++++++ Here, have another chapter! Love you all! ++++++

Sixty-Nine

"Looking for a three of diamonds, Jade, got a three of diamonds?" I asked the four-year-old as she sat in front of me, holding some playing cards in her hands. "Three of diamonds kiddo, hand it over."

Jade giggled and shook her head. "Na-ah!" she teased, pulling the cards into her chest.

I raised an eyebrow at her. "You really wanna play that game?" I asked, a smirk on my face. "Cause I'm pretty sure the tickle monster is totally gonna come out to play, Jade."

"Not the tickle monster!" Jade screamed, dumping her cards and jumping up to run off and hide.

I got up and had a look at her cards, seeing the three of diamonds sitting there in her hand. "Cheat," I grinned just as the phone rang and a series of sirens blurred through the streets below. They'd been doing it all day and it was annoying as heck. "Hang on a minute, the tickle monster has to answer the phone." I grabbed the cordless and answered it with a grin, "tickle monster residence. This is PJ."

"PJ!" the voice at the other end of the phone shouted. "PJ! Thank god!"

"Dad?" I frowned, hearing the panic in his voice. "Dad, what's wrong? You should be enjoying your cruise! How's mum?" I asked him.

"Oh god!" he shouted over the phone. "Something…something attacked your mother! Almost ripped her arm off!"

"Mum!" I gasped. "Is she okay? Is mum okay? Are the doctors taking care of her?! What kind of animal did you run into?"

"Wasn't an animal!" he objected. "It was another passenger! He bit her."

I scratched my head. Another passenger? How the hell was that even possible? Was that even possible for human to almost rip off another human's arm? Not unless they were drugged up, I suppose. "Dad, is mum okay?" I asked him.

Silence.

"Dad?" I repeated. "Is mum okay?"

On the other end of the line, I heard the phone drop to the ground. "Mary!" my dad shouted. "Mary! Stop! Mary honey! Stop!"

I could hear a kind of feral snarling on the other end of the phone followed by my father literally screaming before the line went dead. "Dad? Dad? DAD!" I shouted. "DAD!"

"Aunty Jay?" Jade questioned, standing there in the doorway looking at me. "What's wrong?"

I almost jumped when the phone rang again. I answered it quickly. "Dad? You okay?"

"Sadly no," came the replied at the other end. "Corporal."

I stood up a little straighter. "Sergeant Camden, sir."

"Report to base, soldier," the sergeant ordered me. "There's a whole lot of shit going down and not a lot of time to explain it. You get your arse in here."

"Yes sir," I nodded. "See you in half an hour." I hung up and rushed to my room. "Jade, gat some stuff together and go see Mrs Oscar," I ordered her, stripping out of my jeans and shirt to swap for my fatigues I had in the cupboard.

Jade ran into her room whilst I got dressed.

When I was ready, I went to the kitchen to write a note for Ebony, letting her know I'd been called into Fort Hamilton. I grabbed my go bag which was stashed in the shoe cupboard than rushed next door to knock on the old neighbour's door.

She answered with a smile. "Been called in PJ?" she smiled. "Well, come on in, Jade, sweetie, I've just made some cookie dough for the grandkids. Want to help me make them?"

Jade grinned and ran inside. "Bye Aunty Jay!"

I laughed and waved. "Thanks, Tiffany. Ebony finishes her shift in an hour so she won't be long." I handed her the apartment keys and instructed her to leave them in Jade's bag before I left.

Instead of the half hour it took me to get out of the city, it took me almost an hour and a half. But eventually I arrived to an irate looking Sergeant Paul Camden.

"Where the fuck you been, corporal?" he scowled.

"Traffic," I replied. "Seriously, kept getting cut off by ambos or cops." I dumped my go-bag in the locker room and joined the influx of marines and army personnel going to the debrief.

"Hey bitch!" Private Jennifer Cross called out over the crowd, worming her way over to me. "Can you believe this shit? I was enjoying my fucking vacation."

I nodded agreement. "This is bullshit," I replied, sitting down on in a couple of empty seats with my unit. "I ain't heard of anywhere been bombed or attacked. If this is an exercise I swear someone's gonna die."

Jenna sniggered and we fell quiet as a five star General walked up to the front of the room. "General Isaacs?" she whispered. "Okay, shit just got real."

Heck yes they did. We've never been addressed by a five star before with the reputation of General Simon Isaacs.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the General spoke. "I wish I could say what I'm about to tell you is some kind of sick joke but unfortunately it is not. Over the past three weeks, a series of doctors and scientists plus military personnel have been actively fighting an extremely deadly strain of what we thought was meningitis. I am here to tell you today, that it is not." He looked back to the screen behind him and a collective gasp was heard as the video on screen showed us the film of an infected patient dying before coming back to life. "What you're seeing here is what the soldiers have effectively dubbed a 'walker' as it reanimates. This, ladies and gentlemen, as a corps come back to life.

"Fuck me sideways," Jennifer gasped.

A rather distressed looking middle aged man took the stage off the general and cleared his throat. "I'm Doctor Williams. Let me keep this short and sweet. The first cases of infection progress through to a state of fever, aches, and internal bleeding, and this illness ultimately is fatal," he told us. "The virus apparently spreads into the brain like meningitis. Infecting the synapses, mostly concentrating on those in the brain stem. It eventually causes the adrenal glands to haemorrhage and the brain to shut down. All brain activity stops, followed by the major organs and the body is classified as clinically dead." He shifted a little. "No measurable brain activity, no reflexes, and no respiration or pulse. The pathogen, through some unknown means, revives the synapses it infected and reactivates the brainstem of the dead body."

"This is real life, not a horror movie," Isaacs spoke. "We're sending you out to hospitals, evacuation centres, the streets-you will be keeping the peace. We have one rule, and one rule-one or two is no problem-crowds-shoot on sight. One infected personnel is enough to infect us all. You shoot to kill and you aim for the head. It's the only way to kill them. Aim for the head. Dismissed."

I turned my head to look over at Jennifer. "The actual fuck?" I whispered, getting up. "I'm calling Ebony."

"No you are not, soldier," the sergeant warned me. "You get your arse into gear-hospitals are ours. Let's move it!"

I ran my hands through my hair and groaned as we went to gear up. This had to be some kind of sick joke. But I highly doubted it was.

++++++ I thought you could enjoy some flashbacks ++++++