Chapter 1: Promises Made

Kyle Hendricks put down his mug of coffee and was reading the newspaper. He was sitting alone in the fire hall waiting for a job. Oh god how boring life can be sometimes. He decided that watching is always better then reading, so he put down his newspaper and turned on the TV. He started flipping through the channels when the news caught his eye. Buildings were burning and the news reporter was saying something about riots and violence. The scene was completely taking over his mind. He didn't even notice his buddy Eric coming up behind him.

"So what the fucks on the news that makes it so special today?" Eric said. Kyle nearly jumped out of his seat.

"Hey, don't fuckin do that man, I will kill you!" Kyle responded. All of a sudden his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of its pouch on his belt and flipped it open. It was Sarah, his girlfriend.

"Kyle, where are you? You said you would be home by now." She stated.

"I'm still at the fire hall, I promise I'll be home in a half hour and we can do something together." Kyle said to Sarah.

"Ok, just be sure it is a half hour." Then Sarah hung up. Kyle went to his locker to get his shit so he could go home. But first, he had to drop by a few places and buy some shit. He was going to make sure Sarah had to wait for a good reason.

Kyle just walked into his home when his girlfriend suddenly bursted out at him, making jump.

"Kyle, you have too see this." Sarah said. Kyle noticed she was watching the news, as the regular anchorman's voice was pounding through the house. What he was saying made no sense to Kyle though.

"-and that concludes the list of the rescues stations." The anchorman said. "Violence continues to spread throughout the city and neighboring states." Sarah was staring open mouthed at the T.V. screen.

"Oh my god! What the hell are we going to do Kyle?" Sarah asked impatiently. She also sounded scared. And then, Kyle's pager went off. He was called in to work.

"I'm sorry, babe, but what was that list thing he was saying that I missed? Rescue stations. Go to one of those, I will be there as soon as possible. I promise" Kyle said sympathetically. In this troubled time, he wanted to be with Sarah, but the fire department was calling him away too work. Probably too put out the fires spreading rampant throughout the city. So, Kyle had to get his boots back on, get back in his truck and drive too the fire station. As he drove, he saw the carnage that his city was really in. He hoped Sarah would be Ok until he met up with her again.

When Kyle finally arrived at the station. He was given brief instruction on where he was going to fight his first fire of the day. He suited up and joined his buddy Eric in the cab of the first fire engine.

"So man, isn't this when you usually get home?" Eric asked as he revved up the engine.

"Yep." Was all Kyle could muster up at the time.

"Shitty man, Well they woke me up from my good sleep, and I was having a good dream too." Eric responded.

"What, you were finally getting a piece?" Kyle asked with the humour dripping from his words.

"Shut the fuck up man. That isn't even funny. And anyways, I did that hot Asian chick the other night." Eric responded, satisfaction clearly shining in his words.

"Did you really? Holy shit man, keep it in your pants for at least a month." Kyle responded.

"Yeah, but I promise you this, I will keep one chick for a girlfriend this month." Eric said.

"Yeah right." Kyle responded.

"What you don't believe me?" Eric asked with a grin on his face.

"No, I don't. And I don't know why we are even talking about this. Lets just get the job done and go home."

Kyle was staring in awe at what he was seeing, he was in for one long day. Fires were spread around everywhere. Cars were flipped over, bodies lay in the streets mutilated. There were several rioters who stormed a police blockade and were terrorizing them.

"What the fuck is happening to this city?" Eric asked as he pulled the fire engine over. Kyle and Eric simultaneously jumped out of the fire engine and hooked up all of the hoses. Kyle and Eric have been doing this for years, their performance was flawless. In his mind, Kyle was already estimating how long it would take to put out the fire. He looked to his left and saw a humanoid shape moving towards him in the smoke, it was shambling at a slow pace. From the contour shape, he could tell it was a woman.

