"What was that?" Lovino asked, sitting straight up on his makeshift bed with a panic stricken look on his face. His hair was messy and his clothes rumpled, it was clear that he hadn't gotten enough sleep.

From all the noise going on throughout the night, no one had been able to get enough sleep.

Antonio was tempted to tell Lovino that nothing was wrong, and that he should just go back to sleep. However, Antonio knew that lying to Lovino would be pointless, and that he wouldn't be able to sleep no matter how hard he tried anyway.

"I don't know," Antonio said truthfully as he gazed through the plate glass window covering the front of the store, "but from what I can tell, it was one of our own screaming."

Lovino looked down and ran a hand through his dirty hair, letting out a long sigh.

"Was it bad?" Lovino asked.

"What do you mean?" Antonio asked, craning his neck to look under Lovino's hair so he could try to make out the expression on his face.

Lovino just turned away.

"The scream, did it sound like the person it belonged to was dying? And who did the voice belong to, if you could tell?" Lovino asked the question without any hesitation, but he still refused to meet eyes with Antonio.

Antonio was quiet for a moment, pondering how he would answer Lovino's question without getting his head bitten off by the wiry man who was constantly fired-up and ready to fight with him. Though it seemed Antonio was making things worse by just being silent, so he came out with something on the spot to avoid Lovino's wrath. "I'm really not that sure, Lovi, but from what I understand, yeah, that scream didn't mean anything good for the person it was coming from. And, as for who it was, I can't be sure. I can't pick out a voice through a scream."

Lovino sighed and leaned his head against the wall behind him and his head hit the wall with a dull thump, "well, judging by how things our running for our group, soon enough the only way we're going to be able to tell our voices apart is by our screams."

"Don't say that," Antonio said, "don't be so negative, you're a prie-"

"Yeah, yeah," Lovino said with an exaggerated eye roll, "but priests don't swear either, so at this point I don't think it really matters what I say – or do."

Antonio couldn't help the small chuckle that bubbled up in his throat every time he thought about Lovino, standing in front of the chalice and cursing his head off at the small children in the front who wouldn't be quiet. If Antonio had never met Lovino, he wouldn't have believed him if he had told him he was in seminary.

"What's so god damn funny this time?" Lovino asked, his eyebrows knitting together fiercely.

"Nothing, Lovi, I'm just tired, that's all. We're all tired."

"Well, you can't sleep now," Ludwig finally said from where he sitting, bathed in morning light, "we need to start meeting up with the others at the front."

"If there are any others at the front of the mall," Lovino said, "from what I heard last night, I have this funny feeling that there's not many people – if any – left alive."

"Lovi," Feliciano whimpered from where he was sitting next to Ludwig, eyes still heavy with sleep, "please don't say things like that."

"I'm sorry," Lovino said with a shrug, "but sometimes, you have to face the facts. We can't go into situations completely optimistic now, it'll only be our downfall."

Feliciano and Antonio both protested to this, but Ludwig was reluctantly nodding his head in agreement with Lovino's words.

"He's right," Ludwig said with a throaty sigh, "it's alright to be optimistic, but in these situations, we have to look at the worst outcome before we look at the best one. We just need to hope that the best situation will prevail over the worst one."

Feliciano and Antonio both nodded their heads, however, it didn't look like they were going to listen to what either Lovino or Ludwig were saying. Their personalities were the only things that remained intact during the outbreak, it seemed - they remained optimistic as ever. No matter how bleak the situation looked for them, they always found a way to look at the bright side of things.

Feliciano, who refused to accept his brother's death even though he knew it was inevitable, and Antonio who refused to accept defeat in the hospital even though their situation was almost impossible.

When Lovino thought back to these events, he decided that he didn't want to fight with his brother or Antonio, and if they wanted to be optimistic, it would be alright. Not everyone had to be a pessimist like him, no matter how much he wanted it to be that way.

Arthur let out a muffled shout when he awoke to both Kiku and Heracles sitting down in front of him, they were both tied up to the table he was currently sitting on. His arms were bound, his legs were bound, and he had a gag in his mouth that made breathing a difficult task. He worked his tongue desperately around the fabric in his mouth so he could try to talk to them, but to no avail.

"Relax," Kiku said when he realized Arthur was beginning to panic, "we're alright, we're fine."

"That's not it!" Arthur was thinking desperately, "I was with Alfred, where's Alfred?"

