Gilbert didn't think it was possible for the girl he had been communicating with for so long to be any more beautiful than what he had seen online, but she was. Her gorgeous face, framed with long golden blonde hair, smiled brightly from across the café. Gilbert felt his heart bump up into his throat, causing him to swallow thickly.

Without thinking, as she ran toward him, Gilbert spread his arms for her. Elizaveta's face lit up as she approached, laughing wildly as she bounded into his arms.

"Gilbert, I can't believe you actually came!" The silky green ribbons in her hair sparkled in the open café.

"I couldn't not come," he said, his voice sounding softer to his ears than what he had intended. "It was a long drive, but it was worth it."

"Is your brother still mad about it?"

Gilbert laughed, "when is my little brother not angry with me? I swear he's got a stick stuck straight up his ass." His eyes widened when he realized his vulgarity, but before he could excuse himself Elizaveta began laughing wildly.

"According to my mother, all German's have a stick stuck up their ass." Elizaveta's pearly white teeth shone through her mischievous grin as she chuckled. Gilbert had forgotten for a moment that Elizaveta was not the type to gasp at the use of profanities, rather the one that chose to use them frequently.

When Elizaveta stopped laughing she let go of Gilbert's shoulders and backed up, "come with me, I have a table saved for us." As he and Elizaveta squeezed between tables and people, she turned around and smiled at him, "you're a lot taller than you sounded."

It took a moment for Gilbert to realize what she had said, and as they approached the table he cursed, "how the hell do I soundsmall?"

Elizaveta didn't hear him though, because when they reached the table she greeted a dark haired man with a scarf tied delicately around his throat.

"God damn hipster,"Gilbert thought to himself.

"This is Roderich," Elizaveta gestured as she introduced the clearly uninterested man beside her, "he's the friend I told you about."

Roderich looked Gilbert up and down, sizing him up quickly, "pleasure to meet you."

Gilbert balked at how blatantly rude the man was, but Elizaveta clearly didn't notice and Gilbert did not want to start their first meeting off with a fight. Gilbert bit back his anger and tried to be as polite as possible, "the feeling is mutual, Roderich."

Elizaveta remained oblivious as Gilbert and Roderich's eyes met, both threatening as they tried to impose their dominance.

"Gilbert," Elizaveta's voice made Gilbert forget about his glaring match with Roderich, "why don't you take a seat, I'll go talk to the waiter."

Gilbert nodded quickly, sitting down across from the only man in his way to Elizaveta's heart. Gilbert watched him as he sipped his tea carefully, eyes shut and eyebrows creased as if he were considering something. He was becoming infuriated by the man's utter disregard for him, eyes shut and ignoring him as if he were not even sitting across from him. "So you're the friend Elizaveta kept talking about," Gilbert snorted, "you're not nearly as friendly as she told me."

Roderich opened one eye, and the hand holding the tea cup to his lips was brought down to the table calmly. He turned his body so he could face Gilbert head on, and smirked as he sized him up yet again. "I just want to tell you one thing and one thing only, Gilbert," Roderich sneered, "Elizaveta isn't interested in you, and she never will be."

Gilbert leaned forward, elbows planted firmly on the table, "and how would you know this?"

Roderich simply shrugged, "I know her better than anyone else."

Gilbert opened his mouth, ready to bite back with an insult about Roderich's voice, but was stopped in his tracks when a shrill scream rang through the café. Gilbert and Roderich both stood at attention, both clearly looking for Elizaveta. Instead of Elizaveta, Gilbert's eyes stopped on a young woman by the front of the café, lying on the ground with a man on top of her. Gilbert couldn't tell, but from the looks of it, the man was biting her. Others were trying to wrestle him off of her, but no one was of much help as it was becoming clear that more than one person was being attacked.

The whole café filled with screams. The whole block.

Roderich finally broke the silence, "we need to get Elizaveta, come on."

Gilbert nodded silently, following quickly behind Roderich. The group in the café was substantially decreasing as people began running onto the streets, jumping into their cars, or just blindly running away. Gilbert didn't know what was going on, but whatever was happening was not good.

