"We had some good times here," Kurt said to himself as he stood on the roof of the KeyArena with one hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle of Jack Daniels. He hadn't so much as touched a drop of booze since Carey left him so many years ago but he found that drinking was very much like riding a bike. This particular bottle had been just under a quarter full when he picked it up and now it was about an ounce above empty. "We were happy back then. Me, Carey, the twins. God, were they ever tiny." Kurt spaced out and took a nip from his bottle. "We were happy."

He raised his free hand to block out the setting sun and gazed across the city. Somewhere, a mile or two away, was the hospital where Zack and Cody had been born. He couldn't see the building itself thanks to a handful of skyscrapers blocking his view but he knew it was there. He'd driven past it when they first flew into Seattle two days ago and he felt like he'd been tossed into the past.

"I thought she was going to kill me. Honestly. I can't really blame her after being in labor for almost a whole day." Kurt grinned as he recalled her contorted face and some of the ridiculous things she said as she bore down yet again. "If you tell me to push one more time I'm going to push my foot so far up your ass that you can smell it," he repeated. He could still hear her saying it all these years later, still see her brows knitted more than he ever had before, still feel her small hand nearly crushing his in a vice-like grip. He took another sip.

"We were happy. Life was good. I had a beautiful wife, two adorable little boys, and I was big. I was famous. Two gold records in three years. And then the third went platinum. We were on top of the world. We could have been the next Nirvana. And then everything fell apart in the blink of an eye."

Kurt aimlessly paced the edge of the roof and kicked random stones over the edge. He stopped with both of his hands on his hips and looked out again at the Seattle skyline. "That year started so good," he said quietly. Kurt drained the dregs of the bottle and hurled it down toward the parking lot. He laughed a dark laugh when it struck a zombie between the shoulder blades and knocked it to the ground. "This year started good, too."

Kurt had put his new band together at the beginning of the year and they had cut an EP by the end of February. He knew it was good stuff but didn't expect the song he liked the least to race up the charts on both coasts like it had. "That song," Kurt grimaced and shook his head. "We put that damn cover on the demo as filler." He picked up a fire axe right beneath its business end as he climbed down the ladder and returned to the safety of the building's concrete walls.

He walked the silent hallways of the arena with the axe slung over a shoulder, passing glossy poster after glossy poster with a picture of the band on stage vertically centered between Ghost Empire and Last Lights World Tour. Kurt laughed wryly as he caught a glimpse of the tour dates and cities. "Don't think we'll be playing Fresno tomorrow."

The halls were quiet now and his footfalls echoed off the walls. "Everything happened so fast," he said as he stepped over a headless corpse and avoided a puddle of dark ichor. The whiskey in his system began to make itself known as his gait took on a wobble as he did his nightly rounds through the building.

His tour took him to the lobby and the large bank of doors that kept the mass of zombies out. The thick glass had become smeared with whatever fluids the zombies leaked while pressed against it and for that, Kurt was grateful. They were a terrible sight and they still unnerved him. He shuddered as their low moans reached his ears and wanted nothing more than to get out of the lobby as quickly as he could. He started to turn away but stopped when he saw that a pane of glass in one door had become spidered from the crush of hundreds of bodies.

"Shit," he muttered as he dared to move a bit closer. The zombies became agitated by his presence and Kurt could see the glass bulging and he instantly stepped back. "Not good." He cast his eyes around the lobby, hoping to find something to brace the door, but saw nothing but a handful of folding tables stacked with his band's merchandise that would easily slide across the polished floor. "Shit," Kurt repeated and his hand tightened its grip on the axe's handle. That glass wouldn't hold much longer and he knew it. Once it broke, the zombies would race in like the tide.

It was time to go. He'd been holed up in the 'Key for almost a week, living off the concessions intended for the fans flocking to his first show and drinking himself to sleep every night thanks to a collection of expensive bottles he'd gathered from the luxury boxes lining the arena. Kurt harrumphed as he gave the crowd of zombies a one-fingered salute with both hands. "Should have left a lot sooner," he said as he hurried his way back to the green room on shaky legs, passing large puddles of congealed blood and other, darker, oozes, "but it all happened so fast." His mind replayed the chaotic scene from that fateful day.

