Jenny was on her back struggling against the runner that had her pinned. It's teeth were clicking fiercely, eager to pierce her warm, living flesh.

BANG!

The runner's head jerked sideways, following the explosion of blood and gore from the bullet's exit point.

"Thanks," she huffed wearily as she pushed the dead runner off of her.

Isaac reached down a hand to help her up, still clutching his gun tightly.

"Don't mention it," he said, equally out of breath.

Isaac pulled her to her feet as a clicker pushed the man in the green t-shirt past them, slamming him into a row of empty metal shelving. Isaac raised his gun to fire at the clicker, but before he could pull the trigger, Nate came rushing past and slammed into the clicker's mid-section. Nate and the clicker hit the tiled floor hard. He quickly drove his pocket knife into the clicker's neck before it could recover from the tackle. The 6-inch blade bit deep and blood spurted from the wound as the clicker gurgled and groaned. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to kill it. The clicker thrashed violently and flung Nate to the side. Nate scrambled backwards on his hands and feet in a sort of awkward crab-walk. If not for the clicker trying to kill him, it would have been comical.

The clicker regained its feet and went after Nate, knife still protruding from its neck. Just as it made a lunge, Isaac planted two bullets into the side of the creatures deformed head. The clicker jerked sideways slightly, but not enough to cancel its forward momentum. It landed just beside Nate, thrashing for a moment before finally going limp. That was the last of them.

Nate pulled his knife from the clicker's neck and wiped it on the tattered rags that clung to it's fungus covered body. He stood up as he folded the knife and then stuck it back in the front pocket of his jeans.

"Dammit! Lost my pistol," he mumbled under his breath as he scanned the area for the pistol he'd lost in the scuffle.

"Everyone alright?" he asked after a moment of fruitless searching. "Isaac, Jenny...?"

"Yeah, we're fine," Isaac answered for both of them.

"Chris?"

"Yeah, I think so," replied the man in the green t-shirt.

He was holding his left arm. A long gash ran nearly the entire distance between his elbow and his wrist. It didn't look deep. More like a scrape. But it was bleeding profusely. Nate removed his pack but stopped as he glanced around the small bread shop. Concern began to creep its way across his face.

"Where's Marian?" he asked.

"I'm here," she said, suddenly appearing around the end of the shelving unit Chris had been smashed into.

Nate rushed over to her, momentarily forgetting about Chris's arm.

"You alright? You hurt?" he asked grabbing her by the shoulders and giving her a quick visual inspection for any bites or other injuries.

"I'm fine," she replied wearily.

"What's this?" Nate asked, grabbing her right arm. She'd somehow managed to tie a strip of cloth around her elbow. It was already saturated with blood.

"It's nothing," she said, gently brushing him off. "Oh my God! Chris, what happened?"

She snatched the pack from Nate's hands and quickly unzipped it as she hurried over to Chris. The bleeding was beginning to slow, but it still needed to be cleaned.

"Scraped my damn arm on the shelf here when that thing tackled me," he explained, tipping his head first at the shelving unit, then pointing at the dead clicker at his feet.

Marian pulled a small strip of cloth and a bottle of rubbing alcohol from Nate's pack. She doused the cloth and began cleaning Chris's arm perhaps a bit more aggressively than was necessary.

"Aagh!" he blurted as Marian touched the alcohol to his wound. "Damn!"

"Sorry," she said, attempting to be a little gentler.

Chris was an older man, perhaps in his 60s, but still pretty fit for his age. He was a bit shorter than Nate, but a little broader in the shoulders. He had roughly shoulder-length dark brown hair, though it was at least half grey. He also had a well kept, trimmed, full-face beard. Also mostly grey. His eyes were a shining green, far younger than the rest of him. He was a fellow smuggler and one whom Nate, Marian, Isaac, and Jenny had worked with on numerous occasions.

He was a good guy and they all got along well. As such, it didn't take much convincing for Nate and Jenny to rally Isaac and Marian to go help him out. Mark opted to stay behind. They'd managed to track him to the small bread shop in the block behind the police station where they were all gathered now. They'd guessed Chris had ducked in here when they turned onto this street just in time to see the three clickers bust down the door. Unfortunately, what Chris apparently hadn't known was that a small group of runners had already taken up residence there.

