12:39 am Saturday – 14 April 2007

Said Odin, "Dammit. Why's it that whenever I kinda wanna fight there's nothin' to fight?" They hadn't encountered anything but two gorillas on the way to the gym, and those two gorillas were so far away they didn't even start running before Odin, Molly, Marion and O'Neill deaded them. Odin would've been so perfect in a fight, too – he replaced the empty slot of the Eclipse Custom II he'd let O'Neill borrow with his USP45 Tactical, and he put his USP45CT where the USP45T had been. It might be annoyingly repetitious to fire two so-similar guns, but he didn't even care. That line of thought made something occur to him, but

"Cuz you're too good at killin' stuff," said Molly. Then she laughed, along with everybody else.

"Hey," said Odin to O'Neill, "You're clear that you're only borrowing that, right?"

O'Neill looked to the Eclipse Custom II then moved it a little further from Odin and pretended he didn't hear the question.

Muttered Odin, "Fucker."

O'Neill giggled.

And there were the gym doors.

"Just to establish this," said Odin, "if they're all dead at the hands of some new monster, I'm gonna be really, really pissed off."

"You had them shut the door?" asked O'Neill.

"Yeah," Odin replied.

"Well it's still closed. That's prob'ly a good sign."

"Good point," Odin said, and then he knocked on the gym's door. "It's Odin, the coolest guy ever," he called, "so please open the door."

A very long moment passed. It might've been seconds long, but to anyone, Odin would've sworn it was much longer than that. Odin heard motion in the room, but it could've been anything.

Then the door swung open. Odin snatched up his P90 and almost pulled it high enough. High enough meaning that once its barrel reached a certain height, he'd just hold the trigger down and pull it up more.

It was somebody he recognized but hadn't really spoken with. Odin didn't know her name but he'd been calling her Overruling Schoolteacher because she seemed like the kind of person, outside of her job, and especially when she was younger, who'd been ignored, pushed around, and who now – being, he guessed, a K-3 teacher – could tell people what to do. She controlled their children, so the parents couldn't guilt her into doing anything, and the children were so young they might not have any concept of bullying anybody around, so they were her slaves, and she could stop anybody she wanted to from being a bully. Odin didn't know her name but she had ugly, been-ponytailed-too-long limp brunette hair that dropped just short of her mid-back, ridiculously big square glasses, about 150 more pounds on her than she needed, and extremely good taste in clothes.

"Hello, Odin!" she said. Something about her body language always annoyed him, but she was as polite to him as she was annoying.

"Is everything okay?" he asked. He looked at her like "Get out of my way so I can see," but not abrasively.

"Yeah, we haven't even been bothered. Oh! Let me just get out of your way here." She moved.

"Thanks, ma'am," said Odin, moving in.

"You're welcome."

Everybody seemed perfectly fine, if a little bored and high-strung at the same time. Roughly a third of the people were asleep. With the lights on in the gym, the place seemed much safer. The two cops' and lickers' bodies were also gone, and their blood trails and splatters were gone.

"Nothing happened at all?" Odin asked Overruling Schoolteacher.

"That's right," she said, smiling pleasantly, like he was about 15 years younger. As far as he'd seen she treated everybody that way.

"Cool," Odin said. He projected his voice: "Is everybody okay in here?"

The normal response – some people's silences meaning yeses, some people spoke. Nobody said anything amounting to a "no" or a "maybe," though.

Odin looked to O'Neill. "Where do you wanna have the meet? This would be fine, but it's kinda stuffy and I get a bad vibe being in there."

"A bad vibe." Like a question, but like to say it the way he wanted to, O'Neill would have to punctuate it with a period if he were to write it anywhere.

"Yeah." O'Neill stared at him. "Just answer the question, Chief."

"I guess we should do it in here. It's easy to protect and…nothing's gotten in, as far as anybody'll admit," O'Neill said.

"Yeah," Odin said.

"I get the impression somebody'd say something if…anything bothered 'em," Molly said.

"Indeed," Odin said. She smiled at him. He smiled back.

