Tight, he realized she was squeezing his hand far too tightly. The look on her face was pinched and nervous, but he still found her pretty. He was surprised that she had still allowed him to hold her hand as they made their way through the Savannah streets, certain that the intimacy they had shared the night before was just a heat of the moment fling. Something that they did because the situation looked grim and they wanted to die happy… But here he was, walking with her hand in hand down a street full of men with really big guns…

They were in full Kevlar, and he did not envy them one bit. He had served a brief time in Desert Storm, and remembered clearly the feel of the scorching sun upon him in the heavy gear. Not to mention how tired one's arm gets after clutching an automatic for extended periods of time…

He glanced at her again, and noticed that her gaze had turned to a group of people ahead. There were three or four people gathered around a convulsing woman on the ground, hands trying to help her somehow. Suddenly a guard came over, pointing his gun at each of them. "Move along…" the guard said firmly, and the stragglers took a few steps back. Jen turned her head to watch for a moment, stopping momentarily as the guard signaled other arms men and they began to drag off the sick woman. Jack tugged at her hand, and when she turned to protest him his eyes told her that it was best to shut up and let it go.

They had been walking for a while, now just a few blocks away from the quarantine zone. He had been noticing things that just seemed off… like bloody handprints on buildings. The sight unnerved him, especially when he spied slugs buried in walls, or bullet holes in concrete.

"This is weird." Jen said quietly.

"Very." He answered, looking at her as she studied what appeared to be a trail of black on the sidewalk.

"I do not know what happened last night, everything seems so…"

"Surreal?" He finished, noticing the black trail led off past the roadblocks.

"Exactly. That really happened right? I mean it had to have, or we wouldn't have woken up in a fucking pantry. "

"Yeah…"

"But…. Cain?" she asked and he glanced at her. She seemed on the edge of tears, her blue eyes glistening brightly as the threatened to spill them down her cheeks.

"He attacked us…" Jack said, more to himself than her. "He was trying to hurt you."

She merely nodded, tears sliding hotly down her cheek. She could not believe what had happened, and still felt the reverberation of skull meeting fire extinguisher. She wiped her free hand on her jeans as if to rid her skin of something vile. The sight of piled up traffic was becoming more apparent as they neared the q-zone, and she shuddered slightly.

"Do you think…." She started, trailing off as if she didn't want to ask. He looked at her with a questioning, and she sighed. "Do you think we are going to be in trouble because of that?"

Looking to one of the Army's riflemen to his right, he shook his head. "No, I don't. I think we just stepped into a shit storm."

The Q-zone was a flood of people; they were getting separated into groups by people in Haz-Mat suits. Jen's mouth was open to form an O when they came up on it. She gazed at the group of people, and realized that they were being separated. The sick were being taken into the tented areas while those who were not appearing sick as yet were being examined. She noticed that they had turned a nearby building, a warehouse of some sorts, into a makeshift hospital by the way the sick were being led to there by some more corpsmen.

She stepped forward, pushing her way past the people in the crowd with Jack in tow, to the front where there stood a CEDA member. "Charlie!" Jen said loudly, waving her hand at him to get his attention. The man squinted at her, and then walked forward. He smiled at Jen, and then looked around.

"The hell are you doing out here?" Charlie asked, catching sight of her hand grasped firmly in Jack's.

"Long fucking story, what the hell is going on?"

"Look, all I know is that we were all woken up early this morning. Some kind of shift in the virus… Deb has been calling for you all morning but there were some complications…" He said, glancing around at the sea of people as if to indicate it was something that they couldn't talk about here.

"Charlie let us through." Jen said, motioning to the gate.

"I can't Jen, you've been in contact with the infected."

"Charlie, my first unmasked contact was yesterday. The both of us have had contact with an infected person, and we have not exhibited symptoms in over twelve hours. We're safe."

Charlie eyed her with uneasiness, as if he doubted her. Jen shook her head slightly and sighed, releasing Jack's hand and crossing her arms over her chest. Charlie groaned, inwardly telling himself that he couldn't do this, but he believed her. If there was any person in the world who was in top of infection control, it was Doc Roberts…

He pulled open the short fence that separated them and stepped out of her way.

Jen trotted through the Q-zone, Jack at her heels. She was nearing the mobile unit when she heard gunfire echoing. Jack grabbed her first and they ducked behind the mobile unit. They crouched there by the wheels, looking around to pinpoint where the gunfire was coming from. Jack's gaze shifted to warehouse door where sound had come from. A blood curdling scream emitted from there and more gunfire was heard. The crowd of people gathered at the gate began to scream, and push past the barriers in terror. The CEDA workers were knocked over, as well as the small barricades.

The corpsmen began to fire into the fleeing crowd, mowing bodies down as they ran. Jen screamed as she saw people fall from their wounds, when suddenly she was jerked to her feet. Jack shoved her through the open door of the mobile unit, climbing in after her and shutting the door. He hit the bolt, and ducked down as the sounds of gunfire echoed around them.