"Think about it," Charlotte said as she stared into her camera, confident in her horrific impending statements. "A single 'Patient Zero'? That one person would have to bite enough people…that would bite enough other people…that would bite enough OTHER people. It would take minimal effort to quell an outbreak like that; it almost certainly wouldn't be able to cross continents and oceans. Something like that would have trouble crossing the town line." She paused and took a deep breath. "On the other hand, people turning no matter how they die? That would be real catastrophic, REAL quick. A hundred thousand people die every day all over the world, meaning that in one day, a hundred thousand of those things will exist. In a week, that's seven hundred thousand. In a month, that's THREE MILLION." Greta, still holding the camera, stared in horror, and the nearby Elaine and Bill listened as well.

Charlotte wasn't done yet. "On top of that…here's a little scenario to consider: a family is in the hospital. Grandma is dying from a long illness, and everyone is there to say goodbye. They say their prayers, they read last rites, and she peacefully passes in her sleep. Everyone is heartbroken, and they're not ready to leave yet. But then…a few minutes later, it's a miracle, Grandma is stirring. She's not dead! Everyone gathers back in, overwhelmed by amazement…just then, Grandma grabs the closest person to her and bites a chunk out of their face. The two strongest guys in the room try to restrain her, but they get bit too. And no one tries too hard to stop her, because it's Grandma, and she was just dead and she's probably scared; no one in their right mind in that situation would ever think to hurt Grandma in any way. Also, it's just a bite, so the assumption would be a Band-Aid or maybe a few stitches and boom, all better. Who'd ever assume they were about to turn into a cannibalistic freak?" By now, every able-bodied person in the triage was gathered around, listening to Charlotte's rationale.

"There's a countless number of scenarios that could've happened that could spread this infection. The point is, this is the more likely way it's spreading, and as it turns out, also the more disastrous one. I don't know if anyone will ever see this, but if you're watching right now, good luck and God bless, and keep your friends and family safe. This is Charlotte Brody, of CBInternet, signing off. Probably for good." She nodded to Greta, who then stopped recording. She and Elaine were stunned silent, but Bill made his stance clear.

"That sounds like a load of bullshit," he said defiantly. "You really think they'd keep that kind of thing covered up? You think they even COULD?"

Charlotte smirked. "You just gotta know who in the media to tell not to print or say something. You'd be amazed what sort of info you can dig up if you just go a few Google pages deeper."

At that moment, Danielle came over to stitch Charlotte's grazed arm. "Your turn. You really think that's how it's spreading?"

Charlotte winced and grunted as Danielle put the needle through the skin above her wound, to stitch it up. She took a deep breath and refocused. "Yes, I do. It's the most logical thing."

Danielle glared at her. "Well, you might wanna keep that shit to yourself, since it's boiling over out there."

Upon hearing Danielle's comment, Charlotte listened more closely, and sure enough she heard a rumbling commotion coming from the main room. Various people were shouting at the Guardsmen.

"You can't keep us in here like this!" "This is such bullshit!" "We have families! Let us go find them!"

Sgt. Thompson stood at the front of the crowd. "If you wanna see your families again," he said, "your best bet is to stay put, because you'll die out there. You all saw what's out there, and it's already trying to get in."

"Just let us on the train and take us somewhere safer!" Chris chimed in, thinking about his wife and daughter.

"We're waiting until we get confirmation that there IS somewhere safer. I don't wanna move everyone into the middle of a large clustering of those things." Chris reluctantly nodded, acknowledging Thompson's logic. But everyone else maintained their frustration and kept arguing with the soldiers. At that point, another soldier came to the sergeant and pulled him aside.

"Sir," the young private said, "we have confirmation that the track is clear and unobstructed all the way to Cut Bank, Montana. We're gonna try and get a unit to Ephrata to clean it up and make sure it's secure."

"Never heard of it," Thompson said.

"That's kinda the point sir: it's small enough to manage."

Thompson thought for a moment, and nodded. "Alright. Ephrata it is. How soon can we get it confirmed clear?"

