They took Karen and Dan, the cop, with them.

They made sure to grab extra guns and ammunition, and took a blue four-door that didn't really have much in the way of room for spare cargo. It was only really good for driving a few people around. They headed out of Marshall and drove as quickly as they could up the road, past more and more zombies. There seemed to be a lot of them out. Marcus didn't like it. It felt ominous, almost like the valley knew that they were getting ready to leave and wanted to stop them. He tried to keep his mind focused, but thoughts like that kept slipping in.

He drove past the Grange, seeing the group loading everything they could into a pair of trucks, one of them being Jack's big vehicle. Fears and worries of failure kept harassing him. What if he was leading them all to their death? What if there was nothing out there? But no, he had to do this. They were committed, and besides, there very well could be a few million zombies on their way to the valley right now or at some time in the near future.

He reached the area where they'd blown the hole and drove carefully through it. As he made his way through town, he ran down a few zombies. After what seemed like far too long, the tension being drawn out, he finally rolled up on the Army camp. The four of them got out after he killed the engine and checked their guns.

"This way," Marcus said, leading them through the open gate and into the Army encampment. As they stepped inside, he felt cold fear shoot through him. There seemed to be nothing and nobody around. What if Eric was dead? What they all were?

What if-

"Marcus."

He jerked, turning to the left, and saw Eric emerge from one of the tents. He looked like hell. Pale, gaunt, fatigued, his eyes bloodshot and sunken. He was sweating a lot.

"So, what happened?" he asked.

Eric coughed for a moment, then spat. "I fucked it up," he muttered. "Sent my men out to check for survivors...got three of them fucking killed. There's just four of us left now. Listen, this is my plan. The only way out of this fucking valley has been blocked off by one grade-A road block. Ten feet of solid concrete. We need to blast through it. Now, the materials we need to do said blasting is inside that warehouse," he said, pointing. "Unfortunately, it's fucking packed with undead bastards. We need more help. That's why I called you. How's your little round-up going?"

"I've got everyone that I know about in this whole valley packing up. They should be ready to go within the hour," Marcus replied.

"Good. Here's the plan: we go in there, clear out the undead, get the bombs, have everyone start heading up and then you all watch Murphy's ass while he hardwires them to the roadblock. I did a little recon...there's a lot of undead around the roadblock, too. And I'm sure the process of getting the bomb is going to create a hell of a racket, so it'll draw more in. Got it?"

"Yeah. We're ready when you are," Maya said.

"No point in waiting. Let's go now."

He heft his weapon, an assault rifle, and turned towards the warehouse. His three remaining soldiers followed him. Marcus led Maya, Karen and Dan off towards it. Marcus felt his pulse begin to pick up. They were close, so very close. They just had to push through this. He had his shotgun on him and his pistol in its holster on his belt.

He was ready for this.

He hoped.

They came to the warehouse and moved around to the side of it.

"All right," Eric said, moving up to a garage-style door. "I'm going to hit the open button. All the bastards, I imagine, are gonna pour out. I want you guys to get ready, just mow these fuckers down fast as they come out, got it?!" he snapped.

There were a string of affirmative replies.

Eric hit the button.

The garage door started opening up. It was a slow, menacing, grinding thing, that door. Because almost immediately it revealed a forest of legs. A chorus of undead groans began drifting out to them, overriding the sound of the door opening up. They wanted to open fire right then and there, he knew they did, because the urge was almost overwhelming within him, but they couldn't, not yet, not if they didn't want to waste a lot of bullets.

An age and an era passed, and finally, the door was high enough to start revealing faces. That did it. The line had been crossed. The switch thrown. All eight of them opened up, unleashing a torrent of crimson hot death, mowing down a dozen zombies in the first two seconds, then another dozen in the two seconds following those.

But it seemed as if the warehouse was packed with them.

All eight of them emptied their weapons of bullets and shells. A great many zombie corpses slumped to the ground, but there were that many more, pushing their way over their fallen brethren with zero regard for them. Marcus hastily shoved another ten shells into his shotgun and kept up his rate of fire, blasting the zombies as quickly as he could. This went for perhaps another half minute and they must have cleared close to fifty or sixty of the bastards but eventually they all spilled out of the warehouse and rushed them.

Then it was close quarters combat.

Marcus didn't even have time to reload his shotgun. He let it drop and instead pulled out his crowbar, smashing the head of the first zombie that came to him. Its skull caved in with a satisfying crack but there was no time for it as another two were right behind it. All around him, the others pulled out their melee weapons and began fighting for their lives. For a long moment, Marcus was entirely lost in the motion of the brawl.

