"This is a waste of time," panted Jonathan as the five of them labored to create signs to let rescuers know that they were there. "I haven't seen any sign of airplanes or helicopters all morning."

"All morning? For the love of God, we've only been out here for an hour," remarked Barry. He was trying to come up with a way to hang sheets over the sides of the building. Tara had spray painted things like 'SOS and 'Alive Inside' on them, hoping that they could use the things as signs to attract rescuers coming through the streets. Jonathan and the others were toiling away painting the roof itself with a giant 'SOS Send Help' that spanned nearly the entire roof, because, as Thomas had said, "If this doesn't get their attention, nothing will."

Below them, on the street, a small crowd had begun to gather near the building's entrances. They could also be seen streaming in and out of the parking garage underneath, almost as if they knew the five of them were in the building, they just weren't sure where or how to reach them. Off in the distance, random gunshots had echoed through the air sporadically all morning long, even before they'd come up to the roof. The shots briefly cut through the incessant snarls and growls from the mob below.

Pausing in her work, Tara stared down at the crowd in front of the building. "Do you think it's true what they said on the TV? That those people are actually the dead come back to life?"

Barry didn't even spare her a glance as he replied, "I don't know. I guess in its own, very bizarre, not to mention morbid kind of way, it makes sense. After seeing that guy in the stairwell last night... There's just no way he could have been alive, with the kind of injuries he had, the blood he'd lost... There's just no way. And his eyes, I've just never seen eyes like that on a human being, they just weren't right," he muttered, more to himself than the girl.

"So what are they then?" she pressed, wanting desperately to make sense out of her world that had been so completely turned upside down in the span of a single day.

"I don't know, I don't really think there is a word for them," he said, finally stopping to take in the view with her.

"Zombies," Emily's voice called from behind them. Finished with her part of the roof, she'd quietly walked up and eavesdropped on their discussion.

"What?" the pair of them asked, whirling towards the sound of her voice.

"Zombies. That's what all the horror movies describe them as. They're the walking dead."

Her words caused the others to pale visibly. Feeling Tara begin to tremble beside him, Barry tried changing the subject. "So what's next on our big plan to get ourselves rescued?"

"I don't know," his friend replied. "I really wasn't thinking that far ahead. I'm still dealing with the fact that we are now officially living in our own personal little horror movie. The complete imax experience even."

"What are we going to do about food?" Jonathan asked, as he and Thomas joined the others. "That stuff in the vending machines isn't gonna last us very long you know."

"Not with the way you've been eating it," Barry replied without hesitation as he watched in disgust while the other man open what had to be his fifth bag of potato chips since they'd gotten up that morning. Jonathan stepped towards him, one hand bunching into a fist.

Thomas quickly interceded, before the two men actually began exchanging blows. "We should be able to scrounge up some stuff downstairs in the restaurant, oughta be enough there to get us by until help comes. We can bring it up here, hole up and wait it out."

"Make sure we stick as much as possible with the non-perishables, preferably ones that don't need to be cooked," Emily added quietly, looking out over the city.

"What do you mean non-perishables," Tara asked.

"Stuff that doesn't have to be refrigerated. You worked in a restaurant and you don't know that?" Jonathan said condescendingly. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen. And I've been a waitress there for all of a week, excuse me if I don't know about food," Tara said defensively. "Besides, why should we worry about these non-peri-ma-thingies?"

"Non-perishables. We should be prepared if we lose power before we're rescued, otherwise, anything that needs to be refrigerated will spoil. There won't be any way to cook things either, short of building a fire somewhere," Emily said. She pointed towards clouds of smoke in the distance. "And I'm sure you can all see where that could lead."

"Why do we even need to bother bringing stuff up here?" Jonathan asked, his voice bordering on whining. "We can eat just as easily down there as we can in the office you know. It just seems like a lot of unnecessary work if you ask me."

"Oh come on people, is this gonna happen every time we make plans to do something?" Emily asked in frustration, looking at the faces of the others.

"Is what going to happen?" Barry asked innocently, silently hoping his friend would tell that lazy, fat ass Jonathan where to go.

