Riza Hawkeye turned the corner and nodded tacitly to the woman waiting for her there. The woman nodded back with a welcoming smile and returned to stretching out her leg muscles. Riza joined her silently, working out the tightness in her calves in preparation for her jog.

The lieutenant enjoyed going for morning runs almost every day and at least fifty percent of the time, this woman ran with her. They had run in to each other a few times right after Riza had moved back to Central from Eastern HQ and after several of these chance encounters at the crack of dawn, they had decided that they might as well run together if they were both running anyway.

In spite of how often these two women jogged down the same path though, Riza knew very little about her running partner. She knew that the woman dormed in the living quarters on the floor above Riza's, but other than that she was a mystery. The lieutenant didn't even know the black-haired woman's name or rank. For all Riza knew, she could be running with a general. It didn't really matter to Riza what her rank was, though... she was just appreciative of the silent company and needed no more from her than that.

They didn't speak much outside of greetings and farewells—which was fine with Riza because she'd never been very talkative—but their silence was an easy one. They were just two joggers greeting the sunrise before they had to don their stiff military uniforms and spend another day in the office.

Riza finished stretching and raised her eyebrows at her companion.

"Ready?"

"Of course." the woman replied.

They took off at a steady pace, breathing in the cold grey fog that had blanketed Central during the night. Their feet pounded the damp concrete rhythmically, bouncing echoes of their footsteps off the walls surrounding the military living quarters. The streets were always hauntingly quiet this time of morning, but within the next hour or so the complex would come to life and thrust itself into the daily grind. But for now, the women had the street to themselves and they enjoyed their brisk solitude.

The pair jogged past the borders of the complex and into the residential district a few blocks down. Riza looked up as they passed by Colonel Mustang's apartment, frowning to herself. She should probably stop by on the way back. He had come in to work the day before distracted and very hungover. That was hardly surprising, considering the state he'd been in the previous night; what bothered Riza was the fact that he had been nervous about something. It was understandable for him to be sad or angry—or even completely guarded and blank as he tried to be when he was suffering—but this anxiety didn't fit. Riza was sure that he'd either done something that he shouldn't have or was about to. She'd tried calling him several times last night, but it seemed as if he'd unplugged his phone. She'd even come by a little before midnight and found his apartment dark and empty. Something wasn't right and Riza aimed to find out what it was.

The women crossed the street and turned on to the dirt path that cut through a copse of trees that ran the perimeter of the cemetery. Riza loved this particular part of her morning run. She loved the smell of the trees and the soft earth beneath her shoes. The fog was heavy this morning and hung thickly on the hillsides that usually provided a beautiful view of the sunrise, but Riza still breathed it all in contentedly. She didn't mind that the fog made the trail ahead dark and grey, nor the way that the cold air turned her breath into tiny white clouds with every exhalation... she was just happy to be outside and exercising.

Ahead of them, Riza saw the dim outline of someone standing in the middle of the trail, a vague shape in the frigid haze.

"On your left!" her companion warned the figure as they moved aside to pass him. As they approached though, the silent man made no efforts to get out of their way. He turned slowly and looked at them, his face obscured by fog. He was wearing his formal military attire, but the garments looked filthy and torn. The women glanced at each other curiously, but made no comment as Riza's companion fell back to run behind her so that they could jog past the man single-file on the narrow trail.

Riza ran past the disheveled soldier, but as her companion did the same the woman shouted indignantly. Riza whipped around and stopped dead. The man had grabbed the other runner deftly and had pulled her in to a pinioning hold. As Riza watched, the man lowered his head and bit into the side of the woman's face, wrenching back and tearing a chunk of meat from her cheek. The woman cried out and struggled, shifting her stance and throwing him forward over her shoulder.

"What's wrong with you?!" she barked at the man on the ground, pressing one hand to the gushing wound on her cheek as Riza took a defensive stance beside her. Barely fazed, the man lurched to his feet again and now the two women were close enough to see that something really was wrong with him. Very, very wrong.

The thing before them swallowed his mouthful of flesh and stepped forward, a low, hungry growl resonating from his throat. His eyes had probably been dark brown at some point, but now they were coated with a thin, opaque glaze of pale blue. His blond hair was a tangle of roots and clods of dirt and the same adornments clung to the damp, tattered cloth of his uniform. The skin on his face was a putrid blue-green-grey color with thin spider-webs of veins crawling across his cheeks. He had no nose to speak of, for it and a good portion of the flesh on the left side of his face had completely rotted away, leaving his eye socket and the bones of his jaw exposed between flaps of worm-eaten tissue.

