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THE DEAD RISING: THE BEGINNING

Albert Yates

The Dead Rising: The Beginning

Albert Yates

copyright 2015 by Albert Yates

This would not have been possible without the undying love and support of my wife, Amanda, she encouraged me to continue when I could not find the motivation to keep writing. Without her I would be lost.

1

February 1st was the beginning of the end of humanity as we knew it.

For anyone living close to the larger cities, there was not enough time to prepare or run, as the onslaught was so sudden that no one understood what was happening. Those living in suburbia or on the outskirts had a better chance of survival. There were others who might not have known what was going on since it was in the middle of the training season for the nearby infantry base. The rumblings in the distance were attributed to the training and not a fight to save humanity in the middle of the city.

Merton was one of the picturesque towns that were featured on postcards that highlighted the beauty of the country; from the sweeping hills of old trees that littered the countryside with colour in the autumn when the leaves changed, to the award winning art gallery in the heart of downtown. Merton was the kind of town where everyone wanted to raise their children. It was once the thriving hub of industry until a couple of decades ago when the recession hit and factories began to close their doors, opening the way for more retail outlets to occupy the once storied locations.

Merton was cut in half by a winding river. The portion of town on the northern side of the river featured mainly the low-income housing and the newly re-opened mill that had been saved by a local businessman, while the other side of the river was where many of the smaller businesses' and residential neighbourhoods could be found.

On the edge of Merton, there was a small, modest neighbourhood the kind where everyone's lawn looked professionally manicured, and all of the houses looked like they were picked from a single page of a housing catalogue. Henry McPhee lived in one of those houses. He did not know that it would not be for much longer.

Henry's house sat at the end of a dead end street, the house is a standard three bedroom bungalow with an exceptionally large yard. When the street was first being constructed, Henry had some friends within the city's planning department who helped him create the biggest property on the street, without paying extra.

After his first neighbour moved in Henry built a six-foot fence that encircled his entire backyard. The fence was there to keep his neighbours from visiting unexpectedly or snooping in his windows, the day that Jacob arrived, Henry found the man walking into his living room while he was in the shower. Less than two weeks later, the fence was erected. When pressed, he often told people that it was put up to protect his garden from the rabbits that lived in the woods.

Almost two years ago he would have been getting ready to go to work. Instead, he found himself sipping his coffee in the living room. The coffee tasted a little bitter as he looked between his curtains and up the road towards the high school. It was too early for the kids to be arriving yet, but he knew they could not let him forget what had happened. Just last week he'd found a copy of one of the textbooks on his doorstep with a note telling him where to go and how to get there.

They had framed him for burning down the auditorium, after all.

What had he done to deserve such wrath? He'd given Kevin MacDonald, the captain of the school's undefeated hockey team, a well-deserved 'C' on the mid-term. It was not Henry's fault that this had caused him to be benched for poor academics. After he caught the hockey player cheating on the test, giving him a 'C' was the kindest thing he could have done.

On that afternoon, Henry had been on his way out of the auditorium, where he was helping create the sets for the upcoming school production of Hamlet, when he'd been approached by Kevin.

"Hey, Mr McPhee! That's a great looking castle you're building." Kevin said with a grin.

"Thanks, Mr MacDonald, what can I do for you?" Henry said.

Henry could tell that Kevin had a plan. He could see the hate seething in Kevin's eyes as he looked past Henry towards the stage.

"You all done in there? The team and I want to have a quick meeting about our game tomorrow night." Kevin said.

"Don't you have a room in the athletic department for that?" Henry asked.

"Yeah, the basketball team has it booked for the next couple of hours," Kevin added. "We won't be very long, we just have a few game plans to go over."

"Sure thing, Kevin. The crew should already be done cleaning up. Just do not touch... anything. The paint is still drying." Henry said.

"We'll be extra careful," Kevin said while smiling and bounding past Henry towards the stage.

It was about forty-five minutes later when the fire alarm went off, and everything changed for Henry.

From what the principal told him, the space heater they were using to help dry the castle had been left on and had ignited the castle and the supplies covering the stage.

Henry knew that it was turned off and unplugged. He had done it himself before leaving the auditorium.

He'd told the principal about the hockey team using the room for a meeting, but the principal had seen the team leaving the school at that time to do some training.

Henry had looked at the principal and yelled at him for believing a student, with a reputation for lies and deceit, over an honest teacher with fifteen years experience. The principal had mentioned a pending investigation from the school board and had told Henry to go the staff lounge for the rest of the day.

After he'd been sitting on the sofa reading the paper for the fifth time, Henry grew tired of the sideways glances and whispered conversations he knew were about him. He put the paper on the table stood up and walked out of the room. He'd glanced over his shoulder as he left and saw the concerned looks on the faces of the other teachers.

He'd found the principal standing in the lobby of the school and approached him from behind with a huge grin on his face.

The principal turned as Henry had gotten closer and had begun to open his mouth to speak when Henry looked at him and shook his head.

"I think I'm done here. You take this job and shove it." Henry had said as he walked by. "You and I both know what happened in that room. It's a shame that there are no longer any decent role models in this school. I feel sorry for the kids."

Henry McPhee had walked from the school with his head held high, carrying a box of his belongings and teaching aids, he could see kids gathering in the windows along the school to see what was happening.

At the end of the walkway, just before reaching the teachers' parking lot, Henry had finally looked up, and the only person in the window of the second-floor math class was Kevin, standing with his arms crossed and a big grin on his face. When he noticed Henry look up, Kevin uncrossed his arms and blown him a kiss.

When Henry had seen Kevin uncross his arms, he knew exactly what was going to happen, but he could not help himself from reacting the way that he had.

Henry dropped his box to the ground and swung around to face the window.

"Screw you, Kevin! I know what you did!" Henry had screamed at the closed window.

Henry's life was not ruined. In fact, he hated to admit it, but Kevin had probably saved his life that day. Over the last few months leading up to getting fired he had started to drink heavily at home in the evenings just to try and cope with the job that he hated.

Henry had really only ever wanted to live a simple life working with his hands and living off of the land.

2

Henry first knew that something was wrong when he was in his basement going for his morning run on the treadmill. He had forgone his usual plan of running 10 kilometres deciding to stay close to home today in case his mother called with news about his grandfather. There was fear that his grandfather had taken a turn for the worse in his battle with cancer. That was a phone call he did not want to miss.

That decision saved his life.

While Henry ran on his treadmill, he usually turned music on his phone to drown out the monotonous noises of the neighbourhood. Nothing distracted Henry more than hearing a door close nearby or a group children screaming down the sidewalk.

Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw some movement in the window of his basement spare room.

He turned his head to look but did not see anything.

"Must have been the neighbour's cat walking on the fence again." he said out loud trying to catch his breathe and keep his pace steady.

Henry saw movement again, only this time on the other side of the house out of his den at the front of the house.

He had not opened the blinds when he had gotten on the treadmill; Henry found the movements of cars, people and even the wind blowing the leaves distracting and would throw his pace off as he was continually trying to watch everything that was happening outside.

He pressed the stop button on the treadmill and stood at the base of it, looking at the shadow cast on the window.

Now that the shadow had stopped moving, Henry was able to make out what appeared to be legs. Someone was standing on his lawn and trying to look in Henry's living room window.

There has never been much of a problem with crime in Merton, but the last factory had closed down a few weeks ago, leaving a large number of people without work. It could have made someone desperate enough to enter a house in the middle of the day.

Henry took a few steps forward and was now standing at the front of the treadmill. He could not tell if his pulse slowed down since he stopped running or if adrenaline had kicked in from the fear that was driving him now.

The shadow of the legs stood motionless against the early morning sun. There was a faint glimmer of sunlight shining on the wall to the left of Henry, and he thought that it was going to be a warm and peaceful day.

For the next few seconds, Henry could do nothing but stare at the shadows of the legs, waiting to see what they were going to do.

As quickly as the legs showed up, they were gone. Apparently, Henry's house had nothing of interest for this suspected burglar.

Henry stood in the middle of his basement for a minute and tried to process what he had just seen.

"Who the hell could that have been?" he said to himself.

He began to wonder if he should go upstairs and take a peek outside to see what was happening rather than just speculate from the basement.

Henry took a quick survey of the room, making sure that everything was turned off and unplugged. He did not want the blame for burning down his house. In light of what was on his employment record, he would lose any insurance money and face jail time.

Henry glanced into the spare room to look out the window where he had previously seen the movement.

As he was about to turn away, he saw something move again, only this time he knew what it was.

Bobbing up and down along the fence was the bright orange hat of his neighbour, Jacob. He was the real reason that Henry put up the fence between the houses. Sure it was another barrier of protection to keep the rabbits and deer out of his garden, but it was also to keep Jacob from talking to him.

Once Jacob entered your yard to talk, it was next to impossible to get him to stop. Even entering the house only caused Jacob to stop telling his story long enough to wait for you to come out again, and in most cases, he continued to tell his story loud enough for you to hear while you were inside.

Judging by the movement that Henry could see on the other side of the fence, it appeared as though Jacob was trying to climb the hill and go around to the front of the house.

Henry began to walk toward the spare room window if Jacob was hurt over in the backyard; he should offer to help him in some way.

As he approached the window, Henry could tell there was something different about him.

The closer Henry got to the spare room window, the more concerned he grew with the situation.

"He has never had much trouble walking before." Henry thought to himself, "Maybe he's had a stroke."

At this point, Henry quickened his pace as he rushed over to see what was the matter with his neighbour. Everything else that happened just a few minutes ago was now a distant memory.

When he made it across the room, he gazed out at his neighbour's house and took in what he saw.

He noticed first was that Jacob was not alone in the yard, there appeared to be someone else there with him. From what Henry could tell by looking at the man he was probably homeless, Jacob had been known to take in a few travellers over the years and give them a place to sleep for the night.

"What that hell has happened out there?" Henry said to himself.

In the far corner of Jacob's yard, Henry could see another person laying down in the most uncomfortable position he could ever imagine. The person was laying on their back, with their feet up on the shed, while their head lay crooked and bent at a hard angle against a tree.

To Henry it looked as though the man decided to climb the tree while in the middle of a drunken binge, only to fall from the tree and pass out. That would be odd behaviour for Jacob and his friends since he is a recovering alcoholic.

"Maybe he's fallen off the waggon?" he thought. "Happens to lots of people."

He returned his attention to his neighbour, who had just taken a hard tumble down the hill.

Henry reached for the clasp that held the window closed. He slid the window open in enough time to hear the snap of a bone as Jacob had landed on the ground.

"Jacob!" Henry yelled out of the window, "Are you alright?"

The silence that followed sent shivers up his spine.

It was at that moment that Henry noticed the splash of thick red paint on the side of Jacob's house at the bottom of the stairs.

"What the hell is going on over there Jacob? Talk to me." Henry questioned with worry in his voice.

The silence continued causing Henry to grow more concerned.

The growl that followed made Henry's blood freeze as if he had stepped outside in the middle of an Arctic snowstorm.

A pair of eyes quickly popped up to look over the fence. The eyes belonged to Jacob's new friend, and they locked onto Henry.

The hands of the vagrant grabbed hold of the fence, and he pulled himself up. His arms, covered in old scars, fresh cuts and the same paint that was smeared all over Jacob's house.

It was about that time Henry had made the connection, that what he was seeing was not paint, but blood. That is when Henry knew he was in trouble and began to fear for his safety.

The vagrant was no longer just covered in dirt from a life on the street; Henry noticed that a layer of fresh blood covered the man's face and was beginning to thicken in the early morning air. He could see the pain and suffering that he must have endured living on the street as most of his teeth were missing or chipped, there was a fresh slash across his cheek from his eye to his lips that left part of his mouth exposed.