"Tough to say, maybe a few days."

Thompson sighed. "Just work at it, okay? This is your only job starting now."

"Yes sir." With that, Thompson walked away, heading for the triage area to check on the wounded. As he approached, Dr. Vaughn came up to him.

"You moved the corpses to the tower, right?"

The sergeant sighed. "Yes, these are people are freaking out enough without seeing a pile of bodies. How are things here?"

"Everyone's stable. These are just grazes and clean pass-throughs. They'll be fine."

"Good," said Thompson. He then went over to Charlotte, who was nearly fully stitched. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said calmly, "but I think I figured out what's happening here."

"What do you mean?" The sergeant was confused.

"About the walkers," she continued. "I think I have an explanation of why they're spreading so fast."

Thompson looked at her inquisitively. "And what would that be?"

Charlotte recapped a condensed version of her theory to Sgt. Thompson. As she spoke, Thompson appeared skeptical, which she addressed when she finished sharing her theory. "You don't believe me? I mean, you don't think it's possible?"

"It's interesting," Thompson admitted, "but it's wrong. The reports we have indicate that the prevailing theory is that there was an initial airborne pathogen which infected some people outright and turned them into walkers, and from there they've spread it through direct contact."

Charlotte looked apprehensive. "Are you absolutely sure?"

Thompson paused. "I'm sure enough. And either way, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we're getting an evacuation plan organized."

"How soon?" Elaine chimed in.

"Within the next few days hopefully. We're waiting—"

"DAYS?!" Bill jumped in. "Look…I've thought about it, and I just wanna go. It's my right. Just let me out, I'm willing to take my chances."

Danielle had to respond. "You were just shot in the leg. You're in no condition to go out there."

"Well I got shot IN HERE!"

"Please," the sergeant cut in, "don't argue, things are heated enough already." He turned to Bill. "Listen, if you wanna go, fine, but I'm not unlocking the front door with all the things outside. And speaking of which, do you honestly think you could outrun them? In your condition?" Bill hesitated, and ultimately shook his head. "Now listen, all of you. Your best chance of safety is sticking with us, listening to our warnings, and doing as we ask. We're not like the military in the movies who move in to control everyone, okay? We're just guys doing a job, and that job is keeping you all safe."

"You're right," Charlotte acknowledged before turning to everyone else. "I'm assuming they brought enough rations to keep us all fed until we evacuate. Our best bet is to just take it easy here."

"Thank you," Thompson said with sincere gratitude; given his knowledge of the stubbornness of journalists, he was surprised to see one agree with him. "At the moment, we're working on contacting a unit that can give us the all-clear on a town further down the tracks. Once we get situated, we can start orchestrating rescues for people's families. If they're alive, there's a good chance they'll have been picked up by a separate unit. It'll all be okay as soon as the mayhem has subsided into something more manageable." After ensuring that he'd placed everyone at relative ease, he left the triage area and headed for the platform, where Devin remained in the front of the train waiting for his next instructions.

"Just when I was starting to get bored," the engineer said sarcastically, having been bored for hours. "What was the commotion in there a little while ago? Sounded like gunshots…"

"A walker got in. Must've followed the train."

Devin's heart sank. Had he been sitting in the engine's cabin, which faced back down the tracks, he would have seen the walker coming and could have warned Thompson. "Fuck me…what now?"

Thompson took a deep breath. "Everyone wants to leave to find their families. We've got to evacuate as soon as possible. Can you refuel this thing here? We need to get on the Empire Builder line and we may have to go rather far."

"Not here, but there's a railyard with a few pumps a little way down the tracks."

"Get there and back ASAP because we might have to leave quickly."

"Okay," Devin said right before making his way to the other end of the train. Thompson went inside the station to alert his men of the train's impending departure.

…

Ben and Danny watched Thompson as he made his way through the station, passing a message to some of the higher-ranking Guardsmen in the station.

"Something's wrong," Danny said with concern.