1:19 am Saturday – 14 April 2007

Nobody was asleep with everybody finally showed up. Odin, Molly, Marion, a few police officers and Drake cleansed the place. There were nine other squads tasked with doing that. After the firefight in the conference room, it seemed, Odin's group had killed all the insect/skeletons in the station that police elsewhere hadn't, and any gorilla groups larger than pairs either broke themselves up or had gotten killed before then. All the firefights after that went by quickly and easily.

Odin even used a Benelli M1 Super 90 for awhile, both to conserve P90 ammo and try the M1 out. The station had one P90 and one of its little sister, the Five-seveN, a pistol which Drake had. When Odin saw the P90, he said he'd kill anybody who dared argue with him over who would get it, but Drake really wanted to try the Five-seveN out. There was very little ammo for the pair, and Odin wanted to keep as much of it as he could incase he had to fight something armored, or lots of zombies at one time. A Benelli M1 is a Benelli M4's grandfather, and it only fires on semi-automatic. Unlike an M4, though, it's entirely black, and doesn't have a goofy telescoping skeleton stock. After the cleansing, Drake retired his Five-seveN and gave Odin all the rest of the station's 5.7x28mm ammo. Odin punched him in the face again afterward, for no reason. Not really.

Odin was shocked when the meeting/discussion ended because he'd been expecting it to go on for hours. He wasn't sure how it came to him, but his memory – what he had of it – told him that meetings of that type were always like that.

The meeting lasted about 10 minutes. O'Neill decided for his cops, and a few of the civilians decided for the civilians, that they'd stay at the police station. There were quite a few of each, and there wouldn't be any safe way to move. Odin decided to leave, though.

And then Odin left the meeting, wandering off with Molly, specifically to get a damn bottle of water in the second floor's lounge. They left most of their gear in the gym, but kept their sidearms, and then skipped away, holding hands.

1:24 am Saturday – 14 April 2007

"Are you really kinda…okay with all this? I keep feeling like you're gonna freak out somehow," Odin said.

"I'm great," Molly said, swinging their arms, "cuz I've got you. And you're perfect."

He kept forgetting she could sound so cute, even with the Beretta Px4 Storm he made her take jutting out her hip holster. Odin smiled. She smiled too, like she wanted him to kiss her or like she'd kiss him. He couldn't start leaning in.

Instead: "What do you wanna do next?"

"I don't know," she said, "but I think you're right about this place. I feel like something really bad's gonna happen here. I know I…might die, with everything like it is, but I don't wanna die here. I don't feel comfortable here."

"I thought we should go to Biskind," Odin said. "I know it's not much of an idea, but the only idea I have's to fortify the Rourke building."

"I like it, but why that one?"

"It's isolated, so while it wouldn't be easy to seal off all the doors in and stuff, we wouldn't have all the skywalks 'n' shit to worry about, like in the other buildings. It's completely hooked-up with communication, so we could monitor the news and stuff like that and maybe even use some of the news cameras for surveillance, it's four stories tall, so we could have an escape plan that was like, If the first floor gets breached too badly, we retreat to the second, and stuff like that, until we get to the fourth. If it's that bad, and we hafta leave or something, we make kind of a fire escape on the roof. Maybe we could have some kinda ride to that island thing for the childhood…center, on the first floor, then half a little path that goes into the parking lot from there."

"How'd you learn all that since you woke up in the Happenings Room?"

He thought about that, a little nervous suddenly, walking in a hallway in the second floor of the police station empty save for them. "I don't know," Odin said. "Sometimes things come back to me."

"Like how to use guns? Or kissing me exactly how I like it?"

"That's just far-fetched," Odin said.

She laughed. "I really do like it," she said. "You don't feel like you just forgot how to do everything. You never did."

"I know." He looked into her eyes as if for a solution. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I know that…some of the people in the gym look familiar, and they look at me like that, but it's like…Who are these people? I know I've met Marion before now, but I don't remember it."

"Is it like that déjà vu stuff at all?"

"Yeah," said Odin. "Almost every moment for me is déjà vu." They laughed.

"Sorry."