For some reason, Neither Kiku or Heracles had a gag in their mouths like he did; just their hands and feet were tied to the legs of the table Arthur was sitting on, however, they bonds were tied so tight that the rope was digging into their flesh and creating nasty rashes. Arthur didn't remember anything before he had been tied up, sole for Elizaveta's death and Roderich's decision to stay behind with her. Then, after that, Arthur's mind was completely blank. It made his panic even worse, and made his stress level sky-rocket.

He knew something very bad had happened to him and Alfred when they had left Elizaveta and Roderich behind, and whatever it was, part of him didn't want to know anything about it.

If his own mind was holding the dam closed and not allowing the memories to flood into his brain, then clearly whatever had happened was extremely trauma inducing - even more so than the outbreak itself.

Arthur tried to forget about his missing memories and focused on his present predicament. He was tied up, and he needed to think of a way to save himself, Kiku, and Heracles before whoever had tied them up got back. The infected clearly weren't quite smart enough to tie three different people up and hold them hostage, so someone else had tied them up, someone human.

They already had it rough enough with the infected constantly on their tail; they certainly didn't need to start seeing other people meddling around in their business and trying to hurt them.

Wasn't the world terrible enough?

Arthur closed his eyes tight until they stung and watered as he desperately tried to remember what happened to him before he had gotten tied up. He knew he should have been thinking about getting out of the ropes, but he wanted get his memories back before whoever it was that had tied them up got back to finish what he had started with them.

"What happened?" Arthur finally asked after having no luck with searching through his memory, his voice was so muffled it sounded more like 'vhuf haffen'. But, despite this, Kiku and Heracles both understood what Arthur was trying to ask them.

"You don't remember what happened to you before all of this?" Heracles asked, trying to crane his neck so he could look up at Arthur's face behind him. He knew there had been a small gash on the side of Arthur's head when he had first seen him, he wondered if that may have been the cause of Arthur's apparent memory loss. Arthur wouldn't be asking him what happened if he had remembered being caught.

Arthur shook his head from side-to-side impatiently.

"I think you – or rather the man that kidnapped you - hit your head. I'm assuming it's because of your concussion that you can't remember anything."

Arthur tried to let out a sigh, but letting out a huge breath of air only proved to make it harder for him to breath around the gag in his mouth. He wanted to tell Heracles to get on with it, and that he already knew about the concussion because of his cloudy vision.

"That's inconvenient," Kiku said.

Heracles nodded his head, but continued speaking to the frustrated Arthur, trying to help him get his memories back before Sadiq came back to 'check-up' on them. He hoped that whatever Arthur remembered would somehow help them out with their situation. "Do you remember what happened before Sadiq got to you?"

Arthur nodded his head - taking mark of the name 'Sadiq' for future reference - and simultaneously lowered it as he thought of Elizaveta's dying breaths, and how she clung so desperately to Roderich as her eyes glossed over.

He thought of how Roderich refused to leave her side even though she was already gone, and how he himself knew he could never be so brave for someone no matter how much they meant to him.

Kiku and Heracles looked away, they didn't know who exactly had died, but they understood from Arthur's expression that their missions to get water and clothes hadn't been a success.

"Ahfed," Arthur said, his voice muffled by the gag in his mouth.

"Alfred?" Kiku asked with a tilt of his head.

"Wheh ish he?" Arthur asked again, getting frustrated with himself and with the other two men in the room with him. He knew it wasn't their fault, but he couldn't help taking his frustrations out on them despite all of that.

"We don't know," Kiku answered on Heracles' behalf, "we only saw you when we got here, no one else."

Arthur felt himself internally panicking, he knew something bad had happened but he didn't know what. Something bad had happened to Alfred, and he couldn't figure out what exactly it was that had happened to him. Arthur shifted around, trying to release himself from the binds that tied his arms and legs together, he was growing impatient and panicked.

"Please relax," Heracles said in the most calming voice he could muster, "panicking isn't going to get us anywhere, we just need to wait and think of a plan to get out of here."

"Think of a plan?" Arthur wanted to shout, "what kind of damned plan could we come up with in our situation, you idiot, we have nothing, and I don't even have my memories!"

"I think I have one," Heracles said, looking at Kiku who sat beside him, "I just don't know how safe it's going to be, and how well it'll work, especially on someone as quick witted and informed as Sadiq."