Henry heard another growl from somewhere else in the yard and looked over to see the body that was laying at the base of the shed was now walking towards him with a noticeable limp. It looked as though the entire bone in his shin had been snapped in half when he fell.

With every step the stranger took, Henry winced in anticipation of the scream that he was expecting he would make. A scream that never crossed their lips. There was no pain on his face. Just determination.

He could see the stranger on the fence beginning to reach out to him and growl showing his teeth in a carnal display.

There was still 6 feet between Henry and the stranger's hands, but he did not want to be any closer.

"Oh god!" Henry groaned as he turned and began to run from the room.

He realised that he was leaving the window open as an invitation for the strangers to enter his house. He turned back to slam it closed and throw across the lock.

Henry just hoped that the fence was high enough to keep Jacob's friends from successfully climbing over.

He had no idea what was going on, but he felt that he should at least let the police know that something terrible had happened next door.

3

Interlude: Helping the homeless

Last night.

Henry's neighbour, Jacob, was a good man. He was a man of his word, a man of honour, who would do anything to help a fellow person who was down on their luck. Henry was always hearing Jacob talk about the people he would bring in off the streets to give them a shower and hot meal. Jacob was the kind of good Samaritan that made Henry feel inadequate every time he heard about them.

It would surprise no one to learn that last night, Jacob brought home another homeless man to keep warm for the evening.

Jacob had been walking back from a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a loaf of French bread to go with supper when he saw this man huddling in the fetal position under a tree at the edge of the park. He thought he could hear the man sobbing as he approached.

Jacob sat on an exposed root of the tree and looked closely at the man.

The man was laying in the bushes next to the tree, hiding from the people who usually would treat him badly at this time in the evening. He held his hands close to his face as if he was using them as a pillow on the cold hard ground.

Jacob could barely see his eyes as he attempted to talk to the man.

"Are you OK in there?" Jacob asked.

"You know I'm not going to hurt you." Jacob paused for a minute. "I just want to help you."

After a few minutes of silence, Jacob added, "My name is Jacob Thompson, I live just up the road from here. Maybe some of the guys from the shelter have talked about me before?"

The man sat up to talk to him after some coaxing; his face covered in blood from a wound on his hand. Jacob was offering him pieces of his bread to eat as he talked to him. It was after the loaf was gone and the man was looking pleadingly at the empty bag that Jacob decided how to help him.

He brought him to the house and got the man to take off his shoes and jacket on the porch so that he could make sure that his wound was taken care of before he got him some more food. As the man took off his jacket, Jacob noticed how badly he was hurt. There was a huge chunk of skin missing from his hand.

"What bit you?" Jacob asked as he looked at the wound a little closer.

"I dunno." The man said as he looked at his hand. "I was sleeping by that tree when I was attacked. I punched it in the face, and it ran off."

A concerned look came over Jacob's face as he looked it over, blood was continually dripping from his hand onto the man's boots.

Jacob reached into his pocket and grabbed the plastic grocery bag that the loaf of bread was in and put it over the man's bleeding hand. He offered the handles of the bag to the man and got his keys from his pocket.

"Can you hold this? We'll go downstairs to that bathroom and get you cleaned up."

Jacob opened the door to the house and walked downstairs, turning on the lights as he went. When he got to the end of the hall, Jacob turned around, expecting to see the man. Instead, all he saw was an empty hallway.

"Are you coming?" He called back.

"Oh yeah." The man responded. "Just got a little spaced there for a minute."

"Everything OK?" Henry asked.

"Not really, just trying to kick a heroin habit." The man said as Jacob heard the front door close, a dull thud as he took his boots off and smiled as he listened to the soft footsteps coming down the stairs.

"I'm down here to the right," Jacob added. "Last door."

Jacob stood in the middle of the bathroom with a towel in one hand and change of clothes in the other. To his left was an open garbage bag, to his right, a grocery bag with extra socks and underwear.

The man walked into the room and looked at Jacob with a shocked expression on his face. He partially had expected to be greeted by Jacob brandishing a knife or gun and to kill him. At this point in his life, the man had been expecting to die any day now, by his hand or through an accident.

Seeing the kindness in front of him had brought the man to tears. He did not have anything happy to cry about for the last number of years and seeing this was something of a shock to him; most people just walk by expecting someone else to deal with them instead.

"We'll get your hand cleaned up now, and when we're done, you can shower down here. There's a fresh change of clothes here and a garbage bag to throw out what you don't want or need to keep from what you're wearing." Jacob smiled and put the clothes down on top of the hamper that was beside the shower.

The man walked over to Jacob and stood next to the sink with him and looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in a while. Seeing the unrecognisable man in front of him shocked him, and he looked at Jacob.

"Do you have a razor and a comb?" He asked.

"Of course." Jacob nodded. "Right behind the mirror, there are new razors still in the package and some shaving cream. There are some scissors there as well."

"Let's take a look at your arm then." Jacob reached out and took the handles of the bag from the man and held them out over the sink. There was only a little bit of blood in the bag, and it looked as though most of the bleeding had stopped.

Jacob took a few supplies from the shelf behind the door and tending to the man's wound. After he had cleaned the bite on his hand, Jacob left the room, and the man got in the shower to clean.

"When you're dressed call me, and we'll get some dressing on your hand." He said to the man. "There's a free clinic in the next town over so we can get you some medical attention. I'm no doctor, but this is awful."

"Sure." The man said and turned to watch Jacob leave the room and close the door behind him.

As he walked up the stairs, Jacob took the old shoes and held them in front of him at arm's length into the room. He rolled his eyes into the back of his head as he walked through the kitchen and opened the back door. He threw the shoes out into the darkness, hearing the dull thud the shoes made as they bounced off the deck boards.

Jacob nodded. "I'll get those in the morning. They can not stay in here."

He took a big breath of fresh air and turned back towards his kitchen, still standing outside in the chilly night thinking about the man he just brought in from the street.

Jacob looked back outside and into the darkness of the woods behind his house. It certainly was peaceful out here in the evenings. After a few minutes, the silence was broken. A continual light thud could be heard from next door. "Oh, Henry must be running again," Jacob said to himself.

"Huh?" The man said from inside by the dining room table.

"Oh nothing, I was just commenting that I could hear my neighbour running on his treadmill again." He smiled.

Jacob turned around and saw the man standing before him. He nodded in approval and smiled.

"You must feel great," Jacob said. "What's your name?"

"I'm Marvin." He said as he shrugged and looked down at his hand. "It's nice to meet you."

Jacob walked over to the stove and poured soup into a bowl and brought it to the table.

"Sit. Eat." He motioned to the table.

"Thanks," Marvin said.

Jacob turned around and walked back into the kitchen and got another bowl down from the cupboard to get some soup for himself. He walked back to the table noticing that the bowl of soup was already gone, along with the few rolls and butter that were on the table.

"Want anything else to eat?" Jacob smiled.

"No. I'm fine right now," Marvin answered. "I haven't been this full in ages. The food at the soup kitchen is good, but it's never enough."

Jacob nodded. He used to work at the soup kitchen back where he grew up and knew that the portions were too small for most people.

"I've got a spare room downstairs with a bed if you'd like to sleep there. Or I also have a pull out couch if you'd like to sleep on something a little harder, like what you're used to at the shelter." Jacob blushed at those words. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"It's fine. I've heard worse from priests and nuns over the last year." Marvin said.

Jacob and the man passed some time over the next couple of hours listening to stories that each other had to tell. Never really getting into anything too personal, many of the people Jacob had met on the streets had personal demons that they were trying to hide and he felt it best to help keep them protected.

Jacob stretched in the chair at the dining room table. A yawn escaped him.

"I'm going to bed now. The fridge is there, help yourself to anything." He pointed towards the kitchen. "I don't keep any liquor in the house anymore, I found that out the hard way."

Jacob rolled up the sleeve of his t-shirt and showed a massive scar that ran from his elbow to shoulder.

"This was courtesy of another that I helped out a few years ago." He pulled the sleeve back down. "Apparently, I didn't have the proper rum in the house and would not get any more."

Marvin whistled, shocked to see such violent behaviour against someone just trying to help.

"I never drank much. I didn't like the man that I became when I did." Marvin looked off into the distance bringing back some memories that he was pretty sure he didn't want to think about again. "That's why I started with the heroine. It let me escape from reality, but I wasn't violent."

Jacob let the thought end there. He was starting to get nervous now that personal things were starting to come around and memories were starting to surface.

Jacob stood up from the chair and walked towards the darkened hallway next to the stairs. "If you need anything, just yell."

"I'm sure I will be okay. Thank you again." The man answered, still sitting at the table looking out the front window rubbing the dressing on his hand.

Jacob watched this from the top of the stairs and glanced at the window to see if there was something that the man was seeing. Other than a few lights of cars driving down the road there was nothing unusual out there. He walked down the hall and turned on the light in his room.

******

A loud crash woke Jacob from his sleep a few hours later. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked over at the clock next to his bed.

"Four fifteen!?" Jacob said to the darkness. "What the hell!?"

Another noise echoed through his dark and usually silent house.

"Where is that coming from?" Jacob sat up in bed and listened again. The noise happened, only louder seeming to originate from the landing by the front door.

He got out of bed, put on his slippers and opened his bedroom door. He put his hand on his baseball bat but remembered the man in his basement.

"He's probably just having a bad dream and is tripping out or something." He thought to himself as he let go of the handle of the baseball bat.

Jacob slowly started walking down the hallway towards the top of the stairs.

"Hey. Are you alright?" Jacob whispered into the darkness. "There's no reason to leave now."

Jacob got to the end of the hallway and took a deep breath before he leant over to look at the front door.

He saw Marvin standing at the door banging his bandaged hand on the door while scratching his nails around the deadbolt.

"You OK?" Jacob said to the man as he turned on the light and started to walk down the stairs.

Marvin turned around quickly, and Jacob stopped in his tracks. He tried to back up the stairs, but he panicked and tripped over the edge of one of the stairs.

Marvin began walking up the stairs; he was frothing at the mouth. His eyes were vacant and bloodshot. All of the colours had drained from his face, and all that was left was a dull grey colour. He opened and closed his mouth quickly as he walked, Jacob continually expected the man to snap out of what he thought might be a drug induced state and talk to him again.

The man reached his hand out and wrapped around Jacob's outstretched leg and pulled it towards his mouth, pulling him down a stair.

"What the hell!?" Jacob shouted as he pulled his leg close to his body bringing the frothing man closer to his face and shot it out straight, throwing Marvin down the stairs. He hit the door with a loud thud and slide to the floor.

Jacob took the opportunity to turn around and scramble up the stairs. He ran across the living room and into the kitchen where he fumbled with the drawers, trying desperately to open the child locks to get a butcher knife out to defend himself.

Jacob glanced over his shoulder as he struggled with the drawers, he gasped when Marvin stood and walked towards the stairs, grunting and growling at him as he walked towards him. The man walked past the dining room table and slammed into a chair.

He turned around at the noise and looked back to the drawer, realising he was not going to be able to open it, he quickly turned to his right looking at the back door and started towards it.

The man in his kitchen did the same, trying to cut him off before he made it out the door.

Jacob got to the door first and turned the deadbolt and the door handle at the same time, throwing the door open. He felt the tips of the man's fingertips run down his back as he tried to grab him and pull him back in the house.

Jacob, forgetting about the shoes he threw out the door earlier, tripped over one of them, crashed into the railing and started to roll down the stairs. He came to a sudden thud at the bottom and groaned in pain. Marvin followed down the stairs after him.

He tried to move his hands and push himself away, but the pain in his back and shoulders was too much.

His other neighbour, Peter, was out in his backyard for a cigarette, he rushed over to his side of the fence. "What was that? Jacob!? Is that you? Are you OK?"

Panic filled Peter's voice as he heard a soft groan coming from the other side of the fence. "Who's over there with you?"

