Moments after the shots fired, Matthew and Emily came rushing into cube land. They were met with the sight of Jonathan, his rifle raised in the ready position, and the twins cowering directly in his sights. The bodies of both Vicki and Thomas sprawled on the floor between them.

"Put the fucking gun down you crazy sonuvabitch!" Emily yelled, pulling out her own weapon as she did. Her actions had the opposite effect than what she'd planned though. Instead of getting the kids out of danger, it got worse.

"Die you monsters!" Jonathan hollered, firing wildly over the kids' heads towards Emily and Matthew. "Sammy! Cynthia! Run to me now! I won't let the monsters get you!" he called to the terrified kids. Jamie had let out a shrill scream when the last shots had fired, diving to the floor and clawing at her brother's legs, trying to get him to join her. It didn't take much encouragement to get him to join her.

"Jesse, Jamie, listen to me,Ineed you to crawl into the closest cubicle and hide under the desk," Matthew called out, crouching in the doorway of the nearest cubicle. "Can you do that for me kids?" He watched as both Emily and the kids carefully crawled out of the line of fire by way of response.

"Sammy! Cynthia! I insist you come to me! I'm the only one who can save you now!" Jonathan commanded. His eyes were wild, and spit was forming in the corners of his mouth, if he'd been an animal, Emily would have sworn he was rabid. "Don't trust the monsters! They just want to make you like them!"

"Emily?" Jamie cried out hesitantly, peaking through the cubicle doorway, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Shhh...It's going to be okay honey. I just need you and your brother to stay in the cube. Do what Matthew said and get under the desk. Jesse? Did you hear me? Get under the desk, get as low to the floor as you can and keep your heads down." She tried to keep her voice calm to lend courage to the kids, not that Jonathan was making it too difficult for her to appear the sane, safe one.

"Sammy! Cynthia! I'm warning you, if you don't come to me now, the monsters will get you. If the monsters get you..." he shook his head wildly. "The monsters can't get you, I won't allow it. But they want to, oh how they want to. The longer you wait the worse it will be. Come to me NOW!" he screamed so loudly that it echoed throughout the entire office. His fingers squeezed reflexively on the trigger, the shot punctuating his words.

"Jonathan? You need to take a chill man," Matthew said, wanting to calm the other man down, but not really knowing how to do it.And his attemptonly earned him another round from the rifle.

"Jonathan? You keep talking to Sammy and Cynthia, who's that?" Emily called out, half expecting another shot in her direction. In amazement, she listened not to the sound of a rifle blast, but to a semi-coherent, if irrational, reply.

"The children. Sammy and Cynthia. Phil's children. I was too weak to save their Daddy, but I won't fail them too. It's up to me now, there's nobody else. That's why they have to come with me now. I can protect them, keep them safe from you monsters."

Keeping her voice as level as possible, she tried to get him to understand what he was doing. "I know you feel guilty about the way Phil died Jonathan, but these aren't his kids. Vicki, the dead woman on the floor, the kids are her niece and nephew. We're not monsters, we're alive, just like you, just like the children. Put down the rifle and we'll all walk away okay, I promise you."

"But that's impossible. Phil didn't have a sister," he said, confusion filling his voice. "You're just trying to trick me, you want the children to become like you!" A shot rang out once more.

"It's no use Em, I don't think you're going to convince him that those kids aren't who he thinks they are," Matthew called quietly.

"So what? We're just supposed to let him take the kids? Is that your idea of a plan?"

"That won't be necessary," Sean's voice said quietly, as he walked right into plain sight, facing Jonathan from about 10 feet away. Even before he'd finished speaking, he'd pulled his pistol from where it was hidden in his waistband and fired. The bullet caught Jonathan squarely between his eyes and his body dropped to the ground. The kids, who'd been peeking out of the cube just in time to see Jonathan fall, began screaming again, and Emily dashed to their cube, falling to her knees and pulling them into her arms.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" Matthew demanded, mostly out of shock from seeing Jonathan's corpse fall, nearly sprawled out behind the others that already littered the floor. The dead man's eyes stared, unseeing, towards where Matthew stood, and the medic had this overwhelming feeling that it was accusing him of something, like it was somehow his fault that Sean had shot him.