Just as Heracles was ready to tell them his big plan, the heavy metal door slid open to reveal Sadiq, and along with him was a blonde haired man and a young woman that was practically attached to his hip. They both looked upset about something, but neither Heracles, Kiku, nor Arthur cared or wanted to know what it was they were upset about.

Whatever it was - if they were consorting with Sadiq like it seemed - then they probably deserved all the misfortune they got.

"These are my new pets," Sadiq said with a grin as he looked at the two blondes.

"The ones I actually managed to collect," Sadiq said impatiently as he smacked the back of the blonde man's head with blunt force, his grin dropping into a heavy scowl in a flash.

When the door finally shut behind the new group that had walked in, they jumped right back into their argument right in front of Kiku, Heracles, and Arthur like it wasn't a big deal. They were treating them like they were small fries, not even worthy of their attention or concern.

"They holed themselves up in a bulletproof room, with guns and plenty of ammo," the tall blonde man said, "there was no way Manon and I could have taken that kind of chance, we would have been destroyed in seconds, Sadiq."

"We need to get them," Sadiq yelled, "it's day time now anyway, and they can't stay in there forever, go out there and give them hell! Vash and Lilly were also clearly unsuccessful, or else they would have been back by now, so you might as well go and find him for some help too. I don't know where they are, but check the monitors to see where they took off to. It's ridiculous that a whole group of you couldn't get anything done, and I'm only one man and I managed to grab three people without any problems at all. I'm not going to help any of you ungrateful strays anymore; I've done more than my own share of collecting the garbage. Clean up after yourselves.

'Collecting the garbage' Arthur thought as his eyes wandered the room, they slowly scanned over the green hooded man that looked so familiar, and the other two people being scolded viciously by him. That's when he realized that at least one of them was paying attention, it was the girl, looking directly at him. She didn't look scared, disgusted, bothered, or even happy - she didn't have any readable expression on her face.

"...Not only that, but have you considered different ways of getting to the people? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to think of a different way of attack." Sadiq slapped the man on the forehead again, and this time the other man recoiled and almost tried to hit the man back. However, just before he let his fist fly, he stopped himself.

Sadiq continued despite the growing rage on the man's face, "you could have easily pretended you were injured, or that you were simply lost travellers, and they probably would have let you into the fucking room! We haven't been observing these people for so long for nothing, we learned stuff about them that we could use against them, and you don't even take the fucking chance! You could have caught them off guard when you got in after a warm conversation, and blew all of those fuckers to hell, do you hear me? It would have been easy."

The man sighed, resigned to the man's scolding, and nodded his head.

"Good, now help me lug these ones out," Sadiq said, arm waving towards the three survivors that were still tied up, "after that, I want the both of you to find Vash and Lilli, then head to get the rest of them. I'll scold those two later."

Sadiq continued to scold the two new people, and continued to do so as he walked toward Kiku, Heracles, and Arthur. It was as if he wasn't worried about the survivors, he acted as if he was invincible.

Arthur looked down absently, and with widened eyes realized that Kiku was still, in fact, tied up, but that Heracles had somehow broken the heavy rope binding his thin wrists. As Arthur continued to look at the broken rope in disbelief, he saw a faint glimmer coming from something in Heracles' hands – a shard of broken glass that was cutting into his hand ever so slightly. He must have picked it up after he had been kidnapped, or maybe it had been stuck in one of his feet, but that didn't matter, because Heracles had escaped the odds, and he had given them a new chance for survival.

However, it was Arthur that had ruined their already meagre chances at escape. He didn't intentionally do it, but he had done it nonetheless.

Sadiq took one look in Arthur's widened eyes and figured out exactly what was going on. Sadiq's eyes lit up like fireworks, flaring angrily behind his smoky brown orbs. Heracles saw this though, and jumped to his feet before Sadiq could even open his mouth to warn the others.

Sadiq was quick and intelligent, but so was Heracles.

Heracles swiped out toward Kiku with the broken shard of glass in his hands, and cut the rope on Kiku's wrists, while at the same time he cut upward and slashed one of Sadiq's eyes, blinding him in his left eye and doing permanent damage.

A few seconds weren't enough, though, and Sadiq still had perfect use of his right eye. Heracles cutting his face had only put him off guard for a second, then he had gotten right back into the game.

Sadiq had the upper hand, and even though Kiku's arms were free, his legs were not and he couldn't have helped even if he wanted to, and lord, did he want to help Heracles. Instead, Kiku could only watch helplessly as Sadiq pushed him onto the table beside Arthur, and mercilessly beat him until his face was a brutal mess of blood. Sadiq was much stronger than Heracles, and with the help of the other two people in the room, Heracles was virtually helpless.

