I hope none of you reading this chapter have weak stomachs, because it's a tad bit violent. But hey, you all wanted the zombies to show up, right?

Thanks again to my sister for being a wonderful beta. :)

EDIT: I'm so sorry! It looks like chapter 2 was reposted last night. It's all fixed, now. Sorry!

June 1, 2013: five months before the Outbreak

'Global MedCare Develops a Vaccine for Dementia' Arthur's morning paper announced, headline bold against the gray of the front page. Uninterestedly, he skimmed through the article, not much feeling like reading it. He didn't much feel like doing anything, lately, a trend his friends and family were beginning to find…worrying.

It had been less than two weeks since the disastrous end of his…relationship with James Eames, Cobb's conman friend.

The article started by talking about dementia—what it was, what caused it, how many people had it…Arthur was surprised to see that in 2006, over 30 million people were diagnosed. Intrigued, he began reading the story with a little bit more attention. Research had always taken his mind off of Eames.

Maybe that had been the problem.

Sighing, he shook his head to clear it and read on. It turned out that Global MedCare was releasing the vaccine that very day, but only on limited release to those who already had dementia, or those who were thirty or over and predisposed to it.

The vaccine remade body tissue by boosting the body's need for protein. People would have to take daily supplements, but it sure beat memory loss. Arthur smiled slightly, always amazed at the progress the world could make.

Maybe he'd look into getting it, when it became readily available to the public.

-oooxooo-

July 6, 2013: four months before the Outbreak

"I'm going to twenty-nine this year," Arthur sighed quietly from where he sat, bored, behind the counter of the weapons shop. "Didn't I say I'd be out of Charleston by now? Wasn't that my plan? Why does nothing ever go the way I—" He aggravatedly rubbed at his temple and flipped the top of a silver lighter open and closed with his thumb, trying not to think too much about everything that had gone wrong.

He put it away with a pang of sadness in his heart, turning instead to focus on Mr. Harrison, who was in again trying to find the rope Arthur had led him to two days ago. The same rope Arthur had shown him to last week. And last month.

He really didn't want to know what the man needed that much rope for.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Harrison," he said with a smile as the man came up to the counter half an hour later, his desired coils of rope tucked under his arm. Dealing with people was annoying, but all in all, working at the shop wasn't too bad. He got to observe all types of people, and he had plenty of time to work on his computer while they wandered around until they bought something or left.

"Hello…Arthur," the man said, one eye slightly wide and the other squinted. "If that is, indeed, really you."

"Yes, I'm still me. Just like last week. Now, are you all set?" Arthur asked, and Mr. Harrison's face broke into a smile.

"Oh good, good. Yes, I'm all set. You can never have enough rope. Nope, never enough rope."

It was the same conversation they'd had the week before, and Arthur suddenly wondered if the man had Alzheimer's or something. That might explain the repeat buys…

"You can never be too sure about people," Harrison confided as he set the rope on the counter. "My wife went crazy today and insisted that I get that new vaccine they're offering. I told her I didn't want it, but…well, she set the appointment up tomorrow, anyway. Some people."

"Yeah, some people," Arthur agreed with a smile. He kind of liked Mr. Harrison. At least their conversations beyond the greeting and the rope were never predictable. Harrison had a unique view of the world.

"Well," said the elderly gentleman when Arthur was done ringing him up. "You have a nice day, now. And if they start coming for you, well…you let me know and I'll take care of them."

"You have a nice day, too," Arthur said with a grin, and waved as the crazy old man left. "I hope the vaccine works for you," he said when Harrison was out of earshot. "The world needs more people like you."

-oooxooo-

October 30, 2013: The Outbreak

It started small. The first Arthur saw of it was at a party. He went into the kitchen for a drink to find a middle-aged couple eating a package of raw hamburger. When he asked them what was wrong, they just kind of stared at him and licked their fingers, saying they were hungry, that's all.

The first Eames saw of it was on the news, a story about some woman in New York who'd been found eating her dog. It was mildly disturbing, but not enough to panic anyone. She got bussed to a madhouse and that was the end of that.