"No, that's okay. It's hard to accept that I forgot everything I knew and then woke up suddenly. I forget sometimes."

"Well that doesn't surprise me."

"Shut up, Molly," he said.

"Aw, honey, I love it when you call me Molly," she said. She took the hand not in his, put it under his chin and led him to her, advancing on him too, for a smooch.

"I thought you were gonna say you loved it when I told you to shut up," he said, on the way in. She laughed, and the burst of air from her mouth felt odd on his face.

Smooch.

Odin asked, "And how do you feel about me?"

"I'm in love with you."

"By how much?"

"I'm terribly in love with you."

He grinned.

"Say it back, okay?" she asked.

"I love you."

She smiled. It was the genuine kind, but it was so heartfelt that when Odin gazed into her eyes, the smile looked like it affected her entire body, that her whole being was smiling. It felt pretty good to him, too.

She let go of his hand and put her arms around the back of his neck. When he saw what she was going to do he stepped in too, leading his arms around her waist. He detached himself as much as he could – he enjoyed kissing Molly much better when they moved toward each other slowly, and when she initiated this, she did it pretty slowly. He was glad they'd just reached their destination, the lounge on the second floor; in the hallway he might've felt kinda self-conscious about liplocking. He swallowed and took a deep breath on the way in, at almost the same time Molly exhaled, and then their lips met.

Almost did. He pulled back a little, reversing his momentum. He made sure his lips grazed hers.

Molly opened her eyes and stared into his hungrily. He felt his animal side – which felt like about 5/6 of him – awaken then. He very strongly wanted to rip her jeans off like he was that strong and fuck her on one of the tables behind him until she screamed, to hell with foreplay.

He left one of his hands on her hip, but slipped the other between their bodies and held her face. Before then, she was the image of beauty – hungry, dark eyes, luscious, plump beestung lips with a little moisture on them, perfect, aquiline basic structure, her somewhat-curly brunette hair down, spilling past her shoulders, some into her eyes. Something about the room's lighting captured her so perfectly it was more than perfect, more than angelic. Not even his ugly hand could obscure that.

"I love you, Odin."

And then she made it even better, which he'd been pretty sure was impossible for however long they looked into each other's eyes before she said it. Maybe 10 seconds. He was so used to people looking away after one or two he wasn't sure what to think of that, but it made him a little uneasy.

"You can't say it back?"

"I'm always afraid that the one time I do you're…gonna say you don't love me anymore afterward." It was hard to say that. He felt tears come to his eyes as he spoke, and that made it all the more difficult.

"How could you think that?" Hurt, like she wasn't far from crying either.

"I don't know," he said. "Every time I feel myself about to trust anybody, I notice it and I completely pull away."

"Don't do that," Molly said. "I'm never abandoning you. I'd die before I did."

Was that a hot tear, clawing its way from his eye to beyond?

"Oh, honey…" she said, wiping it off. Something about how she did it just a little too hard made him cry-giggle. "It's okay, sweetie," she said, kissing him softly on the lips and then pulling his head into her shoulder. He didn't particularly struggle.

"I'm sorry I'm like this," he said, holding onto her for dear life.

"No, don't be. I love you just the way you are."

"How could that even be possible?" he asked.

"Shut up, Odin," she said, with a giggle, rubbing at his back reassuringly. He giggled too.

A few deep breaths. A few more sweet reassurances from Molly.

He resurfaced.

Pure loving eye contact, three seconds.

"I'm sorry–"

She nearly lunged forward, lips-first, latching onto his and shoving her tongue into his mouth with a fervor. He had no choice but to match her passion, and it didn't take long to rev up.

1:38 am Saturday – 14 April 2007

It's almost odd, Odin thought. When Molly couldn't take his patience anymore, she skipped from any kind of groping to leading his hand down her pants, and when he felt that already-wet holiest of holies meet his hand, his heart pounding, he felt like he knew it, like it was his somehow. He just knew what to do, as opposed to thinking about it. He glanced down about one time, and didn't really know why. He liked feeling her gyrate a little more than he liked watching it anyway. He kept wondering if she'd pull him in and kiss him, because she kept biting her lip and grinning and letting out teeny moans, like she was ashamed to, and clutching at him, with either the hand that lead him down her pants – that was still holding onto his forearm – or the hand on the back of one of his arms. She was part-next to him on a bench and part in-his-lap, which was how they had to sit for him to access her, and their faces were close.

