As Danny pulled up outside Maggie's shooting hut, swung open the door and slammed it closed with precise force, before checking the brake disks for signs of heat damage and the tires for wear, as well as under the hood for signs of damage to the intakes and out-ports of the supercharger. Nothing, not a scratch; as flawless as always.
He made sure to lock-up and keep it in the shade, as not to damage the paint or insides of the engine, and stepped into the shack to a familiar ring-ting of the doors' bell; he looked around the dank, wooden hut and called: "Maggie, you in? We need some more shells …and rounds for that matter" No reply. He called again; "Hey, Maggie, you up yet?! Come on, it's half twelve!" Urgently, he picked a thirty-two calibre revolver from the table nearest him, and some ammunition from under the counter. He asked again, more cautiously this time; "Maggie? Hello? Are you in here?" tapping the door to the back of the cabin carefully with the barrel of the gun, when no reply came he cocked the hammer slowly and held it in both hands firmly. He counted slowly in his head: 'One… two… three' before kicking the door heavily and bringing the revolver to bear. What Danny saw confirmed everything he and Jay had been preparing for. The window to the bedroom was smashed, and on the floor laid the small, pale body of Maggie McRae. A custom Colt M1911 lay on the floor next to her; definitely her own – he could see the intricate, monochrome stencilling and etched patterns of wolves and wild dogs along the barrel, and three, spent cases nestling themselves beneath her black, lace skirt. Three blood splatters covered the ceiling and walls, and a trail fled outside; she had shot and hit three times before being overcome. A definite chunk of her flesh was missing from her neck, her eyes lay blank inside their gaunt sockets, and blood ran down her black top. Danny turned away and felt his eyes tear-up slightly, Maggie had been one of the first friends he had made here, and to see her like this was… was heart-wrenching.
At that instant, he turned back around sharply and caught a glimpse of a piece of crumpled paper behind her body. Danny reached down and picked up the note, it read; 'Left door, 5894 Mx' even through the blood and bone shards he fondly remembered that handwriting on his first order to the plantations' basement. He turned away to the exit of the cabin and looked at the left-hand door under the counter, Danny slid open the plywood door and found a floor-mounted safe under the debris of a lifetimes' work. He turned the dial through the numbers and pulled the handle, the safe opened with a reassuring pop as the seal let precious fresh air into the chamber, as Danny pawed through the miscellaneous scrap of Maggie's safe he came to an expensive, wax-sealed letter hidden under everything else. He slid his finger under the flap and popped off the seal, before carefully unfolding the thick, ivory paper, the beautiful calligraphy mirroring her love of the arts, as Danny read the letter he started to well-up again; it told the owner that they had full reign over her stores, and a small cache of weapons hidden in the forests, as well as a map to the location. It was after he had finished the letter that he saw a small note in the bottom left corner: 'P.s. Good luck Danny, watch your back'. He smiled warmly and tucked the note into the top pocket of his jacket before grabbing a bin bag from under the counter and went around the small shack clearing shelves of ammunition, accessories and cleaning kits. Then, grabbing the revolver from his waistband, he smashed the glass cases behind the counter and retrieved an empty .22 bolt action rifle from its moorings, the paper tag secured to the top right of the case said: 'True, Colt Arms, .22 action chassis, no bolt, action, receiver or scope, able to mount suppressor $205'.
"Perfect" Danny thought to himself, "Jay's been after one of these for donkey's years", the next case held an ominous, yet recognisable steel and wood automatic rifle; 'Avtomat Kalashnikova 47, 7.62x39mm, single-fire only, minor maintenance needed, comes with two empty STANAG magazines $3020'.