"What the hell...?" Riza breathed, exchanging another astonished look with her partner. The woman opened her mouth to say something, but the man-creature pounced on her again before she had the chance. Riza threw herself on the thing and succeeded in pulling it off, but not before it could sink its teeth into her comrade's unprotected throat.

Riza took the half-rotted thing's head in her hands and twisted it, snapping its neck adeptly. It crumpled to the ground and lay motionless, a stream of blackish, coagulated fluid leaking from its bloodied mouth and trailing down his chin. Riza stepped back from it queasily, wiping her slick, rot-covered hands off on her shirt before turning to her comrade.

The other woman was leaning back against a tree, holding the gaping hole in her neck closed with one trembling hand. Blood dribbled worryingly from between her fingers, coating the front of her white t-shirt with a vivid stain of scarlet. Riza rushed over to her and clamped her hand onto the wound as well, hoping that more pressure would stem the flow.

"B-bastard must have torn the artery." the woman gasped, trying to smirk at Riza in a reassuring way.

"Looks like it." she agreed flatly, not about to sugarcoat it. They needed to get the woman immediate medical aid... she was losing far too much blood for comfort. "Come on, let's get you some help."

Riza put an arm around the woman's shoulder and supported her, leading her back toward the colonel's apartment. It would certainly be a violent wake-up call for Mustang, but she figured that the woman had better chances there than waiting for help to come by out here on the street.

"H-hey..." the woman rasped. "We should go faster..."

Riza looked up at her quizzically, thinking that maybe the woman was about to pass out and wanted to get somewhere sheltered, but then she followed the injured woman's gaze and stiffened.

There must have been a dozen of them, all stumbling forward with a disturbing kind of ungrace that reminded her of demented animals heaving through the last phase of rabies. They were all military personnel, all in various stages of decay and all drunkenly staggering toward the two women with arms extended and mouths gaping wide.

"Yes, faster. Faster would be very nice." the woman continued, holding her neck with one hand and grabbing Riza's arm with the other as she sprinted forward, a sudden burst of adrenaline lending her the strength to run. Riza stumbled after her, glancing over her shoulder at the rotting monstrosities behind them. The things were not moving very quickly and the women had a good head start, but that didn't quell the sudden terror that tore itself a seat in Riza's chest. What the hell was going on? This couldn't be happening...

Riza didn't have time to explore her panicked thoughts though, for the woman running in front of her suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. The lieutenant plowed into the back of her and they both fell hard against the asphalt. Riza was up again in an instant, trying to pull her bleeding companion back onto her feet.

"Come on, come on!" Riza shouted at her, looking back at the creatures moving ever closer. The woman made a wet choking sound that might have been an attempt at a scream and tugged urgently on Riza's sleeve. The lieutenant looked around and saw what had made the other woman stop running. There were three more of the things directly in their path and well within reach.

A green-splotched had shot forward and grabbed Riza by the hair, pulling her toward its swollen, mold-covered mouth before she even registered that it was there. She spun away from it and kicked hard, feeling its enfeebled bones crunch beneath the force of her foot as it connected with its chest. Another grabbed her from behind and she elbowed it in the face, her stomach turning as the skin on its cheek ruptured and splattered her arm with cold viscous rot.

The woman on the ground cried out again weakly as two more of the undead creatures pinioned her, burying their faces in her neck and breasts and tearing out bloody hunks of meat. The woman's cries fell silent and her body stopped struggling as the other, larger group of the things approached and joined the feast. Riza looked at the dead woman, then back to the gang of monsters with her heart in her throat. She knew that she was going to have to leave this woman and flee, but doing so felt too much like cowardice.

She stood there and watched the things consume her companion, most of them ignoring her entirely in favor of this easier meal. Blood and strings of flesh flecked the asphalt of the deserted street and the faces of the things as they feasted on the still-warm flesh.

Riza took a breath, turned, and bolted.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Al raised his head as Mustang moaned in his sleep and rolled over, draping his bandaged arm across Ed's back. Ed was deeply asleep, lying on his stomach with his face turned toward the colonel and gave no response to Mustang's somnolent touch. In fact, Ed hadn't really moved much at all since he'd woken up ranting drunkenly about dead things coming to get him. He was sleeping peacefully now, his gentle breathing deep and even. It lifted Al's spirits to see his brother resting well, the color slowly returning to his sallow cheeks. The muscles in Ed's back and shoulders still twitched a little occasionally, but not badly enough to hurt or even to wake him. He was almost completely normal again.