"Am I doin' okay?"

"You're doin' better than okay, baby," she said. She looked like she was enjoying it, but for whatever reason, Odin wouldn't let himself believe she was. "Can't you tell?"

"I can, I'm just nervous."

She urged him into her, pulled him a little closer. "Don't be."

A minute of pure bliss and ecstasy.

A quiet smash, far off in the distance like if they were near it, it would be much louder. A lot of glass just broke somewhere near the front of the 'station. And then, a hurricane of gunfire – a lot of shooters, maybe with semi-automatic weapons, but it definitely wasn't one or a few shooters with automatic weapons. There was much too large a variety in the different pops and bangs of the guns' reports.

"Fuck," said Odin. He didn't move, but now he wasn't in the mood anymore.

Molly felt the same way, but, Odin noticed, didn't push his hand away or anything. "We should check that out, shouldn't we?"

A long silence. He seriously considered ignoring whatever made the initial explosion of noise, and what was still shooting a lot of different guns. The rate had died down considerably, but it was definitely still there.

"Yeah, we should." He looked from her clothed crotch to her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize!" surprised that he would. "You were perfect." She held his face. "And you are perfect." She kissed him, a long smooch, with a soft "mmm" noise she punctuated with the "wa!" afterward.

"Seriously? You're not mad?"

"Fuck no!" She laughed.

"Good."

1:41 am Saturday – 13 April 2007

"A couple'a those gorilla things busted through the glass," said Karl. He and a lot of other uniformed police officers were there. Running to the scene with Molly, Odin felt like order was coming back to society, at least in the police station – maybe 50 of the civilians had gathered to see what was happening, and some of the cops were doing crowd control. The rest were zombie-poppin' like Karl.

"I'm disappointed," said Odin, his hands finding his pistols without asking him whether he wanted them to. The Eclipse Custom II and the USP45 Tactical, Odin had to admit to himself, felt pretty good like that, though.

"I was too," said Karl. "Wouldja mind covering for me? My mag's gonna run dry." Meaning his Colt M4A1, or maybe M4, magazine. Unlike Marion's earlier, the magazine loaded in his M4/A1 was the normal kind, which held 30 rounds.

"Sure thing," said Odin, stepping into Karl's place. The zombie flow stopped a few feet into the lobby, and all the police officers were gathered in a half-circle about 10 feet away from that point. Odin headshot plenty. Sometimes thinking about who they might've been hours ago, if not minutes or days, made him hesitate. One of them looked like the kind of high school girl who said she was much older than she was – 14 or 15, saying she's 17, 20. One of them looked like a dentist – that was the impression Odin got, although he was wearing what looked like clothes to sleep in – a very soft-looking blue t-shirt, very well-contrasting dark blue shorts, a robe. There was a nurse, a construction worker, some submissive-looking white-collar guy, and the rest of the town, or so it seemed. And no matter how many Odin shot, a second later, if not less than a second later, there would be another in that zombie's place. The moan was really the most overpowering thing. If all the zombies were completely silent, it would be okay, that their eyes were so unearthly, impossibly blank and cataract and white. It would be okay that none of them really had any emotion in their looks, pain or hunger or otherwise. It might even be okay that Odin could see how must of them had died – a bullet wound in the shoulder, blood loss from getting an arm lopped off. But wait…doesn't it work through blood? If somebody died of blood loss, wouldn't it not be able to reanimate them? Whatever that meant, even though the line of zombies to get into the station was endless, it was their collective moaning that bothered Odin. It felt like they were stepping inside of him, next to his heart, and trying to moan with whatever frequency they needed to to make his heart explode, and it felt like they weren't far from finding it.