Jacob groaned in pain; from his position at the bottom of the stairs he turned his head and watched Peter try to jump over the fence in the wrong spot and land painfully on the branch that had broken this past summer during the storm. Jacob did not need a light in his backyard to know that Peter was hurt, he could hear a gurgling sound as Peter began to spit blood and then he stopped moving.

Jacob watched helplessly as the man from his basement walked past him and over to his neighbour where he bent down to check on Peter, putting his face close to his to listen for breathing and took a large bite from his body. Marvin turned back towards Jacob, and he tried to scream.

The homeless man fell to his knees by Jacob's head and leant over him. A warm, wet liquid fell onto his face as the man bent closer and closer. More of the liquid fell on him as Jacob could feel the cold breath of the man as he opened his mouth and closed it around Jacob's Adam's apple.

Jacob opened his mouth in agony as the man closed his lips on his skin and pulled. The tearing of his muscle and skin sent him into shock and Jacob passed out knowing that he was probably never going to wake up from this nightmare.

4

Henry could see the desperation in the eyes of his would-be attackers, at this point, he had come to the decision that these men wanted to hurt him. He wasn't sure how he'd known this, but he could not shake the feeling.

Henry began to back out of the spare room, never letting the reaching hands and growling faces out of his sight.

He stuck his arms out behind him feeling his way out of the room and towards the door. He felt sure that if he could get to the door and close it, then those things might forget that he is in the house and might leave him alone.

The further that Henry gets from the window the more urgently the men began to move.

By the time that he had made it all the way to the door the man on the other side of the fence began to howl. The hair on the back of Henry's neck began to stand up as the noise continued for what seemed to be an eternity.

As the sound of the howl tapered off, Henry realised he needed to do something quickly.

"I gotta get some help for Jacob. I don't want to go anywhere near that guy."

He quickly turned to leave the room, forgetting he had just put a basket of folded sheets and towels in the doorway to make up the bed for any unexpected visits from his mother. As he was turning, Henry put his foot squarely in the middle of the towels, catching his running shoes on the side of the basket and flying face first into the midst of the den.

Henry braced himself for the fall and managed not to injure himself as his arms began to cartwheel trying to find something to grab.

He hit the floor with a thud, taking the brunt of the impact on his right shoulder.

Instinctively, Henry opened his eyes and began to look around to see where he was. His nose was mere centimetres from the sharp metal corner of the wood fireplace.

"Phew! That was close." Henry said as he let out a little nervous laughter.

Henry began to lift himself off the floor, wincing in pain as he lifted himself off the ground.

"That's going to be sore later." he said to himself as he rotated his arm in slow circles, trying to work out the pain in his arm.

While he was rotating his arm, he slowly walked across the room towards the phone resting on the cradle. He reached for the phone and just before his fingers touched it he stopped and cocked his head back towards the room he just left listening if he could hear the stranger making any more racket.

Satisfied that he could no longer hear anything seriously threatening, Henry reached for the phone and dialled 9-1-1.

Henry stood with his back to the front of the house and looked towards the spare room window, but he could no longer see the man who was scaring him so much.

After a couple of dozen rings, an operator finally answered the phone.

"Thank you for calling Merton Police, what's your emergency?" The dispatcher responded.

"Hello, my name is Henry, and I think something horrible has happened to my neighbour. I was just looking out in the backyard, and I believe that there was an attack. I cannot see him, but there appears to be blood splashed on the side of his house." Henry spoke quickly, trying to get as much detail out as he could.

"You said your neighbour was hurt? Does it look as though anyone was bit?" The dispatcher asked.

"That's a strange question to be asking." Henry thought to himself.

"No, I didn't notice anything like that. It was hard to see any detail over the fence, but there is a strange man in the back yard, and he did appear to have blood on his hands and face when he saw me trying to look in the garden." He responded back to the dispatcher.

"Sir, I have your address as 16 Sycamore Road, is that correct?" The operator asked.

"Yes, it is."

"Thank you, there have been a large number of reports of violent outbursts in the area that the police are currently responding to." The operator continued to speak to Henry. "The best thing for you to do in this situation is to stay away from all windows and doors. Try to remain in a basement or cellar to make as little noise as possible."

Henry thought this was a weird request to make.

He began to turn around in the den, trying to take in everything.

He glanced into the back yard through the reinforced sliding door. He could see nothing but his fence and trees. The delusional visitor in the next yard was no longer visible.

He continued turning in the den with his eyes resting on the same front window where he saw the legs a little earlier.

"Why do I need to keep away from the windows?" He asked the operator. "What aren't you telling me?"

The operator began to speak, "We're not exactly sure what is happening, but it appears as though these people are attracted to sounds, and does not seem to stop until they've found what they're looking for."

Those words echoed in Henry's head as he looked back towards the spare room window. He desperately wanted to see a hand or something there to know exactly where the stranger was now.

Henry's attention quickly returned to the front of the house.

"That's strange, when did it cloud over?" he said out loud.

"Excuse me, sir. I'm on the other side of the river, and it's bright and sunny outside" The operator responded.

Henry spun around quickly and looked into the back yard. The sun was shining in the backyard casting some shadows of the fence into the back yard.

"What the hell is going on outside?" Henry said as he turned back to the front of the house.

Henry took a few steps closer to the front window.

He knew he didn't have any trees in the front yard. The previous owners had chopped them all down after a hurricane rolled through the province a few years ago and decimated the neighbourhood.

Henry reached his hand toward the curtain.

"I don't have any trees out front. Why is it so dark out there?" Henry said.

Henry lowered the phone down from his ear, missing a message from the 911 operator that could have saved his life.

"Sir!" the dispatcher yelled into the phone. "Don't open the curtain! It's only going to encourage the violence."

He heard none of those words; Henry was too focused on figuring out the problem that was before him. He stuck his hand out and touched the curtains, moving them ever so slightly to see outside.

Henry dropped the phone.

"Oh my god!" He yelled.

Henry tried to throw the curtain back into place, hoping that he could forget what he had seen.

He could try to forget what he had seen out the window, but the throng of men and women pressed against the window would not forget about him seeing them.

Standing and kneeling outside of Henry's basement window was a group of a dozen or more people with their face pressed up against the glass trying to catch a glimpse of what was inside of the house.

When the person who used to be Billy Hayes first noticed the movement of the curtain, it let out an excited and almost gleeful noise. Picking up on this new sound, the rest of the group began to focus on the window.

Almost in unison, the group began to press forward, using all of their instincts to gain entrance into the house.

Henry did not know what to do. When he moved in, he upgraded all the windows to a thick double pane to reduce the noise of the school and busy street, but would it keep out that many people?

He knew he had to leave the house. There weren't many supplies in the basement that he could take with him on the road.

Next to the treadmill was his gym bag with a few protein and energy bars from his last training session for the Fall Classic marathon in a couple of months.

The keys to the car and garage were upstairs on the bedside table. There was no way that Henry was going to make it up and down two floors before that window caved.

SNAP! The window began to fracture under the enormous weight of the group of people pressed against it.

Henry quickly scooped up his running bag, tossed in his spare jacket and grabbed a bottle of water from on top of the cabinet next to the treadmill.

He ran for the sliding door to the backyard.

As he reached for the handle, he heard the terrifying sound of the glass collapsing onto the hardwood floor of his den.

Henry took one glance over his shoulder as he twisted and yanked on the door. All Henry could see was a pile of bodies laying in a heap on the floor by the television.

A little growl snapped Henry out of his trance.

Looking in the window from the front lawn was the stranger from his neighbour's backyard. The man, or what used to be a man, took a step forward. The man was fixated on Henry, never taking his eyes from him as he slowly ducked into the window and then fell to the floor.

The man slowly started to lift his head, looked directly into Henry's eyes and bared his teeth while letting out a growl.

All at once bodies in a pile on the floor begin to writhe and come alive. Limbs that were twisted backwards, broken and had large pieces of glass stuck in them began to move as the people started to get back up.

The stranger from Jacob's backyard continued to take very slow, methodical steps.

He was so focused on Henry that he did not bother to move or step around furniture that was on the floor. The man stepped into the leather sofa and stood there baring his teeth at Henry.

Sweat began to slide down the side of Henry's face. He swiped it away with his free hand as the fear in his body was starting to take over.

"How can I get away from these people? Nothing seems to stop them." Henry said.

He looked at the rest of the group and noticed some of the physical damage that many of them were sporting. There was a lady with a missing arm in back, a teenager to his right had a large piece of glass wedged in its face. Seeing all of this was starting to make Henry queasy.

As the last of the group of people got back to their feet in Henry's den, there were a dozen eyes fixated on him.

The man furthest to the right began to step forward, with each slow, lumbering step the man took, the sofa started to move somewhat so that there was no longer anything between himself and Henry. The pace of the man's step quickened.

Henry was still in a daze when the man tripped over a bowl that had fallen off the counter when Henry had initially grabbed his bag.

The man had come crashing down within a few feet of Henry and began to snarl as he crawled towards him. Henry could do nothing but stare as the man came closer and closer; dragging itself across the floor like a haunted man.

The man's hands touched Henry's' shoes, and he finally snapped back to reality. Henry kicked out at the man as he was going to try to take a bite out his foot.

Henry connected square to the man's face, snapping his head back with a loud cracking sound.

The man slumped forward and released his grip on Henry's shoe.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Henry said while covering his mouth with his hand and bracing himself against the door frame with the other.

Henry glanced over and saw the rest of the gang begin to walk around the sofa towards Henry, all of them snarling with a primal urge.

He turned and grabbed hold of the handle to the door yanking it to the side.

The door didn't budge.

Henry took another glance over his shoulder, the first of them were only 6 feet or so from him now.

He fumbled with the handle for the door and tried to find the lock mechanism, all the while watching the group of people get closer and closer to him.

Henry couldn't find where the lock was on the handle and returned his attention to the door in front of him. He looked all around the handle and remembered that Jacob broke the lock within the first few weeks of moving in, after an evening of drinking. Henry had to resort to putting a wooden stick in the track of the door to keep it closed and locked. He was pretty sure that the insurance company would be pissed if they ever found out about it.

A smile crept over Henry's face as he remembered this and bent down to grab the small piece of cedar that was hindering his escape.

As he stood up with the wood, a hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

The first of the men was finally on him and was trying to pull him closer to his open mouth.

Henry took the piece of cedar and put it in the mouth of the man, who immediately bit down on it. Henry could hear the board beginning to crack under pressure from the man's bite.

Henry started to smell the breath of the man and almost threw up. He could not find words to describe how terrible it was. It seemed to be a combination of dirty feet, leftover pork chops and the smell of methane from the landfill.

The rest of the group began to encircle Henry as he backed up towards the door, using his free hand to feel along the edge of the door for the handle to his escape.

His fingers touched the handle and immediately began to pull it open.

Henry quickly turned to his left and began to sprint through the screen door and into the backyard.

He was halfway across the yard even before the first of the strangers was close to the screen.

Henry took a running jump and scampered up the wooden planks of the fence. He looked over his shoulder towards the house. The strangers began to pour out of his house towards him, all fixated on him.

Henry said goodbye to his house. With the damage to the house and the strangers that had now laid claim to his backyard, he doubted he would be able to return anytime soon.

Henry jumped down from the fence and began to run away from his house and into the woods.

He did not take another look over his shoulder, or he would know that there were almost a dozen sets of eyes looking for him.

5

Henry ran.

Wiping tears from his eyes, he continued to run away from his life, house and memories into an unknown world full of violence and death.

He could not help but imagine how this is the life that a person living in the middle east might feel every single day when they walk out of their homes. There were unknown threats all around him. He did not know where they were, but he knew they were somewhere out there.

He slowed down as the woods began to thin out.