"Taking care of a problem none of the rest of you seemed to have the balls to do."

Silence met his words, with the exception of the twins' still hysterical crying. Natalie and Allen, who arrived just in time to see Sean shoot Jonathan stood uncertainly near the door. Finally, Natalie moved forward to help Emily with the kids. Scooping Jesse into her arms as if he was a baby rather than a 9-year old, she announced, "Let's get them out of here, they shouldn't have to keep seeing the b-o-d-i-e-s."

Sniffling loudly, Jesse managed to choke out, "You can go ahead and say it. Bodies. We can spell you know, we're not little babies."

"Of course you're not kiddo," Natalie told him. "I'm just trying to keep myself from feeling old ya' know. What with two big kids like you around." She smiled at him, and he buried his face into her shoulder, sobbing loudly again. Her smile faltering, she acknowledged silently to herself that even if they made it out of all this alive, the twins would never be kids again, not really.

Lot's of arguments and tears later, an eerie silence spread throughout the office. Sean and Aaron had handled the impromptu 'burial' of their dead, wrapping them in blankets and pitching them off the roof. Allen and Barry worked feverishly to clean up the gore left behind, the blood slowly congealing on the floor, along with the bone and brain particles. Tara tried to keep Justin preoccupied while Emily, Natalie and Matthew attempted to calm the twins down. Eventually, Matthew was forced to give them a mild sedative. Once the sedative kicked in and the kids fell asleep, they moved them to the far side of cube land where beds had been set up as far away from the site of the carnage as possible.

"Are you sure we shouldn't just move them into the security office," Emily whispered, gesturing towards the kids.

"We could, but I think that's where the AA meeting is going on," Natalie replied.

"AA?"

"Assholes Anonymous. Sean and Aaron."

"In front of Tara?"

"Actually, I had Barry help her up onto the roof. I think we girls need to spend a little time to ourselves."

Emily looked perplexed, but Matthew's return kept her from asking any more questions.

"Look, why don't you two take a break. Justin and I will take care of the kids if they wake up, but I'm pretty sure with the dosage I gave them they'll sleep through till morning."

Justin, free from Tara now, had sat down beside the twins' sleeping area. The teen was wracked with guilt over what the kids had seen. He was sure everyone blamed him for not paying close enough attention to them when they'd slipped away from the roof. It was something that he wasn't going to let happen again, he owed it to his Mom to keep the kids safe.

"If you're sure..." Emily said hesitantly, reluctant to leave the kids alone.

"He's sure," Natalie told her pointedly, taking hold of the other woman's arm and directing her towards the exit. "Now, let's go bury the hatchet and get all our girly issues resolved."

"Uh, Emily, why don't you leave your pistol down here," Matthew suggested, a little leery at the thought of all the girls being together, and armed.

"Not a chance in hell," she told him. "Around here, the bad guys all seem to crawl out of the woodwork." She thought darkly of Sean, but allowed Natalie to drag her away and up onto the roof. There, Tara and Barry sat, an open bottle of wine sitting between them.

"Tara, you think the wine's a good idea? What with the pain pills and what happened the last time and all," Emily asked, slipping back into motherly mode. "Oh my god. I can't believe I just said that! I'm starting to sound like my Mother!"

"Well, at least you admitted it," Barry said cheerfully. "That's the first step."

Ignoring him, Emily continued. "So now that we're all up here, what exactly is the plan? Are we supposed to sit around listening to the dead moan while we talk about boys and do each others hair or what?"

"Please, as if there's a chance in hell that I'd let you touch my hair," Natalie smirked.

"Ladies please, let's not ruin a perfectly nice evening with all your fighting," Barry suggested.

"We're not fighting," snapped Emily.

