The general mood throughout the office was one of jubilation. At last, proof stood before them that there were other survivors in this ruin of a city. Even Jonathan put in an appearance, drawn by the noise and excitement generated by the new arrivals.

"The dead have arrived and you're just welcoming them in with open arms. You should have let me take care of them when there was still time. It's too late now. Too late. Too late," he muttered repeatedly, hugging his rifle tightly to his chest. Aaron and Thomas both had pulled their own weapons out at the first sight of the crazy man, and now stood defensively in front of the new arrivals. But Jonathan just continued to mutter to himself, in a voice barely above a whisper, rocking from side to side as he did.

"Is there something we should know about here, Sarge?" Sean asked, stepping forward to join the soldier and the guard.

"This is Jonathan. I guess you could say he's not really playing with a full deck of cards anymore. The situation's been a little too much for him to deal with, he just cracked under the strain," Aaron explained, watching as Jonathan began to back away, undoubtedly retreating to his office once more.

"Right. So you thought it might be a good idea to give him a rifle. Is that it?"

"That's sorta our fault," Emily spoke up defensively. "The first night we were here, before Matthew and Aaron showed up, he was still pretty much normal. For a suit anyway."

"Normal for a suit?" the LT replied, the bare trace of a grin lighting his face.

"You know. A suit. Management type," she tried to explain. "Anyway, he seemed relatively normal when we decided to raid the arms in the security office and do a sweep of the building, make sure everything was secure. The mental breakdown came later, and by that point it was a little too late to get him disarmed, at least not without risk to the rest of us."

"And you just let that foolishness continue Sarge?"

"It was under control. We were in the process of isolating the mark away from the rest of the civilians. I was going to take him down and avoid any collateral damage, but you arrived before I could finish the job. Sir."

Emily looked at the soldier in amazement. Who the hell was he to be making secret plans of shooting Jonathan without even bothering to talk to the rest of them about it. Not that any of them would have really protested the idea, at least not very strongly. But still, the first chance she had him alone, the gloves were comin' off and she was going to be kicking a little ass, metaphorically speaking of course. The look on his face when he shot her a quick glance told her that he knew exactly what she was thinking. With that in mind, it took her by complete surprise when he pulled her out of the security office as Matthew was tending to Vicki's arm, and the rest of the newcomers were getting introduced to Tara and Barry.

"We've got ourselves a serious problem."

"What's this we stuff? As far as I can tell 'Mister Lone Ranger I'm gonna shoot everyone and not even bother discussing it,' the problem is all yours."

"Look, I know I probably deserve that for trying to save a little face in front of the LT like that, but this is something else entirely, and it's all of our problem."

His words had her attention now, just not how he'd hoped. "What do you mean trying to save face in front of the LT?"

"That after all the time we've been here I just let things with Jonathan continue at their status quo instead of at least disarming him. I couldn't bring myself to admit it in front of the LT."

"Why? Because you weren't acting like some kind of super soldier?"

"Little bit. But can we get back to something more important now?"

"More important than what could lead to some potentially hot make-up sex?"

He shook his head sadly. "Let's just shelve the make-up sex thoughts until after we take care of the problem at hand. Once that's dealt with I am more than ready, willing and able."

She grinned. "Okay, shoot."

"We've got to get rid of Vicki."

"You can't be serious."

"She's more dangerous than Jonathan right now, or at least she's gonna be."

"Aaron, that's insane. She's fine!"

"No. She may look like it right now, but she's far from it. That scratch on her arm is a death sentence. It's only a matter of time before she's dead. If we don't handle it first, then she'll be one of the walking dead, and we're all fucked then."

"No. It's a scratch, not a bite. The way you're talking, my god. You sound almost as crazy and paranoid as Jonathan right now. Is he starting to get contagious or something?"

"Look, when I was at Pastor. I saw some things..."

"What are you trying to say Aaron? Just spit it out."

"It's not just the bites that will kill someone and turn them into one of those things. A scratch that draws blood, or even just breaks the skin is enough to infect someone. And once that happens, there's no way to stop it."

"How can you possibly know that Aaron?"

"I was assigned to a top secret unit at Fort Pastor, studying the potential uses of chemical agents in warfare."

"Chemical weaponry! Isn't that what the whole war in Iraq was supposed to be about? Weapons of mass destruction. And this country's opposition towards them!"

He hung his head, reluctant to meet her eyes. "I was told that we were studying the potential uses of chemical agents in order to protect ourselves against them. It would be hard for a terrorist to try to take out an entire Army using bioweapons if the soldiers in question were already immune to the chemical."

"Okay, while I admit that there is a certain logic to that scenario, can you honestly tell me that everything that was going on there was strictly for defensive purposes? And what the hell kind of chemical weaponry brings the dead back to life!"

His silence answered her question. "Don't be too hard on the Sarge, Emily. He was just one of the drones in the lab. A little worker bee, just doing what he was told and not part of the inner intelligence circle."

The two both turned, startled, and faced Sean. "You said you were on the way to your new posting at Pastor, why didn't you tell me where?" Aaron demanded.

"Didn't seem important at the time. Besides, you weren't very forthcoming about it yourself. And I'm sure you would understand that any information regarding my involvement in the project was strictly on a need to know basis."

"I don't believe what I'm hearing here. In case you guys didn't notice, the Army is just a little bit defunct right now. And instead of telling us what you know, you two are prancing around trying having your own private 'who's got the biggest dick' kind of contest with your fuckin' top secret lab talk. Now I want some answers, and I want them now!"

"Damn Sarge, I didn't think ballsy, man-eating women were your type. Whatever happened to that Hooters waitress?"