He'd been the first of the band to make it to the arena that morning, telling the others that it was to make sure everything was in order while it was actually the worst case of nerves he'd ever had in his career. There was no way he could sit around in the hotel room for one more minute despite not being scheduled to take the stage for another nine hours. He paced back and forth between their green room and the stage, barely noticing the rising number of sirens that managed to penetrate the building. He stopped wearing a rut in the floor long enough to force down a quick lunch and it was then that everything went to hell.

Kurt had flipped on the television in the green room to try to take his mind off of his upcoming performance and caught the end of a segment showing live video from downtown. Fires were burning uncontrolled and there were police roadblocks set up on strategic corners. "What in the hell is going on?" he said as he dropped the remaining corner of his sandwich on the ground.

"The Mayor's office has officially denied the reports of rioting breaking out across the city but as you can see behind me," the reporter said. His mouth kept moving for several more seconds but the wail of a fire truck and two police cruisers racing past hid his words. The camera panned away from the reporter to show the vehicles racing down the street behind him before pulling into a wider shot that showed a plume of smoke rising into the sky from behind a cluster of buildings. "I think that says it all. Back to you, Sandy."

Kurt yanked his cell from a pocket. "Call Danny," he said into the speaker and the phone dialed while he began walking faster and faster to the front of the arena. Kurt scowled at his phone after the call was unable to be completed. He went through the rest of the band but got the same results. He stuffed it back into his pocket as he reached the lobby.

"What the?" he gasped as he stepped into what looked like a triage center from a war zone. Walking wounded were everywhere and Kurt had never seen so much blood in real life. His stomach did a slow cartwheel and his sandwich bubbled back into his throat. A gaggle of men and women stood near the doors that overlooked the approaches to the building, pointing and chatting softly to one another. One had her hands over her mouth and she turned as Kurt neared the doors.

"Should we stay here? They're saying it's not safe out there." Her eyes had a far-away glaze to them, he noted as they scanned over him before returning to the glass.

"Lady, I don't even know what's going on," he told her as he looked outside. Lots of smoke was the first thing he saw, followed by dozens of lone individuals wandering the parking lot aimlessly. Some looked lost while others staggered over the pavement.

"Someone said people were turning into zombies out there," she said as she pressed her face against the glass. Her body shook as she looked out and Kurt saw her hands knit themselves into a writhing ball just above her waist.

"That's bullshit. There's no such thing," he said but was growing less sure with each second he watched the parking lot.

"I need to go check on my parents," the young woman announced and pushed the door open before Kurt could even think to stop her. She dashed across the parking lot and he saw two of the roamers turn in her direction. One walked into a handicapped parking sign and fell but the other trudged slowly after her. He watched, almost enthralled, until his breath had turned the glass opaque.

"And it just got worse from there," Kurt said as he headed down one of the main corridors in the depths of the arena. Most of the people who had taken refuge during the initial outbreak had fled before the sun went down and zombies began to surround the building. Most of those who didn't were wounded but a handful were simply as scared as Kurt was and had nowhere else to go. He'd ended up killing the wounded that night once they died and rose again. He winced as he remembered bashing one young woman in the face with a fire extinguisher after she'd bitten two of his fellow survivors. "Nasty business," he muttered. "Had to take care of them, too."

Kurt drank a lot that first night. He needed to forget everything he'd seen and not think about the things that might be. Five shots of whiskey dimmed the horrific images of what he'd done that afternoon. Another four shots drowned out thoughts of his boys and a further three erased thoughts about Carey. Kurt fell into a dreamless oblivion and didn't wake until late in the afternoon the following day.

