2. Act 2

**A/N: Sorry, not in Samantha's POV. Sue me.**

**Act 2: '**_**Burying the DEAD'**_

_3 days later; somewhere near Baton Rouge, Louisiana-_

"Damn, they're everywhere!" Dempsey growled through clenched teeth, jerking the wheel of the truck to the right as one of the walking dead shuffled into the path of the speeding vehicle.

Samantha was thrown against the side of the pickup truck's bed at the exact same time the M16 kicked against her shoulder, firing a single round that zipped harmlessly off the pavement next to the once-human that she'd been aiming for.

"UGH, fuck Dempsey! Learn to drive sometime, vy don't you!"

There was a metallic crunch as Jake ran down a body standing in the road, chunks of raw red meat and parts of limbs sailing through the air. Takeo hung off the passenger side of the truck, holding onto a handle inside the cab. He blew a puff of air out of the side of his mouth, narrowing his eyes against the sun to pick out the monsters staggering towards them on the horizon. He was out of his element.

"_To 'run and gun' "_ He thought. _" is dishonorable."_

Like a flash of lightning, his right hand wielding his katana lashed out; catching one staggering beast in the neck at roughly 70 miles per hour, the combined force of the trucks momentum and the swing easily severing the thing's head from its torso.

"Suck on this, hellpigs!" Nikita spat, standing up in the pickup bed and cradling a tinted green glass bottle. A few feet away, squinting down the iron sights of the M16, Samantha could smell the bottles contents. She smiled, taking an appreciative whiff. Gasoline.

Fire began to bubble from the neck of the bottle as Nikita flicked up a flame on the lighter to the gasoline soaked rag that protruded from it. Her eyes danced over the small clumped groups of them that shuffled along after the truck as she mulled over where the best place to throw it would be. Their sunken, pale milk colored eyes followed the retreating teenagers with a look that was devoid of any perceptible emotion save for one: hunger.

The Russian girl hurled the flaming bottle in a high arc with a masterful home run-style pitch. The Molotov exploded at their feet, bursting into a devastating mini-storm of orange and purple flame. The undead things seemed to ignore the blistering flame that clung to them, burning their tattered, blood-stained clothes from their gaunt; rotting frames. They kept walking forward, aware only to one animalistic need: they needed to eat.

_**POW! POW!**_

The body of one of the closer ones jerked backwards, grunting as a bullet took it in the shoulder; this was followed by a 'crunch' as the next round pitted a crater in its skull, a streamer of beautiful, viscous red splashing skyward.

Samantha bared her teeth in a grin that was half of satisfaction at her accuracy, half of the pleasure she derived at the brief suffering of the thing. Her smile drooped as she pondered, _"Hmm, but can they even _feel _the pain? Not as good as if they were alive "_

She removed her eye from the iron sights as the flaming corpse crumpled to the ground some 150 yards away. "Teehee! Guns are fun!~"

"_Silly German girl."_

The Russian teen slung the AK47 off her slender shoulder, sliding a classic black banana style magazine into the receiver and pulling back the slide with practiced ease; the wind whipping her dark ebony hair about her face. She kneeled down next to the blonde German girl, taking a rest on the top of the pickup gate as the truck sped forward.

Spying the silhouette of a limping human in the distance, Jake grinned wolfishly as he floored the accelerator, the truck's engine roaring like a lion as he steered the truck into just the right path to bring it on an intercept course with the single undead beast.

"Chew on this, freakbag!"

_Whumph. _The steel of the truck's grill crumpled as the walking carcass was demolished, the heavy vehicle plowing into it with such force that its arms and legs were sent flying as it was smashed by the tons of rolling steel. Jake watched as the corpse rolled past the truck in a blur of red, flesh and clothing being torn as it scraped against the hot pavement. Flicking his gaze back to the road, his dark blue irises widened in horror before he slammed on the breaks; finding his voice.

"AW, SHIT!"