They stopped at the end of the café, they found Elizaveta sitting on a bar stool, eyes wide and dazed, glued on something in front of her. Roderich and Gilbert followed her eyes and were both shocked at what they were seeing. The woman that Gilbert had seen being attacked was lying in a pool of her own blood on the ground. Her stomach was torn open; the contents of it were spilled onto the pavement beside her for all to see. The worst part about her was not her gored body, though, but the way her eyes were rolled back in their sockets, and the way her mouth was turned down in a scowl from the pain.

Roderich walked up to Elizaveta and covered her eyes, but she didn't react, she was in shock. Gilbert didn't know what to do; he just stood there as he took in the chaos that was happening on the street, the sound of Roderich trying to snap Elizaveta out of her daze nothing but the background noise to what was happening before him.

His ears began to ring.

"There's no time for this," Gilbert's head swung to the right from the force of Roderich's fist colliding with his cheek. "You can't do this now; we need to get her out of here."

Gilbert turned toward Roderich; he had Elizaveta cradled in his arms. Her eyes were open, but they were glazed over and she was completely unresponsive. "What-" he began, but Roderich shouted at him.

"Don't ask me what's happening right now, because I know just as much as you. The only thing I know is that it is not the time or the place to be discussing what's going on. We need to get somewhere safe!"

Gilbert nodded his head, he was still not fully lucid, he still felt like he was in a dream, but he knew what they needed to do. He grabbed Elizaveta from Roderich, despite his protests, and motioned toward the emergency fire axe enclosed in a glass case behind the bar. "Take a chair, break the glass, and cover me."

Roderich nodded, Gilbert was happy that he was not arguing with him. At least he knew what the stakes were if he wasted time by arguing with him. Gilbert watched the outside of the café carefully, making sure that none of the people on the street were walking in suspiciously. It seemed that the people who started the attack were too busy chasing after people on the street.
Gilbert heard the sound of a chair scraping the ground behind him as he continued to watch the madness unfold. It was strange to Gilbert, but it seemed as if the amount of people attacking were increasing. Instead of just five people committing the assault, there were now at least twenty. Maybe it was something organized.

The crash of the glass breaking behind him caused him to turn around, "do you have it?"

"Give me second," Roderich's voice was strained; it sounded like he was having trouble with pulling the fire axe off of the wall. So much for use in emergency situations.

Gilbert focused his eyes back on the road after watching Roderich struggle with the axe on the wall. He looked back at the street, but quickly realized that there was something wrong.

The lifeless body of the battered and gored woman on the ground began to twitch and shake. Her eyes rolled back in their proper place, and from her mouth came a sound so inhuman it caused Gilbert to take an unconscious step back. Gilbert was so taken aback by the woman that he couldn't muster a reaction as she began getting to her feet, intestines hanging out obscenely from the gaping wound in her stomach.

Gilbert took another step back, then another, and another, until his back hit the bar.

The woman was completely on her feet, eyes open and aware, but she was not the same woman. Other than the obvious fatal wounds on her body, there was something else missing. Even though she was moving and clearly breathing, there was something so lifeless about her. Gilbert couldn't react as she began walking toward them, her feet sliding along the ground was the only thing he could hear.

She got closer and closer until she was only an arm's reach away from them. Then she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, blood poured down her face like a stream. Gilbert could only watch silently as she dropped to the ground in a lifeless heap.

It took him a long time to realize that Roderich was standing beside him, fire axe in his hand, and covered in blood. He was panting heavily, eyes trained on the dead woman lying on the ground at his feet. The axe he clutched in his hands dropped to the ground with a loud clatter, his eyes misted over, his mouth turned down in a heavy scowl. He was hyperventilating.

Gilbert's eyes widened as realization set in. Roderich had killed the woman.

The screams that Gilbert had been filtering out came flooding back, the things happening on the streets played in front of his eyes, the weight of Elizaveta in his arms became heavy and real. This was happening, this was really happening; he needed to snap out of it for real this time.

"Roderich, pick up the axe and come with me," Gilbert's voice became stern and commanding. "You told me yourself, this is not the time or the place for this kind of thing!"

Roderich stopped hyperventilating; he looked up at Gilbert from between his bloodied fingers with a cloudy but understanding expression.

"It needed to be done; this woman was no longer herself. Elizaveta and I would have both died if you hadn't done it."

"How do you know her intent was to kill?"

Gilbert indicated the chaos happening on the street not even fifteen feet away from them. "Look at what's happening out there, Roderich, half of those people out there should already be dead."

