"Wendell! Wait!"

Marcus' whole world had become a black hole, staring down the cold, metal barrel of a gun. It was like nothing he ever imagined. It was like looking into an open grave with his name on it. Around him, he could hear other voices, caught a peripheral of movement, but he paid it no heed. His attention was consumed by the gun.

Suddenly, it was taken away.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and a vicious shudder went through his entire body. For a second, Marcus thought his legs would give out and that he would collapse right there in the entryway to ranger station. But he put out his hands and steadied himself by gripping the door frame.

"I do apologize," someone said, the man who had first spoken. As the gunman stepped away, a new man appeared in Marcus' field of vision. "But I simply must ask you to come inside and close the door. It's not safe."

"Of...of course," Marcus said, still feeling a strange sense of dislocation. "I'm sorry," he murmured as he stepped through.

Ed followed him, then closed and locked the door behind him.

"No apology necessary at all from you, my new friend," the man said.

Marcus took in the two men before him. Wendell, the gun-wielder, was not the musclebound giant Marcus had, for some reason, been expecting. He turned out to be a tall, thin man in a coat, jeans and a red beanie. He had a long face and was shaking. The other man, who was smoothing the situation over, was older. He had dirty glasses, a receding hairline and a thin frame. The man seemed more like a teacher or librarian than anything else.

"Thomas Ritter," the man who seemed to be the leader of the small group said, extending his hand. Marcus took it and shook it awkwardly.

"Uh...Marcus...Campbell. Marcus Campbell," he murmured. He felt as though his brain were a ship that had slipped its moorings and was now adrift at sea. He looked around the ranger station, taking in the damage, the destruction.

It was obvious that a lot of fighting had gone on here. Several of the windows were cracked, some of them outright broken. The furniture was overturned and, in some cases, completely demolished. There were no actual corpses in the cabin, but he could see more blood. Besides Wendell and Thomas, there were three other people. One was a pale, dark-haired, harrowed looking woman in a dark sweater and jeans. She was tending to two others, who appeared to be wounded. One was a man in an orange hunter's vest and outdoors boots, the other was a skinny man with a ponytail. They were both actively bleeding.

"Wendell is prone to frights," Thomas was saying.

"What happened?" Marcus asked finally. "What the hell is going on?"

"What's going on is that Wendell and Sheila and myself volunteered for a mission significantly more dangerous than we thought. We came up from Spencer's Mill to hunt for supplies and survivors. I didn't think it'd be this dangerous," Thomas explained.

"But...what happened, I mean-"

Thomas stopped looking around the cabin and looked directly at Marcus. "We're in a bad way," he said in a tense, confidential tone. "Our situation is desperate. We've already found these two and there are a lot more of the nasties up here than I had hoped. I need to defend this building, tend to the wounded so they don't die on us. At least stabilize them before we move them. I could never live with myself if I didn't conduct a more thorough search...you two seem hale and hearty. Would you please do me the favor of checking out the cabins and campsites?" he asked.

Marcus considering telling the man no, he wanted answers and he wanted them now, but he looked again at the two wounded. The woman, Sheila, was tending to them, but their wounds looked bad. With a sharp squeal, Marcus' attention was snapped to Wendell, who was pushing a large piece of furniture up against one of the broken windows.

"Okay," he said. "We'll help."

"Uh...we will?" Ed asked, sounding incredulous.

Marcus elbowed him in the ribs. "Yes, we will."

Ed sighed, but held his peace. Marcus had never known Ed to back down from a situation when it became difficult, but sometimes he had to be persuaded. And in this case he didn't blame him. This was beyond the pale of anything they'd dealt with before, even he didn't know if he had it in him to do whatever it was that needed doing to survive the day. But this man, Thomas, knew more about the situation than they did.

"Thank you so much. Please, come here," Thomas said, moving across the ranger station to a desk with a map of the area pinned to the wall above it. "Are you familiar with the area?" he asked.

"Somewhat," Marcus replied as he and Ed followed.

"Good. Here we are," Thomas said, pointing to the center of the map. He moved his finger around. "There's some cabins I was hoping to check out, and a public restroom. I'm not sure which of the campsites were being occupied."

"We'll figure it out," Marcus said after a moment.

"There's a water tower to the side of the building. You can climb up it and get a good, bird's eye view of the situation," Thomas said. He hesitated, then reached behind him and pulled out a black revolver. He handed it to Marcus. "Here, take this."

"Are you sure?" Marcus asked, staring at the gun for a moment before taking it.

"Yes," Thomas said, "I'm sure. But listen, don't use it unless you absolutely have to. We're talking last resort here. The zeds are drawn to sound and when they cluster, well...you have to get pretty lucky to get out alive."

"So what do we use against the, uh, zeds?" Ed asked. "Because I've seen this movie before, and the guy who tries to take on frickin' zombies with his hands ends up getting killed first, and I'm not gonna be that guy."