Before him the two lane road was clogged with cars, some burning, most with doors ajar or half off the road. A few had collided with each other or had ran off the road and smashed into the faces of the road side businesses. Aside from the problem of the road being blocked, a thickly packed mob milled about in the crashed automobiles and trucks. A small group seemed to be attacking a minivan. The car alarm was blaring as the undead hissed and moaned at the vehicle. Biting with open mouths against the glass of the windows and pounding with rotten fists against the steel doors. More were pushing and shoving to get into the back of a half-open horse trailer, their sheer weight and numbers and combined strength rocking the thing and the pickup truck it was hitched too. The inside of the trailer was a roiling mass of limbs, blood and meat. The scared whinnies of others of the animals trapped inside were hardly audible over the screaming and the meer sound of that they made eating with their faces and the ripping of flesh.

"_Dear God " _Dempsey thought as the truck ground to a halt. "_How many are there?"_ He tried a quick scan of the stumbling, groaning hordes; trying to estimate their numbers. 10, 15, 20 No, 30

"Fuck." He swore aloud, losing track and vowing that someday he would dig up the asshole who invented math and give him a kick in the balls sometime soon.

God, this sucked. They had somehow managed to get to fucking Louisiana without a map, and now this. What a great day.

Several of their heads whipped around at the sound of the trucks tires squealing, hunks of blood-red, raw meat falling from their gaping mouths or clenched in their hands; blank eyes searching hungrily for their next meal. There was silence for a moment as time stood still, then one monster stood straight; Jake shivering as the hooded eyes peering out of the disfigured face locked with his own. Then it screamed and sprinted forward.

In a dance of shining steel, Takeo had already severed both of its arms and floored it with a piston-hard kick to the chest. At first it struggled to stretch its neck and bite his leg as he stood with one foot planted atop it. The point of the katana straight through its skull calmed it and it was made still. The dead stood confused for a moment, comprehending him as if saying "_Did he _really _just kill one of us?" _as Takeo casually wiped the blood and muscle from the swordblade onto the dead man's threadbare polo.

"Girls," Jake whispered to the two teens in the pickup, who were already standing, guns limp at their sides and gawking at the mob ahead of them. "Get ready to run."

The Japanese transfer student challenged the others with dark eyes like black steel, daring more to attack. Time once again came into session as the horde left the old kill and charged, limbs windmilling about in a haphazard run towards them as they screamed and grunted for blood.

Drawing the antique Japanese Nambu handgun from its holster as if he had all day, he calmly pulled back the slide and popped two rounds into the head and chest and head of the forerunner, running the second beast through and finishing that one with a single additional round in its head as he pulled his katana free. Nikita shook her head, returning from her daze, and began firing indiscriminately into the charging mass of bodies; finding with relief that Samantha was doing the same beside her.

With so many of them packed so close together, it was hard not to miss. Bullets immediately found their mark among the monsters in the horde, splashing red into the air left and right as the deafening crack of gunfire filled their ears.

"TAKEO!" Dempsey screamed, unholstering the Colt 1911 pistol at his belt as he gripped it by its barrel and shattered the windshield with it. "Get your ass in this truck THIS INSTANT!"

BOOM! BOOBOOM! Jake fired a heavy .45 caliber round into a fiend's eye as it began to climb up the grill of the truck, mangling its head as Takeo slammed the door; Dempsey discharged a few more rounds into the multitude of flesh eaters, almost simultaneously stomping the gas pedal into the floor.

"RRARghh!"

The pickup did a burnout for a split second before knocking Nikita and Samantha on their butts in the pickup bed as the vehicle sped into the mass, a blur of red as they were run down, being smashed under the truck as the air came alive with the screams of the dead, the shattering and crunching of bone, and the sickening squish of heads popping underneath the tires.

The truck sped left, making a U-turn straight through them and succeeding in turning the truck around at least. "You're lucky you didn't fucking get bitten!" Dempsey remarked with a glare to Takeo as he spun the wheel. As the truck spun, Samantha gave an unhinged looking grin to one of the monsters reaching for them in the pickup bed. With a malicious thrust she drove the barrel of the M16 into its eye socket with a disgusting squelch, splattering both herself and Nikita with flecks of gray matter and blood as she pulled the trigger, its cranium bursting. The Russian teenager looked on in horror at the crazed look in Samantha's eyes and the sadistic smile on her face, watching the thing fall only to see that the other girl had blown a hole straight through its head the size of a fist.