There was nothing but zombies and his hands and the crowbar. His arms rose and fell over and over again. His muscles burned. He became covered in gore. The stench of coagulated blood and rotted skin override the pall of gunsmoke that had fallen over them. Time seemed to stretch, seconds and minutes rendered utterly meaningless as zombie after zombie after zombie fell before him. And each one always seemed to get a little bit closer to killing him, a little bit closer to grabbing hold of him and ripping his neck out.

When the break in the tide came, it wasn't simply because they had managed to kill the majority of the zombies.

It was because something else, something bigger, was forcing its way through the crowd. One Marcus had named, in his head at least, the juggernaut. It was huge, immense, easily nine feet tall and probably weighed closed to a thousand pounds. It was huge and fat and bloated, built almost like a damned elephant.

The first inclination that he had that something different was happening was when he heard one of the soldiers scream. He finished cracking the skull of the zombie directly in front of him and fell back a few paces to give himself some room. Pulling out his pistol in a hurry, he opened fire, capping five more of the bastards in the head in quick succession to give himself even more room. Then he looked to his left in horror.

The juggernaut had one Eric's soldiers in its grasp. It was pulling him apart at the waist. The man was screaming, a high, keening wail as his intestines came out, foamy and purple and red. Marcus saw this happening, saw the man's head suddenly snap back, a red hole in his forehead. It was Eric who had put the bullet through his suffering soldier's dome. Then he turned his rifle onto the creature, which tossed both halves away and made a sweeping motion with its arm, knocking over most of the survivors and several zombies.

Marcus stumbled back several paces. There were still close to a dozen zombies coming for them. He saw that Eric, Karen and the two survivors were going for the hulking juggernaut. Fine, he, Maya and Dan would keep the stragglers off of them. Marcus raised his pistol and emptied his magazine, managing to put down another six. Between Maya and Dan, they put down the rest. As he was reloading, he saw Eric dodge the juggernaut's grasp, slap a fresh magazine into his rifle, aim it into the thing's face and fire.

The juggernaut's skull disappeared in a vaporized plume of gore. It toppled over and hit the ground with a thunderous crash.

"Holy shit," Eric said after a long moment of making sure nothing else was sneaking up on them or coming for them. "That was insane..."

"Yeah," Marcus replied shakily.

For a moment, there was just the sound of reloading. Then Eric had everyone sound off. Everyone from Marcus' crew had made it with some cuts, scrapes and bruises. Out of the three soldiers that Eric had started the battle off with, only the demolitions expert, Murphy, remained. And neither him nor Eric were looking too good.

"Come on," Eric said, heading into the warehouse, "let's fucking get this over with."

The warehouse was mostly cleared out.

They had to put down a few stragglers, but that was the easy part. The hard part was sorting through the wrecked ruin the interior had become. It took close to an hour, but they managed to track down enough explosives and the proper equipment to make it blow. As soon as they had everything loaded up, Marcus sent the call out.

"How close are you to being done packing?" he asked.

"We're done," Lily replied. "Just waiting on the call."

"And at the Grange?"

"We're good to go," Becca replied.

"Excellent. Come up to Fairfield. Head towards the bridge out of town and be ready. There seems to be a lot of them up here," Marcus replied.

"We're on our way," Lily said.

"Us too," Becca said.

Eric was coughing worse than ever as he walked over to one of the black SUVs they'd been using. "All right people, let's hightail it up to the bridge and get this fucking show on the road."

Marcus and Maya took the other black SUV and began following Eric and Murphy out of the Army base.

"I can't believe we're finally leaving," Maya murmured as they drove.

"Yeah, I know. Feels like a freaking dream," Marcus replied.

As they continued driving, he couldn't shake his previous notion that the valley somehow knew they were going to escape and was trying to stop them. There were more and more zombies around in the streets. Up ahead, Eric was starting to run some down. They began picking up speed. In the distance, Marcus could see the bridge and the way out. The Army had cleared the bridge, at least. How kind of them.

There were a lot of zombies up ahead.

"Shit," Marcus muttered.

As they came within about twenty feet of the bridge, which was packed, Eric suddenly stopped. "What's he doing?" Maya asked.

Suddenly, the window rolled down and something that seemed to be lit, which Marcus initially took for a cigarette, flew out, off into a clutch of trees that buffeted that side of the bridge. Simultaneously, another one flew out of the other side, into a parking lot. A few seconds went by, then, suddenly, loud popping noises filled the air.

