The reason why you haven't seen an update lately is because I've been extremely unmotivated to type up new chapters. Selfish, I know, but that's how it is. But now I have a new chapter for everyone, yay! So R&R, it'll make me a happy person. Won't you feel nice if you make a random stranger happy?

Anyways, here you go. The next chapter.

Falling Apart

Leon couldn't sit still knowing that there were two very serious problems in the building right now. With the zombie in the bathroom and the kid bitten, it was only a matter of time before something happened. Quickly darting his eyes around out of pure nervous suspicion, he realized that he had to come up with yet another plan.

He stood up. "Mark," he said, "I need to talk to you in the back for a minute." He turned and left with only a curious glance from Jeff.

Mark shrugged and followed. When he got there, Leon pulled him away from the sight of the group, and immediately said, "We need to get out of here, pronto."

Mark was taken back by this. "Why?" he asked, "We just got here. Besides, the place is fortified and stocked. And we even have people who know how to shoot a fucking gun! We're fine here Leon, just calm down."

Mark turned to walk away, but Leon held him there. "No, we're not ok," he said, looking around to make sure nobody else was near. "We are in a very bad situation right now. Jeff's zombie daughter is chained up in the fucking bathroom, that kid's been bitten, and Jeff is absolutely fucking psychotic! We need to get out of here."

Mark was absolutely stunned at this point. This couldn't be true, could it? He didn't want to believe it, but he had no reason to think Leon was lying. The man had saved him more than once today. He sighed, suddenly stressed out by the whole situation and said, "Fine, when do we leave?"

Leon smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "I knew you would stick with me. Anyways, I don't want to leave right now, because that nut might get suspicious and try to stop us. Plus, it's getting pretty close to dark, and it's a bitch trying to avoid those zombies at night. I suggest we wait until early morning. Dawn would probably be the best bet. They'll probably be sleeping then. And if they aren't, I'm sure they monitor the zombies in shifts. It'll be easier to get out when less of them are awake."

Mark just nodded. "Sure, we'll go with that. I can't think of anything better. I don't know how we'll be able to keep a low profile until then."

Leon just shrugged. "You're gonna have to try. Jeff is already pretty suspicious of me, and no doubt he'll be paying attention to you now. Hell, the entire group has probably got us labeled for suspicious seeing as we're talking to each other away from the rest of them, and we're the newcomers. Just try to keep cool for a while, ok?"

So Mark did as he was told, and went back into the room to resume the position of hapless survivor. He was nervous, but he did his best to keep his composure. He didn't want to blow this for him and Leon. They might now make it out of here alive if he did. Behind him, he could here Jeff starting up a conversation with Leon, loud enough for the whole group of survivors to hear. Mark figured that he was probably trying to get Leon to tell him what he had told Mark.

"So Leon, what were you two talking about?" Mark said in a deliberately loud voice.

Leon just stood there with a stoic expression on his face. "Nothing you need to concern yourself with Jeff."

But Jeff still pressed. "Really? Because we wouldn't want you to try and overtake us now, would we?"

When Jeff said this, Linda and Jacob started to move their hands towards their weapons, but Leon didn't crack. "No," he replied, "Just about something that happened back at the apartments that we escaped from, no biggy." Leon even gave a smile when he said that. He was putting up one hell of a front.

Jeff, stared at Leon for a while longer, snickered, and walked away. Leon let his smile drop and resumed sitting down over by the windows. Mark hung his head down out of boredom and anticipation of wanting to get the hell out of here. Leon stared straight ahead, mentally preparing himself for what was about to come.

Night came, and they were ready.

Luckily, Leon had been assigned to the first guard shift. He didn't see why Jeff would do that if he was suspicious of him, but Leon didn't complain. This would give him some time to plan an escape route out of here. It was still several hours before dawn, and he had all of this time by himself, so he might as well make use of it.

Being careful not to wake anyone, he stepped over the sleeping figures on the ground. When he went to step over Matthew, he stopped. He stared down at the child and started wondering if he had really been bitten. He showed no signs of turning into a zombie; he hadn't even started showing signs of turning. It had easily been twelve hours since the kid had been bitten.

Leon didn't ponder it too much. Better not to think about it. He stepped over Matthew and went to plan a route outside. He didn't want to head straight for the door, because they would probably shoot him and Mark before they even got there. There were a few aisles that they could weave their ways through to slow down their pursuers when the time came, so Leon kept that in the back of his mind as a possible escape route. With his plan set, he went over to wake Mark up from his slumber. Carefully stepping over the other people and taking light steps as not to wake anyone, he made his way over to where Mark was sleeping. Taking one last look around to make sure nobody had awakened, he nudged the sleeping figure with his foot and said, "Get up, it's time to go."

Mark groaned for a second and then slowly rose to his feet, wiping his eyes. He grabbed his weapon off of the floor next to him and whispered, "So, what are we doing?" Leon looked at the rest of the group sleeping on the floor and said, "We're just going to go straight for the door if they stay asleep. If not we separate and run through the aisles to keep them off of us." Leon started to step over the rest of them and stopped suddenly. "Before we go," he said, "I need to do something."

Mark only shrugged and replied, "Make it quick, I don't want to be here much longer."

Leon stepped over the survivors and made his way to the bathroom. If Jeff's daughter was still alive, he planned on killing it. He may not like it here with them, but he didn't want them to die either. And besides, nobody deserved what was happening to her right now, zombie or not.