It was three days later that the first human was found with chunks bitten out of their neck.

An isolated incident, the papers and the news said. Nothing to worry about. But then it happened again, and again, until most of the major cities of the world were all just one isolated incident.

-oooxooo-

November 4, 2013: Present Day, eighteen hours earlier

Arthur watched, shocked, when he saw on the news that Shanghai had been quarantined with more than 22 million people still inside. This disease, this—this whatever it was was spreading fast. Too fast to contain. From what Arthur could tell from the research he'd thrown himself into, it seemed to be emerging rapidly and unpredictably all over the world.

The only connection was the vaccine.

It had taken some digging—more digging than even Arthur was used to—to discover an incomplete formula for the inoculation, but what he had found made his heart stop dead in his chest. According to the chemical equations he'd run in his head, the vaccine would increase the body's need for protein to rebuild, repair, and strengthen brain and muscle tissue. People were only supposed to need to take protein supplements to keep up with the body's new requirements.

But it looked like they'd moved onto another source of protein.

What was worse was that the vaccine had altered their brain chemistry, turning them into smart, emotionless predators. It started with a headache, reports said. Then irritability, and a fever, and then…There was really nothing to distinguish them from the other people around them, besides slightly grayish skin and glassed-over eyes.

Well, that and the blood around their mouths.

The next city locked down was Tokyo, the news said. And then it was New York. Then Paris. He was cleaning out the weapons store with the radio on when the anchor reported that it was just in that Buenos Aires had been closed, and Arthur tried to breathe around his heart, which was lodged in his throat and trying valiantly to escape.

The last time Cobb had talked to Eames, the conman had been in Buenos Aires.

Trying to not panic too much, Arthur shoved the last of the ammo into the backpack, reaching for another one to load the knives into. They sold big-ass knives here, so he had everything he could want.

He looked up when the bell above the door chimed.

"We're not open," he said automatically, store-reflexes still ingrained. And then he shook his head and turned to the customer, because hell, if there were people running around trying to eat other people, who was he to begrudge anyone the weapons he wasn't taking with him?

"I'm just here for rope," came a reply from the back shelves, and Arthur froze. "Where was it again? Oh Arthur, you know I can never remember."

And for a minute, Arthur let himself relax and believe that maybe Mr. Harrison had held out against his hell-spawn wife and not gotten the vaccine, maybe he was still normal in this emerging chaos. That minute was all it took for the man to appear from the shadows and tackle Arthur from the side.

Shocked, Arthur had only a second to twist his body to avoid both hitting his head on the granite counter and the teeth aiming for the junction of his neck and shoulder.

"Jesus Christ!" he gasped out, hands on Harrison's shoulders. The vaccine had done its job well: Harrison, frail as he looked, had enough muscle to hold Arthur down with seemingly incredible ease. "Mr. Harrison, stop! Think about what you're doing!"

But he already knew it was useless. He managed to flip the man off of him using a move his father taught him for wrestling with his brother, back when he was young. He wrenched his shoulder in the delivery, though, because he wasn't even close to being in the right position to attempt it normally.

He was just glad it worked.

With Harrison pinned under him, Arthur hesitated. What now? Surely there had to be something he could do, someone he could call, a cure, maybe… But he ran out of time to think when the man below him shoved him off, hard. Arthur landed awkwardly, back to a shelf with one leg pinned underneath him.

His vision swam a little from his head's impact with the wood.

Harrison rolled onto his stomach and stood, leaping at Arthur before the hacker could really comprehend that the elderly man had moved. Arthur stopped thinking and let his instincts take over. Frantically reaching behind him, Arthur found a metal fire extinguisher.

The first swing hit Mr. Harrison in the temple.

Breathless, Arthur struggled to his feet, watching Harrison with trepidation. It seemed that he wasn't moving—and then he was up again, and coming at Arthur with a wild look in his eyes that hadn't been there before.

This time, Arthur swung the fire extinguisher and didn't stop until Harrison's head was a bloody mess barely connected to his shoulders. And after the eternity Arthur lived in a second, what was left of Mr. Harrison crumpled to the ground and didn't move again.