"Do you really think that was a good idea?" Sadiq screamed into Heracles' face, "do you really think that you could escape me, or do any damage to me?"

Heracles, in return, spit in the man's remaining good eye, which only proved to make the man even angrier than he was before. Heracles tried to kick his legs out at the man, but the taller blonde man finally joined in after the initial shock and held Heracles down onto the table with nothing more than one arm.

"I'll teach you, and your little friends, that I am not to be messed with!" Sadiq said, hitting Heracles across the face with the back of his hand as one final hurrah.

Sadiq backed up, silently telling to the tall blonde man to hold Heracles while he prepared whatever it was that he planned to do with all three of them.

Nothing could have prepared them for what he did.

Sadiq pulled a gun out of his pocket, pointed it at Heracles' head, and shot him point blank without a second's hesitation. There were no dramatic words, there were no warnings - he just pulled the trigger and ended Heracles' life like he was nothing more than a bug that needed to be squashed.

Kiku's eyes widened, but he couldn't even muster a scream, the only thing he could do was look on in horror as Heracles' blood started spilling over the side of the table, making a large red puddle on the floor right next to him.

Sadiq drew back, wiping the blood from the end of the pistol and sneering, as if the blood on it was from nothing but some creature, like it was the blood of one of the infected. He wiped the blood on the end of his tattered shirt, and put the pistol into the back of his pocket again before he looked at the rest of the group with a snide grin on his face.

Kiku recoiled, and looked down at the ground, only to realize that tears were coming from his eyes. However, he hated himself for the fact that the tears coming from his eyes were not from sadness, but from pure, unadulterated fear. He couldn't find it in himself to mourn right away, he could only find it in himself to hope that he wouldn't get killed in the same way that Heracles did. He could only hope that his death wasn't so sudden and meaningless.

Their world – their lives – were nothing like what you saw on the T.V. screens, or during big picture horror movies, you didn't get a chance to say goodbye – there was no dramatic kiss or 'I love you', Heracles' death was all that you got – and that was only if you were lucky. No chance to react, no chance to regret or be happy, you just died – you were killed without a second's hesitation.

Your death was insignificant; the world continued to spin.

Kiku wished that wasn't the way things went, but he couldn't do anything about what had just happened to Heracles. Someone he had grown fond of – someone he had grown to respect immensely – someone he was even growing to love, died pointlessly at the hands of a power hungry madman with a gun and a group of minions at his beck and call.

Kiku became completely still.

Finally, Arthur started thrashing around in his binds, trying with all his might to inch away from the blood making its way toward him in a steady stream. However, despite his apparent fear of being touched by Heracles' spilled blood, his eyes wouldn't leave the sight before him. It was like a train wreck, no matter how horrible it was, you have to watch.

Sadiq grew impatient with the way Arthur was acting, so to make him stop Sadiq ran his hand – palm and fingers – through the heavy blood on the table, only to wipe it on Arthur's face by way of a hard, echoing slap. The blood splattered all around Arthur face, some of it got into his eyes, into his nose, and worst of all it got into his mouth.

The entire room grew quiet, everyone in it was waiting to see Arthur's reaction.

Arthur didn't have time to react for them though, as Sadiq grabbed Arthur's face in his hands and pressed Arthur's bloodied forehead to his own. He looked directly into his eyes, so piercing and furious that Arthur couldn't have looked away if he had wanted to.

Sadiq pulled the sock out of Arthur's mouth, finally allowing the man more room to breathe and speak; however, he wouldn't speak to Sadiq in his current state. He would only end up like Heracles in the end; there was no point in fighting with the man.

"Your friend," Sadiq said with a laugh, "the one you were begging Kiku and Heracles to tell you about earlier? Do you want to know what happened to him, Arthur?"

Arthur didn't nod his head at the man, he knew it was a rhetorical questions and that even if he shook his head Sadiq would tell him.

"I threw him over a three story drop, and his bones shattered to piec-"

Before Sadiq could even finish what he was about to say, Arthur remembered everything in one blinding flash. He remembered running from the infected, he remembered leaving Roderich behind with Elizaveta's dead body, and most of all he remembered running to the middle of the mall behind Alfred, and standing on the overlook with him. He remembered looking down to check if any of the infected were near the entrance.

