Chapter 2

The Meeting

I had to think. My unit was gone. I was alone. I was fucked. I ran up the apartment stairs, finding most of them barricaded. I wasn't able to climb over any of them, so I guess the people who made these knew what they were doing. Too bad for me, right? I stumbled into one of the few unlocked apartments and found two of them shambling around, a man and a woman. I took out my sidearm and dispatched both of them, one shot each. I ran over to the phone and I prayed that it was still working.

It took awhile, but I finally managed to get through. I was calling my friend, Samantha, who lived in Riverside. She picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Sam, listen, it's me, Cal." All my friends called me Cal, not Marty. "You need to get out of Riverside now. Do you understand?"

Her voice came back, wrought with fear. "Why, what's going on Cal? Where are you? Are you hurt or-"

I tried to put courage into my voice, to make her feel better. I was nearly sobbing as I ran through what just happened in my head. "I don't know if this is some classified crap or something, but Philly is gone. Overrun. Out of the picture. I don't know what it is, maybe that Green Flu, but everyone here went crazy! There's to many of them, you need to get out of Riverside now!"

She started shouting at her parents in the background, yelling at them to get everything in the car. She was smart enough to listen to me, I was glad. Sam and I were close, like, close close, you know? If anything happened to her I'd...well I guess I don't know what I did.

She spoke to me one more time, before the line cut out. "Cal, where are you? We can come get you and-"

"I'm in the middle of fucking Philly! How do you think I know this? Just get out and head, I don't know, west? North? Just get away from here!"

"Cal, I'm sca-" Then the line cut out. It was gone and I had to move. I felt the right side of my face for the first time, and my hand came away covered in my own blood. Times like that make you wish you had been a medic, right? All I did was wash it up some in the sink right next to me, then I went for the roof. I didn't want to die, I was only 19. Along the way I raided every apartment I saw for food, ammo, anything like that. When I made it to the roof, I realized how hopeless my situation was.

I saw the entire city, or at least the portion I was in, engulfed in flames. I turned on my radio for the first time and heard screaming all over. I turned down the volume so that thing below wouldn't hear me. People were yelling, units were being overrun. The EVAC site was under heavy attack, including more of those behemoth's that killed all my friends. I couldn't imagine facing that one down there again, let alone three of them. I decided to make a call, try to get a chopper out to pick me up. No dice.

"This is Private First Class Callahan, on the roof of the Holly Street Apartments, can anyone hear me?" An older voice came over, and I recognized it as Captain Jensen, my C.O.

"Cal?" I could hear gunfire and screaming in the background, and the Captain frequently stopped talking to me to bark orders at the people on his end of the line. It was chaos everywhere. "What is it son, we could use some reinforcements here, where is your unit?"

"Dead sir, everyone's gone! I'm the only one left. I need a chopper to the Holly Street apartments ASAP."

"I can't do that son, we need every bird we can get at the hospital." I looked up and could see the hospital from where I was. I could faintly make out the flashes of gunfire and the EVAC choppers leaving and approaching the rooftop of the hospital. Suddenly he started scream, it was so sudden I dropped my radio. I picked it back up just in time I guess. "Cal, you are ON YOUR OWN! Do you understand, we can't get you out! If you can make your way to Mercy Hospital you can-" Then he started yelling behind him and the sporadic shots I heard before turned into a rolling crescendo of automatic weapons fire. Can you believe I nearly tried, then and there, to get to the hospital? I know, stupid. I looked back for the final time, and saw one of the helicopters spin out of control and slam into the helipad. The explosion wasn't big, but it was big enough to knock down everyone on the roof. I heard gasping from the Captain's end, and then he whispered. I don't think I was meant to hear it because it sounded like a prayer. The next second I heard the scream of the horde through the radio, then the scream of the few surviving people being butchered and torn to shreds. Like I said, I was fucked.

I was on that rooftop for a week, scavenging food from the apartments below. I remember looking over the side of the roof and looking at the swarm in the streets below. That big bastard was down there, his back all fucked up from the grenade. It was like he was pacing around the building, looking for something. Well, the only something worth looking for was me, so I pulled my head back over the side and whispered a prayer of my own. I knew I wasn't going to make it out. Why I didn't turn my rifle on myself at that moment, I'll never know. I guess I still believed that suicide was a one way ticket to hell? I lost my faith overseas, seeing my best friends' lives ended out of the blue. Landmines, snipers, firefights, you name it. But hey, the end of the world makes everyone religious, right?