"Look, the reason I brought you all up here is that I think there's something you all need to know about Sean," Natalie announced, catching everyone off guard by the seriousness of her tone and the subject matter it entailed.

"He's an unreasonablesonuvabitch? Sorry luv, we all know that one," Barry replied.

Plunging forward and ignoring the rest of them, Natalie continued with her story. "When we first escaped from the Fort, there were ten of us total. And that was before we picked up Allen hiding in the bus garage. Sean seems to have a tendency to 'sacrifice' the people he declares to be the weakest links when it serves his purpose."

"So his shooting Jonathan..." Tara prompted.

"Was just part of his normal MO."

"Who was it?" Emily asked, a chilling look entering her eyes.

"Who was who?"

"The people he left behind to die."

"There was an elderly woman named Beverly. She was the first to go. Her gout chose the wrong time to start acting up, so when those things started getting close to us, he rushed the rest of us ahead and she just couldn't keep up. I remember hearing her pleas for help. Sean shot her in the knee cap, I'll never forget the look of her face with those things swarmed."

"But you guys didn't do anything to stop him?" demanded Emily.

"Like what? We were running for our lives. I just barely caught it when he pulled his gun out and I figured he was going for the dead closest to her. It wasn't until I heard her scream that I turned and saw what he'd done. The next one he took out was Lynette. She was just your average stay at home mom sort like Vicki. I think she had some kids that went to the same school as Justin, but they didn't make it, not to the Fort anyway. She was really quiet, helped out with the kids and stuff but otherwise she didn't make waves."

"So what happened."

"After we'd lost Beverly, Sean insisted on our moving towards the highway, kept saying it was more open, didn't give the dead people anyplace to hide. And when we got there, there was wrecks and abandoned vehicles everywhere. But we kept walking, between the cars, hoping to God that those things were hell and gone from there."

"But they showed up," Tara said.

"Bingo. You could hear them snarling one second, and then they just appeared out of no place."

"Jesus," Barry murmured. "What'd you do?"

"There was some kind of SUV sitting there abandoned. Sean yelled at us to get in, he'd jumped in the driver's side, got it started and we'd all managed to pile in put Lynette. She'd just started to climb in side, and those things were almost to our bumper and he just floored it. She tried to hang on, but lost it when he plowed his way off the road and into the median to get away. If he'd have waited for just two more seconds, she would have made it and we still could have gotten away."

"Okay, so that's two down," Emily said a little coldly, what happened next.

Natalie pulled out another smoke and lit it before continuing with her story. "We lost Marcus at the bus garage. He was a young guy, a grad student, and the one who came up with the idea of heading to the bus garage. We were running on fumes in the SUV, so it was either go on foot again or find another sort of transportation. We just plowed through the fence and headed towards the nearest building and found Allen. The noise we'd made crashing through the fence is what drew the dead there I think, and of course, nobody thought to lock the doors once we made it inside the garage. And we wasted so much time trying to fuel up one of the buses and find food and water to take with us. Marcus was on his way back to the bus with some bottled water when they nabbed him."

"Okay, this one I'm having a hard time seeing as his fault," Barry said, and Emily silently agreed, waiting to see how the other woman would explain this one.

"He didn't lock the door now did he?" she snapped, taking a long hit off her smoke.

"Well, no, but apparently neither did anyone else," reasoned Emily. "Now, I agree that the first one was definitely murder. The second one sounds suspicious, but in all fairness it could have been an accident. The third one, that just sounds like extremely bad timing on that Marcus guy's part. And by the way, that's not a cigarette you're smoking right now either, is it?"

"No. Not that it's any of your business."

"You mean it's pot?" giggled Tara.

"Yea, so?"

"In the immortal words of Chris Tucker honey, 'puff puff give.' Don't be selfish now," Barry said with a grin, reaching out his hand. Natalie narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him, but decided to relinquish the joint.

An hour and severalfat oneslater, they were still trying to continue the conversation, it just wasn't going very smoothly.

"I'm telling you, the fucker killed them all!" Natalie was back to insisting.

