A/N: Thanks to everyone for checking out my story! I really appreciate feedback - as I've said before, what with this being an experiment, I need to hear what folks think of it.

10:29 pm Friday – 13 April 2007

"I got it, but I don't like it," Molly said, smiling. "Don't say that, okay? You can't die."

"That's what she said."

Molly laughed. "Why do you always do that?"

"What?"

"Undercut the seriousness of…everything."

"That's just me, baby," he said, getting close to her and taking her earlobe between his lips and sucking, then blowing, softly. She giggled.

"I really like that."

He backed off a little. "Be careful, okay? If you get into a firefight you didn't think about enough you'll probably lose it."

"I'm…" She looked into his eyes. "Do you have a gun?"

"Grab my crotch."

She did.

Said Molly, "Big gun."

Said Odin, "Big crotch."

10:36 pm Friday – 13 April 2007

A few different people had looked at Odin on his way back to the gym, Marion, walking to a bathroom, being one of them. He probably got lucky that time – nobody really stopped and asked him what was happening, maybe – well, likely – out of shock. "Why the hell's that guy have blood all over him? He's not a zombie…" Of those people, every one looked at Odin when he left again, to try to find Karl or some authority figure and tell them what happened with…not-O'Neill. In addition to the people who'd looked at Odin before, many, many more did. Odin figured it was the blood – he'd been splashed with it pretty good, and now it looked even weirder because it was all dry and reddish-brown. That he had a dead cop's SIG-Sauer P229 Elite in one of his pockets and ammo in the other probably didn't occur to anybody – especially not after seeing blood on his face, much less his shirt or pants.

Finally, as Odin thought of it, one cop – no, two cops – stared straight at him, on his way toward the lounge on the second floor. They'd been following him, definitely, and one of the cops Odin knocked out on his way to Molly was with them.

He could shoot them.

Nah, thought Odin. If he did that, every person in the whole goddamn city would know that some threatening presence was in the second floor of the police station.

Odin frowned.

Then he ran.

In his perspective, four hours later, he rounded a corner just behind him and raced toward a recreation center. In reality about six seconds had gone by. In the rec center were weights and exercise equipment galore, and the lights were off.

One of the three cops shouted at Odin, for him to stop immediately. Another of the three cops shouted, except he said something nasty. The third one, whom Odin had earlier rendered unconscious, said nothing. Listening to their footsteps, that one seemed to be lagging behind the other two a little.

For about 4 seconds – it felt like as many minutes, if not more, but it could've been longer – everything was perfect, in a weird way. It was true that three police officers were chasing after him, and that everything wasn't perfect, but everything was. He was going to get away, and then he'd find someone sympathetic to his cause, and everything would be perfect. He might even sort of have fun as he solved the puzzle O'Neill had dragged him into. How many other cops knew about that? Could Impostor O'Neill have snuck it by, because of how chaotic/apocalyptic the whole situation was? How many cops supported what the real O'Neill had been doing, with regard to infected people?

Sometime between "regard" and "infected," two cops, chumming up, smiling, laughing and having fun, stepped out of a lounge. No, it was an interrogation room, Odin had forgotten. Maybe they'd been playing videogames or something – he'd heard about how cops used the rooms to have system-link Halo 2 fights, and the cops coming out looked like gamers.

Those two cops realized exactly what was happening before the three cops chasing Odin even said anything to them. They got ready to grab Odin, and a second later, one of the pursuing cops said, "Stop him!"

Odin knew what he'd do, but took care not to telegraph his motions.

He felt his heart pounding inside his chest. Somehow, he knew this level of physical exertion wouldn't make him sweat, or get this pumped up, but the mental side had kicked him into overdrive and it almost felt good. Seconds crawled by, as did time itself.

Odin threw himself, becoming sort of an arrow, shooting between the two cops ahead of him. They'd spread out too much for him to go around and not lose the momentum he'd need to get through, and he wouldn't've been able to jump over them…so he went straight through, and head-first. He freaked out right before he vaulted into the air. There was no way he'd land. One of the cops would grab his ankle or something, then he'd slap face-first into the cold marble floor, bust his nose off, start pouring blood out of every orifice somehow, and then the cops would beat the living shit out of him for no reason, and then rape him. That was just too much.

