Alien Vs Predator: Annihiliation

by K'Shai

If you can believe it, I actually first wrote this story way way way back in 1996! I've modernized it a bit since then. This is the first time I've ever shared the complete story in its entirety. When Xenos overrun Earth, how will life change forever? Mild language. Gore. Graphic sexual content with Yautja (M) / human (F) in later chapters. Enjoy, and comments welcome.

17. Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

They headed South.

Lewis drove until he could not keep his eyes open anymore then switched out with Carlos while Cassandra slept through most of the ride. For the most part, the driving was easy going.

While many abandoned vehicles were scattered throughout the highways, it was easy enough to swerve around them. The path they were taking to a destination they did not yet know was sometimes blocked completely by crowded lanes of the highway, where jam packed cars, mostly all with fender bender damage to them, were simply left in the roads.

Carlos took to the wheel without asking where to head. For that question was truly an unanswerable one. There was no place in specific to go that he could immediately think of.

The events of the night played out in his mind as he thought about the same scenarios happening over and over again until all surviving humans had been scattered to the wind.

He veered off the highway just before a blockage ahead and made his way through unknown side streets while thinking about the future for humanity.

He could not help but feel great remorse for those still hoping for a quick end while huddling together in crowded, military guarded safe zones. He wondered for all those people, and the trio in the truck as well, where they would go?

How would they defend themselves against a nearly unstoppable enemy? The creatures could multiply so quickly and kill one person or animal for every new infant born, it seemed inevitable that the balance of dominance on the planet would shift.

Carlos contemplated the path of the parasitic, murderous creatures as he drove through the remainder of the night straight on into morning.

He was sure that just as the wave of the terrible animals had swept across the country from their points of origin, another army of monsters was probably forging south. He imagined there was probably nowhere safe for human habitation anymore. In just about four months, Earth as humans knew it, was gone.

Carlos checked the gas gauge and pulled the vehicle over just before the tank ran dry. He was silently considering the options that the group had, which was very little.

With no safe place to go to, in his mind this left little option other than roaming around and hiding out in place to place, trying to stay alive. It seemed like a bleak and terrible life with the only goal of prolonging their deaths.

He sighed deeply. Perhaps there was still a chance that the army could pull back together and try to defeat its enemy.

"Where are we?" Lewis asked as he opened his eyes and sat up in the back seat.

Cassandra woke up and looked around. It was morning and the sky was blazing a brilliant orange over a desolate, empty town.

They were at a gas station along a small two lane road, with a grocery store down the street on the opposite side and a tiny strip mall behind it.

Cassandra looked both ways along the road and there was nothing for as far as she could see.

There were a few cars parked off the sides of the roads, but there were no homes nearby that she could see, only spotty patches of trees and shrubbery and a vast corn field behind the mall complex.

Behind the gas station there was another large cornfield and just barely beyond the tall stalks she could see the roof of a home or barn.

"I'm not really sure. I think we're almost completely across the state and almost out of gas too." Carlos said quietly.

The trio stepped out of the vehicle and looked around once more. There was a slight breeze in the cool morning air.

The trees were beginning to change colors with the season. Other than themselves and the corn stalks, nothing alive seemed to inhabit the area.

Lewis walked from one end of the gas station lot to the other, scanning the countryside. Cassandra and Carlos stayed near the jeep and panned the plain lands with their eyes, sighing uncertainly.

"Well, I guess there's nothing here." Carlos said.

"Nothing at all," Cassandra responded dryly.

"We can probably hold out here for a long while. There's probably not even enough life around here to attract the damned things." Lewis said clearly, returning to the vehicle.

No one responded. Lewis grabbed the gas pump and flicked the rest arm up, nothing happened. He clicked the gas pump again and again, pressing buttons on the display panel.

"Power's out here, too." Lewis said questioningly as he tried the pump again.

He strode up to the store and found it dark inside. The door was unlocked and he pulled it open. He tried to reach behind the counter to make anything work but nothing was receiving power. Sighing, he stalked back outside to the group and watched them watch him for direction.

"Look at that," Carlos said suddenly, pointing to the west down the road.

Cassandra and Lewis turned and watched what Carlos was pointing to. A herd of cattle was free roaming the lands, calmly grazing and mooing to one another as they walked along the cornfields. They did not seem at all concerned about the presence of any unearthly creature.

"Okay then, let's go."

"Lewis," Cassandra turned to him. "Where are we gonna go exactly?"

He shrugged.

"We'll find a hold out somewhere. Just a roof over our heads. It's all we can do for now."

They hopped back into the truck and Lewis took to the wheel. They drove slowly down the street, cautiously navigating through the cattle as they stared nonchalantly at the passing vehicle, completely unconcerned by its presence.

Lewis spied the farmhouse beyond the cornfields and turned left at the next intersection. He pulled into the home's long driveway, cautiously and slowly.

"It looks empty," he whispered as he pulled to a stop in front of the quaint home.

"Well, I'm sure some old man will come running out with a shotgun if he's still home." Cassandra muttered. "Trust me, I speak from past experience."

They got out of the vehicle and waited for a moment.

"Hello?" Lewis called.

The breeze whooshed through the large oak tree in the front circle of the home and sped through the cornfields in the back and to the side.

Behind the house to the right stood a small gray barn, its large door was open and gently banging in the breeze. The curtains were drawn in the home and no one responded to Lewis's call from within.

He stepped onto the porch and knocked on the door. No one answered. After a long pause, Lewis tried the door knob.

"It's locked."

"Let's try around back," Carlos suggested.

"Does anybody else feel like this is breaking and entering?" Cassandra asked softly.

"Cassy, trust me, it doesn't matter anymore." Lewis assured her.

"I know but still, this is..."

"Well, what else can we do?" Lewis asked of her.

She gave up, she knew he was right.

Most likely the owner of the home had either been killed or escaped away to someplace else.

She had already committed murders, so why not add breaking in to her growing list of felonies. She shook her head, trying to remind herself that the way of life she used to know, was gone. This was survival.

There was no law enforcement. She thought if she reminded herself of that enough, she might actually someday come to accept it.

She tried to let go of the life she once knew as she walked down the brick path to the back of the home with Carlos and Lewis.

The back door was locked as well. Lewis knocked one more time out of courtesy before he stuck the butt of his gun through one of the window panels and reached in to unlock the door.

He stepped slowly inside the pleasant kitchen of the country farm house. The place was clean and neat and readily livable, complete with lacy curtains and matching doilies on the kitchen table.

"Hello? Anybody home?" Lewis called out again and again as he crept through the kitchen slowly.

Cassandra followed the two men and scanned through the home as well. They walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, past the fire place and scanned the staircase up to the second floor. Lewis called out once more and stepped upstairs.

They found three empty bedrooms on the second floor, all neatly decorated with the beds well made. One very lavender bathroom was behind the fourth door in the upstairs hallway.

Cassandra scanned through the rooms for signs of recent life. The entire place looked perfectly pristine.

It seemed like its owners simply woke up one morning, cleaned the house to perfection and locked the doors and left. It was obvious that they expected the home to be in the same tip top shape when they returned.

Cassandra feared what might happen if the owners were to suddenly return later today, but she decided that Lewis was probably right.

"They're probably long gone." He said.

They returned downstairs. Cassandra instinctively headed over the television and tried to flick it on. She pressed the button several times and nothing happened. She glanced behind it to be sure it was plugged in and then turned to Carlos and Lewis. They futilely tried the light switch on the wall and a table lamp.

"Alright, let's get the stuff out of the truck. There's weapons, flashlights, and food rations in the crates." Lewis said promptly.

They opened the front door and quickly unloaded the vehicle, glancing between the house and the cornfields and the vast empty stretch of land beyond the home just making sure that nothing was stirring nearby.

When they returned inside and unpacked the crates, Cassandra began to scour the kitchen in further detail. She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a glass jar of milk, opened it and sniffed. She made a repulsive face and put the bottle back inside.

"All the food is probably bad. Power's been out too long." She said as she opened the freezer and water poured out along with some soggy packages of meat that were once neatly wrapped in white freezer paper.

"Oh, gross," she grimaced at the bloody, soggy paper on the floor.

"Well, that probably means the people here have been gone a while." Carlos said as he joined Cassandra in the search for food.

He opened the cabinets and fished through them one by one. Cassandra tried the faucet on the sink in the kitchen. Nothing happened. She frowned and turned both knobs all the way. Still nothing.

"No water, either?" She said.

"Probably have an electric pump." Lewis called out.

"Electric pump? What?" Cassandra questioned with a smirk.

Lewis chuckled. "Right, big city girl, I forgot. Out here in the sticks, people have water wells on their property. An electric pump will bring the water to the house."

"Joys of modern technology," Carlos chimed in.

"Ha, ha." Cassandra said sharply. "Well, that technology really sucks when the power goes out now doesn't it?"

"Good point." Carlos agreed.

Running water or not, they made do with what they could. They found every large bowl in the house and located the drinking well. By the time the evening had rolled on, the trio had candles and flashlights a plenty, enough water to hold them through the next several days some non-perishable food cans and were beginning to settle in, with no real plans what to do come the morning.

They simply waited and hoped. It was all they could do.

Carlos had taken a small table top radio from an upstairs bedroom and brought it back down to the living room.

He popped the batteries out of one small flashlight and put them into the radio. It buzzed to life.

For a tense moment, all three heads stared at the radio with such apprehension the radio might as well have been pointing a gun at them. Carlos scanned eagerly through the stations, but there were no broadcasts coming in.

He tried for several minutes and gave up, turning the volume down until only the slightest crackling could be heard from the station he left the on.

Lewis and Cassandra took some time and investigated the house in more detail. Pictures of a long line of family members adorned the walls.

One large photograph on the decorative shelving unit along one wall showed several generations worth of men, women, children, infants, and dogs gathered together on the back patio area, smiling happily.

The sun brightly lit the summer sky and one little girl's purple flowered summer dress flowed delicately in the breeze that ruffled her skirt. Cassandra sighed and turned away from the photograph. She wondered what had happened to those people and hoped that they got out before anything bad overtook them. They seemed like a sweet family.

