I turned and walked away from the blood-spattered doorway where the body of my friend Darrell was now laying. Whatever hell had been let loose in this town had managed to get inside him and turn him into a monster. Those statements alone would have been enough on any other day to get me committed, but right now the only living souls around had seen it all first hand and were in just the same shape I was. I wondered if this was what "combat fatigue" felt like.

Resting the shotgun on my shoulder I tromped back down the stairs, heading for the front door. Braddly ran up behind me, still glancing around corners, apparently fearing the arrival of more canine monsters.

"What the hell, Scott? You can't really be thinking about going out there?"

"Haven't seen any zombies in the daylight. And we can hear that chopper coming and take cover. Our best chance is to make some ground while the sun's out."

"Make ground to where?"

"Anywhere… anywhere where we can get some food and weapons and hole up for awhile."

I reached the door we had come in through. No sounds were to be heard.

"I wonder why they aren't out in the daylight," Braddly mused.

Jeff eased up to the wall, looking at me, his expression was hard to read but I think he looked surprised.

"Instinct maybe…" he muttered, "Maybe the sun rots them faster and they can feel that."

"Actually," I butted in, "I think it's because the sunlight blinds them…"

The other two just kinda stared.

"Think about it. You seen one of those corpses blink? The sunlight would burn out their retinas real quick and then they couldn't see anything. I reckon they cant see too well as it is with their eyes all dried out anyway . The sun would render them completely blind."

Jeff and Brad shrugged as I unbolted the metal door and looked outside. There was nothing in the alleyway, and I couldn't hear the killer helicopter's blades. So I lead the way into the street. Mara and Wedge rustled inside my backpack, poking their heads out. I knew we had to recover some supplies. We were low on food, and most of the stuff we had scrounged up was lost when the police car went up in flames.

The streets of my hometown, once familiar, now seemed alien. The crashed or abandoned cars, the blood-stained walls of the buildings, the haunting silence, all made this once friendly environment utterly alien to me. I'd already lost two friends in to this horror, Wednesday, and now Darrell. Darrel by my own hands… No! I mustn't think of it that way. He was changing. There was nothing else to do. If I hadn't he would have killed us.

I blinked back the tears and wiped my face on my now rather grungy sleeve. Jeff and Braddly were walking a few paces behind me. No one was talking. What was there to say. Idle conversation was pretty much thrown right out the window at this point. "Hey read any good books lately?" "No but I did blow the face off a good friend of mine." Yeah right. Even Braddly was quiet and he was normally a complete chatterbox. I was beginning to worry about us… not just in the sense that there were things and people trying to kill us… but in the sense that we were all starting to withdraw a bit.

I wonder if soldiers felt this way in Vietnam.