Arthur was sure he could hear someone screaming. Someone far off. After a second he realized that it was his lungs, screaming against the breath he hadn't known he was holding. For another minute he was afraid to release it, worried that he may lose the tenuous grasp he had on his calm if he allowed himself the opportunity to make any noise whatsoever.

"Fuck," he breathed, finally. "Fuck. Fuck." He let the bloody fire extinguisher slip from his limp fingers and onto the floor. It landed with a loud metallic thud that was swallowed up in the silence of the realization that he'd just killed a man.

He pulled out his phone and shakily dialed the number he'd sworn would never mar his Blackberry screen again, because he'd just killed a man. There were plenty of people he could have called to help him, but there was only one person he wanted to talk to at the moment.

"Godammit, Eames, you son of a bitch," he muttered almost hysterically, pacing back and forth until he caught sight of Harrison's body and froze. Then, he closed his eyes and vaulted over the counter, sliding down to sit on the floor, knees to his chest. He sucked in a shaky breath and pillowed his forehead on the arm he'd laid across them, not looking at the line of blood winding around the edge of the wood paneling. "James, you had better fucking pick up—"

"We're sorry, but the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected or is out of service. Please try the number again or contact your service provider for more—"

Arthur swore and hung up, fighting the urge to yell and throw his phone across the room. He took a breath and tried to compose himself. This was the first time he'd ever killed someone who wasn't made of paper with a target drawn on them—shot, yes, but killed?. He wasn't sure if he wanted the reality of that to sink into him yet, so he switched his attention to other matters.

Okay, so Eames's number was out of service. That could mean anything from he'd switched to a new phone to he'd been killed in Buenos Aires and his phone had been destroyed.

…So, Eames had a new number.

Arthur let out a forceful huff of air and stood. He straightened his tie and didn't flinch when he saw Harrison's body lying collapsed on his floor. 'It was self-defense,' he told himself. 'The world is going to hell, Arthur. He was trying to eat you.' After a minute, he shoved all thoughts of it into the back of his mind and focused on the job at hand, something he'd always been good at.

First, he needed a plan.

'Call Cobb,' his brain suggested immediately, and he cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. Cobb, Mal, and the kids were home, as far as he knew. He hoped they were all right. Taking a moment to retrieve the radio that had fallen off the counter during the struggle, Arthur thought through his next few moves.

He'd already talked to his family, and they were safe in rural France, for the time being at least. He didn't feel like he had to worry about them: all of them were weapons-handy.

Next, his friends. The only ones he could think of off hand were Cobb and Eames and…Ariadne.

Swearing, Arthur dialed Ariadne's number. The Cobbs and Eames could take care of themselves, but Ariadne was just a college student. He'd met her when he was younger and living in Paris for a time with his mother. They'd been neighbors for a while, him in his sweaters at fourteen and she a seven-year-old with bouncing brown pigtails. They'd met up again when she took her junior year abroad to France, visiting the castles in the Loire River Valley, and soon they'd grown into the email-every-few-hours, let's-call-and-chat-about-your-life-even-though-nothing's-changed close friends.

Ring, ring, ring.

Ring, ring, ring—click.

"You've reached Ariadne Spellman. Please leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks!"

He didn't bother leaving a message. Instead, he grabbed his packs of weapons and left the store without looking back.

-ooo-

When everything was loaded in the car, Arthur took a moment—one, single moment—to tell Mr. Harrison that he was sorry, for everything. Then, out of ingrained habit, he checked one last time to make sure the sign was flipped to 'closed', and then slid into the driver's seat.

Though it was far from being counted among America's biggest, Charleston was the second largest city in South Carolina. The city had at least five Alzheimer's care centers, and many more assisted living or nursing homes that would have gotten the vaccine. There were many predisposed relatives.

The results showed in the chaos on the streets.

People were running, screaming, crying. Some were praying. Some were being eaten. Some just sat and stared. Arthur tried not to look at anything but the road, and finally he made it out of the center of the city, leaving behind the slaughter.

The quiet was almost worse.

