Author's Note:

Wus poppin my dudes, I'm finally finished with the third chapter! Sorry about the wait, but now that finals and school are over, I have much more time to write. This one was certainly an experience to write. Enjoy!

Ignacio found himself dragging his finger along the wall, as he traversed the dark hallway. Everything felt so real, even down to the texture of the wall. He couldn't see much but darkness, but he didn't have to. He could recognize this place with his eyes closed-his childhood home. It was both peaceful and terrifying at the same time, all the darkness enveloping him like a blanket as he aimlessly wandered through the halls, finding nothing but more hallways.

Suddenly, something grabbed his foot as he walked. A decayed hand, with sharp nails and gray skin. A biter. He struggled, tried to scream, but nothing came from his mouth but white noise. Slowly, it began to drag him down. He was sinking into the floor, the darkness closing in so that all he could see was the hand dragging him down. He fought, but he only sunk deeper and deeper. Before long, he was enveloped, screaming to no avail. Everything was pitch black. A sound caught his attention-a vague word that he couldn't quite process. Someone was saying something. What was it?

"Hey." The sound became clearer, as he began to stir.

Suddenly, he woke up.

"Hey," Mariano said, "time to wake up. We're leaving on the run in twenty minutes at the latest."

Cio groaned, but sat up in his sleeping bag nonetheless. He didn't feel like getting up-some things don't change, he supposed. Nearly falling back asleep, he forced himself to defy the cold and get dressed. After around five minutes, he was standing by a pickup truck with the others. Riley, Logan, Mariano, Isaac, Karissa and Liam were all there, waiting for him.

"Took you long enough." Mariano quipped.

Riley found his hair to be rather irritating as he drove in the pickup truck with Liam, Mariano, and Ignacio in the other seats, getting in the way of his eyes. He needed a haircut. It certainly wasn't something he was used to in the military-his thin, dirty brown hair being so lengthy and thick. Unfortunately, there wasn't exactly a hairdresser at camp. It wasn't really something anyone thought about. Oftentimes it seemed that they got less and less organized with every passing day, and everyone knew it. They were holding out, but didn't really know what for anymore.

Doing his best to clear his head, he tried to focus on the road. He didn't have time for these kinds of thoughts, especially given that people relied on him. They were arriving on the city outskirts, preparing to park. They stopped at an abandoned gas station on the outskirts, the two cars parking alongside each other. One by one, they got out and gathered.

"Alright," Riley announced with haste, "you all know the drill-groups of two or three. We go in and out, gather whatever's useful. You all know what we're here for. We have the walkie talkies if need be, we'll meet back here in three hours or so. We play it by ear, get what we need and leave."

With assorted nods from the group, the survivors started gravitating into small groups. Ignacio and Mariano. Logan, Liam and Riley. Karissa and Isaac. After prepping their walkie-talkies and weapons, they set off. Splitting off into the city on foot, they organized their paths to cover as much ground as possible.

Cio and Mariano split up as they searched through one of the many houses on the block they were clearing, with Cio taking the second floor and Mariano taking the bottom. He enjoyed working with his brother on supply runs-it was just natural for them. In all honesty, he wasn't close with much of the others. He and Riley talked on occasion, and he interacted with people, but he hadn't made any real connections. Mariano was really the only one keeping him sane. However, he was starting to become more and more skeptical that things would go back to the way they were. What did that mean for them, exactly? Would they be hiding in fear in a refugee camp for the rest of their lives?

Suddenly, he snapped back to reality. He had been staring at the same picture on the wall in the upstairs bedroom, lost in thought. It wasn't anything extraordinary, just a photo of an average family. Two parents, two little boys. Reminded him of his own family, quite some time ago.

"Hey," Mariano called out from downstairs, "you found anything yet?"

"Nah," he replied, "let's move on."

Riley kept his hand close to the hilt of his handgun as he, Logan, and Liam navigated through separate aisles of the supermarket they were searching. The place had already been looted from what he could tell. They would need to start branching out, taking longer drives for supply runs if they wanted to continue finding anything. Unfortunately, it didn't really matter what region they searched in. Supplies were scarcer than ever, especially with the amount of people they had to provide for.

The entire aisle was mostly cleaar, with the exception of a few useless or spoiled items. He was forced to stiffen himself from punching something. Anything. It was so frustrating, scavenging for food like animals, but still coming up short time and time again. The portions of food got smaller every day. And of course, that was his responsibility. The others looked to him to make sure they had enough to eat, and complained to him when they didn't. Maybe not verbally, but he knew how they felt. He never asked for the role, but he still tried his best. He hoped that was worth something.

Wes found himself smiling absentmindedly, as he watched Elliana and Rose play together. He was glad that Ellie had another girl her age to talk to, despite all they had to worry about. She was smart beyond her years, and had at least an idea of how dire things were. Thus, it was comforting to see her interacting like a normal eight year old. Rose had taught her to play go fish, and they were cheerfully sitting opposite each other on a blanket layed out on a patch of grass, playing with the deck of cards he, Karissa, and Isaac usually played poker with.