To his left, Henry could hear a buzzing noise, almost constant. The loudness of the sound would fade in and out as if whatever was making the noise was moving.

"Someone is alive." Henry thought.

Henry turned in the direction of the noise and tried to locate the exact location where the sound was originating. He turned his head to the left to where he thought it might be.

"It seems like it's coming from over there." Henry thought to himself and took a step forward when the noise suddenly sputtered to a stop.

Henry looked towards the direction he was going to head and listened for a while longer. Not wanting to waste any more time standing around, he turned and headed back in the direction he was going a few minutes before.

Henry knew the woods like his house; he had spent many Saturday mornings running through these woods to escape his life and return to the happy memories of his childhood. Being in the woods on those mornings had given him another purpose to his life. It was after his first walk through the forest, while he was looking for a good place to end his life, which he decided that enough was enough. He was going to leave the sadness behind and try to make something new from his life.

He was lost in his thoughts and did not realise that he had almost left the safe cover of the woods and walked directly onto Water Street.

Henry froze. Unable to move or comprehend what he was seeing.

Water Street was the main thoroughfare in which most traffic drove through on the way to work, school or shopping. The town was initially planned by the city officials to try to divide the city into distinct regions designated to host-specific property types. Much has changed in the years since the city then, but much of that structure is still in existence.

The streets on the west side of Water Street were originally intended to house the businesses of the town, while the east side is where all of the employees would have lived.

Crossing the middle of Water Street was the Henderson River, named after an unheard of English explorer who got lost on one of John Cabot's initial voyages to North America. It was on this side of the river that most of the town's first industry remained constructed. The original pulp and paper mill stood located on the banks of the river, along with a small dock for shipments of the world famous maple syrup created here.

What Henry saw before him was complete and chaos. The usually serene and peaceful town was full of blood-curdling screams, smoke and ash.

On the road in front of him was the still smouldering wreckage of a telephone company fleet vehicle. The car sat in the corner of the street with the traffic pole embedded in its hood. He could still partially see the blue logo etched into the white panel van. Surrounding the van were the corpses of half a dozen bodies, all of whom charred beyond recognition. The driver of the van was lodged in the windshield of the vehicle with the upper half of his body simply gone.

A single scream took his attention from the wreckage.

Henry turned to his right just in time to see a woman jump from the roof of a four-story building. Two or three other men accompanied her falling body grabbed her just as the intruders did in Henry's house not that long ago.

As soon as he had heard her scream, there was a quiet but distinctive series of thuds. Her struggle in this world was over.

Henry looked to the roof of the building to see four more men in suits standing on the ceiling unable to decide if they should follow the woman or find someone else to hurt. Something must have caught their attention as they all turned in unison and began to shuffle away from the roof and towards something more interesting.

All over the street were the tell-tale signs of violence and death. Never before had Henry been a witness to such a large scale scene of senseless destruction. Not even the riots Henry had seen on television the last few years had this kind of an impact.

A short distance down the road was a car with the car alarm going off. The car alarm did not have the initial volume it would have when it first started, it was clear that the battery was starting to die. A group of men and women surrounded the car pounding on the windows and door in an attempt to get it open.

Henry could faintly hear the muffled scream of a woman in between the pulsing sound from the dying car alarm.

The banging on the car continued as Henry began to survey the carnage. Dead bodies littered the street.

Bodies that should not be moving were shuffling down the street towards the car and other things that had caught their attention.

Henry could see bones poking out of shoulders, slashes across faces and chunks missing from the flesh of everyone walking around.

Down the other end of the street, Henry saw another group of people huddled on the ground surrounding something.

"They must be resuscitating someone." Henry thought.

Just then, one of the men stood up from the group and began to pull at something. With one final tug, the man walked away from the group holding a severed arm. The man brought the arm up to his mouth and proceeded to take a bite out of the bicep.

"Oh my god!" Henry said out loud.

As soon as those words escaped his lips, Henry brought his hand to his mouth and gasped.

Hearing the noise, the dull eyes of the man began to scan the surrounding area looking for its source.

"Holy shit! What is that thing?" Henry thought to himself.

He fought the urge to run. He was too close to the road and knew that he would get noticed if he moved.

The man pulled another bite off the arm and threw it back into the crowd, where it promptly disappeared into the clutches of another. Henry could make out the resemblance of a mechanic's uniform on the man as he began to shuffle towards him, still looking around for something.

A sudden smash had caught his attention as well as the attention of the mechanic. Henry's attention returned to down the street where one of the men managed to break the back window of the car. Now there were three sets of arms reaching into the car for the screaming woman.

Another smash came from down the street as another window came crashing in as a result of the pressure on them.

In a desperate attempt to be further away from the attackers on the side of the car with the broken window, the woman had slid all the way across the car and pressed herself against the other door. The sight of the woman this close had excited the people on the other side of the car and they had immediately begun to work on getting into the car.

As soon as the window shattered, Henry could see some hands reach into the car and, grab the woman by the hair and began pulling her out of the car.

Even before her head was fully out of the car, one of the bystanders to the whole event had managed to walk up to the car and took a huge bite from the cheek of the woman before removing her from the car.

The top half of the woman was barely out of the car before some people swarmed her body. Henry could no longer see the lady, but he could hear the screams she made as her attackers began to rip pieces off of her flesh and eat.

Just then, another man came running around a corner from a side street near where the woman had just fallen to her death. The man, who appeared to be in his 20s, was apparently terrified as he came speeding around the corner.

Henry wanted to get the attention of the young man but did not want to chance to give away his location in the process. The young man stopped. He hid behind a dumpster in front of a door to the four-story building.

The young man was panting, trying to catch his breath when he looked around at his surroundings and noticed the dead body of the woman and her attackers on the ground next to him. The young man turned around and began to retch into the side of the dumpster.

The sudden noise caught the attention of the mechanic, and he started walking towards the terrified young man.

Sweat began to form on Henry's brow; he had to do something to help this poor fellow out.

"What can I do?" he murmured to himself.

As if to answer the question all hope of saving the young man vanished as one of the attackers that had fallen off of the roof began to stir. The attacker that Henry had previously thought had died when he fell from the building had started to pull itself towards the still heaving young man. The corpse began to crawl forward using only its arms. There was a satchel bag draped over his shoulder and, it appeared as though he might have been a paper delivery boy.

The delivery boy was only a foot from the young man as it continued its slow, methodical pursuit of him.

Henry was just about to scream for the man to turn around when his head snapped around just in time to feel a hand wrap around his back pocket and pull him to the ground. The young man began to violently kick and fight to get the crippled corpse off of him, but its grip had been too powerful, and its hands were already wrapped around his head as it sunk its teeth into the soft meaty flesh of his neck.

The young man let out a soft gargled scream as his attacker took another bite from him.

By this time the mechanic has made his way over to the bleeding body and fell on him and began to rip and tear into his shoulder. The feet of the young man gave one final kick and then he stopped moving.

The mechanic lifted his head tearing another meaty chunk off of his shoulder and turned his head and looked directly at Henry over his shoulder and continue to chew his meal.

6

Interlude: Herb's in the garden

Interlude: Herb's in the garden

The world was falling apart all over town and Herb Dean, a retired military man of 57 years, knew nothing about it. That morning he and his wife had been fighting about something menial and tedious when he decided that it was best for him to go outside and mow the lawn again.

"You did that two days ago Herb!" Phyllis yelled as he took out his hearing aids and went outside.

Herb took out his hearing aids most of the time when he mowed the lawn, the noise of the lawn tractor bothered him. Today it had the added benefit of him going to be able to ignore his wife if she came outside and wanted to talk some more.

"No, Phyllis, I don't like your meatloaf. I don't like anything you cook." Those were the words that started his day on a downward spiral. All his wife wanted to do was to make something new for breakfast, a recipe she had seen in a magazine. To Phyllis, those were fighting words. Those were the words that made Herb sleep on the couch for the night. Those were the nights that Herb enjoyed the most, the nights where he had peace and quiet.

Herb walked out the back door and into the back yard, completely oblivious to anything that might have been happening on the street outside of his privacy fence.

A few years before, Herb had decided that he wanted to build a privacy fence around the yard to keep his younger neighbour from just dropping by unannounced whenever they were outside enjoying the sunshine. The 10-foot wall only went around the front by the house and more importantly the side that faced Ted's house.

Ted had been careful enough when they had first moved in, always coming over and making sure they had settled into the area, pointing out the local destinations and things to see. It had been over 15 years ago since they first moved in and Ted was still constantly trying to get them to visit locations he had already been before.

Herb looked around the back yard. "I'll put up a fence around the rest of the garden soon enough; I just like looking at the woods. And we both enjoy seeing the rabbit tracks in the winter."

The happy memory from the winters in the house watching rabbits bounce through the backyard brought a smile to his face. He could never stay mad at her for very long. No matter what.

"I'll just do a few strips around the outside of the yard and go give her a kiss." He said to himself as he walked to the shed.

He took the key ring from his pocket and fumbled with the keys.

"They give you two keys for every lock," Herb thought ", but I always put them both on the same ring. You'd think I'd learn after losing the house, boat, and cabin keys when we first got married."

Herb laughed as he thumbed the small gold key on the key ring from the others and slid it into the heavy duty lock on the door of the shed. The lock was the best lock that Henry could find at the hardware store. The clerk said it would take a large man to break this steel with a pair of bolt cutters. He kept his most valued possessions in this shed; the snow blower, lawn tractor, a set of old golf clubs that his grandfather gave him when he first joined the military, and a locked box containing a few marijuana cigarettes that he got from his doctor to help with his insomnia.

Herb picked up the gas can sitting next to the back wheels of the tractor and shook it a little.

"It's light. Might need to pick some up tomorrow to finish the lawn," Herb said as he opened the gas tank on the lawn mower and poured the few litres into the gas tank.

Herb did a little walk around on the lawn mower kicking the tires to make sure they had enough pressure in them and then climbed on the tractor. He took the biggest key on the ring, put it in the ignition of the tractor and turned the key.

The engine sputtered a little; Herb kept the key turned, and the engine finally roared to life.

"I really should get that checked out." he said to himself, almost trying to talk over the roaring noise of the mower's engine.

Herb looked over his shoulder as he released the break, backed the mower out of the barn and onto the grass. He engaged the mower blades and started towards the back of the yard to mow around the outside a few times before going inside for some breakfast after all.

He started the mower moving and was looking at the lawn, making extra care was taken around his wife's flower gardens so that a rogue mower blade accidentally damaged nothing. That was the last thing he needed, insulting Phyllis' cooking was one thing, but destroying her roses was a death warrant.

He rounded the corner at the back of the yard and made his way around the snaking garden they had built along the tree line. The way the flowers bloomed in the summer was something incredible to look at but keeping a garden that size clean was an entirely different matter.

He made it to the end of the backyard and took a look over his right shoulder to make sure nothing was damaged; there were a few blades of grass in with the tulips, but he could take those out after lunch when things were smoothed over with his wife. Herb turned the wheel and began his journey to the back of the house before bringing the mower around by the shed. He decided at the last minute he would not do behind the shed and would stick to the edging of the yard before the mower ran out of fuel.

Herb followed the same track around the yard that he had created the first time. He didn't pay attention to where he was driving and just enjoyed the feeling of the early morning sunshine on his face. The light breeze coming through the trees was refreshing after such a heated argument.

Before long Herb had circled the back of the yard and was coming around the back of the house. He tried to look in the kitchen window to see if his wife was there so that he could wave to her and blow her a kiss. The only thing that he could see was the light from the front door; she must have gone out front to check the mail.

"I'll come to the house and surprise her," he said with a sly smile. There was nothing more that Herb loved than surprising and scaring his wife. She was getting older, and his pranks were not as grand as they had once been. He did not want to scare her to death.

Herb turned away from the house and swung by the shed again when he saw some movement by the corner.