In sharp contrast to Ed though, Mustang didn't seem to be doing too well. He slept fitfully and mumbled as if dreaming, tossing and turning next to Edward. Al could tell that he didn't feel well, and the colonel had even gotten out of bed around five in the morning and stumbled into the bathroom to vomit. When he came back, he wouldn't answer Al's concerned questions and instead curled up on the bed again and tried to get back to sleep.

Al had thought that perhaps the man was just over-exhausted to the point of sickness, but as the youngest Elric watched Mustang sleep he started to think that the colonel really was ill. Perspiration beaded Mustang's forehead in spite of the coolness of the room, plastering his hair to his clammy face as if he were gripped by a fever. The colonel's breath came heavily as if he'd been running for miles, a strong juxtaposition to Ed's quiet respiration. Al also noticed that the bite wound on Mustang's arm was starting to bleed through the bandage, creating a blossom of color in the middle of the white gauze. The growing spot of blood wasn't really red though... more of an unhealthy-looking orangey pink. The thing probably hurt pretty badly—although Mustang tried to play it off as a scratch—and that certainly didn't help the ailing colonel feel any better.

Al felt bad for the man, but he wasn't really that worried. He figured that the strain of the transmutations the night before had just drained him so much that his immune system was too overwhelmed to fight off sickness. Al knew that the colonel hadn't really been taking care of himself since Ed's death—what with the binge drinking and all...—so perhaps falling asleep in the frigid dankness of the crypt had gifted the poor, tired man with a bad cold. Mustang certainly must be miserable now, but he'd probably be fine in a few days.

A sudden banging on the front door jolted Al out of his quiet study of the colonel. Al stood up but then hesitated, unsure of whether or not he should answer the door. He looked back down at Mustang as the frantic banging started again, but the colonel gave no sign that he heard it other than a slight furrowing of his brow. Al paused a moment longer, but then shrugged. He should see who it was at the very least.

"Colonel!" Al heard someone call from beyond the door. He recognized the voice immediately and rushed to open it.

Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye pushed her way through the doorway before Al had even opened it fully. Once inside, she slammed the door behind her and bolted it shut. She leaned back against the wooden surface and closed her eyes, her chest heaving with exertion. Hawkeye's white t-shirt was stained with fresh blood and Al could practically feel the nervous adrenaline flowing off of her in a wave of confused fear, but her face was entirely blank and revealed nothing.

"...What's going on...?"

Al looked up and saw Mustang stagger out of his bedroom, glancing around in tired bemusement and he pushed his ragged hair out of his face. His eyes landed on Hawkeye's bloodied form and his grogginess evaporated instantly. He grabbed the doorknob to the room behind him and quickly shut the door, blocking her view of Ed before she noticed him.

"We were attacked." Hawkeye said simply, opening her eyes and looking at him with an unnerving sort of calm.

Mustang was frozen for a beat, his dark eyes still dazedly absorbing the alarming amounts of blood on her shirt, but then he asked, "By what, a fucking bear?"

She didn't deign to reply to that, instead choosing to cross the room to the small closet on the other side. "Do you still keep your guns in here?"

"Yes, but..." he began, but she ignored him, throwing open his closet and crouching down in front of his impressive-looking gun safe. She turned the dial with an expert hand and the heavy little door popped open without contest. Al glanced back over at the colonel, noticing that he looked a little annoyed—but not surprised—that she knew the combination to his safe. Hawkeye pulled out three guns and tossed one to Mustang, checking to make sure that each was loaded before holstering them in a belt.

"Riza, what the hell is going on? What attacked you?" Mustang asked finally, his bemusement giving in to his instincts as a soldier as he watched her strap the belt around her hips.

"I don't know." She said after a beat, pausing in her task to look up at the colonel. A brief, haunted look crossed her face but she quelled it quickly before continuing, "I was jogging with a friend of mine and these... things came out of nowhere. They were dressed as soldiers, but there was something wrong with them. They were..." she trailed off for a moment, then a harsh bark of laughter erupted from her. "You're going to think I'm insane... but I swear to you that they were dead. All of them, just walking corpses..."

Mustang stiffened as he listened to her speak, but said nothing.

"There were too many of them for us to fight off. My friend went down fast and... and they ate her, Roy..." Hawkeye stopped for a moment, fear and sorrow entering her voice for the first time since she'd barged in. "There was nothing I could do."

"...Are you okay?" Al ventured to ask softly, drawing Hawkeye's gaze away from the silent colonel.