Odin was almost entirely done with his rocky somersault forward, shooting himself up to his feet again, before he realized that about two seconds had gone by before he actually knew what was happening to him.

Oh, I'm on my feet, running. I just got through those two policemen.

And now there are five of them chasing me. They're gonna be pissed whenever this ends.

I have to leave the station.

No. Karl's gonna vouch for me.


Why the fuck would he do that?

I'll double back and go to the lounge. Karl has to be there. If he's not, though, I'll find him, even if I have to bust into the ceiling and support myself on that metal shit between ceiling tiles and strangle myself half to death on wires and stuff. I will not abandon Molly.

Odin had to take a left. Soon, he'd go by a staircase. With his luck, an entire squad of cops in full riot gear would be there, coincidentally facing in his direction, coincidentally carrying some new less-than-lethal weapon that they would use to knock him down, and that would hurt a lot to get shot with.

Soon, he was. He might've plowed through a cop on the way to it, but he wasn't sure. Maybe he just thought about what he'd do if that happened. Maybe not.

Either about 40 seconds later or a few hours later, plus about three cops, he was in that lounge. He plowed through Karl, completely by accident, completely not seeing him. Odin was pretty sure he heard Karl say "What the fuck!" sometime after he bounced off the floor. Odin wasn't real sure where he was…

He was under a table, a chair hooked in one of his legs, his head throbbing like he'd just crashed into a lounge with a lot of white and black vinyl chairs in it.

"FUCK that hurt!" said Odin, rubbing his head.

"Why's all that blood on you?" asked a cop Odin hadn't seen before.

"Why'd you – oh," said Karl, as the seven or so cops chasing Odin caught up with him and entered the lounge.

"We got you now, motherfucker!" said one of the pursuers. He had a dark red mark covering his face.

Odin thrashed about on the floor, knocking the chair on his leg accidentally off. It hit a vending machine and plunked off, landing with a loud metal tink back on the floor. "God dammit!"

The cops advanced on him, minus Karl and Karl's partner James, cautiously, but kind of understanding he wouldn't up and shoot any of them. They might also not have been aware he was armed. There were a few complicit cops in the lounge, too.

"How do you feel?" one of his pursuers asked. He must be the sympathetic one, thought Odin.

In too much pain from whatever he'd done to his head to suppress his sense of humor, and general impulses, Odin replied, "Good enough to fuck your mother!"

10:49 pmFriday – 13 April 2007

Odin had long-since forgotten the transition between saying that and where he walked with the cops, although where he walked to was a table in the lounge, so he probably hadn't forgotten much.

"You're seriously willing to do that?" asked one of the cops. He looked very, very normal, perhaps 40 and had an odd birthmarky patch of brown and black skin on his otherwise chalky-white face, covering ground on the left side of his face. It went from above his sharp jawline, maybe two inches behind his chin, to about halfway down his neck.

Uh-oh, thought Odin, having just forgotten what That was.

"Yeah. That Karl vouched for you is kinda enough," said another cop. He looked younger than Odin felt, and about as skittish as that white kid who shot himself in the head with a revolver in George Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

"No, I'll do it," said Odin. He got the feeling he'd have to in order to prove his good-guyness to the cops anyway, although immediately after volunteering, or perhaps re-volunteering, he wondered whether it was a really bad idea, or just a bad idea.

"I'm actually really impressed," said a bald cop. He looked about that old, and Odin was pretty sure he'd bowled him over at some point in the pursuit. I'm manic, realized Odin. I need to get shit done before I droop, and…I dunno what I forgot.

"Yeah?" asked Odin.

The bald cop nodded. "I kinda knew when I was chasing you you weren't a bad guy, but…I didn't think you'd save Chief O'Neill just to prove that."

"Well," said Odin, realizing how fucked he was, "I didn't wanna leave it up in the air, y'know?"

"Yeah," said the cop with the birthmark.

"You guys hafta trust me enough to give me a coupla guns, though. I'll prob'ly just get eaten if I'm unarmed."

"Well here's your SIG back," said the young, lily white Dawn-guy cop.

Odin took it, slightly disappointed that the thing was so 1diminutively small. He was pleased that it held 12 rounds of .40 Smith & Wesson ammo, but…still.