They headed slowly into the basement and pointed their flashlights all around nervously scanning the dark sub level of the home, halfway expecting a grotesquely twisted sinister being to leap out them.

The basement had a thick musty odor to it but was still and quiet. They did find a large pile of newspapers next to a large deep freezer, full of soggy, rotting meat. Lewis quickly scanned through the papers.

"Looks like they kept every local paper from the original outbreak." He whispered.

He gathered the large pile up in his arms and took them back upstairs with them. Though Cassandra could not understand why anyone would want to voluntarily relive the past several months, Lewis and Carlos spent most of time reading through the articles.

They poured through the papers slowly, analyzing each story, studying them. Sometimes Lewis would catch himself whispering aloud about the things he read.

In between his readings of old papers, when his eyes needed a break, Carlos would go back to scanning the radio stations or unconsciously trying to turn on the television.

Lewis also occupied his time routinely checking the rifle supplies and counting ammunition packets, dividing them equally to the guns that they had.

He searched the house high and low for carry sacs and came up with three back packs from the bedroom upstairs that seemed to be shared by two children.

He loaded the ammo into the bags, secured grenades to the bags, and packed the rest full with rations.

"Just in case," he said quietly to Cassandra as she watched him organize their rations.

She took a deep breath and let her eyes drift through the curtains of the front window. She hoped that they would not have to abandon the home any time soon.

There was nothing beyond the window for as far as she could see, besides trees and cornfields. Somehow, getting lost in a cornfield with those satanic monsters in pursuit did not seem like a good way to stay alive very long.

At the same time she longed for her home, her family, everything that she had once known. She glanced sideways at a newspaper Carlos had just set down.

The front page picture was that of the face hugger creature that she recalled seeing on the front page of a New York Times so long ago. She squeezed her eyes shut and did her best to put the image out of her mind.

"Hey." Lewis said from behind her. "Come with me."

Cassandra stood and followed Lewis outside to the back yard. Carlos watched the pair leave but turned his head back to the newspapers once again.

"What are we doing out here?" She asked softly.

Lewis raised his M-41-A Pulse Rifle. Cassandra rolled her eyes and groaned.

"Oh Lewis, I can't even aim that other gun you gave me."

He nodded. "You need to practice so you can learn."

"Hey, I killed one of those things. At least, I think I did."

"That's good," Lewis said supportively. "Let's practice."

"Lewis," Cassandra complained. "I don't want to do this. I just want this all to stop. I don't think I can do this."

"You already have done it. You just have to refine how you do it." Lewis retorted.

"You'll need to learn to be a better shot, to limit wasted ammo and kill your opponents quickly."

"I don't want to be a killer. I can't do this, Lewis. I am not a killer."

"You'll have to be if you want to live." Lewis looked her square in the eye and said with great force.

She fell quiet and thought about that for a moment. Her eyes shifted to the gun and she sighed.

Lewis assured her that what happened in the safe zone had to happen and she would have to move on from it. She could not see how she was going to move on from the thought of murdering people.

She shut her eyes and tried to accept Lewis's guiding words.

Lewis nodded approvingly. He set up some old bottles on the top of the picnic table. Cassandra tried her best to aim the gun and hit the target. He only allowed her a limited amount of target practice since they had only a limited amount of ammunition for the weapon. But, at least the target practice did help to pass the time.

She began to learn her way around the M-41-A, but when she finally squeezed the trigger, she quickly lost control of the gun and fell back.

"That's alright, try again." He urged.

"That thing is way too powerful."

"Yeah, that's the point." He smiled gently.

"I like my other gun."

"How many bullets do you have left for it?"

Cassandra rolled her eyes back and nodded, understanding his point.

"Thirty," she answered.

"So, try again with the Pulse Rifle."

She tried again and again until she was too worn out from lugging the massive weapon around to concentrate on firing it. Eventually, the two returned to the house and found Carlos still going over the newspapers.

"Catching up on not so ancient history?" Lewis asked of him.

Carlos sighed and sank back into the oversized armchair.

"Just these things, you know. I really haven't had much time to understand them. I've just been like everybody else. Too stunned by them and too scared to do any good analyzing. Thought I'd use my downtime for that."

Lewis smirked. "So that's what you do with your downtime?"

Cassandra sat on the couch next to Carlos.

"What have you come up with Doctor?" Lewis asked calmly.

"I've just been piecing together everything I know for sure about them. Things I've seen and read and heard other people tell me."

He shook his head as he thought deeply. "Everything about them seems to make them, for lack of a better word, perfect."

"What?" Lewis questioned sharply.

"Perfect? How can you say that?" Cassandra added.

Carlos raised his eyebrows.

"Well, I mean, they are just animals, yes, but they've evolved or adapted to severe environments. Their method of reproduction, their acidic blood, it allows them to assure dominance over just about anything. They're not unstoppable. They can be killed, but it's just their numbers and how they breed that make it difficult."

Lewis clenched his jaws. "It's more than difficult. I've been in their hive. I've seen what they do to us."

"I know. I know." Carlos said, lowering his head. He breathed deeply and pressed his fingers together. Cassandra stared at her half eaten candy bar for a moment, wrapped it back up and placed it in her ammunition satchel. She had lost her appetite.

"Do you think we'll win this?" Cassandra asked directly at Carlos. "I mean…. Ever?"

Lewis bit his lip and listened quietly.

Carlos pondered the question for a long while. He did not feel as though he had the authority to answer such a question.

He believed that the answer to that question was as immeasurable as the answer to life itself. There was only one power that he felt had the right to make that judgment.

He shut his eyes and lowered his head. Suddenly his heart started to pound within his chest. His answer was on the tip of his tongue and he fought with his own mind to bury it, to not say it.

He had no right, he told himself. This decision was not his to make. Cassandra's question was not answerable by any mortal.

"I don't know."

The words slipped out from his lips in a raspy whisper through clenched teeth.

"I can't imagine this being an extinction level event. But on the other hand, if the tables are turned … if the human race as of today is no longer the dominant species on the planet…" He paused. He did not really need to continue.

"I don't see how we will survive as a race."

Cassandra broke into tears and Lewis shuffled his foot at an invisible piece of garbage on the floor. He did not lift his eyes.

The room fell silent as the dusky sky outside turned black and cloudy. Rain began to hit the windows of the house lightly. The group fell asleep slowly to the increasing sound of the rain outside.

Three more days passed by. The weather turned ever colder. There was no electricity in the house, the town; the country.

There had not been a sight or sound of the horrible black creatures in all the time they had been in the house. Lewis, Carlos, and Cassandra passed their time quietly and slowly, watching the fire crackle.

Carlos added newspapers to the fire after he pulled apart the pages he wanted to keep and shoved them in his satchel. Lewis had the cleanest weapon in the country, Cassandra imagined, after days of whittling away at the mechanics of it time and again.

It seemed that they were transcending to another level of acceptance of their future and their new life, limited and unpredictable as though it appeared to be.

"So, what do we do now?" Cassandra whispered over the crackle of the burning paper. "Do we just stay here, in this house?"

"What would you have us do, Cassandra?" Lewis asked in an equal whisper.

She sighed deeply. "Honestly, I don't know. But there's got to be something. More people? Maybe this war is over and we don't even know because we're so isolated."

"Do you want to leave?" Carlos questioned.

Cassandra grimaces, her eyes teary. "I don't want to stay anymore. I don't think we should."

"I think if we go out we'll be killed." Lewis stated.

"You don't know that," Cassandra muttered.

Her head turned towards the window and she stared out of the split in the curtains, past the breezy cornfields that had never been harvested.

She contemplated exactly what she wanted or expected to have happen as she watched little drops of rain pelt the window from under the porch awning.

She thought she saw movement, perhaps in the distance, she wasn't sure. It could have been nothing. It could have been a glimmer of a shadow from a passing cloud. She sighed and shifted to another window for a different view. She parted the curtains to look out again.

A monstrous, elongated black head stared directly back at her through the front window. Cassandra screamed at the top of her lungs and fell backward. Lewis and Carlos bolted for their weapons.

Lewis screamed for Cassandra to get back as the terrible creature did not hesitate to leap through the window glass. Lewis opened fire and pummeled the window, the creature and the walls with non stop semi-automatic fire.

"Whoa!" Carlos yelled.

The black carcass toppled over a book case under the window and collapsed into a burning heap of acidic blood and stopped moving.

Lewis kept pulling the trigger over and over again, releasing more bullet spray into the animal's shiny armor hide. He finally heard Carlos' words to stop shooting and relaxed his grip. He shook his head and let his eyes register on the site. Spinning on his heels, he found Cassandra huddled on the floor near his feet, shaking with fright.

"Jesus, are you alright?" Lewis asked of her.

She did not answer. Her wide eyes stared at him and she shivered under her hands and arms that were wrapped around her body and face.

Carlos helped Cassandra up and evaluated her briefly. Lewis strode towards the front door, carefully navigating around the sizzling floorboards. He gently popped the door open and glanced around.

"We need to get the hell out of here, now." Lewis said after he confirmed that there was no other immediate sign of activity.

"Was that the only one?" Carlos said as he helped gather their weapon and food bags and pull Cassandra to her feet.

"Looks like it," Lewis grunted as he slung two more rifles over his shoulder and grabbed a spare bag for himself.

As they got into the Humvee, Carlos reminded Lewis that the vehicle was nearly dry on gasoline.

"I know, but let's just get as far as we can."

Lewis confirmed as he slipped behind the wheel. Carlos helped Cassandra into the back and hopped in after her. She was starting to gather herself back together, shakily reaching for a supply bag and strapping it over her shoulder.

"Wh...where are... are... we g...gonna go?" She stuttered.

"I don't know. Just away." Lewis said as he slammed the truck into drive and quickly started out of the driveway.

"Lewis!" Cassandra suddenly shouted.

Another creature leapt out at the vehicle from the cornfields. Lewis swerved to avoid colliding with the thing. He veered over the lawn and swerved back towards the roadway, pressing harder on the gas pedal.