Giving him a dirty look she replied, "All this asinine fighting. What's it going to take to get us all to just make a plan and stick with it? A fucking act of Congress? The way I see it, if we want to make it out of here alive, we work together, period."

"And just who exactly put you in charge?" demanded Jonathan. "Seems to me around this office I have seniority, not to mention I'm the one in management around here."

"Okay. And did that 'management' experience of yours include anything about survival in a crisis situation?" Emily replied. "Does anyone here have any kind of survival training at all?"

"I was in the Army, served in 'Nam from 70 to 71, so I think I know a little bit about survival," Thomas said. The others just shook their heads.

"What about you little miss know-it-all? What's your great survival background?" Jonathan asked imperiously.

"My Dad was a career Marine, trust me, he made sure all his kids learned how to handle weapons and survive in any situation," she replied. "I may prefer going for a manicure over a trip to the shooting range, but I can hold my own."

"Oh, and did Daddy have much experience with the living dead? Did he take you out shooting them often?" Jonathan said sarcastically. "Is that something you have to have a permit for? You know, like deer hunting or fishing?"

"No. But he did show me how to put a bullet in the heads of arrogant, condescending assholes. Would you care for me to demonstrate?"

That temporarily shut up Jonathan, and the others didn't say anything either, Thomas because she'd already said everything he'd been feeling, the rest because they knew deep down that she was right. Finally Tara said, "What about the body in the stairwell? Just the thought of going down the stairs, walking around with it laying there really creeps me out. I don't think I can do it."

"Emily and I took care of it this morning before the rest of you got up," Thomas told her. "Besides, it was a whole flight down from where we're going, you wouldn't even have seen it."

With a little more talk, they eventually managed to wrangle everyone downstairs to the restaurant, where they began loading milk crates full of supplies. Jonathan continued his whining, but in the end they all agreed to lug the crates back up the steps to the office area, unanimously shooting down the fat man's idea of turning the elevator back on and using that to move the food. Early in the afternoon, with the supplies safely stowed away, they all silently agreed that there was little more to be done besides settle in and wait.

It was about that time when Jonathan made the discovery that the television stations had all gone off the air. A few of the local ones were airing the emergency broadcast signal, with the same list of rescue station scrolling across the screen that they'd seen the previous day during the news reports. He sat there, slowly flipping through stations as he ate, hoping against hope that one of them would miraculously return a live broadcast to the airwaves.

Ironically, at the same time Jonathan made his discovery, Tara discovered that the Internet was still working. Unlike its normal up to the minute news, however, all the information she located was dated the day before. Unwilling to give up, she kept surfing the web, hoping she would find something, anything, that would explain what was going on.

Barry went back to messing around with member profiles in the company database, deciding that the best way to pass the time would be searching the files to find the perfect match for Emily, even if they were all most likely the walking dead by now.

Thomas sat in the security office, looking at monitors linked to the security cameras spread throughout both the inside and the outside of the building. There were a few more of the things outside the building, milling around the entrances as if they were waiting for something. Probably hunting them, he thought, if the news reports from the night before about them eating human flesh was true.

Sighing, he turned away from the monitors and stretched wearily, trying to think of a way to speed their rescue. He'd checked the phone lines when he'd entered the office, but they were still useless. Rising to his feet, he walked over to a corkboard mounted on the wall beside the office door. The board was filled with snapshots from a barbecue most of the security team had held the previous Fourth of July. Glancing over the photos, his eyes came to rest on one of himself, his best friend Charlie, who worked the night shift with him, and his son. He felt his heart clench in his chest at the thought of his son, the uncertainty of not knowing whether or not his only child had made it to safety in the midst of all this chaos. Pushing the thought from his mind, he glanced at Charlie's face once more. His friend had never made it to work that last night. Suddenly, he remembered the old police scanner that Charlie had kept in the bottom of his locker. Moving quickly, he headed towards the tiny locker room to search for it.