"Come here gorgeous" he said as the butt of the revolver smashed the glass containing her. He tried to clear the chamber by cocking the action back, something was stuck, 'Maybe a little harder' as he propped the ancient rifle against his thigh and yanked the action back as hard as he physically could. Nothing, this was obviously going to take more than Russian force to fix, still worth taking however. The penultimate case held a fearsome, and somewhat alien-looking rifle in a SWAT black colour scheme; 'Tavor TAR-21 assault rifle, Israeli origin, select fire, previously used in Guatemalan defence force, 5.56x45mm NATO, no ammunition, $3000'
"Could come in handy" Danny said to himself out loud "ammo could be a problem though, I'll have to look in the cache later on". The last case held a large and imposing, automatic rifle with a khaki colouring and a free-floating barrel; 'SOF Combat Assault Rifle Heavy designation (SCAR-H), 7.62x51mm NATO, Ex-SOCOM, select fire, heavy recoil, comes with 3 Magazines…'
"Mine" he uttered bluntly; not needing to read the rest of the card, this weapon was a favourite of his, and he had wanted it ever since he had played war games as a kid. He hastily smashed the glass, slid the revolver back into his waistband and removed the precious rifle from the case. It felt glorious in his hands, the weight sat over the receiver, the handle felt soft and contoured in his hand. One quick look down the sights and he knew why he loved them so much; It's stock sat in his shoulder like a lover massaging his work-sodden muscles, he flipped the weapon on his left arm, and slid back the action. The internals moved like the well-oiled machine it was, with each click and ratchet sounding as fluid as the first. Suddenly, Danny's weapon-love was broken by the sudden feeling of someone else in the room.
He dropped the weapon carefully on its stock and reached for the revolver as quick as he dared, before spinning around and pointing the barrel at the hapless thing in the room with him. His eyes dropped like the rest of his features when his gaze met hers. "Maggie…." His voice sounded like a tiny pebble dropped into a well as it escaped his lips. "No… No…. NO…." he roared as his choler rose in equal measure with his sadness. A thousand voices screamed: 'it can't be happening' 'it's just a dream' 'she's not one of them', but every one of them was silenced in the indisputable fact that she stood like she was alive, only near-decapitated. Maggie moved unnaturally on the side of her feet and lurched toward Danny behind the counter as she feebly tried to steady herself with no real blood-flow to her legs. Her skin was a sickly shade of ivory, the normally welcoming face was replaced by a sick, alternate version: lop-sided, gaunt with disease, with a needle-tooth-filled maw. Danny was terrified, angry and desperate: three things that should not mix at a time. Pulling back the hammer on the revolver slowly, he raised the gun again, aimed at the grotesque parody of his dear friend. There was a terrible tension in the room as the defiled undead stared at the hopelessly lifeless. It wasn't Maggie, just a degenerate parasite using his friend as a macabre doll for its own ends. "Goodbye" he managed to mutter as he choked on tears, and squeezed the trigger. A huge flash erupted from the muzzle, as the weapon kicked back and spat a lump of hot lead at the being. It met the wet meat of its head and detonated the cranium like an apple. Cold, off-colour blood fell from the wounds and splashed the floorboards, and spattered Danny's hand.
It felt almost as if it moved by itself, like it was trying to get into his body by any means, he rubbed off the debris with a rag and made sure not to miss any specks of blood, before igniting it with his lighter and throwing it to the floor like he had been told. It slapped the bloody woodwork like the high-five of two Olympic swimmers, but it was what Danny saw next that worried and intrigued him; slowly at first, the pool of dark crimson began to split and shift away from the flaming rag: It was alive.
"Holy crap it's true!" exclaimed Danny; long ago when he and Jay had decided to start preparing for the apocalypse, they had both read an article on a website of pooled Zombie research which had said that zombie blood, could well be 'self-mobile and respond to stimulation'. If the infected blood cells were infected with the basic, instinctual drives of amoeba: food, temperature, and reproduction, into a parasitic virus, the result would be a viral infection that would slowly convert any and all red blood cells into self-mobile oxygen and energy carriers, to feed the host's most instinctual brain centres. In effect; the blood would shut down all 'non-necessary bodily systems' in favour of digestion, movement, smell and hunting behaviours, by starving areas of oxygen until they died. If that were the case, then the blood would seem almost afraid of situations where it could be destroyed.
'Oh god, this one's a biggy' thought Danny "I am definitely going to have to call Jay, I owe him twenty dollars" regretfully, he had to concede he was wrong about the method of infection; he always thought it would be a symbiotic infection from rogue prion proteins, but alas he couldn't be the expert in everything.