"What the hell is that?" Marcus whispered.

Maya laughed. "Blackjacks, fireworks, big packs of 'em," she said. "Pretty smart."

The zombies started moving away, drawn by the noise. They way was clear. The two black SUVs drove across the bridge. Eric parked his at a slanted angle to the left of the bridge and made hand motions for Marcus to the same on the right.

"Natural cover," he said as they drove by.

Marcus parked the vehicle, killed the engine and got out. He looked around. The area was pretty simple. Ahead there was the immense concrete gate, behind was the bridge, which ran over a dry riverbed that looked steep enough not to admit any zombies. To their left and right were expanses of forest, which would, unfortunately, admit zombies.

There seemed to be some moving among the trees.

"All right, Murphy, get it set up. The sooner we get this thing going, the better. I preferably want this blown up before everyone else gets here," Eric said.

"On it," Murphy replied.

"Let's watch his ass," Eric said, approaching the others. "We've got company."

Marcus looked. Sure enough, there were zombies coming from both sides and across the bridge as well. Not good.

One last push. One final battle.

Marcus made himself focus. His shotgun had run out of ammo and he'd abandoned it back at the warehouse. All he had left was his pistol, but he had managed to salvage a lot of bullets for it. It was time to put them to use. Marcus and Maya took the bridge while Eric covered covered the right side and Karen and Dan took the left.

Everyone opened fire.

Marcus timed his shots as well as he could. He began putting down the zombies one after the other, crouching in the shadow of one of the SUVs while Maya stood behind him, behind the front of the vehicle, using it to steady her aim. Together, they put down ten zombies, then twenty, then a whopping thirty. Bullets flew, old blood spray, decayed heads were split. Around them, Marcus could hear the others at work.

There seemed to be more and more zombies, three to replace every one that fell.

"Any day now Murphy!" Eric called.

The gunfire was almost constant.

"Got it!" Murphy called. He rushed back to join them.

"Blow it!"

Murphy hit it. Nothing happened.

"What the fuck!?" he cried.

"Check it!" Eric yelled. "Keep firing!"

Marcus groaned, slapped a fresh magazine into his pistol and kept banging away. He and Maya kept up their rate of fire, getting headshots more often than not. Finally, Murphy came back and quickly explained the situation.

"We're fucked!" he snapped. "Detonator or the receiver is fried, there's no way to blow it from a safe distance."

"Can't we just shoot it?" Marcus asked.

Eric laughed. "What is this, an action movie? No, it needs an electrical charge passed through it. Means someone's gotta be up close and personal to blow it..."

All conversation lapsed and a moment passed as they continued putting down the ever-encroaching zombies.

"Shit, I'll do it," Eric muttered. "I'm dying anyway. I've got that fucking Black Fever or whatever. Got maybe another good day left, don't wanna go out lying in a puddle of my own sick, too gone with fever to remember my own fucking name..."

"Thank you, Eric," Marcus said.

"Yeah, well, you assholes had better build a solid gold fucking statue in my honor! Murphy, cover me," Eric replied.

Marcus didn't have a chance to glance back. More zombies than ever were coming. He continued putting them down as quickly as he could, but he was running out of ammo. He was just about to glance back anyway, to see if something had gone wrong, because he felt the bomb should have blown by now, when it did.

A great burst of heat and light knocked him forward and overloaded his hearing. Groaning in pain, he tried to get to his feet, but he was exhausted now, worn down from running on adrenaline for so long. He glanced up.

A zombie was coming for him.

He began to raise his pistol, fearing that this might very well be it, that he just didn't have the strength to go on.

The zombie's head disappeared in a spray of blood.

He heard several people shouting in triumph and managed to get to his knees. The convoy had arrived. There were a lot of zombies behind them.

"Come on, let's go!" Maya yelled, hauling him to his feet.

The blue SUV he'd picked up earlier was in the lead with Lily driving and Jacob riding shotgun. "Come on!" she urged. "Hurry!"

Marcus ran. He looked around, spying Karen, Dan and Murphy running as well. They all managed to get to the SUV and cram themselves inside. There was hardly enough room for them all but at the moment it didn't matter.

"Drive!" Maya called.

Marcus glanced out the back window. He saw a line of cars, people firing out of the windows, standing up through a few moon-roofs and firing.

They were going to make it.

The convoy left Trumbull valley.

"Now what?" Lily asked as they hit the road out of the valley, back into the rest of the world.

"I don't know," Marcus replied softly.