"So what are you doing out here, anyway?" Nate asked.

"Trying to get the hell out of that nuthouse before the shit really hits the fan," Chris replied through gritted teeth.

"In broad daylight?" Isaac asked.

Marian finished cleaning the wound and simply tossed the rag aside. She grabbed a roll of gauze from the pack and was about to make a bandage.

"No, don't bother," Chris said, pulling his arm away. "It's not that bad. You'd waste more than it's worth."

"You need to keep it clean," Marian insisted.

"No, it's fine. Bleeding's pretty well stopped. No need to waste bandages when you might actually need them for something important."

"Alright, if you say so," she said, stuffing the gauze back into the pack.

She zipped the pack and handed it back to Nate. He grabbed it and slung it back over his shoulders.

"I'll search the bodies," she said, turning away from Nate and pushing past Chris to reach the clicker that had waylaid him.

Their eyes never met, but Jenny caught the suddenly sullen look that crossed Marian's face as she walked past.

"Their attention is focused inward right now," Chris said, answering Isaac's question. "Besides, with that pack of yours, I'm surprised you can sneak out even at night."

That got a slight chuckle out of everyone. Everyone, that is, except Marian. She seemed a little bit too preoccupied with searching the dead infected. She would normally at least listen to their conversations and laugh along with them even if she didn't usually have too much to say.

"Marian? You ok?" Jenny asked.

"Huh?" she started, glancing up briefly. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine."

She had moved on to the runner that had pinned Jenny and pulled a pistol from it's waistband as well as a spare magazine from the pocket of its surprisingly intact jeans. She stood and handed the gun and the ammo to Jenny since she hadn't brought her own pack in the rush to help Chris.

"It's not safe here," she said, turning her attention to another dead runner. "You can talk more back at the station."

Jenny briefly checked the pistol Marian had recovered. It was a different model than hers which meant that the magazines were not interchangeable, but it did use the same rounds. She watched Marian with curious concern as she slung her pack off and stuffed the pistol and ammo into separate pockets of her many-pocketed backpack. Marian seemed distracted. Something was wrong, but Jenny didn't quite know what.

They did a quick scavenge of the bread shop while Chris explained that a group of citizens had formed a resistance and were fighting back. He didn't want any part in that and said he intended to go to Boston where the citizens were not rioting. He apparently feared that Hartford would end up like Pittsburgh. He'd been trying to smuggle out three civilians, but they'd been killed when the Infected attacked them.

They finished up their search without really finding anything useful other than what they retrieved from the runners. They hadn't actually hoped for much since they'd been here at least once before looking for supplies and it had been scarce then. Sometimes it paid to search again, though, because supplies might have been missed on the first search or someone else may have passed through and left something behind. The presence of runners indicated the latter since the last time they'd been here the place had been clean. Unfortunately, they didn't appear to have carried much with them. Jenny did, however, recover the pistol Nate had lost. It had been knocked out of his hands and kicked under one of the shelving units.

They met up near the front of the shop again and started to leave. Jenny suddenly realized that Marian wasn't with the group. She stopped and turned around to see Marian standing once again at the end of the shelving unit where Chris had cut his arm. She had her back to the group and was staring at a dead runner laying a couple aisle's down from where she stood. Her arms hung loosely at her sides. A tiny trickle of blood ran down her left arm, having oozed out from the beneath the crude bandage around her elbow.

"Marian?" Jenny said as she headed back into the shop. "What's wrong?"

Marian turned around. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Mom, are you ok?" Isaac said stepping up beside Jenny.

Nate stepped around Jenny and Isaac as Marian lifted her right arm to show the saturated bandage.

"No," Nate whispered, coming up close to Marian now. He gently grabbed her wrist as he reached for the bandage.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, barely containing a sob.

Nate pulled the bandage down to reveal the injury. On her forearm, just above her elbow was the unmistakable bite mark, still bleeding and already badly inflamed.

"Mom, no!" Isaac sobbed as he dropped to his knees.

Jenny covered her mouth as a tear ran down her cheek.

"No...no, no, no," Nate mumbled again, staring wide-eyed at the wound as if refusing to believe what he was seeing.

"I'm sorry," Marian said again. "I'm not going back with you..."