11:06 pmFriday – 13 April 2007

Although Odin would rely on his spankin' new Heckler and Koch MP5A5 more than any other weapon in the future battle, he'd remember getting temporarily-his Beretta M9, technically an M92FS, the best. One of the cops who'd previously been chasing him handed it over. It was his service weapon. The gun had a large-circumference grip and a long double-action trigger pull, and Odin damn near fell in love with it. Its button-by-the-trigger magazine release was even on the right side, for a left-handed user's thumb to tap. The gun had been manufactured for a left-handed person, and Odin was more comfortable using his left hand than his right. "I noticed you favored your left hand," the tall, clearly-left-handed cop had said, "and you damn well better return it." Implied was "and my three magazines," all of which had been manufactured by the Italian company Beretta itself. A US Armed Forces service pistol, the 15-round M9 magazines actually given to soldiers were usually ones manufactured by other companies, but, most shooters agreed, magazines manufactured by the weapon's actual company were of the best quality. The M9's grip sat perfectly in Odin's large-for-his-height hand, and the sights felt perfect, illuminated by radioactive tritium dots. Every round, perfectly hand-loaded by the tall cop with hollow-pointed bullets, promised to kill whatever they should hit, the fact that 9x19mm Luger rounds were weak relative other common American pistol rounds be damned. The M9 in Odin's hand was a special weapon.

"It's not too late to turn back," said Karl, his voice oddly soft and concerned.

Alarmed but determined to save O'Neill, Odin disregarded Karl's tone and said, "I know, but I'm still gonna do it."

"You're crazy," said James.

"Yeah?"

"Yes, you are," said James, "and I love it."

"Better that than 'just kind of like,'" said Odin. His comment got a few laughs, and the light, somewhat happy mood around him was awfully nice to see.

Equally nice to see were the five people around him in bulky, black riot gear, carrying massive, transparent shields, with large helmets with their clear, full-face visors turned upward so they wouldn't cloud them with breath or get too hot too early or anything. If any zombies wouldn't just back away from them, someone in their six-person backup team would kill them. Way behind those six people were five more, incase it went that wrong. With 10 snipers on the roof, a few even from SWAT, it probably wouldn't, but even without the snipers, Odin trusted himself and Karl. It won't go wrong.

Somewhere inside of 2 minutes later, Karl and James, working together, threw open the police station's front door. Two of the six men in the riot-backup team, armed with 12-gauge shotguns Odin didn't even bother looking at, stood aside Odin and opened up on the zombies there. For about 5 seconds, five heartbeats and one real moment, this is what Odin saw: blood. He was also deaf, although his goofy neon-green earplugs might've lessened that impact. The guys' shotguns went off at least 12 times, quickly, in the small space of the two-stage doorway into the police station, and the reverberation from the guns was crazy. It shattered all of the staging area's showy glass.

As the glass rained onto the floor and outside the building, Karl's riot team surged out into the night, one of them almost tripping over either a zombie or a zombie's pool of slippery, although caked and congealed, blood.

Karl's team went out as far as they'd go for this operation, maybe 5 feet, heroic zombie-raiders simply beating back the zombie horde for Odin to go out.

Before Odin would move out, though, the riot team's firearm-toting backup squad came out. They killed off all the zombies inside of the semicircle Karl's team had secured, then moved back into the station. Odin replaced them. Odin knew he was a good gunfighter, but he still felt pretty silly, one of him with a big submachine gun replacing six guys, three with massive, time-tested Remington or Mossberg combat shotguns.

Then Karl's team pulled back, their backs clear. They'd stay by the doors and keep the place as clear as possible for Odin to come back in…but the station simply didn't have the resources to really help Odin. It was a glorified suicide mission, and he knew it. He'd have to weave his way through a horde of zombies that could fill a few transcontinental flights, alone. Worse than that, every single zombie in the horde wasn't truly aware of every other zombie. One zombie might lunge at him, then another and another and another, and then he'd get completely covered in zombies. All Odin had were his wits and a few guns. There were no explosives in the police station. Although with 10 snipers' guns' assistance, Odin would have to go through a few thousand people the old-fashioned way and save a person marooned in a locked police car. That person probably wasn't even alive.