Hawkeye's face hardened again, becoming the expressionless stone that Al was accustomed to. "Yes, Alphonse. I'm fine." She stood and turned back to the colonel. "We need to get a handle on them before they can kill anyone else, sir." she said, brushing a spot of blood from her cheek. "We should alert headquarters, maybe—"

"How could they have gotten out?" the colonel interrupted, speaking more to himself than to her.

"...Sir?"

"They... they were all latched into their coffins. They shouldn't have been able to get out."

Al's suspicions that Mustang had a fever returned as the colonel spoke those words. It wasn't necessarily the oddness of the words themselves that reminded Al of the man's sickness, but more the way that he was speaking; his words were slow and distracted, vague as if he wasn't entirely aware that he was speaking aloud.

"How many of them were there?" he asked, his eyes snapping over to Hawkeye urgently.

Hawkeye balked for a moment, regarding him with a slight frown before replying, "Well over a dozen, but there could have been more."

"That's impossible. The crypt wont hold that many bodies at once..."

A dark chill flowed through Al then. The colonel knew something. He was clearly alarmed by what Hawkeye had told him, but not as shocked as he should have been. He knew about these creatures, and if they had come from the crypt, then...

"Sir, what are you talking about?" Hawkeye asked warily.

"I've... done something." Mustang admitted nervously, taking a tentative step backward from her.

"...Something stupid?"

"Something that I probably shouldn't have."

Mustang stood still for a moment, chewing his lip and watching his lieutenant as if deciding whether or not to tell her what he'd done. He looked over at Al for a beat, then turned from him abruptly and moved to his bedroom door. He motioned for Hawkeye to follow him and she obeyed hesitantly, shooting a questioning glance at Al. Al didn't say anything. This explanation needed to words. The colonel opened the door and allowed his lieutenant to see what was slumbering beyond.

For a moment, there was no reaction from the bloodstained soldier, but then Hawkeye's muscles tensed under her red daubed t-shirt and she drew in a horrified breath.

"Roy..." she whispered, her reddish-brown eyes roaming disbelievingly over Ed's peaceful form. The sleeping boy had rolled over onto his side, tangling himself in the dark blue blanket as he slept. Ed's deep, steady breathing stirred his untidy bangs dreamily, making them brush against his pillow with every soft exhalation.

"...Roy, what have you done?" Her voice shuddered with sick alarm as she turned back to the colonel, the anxiety in her words a violent contrast to the placidity of Ed's sleeping form.

Mustang glanced at her furtively but then averted his eyes from her terrified, accusing gaze.

"I... raised the dead." He said needlessly.

Hawkeye stared at him openly, at a loss for words.

"But what about the other things?" Al asked him, "The things that attacked the lieutenant... Did you know about them?"

Mustang didn't look up, but nodded slowly. "The power of the red stone had surged past my control by the end of the transmutation that brought Ed back. I thought it had only affected the bodies within the crypt... but I guess I was wrong."

He raised his gaze to Hawkeye, his eyes pleading for forgiveness, "I thought they were contained, I swear. I had no idea that they could get free. I thought the transmutation would have worn off of them by now... If I had known..." He trailed off, unable to put his regret into words.

"Well... what are we going to do about it?" Al asked, feeling a little overwhelmed that he'd played a part in this atrocity.

"Kill them again, I guess." Mustang mumbled, "We have to sever their spinal chords or completely decimate what brain-matter they have left. That's the only way that I know how to destroy them."

"I don't know if the three of us can handle all of them." Hawkeye said, her voice cold.

Mustang flinched at the concealed anger in her words and sighed. Al could tell that he knew she was right.

A sudden scream outside made Al jump. The three of them ran to the window and looked out. Hawkeye gave a soft, horrified curse and covered her mouth.

There was an old woman standing on the other side of the street, rushing toward another woman who was pulling herself across the sidewalk. The woman on the ground was soaked in blood; one of her legs was missing at the knee and her face looked as if several chunks of it had been torn away. She was dragging herself calmly with her hands, scraping her belly and exposed intestines across the rough pavement as she made her way toward the old lady.

"My god, she's still alive..." Hawkeye breathed as the old woman shrieked again and called for help. The lieutenant turned and dashed for the front door, wrenching it open in her haste to save her friend. Mustang was hot on her heels, grabbing his alchemy glove from a shelf and sliding it on.

"Wait, stop!" a tortured voice said from behind them.

She stopped and looked up, her eyes landing on the trembling figure that was supporting himself on the doorway to Mustang's bedroom.