Jenny sat up suddenly. She was drenched in a cold sweat and her breathing was short and raspy. She glanced around nervously as her brain slowly came back to reality. She was in the armory of the police station that had served as their home for the last week or so. Even though it was almost pitch black in the basement armory, she could see the familiar outlines of the racks and lockers. She heard the not-so-gentle snoring of Mark from the couch behind her. Just a nightmare. The same nightmare as always. Except this time, Marian took Natalie's place in getting her throat ripped out by the clicker.

She shivered in the coolness of the armory, both from the chill and the lingering memory of her nightmare. She brought her knees up to her chest, wrinkling the ragged, dirty brown sleeping on which she had been sleeping. She wrapped her arms around her knees and laid her head down, letting out a deep sigh.

She sat like that for a moment thinking about Marian. After their tearful good-byes, Marian had given them her pocket knife and all but one cartridge for her pistol. Any other supplies she had were in her pack in the station armory. They'd left the bread shop and said good-bye to Chris as he continued his journey to Boston. They were only a hundred feet or so from the shop when a sudden, single gunshot forced another sob and wave of tears from Jenny. Nate and Isaac kept stern expressions, but she noticed them flinch at the sound.

It had been a long time since she'd lost someone she cared about to the infection. She'd never known her mother. She'd died in child birth. But she'd lost her aunt, Natalie, to the infection. She was very young when it happened, but the image of her aunt's gruesome fate haunted her and shaped the way she made new relationships. She was afraid to ever experience that loss again and it had taken a long time to build the relationship she had with Marian, Nate, and Isaac. And now Marian was gone. Taken by the infection.

She'd thought she lost her father, too. She'd figured the Infected had killed him when they attacked. But he hadn't been killed and now he was working for the Fireflies in a lab in Colorado. Probably working on whatever cure the Fireflies were so sure existed. She didn't know that for sure, of course, and Mark had never actually specified, but the cure was one of the Fireflies' major goals so that's what she assumed.

There is no cure, she thought angrily.

Those damned Fireflies and their false hopes! This is how the world is now. Why couldn't they just accept that? If they truly believed in a cure, why the hell can't they just keep their noses out of the zones and just work on the cure? No, instead they come in and start blowing shit up and killing off or driving out the military that had kept them protected from the infection. What good would the return of democracy do if the Infected could just come in and tear everything up? Marian would still be alive if not for their rabble-rousing!

Jenny squeezed her eyes shut as a tear slid down the bridge of her nose. She sniffed quietly as she lifted her head and wiped the tear from the end of her nose with the back of her hand. She swiped her hand across her pant leg and sniffed again.

No. That's not right. They needed a strong military presence, sure, but they could accomplish that along with democracy. Couldn't they? Marian died because the military was too oppressive. They'd driven the people mad. Forced their hand into shady dealings to support themselves and their families. They likely would never have gotten into smuggling if the military had been fair in their governance.

Jenny glanced to her right where Isaac slept, intending to wake him up. She needed to talk to someone and he had always been there for her. Always listened. Usually knew how to cheer her up.

Except he wasn't there. His green sleeping bag lay unzipped, the top flap flung open. His gaudy backpack and his pistol lay next to it. She furrowed her brows and flicked her gaze to the stained and ragged mattress beyond where Isaac normally slept. The mattress had previously been one that Mark and Lana shared, but after her capture and execution, Mark resigned himself to the couch and let Nate and Marian use the mattress. Except the mattress lay empty now. It was dark and difficult to see, but there was no silhouette of any sort bulging up from the mattress.

Frowning, Jenny stood up and made her way to the rooftop. She knew that's where they'd be. Isaac and Nate used to go to the roof of their apartment fairly often whenever they needed to think or be alone. In fact, Jenny often had too. She always found it calming to just stare up at the stars or off into the dark, untamed world beyond the wall of the zone.

She reached the top of the stairwell that led to the roof. The door hung ajar, but it always did since the latch was broken. She pulled it fully open and stepped out into the cool night. The sky was clear and even with the faint glow of street lights from the zone to the south, a million stars filled the sky. The moon hung high above, nearly full and shining brightly.