Odin thought about what he should do for a few seconds, even though he didn't really need to. He'd planned about the moment when he became alone for awhile, with Karl and everybody else who'd back him up. He was going to cut through the zombies, spraying 9x19mm bullets at head-level, and then run, then do it more and run, then do it a few more times, creating a path just wide enough to get to the car O'Neill was in.

Actually, thought Odin, I can't really know O'Neill's in that. He was right. O'Neill's impostor, whose name Odin wasn't sure about, had never killed the three men with O'Neill. He'd just bound and gagged them in an office – he'd made up the entire story about them. I guess that's why the other two guys were so interested, thought Odin, squeezing the MP5A5's trigger. The gun was definitely loud, popping and tearing away at the air in front of it. It fired about 13 rounds a second, which wasn't amazingly fast or anything, but which was still pretty fast. Odin wouldn't want to be anywhere close to the gun in front of it for fear the sonic pressure would knock him over or something, to say nothing about the actual noise or bullets roaring out the gun's 8.85" barrel.

For a second time, Odin was pretty sure the only thing he could see was blood. There'd been a wall of ordinary-looking townspeople – ordinary-looking dead townspeople, Odin corrected – in front of him, then he'd fired about 30 rounds of 9x19mm ammo, and then all he could really see was red. Fortunately, now that he was outside, in the dead of night, pretty literally, he didn't go deaf from sound bouncing around him, never more than a few feet away.

Odin panicked for exactly two seconds. Certain his MP5A5's magazine was empty, Odin jerked the gun around so he could see into its ejection port, on the left side because the gun was a left-handed model, then jerked the cocking lever back and looked into the gun. He would've, anyway – a live round shot out the ejection port and hit him in the left eye.

He'd loaded a double-drum into the weapon. Manufactured by a company called Beta, the C-mag, as it was called, wouldn't let Odin down for about 70 more bullets. He hadn't loaded it himself, so he wouldn't trust his life with the number 70, but he'd keep in mind that possibility.

Again fortunately for Odin, the bullet that hit him in the eye didn't actually hit him in the eye. He was wearing a black Pro-Tec skateboarding helmet. Modernized but essentially the same plastic helmet Southern Californian skateboarders of the 1970s used, Odin's helmet had a pair of shooting goggles with an elastic headband strapped over it. Because of those goggles, when the bullet hit him in the eye, it bounced off. Odin still flinched, though, before he went back to firing the MP5A5.

This time, Odin controlled the gun a little more, and a little better. He didn't let it waver more than a few degrees to the right or left, facing exactly where he was going – O'Neill's final resting place. Probably O'Neill's final resting place, Odin corrected. He was going to beeline it – with zombies, he thought, why shouldn't I? He'd also made clear to the snipers earlier that he was going to do that, and he didn't want to confuse somebody with a high-powered, scoped human-hunting rifle. Not now, when they were probably friends, anyway. It never left Odin's mind that the police, including Karl, might just kick Odin's ass out the door and leave him to fend for himself.

He didn't think about that a whole lot, though. Listening to his MP5A5's lifeless, impotent brass shell casings tink on the cement walking path toward the station's front parking lot, Odin took in the zombie horde in front of him. He'd definitely carved a path, and he could even see O'Neill's probable resting place, although not well. It was certainly not near the police station, but even if it were, there were a lot of fucking zombies between it and Odin.

Odin ran, keeping the MP5A5 aiming basically straight ahead of himself. He was kind of lucky – most of the zombies had lost interest in the front door and gone for other entry points, so the horde was rather thin around the front entrance. It won't be after I finish this, thought Odin. With that in mind, he ran hard, but didn't commit himself so much to the forward motion that he couldn't turn back. He didn't entirely care about his own life, but if he died, Molly probably would too. O'Neill, if he was still alive, definitely would die without Odin's assistance. It would be a long time before the chief would be able to get out of the car safely, on his own, even if he were armed, and…Odin simply didn't want to know how long it might take the zombies to starve to death or something.

Odin got lucky, in a certain sense. His MP5A5's hammer, while deep inside the weapon, clearly clicked on an empty chamber. Maybe it had jammed, but maybe it hadn't, and Odin had emptied the – he'd hoped – bottomless C-mag. Odin got lucky in that he wasn't in a spot wherein zombies' hands were mere inches from him. They were feet away, but that felt like miles compared to the proximity he'd shared with zombies not 2 seconds beforehand.