Leon opened the bathroom and was greeted with a low growl and scratching noises. He quickly walked over to the stall that the girl was in, opened the door, and bashed her head in before she could make any noise. He had to look away as the blood and brains splattered along the insides of the stall and his body, and tried to drown out the sickening "thwack" the butt of the gun made as it connected with her skull. After he had reassured himself that she was not getting up, he stopped and walked out of the bathroom, making sure he didn't look to survey the damage that he had done.

Leon walked down the hallway and back into the main room where he was going to tell Mark that it was time to go. As he entered, he saw Jeff holding a gun to Mark's head. Jeff had a wide, crazy grin on his face. Leon realized it as the smile of someone who had finally gone off of the deep end.

"Thought you were going to take us over did you? Thought you were going to feed us to those monsters out in the street, didn't you?" Jeff started asking, "What were you doing in the bathroom? Getting your secret stash of weapons to kill us with? Or maybe you were going to lead us outside to our deaths? Start answering my questions, asshole!"

Leon was silent for a moment, and then replied, "I went in there to kill your daughter. She was a zombie, and I didn't need her breaking out and killing us."

Jeff's smile was suddenly gone, and he pointed his gun at Leon. "You did WHAT?" he screamed. The others had woken up by now, and were staring at Jeff with nothing short of pure hatred for Mark and Leon

. "You killed my daughter! She wasn't like them! She was a good girl…she wouldn't hurt us." He was crying in between his hysterical ranting.

Leon only said, "We don't want to cause any trouble. Mark and I just want to get out of here and leave you guys alone. Nothing else has to happen. We're not going to feed you to the zombies or kill you or anything like that."

Jeff was not convinced. "No, you want us all to burn, and I'm not going to let you do that."

At that instant, everything went to hell. Leon drew his gun and shot Jeff. The shot landed square in the middle of his head, spraying blood behind him. The room was silent for a moment; nobody dared move. Then all of a sudden, Leon screamed, "Mark, run!" He did so, and that's when they retaliated. Linda, in a fit of rage, picked up here weapon and wildly shot at Leon. Leon ducked behind an aisle to take cover from the blasts that she was directing his way. He had no choice but to shoot back at the woman. Jacob had raised his weapon and was shooting in Mark's direction. Mark had also taken refuge behind one of the aisle walls and was also returning fire to Jacob.

Leon and Mark both knew that they would be in trouble if they didn't get to the door soon. Linda and Jacob had more ammo stocked with them and would be able to last longer in a firefight like this. They both tried to conserve their ammo against the psychotic survivors, but were doing a horrible job of that. It wasn't more than a minute into the battle when they heard Jacob give out a loud scream. Mark peeked around the corner to see what had caused him to do such, and was surprised to see young Matthew latched to his father's arm, ripping huge chunks of flesh out of it.

"Leon, we can go now, the kid turned into a zombie!" Leon heard this and checked to see if it was true. Sure enough, there was Matthew, ripping his father apart. Linda finally took notice and shot the child, but it was far too late for Jacob. He was nothing but a bloody heap of torn limbs and entrails. The zombified child got up and ran at Linda. She swung her gun and connected with its skull, and then shot it point blank in the face. With him dead, she turned back to Leon and Mark just in time to see them get to the door.

Sprinting outside, not bothering to close the door, Leon screamed, "Mark, where's your damn car!" Mark struggled to catch up with Leon and pointed to the front of the store, where there was now a rather large group of zombies; at least a hundred of them. The car sat just on the edge of the crowd. This was good, considering that a door just slammed and Linda was screaming, "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"

The two made their way to the car, completely ignoring the zombies. Halfway there, they heard gunshots coming from Linda's weapon. It was impossible for Leon and Mark to focus with all of this happening at once, so they just kept their eye on the car and ignored everything around them. Linda was merely firing wildly in their direction and doing a horrible job of actually hitting her targets. The zombies were also far too slow to catch up with them, so they were able to make it to the car easily.

As Leon opened the door, a stray shot entered his shoulder. He immediately screamed and dropped to the pavement. He could vaguely hear Mark calling his name, zombies moaning, and some screaming lady off in the background. He cleared his head and crawled into the car, closing the door just in time to avoid being grabbed by the undead outside.

Mark turned on the car and, instead of moving forward through the crowd, backed up. Leon was in too much pain to object or ask why he was doing this, so he just let it happen. Mark shifted the car back into drive, and proceeded to drive in Linda's direction. Leon finally realized what he was doing, and amidst the pain of the gunshot, found the strength to scream, "Mark no!"

The scream fell upon deaf ears though. The man was focused on running the screaming lady down. He drove faster and faster, and Linda just stood there, shooting. Then, she was on the hood of the car, face splattered against the window. She slid off, and there was a streak of blood on the window from where her face had slid off.

Leon sat in the passenger seat, in shock from what had just happened. Mark simply looked at him and said, "I had to do it Leon. I just had to do it." Leon nodded as if he was agreeing with him. He didn't, but now really wasn't the time to argue with Mark. They would have to save that for when they got out of here.

Mark looked at his car's fuel gauge and said, "It looks like we have about half a tank of gas left. It should last us a while, so do you have any idea where we should go?"

Leon straightened up in his seat and said, "We should go somewhere where we can get this damn bullet out of my shoulder. It hurts like hell." Even though the hospitals were probably either closed or overrun with the undead, they should at least try going there. He didn't need his wound getting infected.

Mark nodded, "Alright, I think there's a hospital nearby. We'll get there soon, just hold on." With that, Mark backed up his car and drove through the group of zombies, leaving behind the bodies of the dead that had once been fellow survivors.

Yeah, it was shorter, but my next one will be longer. I just needed to get back into the swing of things.