He glanced down at the gas gauge and hoped there would be enough to at least out run the animal in pursuit. As the vehicle sped on down the road and another creature joined the chase, Lewis stared between the road ahead, the path behind and the gas gauge.

"We've got to kill them. We'll never outrun them."

Carlos took a deep breath and popped the door open, halfway crawling out while the vehicle sped along. Cassandra screamed at him to get back in, and grabbed hold of his belt loops as he swayed in the breeze, bracing against the vehicle.

He tried to both brace up and use both hands to hold the rifle in his grip steady. He opened fire and one of the creatures tumbled to the ground. It was still moving, but it slowed to nearly a halt.

"Got one!" Carlos yelled as he pulled himself back in the vehicle.

"What about the other one?" Lewis yelled back to them. He did not see the creature in his rear view mirror.

Cassandra and Lewis stared out the back and sides of the speeding vehicle. Cassandra saw the thing on her side, nearly keeping pace with back tire.

"It's here!" she yelled.

Lewis glanced back and saw it. He looked back to his panel gauge, quickly noting the gas and the speedometer.

"Christ, I'm doing fifty!"

Suddenly the jeep shuttered and lost propulsion. The creature slowed immediately with the vehicle and lunged forward.

"Go!" Cassandra yelled.

"Out of gas!" Lewis barked at her and grabbed his weapon off the seat next to him.

Carlos and Lewis popped out of the driver's side of the vehicle and Cassandra slipped backward across the seat, flopping out on the other side away from the creature as Carlos and Lewis aimed their weapons while

Cassandra fumbled to grab her own gun, which she dropped on the back seat as she pulled herself out of the vehicle.

The killing machine that it was leapt on to the roof of the vehicle as Cassandra pulled herself to her feet and aimed the rifle in her hands along with the others. Lewis beat her to the trigger button and splayed the beast with bullets.

The top of the vehicle began to fizz from the acid blood pouring down on it and in just a few seconds, the roof gave in and the limp carcass fell to the inside of the truck.

Cassandra turned to Lewis, but her eyes set to a point beyond him. She shakily raised a finger and pointed down the street. Lewis and Carlos turned and followed her cue. A small, well-armed group of survivors was trotting up to the scene.

"Are you guys alright?" The man at the front of the little group called out as he slowed to a stunned walk and approached the burning jeep and three shaky people.

"Yeah, I think so." Lewis responded with an uncertain tone in his voice. "Where did you guys come from?"

The man gestured over his shoulder, "We were down the street. Hold up in a warehouse. We heard the gunfire. Are there more of those things?" He asked with wide eyes that scanned the roadside.

No one in the trio responded. Cassandra turned behind her and glanced back down the road in the direction they had come. There was nothing following the group that she could see.

Her eyes settled back on the still fizzing truck and she watched the smoke rise from the burning seats and undercarriage as the acidic carcass of the black monster inside continued to melt through while Lewis, Carlos, and the others discussed their situations for a moment.

"We need to get out of here," Lewis said finally.

"Come on," the man said and turned back down the road.

The group walked quietly and quickly down the street, each armed man scanning the countryside around them with the muzzles of their weapons.

They glanced from time to time at the weapons that the new trio carried with them. In a few minutes, the small group was tucking into the barely open door of a small warehouse. The heavy metal door was barricaded from the inside, leaving only a crack large enough for a man to squeeze through.

Lewis stepped in first, Cassandra tailed behind him. Inside they met several others that were hiding away in near darkness, with only a few candles to light the room.

Cassandra glanced from the group of people in the open space to the supplies, the stairs leading up and down to other levels, and several office doors around the perimeter. There were men, women, and a few children.

Though many were armed, Cassandra could not help but feel overwhelmed by the looks of fear and worry on all the faces, many of the people were injured, some looked sick, exhausted and succumbing to limited food and water.

She raised her eyebrows and stepped forward with a little sigh. The group of people crammed into the back room looked battered, tired, and very scared.

"How long have you been in here?" Carlos asked as he began to tend to the people as best as he could, evaluating their injuries with the professional demeanor he was accustomed to providing.

"Three weeks," the leader of the group said. "Most of the town got the hell out of here with the military escort, but those things came swarming in so fast. They buzzed in and out of town in two hours. We were all able to hide and just lucky enough to start to find each other."

He paused for a moment and looked at Lewis. Under the layers of clothing he had been donning as the weather grew cold the man could see the collar of Lewis's army fatigues. He eyed it and raised an eyebrow.

"Did you loose your men?"

"We..." Lewis started quietly. "Yeah, we were in Chicago when..."

"Chicago? Jesus, the big city like that, must have been a madhouse."

Cassandra grunted softly, with a 'you have no idea' scoff, but said nothing.

"How the hell you'd end up here in the ass end of nowhere?"

"We drove," Lewis said quite frankly.

"Well, welcome anyway, Paul Telgren, good to meet you."

Lewis and Paul shook hands. Lewis's eyes cast downward to the weapon Paul toted with him, a semi-automatic.

"Where'd you get the guns?" Lewis asked suspiciously.

The man looked him square in the eye and avoided answering the question all together.

"Look, we've been doing the best we can here."

A shrill voice rose from the outside. The very sound of the creature's cry sent shivers down Cassandra's spine. She swallowed and gripped the rifle firmly in her hands as she glanced through the propped open door.

The calls of the creatures echoed through the empty town streets and filtered into the shut windows of the warehouse.

Carlos shifted through the small crowd and watched the world outside the windows with the rest of the group. Cassandra followed Lewis, Paul, and the rest cautiously as they headed towards the door.

"Nah," Paul grunted after an awkwardly long silence. "They don't sound so close by. Everything echoes in the empty streets. We stay quiet enough, they will just pass through."

"What if they don't?" Cassandra asked with a worried whisper, peering out through the cracked door.

"They have so far." Paul responded with a satisfied tone that Cassandra took no comfort in.

"Come on, Cassy," Lewis said prompting her away for the door with a hand on her shoulder. "Let's get away from the doors."

The group gathered in a smaller adjacent area with solid walls. Cassandra immediately found herself glancing around to identify the escape routes; a habit she found forming strongly over the passing months.

Once she eyed up all of the potential ways out of the room, she filtered into the group along with the others and looked around at the group as they began to quietly open cans of fruit and heated up soups over small flames.

Cassandra eyed one of the men in the group. There was something familiar about him, but she could not quite pin point what it was. The man was crouched as far back as he could possibly be into the farthest corner along the furthest wall.

He looked absolutely distraught, lost, with dirty jeans and a bruised face. His face was long and wrought with pain and misery and loss from so many months of hardship.

Carlos moved through the people in the room, until he too came to the crouched man. He whispered softly to him and reached out to inspect the man's arm, which was wrapped up with shirts and towels.

Cautiously, Carlos began to remove the wraps, and the man whimpered softly, grimacing while biting his lip and trying to force himself to keep composure. When the wraps came off, Cassandra could see that most of the man's forearm was completely burned.

The wounds did not appear, from what she had seen so far, to have been caused by the acid of the creatures' blood. The skin on this man's arm was black and charred, as though he had reached through a burning fire.

Carlos used some of his stockpile of medical supplies to tend to the man's injuries. As he finished putting a new bandage on his arm, he smiled softly, trying hard to convey some optimism.

"There, you should be alright."

The man nodded, but only muttered a distant thanks to Carlos.

"You're welcome. If you need anything, just let me know." Carlos reached to shake the man's hand as Lewis drifted over and eyed him up.

"Are you Dell Allen?" Lewis asked in a stunned whisper.

That question jogged her memory and Cassandra now knew where she had seen the man before.

The man nodded silently.

"Oh man, I loved your movies!"

"Yeah, yeah! I knew I recognized you, man." Someone else brimmed ear to ear as he trodded over and clamped down on Mr. Allen's hand firmly.

"Wow, we sure could use a little bit of Metal Man's help, now."

Someone else laughed dismissively. "Yeah right; seven foot tall man in metal armor that shoots lasers and kills the bad guys – they're just around every corner."

Lewis' face faded as Dell Allen stared warily back at him, a hopeless sort of look etching into his face.

"Well, come on, sit down." Lewis said his voice faded, a little look of embarrassment flickered in his eyes as he glanced at Cassandra.

The famous actor did not seem at all appreciative of fan approval, and he quickly lowered his head, squeezing his eyes shut and wrapping his good hand around the bandages that covered his forearm. Carlos patted him on the shoulder supportively and moved on to the next person.

The sounds of the shrieking calls of the satanic beasts grew distant, but it was still rattling Cassandra's nerves. She did not terribly like the way Paul was eyeing her weapon or the rest of her, nor did she particularly care for the looks the rest of his men seemed to be giving her and her companions.

Most of the group was injured and worn looking, and the few men who had weapons, including Paul, were the only ones who seemed to be unscathed. Cassandra couldn't help but notice how very few of the women or the two young children in the group, who mostly remained tucked away behind the women, seemed afraid to even look up.

The night was a restless one. Cassandra, Lewis, and Carlos sat side by side watching the group around them. Lewis took to a lookout duty for a few hours in the middle of the night and Cassandra pulled away from the group for a short while alone to have a quick look around the rest of the warehouse as most of Paul's group had split up and disappeared into some of the offices and back rooms.

Cassandra slipped silently down a corridor and heard the echoing sounds of a woman crying. She tip toed forward nearing the door the sound was coming from and realized she heard multiple voices; at least two men and one woman whimpering and moaning.

Cassandra felt her heart leap into her throat and she began to shake. She heard muttering sounds of male voices warning the woman to stay silent.

The tone was threatening, and the woman's muffled sobs were fearful and pained. It was no stretch of the imagination for Cassandra to figure out what was going on behind the closed doors of the back room in the middle of the night.

She spun on her heels and returned to the group, grabbing up Carlos without a word and nearly dragging him to the fire escape to find Lewis.

"We can't stay here," she whispered ever so softly to Lewis. "It's too dangerous."