There were a few scattered bodies, some on the lawns, some draped over fences, all of them mutilated, ripped apart. The worst ones were on the driveways, or hanging out of cars. The closest to safety, yet brutally denied it in the last crucial seconds.

Somewhere off in someone's backyard, a radio blared faint warnings for citizens to stay inside, stay away from friends or loved ones who were acting strangely, lock the doors and don't let anyone in. It faded as Arthur drove on.

At the beginning of the highway, blinking signs had been set up that read: 'State-enacted quarantine. Do not attempt to leave the city.' But there was no one around to enforce it, and Arthur wondered if the guard had been that splash of blood on the bottom left corner of the sign.

He left the city.

After a few bare miles, there were many cars. Most of them were empty, with windows broken or doors torn off. They lay stopped at odd angles, like they'd swerved wildly before coming to a rest. Many of them still had their keys in the ignition.

Arthur pressed his lips together in a thin line. He'd have to leave his car to move some of them, and that wasn't a prospect he was looking forward to. But there was no other way. He had to get to Pittsburgh to find Ariadne, and that meant getting onto I-26 W no matter what.

Reaching into the backseat, Arthur pulled out a Winchester rifle and two handguns; a Glock 17 9mm and a Berretta 98 9mm. He checked to make sure all were loaded, and then got out of the car. Slinging the rifle across his back and holstering the Glock, Arthur pocketed the keys. He didn't see anyone around, but he wouldn't take the chance of having the car—and his supplies—stolen.

The first car he went to was a black BMW, passenger side door hanging only by one hinge, back windshield broken. The backseat was soaked with blood, but the car was empty. Arthur drove it off the road and then moved on to the next car. It was a silver Toyota, similarly damaged and stained.

But unlike the BMW, there were still people inside.

Arthur couldn't hold back his cringe when he saw them. There was a woman in the driver's seat, slumped over the wheel with her bleached-blonde hair plastered to the side of her throat, or what was left of it. The entire left side of her neck and upper arm had been ripped away. The blood gleamed wetly on the white of her bones.

The two children in the backseat had fared even worse. The girl, who looked to be about five, was torn open from her collar bone to her waist, skin peeled back and most of her organs gone. The younger boy was strapped into the car seat. His arms and legs had been pulled off.

The passenger side door was open, and there were smears of blood on both the outside and inside. Arthur tried not to wonder if the husband had been dragged out and mutilated, or if he'd been the mutilator.

And, though he didn't want to, Arthur walked around to the driver's side and leaned in to unbuckle the woman's seatbelt so he could pull her out. He jerked back so violently that he nearly stumbled off the road when she gave a low moan. She stirred, and then blearily raised her head.

He couldn't believe she was still alive.

"Ma'am?" he asked, taking a hesitant step forward. "Ma'am, don't move. I'm going to get you out of here, all right? And then we'll get you some help. So, just hang on for a minute while I get your seatbelt off."

She looked at him with glassy eyes, her face pale and drawn. "My…children. How are my children?" The words were hollow, like she was in shock or already knew the answer. He didn't want to tell her.

"They didn't make it," he said softly. She shifted again, and Arthur could see the fresh blood leaking down her left arm. "I'm going to go around to the other side, and we'll get you out of here, okay? Just hang on, ma'am."

He returned to the passenger side and leaned in to the car to hit the release for her seatbelt, and she just watched him with those same, glassy eyes. They sent a chill down his spine. Afterward, he returned to the driver's side and helped her out of the car. She was shaky on her feet and supported herself on his shoulder, swaying dangerously from side to side.

"Here, let's sit you down and let me take a look at your neck," Arthur said. "I'm not a doctor, but…" 'Maybe,' he thought, 'the damage isn't as bad as I'd first suspected.' It was still amazing that she'd lived, but Arthur knew she wouldn't last much longer if he did nothing.

"Did you get the vaccine?" he asked nonchalantly as he set her down on a rock by the side of the road. She looked like she was just in shock. Her stood up and went around to her left side to get a better look at her neck.

He gasped when he saw the extent of the mutilation.

"No," she said, "but my husband did. What's wrong?" she asked, tipping her head a little to look at him. "What is it?"