They had been so close to salvation. So close.

Then Sadiq had shown up, causing Alfred to go into a desperate, and rage fuelled frenzy. Arthur couldn't blame him for his reaction at the time, as they had been so close to finally escaping the death trap that was the mall. Sadiq had begun choking Alfred because of a reckless move he had tried to make and Arthur remembered grabbing him, trying to wrestle his fingers off of Alfred's neck, however, he was nowhere near as strong as Sadiq was. With just one quick hit, Sadiq had him lying flat on the ground, breathless and clueless.

"Your little friend is dead, can you hear that through that thick skull of yours?" Arthur remembered the faint feel of the man's knuckles tapping on his head like he was scolding a small child, and he remembered the stench of the man's breath washing across his face as he laughed at him. "Now, without any more interruptions from your little friend, you're coming with me."

Arthur would never forget Sadiq's words, no matter how hard he would try, the words Sadiq had spoken to him were not words that were easily forgotten. Not only that, the words that Sadiq had spoken were true. The man was many things, but a liar he was not.

Alfred was dead, and there was nothing Arthur could do to change it.

"Hey, pancakes, wake up," Gilbert said in a hushed voice, shaking the blonde man's shoulder to garner his attention.

Matthew tried to respond to Gilbert, but he was so tired and sleep deprived that he could barely feel his own mouth working around the other man's name. Instead, he settled for opening his eyes a crack, just enough to show Gilbert that he was awake and that he could hear him. Matthew's eyebrows, however, were working fine enough to knit together at the name Gilbert had just called him.

"What's with that expression?" Gilbert asked.

"Pancakes?" Matthew finally mustered.

Gilbert laughed quietly, "I woke up to you talking about pancakes, and how much you wanted some. I have to tell you, your vivid descriptions of their taste made me really hungry."

"Jesus Christ," Matthew thought to himself, mentally slapping the palm on his hand to his face. He was so careful with his words when he was talking with someone, yet he didn't have a thought-to-mouth filter when it came to his sleep.

"Seriously though, we need to get out of here soon, the sun's already up."

Matthew looked up at the faintly glowing, dust dirtied skylight and verified what Gilbert was saying; it was already daylight, and they needed to get moving quick and think of something fast before night fell again. If they didn't, they would be left behind by the rest of the group to die off from either starvation, or from being attacked by one of the infected.

Their biggest problem was not the infected, but the possibility of being left behind by the group.

That was, if any of the group remained. If they were all facing similar problems as them, then maybe they wouldn't be the only ones running behind on schedule. At least, Matthew hoped that they weren't the only ones.

In fact, Matthew hoped that they weren't going to be the only ones showing up at the lot with the cars in it. If that was the case, he didn't know what they would do from there. And knowing Gilbert's love for his brother, he wouldn't want to leave without scaling the entire mall for him.

Gilbert was a sane, well built, and completely reasonable person, but when it came to his brother he was nothing more than a blind sheep.

Matthew prayed that that wouldn't be the situation they would come to, because hard decisions would need to be made on the spot, there would be no room for argument or discussion. Matthew wasn't good at on the spot decisions; he was good at thinking things through for an extended period of time - he was a critical thinker. The most they would be given would be 10 minutes, and that was being generous.

Matthew tried to save face despite these frightening thoughts, and got to his feet before Gilbert could begin suggesting that they 'get a move on'. Matthew stood up and carefully scanned the food court, happy that nothing had gotten through in the night. Truly, there really was no worry because if some of them had broken in during the night, both he and Gilbert would either be dead or infected by one of them. Matthew was just being paranoid, and justifiably so.

Gilbert stood up beside him, brushing dirt off of the back of his jeans as he stood next to Matthew. His eyes, however, were firmly locked on the guns that they had both carelessly cast aside when they had run into the Mediterranean fast food joint. It was a stupid mistake on their part, because if the infected could smell them out when they walked out into the open air of the food court, they would be dead in a matter of seconds. The infected were getting stronger and stronger, and if they were still lingering outside they could have the doors broken down in no time at all.

"Let's just run," Matthew said despite his own fears, "standing here and thinking about how this is going to work would be pointless, you can't make a plan when you have unpredictable factors playing in from – quite literally – all around us." Matthew ran a hand through his sweat damp hair, only then starting to realize that the day was unseasonably warm - it was fall, yet it felt much like the dead of summer. "Let's run, grab the gun, each shoulder one, break the gun barring the door with a knife, and run like wild to the front of the mall."

