UPDATE: Sorry about the major delay. This chapter is a complete rewrite and wouldn't ever have gotten started if I hadn't just seen the best addition to the zombie pantheon EVER! Grindhouse was an awesome experience. And reminded me of why TS has always been one of my favorite guest actors in zombie flicks. So on to the story.

Let me know... good, bad, indifferent. :)

The Flood – Part III

"Ana!!" Sarah lunged onto the hunched blond woman and yanked her up so hard that the sobs were torn right out of her throat. "Oh fuck me." Michael's body lay sprawled in front of them but she didn't miss the evidence that lay around him. The analytical part of mind spat out the word 'incriminating', but her hind brain was already screaming 'danger'. These words were still too full of zombies to make any movements safe.

Ana moaned. A sound without hope.

But there wasn't even enough time for that. Sarah nodded to the three guards who'd followed her out. "Let's get moving."

"Do you want to bring his body back with us?"

The answer should have been yes. He wouldn't come back. The hole in his skull, the cracked pieces of bones, brains and blood cemented that. But there was no place they could bury him inside and although Sarah would never have told them, there was no use anymore. A body was just the leftovers. Michael, whatever had made him human, was long gone. True death or a bite. They all led to the same thing, Michael wouldn't ever come back, a fact that Ana understood all too well.

"No." Sarah slung Ana's arm over her shoulder and noticed, almost in surprise, that it was a beautiful day. "No time."

They ran for the entrance. Zombies began to come through the trees, mostly lurchers, many who'd traveled miles from their city of origin in search of blood. Like the people they came from, some were meant to be wanderers.

Two of the guards set up a perimeter as Sarah led Ana back through the gates towards the entrance. But she released the shell-shocked woman as she saw that the box cover was closed. She couldn't remember, not in the heat of the moment, whether they'd closed it behind them. It locked from the interior, a protection, and as she laid one hand against the warm metal, a sentence.

She yanked against it with a grunt of panic.

"What's wrong?" The guard, Tim, asked next to her. "Let's get inside. They're coming."

"It's locked."

"What do you mean it's locked? Why is it fucking locked?!!!" Tim leapt onto the cover and bashed at it with his rifle. "Let us back in!!!"

Ana answered him, her face drawn with grief and anger. "They left us out here to die."

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Kenneth lunged at Rhodes from the entrance of the brig. He was nearly twice as big as the Captain and he fully intended to put that weight into throttling the punk. Two inches into the movement, McDermott and John grabbed a hold of him and pinned him back. Weapons snapped up onto the movement and he snarled in rage.

"She's alive!" He roared. "She's alive."

Rhodes flipped the pistol in his hand and backhanded Kenneth casually. Except a casual backhand with a pistol ripped the skin off his nose and snapped his head backwards. Blood rushed down over the big cops face as he slumped slightly into the arms of the men that held him.

"You won't get away with this." John said softly. "What are you going to do with all of the people here?"

"As of right now, the hospital has been locked down. No one in or out."

"No supplies in either." A soldier cackled behind him. "Which leaves more for us."

"I'm going to kill you." Kenneth spat through the blood but Rhodes grinned happily in reply.

"You fucking try."

There was nothing else to do. Another step backwards and the doors slammed shut in front of them. Prison.

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Jayne wasn't thinking it was a pretty day. She was well and thoroughly pissed off. Her bruises had solidified into a sheet of green, purple, and a nasty shade of indigo that were spread across her body like a living tapestry. The roof had turned out to be a horrible place to survive. Hot during the day, cold at night, and it had rained three times, soaking her every time. The last one had left her with an aching cough that crept up from the pit of her lungs and bit into her chest with every breath.

The dead around the police station had continued to build up, day by day. It was like she had her own private fan base, and every one of them wanted a taste of her.

So it was with half an eye towards the fact that she'd been drinking whiskey without any food that she discounted the first rumble of an engine. But it drew closer and finally she capped the bottle with a frown.

The world exploded.

It threw her backwards and she skidded across the gravel topped roof with a scream of pain. One burst of flame and fire after another and she realized that someone was dropping missiles onto the street in front of her temporary residence. She'd landed spread-eagle and quickly curled up as debris, body parts, and something that smelled awfully like a colon landed around her.

When the fuselage stopped she peeked out of the shield of her arms and staggered to her feet. The street in front of the station was gone, completely annihilated along with the crowd of zombies that had once stood there. She cursed softly under her breath and let the slim ray of hope start to blossom. Kenneth and the others had come for her.

"Hey!" A shout echoed up to her and rode forward on the full throttle of motorcycles as a phalanx of bikes rounded the corner of Main Street and gunned their way toward her. Everything from a few sizable hogs to crotch rockets with two people perched on their narrow frames. Behind them lumbered a behemoth that might have been a tractor trailer in a previous life – before it had discovered steroids.

"Hey!" The rider who had shouted it, shouted again and Jayne stepped forward to the edge of the roof. "Usted parece mierda." He said with a grimace as he caught sight of her. "What did the gato do to you?"

"The cat?" Jayne was confused, as confused as what her eyes were telling her through the fog of liquor and exhaustion. "What are you talking about, Cahill?"

The man looking up at her was the mirror image of a man she'd killed. Maybe twenty years younger, but it was all the same. It was too much. The sun beat down on her fiercely and Jayne Canton passed out from shock. The thought scrabbled at her brain, that she was too fucking close to the edge, but she couldn't grab hold as she toppled and went over the side.

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Your official preview: Bub's in the lab, Sarah and Anna are outside, and Kenneth et al. are in the brig...and those are just the problems at the complex. Jayne might survive the fall - but who will she wake up too?