"Was that an eye?" he thought to himself.

He was coming around the shed and looking along the side trying to see if he had seen someone when something pushed him from the lawnmower and landed on the ground. The mower continued for a few feet before sputtering to a stop.

Towering over Herb was a man and woman who were in bad shape, as they had apparently been spending their nights sleeping in the woods. They opened and closed their mouths, but Herb could not understand any words that they might be saying. He reached into his pockets for his hearing aids but remembered that he left them on the counter next to the door on his way out.

He pushed himself backwards as they continued towards him, reaching out for him. He put up his hand to show that he was not dangerous and did not want to harm them. That was when another person came from inside the shed and bit him on the hand.

Herb screamed as their teeth sunk into his skin and tore off his thumb and index finger. The dirty woman standing over him jumped on his chest and began hitting him with her fists in his ribs; he could feel the bones in his chest weaken and start to crack with each forceful hit.

He tried to call to his wife, get her to call the police, but there was no air in his lungs anymore. He gasped for breath but felt like he was breathing under water. The woman sitting on him threw her hands over her head and brought them down in the middle of his chest with one final thud as he started to black out from the pain.

The last thing the Herb remembered seeing was the woman sitting on his chest grinning at him with a mouthful of his sternum clenched between her teeth.

7

Henry froze, not able to comprehend what has happened in front of him.

Two perfectly well and alive human beings were just ripped apart for no reason at all. Well, no reason that Henry can make sense out of right now.

He repeats everything that he just saw in his mind over and over again.

"Those creatures can not be human anymore? But what are they?" He thought, "That delivery boy who attacked the young guy should have died when he fell off that roof. Why didn't he?"

Henry's mind keeps replaying the sound that the bodies made when they hit the ground. Each body fell in a similar manner, but for some reason, this one particular guy is almost untroubled by what happened.

The latest victim of the attack was only a dozen meters from where Henry stood, and the man wearing the mechanic uniform seemed to be still staring at him as Henry stood there lost in his thoughts.

The sickly sound of the flesh tearing from the latest victim was starting to get to Henry, hearing the tearing as each chunk of meat was taken from the body and put into the mouth of the attacker.

Henry was not sure what was the worst sound, the sound of the tearing flesh or the sound that each person made as they slowly chewed the flesh of the victims into chunks small enough to swallow. Everyone eating from the body seemed to be chewing in slow motion as if they were trying to savour every bite that they took.

Without realising it, Henry's eyes began to roll back into his head. He became very unsteady on his feet, and he began to waiver from front to back and side-to-side.

"I should probably... sit... down..." Henry said as his body has leant too far back and his momentum carried him backwards, and he landed on the ground with a loud bang.

Henry's eyes rolled back, and his head tilted to the side as he passed out.

The sound of Henry falling in the woods did not go unnoticed by any of the people in the surrounding area.

Much of the city was at a standstill with the rampant violence spreading throughout it. With most of the cars not on the road, anyone within half a kilometre could have heard Henry hit the ground. With the high concentration of businesses in the area, there could be upwards of 2,000 people who just heard Henry pass out.

One of the first people to take notice of Henry falling in the woods was the mechanic; who stared into the woods while he ate attempting to find the location of the source of the noise.

The mechanic stood up and took a few steps away from the body. He scanned the woods near that burnt shell of the utility truck.

The mechanic bared his teeth and let out a soft growl.

He began to walk towards the woods slowly.

Henry's eyes began to flutter open as he regained some consciousness. He found he could not focus on much of anything.

The tree branches above him looked hazy and blurred in the sky above. The light filtering through the trees hurt his eyes as he squinted through the pain in his head.

Henry let out a little moan as he tried to move and sit up.

A twig snapped somewhere to his right caught Henry's attention.

Henry tried to remember what happened before he collapsed. "I remember watching those things eat, but why did I faint?" he thought.

A wave of nausea raced over Henry as the mental images of those people eating flew past his vision again.

He slowly sat up. This time he made a conscious effort to hold his breath while he moved to try to make as little noise as possible.

Henry began to scan the immediate area since he had no idea how long he had been laying down and could not be sure if one of those creatures had heard him make any noise when he hit the ground.

His heart began pumping faster as he heard the familiar smacking noise of those people eating, but only this time it sounded as though someone was standing close. Henry tried to focus his eyes, but the bump on his head had a significant impact on his vision.

Henry cautiously raised an arm, trying to use his other one to hold himself upright. His left arm, bearing his entire weight began to wobble under pressure. He slowly tried to rub the fuzziness out of his eye, but the only thing that accomplished was to rub dirt into them instead.

His eyes began to water and tears began to run down Henry's face. If this had been another time, he would have found it funny to see a grown man sitting in the middle of the woods crying about getting some dirt in his face.

Unfortunately for him, it was not another time, and Henry could sense the danger all around him and needed to be able to see if he was going to survive longer than the next five minutes.

The more tears slid down his face, the more dirt that washed out of his eyes. He found it amusing that he could cry now that the town was going crazy, but he could not properly mourn his father.

It had been a few years since his father had passed after a very brief battle with cancer, and even when he was delivering the eulogy on the day of the funeral, he could not bring himself to cry in public. Standing at the altar in the church, spilling out his most cherished memories of his dad, he could not let himself cry in front of his mum. She had been barely keeping herself together while his father had been sick. When they found out about cancer, she had spent the first few days crying and yelling about it, before eventually coming to terms with the inevitable. He was looking at her as he told his stories, reliving his memories as he spoke of the beautiful things that they did together. He was watching the tears roll freely down her face as he finished and took his seat next to her.

She squeezed his hand and said the words that he would always keep close to his heart, "He was always proud of you."

He could feel the flood of emotions coming back over him again. The memories of his father, coupled with the thoughts of what he had witnessed already today brought, even more, tears.

On the verge of hysterics, a soft rustle of leaves brought Henry back from the memories of his father.

To Henry, the noise sounded like it came from not too far ahead of him.

He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut as hard as he could. Just like when he was a child and trying not to see something.

He slowly opened his eyes and instantly knew his day was going to get worse quickly.

Standing a few feet away from Henry was the mechanic. Before going crazy and eating people, the mechanic looked to be taller than most people Henry dealt with in his daily life, probably close to six and a half feet tall. He was wearing his coveralls from Mike's Engine Repair, located on the other end of Water Street, close to the school. According to the label, the mechanic's name was Trevor.

Still slowly chewing the last piece of warm flesh from the young man he attacked, Trevor was standing as still as he could with his eyes darting around looking for any movement that would give away the location of the noise which he heard.

Henry began to have a mild panic attack.

Henry started to devise a plan in his head, "I cannot crawl out of here, if I do then the noise will certainly attract his attention. I don't know if my legs are going to hold me if I try to run."

Concentrating on the mechanic in front of him, Henry had almost forgotten about the noise to his right until a body came crashing through the underbrush.

The man dressed in a t-shirt from an 80s rock band and torn jeans caught sight of Henry sitting on the ground. He moaned as he started coming for the fallen man.

Henry tried to scramble to his feet but his legs were still a little shaky from his tumble, and he immediately fell into the leaves and sticks.

The new threat was moving much slower than he had expected. Henry had expected this man to be on top of him when he fell. As he was getting to his feet again, he looked over his shoulder and saw that the man was missing its foot and with the other caught in a bear-trap.

Henry, finally stood on his feet, began to run away from the carnage that was happening on Water Street and go deeper into the woods. The ground had lots of upturned roots and fallen trees from the last tropical storm that rolled through the area a couple of years ago.

He had spent enough time in this section of the woods to know where most of the dangers were and managed to narrowly avoid a large branch that was sticking up into the air. Henry had dashed around it.

He glanced over his shoulder to see both Trevor and the rocker together in a slow and steady pursuit of him.

Henry was not looking where he was going and managed to get his feet tangled on a loose branch and fell again.

As he was falling, Henry began to turn to his left to try and catch himself before he hit the ground.

Henry pulled his head backwards in surprise as a long slender branch narrowly missed piercing Henry's cheek and ending his life.

He fell to the ground and managed to absorb most of the shock of the fall in his arms.

Instinctively he rolled onto his back, ready to defend himself from his attackers who he knew was right behind him.

Henry used his feet to push himself backwards, trying to get as much room between himself and the men as he could before they were close enough to attack him.

Henry did not have much time to prepare himself as the man dressed as a rock star got to him first.

He could see the hatred and determination in the face of the man as he dragged the big bear trap behind him. Henry could hear the snarl that the man was making and could see the drool forming on his lips as he began to salivate for his next meal.

The rocker was unable to lift the trap high enough over a tree branch, and he fell. The man was so focused on reaching for Henry that he did not use his arms to catch or brace himself for the fall.

Henry closed his eyes and braced himself for a quick death by the hands of these monsters.

The next sound that Henry heard was a sickening smack and a small pop.

Henry opened his eyes to see the man impaled by the stick that narrowly missed his face when he fell. The stick had entered the man's head under his jaw and was sticking out through the top of his skull. The body began to slowly slide down the sick, leaving a wet sticky mess behind that contained a few chunks that Henry could only think was brain matter.

As the body slide towards the bottom of the Henry could see Trevor pausing in an attempt to figure out how to get to Henry now that his companion had died.

That slight pause was the only thing Henry had needed as he got to his feet and sprinted off into the woods.

With a fresh set of tears streaming down his face, Henry ran through the forest crying. Happy to be alive, and in shock that he had managed to come out of that situation.

Henry ran towards the only thing that he could think of where he could be safe for a little while until he came up with a plan of action. He ran back deeper into the woods.

If he had taken one final look over his shoulder when he first started running, he would have seen a small smile creep across the face of the mechanic.

It had only been a few hours since he became a monster, but Trevor was already showing signs of his new life. Large portions of his teeth had chipped off and were now missing, the teeth that were left were pointed and covered in black as if he had spent his entire life not brushing his teeth or going to the dentist.

Trevor took a few shambling steps towards the last place he had seen his meal go.

The smile on his lips getting just a little bigger.

8

Interlude: They all fall

Maureen's day started off just like any other day. She arrived at the office promptly at 10 minutes after 8 in the morning, so that she can be the one to make the coffee the way that she like it.

"The last time that I let Jessie make the coffee I almost threw up," Maureen said to herself as she got out of the car, her breath puffing in the cold morning air. "I'll never let that cow near the coffee pot again. I swear she put dirty socks and cow patties in it."

The thought of the coffee made Maureen shudder in spite of wearing her thick coat.

She shut the door of the car and pressed the button on the fob on her keys to lock her door. The car chirped in the silence as she walked around the front of the car and looked for oncoming traffic.

The street was empty in both directions this morning, on a typical morning the street is bustling with a few of the other early morning workers, like herself. The coffee shop a few blocks away normally has cars lined up to the lights at this time of day after people dropped their kids off at school.

A light fog was rolling in from the river, giving the street an eerie feeling as she stepped off the kerb and onto the pavement. If this was a scene in a movie, Maureen thought that this would be when the villain revealed his plan for taking over the town and killing the hero. She started to imagine herself as the international spy, in town to covertly infiltrate a business and foil plans for destruction. She smiled as she played out a scene from her favourite movie in her mind as she stared into the fog.

A crow cawed in the distance frightening Maureen from her daydream.

"Shit." She said as she jumped back, almost falling over the kerb.

She laid a hand on her chest and felt her heart pounding in her chest through her thick coat. She looked in the trees along the road behind her trying to spy the bird.

A clanging bottle from across the road brought her attention back to her office building.

A man, probably in his 40s, came stumbling around the corner of the building next to where she worked. The man was filthy; it looked as if he had fallen asleep in a kindergarten class while they were painting pictures of poppies for Remembrance Day. His face, shirt, and pants were discoloured. His eyes were lifeless and empty; she could almost sense the hopelessness in them. Maureen looked at the front door directly in front of her and glanced over at the man who had just noticed her and started walking towards her.

