Jefferson Elementary was no exception to the terror that ensued throughout the town. Rick wasn't the only parent who had had the good sense to come get their child from school. Moms and dads ran in and out through the front doors- sometimes with their children, sometimes without, but it was the sick children that were the most terrified of all.

Whatever this disease was, it had taken no mercy upon Jefferson's charges. The ones who had the disease.

Rick grabbed for the door handle, and Leon struggled to keep up. Rick was already out of the car by the time he'd reached for his own.

"Rick, wait!" he called out as Rick ran for the front doors.

"We don't have time to stop!" Rick shouted.

Leon knew he was going to have to pick up the pace if he wanted to stop Rick from doing something stupid. He promised Lori her husband's safety after all. And her husband was about to run into a crowd of shrieking, feral, diseased children.

Leon was never a very fast runner, but the adrenaline from all the chaos surrounding him served him well. He caught up to Rick, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.

"Not the front door!" he yelled before Rick could protest. "Is there another way to your son's classroom?"

Rick's eyes glazed over like they were searching for something Leon couldn't see. Without saying anything, he sprouted back into action, running through the gardens in front of the building, and around the side.

Leon struggled to keep up. Cops had physical fitness tests they had to pass. Security officers didn't, at least not the type of security officer he was. There was that, and he remembered the photo Lori had on her desk of a much younger Rick in a baseball uniform. Leon had never been much of an athlete himself.

Rick rounded the corner, not stopping for the chain link fence in front of him. Using his height to his advantage, he grabbed the metal bar at the top and pulled himself over, kicking furiously at the mesh before toppling over the fence.

While not nearly as tall, Leon had jumped plenty of fences in his days, having grown up in the mountains of Washington State. He reached as high as he could, the shape of Rick growing smaller and smaller on the other side as he did. Grabbing onto the mesh, he stuck his feet in between the holes, moving up and up, until he made it to the top, sending himself over the fence as gracelessly as Rick had done.

He found that they were in the playground area of the elementary school. He'd had a similar one at his elementary school. Big slides and monkey bars. Only this one was stained with blood. He didn't want to think about how that had gotten there. About how children once played there, and more than likely, children had now died there.

He had to catch up to Rick. He looked to his left- the direction he'd seen him run in, but Rick was nowhere in sight.

A series of doors, some closed and some open lined the wall. He walked past, his trembling hand holding his pistol tightly, seeing that each door led to a classroom- classrooms littered with bodies of children, some with parents crying in them.

None with Rick.

"Dad!" an ear piercing scream came from several doors down. "Get off my daddy!"

Leon had heard plenty of screaming and crying children in his life, but never with the quality that this child's screams had. The quality of fear. It was a quality that brought out the natural parental instinct in any adult and however young, Leon was no exception.

He ran towards the directions of the screams. First seeing a little boy, a familiar little brown haired boy, one he'd only seen with his mother a few times but enough to know that he'd found who they came here to look for.

Carl took one look at Leon then pointed his finger to the right. Leon turned to see Rick struggling, a woman on top of him in a frilly little dress. He knew this was no kindergarten teacher anymore. This was one of them, the infected people like the one that was shot back at the hotel, the ones Rick and Shane had told them about, like the kids running around out front.

He ran over to Rick and the infected woman, sending a firm boot into her side, kicking her off of Rick. Rick scrambled to his feet, the woman having much more difficulty finding her bearing.

"Go to your son," Leon said.

Rick didn't listen at first, holding his colt python firmly in his hand, looking intensely at the woman as she struggled to stand back up, sweat dripping from his brow.

Similarly, the woman's mouth dripped with saliva, and the same nasty little tendrils that Leon had seen in the man's mouth back at the hotel.

It was clear to Leon that Rick didn't want to shoot this woman if he didn't have to. But they had to. Someone had to.

His own gun in his hand, he raised it, firing a shot with no hesitation into her chest. Then another one. The woman's body slumped.

He had killed someone.