Lewis put his hand up to quiet Cassandra as he looked around the cold dark and abandoned streets. Though distant, the shrieks of the bug drones were still echoing through the bricks and mortars.

"They're still out there, Cassy."

"It's not them I'm worried about, Lewis." Cassandra whispered, glancing from Lewis to Carlos and back.

"What are you talking about?" Carlos questioned.

The three of them huddled together in a whisper as though they were conspiring. Cassandra told them what she heard and shook her head dismissively when she was questioned about her interpretations of what she thought she heard through closed steel doors behind concrete walls.

Every time someone's voice raised slightly, another would harshly remind them to whisper again. Cassandra halfway felt like a kid at a sleepover, trying not to wake the parents nearby.

"What's going on here?"

Cassandra jumped with the voice breaking the whispering meet. She eyed Paul warily as he rubbed his dirty fingers through the stubbly beard on his chin.

He strode out into the landing of the fire escape, too close for comfort as far as Cassandra was concerned. She grabbed Lewis' arm with a tense grip as she sidled as close as she possibly could next to him, slightly behind Carlos.

"We're not safe here, the bugs are nearby."

Paul seemed to eye the three of them up like they were some kind of menace or threat to his dominion. He brushed off any concerns about the bugs dismissively, but Lewis insisted his point.

"Any of you… your group that wants to come with us; we should leave in the morning." He said to the Paul.

"No, no. My group is staying. We've done fine for weeks." Paul said quickly.

"Fine? You have seriously injured people here," Carlos added in and glanced at Cassandra. "A couple of the women look pretty beat up…"

Paul closed in on Carlos. " What you tryin' to say exactly there, Doc?"

Lewis stepped forward, but stayed silent as Carlos held his ground.

"You've got a few who seem to be no worse for wear, but the rest of the group looks beat, injured, and starving. If we all leave together as a group, we can all get to food and more medical supplies."

"We're not going anywhere. If you want to go, fine. Be my guest." Paul snapped, extending his arm over the edge of the fire escape. "Go out and die. Why don't you leave Cassandra here with us…" he paused. "For protection. We do everything we can to protect everyone in the group."

"We're leaving in the morning, with anyone and everyone that wants to come." Lewis said flatly, with an authoritative tone.

Cassandra eyed the group of men warily, and Paul sneered at her.

"Does he make all the decisions for you?"

Lewis pushed forward and grabbed Paul's coat collar. "Don't you talk to her, you hear me?"

Voices raised quickly and a small fray broke out, attracting the attention to of several other men in the group.

"What the hell's going on out here?" One of them asked snidely.

"They're leaving. All of them. Right now. Get out." Paul said bitterly, wiping his jaw from a hard punch Lewis landed.

Lewis, Cassandra, and Carlos slipped past Paul and glanced to the group, who had now mostly gathered around listening to the scuffle.

"You'll die out there. You're better off here with us." One of the armed men said to them.

"I doubt that," Cassandra muttered without missing a beat.

In a tense moment, guns were raised and voices rose even higher. A deadly silence filled the room for a moment and Lewis stared intently at Paul, eyeing him down like nothing more than a thug.

"I guess you do make the decisions, then." Paul said, nodding his head at Lewis, and turning slightly away.

In a fraction of a second, it seemed as though the tension was broken. Paul partially turned away, as though to dismiss Lewis, Carlos, and Cassandra from his keep.

Immediately, he swung his arm back up, aiming his gun for Lewis's head. Cassandra screamed and at least three people lunged forward.

The gun went off twice quickly and someone else opened fire into the air, causing everyone to stop. Cassandra looked around from Lewis to Carlos; neither of them seemed injured, and she was sure she wasn't either.

Dell Allen stumbled backwards with a look of pure shock on his face. He was covered in warm, fresh blood spray.

He collapsed on the ground quickly and Cassandra barely noticed that Paul dropped to the ground at nearly the same. The group took a synchronized gasp as they looked around and evaluated exactly what had transpired.

Paul was gasping for air. Carlos immediately dropped down to evaluate him, but it was obvious it was too late. Dell Allen was in shock, and may have been the one to pull the trigger, but he wasn't sure. He was not injured. The group quelled and looked around.

Lewis clenched his jaws and spoke harshly at the rest of the men, who seemed a little less interested in renewing the fight without their ringleader.

"Those things are scanning this area, they're cleaning up. If you want to stay, go ahead. Whoever wants to leave, you should come with us now."

"You honestly think you stand a better chance out there?" One of the women in the back of the group asked with a disbelieving look on her face.

"If we stay here, we'll die." Cassandra chimed in.

"South," Lewis said quickly.

"What?" One man questioned.

"We need to head South."

"Why south?" Dell Allen asked Lewis in a shaky whisper as he pulled himself up off the floor. "What makes you think we'll be better off there? Where exactly?"

"Because winter's coming and there's no power. The bugs are following after their hosts… after people, who mostly headed North. If we go south."

One man from the group, Cassandra wasn't even sure of his name, looked thoroughly shocked at the notion of leaving. "You can't be serious? You want to leave, on foot? I'm sure the power'll come back on."

"Then you're an idiot." Someone else retorted angrily.

Lewis stepped back in with a tone in his voice that commanded respect from the group. He was no longer willing to tolerate any hold ups or arguments.

He knew remaining where they were was a bad idea. It was obvious that the group had simply become accustomed to being battered and bruised and not having a chance, although as Cassandra listened to Lewis talking, she glanced around the room full of people and wondered how many of those injuries were from the bugs or from other people.

Lewis considered the weather as a factor, but also the known locations of the bugs.

To stay in the northerly regions would mean contending with bugs and cold winters, with no electricity, no commodities that people depended upon to exist, and no idea when any semblance of modern civilization would be restored.

There was no communication, no idea what the rest of the outside world was facing, nor how many people there were even left. Heading south would be difficult on foot, and there was a serious chance of heading right into to bug territory.

"I'm not saying either is a good choice, but I think we need to give ourselves every chance possible. If we run out of food resources and the snow hits…" Lewis wrapped up. "We'll be better off not having to compete with weather."

Cassandra and Carlos stood by Lewis. Dell Allen soon rose to his feet, ready to follow, nodding in agreement.

Slowly the rest of the group stood as well. Outnumbered, the remainders of the power-hungry gang that followed Paul dropped nodded in agreement as well.

The small group was soon organized and ready to head out into the open streets under the early morning light. Lewis crept over to the door and peered through, holding his breath so he could hear more clearly, listening for any sounds.

He heard nothing from his crouched position near the entrance.

Turning his head back, he stared at Cassandra's wary face for a quick glance then nodded to her. She dropped her chin into a subtle nod and Lewis lurched forward, pulled to his feet and strode outside scanning the buildings and parking lots around him for signs of the enemy.

He silently wondered if he was making the right choice, if leading the people out of their makeshift shelter was a good idea, or perhaps it was better to simply cower and hide in a corner. He quickly decided top put those thoughts out of his mind.

As he looked back, he saw the group filing out of the building one by one. There was no going back. They had to survive.

Cassandra popped out of the building and strode quickly to Lewis's side, using the muzzle of her rifle to scan the buildings to her right while Lewis' weapon scanned the left side of the street. They marched quickly, silently, and warily.

"So, do you prefer Cassandra or Cassy?" Lewis asked of her after more than two miles of dead silence. "I just realized I never asked."

She gazed at him with a stunned look, which quickly softened into a smile. The question, so lightly and casually asked, threw her from her mind set. She was walking with gritted teeth, glaring at the town around her as though it was one large enemy and Lewis asked such a lighthearted question they might well have been taking a nature walk in a park on a peaceful summer day.

"Cassandra," she answered, though she thought it was all rather irrelevant. It made no difference to her what she was called, but she answered just the same.

"But Cassy's fine, too." She added quickly. "Everyone calls me Cassy."

Lewis smiled at her and she smiled widely and dropped her eyes to the ground for a moment. A not so distant sound of the terrible call of the bugs took them both away from their smiles and their eyes fell to the scenery around them.

Whether driven by determination or fear, the adrenaline that pumped through the veins of each member of the group kept them walking steadily and quietly clear through that day with very little rest.

They walked well into the night and only stopped to make camp not long before dark fell. They remained silent, camping around a small fire, which they used to warm soup.

Soup and fruit cocktail and canned vegetables seemed to be the primary diet of the human race, Cassandra thought.

After so many months of being disheveled from their homes and comforts, it was getting nearly impossible to find anything that wasn't canned or vaccu-sealed in plastic. Frozen foods had long since gone bad, fresh meats were rotten.

Canned goods were the staples and sometimes still sealed packages of rice, beans, cereal, and potatoes, even macaroni and cheese, were treated like a high end meal as they quickly became scarcer.

As Cassandra ate, she silently wondered what would happen with even those luxuries dwindled away. She could only hope that the world would be reorganized before that happened, and the nightmare would end.

The group walked for days, managing twenty miles a day at best. Their place slowed as the group's overall levels of exhaustion rose and the food supply they had wasn't enough to support such activity.

The adults took turns carrying the smaller children when their small legs and tired feet could no longer tolerate walking.

The group walked from early morning light until just after dusk every day, stopping only as necessary and making small, quiet camps at night.

Their journey did not go unnoticed, as small groups of survivors, just looking for help, wandered into camp one night and join them.

The weary members of the exhausted group stopped for much needed rest as evening approached less than a week into their journey. They had gone days without sight or sound of a bug, which was a relief to everyone, but despite that, the journey was still difficult.

"Alright, do we have any idea where we should be going?" Dell asked of Lewis.

Lewis shot him a dirty look but said nothing. He glanced around the streets and looked to the group that followed him as Carlos was helping some to water from a jug.

This town, like everywhere else they had been, was dark and cold, with no electricity to power even a single street lamp. The street was full of shops and stores and the group had come to halt directly across the from the entrance garage to a full sized shopping mall.

Cassandra glanced at the solid, windowless side of the building that faced them. At the bottom of the banked building, there was a large steel garage door that was firmly pulled closed.