"Trust me, the man-eating part is one of her more endearing qualities. And the Hooters chick...way fuckin' overrated man."

"Enough with the macho bullshit. I want to know what you know about this infection."

"It's a chemical compound we were developing that showed promise in the area of speeding up cell regeneration in damaged tissues," Sean explained.

"Fine. Now say it again in English."

"We were working on designing a chemical compound that would help speed up cell regrowth in damaged tissues. You've heard about those bandages that the soldiers carry with them in the field, the ones that are designed to clot blood faster?"

"Yea."

"This was intended to work in a similar life saving fashion. A chemical that could be either administered through an IV or potentially incorporated into the bandage materials to accelerate cellular regeneration. That means it would speed tissue regrowth, promote healing and reduce convalescence time. Imagine how many lives could be saved if we could start repairing the damage even before an injured soldier made it back to the field hospital from the front lines."

"So if this wonder drug is supposed to do all that why is it killing people and turning them into cannibals?"

"Cannibalism really is an improper term in this instance. It implies that those things are still human."

"Excuse me? I didn't realize we were arguing semantics here."

"What the hell is going on out here?" demanded Thomas.

"That would depend on how much you heard," the Lieutenant said blandly.

"Just that little bit about cannibalism."

"Oh, let me do a quick re-cap for you," Emily quipped, narrowing her eyes at the two soldiers. "It's seems GI Joe and his little boyfriend Captain Chaos over here want to kill that new woman, Vicki. And they know what it is that caused all this fucked up shit going on out there in the streets, in fact, they were in on it from the beginning," she finished bitterly. "Did I miss anything boys?"

"Nobody is killing anyone," Thomas enunciated tersely.

"I know the idea of killing someone, seemingly in cold blood, goes against all that boy scout, rent-a-cop training, but you have to understand something here, it's either that woman or us. There's no other choice," Sean reasoned.

"There's always another choice," the older man argued.

"Did you see her injury?"

"I don't see what difference that makes."

"Did you see the injury?"

"Yes! Dammit, is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Good. She was scratched before sunrise this morning, right before we made our escape from the bus garage on that rolling death trap. That means it's been about eight hours. Eight hours of the infection slowly entering her blood stream. She complained about it bleeding excessively, especially for such a little scratch. That's what all the minor scratches did at first. Then the ache begins, nothing major, just a dull throb leading into some serious itching. It's kind of misleading, like your average cut that begins to itch as it scabs over and heals. Once it reaches the itching phase, that's when you begin noticing what we call the spiderwebs."

"Spiderwebs?" Thomas prodded.

"Right. The veins leading away from the injured area all seem to become pronounced, almost black in color. The pattern takes on kind of a spiderweb kind of look, at least that's what those of us who have seen it describe it as. It's almost as if the infection poisons the blood, but we think that's what keeps it from coagulating completely after death. After that, the appearance of cold, clammy skin isn't unusal, but more often than not, it's just the slow death of every part of your body on a cellular level."

"Other than the excessive bleeding, I haven't seen Vicki exhibiting anything else like the symptoms you described. She's not gonna turn into one of those things," the guard insisted. There was the sound of someone clearing their throat from behind them.

"If I'd known we were all having a meeting out here I would have finished up with the wounded sooner," Matthew said.

"How is everyone?" Emily asked, terrified of what the answer would be.

"The young woman, the teen and the kids all seem to be fine, just a little scared out of their minds. The bus driver looks like he might have a mild sprain to his ankle. I can't believe he climbed up those steps the way he did. The mom is the only one showing any real sign of injury. There's a scratch on her arm that she says happened when they were loading on the bus this morning. One of those things was in the garage area, scraped her arm as she was loading her kids on board. Before Captain America here put a bullet through it's head, anyway."

"Just a run of the mill scrape, that's all?" Aaron asked.

"Yes and no. It's just a normal scratch, maybe about an inch, inch and half long, but it's already got a tremendous infection. I've given her some of the penicillin that was down in the pharmacy, but we'll want to keep an eye on it that it doesn't get any worse."

"Is that not normal? The infection I mean," Emily asked.

"It's not unusual for a scrape like that to become infected, especially when you consider what the conditions are like outside and the fact that there was a delay in getting it cleaned up and bandaged. But I've never seen one get this bad so fast. Weirder yet, there's no fever. I've never seen a wound infected that bad that wasn't accompanied by some kind of fever."

"We're gonna have to act fast," Sean said, pulling a 9mm pistol from where it had been concealed in the waistband of his pants near his spine.

"Just what the fuck do you have in mind?" demanded the medic, his eyes widening as he saw the gun.

"She's infected, we have to neutralize her."

"Neutralize her! Why don't you just come out and say you're gonna fucking kill her. Just corner her like some kind of wild animal and blow her fucking head off!" Emily said, near hysterical in her anger.

"You're not going to just blow her away like that, she's got a son in there, plus her niece and nephew," Thomas said, drawing his own weapon.

"Let's be reasonable here," Matthew said, stepping between the two armed men. "If she is going to become one of those things, we'll have to take care of her, eventually. But not before we know for sure that it's going to happen. In the meantime, I think the best thing to do is move her into one of those empty offices towards the back of the dating service. She'll be isolated away from the rest of the group, and we'll keep someone on guard the whole time."

"But the offices...that's just so close to Jonathan," murmured Emily.

"We'll be dealing with him too," Sean declared, checking the rounds in his pistol.

A/N: So, obviously we know who the first victim is going to be, now the question is, can you guess who she'll take with her?

D.S.