Maureen noticed that the man's step was off balance like he had too much to drink and the way that he was looking at her, with a little smile on his face, she knew he was going to be causing trouble for her once he got close enough.

Maureen grabbed the keys out of her purse and started hurrying across the road, not even bothering to look for cars as she ran. She fumbled with the keys trying to find the key for the deadbolt as she watched the man out of the corner of her eye.

She reached the other side of the road at the same time as she found the master key and put it in the lock turning it to the left, and pulling on the handle in one swift motion. She pulled the key out of the lock and pulled the door shut behind her as the man reached for the back of her jacket. His hand slammed the door as she turned the lock on the bolt and let out an exasperated sigh.

Maureen backed up as the man pressed his face on the tinted glass trying to search the darkness for any sign of movement.

Maureen reached her hand out behind her and felt for the railing for the stairs and started walking slowly up the stairs, never taking her eyes from the man.

The man walked away from the door before she was half-way up the stairs.

She stood there for a minute and watched the door before she turned around and ran up the stairs to the office. Once inside the office, she slammed the door shut, pulled down the blind and looked out the window to the street below, not even bothering to turn on any lights until she was sure that the man was gone.

She glanced at the clock on the wall, "Eight-fifteen? Where is everyone?" She said to the empty office. "Jessie should be here by now. She's always here by now."

She turned to look out the window for any arriving vehicles when the lock in the door turned, and someone pushed open the door.

Maureen turned around quickly surprised by the wonderful co-worker arriving at the office.

She saw Jessie come through the door with a smile; her expression quickly changed when she saw the look on Maureen's face.

"What happened to you today?"

Maureen quickly told Jessie about the man who chased her into the building when she got here a few minutes earlier.

"There was no one outside at all when I got here." Jessie said, "The roads were kind of empty, but maybe they have a teacher's day at the school, and a bunch of people are staying home."

Jessie shrugged as she walked into the office and closed the door. She turned and pulled open the blind and turned on the room lights.

Maureen blinked hard at the harsh brightness of the fluorescent lights after being in the dark. She turned her attention back to the area outside of the window.

"I'm going to make some coffee," Jessie said with a smile as she walked back towards the small kitchen.

"Wait," Maureen said as she spun around and pierced Jessie's soul with a gaze that would have killed a kitten. "I'll do it." She shouldered Jessie out of the way gently as she walked into the kitchen to brew the coffee.

The office for Sam's Air Conditioning was rather small compared to most other offices in the building. Since there were so few office workers, they spent the bulk of their rent on the garage and storage space on the other side of the building. There were two small offices for the sales manager and president of the company, a small meeting room, the kitchen and another room used for technical support and sales. The bathroom was shared with the other tenants of the floor and located at either end of the hallway; this was the one thing that Maureen disliked about the new office, having to walk that far to use the bathroom was a big inconvenience for her.

Maureen heard a small beep and knew that the coffee finished. To her, the office smelled like an exotic jungle teeming with life and freshly picked coffee beans. She heard Jessie rummaging around in the kitchen looking for some sugar when Mike, the senior sales manager walked into the office with Marjorie, the wife of Sam, the president of the company.

She looked at the clock on the wall and noticed that it was almost time to open the office for the day. Maureen walked to the kitchen to get her coffee before the others in the office managed to drink it all before she could enjoy some. She sauntered back to her desk by the front door and began to get ready to start the day.

Pressing buttons on the panel on her desk she turned on the sign outside, took the phone off of night mode and logged into the computer at her desk.

Maureen opened her email and started looking through the messages from customers sent overnight when a single knock came at the door.

Jessie had just finished watering the plants on the wall next to the door and looked at Maureen who just shrugged.

Jessie reached for the door handle while saying "Hello. We're open, you can come right in."

Her hand was just about on the handle when the person on the other side of the door started banging on the door.

Jessie stepped away from the door as the banging continued, her eyes turned to Maureen who had picked up the phone, ready to call the police for assistance if required.

Suddenly the banging stopped, and she heard a moan from the hallway.

"Oh my God." Jessie snapped to attention, her first aid training kicking into gear. She stepped quickly to the door and swung it open ready to help whoever was in the hall.

Jessie was barely able to register who was out there as several hands grabbed hold of her hair and sweater and pulled her into the corridor.

Jessie tried to scream in the darkness but all Maureen could hear was a wet gurgle and several moans. The gurgling stopped suddenly, and the Maureen sat frozen in her seat with the phone pressed to her ear listening to the dial tone buzzing.

A thump echoed down the hallway, and Jessie's feet were pulled through the doorway and into the hall. She heard a soft smacking and tearing sound from the outside the door.

Maureen screamed as a figured walked in the door covered in blood. It hissed as it recoiled from the noise she was making and started walking towards her. There was a new smear of blood covering his face and chin, with every step that he took a few drops of blood fell to the floor, landing on the carpet.

Mike and Marjorie came running from the meeting room. Mike yelled "What's going on out..." before he ran into the man standing in the office. Mike fell to the floor looking down at his chest and hands covered in the warm, wet liquid from the man.

The man turned towards the fallen Mike and threw himself on top of him grabbing and reaching for his neck and shoulders. Mike tried to push the man off of him; his hands kept slipping off of the man's shoulders as he pulled his way up to Mike's face.

Mike stopped struggling as he looked into the face of the man on top of him. His skin was starting to fade, from this distance Mike could almost see the individual veins just under the man's skin. His eyes were starting to turn yellow, and the colour had begun to drain from his iris. The man slowly leant forward and pressed his cheek to the side of Mike's face; Mike started to relax thinking that the drugs had finally come out of the man's system.

The man opened his mouth and grabbed Mike's cheek in his teeth tearing a large chunk off of it.

Marjorie screamed as she saw the flesh torn from his skin and the man began chewing it while bending down and taking another piece.

The man on top of Mike reached out with his hand and grabbed her ankle; a startled Marjorie recoiled from his touch, but the man did not let go, and she toppled to the ground falling into a bookshelf against the wall and hitting her head.

Mike struggled against the man as his attention changed to Marjorie, but the man was bigger and heavier than he was expecting. He could not move the man no matter how hard he tried.

Exhausted, Mike slumped down, hitting his head on the floor. The man turned his head towards Mike and bit down on the soft area of the neck just below the jaw. Blood squirted from the wound spraying upwards, hitting the ceiling and landing inches from Maureen's shoes.

Maureen, still frozen in her seat, looked at the door as movement caught her eye and watched as two more blood-covered men walked into the office and went right towards the sprawled Marjorie.

The first man, dressed in a suite had a briefcase attached to a long strap around his neck dropped to his knees by Marjorie's feet and began to bite and tear at the muscles in her legs. Marjorie did not move or flinch; Maureen had hoped that she had died when she hit the shelf when she fell.

Seeing the second man frightened Maureen the most, that was the man who had chased Maureen into the building this morning. The man looked older than she had originally thought this morning, the grey in his hair had looked blond this morning, but now she was able to see that the man was well into his 50s, and judging by his attire he was likely a runner. The man approached Marjorie and bent down to look at her face closely, the reached out and touched her cheek.

Marjorie moaned and started to roll her head sideways. She began to moan louder as the pain from her leg intensified. Her eyes shot open, and she looked directly into the eyes of the man who opened his mouth and hissed at her before diving on her and biting her shoulder.

The smell of blood began to fill the room as the strange men continued to eat and destroy the closest thing that Maureen had to a family. A tear started to roll down her cheek as the thought of her life coming to an end like this had begun to be a realisation.

A spray from the carotid artery of Marjorie hit Maureen in the face and brought her attention to the present. She looked around the room as she wiped the splatter from her face. She noticed that everyone had focused on the body in front of them and they had all forgotten about her.

Maureen started to slowly stand up in her chair, rolling it out behind her and softly hitting the wall. She froze, waiting for the men to remember that she was there.

No one moved, and Maureen sighed softly with relief.

Maureen looked around the room and took a single step forward. The heel of her shoe clicked on the floor.

Maureen hissed at herself for changing into her dress shoes already. "Shit." She whispered to herself.

She bent down and slowly undid the buckle on the strap around her ankle. She wobbled a little as her feet lost that extra bit of stability, she reached out with her hand and grabbed hold of the desk to make sure she stayed up. Her large costume jewellery ring clanged on the desk as she reached out for her balance.

She winced with anticipation as she closed her eyes. She opened one eye expecting to see the men looking at her snarling, but each of them was gorging on her co-workers. She worked quickly sliding her foot out and putting it on the cool floor, she reached over and released the clasp on the other shoe and pulled out her foot. A bead of sweat began forming on the back of her next and rolled down her back following her spine down her back between her shoulder blades.

Maureen shuddered as the cold bead ran down her body.

She reached down for the shoes, her hands shaking noticeably. Maureen steadied her hand after taking a few slow breaths.

"I can't go down like this," Maureen said to herself.

She grabbed the shoes in her hand, "There's no way I'm leaving these behind. I paid good money for them in Vegas." She thought to herself, justifying her decision to take them with her.

She stood up and looked towards the door. Her big bulky L-shaped desk was going to be a problem, a couple of months ago they put up the partition on the front of the desk to give visitors something to lean on when they arrived. With all of the stationary, papers and binders on her desk it was a cluttered mess.

"I knew I should have cleaned that earlier." She thought to herself as she eyed the mess.

Maureen took in a deep breath and exhaled, she was going to have to walk around the desk as quietly as she could. She started walking to the end of the counter and pressed her bum against the side of it and began to follow it as closely as she could.

When she got around the first corner of the desk, she ran into a problem, the man who was currently desecrating the body of Marjorie had his feet resting on the side of the desk. Maureen looked around the corner of the desk to see if there was a better way to walk around the man.

She could not see any other way around him, she pressed her back on the side of the desk and slowly started shuffling along as she tried to move as quietly as possible. Maureen let out a slow breath, trying hard not to bring any attention to herself as she tried to make it to safety.

After moving a couple of feet along the desk, the sound of the men greedily slurping on flesh and blood of her coworkers had started to get to her. She could feel the room starting to spin as she got more and more lightheaded by nausea rushing over her. She reached her hands out and grabbed hold of the top edge of the desk to brace herself and closed her eyes, wishing the noise would stop.

She clenched her eyes closed harder and waited for a minute before continuing.

After a minute the noises that were filling the room started to slow down until there was just a faint dripping sound heard in the room.

A warmth of embarrassment washed over her as she suddenly realised that the dripping sound was from her. While fighting off nausea that came over her, she was trying so hard to block out the sounds of the cannibalism that she did not realise that she had wet herself. Her feet were starting to get cold as the liquid had begun to cool off quickly as it spread over the floor.

"Oh god," Maureen whispered to herself. "How am I going to show my face in the office again after this?"

She slowly began to open her eyes and looked around the room, the two men that had been eating her co-workers were still laying on the floor, their faces covered in blood as they were slowly chewing pieces of muscle in their mouths.

"Eek!" Maureen shrieked as she realised that she was the focus of their attention now.

She turned and ran towards the door.

Her foot slipped in the puddle of urine on the floor, and she fell face first onto the floor. She stumbled to her feet as she looked over her shoulder to see both men getting to their feet now.

Maureen got to her feet and ran to the door she fumbled with the handle as she tried pushing the door open to escape.

She looked over her shoulder again as she turned the knob to the right and left to see both men coming around the corner of the desk after her. She put both hands on the door handle as she turned the knob back and forth shaking the door as she began to whimper.

The door flew open and smashed Maureen in the nose, water instantly rushing to her eyes making them water. Blood started dripping down her face and onto the floor.

Maureen ran out into the hallway, forgetting all about the door she left open.