Bright red painted on lettering displayed the daily mall hours. Cassandra was certain that it was before nine in the evening on at least a Friday or Saturday, but despite the hour, the parking garage and the mall were closed.

"Let's go in there, maybe we can find something to eat, and we can rest," Lewis addressed the group.

Slowly, they pulled back to their feet and started across the street. Cassandra sighed deeply as she walked alongside Lewis. She eyed the mall warily.

She loved malls normally, but she thought back to her last experience in one, and decided she had little desire to go into another one. Seeing the large, vacated building looming over the group as they rounded a corner towards the main entrance, Cassandra found the place to be foreboding, but she stayed silent as they approached the entrance.

They soon found themselves standing in front of the building, staring a glass door that led into a lobby, followed by more doors. One of the first doors was broken and Cassandra was certain there was a lingering death waiting inside.

"Looks like someone beat us here," Lewis said.

"Or something," Cassandra mumbled, eyeing the door suspiciously.

Cassandra grabbed at Lewis' sleeve as he strode forward. He cast her a quick glance and headed through the door.

She was staring at the building with wide eyes and a look on her face that was almost pleading to him not to enter. Lewis freed himself from her grip and smiled sideways at her, trying to assure her he doubted there was any danger.

Slowly, the group followed along. Cassandra stepped through the first broken door and eyed the lobby and the second set of glass doors, one of which was cracked, but not broken out.

The doors were tinted, and no light was shining through. Only blackness seemed to be waiting for them, and a heavy smell almost like refuse filled the air.

Cassandra stepped through, feeling her spine tingling. The overwhelming sense of danger swept over her like the thick, musty, rotten air that draped her body.

She was just about to inform Lewis that she thought they should not have entered this place, when one member of the group, blind from the lightlessness of aisle, flicked on a flashlight.

Lewis jumped around as if to shout to the woman to turn the light off, but he said nothing. It was too late. The woman had already clicked the button on her flashlight.

It was as though someone had turned on a light inside a deep tomb that was unfit for human eyes. Cassandra felt nervous and weak, sick. She took a quick step sideways and folded herself behind Lewis as he glared at his surroundings with a deep hatred etched onto his face. Cassandra eyed the mall, too frightened to think, or block out what she saw.

Her eyes were wide with fear and she looked around, trying to comprehend what she was being forced to look at.

There were no stores visible in the mall; no little shops or kiosks, not even a vending machine or the store directory could be seen.

There were walls, a floor, and a ceiling, but no doors, no brightly lit neon signs, no ounce of familiarity to the place at all.

The floor was glistening under the beam of the flashlight from the slimy strands of crisscrossing mucousy goo that covered the floor from wall to wall. To call them 'walls' however, was a grossly incorrect misuse of the word.

There were no true walls, Cassandra decided rather promptly. Where the walls of the mall once were, now was a cemetery instead, a sickening tomb of death, decay, sulfur stench, blood, and rotting flesh.

The smell of death filled Cassandra's nostrils, permeated her skin. It sank deep into her bones, grabbed hold of her heart and throat and made it difficult to breathe or concentrate on anything other than the loud thud of her pounding heart as it struggled to free itself from the horrific tomb.

Hundreds upon hundreds of bodies were entwined behind the thick spidery castings all along the buried walls of the mall as far as Cassandra could see.

The corridor ahead split off into a 'Y' and Cassandra could tell that there was a second level to the mall buried somewhere behind the sickly yellowish and black resin secretions of the hive walls. She spun slowly on the spot eyeing her surroundings with her rotation.

She was in an unearthly place, so far from human in its appearance she just as much could have been on an entirely different planet, a planet where sights like this were normal, where they were just a way of life; a planet void of anything familiar, and surrounded only by death.

"My God!" Exasperated whispers and gasps and wails of pity and sorrow filtered from the group piling into the mall behind Lewis, Cassandra, and Carlos.

As Cassandra gripped Lewis' shoulder, she could feel his tension though the several layers of clothing he wore. He shifted his weight, and raising his weapon, took a step forward.

Cassandra turned a wild eye to him and noticed that several others had begun a slow stride forward. Suddenly the speed of the situation finally caught up to her.

For a moment, she felt as though life had come to a complete halt and would allow her to see what she needed to see and make a hasty exit before anything realized she was there.

However, when all of a sudden, the movement, the sights, and the sounds sped back up and flooded into her brain in real time, her mind was bombarded with all the things she didn't even realize she had not seen in the few seconds she was standing on that stunned spot.

The young children in the group were howling hysterically at the sights in the corridors that they could not understand. Disgusted and horrified adults who had not ever spent one second of their time considering that this would be their reality cursed and whispered to one another as they eyed the dead plastered to the walls and ceilings.

The ground was littered with the dead 'face hugger' carcasses that had fallen off their hosts' faces. The people on the walls had terrified looks of unimaginable pain forever locked onto their faces as their carcasses rotted away.

Cassandra was quickly becoming all too familiar with that very look. She clenched her jaws and tried hard to fight the terrible urge to vomit and cry.

Her eyes shifted from Lewis to the men walking even deeper into the hive, and back to Carlos behind her, who was, wisely, helping, forcibly, if need be, the shaken people of the group to leave the building. She saw him hustle out Dell Allen, who turned around just outside the door, huddled over and wretched.

She felt herself smirk at him; like a reflex she couldn't control. She was almost disappointed at the man, and she knew deep down that wasn't fair.

Still, he always presented like a brave, bold man, and his famous character was able to charge straight into automatic fire from the bad guys, never getting hit of course, until a pivotal point in the film, which always turned out to have a happy ending where the good guy wins.

She watched for a moment the superhero icon folded over and gagged on his own spit and felt herself doubting that there would be any happy ending when even the super hero was retching.

Carlos glanced back inside the doorway and gave her a 'come on!' type of look. She felt compelled to run out the door, and turned back to Lewis to be sure he was following in her path. However, he was standing all the way down at the end of the hallway, staring over the banister to the lower level of the mall with several others.

Her eyes widened. "Lewis!"

She called out in a loud whisper. He did not respond. She tried again, a little louder, and again a third time.

Before she even realized it, she found herself walking determinedly towards him. She looked down at her own feet, both shocked and angry with them for carrying her even further into the realm of the bug hive.

Before she could even say another word, her eyes shifted to an even more terrible sight below.

The lower level of the mall was covered so completely wall to wall it would not even possible for the smallest of a person to walk through and not step onto the tops of the countless egg cases that adorned the wide hallways.

Cassandra felt her heart skip beat after beat as her eyes scanned very quickly over the egg lined hallway and then landed solely and squarely onto the giant hole in the floor just under the archway to a large anchor department store.

She could not see the name of the store since it was well covered by the resin secretion that trapped a dozen more people along the partially blocked doorway.

The hole that was torn through the floor of the mall, opened up directly to the parking garage below and Cassandra got the immediate sense of movement from the levels below.

Something was alive in the hive, and it was large, and it probably knew they were there. Cassandra suddenly felt a whole lot like a fly caught in a spider's web, and she knew that the spiders would soon be coming.

She immediately imagined that the massive queen egg layer was going to rush up through the hole at any moment.

Right then, a severe hiss rang out through the lower levels, up through the hole in the floor and past her ears. The men around her readied their weapons at the hole.

"We've got to kill them," Lewis whispered to himself over and over like a broken record.

Each time he uttered the words, his voice changed a little. It shifted from shaky and fearful to despiteful and determined.

"No, Lewis, we have to run," Cassandra whispered, clutching his arm.

He gave her a wide eyed stare and she knew from the look he shot her that he was not going to leave the hive without making his mark known.

His weapon shifted into readiness and Cassandra shook her head, pleading with Lewis not to press on. He cast her one final glance and slid sideways along the banister, winding his way around the second level to a set of stairs, as several other men followed.

Cassandra tried to stay focused on Lewis, but the tears filling her eyes made it hard to keep his image from blurring. She wiped her eyes and cast her head sideways towards Carlos, who was still standing in the doorway to the mall with his jaw dropped.

Cassandra felt her body shaking. Her hand rattled so hard it vibrated the weapon in her clutch.

She glanced at her rifle as though getting ready to have a conversation with it, then lifter her eyes towards Lewis, who was already putting one foot down on the first stair to the lower level. She shot Carlos one last look and darted off following Lewis.

She caught up to him quickly as he slowly lowered himself down the semi-circle stair case.

The five men halted at the bottom stair, and evaluated the egg cases that were pressing into one another all along the floor. Cassandra eyed the egg cases from a few steps behind the rest of the men.

While many of the cases were splayed open like a tulip from hell, hundreds of the leathery sacs were tightly closed at the top, still unhatched.

One man strode out from behind Lewis and stepped forward, tiptoeing into a small space just behind the first of the egg cases.

Cassandra caught up to Lewis and bumped him on the shoulder softly. He turned to her, startled. He had not even realize she had followed him, she figured from the shocked look he gave her that definitely told her she should not have been there.

She swallowed and tried to pull a smile on to her face, but failed. Her eyes cast back to the main floor when she realized something was moving. The egg cases were opening.

Aroused by the presence of useful life in their midst, the spidery creatures within the leather shells began to unfold themselves as the tops of their oval homes peeled open like a budding flower.

The creatures' long crab like fingers reached over the openings of their eggs and the animals inside readied their tails underneath their bodies like a spring, able to propel them many feet from their sacs.

The man in the egg field did not hesitate to open fire. He pumped the shotgun in his hands over and over, quickly reloading when the gun went dry. Two other men followed his lead and began to fire at the eggs.

Lewis and Cassandra reserved their ammunition and watched the scene unfold. After just a few seconds, a wild shriek rang out that resounded loudly above the gunshots from the variety of weapons that the men carried.

The men howled with elated cries as they easily blew the egg sacs apart like darting a water balloon.

Lewis and Cassandra began to step forward carefully. As she put her foot down on the main level, she was certain she felt the floor vibrate.

Another loud wail called out from the parking garage levels below and even Lewis dropped his eyes to the floor he stood on. The floor was shaking.

