checking to see if anybody – or anything – besides these people was around, the yellow-clad man finally gave in and responded. "Otto." It took the three of them putting their guns completely away before he put the safety on his own gun. "It's Otto. What do you want?"

Dave actually balked at that one, as if the question was so pointless it had no answer. To him, it really was that pointless; they had just saved this guy, and still the panicked look hadn't left his face. He hadn't even stopped shaking from what should have been the short-lived shock of meeting other Survivors. Something was off about this Otto character...but he was human. That was what mattered, and he'd be damned if he didn't live up to what Grandad had taught him about human kindness.

Smiling, the man with the Louisiana accent spread his hands. "We just saved your life. Care to join us?"

Before Otto got a chance to reply, Cassidy and Charlie's voice rang out in unison: "What?"

Charlie gaped at her companion, twitchily putting her gun back into its holdster – makeshift, Otto noted. This girl wasn't a professional marksman – and keeping her baseball bat out. As Cassidy rolled her eyes and looked away, the younger woman glanced over in Otto's direction and hissed to Dave. "You sure this is a good idea? This guy looks…y'know…Z-shocked." Charlie caught Otto's eye and smiled sheepishly, covering the unconscious shudder at the expression on the new man's face. With new resolve she turned back to Dave. "Why should we bring him along?"

The Louisiana native's face twisted in confusion at the unfamiliar term – 'Z-shock?' What in the hell was that? – before smoothing out into its characteristic serenity. Dave looked back at Charlie and shrugged. "He's a Survivor, isn't he? All us Survivors gotta stick together, watch each others' backs, 'else we're all zombie chow."

The logic was irrefutable, though Charlie hated to admit it. Nodding, she looked back at Otto and attempted an apology. "Sorry, dude. It's just –"

"None of us have any reason to trust each other. How do I know you won't shoot me the second I piss one of you off?" Otto scowled, finger twitching uncomfortably close to the trigger again; his ears just managed to catch Cassidy's muttered response: something about how oddly prophetic his statement was. "How do you know I won't do the same?"

"Because if you do, it'll be my heel up your ass. The thing's trashed enough as it is, so nothing's stopping me." Cassidy smiled grimly again and purposely ground the sole of her shoe into the bloody sidewalk. "What the fuck's wrong with you, anyway? I thought hippies were supposed to be friendly."

"There's no reason for me to be friendly," snarled Otto. He brushed a blood-matted strand of blonde hair out of his face and looked around; it wasn't safe here. Already, they could hear the groans of a few Infected that were drawing close, drawn by the sound of the explosion and the reek of burned flesh.

Flicking the safety on his gun, he gave in to the three other Survivor's stares. "Where are you headed?"

Cassidy's foot tapped methodically as the trio looked to one another; this subject hadn't quite been decided yet. Charlie eventually piped up. "Well, there are evac stations in the main part of the –"

Otto cut in, voice bitter. "Don't bother. They're shut down – CEDA pulled out." Shouldering his shotgun, he raised an eyebrow. "Don't believe me? Go there and get shot or left for the Infected."

Charlie deflated, clutching her baseball bat tightly. Cassidy swore under her breath and glared at Otto, only to look around as an especially close moan echoed down a nearby alley. Hearing the sound, Dave sighed and scratched his head. "Guess that means we're headed for wherever there are less zombies, then. I heard that Texas is good, since nobody really lives there."

"Yeah, but it's next to Mexico," snorted Cassidy.

Charlie shot a particularly venomous glare at the lawyer. "You got a better idea of where to go?"

That shut Cassidy up; the older woman sighed and seemed to fight with her pride before finally responding. "No, I don't."

"Guys, please." Dave said, playing the peacemaker again. "How about we get to another safe house and puzzle it out there?" With that, he spread his hands again. "What do you say, Otto? You with us?"

The Grateful Dead fan thought it over. "Fine. You pull any shit and I'm out, though."

Cassidy grinned, her stunningly white teeth bared in a horribly cheerful, somewhat threatening expression. "That's what I said."

That's right. I wrote this while listening to "Sympathy For The Devil." It's an amazing song; you should listen to it.

I butchered the initial meeting story; this could have been done much better, but I just wanted to get this first chapter out. "Writing is the unrestrained stroking of a verbal ego," as they say – now that the ball's rolling, the next chapters will be much better, especially if you support my writing. *shameless self-promotion*

So for now, adios, and don't forget to review!