She moved towards the stairs and started to run down when she noticed a blurry shape at the bottom of the stairs by the door. She tried to blink away the tears to focus on the form to see if it was inside or outside the building.

The growl of one of the men coming out of the office and spotting her was enough for her to make up her mind to make a run for the roof. She ran down the little hallway that ran along the stairs and took the corner and headed up the flight of stairs towards the roof.

She ran up the flights of stair and paused on the landing looking down the small hallway towards the two offices that were on this floor to see if there were any lights on, both of these businesses typically did not open until 10 in the morning most days and were never usually very busy with foot traffic.

She ran towards the first door and tried the handle.

"Damn." She sighed as she began pounding on the door. "Let me in! Please. Someone. Anyone?"

She started sobbing as she continued to pound on the door. She looked down the hallway towards the other office but decided not to try it as there was no commotion from inside of it. She turned back towards the stairs as she wiped tears and snot from her face with the sleeve of her jacket.

The first man came up the stairs and stopped as it listened for where she had gone. A sob escaped her as she saw the blood dripping from his fingers as his arms hung down by his side. He turned towards her and sneered at her.

The blood drained from her face as she realised that this was going to be the end. She started saying her goodbyes and getting prepared for the painful death that was soon to follow.

Maureen stood up and straightened her back. "No. Not today. Not like this." she said to the man sternly. The tone of her voice caused the man to suddenly stop and tilt his head sideways as he tried to see if she was going to be a threat.

She looked behind her to see the wall of a dead-end hallway. "How was this building never closed for being a death trap?" she said to herself.

She turned back towards the only exit. She looked at the man and shrugged her shoulders as she started running back towards the man screaming as loud as she could.

He reached his arms out to catch her, but as she got closer, she grabbed the expensive high heeled shoes by the toes and swung her left hand down finding one of the man's hands with the heel of the shoe impaling it. The force of her swing caused the man to turn as she ran by and swung her other arm out and hit the man squarely in the neck with the other shoe.

She jumped in excitement as she ran by the man and got to the end of the little hallway to go up the next flight of stairs. Maureen looked back at the man and saw him still standing with a shoe sticking out of his neck continuing to follow her.

"What!?" She shrieked as she ran up the stairs. "Why the fuck is he still standing up? He should be bleeding out and screaming by now."

She got to the top floor of the building and looked down the darkened hallway, there were three offices in this building; one belonged to a photographer who only used this space in the evenings, another belonged to a graphic designer who mostly worked from home, and the last office was vacant.

Maureen knew that none of these offices would be open and turned towards the little hall that led to the final set of stairs that headed to the roof.

Maureen raced to the top of the stairs and stopped when she reached the top. She listened, holding her ragged breathing as best she could to hear where the men were. She could hear them shambling and stumbling down the hallway towards the stairs banging on the locked doors as they went.

She let out a small breath as she looked at the door. The door to the roof had a simple push bar holding it closed. Until last year the door was always closed with a padlock to keep squatters and homeless from coming up during the day and sleeping there at night. Her boss had managed to talk the landlord into removing the lock so that they could use it as a lunch room, or smoking area in the summer to keep the smell of cigarettes from the front of the building to give it a better image.

Maureen put her hand on the door handle and gave it a light push. A loud crack filled the stairs and echoed down the hallway. She had forgotten how loudly the door opened.

She looked back down the stairs as she heard the men clamouring into one another as they turned around and headed towards the source of the noise.

Maureen raced out the door and threw her arm up in front of her face as the early morning light slightly blinded her after being in the dark hallways for so long.

The door slammed behind her as Maureen turned in a circle looking for anything that would give her a way to block the door and keep those men from killing her. Maureen stomped her feet on the floor as she had realised that the table and chairs that the boss had not brought back from his house after taking them home over the weekend.

There was nothing on the roof; no garbage can, no sticks, nothing she could use to block that door from opening.

Maureen turned towards the door and started to back away when she heard the first fist slam against it. She looked over her shoulder and started walking towards the corner of the building the furthest away from the door.

Another bang made Maureen jump in as she realised that all of the men were now at the door trying to get out. A tear began to roll down her face as she began to accept that this was going to be her end.

The door flew open as the men pushed against it and stumbled to the ground, the man in the back stood on the other two as he walked out and onto the roof. A smile crept across his lips, and he licked some of the congealed blood off of his face.

Maureen backed away from the man as the others began to get to their feet as well.

She looked behind them as she noticed another shadowy figure in the darkness. The figure emerged into the light; Maureen gasped as she raised her hands to her face and began to shake her head back and forth. Walking into the light with a portion of his face missing, a large chunk missing from his neck and carrying Marjorie's arm was Mike.

Tears streamed down her face as Mike raised the arm to his lips and took a bit of it. She watched as he chewed the meat from the arm, small chunks falling to the ground from his exposed jaw.

Maureen looked at what used to be her former coworker and could not understand how he was up and walking now.

"Mike!?" She shouted at him. "What's wrong with you? Why are you doing this to Marjorie?"

Mike continued his slow walk towards the shouting woman as he chewed on the arm, trying to satisfy the craving for meat that seemed never to dissipate.

Mike dropped the arm as he got closer to Maureen and put his arms out for her.

Maureen thought about running to Mike. Running into his embrace and accepting her fate from her friend. She continued to back up as she thought about what to do next.

She looked over her shoulder quickly and noticed how close to the edge of the building she was getting. She turned her attention to the men that were closing the distance when she closed her eyes and continued to walk.

As she hit the edge of the building, Maureen thought that she heard a gasp or a shout coming from somewhere behind her in the distance, there was nothing else she could do anymore.

Maureen closed her eyes as she started to fall.

The short amount of time that Maureen was falling was exhilarating and freeing; she had always been too afraid to do anything related to heights or jumping.

"Nothing I can do about it now." She thought to herself as she came to a sudden halt on the pavement.

9

Henry sprinted for about 10 minutes before he finally began to slow down to figure out which direction he was running.

"I know I ran away Water Street. But when I got to that rock I turned.... I think."

Henry wiped ways that tears that were starting to dry to his cheeks and stopped walking.

He spun in a small circle in the middle of a patch of grass in the midst of the woods. Trying to listen for any familiar noise that would tell him where he was.

Henry glanced down at his watch. "Almost 10 am, should be time for the recess bell at the elementary school to sound."

At 10 am on an average work day, he knew that he should be able to hear the production of the mill across the river, traffic driving up and down Water Street. If he was close enough to the edge of the woods, he should be able to hear the drive-thru of the coffee shop.

Henry heard nothing.

There were no birds singing. No cars were driving. Only the faint muffled cries of the monsters that have taken over the town.

He continued to spin in a slow circle, frantically looking for a sign that would point him in the right direction. Toward some safety or familiar place where he could hide.

He knew that he could not spend any time in one spot. He had a feeling that Trevor, the terrifying mechanic from Water Street was going to be following him.

Through the trees to his left, Henry saw a shimmering of light. A glimmer of hope came across Henry's face.

"Is that?... It cannot be..." Henry said to himself as he walked faster toward the light.

Henry approached the source of the shimmering light carefully and cautiously; he did not want to end up surprising any more of those monsters today.

Even this early in the morning in September, the sun could still be blinding.

As he gets closer to the edge of the protection of the woods, he has to bring his hand up to block some of the rays of the sun. Coming into the sunshine after being in the shaded comfort of the woods makes his eyes have a hard time adjusting to the light.

Henry took a step backwards once he was able to see what was before him.

All he could see was bodies slumped over on the ground.

He had walked into a war zone in the middle of an athletic complex. The sunlight had bounced off the glass siding of the building. The athletic complex, built in the last few years, with funding from the mill and the city; they had wanted a place where all the town could come to exercise together. The main building had a running track and hockey rink; there were three soccer fields, and a baseball field on this side of the building and the other end had a dog park and a place for skateboarding.

Scattered all over the fields were bodies of teenagers and college kids in team uniforms and pieces of bodies of other people, whom Henry had guessed turned into monsters and tried to eat them.

Seeing so many people in one location took it's toll on his emotions, which he had been trying to keep in check this entire time.

On the soccer field to his left, Henry could see the body of the team's goaltender in a few pieces in the back of the net and all over the field, he could see the bodies of most of the teams. There were even a few bones, or pieces of them, in the stands who were watching the game cheering for their kids.

A tear came to Henry's eye; he wiped it away quickly as if he was worried that someone was going to see him crying.

Henry looked to the right at the baseball field and seen a completely different story.

Henry could see bats, gloves, and a few uniform shirts littered around the area. He looked around the area some more hoping to get a better idea of what had happened.

Instead of a dead team, the field littered with a few bodies of people dressed in dirty clothes and an occasional limb. It was as if both teams came to the rescue of their downed teammate but did not make it in time. Henry had wondered what truly happened on that field that made it so much different than everywhere else.

Looking through the parking lot, Henry could see the same results that he saw down on Water Street; death was everywhere. Cars were overturned, on fire or left abandoned with their doors open and a bloodstain in front of the open door. Bodies were on the hoods and roofs of cars, squished between walls, barricades and a runaway car.

He stood there for a few more minutes, making sure he did not see any movement at all before he ventured out to find someplace safe. He decided that he could not go back towards the way he came in fear of running into more of the monsters that would have followed him into the woods. From here the woods curved along the fields before reaching the road on either side of him. The safety of the woods was over; Henry had to venture back out into the town.

If he was going to venture out into a large open space, Henry decided that he needed to have some weapon to defend himself. He was sure that he could outrun any danger encountered, but running is only going to carry him part of the way before he collapses from exhaustion and hunger.

"I'll probably find something to use on the baseball field. Hopefully, someone dropped a bat." He said to himself.

Henry cautiously stepped out of the woods, keeping an ear out for any new sounds.

After every step forward he would always pause to listen and watch for danger before going forward again. He had gone about a dozen steps before he was satisfied that there was no immediate threat in the area.

"It's way too quiet around here. At least I know that the monsters are gone, they certainly do not know how to keep quiet." Henry thought. "Now, there must be something I can use."

Henry started walking towards the baseball field in hopes of finding a leftover weapon that he could use.

As he stepped over and around the bodies that covered the outfield, he tried not to look at the faces of the dead. He did not want to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out who everyone was and what they used to do with their life that would make them turn into these things.

The only time he paid any attention to a body was when he came across a little old lady dressed in her Sunday best. He started to shed a little tear remembering his family that was over 350 kilometres away. With a quick glance he would have thought that she was just innocent in all of this, after a more careful look, he noticed that the woman had bits of hair and flesh all over her face and an arm from a dead person clutched in her hand. Her dress had been tattered and ripped; she looked as though she savagely attacked before she became a monster.

He reached out with his foot and nudged the woman with his toe. Her limp body rattled back and forth from the force of his foot, Henry gagged and turned away quickly. As the woman rolled back, her momentum carried her to her back, and Henry caught a glimpse of her disfigured face after someone had beaten this old lady.

He spat on the ground next to his feet, "I don't think I can handle this." He said as he wiped the spit from his mouth with the back of his hand. He absentmindedly rubbed his hand on his pants and continued.

He put the image for the old lady to the back of his mind and took a few steps forward towards the centre of the field. He hesitated near the woman and was listening for distant noises and missed the sound that was close to him.

While Henry was looking off in the distance, the eyes of the old lady snapped open after she caught a scent of him in his near panicked state. The woman reached towards his ankle.

Henry could have heard the warning growl but the old ladies vocal cords was damaged when she took a baseball bat to the throat in the battle earlier in the day.

She would have gotten up if she could, but neither her arms and her legs worked properly after being dislocated or torn off. She had to rely on using her neck muscles to pull her lifeless body along the ground. Her mouth opened and closed with eager hunger.