"Bullshit. He may be Super Jackass Man, but I have to agree with Em, two of those don't sound like anything more than accidents," Barry said, munching on a small bag of chips.

"Can we be done talking about Sean please? I'mso sick of talking aboutMister Creepy and personally I think Matthew's tight little butt is a much better topic," Tara interjected. "Barry, pass the chips."

"Get your own frickin' chips, these are mine."

"Matthew is too old for you Tara, why don't you take Justin for a test drive and stick with something your own age."

"Can we get back to the topic of the fucking sociopath murderer please?"

"I can't go get my own chips! Hello! Injured here. And what the hell do you mean that Matthew is too old for me?" Tara demanded, whirling towards Emily. "You're just jealous 'cause you picked crazy soldier man to screw and he's getting more and more like his supposedly phony online profile every day."

"Tara, I swear to God if I wasn't so stoned right now I'd bitch slap you off this roof. And for the record, Aaron may be the crazy soldier guy, but at least I have a sex life. And believe me, crazy or not he was totally worth it. And he's not even close to being that phony profile. I don't see him stuffing any dead things and there is an unusual abundance of them laying around you know."

"Jesus, would you people listen to yourselves," Natalie said in disgust. "How about we start thinking about the group as a whole instead of who's eating what and who's screwing who!"

"Huh. You know, for some reason I just can't get that Tom Petty song out of my mind," Barry said, completely off topic.

"Tom Petty? Wasn't he like a race car driver or somethin?" Tara asked.

"No, Tom Petty is a musician, Richard Petty is the race car driver you idiot. What, have you been living under a rock or something?" Natalie scoffed.

"Hardly."

"What song?" Emily prodded, grateful for the distraction. Had she really just bragged about having a sex life? With Aaron? Geezus she needed to lay off the pot, she thought, taking another toke anyway.

"You know, that one that goes something something, let's roll another joint, something something, you don't know how it feels to be me. At least, I think that's how it goes," Barry replied. He was shaking an upside down bag of chips, trying to dislodge any remaining crumbs. Damn he was hungry.

"I guess none of you are going to take what I've said seriously, at least, not serious enough to continue discussing it like rationale people. No, instead just go ahead and talk about old rockers and your fucking sex lives," Natalie said in disgust.

"We've been discussing something?" Emily asked sarcastically. "And here I thought all this time it was you telling us your version of events and then getting belligerent when we question any of it."

"Just forget it. When Sean decides it's time to sacrifice you we'll see who's laughing then."

"Okay, to be fair, you're the one who brought weed to this little party and then expected us to be able to talk rationally. Big mistake. That being said, what makes you so certain that Sean is going to 'sacrifice' one of us? We're all trapped here now, what would the point be?" Emily asked.

"Do you really think he has any intention of staying here?

"Where we gonna go? How we gonna get there? Face it Natalie, we're trapped here."

"Hardly. But I'm not wasting any more time with the likes of you. I've warned you, if you don't want to listen, it's your funeral." She climbed to her feet and disappeared, back into the building.

"If that was her idea of how to win friends and influence people she definitely didn't read the same book that I did," Barry yawned.

But Natalie actually smiled quite proudly to herself as she fairly skipped down the steps. He'd be happy with what she'd done tonight. Lost in these thoughts, she wasn't prepared for the hand that suddenly clamped around her mouth and pulled her into the shadows of the steps.

"Did you do what I asked?" a masculine voice whispered.

"Of course."

"And they believed everything you told them?" the voice asked again, a muscular forearm coming up to wrap tightly against her throat.

"Everything. There's no way they trust either of them."

"You're sure?" he pressed, squeezing his arm tighter,coming dangerously close to crushing her throat. It only eased up when she let out a small, barely audible whimper of terror.

"Yes! I swear. They think the two of them are satan's little minions themselves. I did everything you asked."

"Excellent." The arm around her throat suddenly dropped, and she found herself whirled around, a pair of hard lips crushing down on her own. "Excellent."