"No shit," Ben said with an eyeroll. "What part of this hasn't been wrong?"

"No man, I'm telling you. That train isn't sticking around. And after what we've done already, he's not gonna let us on."

"They won't abandon us…" Ben paused. "Although there's no guarantee we'd even make it onto the train in the first place when shit goes south." They stood silently pondering for a moment, and then Ben spoke again. "Let's go wait closer to the door. Just in case." Danny nodded, and they moved.

Meanwhile, Thompson finished alerting the higher-ups, when one ran up to him with a radio. "Thompson, it's Sergeant Major Douglas. He's requesting an update on the status of the quarantine zone." Thompson acknowledged him, took the radio, and walked to the station's alcove.

"Sergeant Thompson here, sir. I'm told you request a status update."

"Affirmative," SGM Douglas responded in a gruff voice. "First of all, approximately how many in your zone?"

"There are over five hundred civilians here at King Street Station, plus about eighty Guardsmen."

"Status of the zone's structural integrity?"

Thompson hesitated, but knew he couldn't lie to his superior. "One door was damaged in a struggle and now won't close properly. It is a platform door removed from the high-volume herd of entities, but it is nevertheless damaged."

"Call 'em what they are son. Walkers. Have any breached the zone?"

Thompson sighed. "One breach. It caused a ripple effect that left thirteen dead including one Guardsman, and a dozen more were wounded. But the zone is once again secure."

There was radio silence for a moment. "So you're saying you've all been exposed?"

Thompson was now concerned. "No sir. No one in here has shown any symptoms of the virus."

Douglas audibly sighed over the radio. "I'm sorry son. We can't take any chances. The rest of Seattle has already fallen; none of the other QZs in the city have checked in for hours now."

Thompson looked horrified; Douglas continued.

"Some cities have been secured; Olympia and Spokane are contained, and other places up and down the coast are as well, like Los Angeles, San Diego, and Portland. But San Francisco has fallen, as have Salem, Boise, and Vancouver." He paused. "The protocol is immediate immolation and destruction of uncontained cities, to prevent further spread."

"You're gonna bomb Seattle? What if there are survivors out there?"

"I'm sorry son, but anyone who didn't follow the earlier evacuation order is foolish."

"BUT WE'RE NOT INFECTED! You can't just kill us all!"

"Soldier. You're all infected. Once that thing got into the station, all of you were exposed and compromised."

Thompson was on the verge of tears. "At least let us have a chance of making it. Don't bomb the city."

Douglas sighed again. "Trust me son. I've seen those things. This is better than turning into one of them. God bless. Over and out."

"No! NO!" Thompson couldn't get a response. Realizing he had ordered Devin to take the train elsewhere, he rushed to the platform in the vain hope that he hadn't gone yet; his mad dash heavily unnerved everyone who saw him. He plowed through the doors, and sure enough, the train had departed. He couldn't even see its lights on the horizon. In his rush to get to the platform, he didn't close the door behind him, and Ben and Danny stepped out after him.

"Where's the fucking train?" Ben asked angrily. Others had started to gather behind them as well, and panic was setting in.

Thompson regained focus and turned his attention to calming down the crowd. "The train is refueling not far from here. It will be back soon, and we will all be boarding it. But right now, I need you all to stay inside because it is not safe out here; we saw what happened with just one coming up onto this platform."

"We know what's up now," Ben said. "We won't let that shit happen again."

Before Thompson could respond, a man in the crowd began screaming. "THE TRAIN'S GONE! WE'RE TRAPPED HERE!" From there, the crowd descended into chaos. Ben and Danny, among a few others, ran past Thompson and onto the platform, planning to hop the fence. That idea was quickly scrapped when they got to the end of the platform and saw (as well as heard and smelled) the large cluster of walkers that had gathered on the other side of the fence, attracted by the train's roaring engine as it left the station. Ben quickly alerted everyone to it, and they all turned tail and ran back to the station. Meanwhile, those that weren't at the front of the mass gathering around the platform door turned their attention towards the soldiers at the front door, demanding to be let out.

