The Plague Spreads

It was hot. All around Sergeant Anthony O'Shea it was hot. All he could taste, feel, or think about was fucking hot it was. The smell of burning hair, paper and flesh clouded his nostrils and he felt the overall sense of disgust, despair and rage starting to take a toll on his sanity. Then, things began to spin.

When he came to, he was leaning with his arm against the side of a SWAT truck, puking his guts out. Beneath him, broken glass crunched under his boots. All the sudden, Anthony felt overcome with a new wave of nausea. His stomach shuddered and he let go, a new pile of vomit falling from his mouth and onto the ground.

A voice called from behind him. "Fuck, Sarge! Couldn't you be a little more subtle!",cracked Edgar Salas, rear guard for Anthony's SWAT unit.

Anthony puked the remainder of his lunch and with a spike of strength, flipped Edgar off and went into the rear of the SWAT van to get some water. Inside the van, Anthony paused and looked into the mirror. His light blue riot gear uniform was matted with sweat and dried bloodstains. His short, thin black hair was oily and smelled of cordite. Anthony snatched a bottle of water and tore off the cap, drinking it like an animal and not caring about the droplets of water that fell from his lips and onto the front of his armor. After finishing the water, Anthony took four more clips for his Colt M4 from the ammo crate in the van and put them in his side pack. Outside, rapid footsteps and shouting were heard.

"They're coming!"

Anthony jumped out of the van and ran with his fellow officers to the barricades. He came to a stop behind a police car's open door with Edgar. Edgar held his MP5 over the top of the door, gazing at the advancing crowd of undead cannibals ahead of them. Fifteen feet from them, a red line had been drawn. It was also known as the "Step over this and your dead" line. According to the rules of riot control, if the rioters stepped over this line the local police force were legally authorized to kill them. Today, for the first time in California history, this law was being put to test. Ahead of the line, a lone policewoman covered by four officers stood on top of a car with a bullhorn. She spoke to the crowd of advancing rioters, warning them that once they had passed that line that they would be killed. She knew they wouldn't listen, but it was her job to warn them so that in the future, when lawsuits were being filed against the LAPD, they could say that the rioters in Beverley Hills were warned that they would be killed if they came any closer.

Edgar looked over at Anthony. "This ain't no riot, man. It's a disease."

Anthony thumbed the safety of his M4 and bit his lip. He looked into Edgar's eyes and said with a sense of purpose, "I'll do whatever it takes to make sure I go home tonight. I've seen what they do. They'll take slug after slug and just keep on comin'."

Edgar listened to Anthony's speech, taking time to eye the advancing crowd.

"I'm gonna shoot 'em in the head. Fuck police brutality laws, I'm looking out for myself."

Edgar nodded solemenly, but his eyes still showed fear.

"The way some of them look…they shouldn't be up and walking around. They're supposed to be dead."

"GET READY!", an observer on a car shouted.

The thousand of L.A's finest officers got into combat positions simeltanously around the city of Beverely Hills and Downtown. The undead victims of the cannibal onslaught had sensed (correctly) that there was no more food in the inner city for them, so they pushed further uptown. The police were doing their damndest to make sure that the infection didn't spread into the Valley and beyond, so they hastily moved their officers to key points along the city where the dead were known to be advancing.

The first to die was the policewoman and the four officers along the barricades. The dead piled onto the car and snatched her by the ankle, pulling her down and into the swarm of dead, which rapidly bit into her body. The cops protecting her fired into the crowd blindly, ignoring the dead that came from behind and put them on their chests, and then swiftly killed them. The crowd moved forward more. Some officers ignored the one step over the line rule and began firing into the crowd. Some of the cannibals fell, while the stronger ones took bullet after bullet and walked still. Like an army, the dead kept coming, killing everything in their way. Anthony took aim on a group of dead ten feet away and pulled the trigger; killing four of them with a well-aimed burst into their heads Edgar rapidly fired his MP5 into another group of them.

Other SWAT officers threw live fragmentation grenades into the crowd, blowing apart hordes of them and sending chunks of flesh everywhere. Unfortunately, this also had the side effect of catching several blocks of street on fire. While the cops fought on, unattended and damaged vehicles came into contact with flame and naturally, exploded. Shrapnel and flame went everywhere, killing friend and foe alike.

Nearby building shook, coating the ground and everyone on it with eerie grey ash and broken glass.

The sudden explosions sent Anthony and Edgar to the ground. They quickly got up and assessed the situation. Fortunately, the explosions had also sent many of the undead to the ground. They would be getting up soon. Anthony took this as an opportunity to flee.

"There's too many of them. We're leaving." Anthony said to Edgar.

Anthony wasn't the only one with that idea. Around them, the surviving officers either still attempted to fight the dead, or were running up the street to escape them.

Edgar nodded in agreement and they both turned around and ran, occasionally turning around to shoot at the dead who were going a bit too fast.

The surviving officers of the Defend Downtown operation walked up the street in stunned silence. Some of them would attempt to contact HQ and ask for further orders. Others would go into the city and seek out information on family members or loved ones. Anthony and Edgar had other ideas. Knowing that Southern California was going to fall to the dead soon, they decided to gather up the fellow officers in their SWAT unit and head west, to the ocean. From there, they would go to one of the barrier islands on the California coast and settle there and wait for the plague to resolve itself. This would be a difficult operation, but Anthony knew that it was the best one.

Whether or not the cop's idea would work, he knew that it was better than sitting around waiting to die.