AN: Sorry for the delay, I had to think about where I wanted to take this story, and find a way to tie it in to the RE world (since this is fanfiction, not upload-random-zombie-fiction). Also, I had to struggle a bit to find a balanced cast of survivors - the obvious choice of a team of S.W.A.Ts had to go, for some reason. :)

Also, I had to decide on the fate of my character. On the one hand, the temptation to let him survive for some reason (chance, skill, magic, leet pawning) so I could continue to interact with the story, on the other hand, kill him off early so you would realize, this is a realistic fic, not some superme fic... I hope you're satisfied with how that turned out. wink

So, with the long wait, here comes the next horror to visit our soon-to-be-growing cast, in...

Associate Evil

"He has the keys!" she muttered to herself. "So get moving!" She drew her handgun and began to sprint towards the corner Joe had just turned. The corner seemed further away now that she looked at it. Was it fading off in the distance? How was that possible? Her mind boggled, then she looked down at her pumping feet, which, she realized, were quite stationary.

"I refuse to freeze up!" she yelled, pounding at her legs angrily. Taking a gasping breath, she took a step forward, then another. Finally, in control of her legs again, she resumed her rapid approach.

As she reached the corner, her intution flickered... she realized something was very wrong, and despite her best intentions, she stopped before rounding the corner. What was wrong with this scene? It came to her as an image.

Joseph rounded the corner, and shortly thereafter, a loud roar followed by a high pitched scream echoed throughout the store. Joseph had run into a zombie, in his haste to reach safety, and the monster had most likely grabbed him, pulled him to the ground, and began chewing on his flesh. Joseph continued to scream as the zombie noisily munched-

Why wasn't any noise coming from around the corner? There it was, simple enough. Surely zombies weren't intelligent enough to practice stealth, and if Joseph still had any life in him, he'd be screaming his head off. Even if his throat was bitten, the zombie would still be making noise...

She turned around the corner in a quick twirl, gun raised at approximately head level, eyes darting rapidly around to spot any sudden movements. A body suddenly lurched at her, and she pulled rapidly on the trigger, twice.

"Hey!" Joseph screamed, jumping back and falling on his ass. He slowly leaned forward, looking towards his shoulder. "That second one grazed me. What were you doing, trying to kill me?"

She gaped. Other than his now bleeding shoulder, Joseph was unharmed. She glanced around expectantly, looking for a sign of struggle. All that awaited her gaze was a small pool of blood leading off towards the center of the store. She gestured towards it, speechless.

"I got lucky. I rounded the corner and bumped into one of those things. I fell backwards on my back - hard. But I broke the fall - barely, and sprung back up..." he hesitated, catching his breath. "and suddenly, he cocked his head sideways... I don't mean cocked, more like it flapped limply... and he dashed off."

"I don't believe it. You run into a zombie and it runs away from you?" Joe offered a sheepish grin.

"Maybe my looks didn't appeal to it?" He smiled wearily, then fell back onto his hands. "Jesus, I'm having a rough day already, didn't need that."

She looked back towards the blood, her intuition kicking in again. Something was still wrong. She strained for the mental image again, and briefly saw the blood, only more stretched out, not in tiny drops spread out over a large pool. Something about the blood was wrong...

"Hey, we going to sit here all day..." he sprung up to his feet, his energy apparently returned, "or are we going to get to the safe area? I don't want to press my luck again, if at all possible."

Her attention diverted, she decided the blood wasn't very important after all. She draped his arm over her shoulder, only to have him shrug her off. "I'm not badly hurt, like I said, you just grazed me." He walked off, limping only slightly - from the fall, most likely. After a brief hesitation, she began to follow him, gun still at the ready. He turned suddenly, a smile returning to his face. "At least this time, I'm walking, right?"

She couldn't help but smirk. Then he paused in front of the Subway doors, and glanced down confused at his clenched hand.

"Something wrong?" She asked cautiously. Then she gasped out, "You didn't drop the -"

"No." He said, slowly unclenching his fist. The keys fell to the ground, slick crimson coating them completely. He slowly reclenched his bleeding fist, gasped from the pain. "Could you... unlock the door? My hand doesn't really feel up to it right now."

She gingerly picked up the bloody keys, wiped them gently against her pants. "Well... at least, in the end, you finally got a grip..." He groaned, more from pain than from the pun, and she turned the right key in the lock. "Lets get you inside and see if we can doctor you up."