As Thomas searched for the scanner, Emily moved across the roof, looking skyward and silently praying for a helicopter to materialize into view. She raised a pair of binoculars that she'd swiped from the department store earlier to her eyes, scanning the city. Things appeared even gloomier through the binoculars than the security cameras had revealed to Thomas. Off in the distance, smoke billowed from a fire that appeared to be spreading across an entire block of old buildings with nobody there to stop it. Further beyond that, the normally busy freeway was now littered with abandoned vehicles. All and all, nothing very encouraging.

She tried to remember where some of the rescue stations were located, St. Verbena, that big church in the center of this old section of the city was one of them. It was still better than 20 blocks away, somewhere northeast of this building she figured. Twenty blocks or twenty miles, it may as well have been on the moon for all the good it would do them right now. Fort Pastor was another lost hope, too many of those things already swarming the building to try and reach a vehicle to drive the distance, no chance at all of going on foot. She was so lost in her musings that she almost missed the sound of a helicopter's rotor blades beating the air.

"Hey! Over here!" she hollered, waving her arms and jumping up and down. It didn't seem to notice either her or the signs on their building at first, but then gradually began to make a slow arc that would bring them in their direction. "Yes!" she yelled excitedly.

Down below Thomas finally made some headway with the scanner, only instead of police traffic, he was picking up military transmissions.

"Home base this is Alpha Fox One Nine, we've got two casualties on board in need of medical assistance, have just spotted SOS signs atop a building in old town, we're moving in for a pick-up then will return to base."

"Roger that Alpha Fox One Niner."

Thomas leaped to his feet and was almost to the door when it happened.

"Oh Jesus. No! Home base, home base, one of the casualties has turn..."

"Alpha Fox One Nine, say again...Repeat, Alpha Fox One Nine, say again."

A split second after the helicopter began arcing her way, Emily watched in horror as the machine suddenly tilted wildly to one side before rocking back and forth. Putting the binoculars to her eyes she watched as someone tumbled from the side of the Blackhawk helicopter, helplessly plummeting to the street below. As she continued watching the aircraft suddenly began spinning out of control, descending rapidly until it plowed into the side of a building and exploded. "No!" she screamed, dropping to her knees in despair.

Moments later, Thomas came bursting through the door to the roof. "What the hell happened?" he demanded when he saw Emily there. Tears streamed down her face and she pointed a shaky finger towards the crash site. "What happened Emily?" he asked again, more calmly this time.

"I...I don't know. One minute it was in the air, flying towards us...the next...boom," she told him haltingly.

Down below in the streets, the zombies staggered down the street towards the wreckage, lured there by the smell of burning flesh. Unseen by the pair on the roof, two people scampered through the recently deserted sidestreet, moving quickly towards the building, making a beeline for the fire escape. Both were armed with makeshift weapons, a broken pipe for one, a fireman's ax for the other. A few strides away from their destination, one of the creatures leaped out in their path, the man bearing the ax barely paused his stride as he swung, separating its head from its body in a single blow. Before the corpse had even fallen to the ground, the duo had reached the fire escape.

"Great, we're here, now how in the hell do we reach it?" the one with the pipe asked, scanning the street around them in search of incoming dead.

"Give me a boost, then I'll pull you up," the ax-man replied.

"No, how 'bout you give me a boost and I pull you up," the other insisted.

"Not with that arm you won't," he partner replied, pointing towards the makeshift bandage on his forearm.

"All right, just make it quick, I hate to think we make it this far only to buy the farm less than 10 fucking feet from our salvation." Squatting down, he cradled his hands for his partner, giving him the boost he needed to reach the fire escape ladder locked in place just a few feet out of their reach. Gaining a solid purchase, he bent down, offering his partner the ax handle.

"Grab hold, I'll pull you up," he said, straining to make good with his promise. Carefully, they made their way up the ladder, finally reaching the steps that wended their way from floor to floor, ending with a ladder from the fourth floor to the roof.