Roderich watched the people running and screaming on the streets for a long moment, before he casually smoothed back his hair and leaned over to pick up the fire axe. He clasped it in his hands experimentally, looking at the mutilated body of the woman at his feet with a pensive expression. "You're right; there is no time to be taking chances."

All too loud groans caused Gilbert and Roderich to look up, only to find a number of people beginning to crowd into the café.

"God damn," Gilbert bit out under his breath, looking around the café for a place to make their escape. His eyes happened upon the emergency exit behind the bar, it was their only means of a safe escape from the café. Roderich seemed to have seen the same thing as he threw himself over the bar again, reaching over and grabbing Elizaveta from Gilbert's arms without hesitation.

"Hey, what are y-" Gilbert watched as Roderich bolted for the emergency exit door, shoving it open and running through without so much as a look back at Gilbert. Gilbert himself tried to ignore the strange behaviour in favor of the large amount of people – seemingly intent on ripping him apart – quickly advancing on him. He followed Roderich's action and jumped over the bar, running to the exit door, and then…

Gilbert pushed the on the handle of the door but there was no give, it wouldn't budge, it was almost as if someone was holding it shut from the other side.

Gilbert's eyes widened, he began banging on the door with both of his fists, "don't do this to me, Roderich, don't pull this kind of shit with me!" Gilbert's fists relentlessly pounded on the cold metal surface of the door, but to no avail, it still refused to open for him. Or rather, Roderich refused to open the door to him. "Listen to me, Roderich, you won't be able to protect her all by yourself, it's not safe out there!" Gilbert tried to desperately plead his case, not only because he wanted to live, but because he wanted Elizaveta to live as well.

Gilbert picked up a bar stool and threw it blindly into the crowd of advancing people.

The door finally opened, and Roderich stood on the other side with Elizaveta in his arms. It took every bit of power in Gilbert's body not to pounce on Roderich and rip him apart. The door slammed shut behind him, and he stood in front of Roderich, staring him down.

"I don't know what happened," Roderich said, "the door somehow got stuck."

Gilbert nodded his head at Roderich, watching the axe hanging from his arm carefully, "I'm sure." Without any warning, Gilbert grabbed the axe and held it next to his side. Roderich backed away from him quickly, watching him through furrowed brows.

"You wouldn't do that," Roderich smiled, "you wouldn't risk harming Elizaveta."

"You're right," Gilbert said. "But that is the only reason why."

The sound of the metal exit door being beaten on finally got Gilbert and Roderich's attention; they didn't have the time to fight.

"Let's go, I think I know a place that's safe."

"How far away is it?"

"There's an abandoned hotel not too far from here, it's all boarded up. It could be a good place to take refuge, if anyone else hasn't had the same idea."

"It's better than nothing; I know what you're talking about." Another loud bang rang through the air, "but we need to go now."

Gilbert nodded.

Elizaveta was aware of brief snatches, she heard groans, she heard the voices of Roderich and Gilbert. She heard them panting and calling out to each other. She heard the sound of glass being broken and the sound of people crying and begging for help.

She felt like she was floating.

Gilbert and Roderich ran down the road with a group of, at the very least, fifteen people chasing after them. They were fast, but there was something severely wrong with them, something completely inhuman about the way they carried themselves. They did not have the time to analyse them, though, they had to run as fast as they could and garner the smallest amount of attention as possible.

"I can see it, it's right up ahead!" Roderich called, only a short distance from behind him. Gilbert was now holding Elizaveta in his arms; Roderich was covering them from behind. After they had been put in immediate danger, they decided that arguing and threatening to kill each other was not the best idea.

When they came to the building Roderich led Gilbert through an opening in the fence, and when they finally managed to crawl through Gilbert was happy that they could finally breathe and relax. The small cut in the fence was too hard for the other people to manoeuver through, and the people following behind them were slowly starting to lose interest. There were still a lot of them, but the numbers were decreasing.

Gilbert watched as a group of them crashed into the fence, fingers gripping the cold steel and teeth trying to gnaw through. This was the first time since the outbreak had happened – only hours before – that Gilbert had seen one of the attackers up close. Up this close, he could finally tell that these 'people' were not really people at all. Their eyes were glazed over, their mouths hung agape, and most of all, they did not act like a human. They acted like animals.