Lewis cast a wide glare to Cassandra, but she kept her eyes pointed down, watching the floor as though she could see it vibrate. The other men did not appear to have noticed that the floor was shaking. There was a rhythm to the vibration, a definite steady feel to it.

Cassandra lifted her eyes as one man in the group toppled forward, a spidery face hugger firmly gripping to his head.

Like a repeat of a bad old movie, the other men quickly jumped over to help their friend.

They tugged and pulled and tried with all their might to remove the animal from the man's head. Lewis and Cassandra stared sadly at the scene for a moment, but their eyes quickly shifted over to the massive hole in the floor as a giant black head emerged angrily from the sub level.

The massive creature that Cassandra had feared was lurking in the lower levels pulled its body up through the hole.

It was quickly greeted by wild gunfire and the screams of the frightened people that were destroying the egg field.

Cassandra howled and lifted her rifle. She could feel the adrenaline take charge as she began to react to the situation without truly thinking.

She shot the weapon at the massive beast until it went dry. Pulling back up the stairs alongside Lewis,

Cassandra reached into her side bag and pulled out another clip for her weapon. The other men launched themselves backward as the massive black beast jumped firmly onto the floor in front of them, a sea of her drone offspring rising up with her, pouring out of the hole with their shiny armor hides reflected the light cast from the weapons fire.

Cassandra was barely aware that more weapons fire began as some of the others in the armed group from the sidewalk outside the mall had run back into the building and opened fire.

There was a fury of shouting, shooting, and shrieking, and Cassandra found herself focusing on the massive animal's twenty foot long tail as it whipped around in a quick curve and snapped like a whip into the people in the pit of the hive.

One man was thrown onto the stair case and he slammed into Lewis, knocking him over. Cassandra jumped backwards up two stairs to avoid the collision.

The man received a deep gash across his chest from the tip of the thing's massive tail. The other man that had been hit flew backwards into the egg field, and his face was quickly smothered by one of the crab like creatures.

Reloaded, Cassandra opened fire once more in hysterical and uncontrolled bursts while halfway falling backwards up the stairs with Lewis near her feet just lower than him.

She watched the drones swarm in a definite formation and Cassandra thought for just a moment that the giant queen creature, turning its massive crowned head at the hell spawn, was controlling the smaller ones, like a commander ordering troops.

She did not spend much time pondering the hierarchy of the creatures as the larger-than-man creatures quickly approached. Seconds felt like an eternity as chaos erupted into full force.

The people on the staircase bolted for back up to the second level. The massive creature, who took a prominent stance in the semi-circular lower lobby of the mall, was tall enough that her head was just about level with the floor of the upper level.

As Cassandra and Lewis bolted across the upper hallway, the creature's massive tail lashed out again and collided with the floor just in front of the group.

The upper walkway shuddered from the impact as part of the floor collapsed back down to the lower level. Lewis jumped over the gap that had been made in the walkway and opened fire one more time on the maddened monster.

Cassandra quickly sprinted across the void and began to shoot at the bugs that had climbed quickly and agilely to the upper level. The creatures charged like bulls straight on into the gunfire from the entire group while Lewis and Cassandra continued to shoot at the larger creature in its giant crowned head.

The thing hissed wildly and its anger grew ever more intense. It shot out its second set of jaws defiantly at Lewis. Narrowly avoiding the inner jaws catching his foot through the bars of the banister rail, Lewis fell backward.

One of the bug drones lunged forward at fallen Lewis. He swung around quickly and bullets shot out over his head from Cassandra's rifle. Lewis quickly rolled out of the way to avoid splatter of the deadly acidic blood.

He leapt up and quickly ducked per Cassandra's howling. She swung about at fired her again at another charging beast. It went toppling backwards over the rail and crashed to the lower level, ever more enraging the massive beast in the center of the commotion.

The queen wailed out a hiss at the loss of one of her precious offspring. Someone in the group shouted a warning and lobbed a grenade down into the lower level as at least two others tried futilely to stop him.

The grenade blew with a resonating burst and exploded empty egg casings, live facehuggers, and already dead drones. It sent up shards of the brittle resin hive wall secretions and a massive spray of acid, which Lewis and

Cassandra, only just realizing what was going on a fraction of a second before, dodged away from.

The acid sizzled as it came into contact with any exposed metal, cement, or human skin, but it did not damage the walls of the hive or any of the bugs around.

The queen hissed and squealed wildly and darted forward, attempting to climb up the balcony. She was huge, strong, and terrifyingly unstoppable, but the cement of the upper walkway, already under strain from hundreds of pounds of hive secretions and weakened by acid spray from the explosion and the queen's own attack, gave way and collapsed under the animal's added weight.

The queen began ripping away the upper level floor, creating its own path to its prey.

The small group of frightened people darted away, maintaining fire at the attacking bugs and charging queen. Lewis suddenly slammed to a stop and turned on the raging beast that was quickly climbing its way over the debris it had created, and was climbing up to the upper level after those in its sight.

Cassandra shrieked to Lewis and stopped herself. Her heart pounding with every beat, and the very seconds of her life ticked away in the middle of the dark corridor of the invaded space.

She screamed at him one more time to keep moving, but cut short when she noticed what he was doing. Lewis was rapidly removing from around his waist a full grenade belt. He glanced at the belt, which had five grenades still in place in their leather holders.

Quickly, moving backwards, Lewis let his rifle dangle over his shoulder and he pulled the pins from all five grenades and launched the belt at the approaching giant. Cassandra fired out at another bug that was charging at her from the body covered walls.

The thing collapsed into a melting heap on the ground. Cassandra looked back just in time to see Lewis charging at her at full speed.

He bolted nearly directly into her, grabbed her jacket collar and dragged her with him out of the broken glass doors until she had managed to catch up with his pace.

The pair ran out onto the street and kept moving. Lewis howled to the panicked group outside to run, but his words were quickly drowned out by the massive explosion.

Fire burst through the glass doors with such a force it sent glass in all directions up, down, and across the street, along with chunks of concrete and pieces of hive and human remains.

The shrieks of the creatures inside the mall hive stopped abruptly and the front portion of the building collapsed in on itself.

A massive boom resounded through the street, followed quickly by a thick cloud of smoke, dust, and debris. Acid rain poured out of the explosion, tapping onto the streets and the abandoned vehicles that lined the roadsides.

The blood of the creatures melted through the vehicles and through the pavement of the road.

As the group pulled themselves back together from their sprawled out hiding places throughout the block, they stared in shocked silence at the remains of the mall.

For a moment, the group as a whole held their breath and watched warily over the rubble, keen and intent for any signs of movement.

A tiny piece of concrete rock shuffled its way from a peak of debris and rolled down onto the sidewalk at Cassandra's feet. She glanced down at the little piece for a moment before her eyes rolled back to the pile of rubble.

The remains of the building, littered with burned cadavers that had adorned the walls, began to move.

Lewis yanked on Cassandra's shoulder enough to get her attention. She turned away from the moving pile of rubble and looked at him.

Suddenly, the blasted concrete pile splayed open and a severely enraged gigantic black creature, obviously injured from the blast, leapt up out of the rubble.

Cassandra could see that part of the things' flared head was broken off and dripping a steady downpour of acid onto the pile from which it had just crawled out of. The creature looked at the group, hissed wildly and mournfully over the loss of its hive and leapt forward, meeting with gunfire from a weary and frightened group of men and women.

Shakily, Cassandra joined in the group effort and opened fire. Lewis called for someone to lob a grenade if there was one, and in a few moments, an explosion resonated.

The giant bug queen was caught the creature off guard. She lost balance and tipped sideways, slamming a foot down hard onto the broken shards of concrete to try to catch herself, but someone else launched a second grenade and yelled for people to clear out.

The next explosion hit the massive beast square in the chest and rocked it over. The creature howled as it collapsed and the group aimed their rifles and shot until nearly every weapon went dry and clicked a hollow sound.

The awestruck group simply stopped and stared in disbelief at their victory. Cassandra felt a flicker of a smile embrace her lips as she stared at the sizzling cadaver. Her body was shaking and she was weak in the gut and the knees, but she felt victorious.

The smell of death and acid blood in the air never felt so good. They had taken down the massive monster. She glanced to the rest of the group and saw Lewis smiling widely. He walked over to her and touched her face softly, wiping blood off her cheek.

"Are you hurt?" He asked her.

She looked at him uncertainly for a moment, then reached and touched her own face. She had not even realized that she had been injured, she was numb with shock and hyped up on adrenaline. She clapped a hand over her wound and looked warily at Lewis.

"I'm okay." She assured him.

"Hey!" One of the people from the group came over towards Lewis, eyeing his weapon.

"Those guns, what the hell are they? They eat through those things like nothing else can."

His voice was agitated, as though Lewis and Cassandra were trying commit a conspiracy against him. He shook his weapon at them and raised his voice.

"This hunk of junk barely cut them! Got any more of those big guns?"

Lewis considered him for a moment. The only rifles the trio had were the ones physically strapped to their bodies.

The rest were probably still fizzing in the backseat of the truck so many miles away. Before Cassandra could even follow what was happening, the man was grabbing at her, yelling something about not needing such a big gun and she was getting wrestled down to the ground over the weapon she clutched to in her hand.

The rest of the group watched while Carlos and Lewis both leapt forward. Carlos yelled for the men to stop as Lewis threw himself into the fray.

The two men rolled over, Cassandra pulled herself frantically to her feet as she grabbed her rifle and glanced off to the burning queen's body in the rubble, double checking that thing was still dead.

Her head turned back to Lewis as the two men scrapped, punching and kicking at one other, Lewis clinging to the two rifles that were criss-crossed strapped over his shoulders. Cassandra shouted along with Carlos for the men to stop fighting, but neither seemed to be paying much attention.

They fought for what seemed like minutes upon minutes. The angry man wrestled himself loose from Lewis's grip and turned on him with the barrel of a gun he had pulled out from somewhere hidden, his automatic weapon having long since been thrown on the ground uselessly.