For the minute it took his brain to comprehend what he was seeing, Arthur just stood there staring at her neck and wondering how someone could be alive when their carotid artery was bitten through. It was when he'd finally realized that no one could live through that that she bared her teeth and dove at him.

Before he could even think about it, he'd fired two shots into her skull in rapid succession. She jerked, but didn't stop her advance. The third bullet tore off the top of her head, and she finally fell, twitching, to the ground. He fired another into her exposed brain, just to be safe.

"Shit," he breathed, and scrubbed a hand over his face. "I thought it was just the vaccine that was making people crazy." But, if he believed her, then she hadn't gotten it. "Fuck." He holstered his other gun and turned back to the car, even more determined now to get to Pittsburgh. God, he hoped Ariadne was okay.

Checking back once more to make sure that the woman wasn't moving, Arthur returned to the car, intent on getting it out of the way. He still had ten hours—more, if this was any indication of what the rest of the road would be like—to drive to Pittsburgh from Charleston. That was also assuming he wouldn't have to fight people for the cars he wanted to move.

With a sigh and another careful glance around, Arthur slid into the driver's seat and turned the key. The engine started, loudly, and Arthur almost missed the soft cry. He barely suppressed the instinct to slam on the brakes, and instead glanced up to check the rear view mirror.

The little girl was trying to unlatch her seatbelt.

He met her glassy eyes in the mirror, watched her mouth 'help' silently over and over, because her lungs were torn open and she could no longer speak. She got the belt undone just as Arthur launched the car off the road. He rolled out of the door just seconds before the girl's teeth snapped in the air where his neck had just been.

His worst suspicions were confirmed.

Taking a deep breath, he drew his gun and raised it at the child monster inside the vehicle. When she caught sight of it, her eyes widened and her bottom lip began to tremble.

"Please!" she begged, her lungs somehow miraculously healed. "Please don't kill me! Please! I'll be good, I swear!" He hesitated, just for a second. Long enough to see the victory in her eyes as she leapt at him from the driver's seat.

He fired two shots rapidly into her head, knocking her back. He watched, sick, as she crumpled against the wheel of the car and stopped moving. Out of pure paranoia, he shot her two more times, just to be sure.

He checked the magazine of his gun out of nervous habit, even though he knew he still had twelve rounds left. After confirming it, Arthur slid the magazine back into place and turned to head to his car. The road was clear, now, and he needed to get going.

He was stopped halfway there by a long wail.

It stood the hair on the back of his neck straight up, but not from any reason he could easily identify. After a second, he realized that it was because the wail was cold, emotionless. It wasn't a cry of sorrow, or of pain.

Arthur glanced back at the car.

Inside, the limbless two-year-old boy in the car seat was staring at him. He wasn't moving—couldn't, Arthur supposed—just staring, mouth open in a perfectly round circle.

And then the cry trailed into a word. "Hungry," the child screamed, eyes glazed over and voice even; loud, but neutral. "Hungry." And that scared Arthur more than Mr. Harrison tackling him. More than the woman with her neck bitten open, and more than the girl coming at him, trying to keep the scraps of her chest together.

His Beretta barked twice, the first bullet shattering the window and ricocheting, the next finding its mark in the child's forehead. The monotone stopped, and Arthur closed his eyes.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he breathed, because now everything he'd hoped wasn't true was confirmed. It looked like the vaccine had more effects than he'd wanted to believe. It could be spread by biting—maybe the infected somehow produced the vaccine naturally? In saliva, maybe? The dead could rise, devoid of all emotion or humanity. Unable to feel pain.

But, the vaccine had done its job.

The infected remembered things. Everything. They could not feel, but they remembered what emotion felt like, what it sounded like. They remembered their friends and family as easy targets, not as loved ones. Worse, it seemed like they would probably remember how to act human, how to be normal enough to get their families close enough to eat.

Arthur threw up in the middle of the road, and then got into his car. He had a long way to go.

Dun dun dun! The end, for this week. xD Thanks so much to all of you who reviewed, and please, keep doing it!