Odin nearly stripped the MP5A5's insides just to remove the C-mag, but then realized that would be really stupid. He took an extra half-second to press the magazine release catch, behind the magazine and in front of the trigger guard, then slip the drum out. The weapon's cocking handle was locked back. It was empty! thought Odin…just before he felt like crying. It had taken less than 20 seconds to empty the C-mag, and it held 100 rounds, if not a few less. He'd definitely felt over 70 rounds go off, although he lost track about there. He had three extra magazines for the MP5A5, but each of those three was a standard-length magazine…which held 30 rounds.

I'm gonna hafta conserve ammo and aim carefully like a motherfucker.

With that sentiment in mind, Odin slapped the weapon's cocking handle down much harder than he needed to, then raised the 7.53-pound German killing machine, took an instant to plot his next move – "straight forward," basically – and then opened fire.

It felt like 4 seconds later when Odin reached the squad car O'Neill might have been in, or might not have been in. Odin didn't know how much time actually passed by, but he didn't need to know, and didn't care to. Whatever amount of time had passed by, there was an endless horde of the undead advancing slowly on his position. He didn't have the ammunition to kill them all, but they were endless, so that didn't matter, and much more important to his mission…he couldn't see over them. He was a few inches away from tall, but, as his luck thrust upon him, most of the zombies weren't. Rather, they were at tall, or beyond it. Odin could make out the top of the police station's atrium, though, and that would have to be good enough.

The MP5A5 had emptied sometime before he reached the car. The closest zombies would be on him in about 5 seconds, so he had time to reload, although he didn't like having to do it, especially because that meant admitting to himself that he only had some 47 percent of his ammunition left. For the submachine gun, anyway. He had two sidearms and a throwdown piece, plus a few knives, but…if he had to ditch the MP5A5, it meant that things were going downhill mission-wise.

One slap of a bolt later, Odin mowed down the closest few zombies with a quick, highly-controlled 10-odd round burst of 9x19mm hollowpoints, then turned to the squad car. There was a person lying in the back seat, and nobody in the front seat. Odin hoped to God, or the fates, or whatever else controlled the world, be it fate or math or Christopher Walken or some large bunny rabbits, that the person in the back seat was a perfectly human O'Neill. If it weren't, or if it were O'Neill but he were infected, Odin would be so pissed off that he might as well just die. In doing this mission, he kind of signed his life away. Maybe I shoulda just killed those…four? cops at Molly's place and not come here, thought Odin. Or not gone on this fucking mission. O'Neill's not worth it, whomever he is.

Odin almost shot the back door's handle before it occurred to him that the easiest way to get through a "locked" door was to check whether it was locked. He paused for another four or so heartbeats, feeling smart as he remembered that police cars' back doors were always locked from the inside but not the out-. Then it occurred to him that it was more important to complete the mission than to feel cool for knowing something most people knew anyway.

The door opened and O'Neill's head snapped up, making eye contact with Odin instantly. He was probably alive – zombies didn't move that quickly.

Fuck me, is there a fast zombie? There better damn well not be! If there is, I quit!

"You're alive," said O'Neill, confused.

"Shut the fuck up. We gotta leave now," said Odin firmly.

Sitting, slowly and gradually as if an incalculable amount of walking dead people weren't all around them, O'Neill stared for a second. Maybe he wanted to lace into Odin for swearing at him, telling him what to do. Maybe he was still a little shocked about everything. I would be, thought Odin, before it occurred to him that he should probably just shoot O'Neill and say he found him like that, saving his own life.

"Sorry," said O'Neill, standing. "Gotta spare rod?"

Odin took stock of the situation, but knew what he'd say already. He let the MP5A5 clatter and pop away the lives of maybe 15 reanimated dead people, then handed O'Neill the weapon and said, "You know how many gay jokes I can make about that, right?"

O'Neill looked at Odin, something in his eyes reminding Odin that the chief had about 30 years and half of a foot on him, then took the MP5A5 and checked its chamber. More than certainly, a bullet was in there. Odin handed over the last spare magazine, and O'Neill said "Thanks."