While he felt somewhat guilty about not volunteering for the latest supply run, he knew that Ellie was his priority. Plus, Karissa and Isaac were going on his behalf. He worried about them, but he new they could handle themselves. The four of them had been together from the very beginning-he, Ellie, Karissa, and Isaac had known each other long before everything went to hell. They rarely interacted much with the others at camp, not that it was intentional. Their little group had become somewhat of a family. It seemed as if the entire camp was made up of much smaller groups that only stayed together because they didn't feel safe otherwise. He and Isaac had discussed leaving the camp before, maybe finding a place for the four of them to live themselves, but plans never made it very far. Whether they admitted it or not, they weren't willing to leave the safety of the camp. Maybe the government would solve things after all. It was difficult to look at Ellie and not be optimistic.

"Hey," he said, walking up to the two of them, "you girls mind if I join you?"

"Anything useful?" Logan asked, as he, Riley, and Liam met up at the check out section of the large crocery store they'd finished searching.

"Not really," Riley answered, "this place's been looted from head to toe."

"Found a box of protein bars," Liam added, "quite the five star banquet."

"We should move on." Riley suggested, prompting a nod from the other two.

With that, Logan led the way to the exit, the other two trailing behind. However, before he pushed open the sliding glass door, he stopped short.

"We got a problem." He said, pointing out to the street. Liam and Riley caught up to him, pausing as well. The streets were far more densely covered with rippers than before, at least twenty of them neandering just outside the doors.

"This complicates things," Liam noted, "we should warn the others. If a horde of them is passing through, we might need to wait it out. We can't risk trying to take that many of them out with firearms and accidentally attract every walking corpse in the damn city."

"So we just sit here until they pass us by?" Logan asked.

"Maybe not, if we're fast enough we can get past them and continue on. We're faster than them."

"I'm not sure about that, we don't know how many of them are out there." Riley objected.

"We don't have time to wait, I say we go for it. As long as we move fast enough, we'll get past them with no problem. You guys with me or not?" Liam said.

After a brief look at the other, both Logan and Riley nodded.

"On three..." Liam said, waiting for the opportune time. "One, two...three!"

With that, the three survivors bolted out the door. Logan followed behind his boyfriend as the three of them manuevered around the biters in front of the store. They bolted to the right, heading down the street towards a bend. The rippers followed, stumbling towards them. Each of them managed to stay ahead, compactly moving down the street in just short of a sprint. However, when they rounded the corner they stopped short.

"Shit." Riley said.

There were even more biters waiting around the corner for them, conglomerated into a large group of at least twenty. They'd miscalculated how many rippers were out in the streets. The group passing tthrough was larger than they thought.

"We can't run through a group that size," Riley exclaimed, pulling out his machete, "we're gonna need to fight! Don't fire your guns unless you absolutely have to, we don't want to attract any more of them."

Logan pulled out the baseball bat he kept tucked into his backpack, charging forward. Swinging at the closest biter, he knocked it to the floor head-first with a hard crack on the side of its head. Riley and Liam came up beside him, slashing biters down. Inch by inch, they were forced backwards by the wall of approaching corpses. The others behind them quickly began to catch up, sandwiching them between the two hordes.

"There's too many!" Liam exclaimed, before being grabbed from behind by one of the biters behind him. Logan turned to him, but he was too far to get to in time. Panicking, he pulled out his gun and fired. The first shot hit it in the shoulder, sending it backwards before he finished it off with another shot.

"This way!" Riley yelled over the sound of the biters moaning as they began to close in on the survivors, plowing his way past several biters towards a house. Logan followed suit, Liam trailing just behind. Logan lost sight of his boyfriend as he bolted to the porch of the house, stopping only so that Riley could smash in the window and allow them to get inside. He practically jumped inside. After a few moments, Liam joined them.

"Keep moving," Riley ordered, heading to the back door of the house, "we can get on top of the neighborhood walls and use them to cut around the biters!"

Escaping through the back door of the house, they each individually climbed atop the neighborhood walls, traversing their way across several backyards before reaching a point when they could hop back down into the street. Jumping down, the three survivors found themselves breathless in the middle of the street, panting heavily.

"We..." Logan said in between breaths, "we should probably alert the others to meet up. I think it's time we all left. Liam, you have the walkie-talkie, right?"

Liam didn't respond, looking blankly at the ground.

"Liam? You okay?" Logan called again, tapping him on the shoulder. Liam raised his eyes to meet his.

"Logan, I-...um," Liam stuttered, lifting up his arm into view. Just above his wrist was a large wound, bleeding profusely.

A bite.

Author's Note:

Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, I have a lot in store coming up soon! Chapter four should be up soon. Reviews are so incredibly helpful and motivating, whether good or bad, and they help me stay consistent. They also don't take very long to write. Leave one if you can!

p.s. I was so excited to post this chapter that I only checked it for errors once, so let me know if you catch anything!

==Character Credits==

Ignacio Moreno / Created by Wolfie McCoy

-Mariano Moreno

Riley Hall / Created by GrabbageTheImmortalChinchilla

Logan Brooks / Created by tobi-is-an-artist-too

-Liam Kosta

-Rose Brooks

Wesley Beiner / Created by RubyLeo

-Elliana Beiner

-Isaac

-Karissa