Isaac was seated on a rusty AC unit. Nate was a few feet away, standing next to the edge of the roof with his arms crossed. Both of them had their backs to Jenny, gazing not towards the zone, but to the northwest in the direction of the bread shop.

They apparently hadn't heard the door open because neither of them turned when Jenny stepped onto the rooftop. She quietly approached and stepped around the AC unit Isaac was seated on.

"Hey," she said softly as she took a seat next to him.

Isaac simply looked at her and gave a faint smile. She returned a small smile of her own before he dropped his gaze to the gravel beneath his feet. He let out a sigh and returned to staring out towards the place where Marian had died. Jenny let her own gaze drift out towards the bread shop. Neither spoke for a long moment.

"What if there is a cure?" Isaac asked suddenly.

Jenny didn't immediately respond. She'd wondered the same thing. What if they could have saved Marian?

"That's a pretty big what-if," she said eventually.

Isaac gave a short chuckle, though it sounded more like a cough.

"It is, isn't it?" he said, turning towards Jenny, a slight smile playing on his face once again. "But I refuse to believe that one doesn't exist. I refuse to believe that the Fireflies are fighting for nothing."

"And what are they fighting for?" she asked, too weary to even fake her dislike of the Fireflies.

"Freedom," Nate cut in suddenly. "Hope."

Both Isaac and Jenny looked up to where he was still standing by the edge of the roof. Jenny noticed now that he was holding a faded picture in the hand that rested on top of his crossed arms. It was a picture of Nate and Marian standing shoulder to shoulder with Isaac, who was just three at the time, held between them. Nate had one arm wrapped around Marian's waist and they each had an arm stretched out, showing off their new home. A home they'd purchased, apparently just days before the outbreak. The house had gray-white vinyl siding with darker shutters on the windows and a gray shingled roof. The entry jutted out slightly with a concaved roof and fake stone siding.

"They're fighting against the bullshit that we just let loose," he continued, still not turning to look at them. "And starting tomorrow, me and Isaac are going to help them."

Jenny flashed a look of confusion at Isaac, who was now once again staring off to towards the bread store.

"We're joining the Fireflies," Isaac said without looking at her.

"What?!" she exclaimed, eyes widening in disbelief.

"We're going to join the resistance here in Hartford. Help reclaim the zone from the military's bullshit control," Isaac explained. "Then we're headed for Boston to join up with the Fireflies."

"Why?" Jenny asked, still unwilling to believe what she was hearing.

"Well," Nate started.

He paused to slip the picture he was holding into his back pocket. He then turned around and leaned against the curb at the edge of the roof, crossing his arms once again.

"I figure it's our fault, or more specifically mine, that the military has finally snapped and gone into full on tyranny. But there's a reason they fell into that sort of oppressive, absolute rule in the first place."

Nate paused a moment, apparently waiting for Jenny to respond.

When she didn't, "The authority of the government is corrupt. They hold no value for the average Joe. That was evident by the families they tore apart and those that were falsely tortured or killed when they stormed the apartment looking for us. They only care about themselves. The civilians they are supposed to be protecting and governing are no more than servants, slaves to them. Prisoners. Criminals even. People they need to keep in check."

"They fear the Infected," Isaac cut in, "and they think that anyone who's not them is weak and useless. Anyone who's not them will end up Infected. So they beat us down, hoping to keep us in the zones where they can more easily keep the Infected out."

"Yes, but more than that, power corrupts," Nate corrected. "People originally turned to the military, because they were best equipped to deal with the threat of the infected. But that made them arrogant. The power went to their heads. And, now that the Fireflies are trying to steal their power, they're getting desperate trying to hold onto it."

"So what's to stop the Fireflies from becoming the same thing?" Jenny asked, standing and walking forward to lean her hands against the curb next to Nate.

"They're fighting for a return of democracy. A return of fair government for everyone," Isaac replied.

"That's what they claim," she returned.

She turned around and took a step back towards Isaac.

"But what if that's just a ruse to get more recruits?"

"It might be," Nate replied, "but if that's the case, what have we lost?"

Jenny didn't respond. He was right, of course. The military was certainly corrupt, but were the Fireflies really any better? She wasn't so sure.

She dropped her gaze to the gravel beneath her feet and crossed her arms as she let out a sigh. After a moment, she turned and met Nate's gaze.

"I hope you're right."