Odin jerked out his sidearms. In his right hand was one of impostor-O'Neill's underlings' guns, the 12-shot, .40 S&W SIG-Sauer P229 Elite – the same gun Odin originally pictured killing two of impostor-O'Neill's henchmen with, what felt like ages ago. The gun still felt small, but it also felt a lot better than nothing. In Odin's left hand was the cool tall cop's 9x19mm Luger, 15-shot Beretta M9, but the weapon had been adjusted to perfection and it would've felt just as good in his right hand, too.

"Let's go!" said Odin, turning around.

For exactly 1/3 of a second, everything was nothing. Odin couldn't think, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe, sure as hell couldn't eat or love or even see. A zombie was inside of a foot away from him. Perhaps a day ago, it had been a beautiful woman. She had a slight soccer mom look, but Odin never would've called her that. Wearing a sweater Odin didn't know what to call, but one similar to a cardigan, over a simple faded yellow-flowers-on-white sundress, the woman looked pretty good. Odin didn't really take any of that in, though. All he could see was the death and defeat in her eyes, and the hunger. Her skin was gray, but tarnished with black, and she looked a little like an unwrapped mummy. Her hair was white and falling off. For all the 1/3 of a second he saw the woman, the only portion of Odin's mind not consumed by terror remembered something. He was watching the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with his mother. This was the first time he'd been brave enough to watch the end, when the evil Nazi guy drank from one of the many false Holy Grails and aged far too quickly, going from his 50s to something far past dead, a skeleton. The makeup effects weren't great, but Odin didn't know that, he'd never seen a person past-dead. Young Odin believed that whenever he shut his eyes, whatever blank space was in front of him would be replaced by that dead man when he reopened his eyes. Except his mother held him, explained it wasn't true, but that she'd be there for him if it was.

The soccer mom-zombie's face exploded and something tore at Odin's left shoulder.

A sniper had taken a potshot at the woman and hit, but the bullet had gone through the woman's brittle skull and grazed Odin.

Odin glared at the sniper for about half a second, then raised both his pistols and fired eight rounds before he knew what was happening.

What was happening: He was near death, where "death" meant an insurmountably large gagglefuck of zombies. Odin was also near a police chief named O'Neill…and Odin didn't know what O'Neill was doing.

Odin took a second to cut down all the zombies around him. With his level of experience gunning down zombies, plus whatever experience he'd had beforehand…that he didn't remember at all…it was rather easy. In seconds, the P229 ran dry and its small, blocky slide locked back, but he'd killed quite a few zombies in emptying it. He'd have maybe 4, 6 seconds before any zombie could get to him.

Odin unlocked the P229's current magazine, carefully but hurriedly pocketed it, then turned to look at O'Neill. O'Neill almost ran Odin over.

"Just go!" said O'Neill, passing Odin. Odin was proud of one thing he'd done in preparation for the mission – he had his extra pistol magazines in an open magazine pouch on his loading-hand's hip. That way, if he had to reload quickly, he wouldn't be slowed by opening any damn pouches; he could just yank them out and get them near the magazine well they'd rest in, in the same motion. Odin's left arm did that motion, two fingers busying themselves with a fresh P229 magazine. It didn't take much of an effort to flip the $40 piece of metal around and slip it in the gun.

Odin almost – no, he couldn't control it, not with this kinda energy coursing through him. Odin said, "'Ey, fuck you, buddy!" Odin released the P229's slide catch and it went forward, locking with an unreasonably loud metallic snap. At least it's reassuring, thought Odin, turning to follow the police chief.

O'Neill laughed, the submachinegun in his burly, grey-hairy arms clattering loudly. Odin followed, doing a combat reload with the M9 because he had a chance. A combat reload is a reload of a weapon that's not empty. Odin released the M9's magazine. It probably had three bullets left; it felt too heavy, as it abandoned the weapon for the ground, to have two, but too light to have five. It might've had four left, and Odin felt awful just getting rid of it that way.

Odin just tossed that line of thought out. If he was going to feel guilty about anything, it would be when he was inside the police station and holding Molly again, with at least one gun near him. He didn't even like guns that much, they just made killing stuff easier.

Odin jerked one 15-round M9 magazine out with his reloading-hand – right-hand – from its respective mag pouch, and it found its home pretty soon.