"Quit all that noise Emily, I think I hear something," Thomas said harshly, moving his head from side to side, trying to pick up the sound. In an instant, Emily was on her feet, pulling her revolver out of her belt where she'd wedged it. Thomas upholstered his own weapon, pointing with his free hand towards where the ladder to the fire escape was located. She nodded in understanding, and the two of them moved as quietly as they could towards it. Once there they waited, weapons drawn. A quiet clanging began echoing up towards them, something was definitely coming up the fire escape and moving fast. Wide eyed, Thomas and Emily looked at each other, steeling themselves to face whatever was coming for them.

"Jesus Christ!" the man toting the fireman's ax exclaimed as he came face to face with the barrels of two pistols.

"Who the fuck are you?" demanded Emily, surprising Thomas over how quickly she'd regained her composure over the helicopter crash. The girl was tough, there was no doubt about that.

"Matthew...Matthew Burns," he said in surprise. "Me and my friend here are just looking for a place to lay low , wait out the worst of this, whatever this is."

Backing up, Thomas gestured to Matthew to come up onto the roof. "Thanks," Matthew said hesitantly before introducing his companion. "This is Aaron. We spotted your signs earlier, figured we might be safe here for awhile."

Emily stared at Aaron's bandages. "You're wounded, what happened? Have you been bit?" she demanded.

"Nah, he sliced it diving through a window, couple streets over. We got pinned down there and separated from the rest of our rescue team," Matthew explained. Looking at him more closely, the other two realized that he was clad in the tattered remains of an EMT uniform, his friend was in regular civilian dress, excluding the military issue combat boots on his feet.

"So what's your story? Where's the rest of your team?" Thomas asked.

"We were dispatched out of Fort Pastor yesterday afternoon, before the shit really hit the fan," Aaron explained. "We were sent out in a convoy of Humvees and ambulances to St. Verbena's, the big church over that way," he gestured with his injured arm. We were told that it'd been compromised, had orders to bring anyone still alive find back to the Fort. It was a suicide mission from the start, they swarmed us as soon as we got near the church, and just overran us. The crowd was so thick, we couldn't hardly move, the lead vehicle...well...the driver couldn't bring himself to plow down people in the crowd, so he brought the whole convoy to a standstill."

"They started climbing on our vehicles, literally pulling men right out of the turrets in the Humvees. Fully armored vehicles, and they were totally useless to keep us safe from them," Matthew added. "After our turret gunner got pulled out, Aaron here just went ballistic, somehow made a U-turn and got us the fuck out of there."

"We tried to make it back to the Fort, but the streets were so jammed up with those things. By the time we made all our twists and turns to get away from them, we were lost," Aaron continued.

"And then we ran out of gas," Matthew added sheepishly.

"After that, it was just a matter of staying one step ahead of those things. We spotted those signs and, here we are," finished Aaron.

"Is there a chance we can walk out of here?" Thomas asked. "We could find a vehicle, make it back out to the Fort."

"No."

"But.."

"No, there were six of us in that Humvee when left the Fort, we lost the turret gunner before we left the convoy, the other three all fell while we were on the run. There's no way we'd be able to make it to a car to get out of here, not unless you've got one parked downstairs somewhere," Aaron said bitterly.

"So it's back to the waiting game," Emily said sadly.

"I'm afraid so," Matthew agreed. "As far as I know, this building is the only thing besides the Fort that's really a safe place to be right now."

"What about a radio?" Thomas asked. "Don't you to have some way of contacting the Fort, letting them know where we're at? They could evac us."

"We had a radio," Matthew said.

"Had? What the hell happened to it?" Emily asked.

"It, ah, kind of got eaten. About the same time our radio man did," Aaron told them.

"Shit."

"Precisely."

"We may as well head on downstairs, you can meet the others, get you some food or water if you're hungry," Emily said. "Take care of that cut on your arm."

"How many of you are there?" Matthew asked conversationally as they descended the stairs.

"Five of us total, we're holed up on the fourth floor in the dating service's offices. The rest of the building is clear, we've got it locked down as best we can,"Emily explained.

"Why don't we head on down to the security office before we go meet the others, there's a first aid kit that might be useful for your arm, and there's something I think you all should see," Thomas told them.