---

"This is the strangest gathering of doomsday people I've ever met." Joseph said to the security girl. He leaned back against the counter, brushing his bandaged hand briefly over the wood. He held the hand up, inspected it; apparently, napkins, combined with duct tape, made good bandages. His hand was nowhere near as flexible as he would have liked it to have been - supposing he had to hold a gun, for example - but at least it wasn't a deep cut. Clenching those keys that hard... he couldn't believe how badly he must have wanted to save them. Still, in this place, those keys might turn out more important than any meager weapons they had gathered.

"Don't pick at it." A man to Joseph's left said suddenly. Joe grinned sheepishly. "Normally, I'd say you could take the bandage off in one to two days, but with the higher than usual risk of infection, I'd recommend keeping them on until the cut heals completely."

Joe nodded. "Thanks again for patching me up, doctor..." The man gestured to his namebadge, one of many Subway relics Joseph had found in the back storage room.

"Brown. James Brown, MD." Joe cocked an eyebrow. "No, I'm not young, I'm in shape. I may look younger, but I'm actually 36." Joe stiffled a cough - he had actually been about to comment on the luck of having a doctor, not on the doctor's given age...

"Well, Doctor Brown, please update me on the status of the cure." Joe looked solemnly into the doctor's shocked eyes.

"Cure? What cure? I've been here for four hours, the outbreak has been going on for - approximately ten hours, and you already expect me to have somehow, without a decent work environment or any of the usual accoutrements, somehow to have mass produced a working cure?" The doctor threw his hands up into the air, exasperated. "Ridiculous!" He stalked away angrily.

Joe covered a smile. "Got him to go away, though." The girl slapped his injured hand, causing him to gasp with pain.

"Don't forget, he patched your hand up." She said warningly.

"I know, I know, I just... don't like doctors." Joe smiled in his now-familiar sheepish manner. "Anyway, we need to find out what we're working with here, so time for a little Q and A."

"Attention everybody. "Joseph called out. Everyone looked up, saw him, and looked back to whatever they were doing. A scarred, burned, patched up man commanded no attention. So, he decided to switch tactics.

"Oh my fucking God, zombies are in the Subway!" Joseph roared out suddenly. As one, every head jerked up, some reflexively stepping away from him. Then, from the back, a small giggle shot out, a scared reflex noise from the back of the throat. Slowly, it began to spread, with a few people smiling, and one man bursting into guffaws.

"Son, I ain't come that close to shitting my pants in almost five-aught years, back when the war was just another paycheck." The aforementioned man let out between wheezing gasps. Joe didn't know what to say to this, so he just smiled and waited. Finally, the temporary merriment died down. Joseph looked around again; this time, all eyes were on him, waiting. He cleared his throat, and stepped forward a few steps.

"Alright, sorry for that, but now that I've got your attention, we need to discuss some fundamentals here." He paused briefly, gathering himself. "First off, does anyone here have any doubt about what is going on out there?"

Everyone shook their head, as one. From the back, a whispering voice called out, "Zombies. Undead." Joe took a look towards the direction of the voice, marking the young girl who had started the giggling before.

"Exactly. Zombies. Undead. Carnivorous corpses brought back to life." Joe began to discuss the basics of zombies as he knew it. Their perseverance, tolerance for pain, hunger for flesh, known weaknesses...

"Headshot." the whispery voice called out again. "I know, because I play a lot of videogames. That's what you do. Shoot them in the head." Joe nodded approvingly.

"Alright, enough on that. Knowing what a zombie is is one thing, and one we can't cover very well. What if those things out there aren't run-of-the-mill walking undead? We won't know until we are face to face to them. So, for now, avoidance is the key issue when dealing with them. But more importantly than that, we need to discuss survival."

He turned towards the chalkboard menu, wiped it clean with his sleeve, and picked up a piece of pink chalk. "Right now, we are doing rather fine, all things considered. We could all be out there on our own, getting picked off at the same rate, but due to some reason, we're all here, still alive, and capable of forming a suitable team. So what I want you to do is come up here, write your name down, and list whatever skills you might be able to bring to the team. Oh, and if you have anything that couldd be useful, please write that down too."