In the middle, Thompson continued trying to ease the terrified confusion, Chris ran to the triage area to be by his friend Bill's side, and others looked to Gordon. "What do we do, man?" Josh asked him.

Gordon thought for a moment and looked around nervously. Then, he eyed the upper level of the station, and looked at the stairs that led to it. "Up there!" He announced.

"Good idea," Ryan agreed. "Let's move!" With that, the three of them, followed by Alice, Samantha, Quentin, Ethan, and a few others ran quickly to the stairs and up to the second level. Ben and Danny, as well as some of the others who had tried to follow them outside, were already up there, trying to open the tower doors.

"Get the sergeant!" Ben yelled. "He's got the key!"

Gordon then ran back downstairs and found Thompson. "Sir, we need to get into the tower! We get in there and lock it, it's our best shot of riding it out!"

"Not a chance!" Thompson yelled back. "First of all, I don't have the key; one of the other Guardsmen does and I can't find him right now. Second, we can't all fit in that tower. And finally, we need to get out of this city as soon as possible!"

"Well we can't do that if we're dead! Who has the keys, I'll find him."

"FORGET IT!" Thompson then angrily stormed off towards the front, where the masses were trying to get out.

"Motherfucker," Gordon said under his breath, frustrated. He then turned and went back upstairs, where Ben, Ryan and Quentin were trying to kick the door down.

"Keep at it!" Ethan encouraged. The three men did, but to no avail.

"Do it at the same time, lads!" Alice jumped in. "More force going at it at once."

"She's right," Ryan acknowledged. "On three, okay?" The three of them lined up. "One, two, three!" They kicked in unison, but nothing happened. "One, two, three!" They kicked again, and this time they felt some give in the door. "One, two, THREE!" This time, the latch broke and the door opened.

The three men needed a second to regain their balance, and in that second, Ethan ran past them and into the doorway leading to the clock tower. As soon as he entered, he was suddenly jumped.

It was Henry. He had turned into a walker.

The now-undead Henry grabbed the unsuspecting Ethan, and before Ethan even realized what was happening, Henry took a bite out of his right shoulder. The two stumbled back through the doorway and onto the floor, shocking everyone. Acting quickly, Quentin grabbed Henry and threw him to the ground, and Ryan began stomping his head in, killing him on the third one.

"How in the fuck…" Ben was dumbfounded. When was Henry bitten? Why didn't he say anything? But he didn't have time to answer any of the questions in his mind, as three more of the victims of Pvt. Hall's accidental shooting had also turned. They stumbled out of the tower doorway, and some of the crowd began screaming for help. Ryan and Quentin teamed up to take another one down via stomping, Ben and Gordon grabbed another and slammed it into the wall repeatedly, and Josh choke-slammed the third to the ground within the doorframe and slammed the door repeatedly shut on its head.

Most of the crowd who witnessed this retreated down the stairs and ran to the front entrance of the station. "They got inside! They're in the tower!" With that, total confusion set in among the Guardsmen at the front entrance, and it was enough for three men to sneak past and open three of the station doors and force their way outside…where they were promptly met and attacked by the even larger herd that had been gathering outside all night. As the men were devoured, Thompson ordered the doors closed, but walkers had gained a foothold of two of the now-open doors and were forcing their way inside.

Thompson had no other choice. "OPEN FIRE!" He loudly ordered. The Guardsmen obeyed the order, but muscle memory meant most were aiming for the chest instead of the head. "AIM FOR THE HEADS!" Thompson shouted. The soldiers amended their shooting, and while a number did go down, the massive horde was uncontainable. Thompson turned to the crowd. "Everyone upstairs now! It's the safest place to be! Do not, I repeat, do not go onto the platform! The door is broken and the train is not there!" With that, the crowd began making their way upstairs.

At the triage area, Chris was helping Bill, and the doctors, Charlotte, Greta, and Elaine were trying to help the remaining wounded. But, the herd was closing in fast.

