Author's Note: Thanks heaps for all the reviews and stuff, not enough time to reply to everyone individually, I just thought I'd get this chapter up as soon as possible. Enjoy!

------------------------------------------------------

The next thing Kendall knew after she'd killed Jason was that she was running from the house, crying and dry reaching, and somehow she ended up in the middle of the road. That was when she'd almost been hit by Seth's car. And he saved her.

Kendall stared at Seth's profile, light intermittedly cast across his face from the street lamps. Apart from the black and blue hair, he looked like a normal guy. But he's not normal. Not a lot of people would have helped me today, she thought.

Seth had rescued her in a time where things were at their darkest for her; he had been kind to her, he had cared about what had happened to her, he worried about her welfare. In the midst of all the terrible things they'd gone through that day, he was still concerned about her.

It was bizarre to have a virtual stranger take care of her, but she was dealing with it.

"I hope the zombies don't catch up to us," Bryce said from the back seat.

Seth glanced his rearview mirror, a bemused look on his face. "The zombies?"

Bryce nodded, and turned around to look back at the road behind them. "Yep. That's what they are."

Kendall exchanged a surprised look with Seth. "How do you figure?" Seth asked.

"Duh," Bryce said with a little smirk. "Don't you ever play video games, or watch those kind of movies?"

Seth shrugged, tightening his grip on the wheel as he avoided a few abandoned cars with bloody windows.

"Well yeah, sure. But that's different, this is real life. That kind of shit doesn't happen."

"Look around. It's happening," Bryce replied simply with the conviction of someone much older.

"Fair enough," Seth said, his brow furrowed in thought.

Kendall considered what Bryce was saying. It did seem like the logical explanation. The bites, the hunger for human flesh, the way they wouldn't die from anything less than a head shot. She'd heard of crazier things, and after everything that happened today, she needed an answer for it all. This would have to do.

"I believe you," she said, glancing at Bryce.

"Are you serious?" Seth asked disbelievingly.

"Yeah, I am," Kendall answered. "It makes sense."

"But there's no way..." Seth trailed off.

"Unless you have a better theory, I'm sticking with this one." She stared at the darkened road ahead, thinking about Jason, thinking about Mel. She wasn't even sure if her parents were alive or dead, or worse. So many questions needed to be answered.

"Okie dokie," Seth said with a sigh. Kendall knew that he believed what Bryce had said, and just needed time to come to terms with it.

They traveled on for a while in silence, every now and then navigating their way around deserted cars and trucks, or corpses, or stray things running around. They're called zombies now, Kendall thought. At least they had a name for their foe, and could work out how to deal with them.

"There's more in the group," Bryce commented, squinting out the back window. "I think."

"Fantastic," Seth replied dryly. "How fast are they moving?"

"Not that fast now, but when we slow the car down I'd say they'll catch up to us in about ten minutes," Bryce estimated.

"Fuck," Seth muttered, looking at the rearview mirror. "Do things really have to keep getting worse?"

"Yep," Bryce answered, pointing ahead with a shaky hand.

Kendall and Seth both stared at the road in front of them. More zombies emerged from the darkness and were headed towards the car. Fast.

Seth stomped on the brakes, causing all the passengers to lurch forward. "Oh come on!" Seth groaned, both annoyed and scared. "Shit. What do we do?"

She said nothing. She watched the zombies in front that moved closer with alarming speed. There must have been at least thirty of them. They would be on the car in a minute. Maybe less.

"Just drive through them," Bryce suggested. His kept twisting his head, looking at the zombies coming from the front, then checking the ones behind. "If we go back it won't do any good, there's more of them."

Kendall saw out of the corner of her eye that Seth was watching her. She faced him. "I don't know," she said simply. "We don't have a lot of options."

Seth watched the approaching zombie swarm, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "Fuck it," he decided. He floored it.

Kendall braced one hand on the door and the other on her seat. Oh shit, I can't believe we're doing this. She watched with wide eyes as they crashed into the first lot of zombies. Some glanced off the windshield, and the car heaved as they drove over several bodies. Even with the windows up and all the horrible crunching noises of corpses being flattened, she could still hear the unearthly screeches from the zombies. It shook her to the core.

The car started slowing down as the wheels battled to climb over the zombies underneath, and more and more started banging on the windows. They were all around the car. She wasn't sure if the zombie group behind them had caught up yet, but it seemed like it. They were everywhere.

"Just - fuck - off!" Seth shouted in frustration, attempting to shake the zombies. A few more went down as the car slammed into them, but whenever some were taken care of, more took their place.

A couple of particularly vicious zombies hammered on the back windscreen, causing it to crack. "Come on!" Bryce yelled from the backseat, his voice breaking with fear.

Kendall shut her eyes and tried to block out all the noises; the zombies' wails, the sound of bodies breaking underneath the car, Seth's scared and angry curses, Bryce's whimpering. After a few seconds all the sounds stopped except for the reassuring hum of the engine. She hesitantly opened her eyes and found herself looking out a bloodied windscreen that showed a clear road ahead.

"Yes!" Seth shouted out of the blue, then started laughing. "Holy shit, we made it!"

Bryce was too busy staring at the crack in the windscreen that was the difference between him living and dying to join in with Seth's celebration. Kendall smiled reluctantly. For now, the worst was over.

A few more minutes of silence passed until Seth said, "Hey, I think that's Luke's car." He slowed the car down to check out a car that had crashed into a street light. The front end looked almost completely crushed by the force of the impact, but the rest of it was in decent shape. "Yeah, that's the Ford all right," Seth muttered to himself.

He stopped the car and pulled the gun from his jeans. "Stay here," he said to Kendall and Bryce. Taking a breath, he unlocked his door and stepped out.

She watched with apprehension as he raised the gun and scanned the highway for any zombies wandering around. They had gained a lot of ground since the attack, but there wasn't nearly enough space between her and the zombies for comfort.

Seth looked in the window, then with a puzzled expression, opened the driver side door. Kendall saw him lift something - it looked like a jacket, she wasn't sure - but she saw an unconscious guy leaning against the steering wheel, blood trickling from a nasty gash in his forehead. Luke, she surmised.

Seth walked back to the car, motioning for her to roll down her window. She did so, and saw a look of worry on his face. "What is it?" she asked. "Are they all right?"

"Luke's okay, from what I can tell," Seth replied, glancing back at the car.

"And Leah?"

Seth cleared his throat. "Leah isn't there."