"Gimme' one of those god damned guns!" he shouted.

Lewis, lip bleeding, lay on the ground with his hands in the air, staring down the barrel of the weapon.

"Leave him alone!" Cassandra shrieked. "We can't be fighting each other! I know your scared, but please don't do this."

He turned on her, keeping the gun pointed at Lewis.

"Throw me yours," he snapped. "You don't want me to kill him, throw me yours."

Cassandra glanced to Lewis, tears welling up in her eyes. She nodded and whispered a plea to once again for Lewis's safety while bringing her weapon around to her side.

She slowly slipped forward, shifting her weight awkwardly over the pile of rubble. She fell sideways on a slab on concrete, and cautiously pulled herself back to her feet, her right hand still clutching the rifle so desperately demanded, while her other hand slipped behind her back to help push her off the rock.

"Give me the gun!" He yelled once more impatiently.

Cassandra cast him an angry look. She glanced at the rifle in her right hand and forcibly threw it forward. The man dropped his guard and reached for the weapon.

Lewis pulled himself to his feet and was just about to charge at him, continuing his fight for the rifle, but he glanced at Cassandra and stopped in his tracks. Cassandra gritted her teeth and tore her left hand around from behind her back as the man, one of Paul's cronies, clamored for the flying rifle.

Without hesitation, Cassandra pulled the trigger on her handgun she still harbored. The bullet slammed into his abdomen and he fell backward.

Cassandra glared at him as she strode forward and grabbed her rifle of the ground. The shocked group around stared in silence. Cassandra strapped her rifle back over her shoulder and glanced from Lewis to the crowd around her.

"You bitch," the dying man gagged before the air from his lungs hissed out from between his lips for the last time.

The remainder of the night was lived out in near silence. The group walked through the town in shock, too afraid to utter a breath too loudly and peak someone's temper. By morning, they fell to rest in a park somewhere well outside the small town's limits.

Days passed and the group pressed south, following Lewis's lead. Though their conversations had lit back up, no one referred to any of the events of the night of their encounter with the hive.

Cassandra spoke as little as she had to. She spent most of the time quietly locked away inside her own mind coming to grips with the truth of her reality.

Eventually, the small band of desperate survivors came into what was left of another small city. The buildings were dark and empty, many had broken windows, bullet holes, and blood stains.

Some of the buildings had massive pieces blown out of them from where cannon fire had grazed them, while other buildings were completely collapsed because of it. Cassandra thought the town looked as desperate as she felt. She was hungry, tired, and very much wanted to rest her weary feet and eyes.

The group sifted through some of the still standing buildings, trying to find any scraps of non perishable food of any sort but came up empty handed as a dozen battered and bloody men strode slowly and warily over to them.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" One of the men called out to the group.

"Hey there," Lewis started in response. "We don't want any fights."

He informed the men of the group's recent past and desire for food and rest.

"Well, you can't stay here." Another man said, striking his palm with a shotgun.

"What? Why not?" Lewis questioned, striding to the front of the pack.

"This is ours," another grunted.

"What is yours?" Lewis said, halfway laughing madly. "What? This rubble? That tree? The nothing everywhere? We just want rest, man. That's it."

"Don't we all," the leader of the group snapped through a half a smile.

He glanced behind him as more people began to emerge from the darkness between and inside the buildings, outnumbering the traveling group of nomads. Cassandra scanned the people. Every one of them was armed at least two times more than most of their group.

"You have to get out of here." The first man directed.

"What if we don't?" Carlos asked quietly, calmly.

The man raised his eyebrows at him and lifted his chin as though entertained by the question.

"We kill ya' then. We don't want those things here. They're not here anymore. They're not coming here, ever. Move on." He taunted with his weapon indicating the exit street.

"We're not going to bring them, we're trying to escape them too," Carlos insisted.

"No...no...no..." another man started. He tipped his gun to his own chest and tapped it. "All of you could have those things in you."

"None of us are impregnated." Carlos assured the leader.

"Um..what? Oh is that what you call it?" The man said snidely and shook his head. "No way, sorry. You could be lying, or maybe," he approached Carlos and pointed to his chest, "you don't even know it."

Carlos opened his mouth but he closed his jaws again, figuring it futilely useless to argue his point. Carlos looked to Lewis, who appeared to be pondering whether or not fighting for their right to rest, but he lowered his eyes.

He could see the groups' point about keeping their little corner of the town secure, and there were many more places for the group to find rest and possibly food.

"We could group together," Lewis tried.

"Survival in numbers, is that it? Sorry, been there, tried that." The man said prominently with even a little laugh.

"Lewis, we should just go." Cassandra urged him quietly.

He glanced to her and contemplated the look she was giving him. Without a word, Lewis withdrew, put his hands dismissively up and turned away.

The group continued on to find a new spot to rest that night and the next and the next. They stocked up on supplies whenever they could, but only taking so much as they could carry.

Their stops grew in duration from hours to half days, to entire days, to several nights in the same hold out. They particularly tried to coincide their rests with places like grocery stores or large warehouses, any place where they could find things to eat, supplies to carry with them, and extra clothing to add to their walking wardrobe in an effort to stay dry and warm against the rainy and cool weather.

They checked the maps frequently to see where they were, how far they travelled, and where they should keep heading to.

Unchanged by the events that were constantly unfolding around it, Earth spun on, and the seasons changed accordingly.

The group migrated as best as they could, and the trees turned from shades of deep rusty orange to completely bare. The bright sunlight that had lit the sky during the days had long since faded to dim, dull grey cloud cover and the wind and rain seemed ever persistent.

It seemed as though the bugs had either vacated the area completely, or were in underground dwellings, perhaps hibernating. No one knew, and every one pondered the behavior of the bugs, but all were grateful to go many nights without encountering any of them.

The group, slowing due to weather, exhaustion and malnutrition, covered less and less ground each time they travelled, and spent more and more time making camp, stocking up and waiting "it" out. It was sometime in late November that Lewis' group, holding out in a large discount warehouse, heard the shrill voices rising through the night air, aroused by the distant sounds of a raging battle.

The group watched warily from windows and the rooftop, huddled up against the cool air and holding their breath in wary silence. Echoes of weapon fire and explosions reverberated through the town, coming from somewhere far away in the distance, it was hard to tell from where.

The shrieks and calls of the bug army told Cassandra that the animals were heading towards the sounds, thankfully, away from the warehouse that the group currently called camp.

Cassandra squeezed her eyes shut, forcing a single tear on a downward course along her cheekbone. She silently wondered how much longer any of this could go on.

She was not prepared to die, but she believed that in the end, the tables will have turned so much against humanity, there would be no recourse. She sighed and gripped her rifle, which was slung over her shoulder, and glanced down at it.

Until now, the thought never crossed her mind, but as those deathly calls from the black beasts dissipated into the night air, she found solace in her weapon.

She realized she was not the person she used to be, or had intended to become. She grabbed extra clips for the weapon instinctively and placed them into a front pocket of her jacket.

Her ammo satchel was strapped to her waist under several layers of clothing and would not be the easiest to access in the heat of battle if the drones turned back.

She did not want to become a killer, but that is what had happened. She never imagined a life where every day she would prep for battle, search for food, and struggle to survive, but that was the world in which she now lived.

She never thought she had truly adapted to such a life, until she stared at her weapon and realized she had, although she wasn't sure when.

The thought flooded into her mind and she tried her best to shake it away, but to banish those thoughts would be to lose a part of herself. It was undeniable now, there was no getting around it, no hiding from it. She carried her gun at her waist, clung to it more than she would have a bag of riches and wielded it like a roughened soldier.

Her routine was to creep, survey, listen, scan, and prepare constantly for the threat of death around every corner, behind every shadow.

She could not imagine a life where any of it would end, where there would be peace or comforts she once knew. She thought back and wondered when it happened, exactly, that she had accepted the routine of surviving.

She dreaded the idea that she had almost gotten to the point where the routine offered her comfort and confidence. Her new life was now familiar and normal. There was no real question about what needed to be done on any given day or the next; it was all about survival.

A constant anticipation of the next battle or running out of water or food kept Cassandra and the others on a perpetual level of high alert.

The slightest off sound would cause the formation of frightened to group up and scan the area, and this was normal and familiar now for them all. Even the youngest of children in the group seemed to know exactly when to be silent, and listen and wait.

Cassandra watch the group around her; the children as they now stared out windows with wide eyes, all listening to the calling shrieks of the bugs far away in the night.

She looked to the small fire, the bundles of blankets, the long and worn faces of the people in the group, from a famous actor to a pregnant girl the same age as her.

It was hard to imagine feeling comfortable with such a routine, such a way of life. Cassandra tried to ponder when she had adapted so fully to it that she stopped thinking about the life she once pursued.

She didn't know if she was broken and defeated into accepting the inevitable life she couldn't change, or if she was turning into something that accepted such a life as the only way.

Every time a noise rose up from anywhere to the horizon, the group turned on high alert. One night, it was the high pitched whinny of a small band of loose ponies free roaming the small town they had harbored in.

Another, time, a small cluster of war-weary survivors startled the group as they emerged from the shadows.

For a few days, the little band of strong willed survivors allowed Lewis' group to stay with them. When Lewis deemed it was time for his group to find safer ground, the strong willed residents refused to follow.

They would not leave their homes, so Lewis and Cassandra and the rest of the group that chose to, turned their backs on the fighters and left them on a bleak November morning.

Tonight, the group was on high alert listening to the sounds of a battle raging far beyond anywhere they would venture. She watched for a long while, scanning the dark city which was illuminated only by the brightly shining moon.

Suddenly, a clattering sound seemed to echo up from the alley way just outside the building.

Immediately, five people, Cassandra amongst them, jumped into action. They stalked across the rooftop and scaled down an emergency ladder as far as they could do before the bottom rungs were destroyed.

The lookouts shuffled silently across the landing and through a door way into the building, down in the inside stair well and into a hallway that led to the outside.