"Come on man, hop faster!" Chris said to Bill, alluding to his wounded leg.

"I'm trying man, I'm trying!" Just then two walkers pounced on the two men, sending both to the ground. Chris was able to kick the walker off of himself, but unfortunately Bill did not have this ability. As Chris turned his attention to his friend, three more walkers got on top of Bill and began ripping him apart. He screamed in terror, but Chris knew there was nothing he could do for him without dying himself. With his last coherent thought, Bill turned his attention to him. "RUN! JUST RUN!" Heartbroken, Chris ran to the stairs, listening to his friend's agonized screaming.

Upstairs, the crowd was turning on each other, trying to get into the small doorway leading to the tower. Some were shoving, others were even punching. Those that had already been on the second level were able to get into the tower quickly.

"Jesus Christ, they're killing each other down there!" Danny noted.

"Ain't nothing we can do for them!" Ben said coldly. "Just keep climbing!"

Just behind, Ryan and Quentin were helping the bitten Ethan up the stairs. "He bit me…" Ethan said in fear, "he bit me…"

"You're gonna be alright, buddy," Quentin said, unaware of the infection spreading through Ethan's veins.

The crowd trying to filter through the doorway had gotten so long that it was practically down the steps. While Thompson and a few others had made their way upstairs already to try and aid the crowd, the massive crowd prevented the soldiers who remained on the ground floor from ascending. To Thompson's horror, he watched over half of his men get overwhelmed and eaten alive just fifteen feet below him.

Samantha saw the sergeant staring at the slaughter helplessly. She ran to him to try and snap him back. "Sergeant!" She yelled to him. "What's the plan here? Hope that they can't climb steps?"

Thompson looked downstairs. The herd was approaching fast and people were still struggling to climb the stairs. Seeing this, Thompson regained his clarity and turned to three nearby soldiers. "Men! We're gonna shoot these things as they get to the stairs! Headshots only! We kill enough of them, that should ease the flow and prevent too many from getting up here at once!"

"Yes sir!" The soldiers replied. With that, they all aimed their rifles and opened fire. The walkers slowly but steadily began piling up, and ones that weren't immediately shot started tripping over themselves, causing a chain reaction of others falling. Still, Thompson knew this wouldn't work for long.

Up in the tower, Josh kept moving up with the others, when something caught his eye through the window. "It's the train!" He exclaimed. "It's coming back!"

Gordon looked and saw the train, but was not put at ease. "We can't get down there now! The crowd's too big and the herd is inside!"

Josh was not giving up. He then readied his elbow, and started slamming it into the class trying to break it. Realizing he couldn't talk him out of it, Gordon decided to help him, and started slamming it with his own elbow.

As Devin returned to the station, he could see from almost a quarter of a mile away that walkers were on the platform. "Jesus…" He said to himself, terrified.

Gordon and Josh continued beating at the window, a task only made more difficult by the number of people on the stairs around them. As they kept hitting, a soldier aiding in the ascent saw them. "What the hell are you two doing? Keep the line moving!"

"We're trying to break it so we can signal the train," Josh explained.

Just then, Gordon remembered that all the soldiers were armed. "Hey, you gotta shoot out the window! This thing ain't cracking!"

"Not a chance!" The soldier said harshly. "Just keep it moving!"

"C'mon man," Gordon pleaded. "One soldier to another, this is the best strategy for us. We gotta let the train know, so they can help all of us."

"There's only the engineer onboard; he's unarmed and by all accounts NOT a soldier, so what exactly can he do?"

"If nothing else," Josh jumped in, "we can keep him from walking into those things!" Gordon nodded in agreement.

The soldier sighed. "Goddammit. Everyone, cover your eyes!" He then pulled out his pistol, and shot the window five times, then he kicked it out completely. Gordon thanked the soldier, who then turned and kept climbing the stairs. Josh then leaned out the window, and began frantically waving his arms.