By the end of the week I didn't have the strength to pull the trigger anymore, even if I wanted to. The water was out by day 3, and I ran out of food on day 5. My wounds had scarred over by now, so I wasn't worried about bleeding out. That's when I heard it, a helicopter flying right near the rooftop I was on! I pulled out my smoke grenade, green for friendly, and prepared to use it when I heard the shouting. It was faint, but not far off and I could make out the words. "Hey! Come back! We're not infected! Come back!" Then I tuned back in to the real world, and heard gunfire soon after. The prospect of new faces energized me, and I bolted down the fire escape on the other end of the roof. Then I heard a car alarm, and that godawful roar that meant they were coming. Then I heard him.

I made my first mistake, leaving the safety of my holdout. Bastard, for that is what I named him, the monster that killed my unit, was here. Well I wasn't going down without a fight, so I went down the alley, turned the corner, and stopped in my tracks. Bastard yelled again, and I had just enough mind to dive out of the way before the car hit me. It has been thrown through the street but not at me. Having cleaned a portion of the monsters out, I saw four people backing slowly away from him toward me. Then they started running, firing behind them as they went. I couldn't afford to be caught here by myself, as I had no idea if these humans were friend or foe.

I bolted down the alleyway in the opposite direction. I came upon a police cruiser surrounded by by bodies with a handgun sitting atop the hood. I left it in my rush to safety, sprinting through the street. I arrived at the Red Line North, and remembered the EVAC in the center of town. I knew they were probably all dead, but there was nowhere else to go. I found a red steel door at the bottom of the staircase down and pushed my way in closing it behind me. I should have taken some of the supplies on the table but I was in to much of a rush to think clearly. Opening the identical door on the other side of the room I was stopped dead.

It was a dead end.

Thinking quickly I devised a plan in which I would destroy the floor using my remaining grenades, but I needed something big to make the hole. I found some cans of propane in the corner and piled them on top of each other, setting my grenades where I could. I pulled the pin on one then ran, but the timer must have been short, or maybe I didn't run as fast as I thought I could. The ground rose up beneath me and my face became intimate with the ceiling. Pain shot through my skull, and I landed on my side, surrounded by flames and debris. The jabs of pain were immense as I was seemingly slow roasted by the flames around me. It felt like my skin was burning off. Then I heard them again, the horde. It was coming for me and I couldn't fight back, so I did the only thing I could. I rolled myself onto my back as I braced for the end and let darkness take me.

But it wasn't the end. In my own head I was back there, in the war. I saw Tyson, and Sarge, and Mike, and Frankie and Dusty. In my dream I walked down the middle of an old village with my squad, Frankie on point, Dusty bringing up the rear. Then a shot rings out and Dusty falls dead. Frankie tries to run but steps on a mine, with his legs going one way, his body the other. Sarge screams at us to get down as bullets begin flying through the air. I feel like I was punched in the head as my helmet goes flying and the ground next to Mike explodes in a shower of dirt and flying, hot metal.

In a daze I tried to sit up, but I couldn't move. Tyson ran over to me and tried to pull me up, but I wouldn't budge. I heard him scream as a round tore into his shoulder, but the scream soon amplified into a roar, the kind you hear when they are coming. Then I wasn't in the war anymore, I was in Philly. The biggest group of them I'd seen yet was running at me, letting out that horrible noise. And in the front was him, the Bastard. Next to him was my squad, but they were changed. Pale white skin, their eyes rolled back into heir heads, and blood flowing from wherever it could escape their faces. They reached me first, and started laying into me. I took a punch to the face from Sarge, Tyson kicked me in the gut. Mike and the LT tried pulling their arms out of their sockets while Captain Jensen craned his neck over to bite me.

Before he could the Bastard picked me up, and he did it again. I watched as he killed each and every one of them again, then he turned to me. He let out what I think was his version of a laugh and his fist rushed to greet my face.

I woke up in a cold sweat and screamed. I was back in Philly, the real Philly, not the one from my dreams. I was awake again, and I wasn't dead! My joy was cut short though as the barrel of a gun was shoved in my mouth, and I heard a gruff voice speak. "Do anything at all, and you'll be shitting this out for a week."