When Lewis reached the entranceway, he jarred the sliding doors open and crouched down. Those behind him did not hesitate to follow his lead. Slowly, they crept out into the street, braced for a death they knew was inevitable; an onslaught they were sure would come.

Inside the warehouse, as was routine, even those without weapons knew exactly what they needed to do. They quickly and quietly put out the fire, gathered their ever-packed supply bags and prepared as planned to make a hasty escape without abandoning their precious supplies.

The entire dance had been preplanned and practiced repeatedly. Under Lewis's guidance, the group ran their drills and continually did it in a decreasing amount of time. Tonight, the group was ready and in place in less than one minute.

Cassandra noticed the preparedness and credited it completely to Lewis' determination in leading the people not to war, or death, but to survival. She was grateful to him for it. She wanted to live and she knew just as Lewis did that fighting hordes of the monstrous creatures would not lead to individual survival.

It was a dismal prospect, to fight only if and when one had to, and spend the rest of the time moving from place to place, scrounging for foods and conserving precious ammunition while carrying with you only what you absolutely needed the most to survive.

However, at the moment, this was the life they were leading. Cassandra cast her eyes out into the street and scanned the unlit and empty parking lot and buildings beyond. She thought to herself for just a moment about the two possible outcomes of this battle and the entire war; defeat or victory. She decided to hope for the latter and readied her weapon as Lewis guided the group.

The moon shone brightly, the sounds of the battle in the far distance died down. A harsh cool wind slapped Cassandra's face as she crept in formation through the alleyway. She ignored the chill in her bones that was not caused by the cool night air. Her spine was ruffled by the sensation of another attack with the demonic creatures. The group halted and listened again.

There was silence. Even the wind seemed to die down until the air was cold, quiet, and still like a graveyard. Cassandra suddenly became very aware of the sweat building on her shaky hands that gripped her weapon. The creatures, if they were nearby, were silent and Cassandra briefly wondered if perhaps they had all just imagined the terrible shrieks out of sheer paranoia.

She scanned the buildings and the lot once more, and then looked ahead to Lewis, who was well out into the vacant lot. He listened carefully once more, then lowered his weapon ever so slightly as though partially convinced that there was no danger, but still unwilling to drop his guard completely.

"Maybe they've moved on," the woman crouched next to Cassandra whispered softly.

Lewis turned on his heels slowly towards the group behind him. The uncertain look of near relief dissolved away as he rounded his turn. Instantly, his eyes and weapon were cast upward, above and behind the group's heads. He yelled just before pulling the trigger on his rifle.

Cassandra threw her head up and rotated enough to view the building she was crouched near. The roof and walls were black, shiny, and moving. Dozens upon dozens of the massive creatures slithered down the sides after their presence had been discovered.

Cassandra could barely believe it. The creatures were hunting them. While the group held their breath and bodies still in a moment of shocked reaction, the monstrous dragons that had planned their assault attacked. The creatures lunged off the building and were instantly upon the scattering, shouting group of firing humans below.

Lewis ran forward and positioned himself directly between Cassandra and another woman as they opened fire. Together, the trio created a cover fire against the hordes of drone bugs.

They fell back, avoiding the deadly acid spray and offered a brief shielding for the others in the group to file in behind and maintain their own fire to clean up any creatures that had not been killed by the initial drape of bullets.

The trio timed their firing so well that no more than one person was left to reload at a time. The bugs pressed on in their attack, forcing the Lewis, Cassandra, and the others to push back even further, but the creatures numbers were thinning.

Cassandra took several steps backwards with the others while the creatures continued to charge, unfazed by the gunfire and the falling of their brothers. As one creature dropped to the ground, another would simply clatter over it, remorseless over the other's death. The ground below the falling bodies sizzled and smoked as the acid blood burned through the blacktop.

In a sudden rush, the creatures bolted forward and leapt into the air. Several of the monsters cleared over the heads of Cassandra and Lewis. Cassandra dropped to the ground and rolled aside.

Glancing behind her quickly, she saw three of the creatures attaching the splitting ranks of the group. The creatures had managed to flank their adversaries, dividing the group from one whole, into smaller, less effective pairs and trios.

Cassandra's attention was pulled violently back to the remainder of the creatures as Lewis howled at her to look out.

She turned her head sideways and began to attempt to fumble her way back to her feet, but suddenly pain shot through her body and she toppled over once more. She tried hard to keep her eyes open, but she howled out from the pain.

She was not totally sure what had happened but she felt her body getting dragged along the pavement as she struggled to stay aware. It was all happening so quickly.

Her fingers fidgeted at her rifle and she rolled the weapon onto her belly, pointing the muzzle dead ahead at the creature that had sunk its talons inter her lower leg. Lewis yelled to her at the top of his lungs but over the sounds of his gunfire and the pounding of her own heart, along with the blood rushing into her head, she did not focus on his words.

Suddenly, she felt a tugging from the other end. Something had grabbed her under the arm and she lost her grip on her rifle.

Cassandra was certain that she was about to be pulled apart by the creatures. She was lurched harshly to her feet and her left leg collapsed back under her, unable to bear weight.

Her head turned and she saw Carlos clinging to her, supporting her with both hands under her arms as he dragged her off to the side, and back in the direction of the warehouse.

The sights and sounds were becoming fuzzy and slow, but Cassandra could hear Lewis yell once more over the gunfire. She rolled her head sideways and glanced at Lewis as he raised his weapon directly at her.

Carlos shouted into her ear and lost his grip on her. She dropped to the group, accompanied by the furious gunfire and yelling from Lewis and Carlos.

Cassandra cried out again, but doubted anyone could hear. She felt intense pain burning through her right arm. Awakened by the unbearable sensation of burning skin, Cassandra began to feverishly claw at her several layers of clothing, pulling them off two at a time until she was down to her bra, crying hysterically.

She did not even realize that the gunfire soon died off around her as the last of the creatures was dropped to the ground. Cassandra was fighting for consciousness, but the pain from her clawed leg and acid burned arm over took her and she collapsed backwards as Carlos overshadowed her once more.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself amongst grim company. The group around her wore long faces and teary eyes, many were bloodied and frightened.

Quietly, Cassandra pulled her body upright, grimacing from the pain in her left leg as her heel dragged along the ground. She glanced down and noticed her toes sticking out from under many bandages and two metal slates that ran from her heel to halfway up her calf. Her right arm, she noticed, was red and ulcerated and missing a quarter sized chunk of flesh and muscle from the side of her bicep.

"Easy." Lewis whispered from behind her.

Cassandra looked about at him. His face too, was streaked with blood and dirt and his eyes looked cold, hard and distant.

She saw Carlos coming over from behind him, and beyond that, she could see what was left of the group of armed fighters. Five men rested under a variety of bandages, some moaning from the pains they felt. The group was nestled into a windowless stock room behind a heavily barricaded door.

"What's going on?" Cassandra whispered then realized how foolish a question it was.

She knew from the bleak and weary faces in the room around her that they were on the losing side of the battle. They were seven men short from what she saw in a glance, and nearly everyone in the room was suffering from the loss, both of men and weapons.

She tried to tally up a mental list of who did not return from the battle, but she felt guilty when she could not come up with most of their names. The only one she immediately noticed gone was Dell Allen.

Forced into fighting rather unwillingly, Allen was not able to bear his weapon as well as the heroic character he portrayed in his blockbuster films. She felt bad for him in his absence, and found herself wondering just what kind of death he met with, if he was killed outright, or taken away, back to a hive to be cocooned and impregnated to spawn out one more of the bastard things.

"Are they gone?" She asked quickly.

"We killed every one of them," Lewis said quietly but proudly.

"But we took a big hit," Carlos added and pricked her big toe with a metal instrument. "Can you feel this?"

She nodded and Carlos seemed pleased.

"Good."

"What happened?" She asked wearily, trying recall the details of how she ended up back inside.

"One of those things clawed your leg to pieces. I pulled out most of the bone fragments I think, but your tibia was grated like a chew toy. Your arm got acid on it, but you were lucky, it only grazed the side and didn't get bone. You've got a large chunk of muscle missing."

"I noticed," she said, somehow managing to forge a smile onto her lips.

"Your arm will be alright. This leg is going to need time." Carlos added.

Lewis noticed her smile and it seemed to catch him off guard that someone could do such a thing at a time like this.

But, he returned the gesture, and as Carlos double checked her bandaging and then moved on to tend to the others, Lewis sat with Cassandra and the pair talked for a long while. She did her best to cope with the pain in her leg, but she tired after a while and fell asleep.

The group stayed in the little room for three days. The regained their strength as best they and cautiously removed the barricade and carefully traversed to the outside sales floor, staring wide eyed through the space, searching for any hint of life.

The place was quiet and still. Cassandra remained with the rest of the group while Lewis, Carlos, and a few others that were strong enough spread out to check every corner of the building. Once it was deemed clear, the rest of the people began to flow back out to the main floor.

They had already organized a plan to make a supply run to a nearby hospital. While half the group left to do that, the remaining people managed to move their entire camp a few buildings down the street, to get away from the site of the bloody battle and make a new camp to hold position in.

One afternoon, Cassandra opened her weary eyes and noticed that most of the group was bustling to prepare food and reorganize a sitting area into two rows, forming two long, awkward tables and chairs.

"What's going on?" She asked in a haze.

"Don't keep track of days much anymore do you?" Lewis asked with a gentle grin, biting into a peanut butter cracker.

"Should I?" She asked vaguely.

"It's Thanksgiving," he responded with a shrug.

She glanced at him. Truly she had lost track. The day of the week seemed so irrelevant to her, but she glanced once again to the group that was preparing a feast.

The children were setting plastic plates and dining ware, pouring water and soda into cups and mugs. Several men and woman had little fires burning, preparing canned food. The eclectic collection of foods that included peanut butter, jams, crackers, beans, vegetables, soups, rehydrated potatoes and gravy, even cranberry, and canned meats, smelled delicious as she took a deep sniff of the cool air in the building.

The group, grateful for what they did have as they all gathered around the tables, took hands, and engaged in a well-spoken, teary, prayer from one woman at the far end of the table.