Back downstairs, Thompson and the soldiers were starting to run low on ammo as Charlotte and the remaining wounded approached the door to the tower. Just then, she saw Henry's corpse lying on the ground, still with blood in his mouth. He was one of the walkers the people had been screaming about before. "Oh my God," she realized, "I was right."

As Devin pulled closer to the station, he noticed a man leaning out the window waving at him, and he quickly surmised that the man was trying to signal him. He brought the train to its full stop in the station, and opened the door on the front of the train; there was a buffer stop keeping about ten feet of space between the front door and the platform, and while a few walkers attempted to make their way to Devin as he leaned out, none were successful.

"What the hell happened?!" Devin yelled up to the man.

"They broke in!" Josh responded. "Everyone's trying to get up here, and the soldiers are trying to stop these things but I don't know how long it'll work!"

Devin thought quickly, and got an idea from seeing that a lot of walkers were able to get out of the station, likely attracted to his train. "I gotta lead them away!" With that, he closed the door and sat back down in the engineer's seat, and blasted the locomotive's horn for five full seconds. Everyone inside the station could hear the almost-deafening whistle, and only a few were able to deduce what was happening.

"What the fuck is happening?" Ben snarled in confusion.

Charlotte heard the horn right as she was about to enter the tower door, and she and Thompson locked eyes with each other, realizing what was happening. Charlotte ran up next to Thompson to see if the distraction was working, and it seemed to be helping. Devin blasted the horn again, this time for nearly ten seconds. As the people in the station reacted in various ways to it, most of the undead turned their attention to the blaring sound coming from outside. "Stop shooting!" Thompson ordered. "Let 'em be drawn to the horn, and when the stragglers come up, knife 'em!" By this time, the ones they had killed were starting to block the fifteen-foot-wide stairs, but all of the soldiers (plus Charlotte) knew it was only a small bandage. "You should probably get up the tower," Thompson warned her.

She ignored him. "You think this'll work?"

He stepped down and stabbed a straggler right in the eyeball. "It's out of our hands now."

In the train, Devin continued to blare the horn to lure the dead out, to the point that they were beginning to bang on the windows. Having anticipated this, Devin had prepared to reverse the train out of the station, and he did so. As he slowly inched the train backwards, the dead began falling onto the tracks in front of him. He looked at the platform doors and saw more and more continue to pile through; they were practically tripping over each other at this point. He finally exited the station fully, having been using the horn the entire way, and what seemed like a thousand walkers were now falling off the platform, getting up, and following the red lights of the train.

Back inside King Street Station, the number of walkers had diminished to only a few dozen, and Thompson realized now was the time to move. "Davis, Johns, Hagerty, get to the doors and seal them! The rest of you, on me, and kill the stragglers!" The Guardsmen stormed down the stairs and began stabbing all of the walkers dead; Davis, Johns, and Hagerty fought their way to the station's main entrance and managed to get the doors closed. Charlotte couldn't take her eyes off Thompson, killing the monsters with what seemed like grace. She quickly came back to her senses, and went to the tower.

As Devin got further away from the station, he had changed from long blasts of the horn, to quick repeated ones. He watched and just as the station was almost out of view, he saw a few soldiers make their way outside and kill the few still on the platform. Although Devin couldn't tell, Thompson was one of the soldiers on the platform, and he was thoroughly impressed with Devin's tactic, unable to help smiling at the fact that it worked.

Seeing that the soldiers had retaken the station, Devin went into the second phase of his plan, the part no one had predicted: he sped the train up to get further away from the herd. After putting about a quarter mile of space between his train and the herd on the tracks, he switched the train out of reverse, and turned the bright white light on his side of the train on to signal that this was the forward-moving side once again; upon seeing the light turn back on, Thompson's jaw dropped at the realization of Devin's true plan. Devin smirked, and put the train in full throttle and barreled toward the herd. As he crept the train up to forty miles per hour, he reached the herd and bloodily plowed through a significant number of them; any walker directly in the path was obliterated by the train, dying the bright white light a bloody red. Several others were clipped by it, being thrown and having their arms and legs torn off as a result. While Gordon moved along, helping the crowd get as far up the tower as possible, Josh stayed and witnessed the destruction of the herd, and was cheering at the sight; a few people passing by, including Samantha and Victor, had stopped and gathered around him to try and see what was happening.