Thomas turned and crossed the room. He knelt down among a pile of debris and came back a moment later, sticking a two-foot length of narrow but sturdy pipe in Ed's hands. He took it and studied it for a moment, then said, "oh."

"I'll need something," Marcus said, opening up the chamber of the six-shooter and staring at the bullets within. It was fully loaded, but it was only six shots. He sighed and tucked the pistol down the back of his pants.

"Here," Thomas said after going to another portion of the room and coming back. He was holding a bright red crowbar. "This'll work wonders. It's standard movie rules," he explained, "headshots and crushed craniums are the only thing that get you any points. You can kill them with body blows, but it takes a lot longer."

"Wonderful," Ed muttered.

"Thank you for this, and I hate to ask, but do you have any more bullets?" Marcus asked.

Thomas shook his head regretfully. "No, I'm sorry. It got a bit nasty on the way up and...well, those are my last six. Use them well...which means not at all, if you can manage."

"Silence. I've got it," Marcus replied.

He hesitated a moment further, desperately wanting to ask this man what had happened, but then he heard Sheila say, "oh god, I need some help here, he's passed out from blood loss!" He felt the press of time.

"Good luck, and thank you," Thomas said, then turned to go help.

As Marcus began to head towards the door, a sudden bang, followed by several more, made him nearly crap in his pants in surprise and fear. He saw that a pair of men in hunter's outfits were beating their bloody fists on the door, trying to get it open. They stared into the window with empty and, yes, Marcus realized, glowing eyes. Marcus crossed the room, Ed reluctantly in tow. The pair of them hefted their makeshift melee weapons.

"Get ready, man," Marcus said quietly.

"Shit, we're really going to do this, aren't we?" he muttered unhappily.

"Yep, we are actually going to do this," Marcus replied.

He reached up, unlocked the door and then shoved it open as hard as he could. Both men flew back away from the door. One of them tumbled over the edge of the deck, while the other went right back down the stairs it had climbed. Marcus heard a series of sharp snaps as the two bodies crashed into the ground. Bones, he realized after a second, it was their bones breaking. The one that had gone down the stairs had crashed into another. They were both tangled up together at the bottom of the stairs, having rolled into the parking lot.

He couldn't see the other one, who'd gone over the edge.

"Get them, Ed!" Marcus cried, feeling a sudden adrenaline rush.

He looked down at the crowbar in his hand. Was he really going to do this? He looked up, the zombies were getting to their feet. Zombies. Zombies. Yes, he was going to do this. Everything from their decayed skin to their glowing eyes to their blood-smeared mouths activated a bone-deep loathing in him. A visceral hatred.

He rushed forward, shouting something inarticulate, and brought the crowbar down on the top of the nearest zombie's skull. It caved in and the zombie immediately appeared to go boneless, flopping back onto the pitted, sun-bleached blacktop like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Oh man, oh man," Ed moaned, hefting his length of pipe, looking at the other zombie, who had gotten to its feet now.

"Ed-" Marcus began, wondering if he was going to have to do it for him.

At the last second, Ed raised his pipe and swung it into the thing's temple. There was a thick, awful crunch that seemed to tear through the air, and the zombie was thrown to its feet. It began shifting slightly, still alive by a thread, groaning mutely. Ed ran forward, screaming, and brought the pipe down on the thing's head again.

The zombie stopped moving.

"Oh, man, Marcus, I-" Ed vomited.

Marcus fought hard to hold onto his own breakfast. He could feel the harsh chemical burn of his bile rising in his throat. Turning away, he stumbled back towards the ranger station, coming to the brick wall that severed as a perimeter for the parking lot. Beyond it and beneath the wooden deck overhead was a small garden-like area of shrubs and bushes and underbrush. Amidst the greenery, he saw the corpse of the third zombie that had gone overboard. It had, apparently, landed on its head, ending any possibility of getting back up.

"Okay...okay...I'm okay," Ed said. "I never...oh man, I never killed..." he trailed off.

"They aren't people anymore, Ed," Marcus said quietly, turning around. "You hear me?"

"I...yeah, I hear you, man. This is nuts."

Marcus came back over to Ed. Blood, bone fragments and gray matter littered the blacktop now. He didn't look down at it. Instead, he inspected the immediate area. There were no more zombies around, at least none that might notice them. Marcus felt a tremor rip through him. He'd just killed two men. No. Zombies. They weren't men, he forced himself to think, they weren't people, not anymore. They were...things.

Monsters.

Creatures that needed to be exterminated, because their only reason for being, the entirety of their existence, was to cause pain and suffering for others. Nothing else. And if they might have been loving parents, businessmen, doctors, children, aunts or uncles before, well...he couldn't let himself think of that. Not if he wanted to stay alive.

"Come on, Ed," Marcus said quietly, putting a hand on his best friend's shoulder. Ed was still leaning over, his hands on his knees, trembling. "We need to get to the water tower."

"Yeah..." Ed said. He hawked and spat a few times, then straightened up. "Yeah, let's get to the water tower and get a...ah...view of the situation."

They began walking.