Alice

Mira was bandaging the bite on the back of Shun's leg. He sat quietly while she finished wrapping the gauze, and scanned over our new hideout. "What kind of supplies do you guys have?" he asked hoarsely. Keith, who was repairing damage done to his crossbow from his fall off the roof, told him, "A first-aid kit, some blankets, water, canned food, and a couple of weapons."

Shun nodded and returned back to a state of silence. My eyes fell back over to Keith. He was waiting for Mira to finish treating Shun's injuries so she could get to his own. His leg was propped up on a chair; the fall had either sprained or fractured his ankle, and Keith wasn't too thrilled about it.

He and Ace were the ones who protected to group, and to be hurt meant that he might not be able to keep us safe. But whether he was injured or not, I felt that Keith was still a valuable asset. Mira snipped the excess bandage away and said, "There. All done."

Shun quietly thanked her, and she hurried over to her brother's side, where she began to check over his ankle. Mira might not have been able to shoot very well, but she knew a few things about medicine, which was a very good thing when one of us got hurt.

Keith flinched when Mira touched his swollen ankle. "Quit being such a baby," she told him while tying an ace-bandage around the injured area. He narrowed his eyes at her, but quickly realized that there was no point in even trying to say something back.

Taking my attention away from them, I turned it back on Shun. The gauze around his calf muscle was already starting to turn red with blood. Baron, who had been standing by quietly, finally asked the question that had been on all of our minds.

"Shun, how did you exactly get out of that bunker? There were way too many zombies for even you to fight through." All eyes were locked on Shun as we awaited his explanation. He gazed down at the tiled floor and told us, "Apparently, those things can tell when somebody is infected…They didn't even so much as run at me while in the bunker, or while I was wandering through Vestal…..It's like they can smell the virus."

I never thought the zombies would be smart enough to detect who was infected and who was not. Then again, that would explain why they never attacked and tried to eat each other. Ace, arms crossed over his shoulders, asked, "If they don't try and attack you, then how did you get that bite on your leg?"

Ace's gray eyes were narrowed at the bloody bandage. "One tripped and fell, and when it did, its teeth caught me. That bite ended up infecting me twice…," his voice trailed off after that. Shun was infected twice? With that said, I was starting to wonder how he was still able to sit up on his own.

He already looked paler than normal, and like he was becoming emaciated from the virus. But if he hadn't been bitten, would that have meant that Shun would live a little bit longer? Most likely. Regardless, his time was limited when he first showed signs of being infected.

A still silence fell over the room, but was broken after a bit. Keith, who was still being tended to, spoke up and told Shun, "We didn't want to leave you behind, but we were pressed for time to get out of there without being bitten." Shun looked up at the spiky-haired blonde, and gave him a single nod.

"I know," he said quietly. I could see that Shun didn't think that we abandoned him back at the bunker without a second thought. He probably knew that we took into account that he was infected, and on death row as it was. I walked over to where Shun was at and sat on the check-out counter beside him.

"I'm just glad that we have you back," I told him. Even if it's only for a little while, I added silently. Shun smiled weakly at me and said, "Yeah. Me too." I glanced down at his arm and saw that more of it was turning to a bluish-black color, along with a bit more of his neck.

I was sure that more of his body was becoming discolored as the virus ravaged him, but I didn't want to know how much. Shun coughed into the crook of his arm, leaving a tiny red spot of blood behind. A hollow feeling formed in my chest when I saw him like this.

This was far from the person he used to be, making the reality of his allotted time all the more profound. "So," Ace started, obviously trying to bring our thoughts to something else. "How bad is it out there?" Baron nodded and added, "Yeah. We only ran through the alleyways, so we didn't see very much of what was going on in the city."

Shun's eyes shifted over towards the iron-barred windows. Sighing, he told us, "It's how you'd think it'd be. The city's overrun with those things, that's about it." The silence returned once more, and during that time, we heard something that sounded like the cutting of helicopter blades from above.

All of us looked around, confused by what was going on. "Do you think the military is finally stepping in?" Baron asked. Shun narrowed his eyes and said, "The military has probably been gone since the outbreak, just like everything else. Odds are this is just some survivors that found a helicopter."

The roaring of the chopper-blades continued to buzz around outside and above the buildings. "Well, if they're survivors, shouldn't we try and flag them down? They might help us," Ace suggested. Shun shook his head. "You can only trust other survivors as far as you can throw them," he said flatly, "Alice and I found that out the hard way."

I cast my eyes down and nodded, remembering the awful experience back at Murucho's mansion. One of the survivors there turned against everyone, tried to kill Dan, threatened me, and released a hoard into the mansion, which took the lives of everyone except Shun and I.

"He's right. When something like this happens, you can only trust those that are close to you…..And even then…..You still have to keep your guard up," I said sadly. At one point during the outbreak on Earth, Shun started to lose his control and humanity, nearly becoming a threat to all of us.

In fact, he ended up killing one person, but that was right before he was taken away as an experiment. I cringed at the memory of those dark times, and hated that we were now having to go through them again. I leaned my head against Shun's shoulder, feeling fatigue taking over after the long day that we had been through.

As I laid there, I was able to feel Shun's body heat. He was burning up with fever, one much higher than what he had back at the bunker before we were forced to leave. I then reminded myself that he had been infected another time during the time we were separated from each other.