The gunshot echoed throughout the area, off of buildings, reverberated through the entire neighborhood. Inside cars, houses, restaurants, more animals, once human, perked up at the sound. They stood, pinpointing where the noise had come from.

_FOOD _

"Damn!" Jake swore, revving the engine and shifting gears. The truck was going nowhere and they had gained virtually no ground.

"Shit " Nikita muttered, taking the risk of a second to look down to the wheels at what was slowing them. She turned, calling to Jake in the driver's seat. "_Der'mo_, they're guts are slowing us down!"

"The entrails and blood do not provide enough purchase or friction for us to move, it coats the asphalt! We'll have to fight!"

"Shit " Jake looked to his left and right, sizing up their chances. The dead were advancing quickly, too quickly.

"I Oh, _fuck_!" Dempsey stood up in the driver's seat, banging his head on the roof and forgetting that he was in fact sitting in a truck surrounded by walking dead people and not outside at the shooting range. Well, at least he wasn't outside, anyway. "I mean I have an idea!" he amended, rubbing his head angrily.

Takeo rolled as eyes as the horde began to shake the truck, pressing against the chassis from outside. "Dempzey has an idea. Oh, God help us." He lamented in mock horror, more in awe that Dempsey had had an idea in the first place rather than the fact that it may very well get them all killed.

"Fuck off, zipperhead. Just listen up."

A few minutes later we find Nikita sweating bullets as the truck was rocked back and forth, she and Samantha huddled together towards the back of the pickup bed; trying to escape the countless hands reaching into the bed to get at them, constantly grasping as they struggled to climb over each other and get into the truck. The two teens had long since abandoned shooting into the crowd, it only seemed to aggravate them and add more fuel to the fire; increasing their numbers with every shot exponentially. Nikita inwardly thanked God that Jake and his father had added giant aftermarket wheels to the truck making it about a foot and a half taller. They could probably reach into the bed of the pickup had it been the height of your average pickup truck and they would be dead.

This was evidenced by the gradual trickle of flesh-eaters walking towards the truck at a leisurely pace, sniffing the air for the blood or meat that they were certain would be there. After all, every single one of them knew that noise meant food.

"Okay." Dempsey whispered to the girls, startling them as he spoke through the sliding cab window that led to the pickup bed. "Here's what we'll do." He handed them a large red plastic can through the window. As Jake dropped the container into Samantha's arms, she felt the familiar shift of its contents and the swish that it made. Two similar shades of blackish-blue irises met as Jake and Sam locked eyes.

"Gasoline."

Jake repeated the process with 6 or 7 of the nozzled cans, until they were stacked inside of the bed with the two girls. "Wait a second, Tak and I are coming around. Start pouring that gas onto the freakbags. Give em a good bath and spread it out."

Within a few minutes Takeo and Jake had broken through the skylight and were standing in the back of the pickup bed with the girls and pouring gracious amounts of gasoline right into the gaping mouths of the undead which now were so great in number that they threatened to tip the truck. Once the cans were empty and the monsters that surrounded them thoroughly doused from head to toe in gasoline, the four teens stood assembled in the pickup bed.

Dempsey sported an M-1 Garand in both hands, with the scoped AR-10 he had brought slung across his back on its sling. Samantha wore one of the backpacks containing mostly ammunition across her shoulders along with the broad case containing her Bowie Knife, and held her M-16 reloaded in both hands, a few spare magazines stuffed in her pockets. Nikita wore another one of the backpacks the group possessed, this one containing the limited food and water that they contained. Her AK-47, instead of ready in her hands, was slung across her back as well along with her sickle; replaced by her locked and loaded PPSH-41, just in case things got particularly nasty. And finally Takeo was equipped with his standard, fearsome menagerie of katanas; the longest two of which were strapped in the same X across his back. He wore the group's final backpack, which was stuffed with the 4 handguns from Jake's house and the Tokarev TT33 that Nikita had brought from school, along with the pitiful amount of medical supplies that the group possessed.

"Uhh, Jake, comrade, I love you like a brother and all but dis seems like very stupid idea." Nikita muttered, staring down into the faces of the dead, who were still occupied with the task of overturning the truck.