"What the hell, I'll help her." Eric said. He ran over to her and said something quietly. And then just out of nowhere. She was on him, in a flash, she was tearing his throat out with her teeth. What the fuck was she thinking? Kyle dropped the hose and ran over to help his friend. He grabbed the girl and lifted her away, she refused to let go of a piece of Eric's neck, and it was torn away, leaving an every bloody Eric lying still on the ground.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" Kyle yelled at her. The woman looked up at Kyle and tried to grab him with an open, salivating jaw. Kyle threw the woman to the ground, she looked up at him, and recognition suddenly took hold of Kyle. It was his wife. But that couldn't be, she died 6 years ago. But it was definitely her. The same straight brown hair and rosy cheeks and the same perfume lingered over the stench of rotting flesh. But her dazzling green eyes have been turned to white mirrors, showing a pain that can only be cured by one remedy

Too feed.

Kyle's ex got up and started limping her way to him. Kyle noticed why she was limping. A huge chunk had been torn out at the bottom of her right leg, including her Achilles tendon. Kyle ran to the truck and grabbed the fire axe. He would have gone to get Eric, but he was getting up on his own now.

"Come on Eric! The rioters are surrounding us!" Kyle looked at Eric as he slowly turned, but all that greeted him from the face of his long time friend was an emotional pain. Eric's eyes, were just like Kyle's ex, plus now he looked hungry for him too. He started trotting at a much faster pace then Kyle's ex was. The chains of panic released Kyle from his paralysis and he charged to the fire engine. Booting it up, he turned to drive away. He didn't care were he went, he just had to get away.

Away from the horrors that he had just witnessed.

Kyle was storming down the street with the radio tuned into the news, hoping desperately to hear something about those rescue stations he heard from earlier that day on the TV. He saw the cannibalistic crazies swarming everywhere. He never stopped when one stumbled in the way of the fire engine. He didn't care, not for what he'd seen them do to his friend.

"What the fuck is wrong with these people, some kind of disease or something?" Kyle said to himself. Then he heard the words he was hoping for,

"The rescue stations are at the St. George Library, the local Police station, and White Brick hospital." Kyle was staring at the radio, therefore not paying attention to the road. He looked up and saw a police road block with a hoard of those psychos, what the hell was he talking about. They were most definitely zombies. That was the only explanation for his dead wife eating his buddy. As crazy as it sounds, he was dealing with zombies. Pondering these thoughts almost got Kyle killed as he slammed right into the police road block and the building beyond it. He lifted his head from the airbag and noticed something bad. The zombies were coming towards him. He grabbed his axe opened the door and started booking it down the road which had no zombies down it. His equipment was slowing him down so he started taking it off as he ran. He looked back once and noticed how slow the zombies were. So he rounded the bend and slowed down. He kept walking and remembered something that could be important. There was a gun store around the bend just a block away. That would be his best bet.

He started to run but then thought of something. He wasn't going to need his Firefighter heat resistant pants anymore, so he took the time to take them off. Now he felt much more comfortable in his black cargo pants and blue Engine 13 t-shirt. Hefting his fire axe in one hand, he started to jog. He could see a few of those things wandering around, but they were to slow to catch up to him. One hissed and lunged at him. Cursing himself as he knocked the abomination away with his muscular arm, he prepared for a good strike between the shoulder and neck with his axe. The zombie looked up at him, hunger filling its eyes as she stared unblinking at him. Then Kyle noticed who it was. It was his girlfriend. She had been caught by one of those fuckers and turned. Kyle knew though, that she would want him to end her if she knew what she was. He struck, cleaving into the torso area, but she didn't die! Kyle was almost in tears as he withdrew the axe while Sarah was clawing at him. Kicking her away, he aimed for a clean horizontal head slice. He swung with all his might, almost blinded by tears. He spun 180° through the sheer power he put into his swing. The undead form of Sarah, his former girlfriend, slumped to the ground. Her head was cleanly sliced at the mouth. Turning away, Kyle started stumbling towards the gun store, tears almost clouding his vision, only one block away and around the corner. Then he heard gunshots from a distance, from his destination.