He shook away memories as he walked in and picked up the small pack of supplies he'd put together in one of his few sober moments. Kurt slid the pack over one shoulder and adjusted the strap to keep the weight snug against his back. The pack was light but contained enough to hopefully last him through the day or two it would take to get out of the city. He started walking out of the room but stopped, seemingly entranced by a Siren's song from the other side of the room.

He turned and appraised a table standing in the corner. Two unopened bottles of Jack stood on it, the last remnants of his skybox scrounging, and they were calling to him. He hesitated for a second before taking a step toward them. Another step followed but he stopped cold before he took a third. Images of his boys appeared unbidden in his head. "No," he said aloud. Kurt had done enough drinking to forget everything while holed up in the arena. It was time to start remembering again if he was to get out of the arena..

Focusing only on keeping his sons' faces in his mind, he ignored the bottles' call and walked out of the room with the fire axe at port arms. Kurt paused to listen at the end of the hallway and was satisfied to hear nothing. He edged around the corner and began his trek to the bowels of the arena and its loading docks.

As he neared his destination, his legs ceased shaking as the power of fear overtook the effects of the alcohol and his gait lost its awkwardness. Kurt took a deep breath and rounded the last corner. At the end of the corridor stood a set of double doors that led to the loading docks. His hands flexed around the handle of the axe as he stepped to the small windows set into the metal. "Damnit," he muttered under his breath.

Kurt had been hoping that all the large bay doors had been shut but was disappointed when he found two were not. He frowned and quickly scanned the large dock and saw that at least three dozen zombies had made their way down to the arena's back door. "That's a lot of roamers," he said as he steeled himself. "Better than out front but still a lot." He tried to plot the safest path between the shambling zombies but each one he laid out in his head was no better than the rest.

He checked the straps on his pack one last time and gripped the axe firmly again. He bounced on his toes to a count of three and gently put a shoulder to the door. It inched open and Kurt cautiously worked his way through the small gap, his eyes flashing around the bay. He made it through the door and reached back to grab it to close it quietly but his fingers slipped from the metal. He had a fleeting thought that he should have looked for some gloves in the split second before the door latched.

"Ah shit," he said as nearly all of the roamers looked in his direction after the unexpectedly loud sound. Dark eyes searched and found him and the group took a jagged step toward him almost in unison. "Shit shit shit," Kurt said as he finally got his legs moving. Three long strides took him across the landing and he angled around a stack of boxes before hopping down to the nearest truck bay. A roamer reached out and Kurt ducked. Another stumbled at him and he swung the base of the axe's handle around in a tight arc and smashed the creature's nose back into its skull. It fell to the side and Kurt dashed up the ramp toward daylight.

Two final zombies stood between Kurt and the outside. He sidestepped the first, nearly falling in a heap after his foot went out from under him in a puddle of slippery filth, but righted himself just in time to raise the axe up crosswise with both hands and jam it underneath the neck of the second zombie. Kurt pushed as hard as he could but the zombie was heavy. He looked straight ahead and saw a set of rotten, gnashing teeth snapping less than a foot from his own face and he had to fight the urge to vomit. The pushing match had become a stalemate and Kurt had to get out of there before the other zombies joined in.

He leaned forward as far as he could against the thing's girth and lashed out with a kick to the zombie's knee. Kurt heard a sickening sound as the knee explodedand he watched as gravity pulled the zombie down, snapping the head back with a second, louder, crack as it broke its own neck against the wooden length. Kurt rolled his hands and the zombie slid off the handle. He stepped away, taking a second to take in his surroundings before moving to the front of the ramp and freedom.

Once outside, he sprinted away from the arena as fast as he could, wanting to put as much space between it and its horde of zombies and himself as he could and didn't stop until he had a disabling stitch in his side. He slowed to a walk and found himself in a relatively empty stretch of street. Kurt leaned up against a smashed car and took in the view. He whistled and shook his head as he looked around. The smell of burnt plastics and paints assaulted his nose, barely overpowering the cloying scent of rot.