"It'll work. If it doesn't " He stared down at the corpse of one of the horses from earlier, which was being set upon still by a mini-mob of the creatures as they tore the flesh from the animals bones with their hands, their teeth; some being caught up in the feeding frenzy and beginning to attack each other in their blood induced haze. " Well, try not to think about that. If worse comes to worse, I'll hold them off while you guys get away."

"It's time," Takeo said solemnly. "The dead grow restless."

Sure enough, the once-human beasts that surrounded the truck were growling at them, their mouths opening and closing, and you could tell that they were growing impatient. And hungry.

"On the count of three, I'll lower the tailgate." Dempsey said. "Nikita, make sure you have the lighter ready. Everyone else, concentrate your fire into the mob at the tail gate. Clear a path, and as soon as you can get through without getting bitten, GO. After that, we run and Uh Hope to God you can figure something out quick. Then, Nikita, you know what to do."

"One Two **Three**!"

The air was alive with gunfire as the tailgate dropped and the undead lunged to get up into the truck, only to be blown down by the torrent of lead from the teenagers' guns.

"MOVE, NOW!" Tank jumped down first, gun still blazing, and landed on the corpses closest to the truck with a crunch. Whether they were dead or not, he didn't know, he could only hope that they were; as checking would be complete and utter suicide.

"KksSShhh!" a carcass in a business suit lunged, swinging an arm at the teen as Nikita jumped down next to him, intercepting the thing's arm with her drawn sickle. The monster hissed as the sharp curved steel bit through flesh and bone, severing its arm at the elbow. In a swift motion, Nikita had wrapped the sickle around the beast's neck, and with a sharp jerk towards herself; cut through the man's spinal cord and freed his head from his body. The girl kicked the headless cadavre to the ground, motioning for Tank to keep going forward.

*POWM! POWM! Ping!* Jake forged ahead with a savage scream, firing the M1 Garand repeatedly into the thinning layer of the dead that separated them from the open road. The skull of one fairly exploded in a cascade of red blood, pink brain, and milky white bone and it crumpled to the ground. _CRACK!CRACRACK!CRACK! _Second turned into what seemed like hours as bullets entered flesh and hot brass fell to the ground. They were aware only of retreating. They knew one set of actions only.

_Breath. Pull the trigger until empty. Reload. Breath. Repeat._

**SPLAT. **

With a scream of exertion, Dempsey swung the M-1 Garand by the barrel like a baseball bat. Time slowed down as a head shattered, teeth, strings of meat and blood, shards of skull flew, an eyeball popping from its socket; the infected person's cranium smashed in like an overripe pumpkin. Takeo emptied his entire last magazine into what was once a woman in running clothes who toppled, Nikita drove her sickle into a dead teen's stomach, ripping it from abdomen and letting his guts spill to the pavement as Samantha clubbed the thing in its head as it fell; bringing the butt of her M-16 down again and again. They were free. Free; but not safe.

"NIKITA, NOW!" Jake screamed, scrambling to reload the M1 rifle while at the same time running backwards.

Nikita pivoted on her right foot as she ran, giving a kiss to the cheap storebought cigarette lighter in her hand for luck before flicking up a flame on it and throwing it towards the truck for all she was worth.

As Samantha saw the light, a shiver went up her spine and she stopped running. The warm buttery light gave her a good feeling inside, as it lit up the day area so bright that the rest of the world might as well have been sleeping. Such a beautiful torrent of orange and red and yellow and white, the very essence of power and destruction. This is what it looked like as the lighter caught to the gasoline soaked into the t shirt of a walking corpse, which then caught to the fumes in the air, which caught to the fumes emanating from the other once-humans' clothes, which transformed the air and sky into an enormous fireball, as if straight from the pits of Hades. Every single one of them stood, perplexed as the flesh was dissolved from their bones slowly but surely, and they started after their quarries despite the flames that clung to their entire being.

"God," Tank said aloud as they ran. "They look like they're made of fire "

Soon after, the survivors began to succumb to the fire and drop to the ground; only shriveled, blackened corpses remaining.

"_Edward!_" Samantha swore. "_I will make you pay for this. Your tears will taste so sweet when you beg for your miserable life, licking my feet..."_

She smiled to herself. Funny how a single thought could be both amusing and arousing at the same time.