"Don't go out there..." Ed continued, his eyes wide. "It isn't safe."

"Ed, if that woman is still alive, then we have to—" Mustang began, but Ed cut him off.

"She isn't alive." He rasped, "She's one of those things..."

"Come back to bed, Brother..." Al said soothingly, stepping forward to push him gently back into the room. "You're still not well."

"No, look!" Ed pointed out the open front door, calling everyone's attention back to the two figures on the fog-blurred street. The older woman was crouching down beside the injured one, her eyes wide as she scanned around for aid. The injured woman lay still for a moment, looking up at her savior dazedly. Suddenly, she lurched up and knocked the old lady to the ground, growling through her blood-wet teeth. She crawled on top of the screaming woman and opened her jaws wide, a thick trail of bloody saliva trailing from what remained of her mouth and dribbling onto her victim's face as she bent forward to sink in her teeth.

"SHOOT IT!" Ed screeched to the stock-still audience of this most gruesome of plays. Hawkeye snapped out of her shock first and squeezed off a shot, sending a bullet into the creature's chest before it could take its first bite. The thing looked up as if vaguely startled, but then turned back to its prey, unconcerned. The lieutenant fired twice more in quick succession and the thing dropped, rolling off of the old woman and into the gutter. It didn't move again.

"Run home and lock your doors!" Mustang ordered the woman, his voice booming across the nearly deserted street. The woman stumbled to her feet with a confused, terrified sob and ran back in the direction that she had come, looking back only once at the twisted, ruined body sprawled on the road behind her.

Mustang shut the door and turned to Ed, pinning him with his onyx stare.

"How did you know what she was?"

Ed shook his head, a strained expression settling itself on his face as he reached up and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I don't know. I can just feel them, like they're a part of me... or I'm a part of them. I tried to tell you earlier."

"We didn't believe you." Al said apologetically, "We thought you were just drunk and scared..."

"I was drunk and scared." he admitted, lowering his hands and looking up at the colonel. "That woman was... new. She wasn't like the others. They made her. She couldn't have been dead for long..."

"How did they make her one of them?" Hawkeye asked darkly.

"That I don't know."

There was a short silence in the room, but then Mustang spoke up quietly. "I read a book as a child about such creatures. They rose from their graves and fed on the living. Their victims would become like them after they died, rising up again and continuing the cycle... I thought zombies were just fairytales, but apparently they're real."

"So... so if you get bitten by these things, they infect you and you become one?" Al asked, trying to organize his thoughts.

Mustang went still for a moment, his eyes widening as he turned to look at Al. From the look on his face, Al could tell that he'd just realized something... something bad. The colonel nodded slowly, then abruptly turned to Hawkeye.

"You weren't bitten, were you?" he demanded urgently, grabbing her arm and looking her over closely.

"No, I said I'm fine..." she replied, looking vaguely startled by his intensity. Mustang let her go and took a step backward. He concealed his sudden uneasiness and shook himself, furtively glancing down at the bloodied bandage on his arm. He cleared his throat and addressed his lieutenant again:

"If you don't think that we can kill them all ourselves, how are we supposed to get rid of them?" he asked her, "I don't know if we have time to wait for back-up."

"We could reverse the alchemy." Ed said lowly.

"...I used the red stone to bring you back, but it backfired and shattered. I don't have it anymore." Mustang muttered.

"So?" Ed asked, a slightly apprehensive anger darkening his voice. "Sacrifice me. I should be enough to make up for Equivalent Exchange, right?"

"Don't be stupid, Edward." Mustang snapped, looking both alarmed and annoyed. "I'm not going to sacrifice you."

"Why not? I shouldn't even be alive in the first place!"

"You shouldn't have been dead in the first place!" the colonel shot back.

"Ed, this is crazy!" Al gasped, terrified at the thought of losing his brother for a second time. "I can't let you just—"

"Do you have a better idea?" Ed spat, glaring up at Al. Ed was still holding himself up against the wall and looked liable to fall over at any minute, but there was still a fire burning in his eyes. There was fear there, too... but it was masked by the flames of his conviction. He was really willing to do this.

The colonel sighed and massaged his temple with his hand. He had been trying to hide his discomfort since Hawkeye had arrived, but his composure was failing him. His face was pale and his hands were shaking very slightly as he wiped perspiration from his brow. His eyes were fever-glazed as he finally looked down at Ed again.

"...Then we should get moving. We don't have much time." Mustang said to him.

Ed nodded grimly in tacit reply.