Aidan didn't know what to do. He watched as his sister sobbed in Roy's arms. Her two best friends had died within the last hour. Creatures that seemed too nightmarish to be real roamed the streets of his hometown. Everything had changed; everything was different. "Is there any hope? Is there hope for any of us?" He dropped his eyes to the floor, and rested a hand on Elza's shoulder. Her friends were gone. She needed the time to mourn, but now was not the time, not while their lives were in severe danger.

"Elza…Roy," Aidan sighed, "We've got to get out of here. We need to get those guns."

Roy looked up, his compassionate green eyes solemn, and dark. "Yeah. We really should go." He gave Elza a final squeeze before releasing her.

She wiped the tears from her face onto her sleeve. She glanced once more towards the bathroom, offering her friend a final farewell. "I love you Serena. I'm so sorry…" They left the restaurant, but immediately stopped as soon as they opened the front door.

There was a group of four infected shuffling past Roy's squad car, slowly heading towards the restaurant's entrance. Before either Roy or Aidan could react, Elza stepped forward, boldly moving towards the infected.

"No. No more running. No more being scared. If we have to fight for our lives, then God dammit, let's fucking fight for them."

Elza charged towards the first infected, a middle-aged man in a stained white dress shirt and black pants. His once nicely parted hair was now messy and disheveled, and his cracked lips were surrounded by a ring of dried blood. He grew anxious with her approach, his arms reaching towards her as his lumbering pace quickened. Elza ducked down, and quickly darted left, effectively faking him out. Now, she stood behind him, and delivered a sharp kick to the back of his head, sending him face first onto the pavement. Roy and Aidan leapt into action, not far behind Elza. Aidan stood over the downed zombie, and destroyed his head with a point blank shotgun blast.

Elza was already proceeding to take down another infected, this one a young Hispanic man. He was downed just as quickly with another swift roundhouse kick to the head. Roy approached a black man in a tan plumber's jumpsuit. He groaned, the familiar lifeless moan of the flesh-hungry infected. With his handgun ready, he quickly dropped the plumber with a clean shot to the head, his body slamming against the hood of the car before slumping to the ground. He turned, adjusting his aim downward, finishing off the downed Hispanic man with another quick shot to the head.

Elza took the last infected, an older man wearing a blood-soaked, olive green sweater. She slammed his head against the side of the car. She then wrapped her hands around the man's head as he feebly snapped his teeth at her. She twisted as hard as she could, and the zombie's moans were quickly silenced. Neck snapped, the man in the olive green sweater dropped to the asphalt.

Elza hardly had a moment to breath, and was startled by a slam against the hood of the police car. There was another ape, standing over her on top of the car. This one looked just like the one before it, with the same bulbous sac pulsating by its throat. Elza instinctively ducked down, and before it could let out a single howl, it was launched off the roof by a booming shotgun blast. It twisted and writhed in the street before its body slowly relaxed and went limp.

Elza slowly stood back up, regaining her composure. She deeply exhaled, "Gun shop?"

Roy shook his head and smiled, amazed by the girl's resilience. "Yeah. Gun shop."


Thankfully, the drive to the gun shop had been rather uneventful. Only one more infected ape had shown up in the middle of the street, which Roy quickly ran down with his car. As its body spiraled past the windshield, there was a brief silence, followed by an explosion of hysterical laughter. Throughout the morbid events of the evening, the brief satisfaction in seeing the hellish monkey fly through the air was absolutely hilarious.

They arrived, greeted by a sign saying "Gun Shop: Kendo" in bold letters, the Kendo lettered with an Asian flair. There was Jeep parked in front of the store, so Roy parked behind it. As he stepped out of the car, his stomach sank, disappointment settling in.

The store's front window was shattered, and Roy could see several figures stumbling in the store. He got back in the car. "Roy, what's wrong?" Elza asked.

Roy remained silent, and reversed the car back into the street. He turned back to Aidan and Elza. "Buckle your seatbelts, and hold on to something." The two nodded braced themselves, and Roy slammed the gas pedal, ramming the car through the storefront and slamming into the three wandering infected. He looked back at Elza and Aidan. "Are you guys alright?"

"Yeah, in one piece. Not sure I want you driving anymore though," Aidan mumbled, holding a hand to his forehead. Roy smiled, then stepped out of the car.

The squad car had caused some serious damage to the shop. The door was obliterated, reduced to splinters, and the floor was covered with chunks of the now-destroyed wall. One of the infected was still under the car, partially crushed by one of the tires. The other two had been propelled across the store, one of them lying in one of the smashed glass display cases, and the other crumpled against the back wall.

There was an eviscerated body lying in the middle of the floor, and upon closer inspection, Roy realized in was the store's owner, Robert Kendo. Roy sighed with disappointment. Kendo supplied a lot of custom firearms for the Raccoon Police force, and was just a good guy all in all. His pudgy face, formerly known for its kind eyes and warm smile, was fixed in a painful grimace. It was a shame to see that a man like Robert Kendo had suffered such a fate. Roy kneeled down to the body, and closed Kendo's eyes. As he looked up, he could see that most of the guns were wired to the walls. He walked towards his trunk and opened it, producing a pair of wire-cutters. As Elza stepped out of the car, he tossed the wire-cutters to her. "Cut loose," Roy said with a smile.

They made their choices quickly. Aidan went straight for the display case, grabbing two nine millimeter handguns. He still had Roy's shotgun from the squad car, so he slung it around his shoulder. He started filling the pockets of his green blazer with boxes of handgun rounds, while Roy selected his weapons of choice.

He grabbed a snub-nosed revolver from the case, a .38 caliber. Roy's father had been a huge Country-Western aficionado, and as the six-shooter rested in his hand, it made him think of his dad. Throughout all of this madness, he hoped that his parents were faring well, and were still surviving. He quickly put the thought of his family aside, grabbing a shotgun for himself, an older looking double-barrel that felt heavy, but also nice and reliable.

Elza used the wire-cutters to remove a scoped, bolt-action rifle from the wall. She held the rifle up, peeking through the scope and lining up the sights. Elza silently thanked her parents for fostering her tomboyish nature, and letting her go out to the shooting range as a young girl. "Never would I ever have thought this would come in any sort of handy…" For extra caution, she also grabbed a pistol for herself, not wanting to rely fully on the rifle.

Their shopping spree was interrupted a low groan from the middle of the shop. The deceased Robert Kendo was slowly getting to his feet. As he rose, his intestines and an assortment of half-chewed organs fell from the gaping hole in his torso, slapping against the floor with a nauseating thud. Roy steadied his new revolver, leveling it with Kendo's face. "I'm so sorry Mister Kendo." The round hit him directly in the eye. He jerked a bit, his arms stiffening, before he dropped to the ground, dead once again.

The room was silent, Roy still staring at the former gun store owner's prone body. Elza finally spoke. "So, Roy, is the car still okay, or would we be better off just walking instead?"

He broke his focus away from Kendo, and began to respond, only to be startled by a deafening roar from outside the shop. Elza didn't know what to make of it. "It sounds like…like some kind of dinosaur." There was another roar, this one sharper and more distinct, accompanied by heavy, plodding footsteps. "Whatever it is…it's coming closer."