About eight seconds later Karl tapped Odin on the shoulder. Odin stepped back and adored Molly for holding his arm lovingly when he was next to her again.

"Thanks," Karl said.

"Yeah," Odin said. "What's the plan here? Are we pushin' em out, or are we readying the next layer of defense or something?"

"The second one," Karl said. "We didn't seal off the doors behind us, but we should have. So that's what we're doing."

"How are you gonna be able to hold the zombies back and seal the doors off at the same time?"

"We're gonna give a couple guys a lotta ammo, and they're gonna hold them off. Then they go to the second floor with this fire escape ladder we just lowered."

"Good plan," Odin said.

"Thank you."

"Did you just make that up, or was it really a plan all along?"

Karl looked at Odin and grinned. "It was the plan all along."

"Sure it was."

"I'll see you later."

Odin walked off, leading Molly with a hand on her back. "We're gonna check on Marion," he said. "I don't care what we do after that."

"Wanna help with the barricading stuff?"

"I will," he said. "So yeah, I guess."

"I don't want to either. I guess we should, though."

"After that, wanna talk about what to do next?"

"Yeah. So far I like your Rourke idea, but that might be too big for us."

"I know. There might be people there already, too."

"We'll figure something out, baby."

"I know."

1:46 am Saturday – 14 April 2007

"Hey, cutie," said Marion. Odin very nearly flinched at hearing that, buckling the load-bearing harness he'd taken on as part of his new gear loadout.

"Never sneak up on a violent man with a P90 in his gun hand," said Odin, turning around. He'd kind of felt her coming up, but more importantly, when he heard her, he suddenly knew that she wasn't alone. Molly, next to Odin, still fighting with her vest to get it on herself, did flinch, but Odin felt like he was the only person who noticed that.

Marion laughed. Nervously, a few of the people with her did too. At the risk of stereotyping, thought Odin, I think most'a those folks would declare themselves "emo." He wasn't wrong in thinking that – predominantly, very tight skinny jeans, very much layered, very much dark hair hanging in a lot of faces, skateboarding shoes and Converse All-Stars, tight shirts, some tight hoodies. Odin wasn't emo but he dressed like he was sometimes. His tan jeans, for example, while "slim fit," looked relatively emo, although they were too light to be purely that way, and the pink-purple Francis Ford Coppola shirt under his gear was pretty tight too.

"Hi, folks. My name's Odin," said he. He had a feeling he could close his eyes, spin a few circles, throw a punch and hit four My Chemical Romance fans.

There were nine of them. Five of – all but one a girl – said it back pleasantly, two some were genuinely kind of quiet, one tried to look too cool to respond and one said it back flatly. All but two of them introduced themselves, and Odin forgot all their names instantly.

He looked to Marion.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said, pleased he'd ask. The way one of the emo guys looked at her Odin got the idea she'd been flirting with him, but now, the way Marion was focused on Odin – walking closer to him – screamed, "I like nobody but this man." The emo guy did not like that, and looked at Odin as if to send him a message. Odin glanced at the emo guy to reply like "I don't have the patience for shit like that. Look at me again and I'll kill you." The emo guy submitted instantly, which disappointed Odin. Meanwhile: "I was kinda worried about you, though, hotness. Are you okay?"

"Yup," said Odin. "Molly is too."

An exchanged look. Molly knew Odin mentioned her to keep Marion aware of that. Marion looked at Molly like she'd get Odin to discard her eventually, definitely.

1:52 am Saturday – 14 April 2007

Helping O'Neill, among other cops, block off the doors that led from the lobby to the rest of the station:

"I know there were reports of the zombies 'n' stuff before it got like this, but had you read anything about the gorillas or the other stuff?"

O'Neill, hefting a card table with Odin, said, "Not that I remember. All I heard about were dogs acting funny."

"Huh." Odin helped turn the table on its side. Two other cops moved in to nail the thing down. "Hey, uh, I'm sorry I didn't get back in time to help the officers in the lobby. I wanted to."

"That's fine," O'Neill said. "You have a skillset better for other things, though." Read: You're not expendable. Odin grinned.

"I'm glad you thought of that."