"What the hell happened out here?" he asked himself as he raised the collar of his shirt to cover his nose and mouth. He could still smell the foul mixture but now it was bearable. To his left, a five-block section of the city seemed to have disappeared and replaced with gigantic piles of rubble. On his right were dozens of smoke plumes trailing aimlessly into the sky. Kurt pulled a bottle of water from his bag and took a quick drink, momentarily wishing it was something stronger. A moan from somewhere nearby but out of sight immediately dashed that thought. He stuffed the bottle back into the bag and hurried on.

He moved fast but silently and covered nearly two miles before he found an apartment building that was relatively intact. Kurt scouted around until he was sure he was alone and then crept inside. He pulled a battered sofa from a ransacked unit and barricaded the building's back door before moving up the steps to the second floor. He was ready to take a rest and grab a bite to eat so he kicked open the door of a unit overlooking the street he'd come up and hurried inside.

The sliding doors on the patio were shattered but Kurt just picked up a deck chair and shook the glass shards off. He sat down and discovered that he hadn't packed as much food as he thought he had. "Sober my ass," he said as he pulled out three packs of peanut butter crackers he'd taken from a vending machine at some point and devoured them. He looked back inside the apartment, wondering if the kitchen might hold something a little better than crackers, but only open, empty cabinets stared back at him.

"Time to make a plan, Kurt," he said aloud after staring at the empty street for a few minutes. "Step one is definitely get the hell out of the city." He slipped his bag's straps back over his shoulders and got moving. "Step two is going to be to go shopping and get some useful shit. Like a flashlight. And maybe something lighter than this stupid axe. And food." Kurt crept down the steps and stole to the front door. "Step three is going to be..." his voice trailed off and he ground to a halt with his hand on the door.

Where to go? Down to Mexico and find a nice little house overlooking the Pacific and spend the rest of his days dodging zombies and watching the surf roll in? Canada? That was a lot closer and had fewer people and maybe the roamers would freeze during the winter. Kurt leaned against the wall as the realization that he had no idea where to go washed over him. Boston flared briefly in his mind and he was torn. Carey and the boys were there but the city was on the other side of the country with millions upon millions of roamers in the way. The odds of him making it there in one piece were probably just as remote as the odds of his family making it out.

He sat down hard on the steps as the root cause of his pessimism came to him in a flash. Cowardice. "That's why I stayed in the arena so damn long. Why should I have left when I had everything I thought I needed right there?" Kurt tapped the base of the axe hard against the threadbare carpeting and flinched slightly when the knock from the underlying concrete came thudding back. As much as he wanted to deny it, he couldn't. It made too much sense. If it weren't for the coming failure of the arena's main doors, he would have stayed there as long as he possibly could have. "Just so I wouldn't have to deal with any of this."

Kurt felt ashamed as he realized everything he hadn't done since the outbreak. He'd been so wrapped up in his upcoming tour that he hadn't paid attention to what the media called localized hysteria or riots up and down the east coast before it turned into a full-blown epidemic. He hadn't bothered to call his boys or his ex to check on them before or after. He never considered getting out of the arena and fighting his way to the airport while there had still been time.

What had he done instead? Focus on and worry about Kurt and damn everybody else. "Just like I always have," he muttered as he got to his feet. He pulled on the knob and stepped outside once the door was open. He looked east and, before his mind could tell him how far away Boston was and show him gruesome mental pictures of his likely fate if he attempted the journey, starting walking.

"Time to walk the earth," he said, quoting a line from his favorite movie, "like Caine from Kung-fu."

I was hoping to have this up before the holidays but, yeah, thanks to the usual insanities that didn't happen. Santa was good to me this year though so it's okay. He brought me a basketball victory over the much despised and archrival Lexington Basketball Academy (also known as the University of Kentucky) and then followed that up a few days later with a Sugar Bowl win over Florida. So much partying and celebration.

Aside from Santa and his gifts, I was struck with another severe case of wanting to work on all of my upcoming stories at once and ended up writing very little of anything. And Minecraft. That damn game... Anyway, hopefully the writing logjam has passed and I can get back to updating regularly. Thanks for reading.