O'Neill paved their escape path. Odin didn't know exactly what the chief would want him to do, so he did what he'd hope O'Neill would for him, if their roles were different. He picked off zombies close to O'Neill's sides, ones O'Neill missed, and made damn sure to stay close to O'Neill. If Odin were more than a few footsteps away from O'Neill's back, the zombie horde O'Neill's MP5A5 pushed back might enclose, separating Odin from the cop. Odin would probably be fine, but O'Neill only had about 45 rounds for the submachinegun, and if he got too far from Odin, but not close enough to the front door's riot team, he was pretty much fucking dead.

A few times, zombies got close to both of them. The horde around them was so close, Odin pretty much always heard hungry, inhuman moans better than his own gunfire, but he had too much adrenaline in him for that to really get to him. Because of that, it was no shocker when a zombie got close, but the first time it happened it shook Odin a good one. It looked like – and Odin didn't know how he knew it – a friend of his who taught people how to play the guitar at a music center near Biskind. He had long black hair, he was always really, really nervous around people he didn't know, and he was basically really cool. Odin reminisced about…Matt? instead of shooting Matt, and Matt got a hold of Odin. For a very short time, which felt like forever despite that, Odin felt two claws-of-life-type things squeezing his shoulders. He'd worn a heavy, definitely-not-police-issue Kevlar vest, and, for whatever reason, slid two level IV ballistic strike plates into it, so Odin definitely didn't feel how cold Matt's hands probably were…but he could still see into Matt's eyes. He looked blind, or at least, his eyes looked really weird. Odin couldn't remember having been that close to a zombie. Not since Darryl, anyway. One look into a zombie's eyes and he'd felt something in him change. When Odin looked into Matt's eyes, that thing shifted even more than it had when Darryl awakened it. Also, Matt's breath smelled horrible.

Odin maneouvered his right arm carefully around so that it would point upward, from under Matt's chin.

Odin fired. This took place within about two seconds, and Odin was walking throughout. O'Neill's pace was faster than Odin's plus-Matt pace, but at least Odin was moving.

Odin felt four other zombies closing in – this's the scariest thing that's ever happened to me – even as he watched Matt's face cave in. The hollow-pointed .40-inch bullet Odin's P229 delivered left a teeny hole in the bottom of Matt's chin, but then became sort of a cone, mushrooming outward. Matt's brain and skull plooped out the top of his head as his eyes sunk too far backward. That and the way that both Matt's previously-full lips had been ripped off somehow would stick with Odin for a long time.

Then Odin was running again. He shoulder-pushed through two zombies who were almost directly in his way, then shot another that threatened to close the path in front of Odin. Odin was about four steps away from O'Neill. That zombie, in fact, had its back to Odin – it was going after O'Neill.

It didn't make much progress, though. Odin put a bullet, care of his borrowed Beretta M9, through the back of the tall man's head. It left through his right eye and made a nearby female zombie's hair flip up into her face. The tall zombie toppled into another. It'd been lunging toward O'Neill. Although completely late, for whatever reason, it was still lunging, from maybe 8 feet behind O'Neill. Its weight was almost entirely forward by the time the tall zombie fell, making it fall straight onto its face. Odin took a running bound over it, launching himself accidentally almost into the cop in front of him.

"Switch places," said O'Neill. Odin swapped out with O'Neill at the front of their two-person line, knowing why, even as O'Neill said, "I'm reloading."

Odin heard telltale metallic snaps and clicks for about a second before he remembered he kind of needed to pay more attention to the 90-some degrees ahead of himself than the 180ish degrees behind him.

He recommitted himself to the fight, primarily ahead of him.

Seconds later, Odin and the snipers accidentally created kind of a zombie-vacuum – for about 10 feet, there were no zombies at all, but Odin and O'Neill were about 20 feet from the police station's entrance. It was weird. Odin assumed zombies closer than that had chosen to go for the riot team and that zombies further than that had gone for him, but it was still really strange to see a gap like that, when before, Odin's entire world had been moaning undead. He'd hardly even been aware that there was an up or a down – just "dead stuff." That and gunshots, anyway.

One second blurred into another, and Odin, his arms jerking back every half-second or so with additional gunshots from the two pistols he was carrying, lost his sense of self