Sneaking a glance at him, I saw that he was struggling to hold his eyes open. When was the last time he took a rest? Before we left the bunker? Knowing Shun, I was probably right. "You should get some sleep," I told him. Keith chimed in and added, "We all should. It's been a long day for everyone."

I pointed to one of the blankets that we found this morning, and asked Baron to bring it over to me. He did as I asked, and when I had the blanket in my hands, I draped it over Shun's shoulders. He quietly thanked me.

Ace intertwined his fingers behind his head and said, "Wait a minute. What if he turns while we're asleep? I mean, he already looks like one of those things, so he can't possibly last much longer, right?" I narrowed my eyes at Ace and tried to convince myself that we had said was uncalled for, but I couldn't.

It was the truth. Shun could turn at any moment. It could be in a day, hour, or within the next five minutes. Baron raised his hand and said, "I can stay awake while everyone is asleep and keep an eye on him." Mira shook her head.

"No, Baron. You need to sleep just as much as the rest of us." He lowered his hand back down to his side and didn't say another word. Shun sighed and closed his eyes. "Tie me up or lock me in a room somewhere, I don't care. I don't blame any of you for being cautious around me. Heck, I would probably do the same thing if it were somebody else in my position," he said solemnly.

I took his hand into mine and said, "Don't say that, Shun." He glanced over at me and asked, "Why? It's the truth." I gave him a sad look and sighed. "I guess you're right." Keith pointed towards the storage rooms and said, "We can't lock him in any of those rooms since the locks and knobs are broken."

When we first found this place, Keith and Ace discovered that almost every door had been kicked in, most likely from when the virus broke out and people started robbing anything and everything. "Guess that leaves tying him up," Ace said stoically. While searching through the rooms this morning, Baron had found a bit of nylon rope; just enough to either get around the waist of a skinny person or to tie hands together.

Ace went into another room and returned with the rope in his hands. Shun sighed, looking more tired than before, and stood up. "Where do you want me?" he asked. Ace looked around and pointed over to the iron-barred door. "How about there? It seems to be the only place."

One would have thought that Ace would have been getting a kick, but even I could see that he didn't want to be doing this. Perhaps he felt pity towards Shun for all that he was going through. Ace might have even felt the same pity back in the bunker when Shun first fell ill, but he refused to show it in order to try and keep us all held together.

Because if we saw that even Ace was out of it, then it would only let us know how bad things really were. He wasn't trying to be mean or crude, but rather, trying to help keep us shielded from hurt. Ace tied Shun's hands to the iron bars that ran up and down the front door of the store and stepped back. He then turned to face us and said, "Well, I suppose we call it a night now."

Layfair

Flanked by two of my loyal assistants, I walked down one of the long hallways that made up my underground lab. Things were going well with our research, but our test subjects were starting to run low, and we would need more soon. So, I decided to take up this opportunity to search for any locations of survivors while up in the air.

Our original reason for going out into the city via helicopter, was to gather data on the virus and how quickly it was spreading so we could record it down for when we sold it as a biological weapon to other worlds; nobody would buy a product they knew nothing about, right?

Two double doors opened up ahead of us, letting in a bright light from outside. My two assistants and I walked through and out onto the roof of the building that rested on top of my underground lab. The roof housed the helicopter that I commandeered when I first released the virus, and the military was wiped out in a matter of hours.

One of my assistants hoped up into the pilot's seat, and the other joined him in the co-pilot's. "Ready for take off," said the male assistant, which was the one flying the helicopter. He flipped several switches and the chopper-blades began to rotate.

I quickly hoped into the passenger part of the chopper and watched as the roof grew smaller and smaller the more we ascended into the air. Now, we were hovering over the ruined planet of Vestal. Smoke rose into the gray, dead sky from the buildings and streets below.

When I looked down, I could see seas and rivers of zombies moving along, hunting for their next meal. My creations. This is the work of my hands. And my colleagues said it could not be done. That I could not bring the dead back to life. What fools.

A slight grin crossed my face as I thought of how they must have looked when my creations came and tore them to shreds. The co-pilot, my female assistant, was peering out of the chopper's window and scribbling down notes of what the virus had done thus far.

I was still leaning against the open side door of the helicopter, the tail-end of my white lab coat fluttered around in the wind created from being at such a high altitude. My eyes scanned for anywhere that survivors may have been located.

If I saw people down below that were running in the streets, I did not want them as live subjects; odds were they were going to be eaten soon. What I wanted, were the ones who were smart enough to lock themselves up and try to make it as long as they possibly could in one location. Although, such a desire proved difficult to fill, for I could not see inside the buildings.

I would only have to settle for getting lucky enough to catch a glimpse of somebody on a roof or running into a building. My eyes continued to scan thoroughly at the streets below. I then caught sight of what appeared to have been a hoard at one point, but they were unable to walk, only able to crawl with their hands.

Their legs have been cut off. The amputated hoard was clustered all in one area, telling me that the people who did this, had to be nearby. I said up to my assistants, "I want Area C checked by the scouts tomorrow. Understood?"

They both nodded and finished gathering information on what kind of havoc the virus created. Once done, they turned the helicopter around and headed back to the lab.

welp, another chapter down. i thought i might have been lacking in creativity (seeing as how i wrote an eight page rough draft of my research paper for english III). i still hate the english language now soooo. ADIOS! read, review, and other things. ~Copperpelt~