He lifted the chalk, pausing only to think. Then he wrote down on the board:

Joseph Games, knows this store very well and has keys to almost every lock in it

He waited, chalk raised. Finally, the security girl stepped forward and grabbed the chalk from his hand. It was at this point that he realized he had never gotten her name. He watched with interest as she wrote:

Elizabeth Hunter, security guard w/ weapons training, have a .38 Special with 24 spare bullets

She glanced down towards her holstered gun, drew it, flicked the barrel open. Frowned. Raised the chalk again, scratched out 24. Wrote 20 above it. Then she hopped back up on the counter.

The old man who had "nearly shit himself" stood up, calmly walked towards the board. In a looping script underneath Elizabeth's, he added:

Jared Tanner, decorated war veteran / retired farmer. Carrying a Remington 12er, no extra ammo

Now a line began to form, and for the first time Joseph was able to count how many people were present. Only three more in line, plus the three already on the board... that made six...

Dr. James Brown, MD, have extensive medical background

Alex "Monty" Montgomery, have "extensive medical herbs"

Joe cocked an eyebrow. "Mr. Montgomery... Monty... what exactly do you mean by extensive medical herbs?"

Monty grinned. "Well, if there ain't a government anymore, that means it ain't illegal anymore, and that's all you need to know." He leaned back, a satisfied look on his face. Dr. Brown frowned, while Joseph took a step forward again, an intense look on his face.

"I didn't mean the medical herbs part, I meant the extensive part."

Monty laughed, pointed towards the corner where a black trenchcoat rested. "Just picked up ten pounds of premium hydroponic, cost me $100 an eighter. Shit'd get an elephant high in one puff." He sighed. "Not that it matters much since there ain't any customers to be selling to anymore. You want some, go ahead and grab it before it goes stale."

"I can't condone this." Brown began, glaring at Monty. "Peddling your drugs to what might be the last surviving group... what we need is to keep everyone clear headed, not doped up... and tripping on whatever else you got in that trenchcoat."

Monty raised his hands defensively, backed away. "Hey, man, I only carry premium weed, none of that hard shit. I know how to have a good time without destroying my mind, ya know?"

Joseph stepped in, raising a hand between the two. "Dr. Brown." He began. "We're going to be potentially in some troublesome situations, and I agree with your assessment of how we need to stay mentally acute. But, if anyone get's injured by one of those zombies, we'll need this marijuana." He raised a finger, stalling Dr. Brown's protests. "If we get the chance, I'll let you raid the pharmacy, but I know most of the prescription drugs come in from pharmaceutical outsourcing, and if you want to tell a man who - for example, might be about to have his leg chopped off - to take Advil or Tylenol, you're a very cruel doctor indeed." He paused." I'd say a relative split, 5 to you, 5 to Monty." He raised the other hand, blocking Monty similarly. "5 pounds is more than enough to keep you satisfied. And the rest will be used, literally, for medicinal purposes, unless Dr. Brown can find something similar - like morphene - to sedate anyone who might need it. In which case, you'll get the five back."

He dropped his arms, looked between both men. Finally, they sighed and stalked off to seperate corners.

The young girl had backed away from the scene, looking nervously around the whole time. Now, Joseph gestured her forward, pointing to the chalkboard.

She picked up the chalk, glanced at the board, breathed slowly, and began to write in a slow, meticulous monoscript:

Ana Groves, no useful skills or equipment

She smiled weakly towards the ground. "I'm still just a freshman, I can't do anything to help out."

Joseph looked towards the name she had written. Ana Groves... Anna Grands... he suddenly began to remember what had happened so far... blinding white... car crash... missing Anna... girl melting... then chasing... then gunpoint... then khaki zombie... now... a girl who's name richocheted in his head, reminding him that he had to find Anna eventually... or else... or else...

white

AN Part 2: Whoooo, longest chapter so far. Had to resolve the Joseph / zombie encounter, then introduce a cast of 6... for those who lost track, they're Joseph Games (not my real last name), Elizabeth Hunter, James Brown, Alex Montgomery, Ana Groves, and Jared Tanner. All those names just randomly popped into my head as appropriate, so hopefully they'll fit the character roles that develop.

So, until next time, reviews would be great. Next chapter they get out of the Subway and begin exploring, and a few secrets are revealed (a few were revealed in this chapter, but you'll never find them, wink).