"There is no time to be staring off into space like a buffoon, we need to go. We can't depend on this fence to keep them away from us forever." Roderich was standing tense, clearly ready to get going.

Gilbert followed him without another look back; he didn't want to see those strange animal-like people anymore.

When they turned the corner to the back of the building, the silence was deafening. The only thing that cut through the silence was the sound of Roderich and Gilbert's loud gasping breaths. They could no longer hear the sound of the people behind them groaning and screaming after them.

"There's a broken board up ahead, Elizaveta and I used to sneak inside as children to play with firecrackers."

Gilbert couldn't help but be jealous at the mention of Roderich and Elizaveta's childhood together. They were so close, they knew everything about each other, and Gilbert had barely scratched the surface. He could only dream about having such a friendship with Elizaveta. Gilbert absently tugged at the hem of Elizaveta's shirt as Roderich slipped the board off of the broken window.

"When we're settled down and we've made sure there's no one dangerous here, we can board it up again until all… Whatever this is, is over." Roderich looked at Elizaveta with worry in his eyes, "then we need to find water for her and lay her down."

Gilbert nodded, following Roderich as he carefully climbed through the broken window. When he was inside, he reached his arms out for Gilbert to hand him Elizaveta. He really didn't want to, but he knew acting like a petulant child would not help their case. Besides, Elizaveta was in complete shock, she would not remember anything that happened after the café. Gilbert was hopeful for that, no one deserved to have that picture permanently imprinted in their mind.

Gilbert handed over Elizaveta, took the fire axe from Roderich, and stepped in through the broken window.

The inside of the building was as generic as Gilbert expected it to be, there was your typical broken, plastic chandelier hanging from the ceiling in a ballroom type entrance. The floor was covered in basic brown and beige. The stairs that led up into separate floor and rooms were basic pine wood.

"How many floors up?" Gilbert looked at the questionably damaged elevator, almost as if someone has intentionally jammed it recently.

"Ten."

"That's good, the higher up the better."

"Yes, we would be better off on the top floor. If something were to happen – god forbid – if some of those things break in here, we'll have more chance to get away or hide."

"Yes," Gilbert watched silently as Roderich started toward the stairs. "Roderich stop."

Roderich stopped in his tracks and turned around to face Gilbert.

"I think there's someone else here."

"It doesn't seem like it."

"Look at the elevator."

Roderich craned his neck to look at the elevator, his eyebrows furrowing the longer he looked at it. The crowbar jammed into the elevator was certainly new, it wasn't rusted at all. "I don't remember that being there, and I was here not too long ago by myself."

"Why would you do that?"

"I like to be alone when I write, and this is the perfect place."

Gilbert nodded, "didn't ask for your life story."

Roderich glared at Gilbert for a long moment but chose not to continue the fight, quickly rolling his eyes in response and looking away from Gilbert. "We don't need to worry about that; it's probably just Heracles…"

"Heracles…?"

"Yeah, he's the resident hobo, I guess you could say. He's quite good company though, he's quiet and he likes to sleep, and he's fairly clean for a claimed 'homeless person'."

"Is he really homeless, it doesn't sound like it?"

"Not really, he has quite an inheritance from his family; he just likes loafing around all day. This is the perfect place for him to do it."

Gilbert jumped and almost shouted when he felt something brush up against his leg, only calming when he realized it was just a cat.

"He also has a penchant for befriending cats…"

"Ugh, I fucking hate cats."
_

When they had Elizaveta propped onto the bed, her legs stacked up higher than the rest of her to stimulate blood flow; both Gilbert and Roderich fell asleep on the two beds adjacent from hers. But they were both woken in the middle of the night by the sound of glass smashing, followed by a loud scream. Roderich instantly sprung up from the bed and ran to Elizaveta, Gilbert chose to stand in front of the door. The voices coming from down on the first floor were clearly very human, and there were only three of them. They couldn't be very harmful, but they still couldn't run down without question.

Just as Gilbert was about to walk to Elizaveta's bed to check on her with Roderich, he heard it.

"Gilbert," an all too familiar voice rang through the hotel, the voice he thought he would never hear again. "Gilbert, are you in here!"

Without thinking, Gilbert grabbed the fire axe beside his bed and ran to the stairs.

A/N: I decided to remove the reference chapter because I changed my mind on some of the groups. Also, if any of you have some ideas as to how you think I should continue, don't be afraid to drop me a line!