Devin's actions diminished the size of the herd down to less than a hundred and fifty, all strewn about the track and out of the station. Coupled with the soldiers' work inside the station, King Street was walker-free again. As Devin returned the train to the station, Thompson ordered a few men to stand guard on the platform and shoot the walkers when they inevitably came back, and then went inside and ordered a few others to start gathering up the bodies to drag outside and free the station up. He then went to his radio to inform Douglas of the situation.

"Sergeant Major Douglas, this is Sergeant Thompson of the King Street QZ in Seattle, calling to inform you that the situation is contained here. There are still over four hundred uninfected survivors here and we have the situation under control. Most of the herd outside has been dispatched. I implore you to cancel the order."

There was silence for a moment, then Douglas responded. "Look son, I can keep them from blowing you up if you get on that train and get out of there, but the destruction order came from the top. There's nothing I can do about it. I'll delay it as long as I can, but frankly I can't imagine you'll have much more than an hour to get your asses outta there."

Thompson sighed with resignation. "Understood sir. Thompson out." With that, he dropped the radio and turned to his men. "Gentlemen, we're evacuating. Get everyone on that train now." He then ran out to the platform and informed Devin of the impending evacuation and to have the train ready, to which Devin obliged. Thompson then went back inside as the last of the civilians made their way down the stairs, including the bitten Ethan. Ryan held onto him while Quentin ran up to Thompson.

"Our friend got bit," Quentin said softly, "what do we do now?"

Thompson just looked at him sadly. "There's nothing we can do for him. Except end his suffering."

Quentin was furious. "What? No! You can't just give up on him!"

"You saw what happened when my man was bitten."

"Yeah I did, you just shot him! How do you know it's always fatal? C'mon man, we gotta try!"

"Quentin…" Charlotte jumped in. "I'm sorry. But look at him. He's not gonna make it."

Quentin looked at the visibly pale and lethargic Ethan, and his heart sank. "Fuck man…" He paused for a moment. "So he's just gonna turn?"

"Not if we shoot him," Thompson said remorsefully.

"No man…let me stay with him. We'll take him somewhere away from everyone else, and when he goes…I'll make sure he doesn't come back."

Thompson reluctantly agreed, and took out his knife and handed it to Quentin. "It's gotta be in the brain."

Quentin nodded, and turned back and returned to Ethan; Charlotte followed him. To their horror, the young man was getting worse rapidly. "Guys…" he said hoarsely, "I think I'm dying. And I don't wanna…turn into one of those things…"

Charlotte knelt down in front of him and put her hands on the sides of his face gently. "Everything's gonna be okay Ethan," she said warmly, fighting back tears, "you're not gonna become one." As she spoke, Quentin walked behind Ethan and whispered into Ryan's ear what had to be done; Ryan could only nod sadly.

"We're gonna get you out of here," she spoke, in dark code, "and you'll have nothing to worry about." Quentin pulled out the knife, and Charlotte held his head still, using her left index finger to indicate a place under Ethan's right ear where a knife could more easily penetrate the skull; Quentin nodded in understanding. Charlotte then lowered her hands from his face, to around his shoulders to hug him (and also to be out of the way). "Everything's gonna be okay kid," she said softly as Quentin readied himself for a moment, and then swiftly jammed the knife into the spot she'd earlier indicated, killing him before he had any time to react. Charlotte broke into tears as Ethan's body went limp in her arms; Ryan removed Ethan's jacket, then he and Quentin gently lowered him to the floor, and Ryan put the jacket over Ethan's head and upper body. Thompson had watched the entire thing from afar, and was struck by the grace Charlotte had displayed throughout. But, he put his feelings aside, and strode to the front of the station and called for everyone's attention.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "we are evacuating."