Gilbert was quiet for a moment as he looked at Matthew with a blank expression on his face, still taking in everything Matthew had shot at him. When he finally seemed to have taken it in, a smile began steadily growing on his pale face. His hand shot out and he ruffled Matthew's hair, adding a quick, "you impress me more and more every day. But, it sounds like we have a lot of running coming up."

Then, without another word, Gilbert took Matthew's advice to heart, grabbed Matthew's hand, and dragged him quickly behind him as they ran like wild for the two duffel bags of guns lying on the floor.

Gilbert wasn't one to hesitate, that was obvious.

Just as soon as they had the duffel bags in their hands, the doors on the other side of the food court were bombarded with heavy impacts made by the infected. Judging by the way the metal doors were bending on their frames, they would crank the doors open in no less than 2 minutes.

They had 2 minutes to break the rifle Francis had used to barricade the door, and they had nothing more than a knife that would fit through the small break in the adjacent metal doors.

2 minutes.

Matthew and Gilbert both sifted through their duffel bags, frantically searching for the knife that they had brought along with them. They only had one, for whatever reason, and now they needed it more than they ever would have thought they would.

A knife had virtually no value to the survivors as the infected were very difficult to take down with just that, so they assumed that they didn't need one. The only uses that a knife had for them was to kill an infected silently, and that never worked very well in the end for them.

Assuming things made an ass out of people, and it certainly made an ass out of Gilbert and Matthew.

However, it seemed as though Gilbert had struck gold. With a loud 'aha' Gilbert drew the knife out of his own duffel bag, dropped the bag onto the floor carelessly, and pushed the door so he could fit the sharp knife through the small crack. From there, he set to work on pressing the knife heavily against the wooden barrel of the gun.

They were lucky there were still wooden pieces on the gun, and the fact that the iron was relatively supple, they could break it if they put enough effort into it. The only problem was that they didn't have much time to break the gun in question, and they would need brute force if they wanted to get out before the infected got to them.

"Gilbert, come on," Matthew said frantically, grabbing onto Gilbert's arm as if it would somehow make the barrel of the gun break faster. Matthew looked back at the door on the other side of the food court and realized that the infected would be able to break it even sooner than he had anticipated. The metal was creaking and bending, it seemed like there were more of them outside than there were before. There was quite a distance from the front and the back of the food court, but judging by the increasing speed of the infected, that distance could be crossed in no time at all. They needed to work faster, somehow.

Making noise wouldn't be a problem anymore, the entire store was probably alerted, and considering it was daytime they would be more visible.

That was it.

Noise.

Matthew, struck with an idea, grabbed a gun out of a duffel bag without even consulting with Gilbert, and ran toward the middle of the food court where the dirty skylight still left a faint glow on everything.

"Mattie," Gilbert shouted from where he was still trying to break the rifle in two, "stop, you can't try to take them all with one god damn gun! Think about what you're doing."

Matthew smirked to himself, if he had had time to tell Gilbert what his plan truly was, Gilbert probably would have called him a genius again. Matthew ran as fast as he could, trying not to look at the metal door at the end of the hall that were beginning to gape open, revealing denizens of mottled, gored hands reaching out for he and Gilbert's smell.

Before he executed his plan, Matthew shouted a quick "don't worry" back at Gilbert.

Matthew stood in the middle of the food court, pointed the gun in his hands up at the skylight far above him, and shot until there were no more bullets left in his gun - it had been fully loaded. The skylight, or what used to be the skylight, was nothing more than an enormous gaping hole, letting in wave and wave of gorgeous golden rays. Matthew hoped his suspicions had been right about the infected becoming increasingly more sensitive to the sun, but if he wasn't right, he would be happy that at least he could say he tried when the infected finally lunched on he and Gilbert's flesh.

When Matthew started running back, he met eyes with Gilbert who was still smiling at him from beneath his sweat damp hair. Matthew ran up behind him quickly as he heard the door behind them finally giving way, lifted his leg, and kicked the door as hard as he could.

The rifle snapped.

A/N: Sorry about the really slow updates, I've been travelling back and forth with my parents to visit my university, and we also have another trip planned to go and pick up my new puppy(: )). Things should be back to normal starting today, and I'm not just blowing that out to tide you guys over, I promise!

Stay tuned, this arc is almost over, then we're going to get into the second-last arc (or last depending on how you look at it.)