Henry jumped back in surprise at seeing the woman straining trying to reach him with her tongue to get a taste of him.

The woman was almost close enough to Henry reach for his shoe when he came back to reality and noticed how close she had gotten to him.

He looked at her as she pulled herself along closer to him.

Henry pulled his foot back as he took pity on the woman, "No one is safe from this are they?"

He took a couple of steps away from her and shuddered at the thought of how this woman is going to survive being unable to move.

Wiping his face on his sleeve, Henry looked off towards the end of the parking lot as he was starting to head towards the dugout when he saw someone moving in the distance. He watched the person with considerable interest as they progressed on their journey, their movements were slow and deliberate, and it made it hard to determine if it was another monster or not. They were looking directly at the ground as they walk, which could have been a teenager lost in their thoughts, oblivious to everything that was happening around them.

He put his foot down so that he could rest on the balls of his feet in case he needed to run at the slightest threat of danger.

Henry sighed with relief as the person in the distance moved to the other side of the building.

"Phew! That could have been bad." Henry said out loud.

He started forward on his journey now that the danger moved on. He tried to lift his foot and fell to the ground.

Henry looked down at his foot, trying to figure out what had happened and noticed the barred teeth of the paralysed old lady looking back at him.

Henry shouted with surprise. Off in the distance birds flew from the trees startled by the sudden noise after hours of total quiet.

He kicked out his leg trying to free himself from the woman trying to climb his leg using only her chin. Using his other foot he kicked out towards the woman as she was about to take a bite from him.

The heel of his foot connected with the woman's forehead and nose. Her nose shattered with an audible pop. Henry expected to see blood gushing from her nose and water streaming out of her eyes in a natural body reaction, something he had seen countless times watching the martial arts fights on pay-per-view.

A look of horror came across his faces as none of those things happened to the old lady. Apart from knocking her head backwards, she showed no sign or pain or agony despite being crippled.

Henry kicked at the woman again and again. Trying to find a way to make her stop moving and wanting to eat him. With one final kick, he managed to put enough power behind it to snap her neck backwards until the back of her head almost touched her shoulder blades. The lady's head lolled forward, and her chin rested on the ground beside him.

Henry let out a huge sigh of relief and rolled his shoulders backwards.

Remembering the danger, he was in just moments ago, Henry pushed himself away from the old lady before looking for any cuts and retying his shoes in a secure double knot.

Henry pushed himself up and looked around, with all of the commotions from the last few minutes he had no idea if anything or anyone had heard what was happening.

Satisfied that nothing else was moving, Henry proceeded to jog into the middle of the baseball field so that he could be closer to looking for a weapon so that he could feel a little more secure out in the open like this.

Henry approached the first dugout with caution; it was almost empty except a few bodies strewn about in various pieces.

He looked cautiously at the other dugout and noticed it was a little cleaner with only two bodies at the far end. The first body was that of a woman dressed for work laying on her face against the chain link fence. The second body was that of a younger man, maybe in his twenties wearing a baseball uniform, he was sitting with is back against the seat of the bench looking out towards the field. Behind that body was what he was seeking.

Henry ran across the infield almost at a sprint and rounded the fence when he stopped in his tracks. The lone body in the dugout was following him with its eyes. The corpse tried to open it's mouth and grown, but it was missing the lower portion of its jaw. Nothing else on the body was moving other than it's eyes, from what he's seen thus far when someone is near one of these monsters they do everything in their power to get at them.

"You're not dangerous at all are you? You little bastard." Henry said as he approached him.

Henry kicked out at the monsters feet trying to encourage him to move if he could. He jumped back instinctively.

He placed his back against the chain link fence of the dugout and slid across the wall putting as much distance between himself and the monster, just in case. The chain link fence plunked as it rubbed across his body, echoing a little around the parking lot.

On the other side, near the man's hand, Henry saw what he needed, a slightly dented and dirty Louisville Slugger aluminium baseball bat. A smile crept across the man's face as he watched him with hunger.

"Do not try anything.... or you'll regret it." Henry pointed his finger at the man who was watching his every move with keen interest.

Henry kept his eyes on the man as he slowly bent down and towards the bat. The man was looking at Henry with as much interest. His fingers brushed against the handle of the bat, but it rolled away with a noticeable ringing sound.

Henry looked down at the bat and reached toward the bat.

It was then that the man lunged at Henry, grabbing at his arm and pulling himself on Henry.

"Argh!" Henry yelled surprised at the sudden attack.

"Get off of me." He pushed the man attempting to get him to release the grip on his arm.

Henry tried to keep himself upright, pulling away from the man's grasp.

Henry realised he did not have the strength in his arm to push the man off of him, while he was off balance himself.

He looked over at the bat, which had appeared to roll further away in the scuffle.

The man was pulling himself towards Henry's chest. This guy was not interested in just taking a bite from him; he seemed to want to do more damage than that, even without his lower jaw Henry knew this man was dangerous.

Henry stretched for the bat. It was just out of his reach; his fingers caressed the round, smooth nub of the bat. It rolled slightly away at his touch and hit a rock. The rock was large enough that it caused the bat to roll back towards Henry.

"Ah ha! Got it!" Henry gasped as he firmly gripped the bat and raised it in the air.

He brought the bat down as hard as he could and hit the man squarely in the back between the shoulder blades. His body slumped down a little from the pressure of the strike, but he continued his progress.

Henry hit the man again, hitting him in the shoulder with the handle of the bat.

He had a hard time breathing as the man had climbed onto his chest and sat upright.

The man sat on top of Henry's chest, with his knee planted firmly on Henry's cheek squeezing the breath from his lungs.

Using the last of his energy and strength, Henry took one final swing at the jawless man sitting on him and connected with the side of the man's head and neck.

The shock from being hit threw the man from on top of Henry, and he stuck the side of the dugout, sliding to the ground. A trail of flesh and congealed blood showed his path.

Henry rolled onto his side and took in a large breath of fresh air. He exhaled and took another.

A quick look at the other man put fear back into Henry's heart. The man was already sitting up and crawling towards Henry again.

Henry stood up in the dugout and was still panting trying desperately to catch his breath.

The man began to stand up. Henry kicked out at him catching him in the shoulder. The man fell over backwards while trying to grab hold of Henry's foot.

Henry stood over the man and placed his foot on his chest.

"How does this feel?" He said as he stood on the man's chest. Henry heard all of the air forced from his lungs. A slight gurgle escaped the man's throat. "It really sucks, when you're trying to breathe but you just cannot."

"Uh!" Henry grunted as he swung the bat as his downed opponent. Catching him squarely in the ribs, shattering some with an audible crack.

"Do not. Mess. With. Me." He kept swinging at the man hitting him all over his body. In the ribs, the shoulders, the head.

With every swing, Henry's arms grew tired, and still, the man continued to reach and grab for Henry.

Henry screamed one final grunt as the bat connected with the site of the man's head and caved it in. Blood squirted from the hole and across the cement floor of the dugout.

Henry pulled the bat from inside the man's head and wretched at the sight of brains on the baseball bat.

He turned and threw up a little on the wooden bench. What little was left in Henry's stomach was now on the bench and dripping onto the floor. The dripping of bile and stomach acid masked the scent of death that was radiating from the baseball field.

Henry dropped the baseball bat from his hands and started to walk towards the exit of the dugout.

"I might need that later." He said.

Turning around and seeing the man that he killed, Henry began to feel a little light-headed at the sight of him. He still could not believe that he took a man's life. How could he explain that to the police? The man was not much of a threat; he was missing his jaw after all.

Henry bent down to pick up the bat, being careful to keep an eye on the man's lifeless body. "You never know when someone you think is dead is going to reach out and grab you. What else can happen today?"

He grabbed hold of the handle of the bat and picked it up.

Turning the bat around in his hand and winced at the sight of the blood and brain matter on the end of it. Henry took the end of the bat and wiped the blood and brains on the shirt of the dead man.

Henry walked out of the dugout and back onto the field.

He looked around for a place to rest; he was getting tired and hungry by this point. After using up all of his energy fighting off the dead man, he could use a little rest.

Off in the distance, a few streets over Henry saw something useful.

Three blocks over and on the other side of the inner-city highway were the Wholesale store. A modern day fortress in times such as these. When most stores opted for the modern aesthetics of big windows showcasing the merchandise the Wholesale store chose to hide it's merchandise behind barred windows and doors only allows those with a membership access to its vast collection of items. The main entrance that was typically closed with a heavy metal gate most of the time. The store did not open until 10:30, so he knew that he had time to get over there and hope that the security was still in place.

Henry could not think of a better place to go and hide out and get a little rest and food. He was pretty sure they had their generator too, so they might even have a bit of power.

Henry started off towards the store, unsure if he should take the direct route and cross the sometimes extremely busy highway or take the safer path along the sidewalks. The safer way thought Henry should be the direct one, less chance of running into these monsters.

He walked towards the parking lot.

Off in the distance, the mechanic altered his course and began his journey up a little hill towards the noises that he was hearing. A dozen of his friends who had been hearing the same noises turned to follow him as well.

10

Interlude: A Team Sport

The Little Ridge Midget 'AAA' baseball team was in Merton for the first game of the new baseball league that started over the summer. The fledgeling league currently features single division with six teams spread that range in skill and financial backing. The Little Ridge team was from the small town that borders Merton but has the financial backing of the paper mill, whose president grew up and still lives in Little Ridge.

The town of fewer than 2000 citizens does not have the financial standing to be able to construct their baseball facility so when the league added the city to the league, the president of the paper mill, Mr John Hendricks, went to the council of Merton to ask for assistance. The town agreed to let the team practice and play in their new recreation area just off of Commerce Drive.

The team is made up mostly of players who currently work for the Hendricks paper mill on the other side of the river. Many of the players on the team are former high school athletes who chose the working life instead of going to college to try to get into the big leagues.

The only exception to this was Michael Bloomfield who played professionally for ten years before a knee injury derailed his career and forced his retirement. He moved back to Merton and took a job at the mill where he's been the night shift supervisor for the past five years. When the opportunity to play in a semi-amateur league came up, Michael could not pass up the opportunity to bring his experience as a player to other people who love the game as much as he did.

At 8:45 in the morning the Little Ridge team was just pulling into the parking lot of the civic centre to take the field for their last practice before the game that evening. Michael was looking over his notebook talking to his assistant coach about final roster changes to make the most out of the team before the match started.

Michael gave one last instruction to his assistant before taking the field for practice. "Do not forget, if Wayne is 10 seconds late; he's not playing for the first six innings. I do not care if he's the son of the frigging Queen. Late is late."

Michael took his bum knee out to centre field and assumed his position while his team of assistant coaches ran through the practice drills together before everyone else took the field.

The layout of the practice field was a little different than what Michael used in the past. The field was essentially a regulation size little league field with a spray painted back wall to allow for the size that the Little Ridge team needed to play. When the little league team played, they had a group of volunteers along the "wall" to determine if the ball crossed before or after it got caught. There was a line spray painted on the ground that they used as well, just passed the wall was the woods that ran through the middle of town.

Despite not being able to play in the major leagues anymore Michael was still, without a doubt, the fastest runner on the team. The best players they could find from the shallow pool were overweight, chronic smokers. Looking at the team as they took the field, the best Michael was hoping for at this point was winning a game.

Michael shook his head at the thought. "Come on man. You gotta have more faith in the team than this."

Michael looked over to his left and noticed that the junior varsity soccer team was taking the field for an impromptu practice, or maybe it was a game. Parents were sitting in the bleachers now too, bundled up in a blanket with a hot cup of coffee warming up their hands. He was never sure what was a game or practice with the soccer teams, they always had fans in the stands and played their hearts out every time.

He envied their enthusiasm for the game and was jealous of their stamina. "If only I could get 10% of their passion into some of these guys, and we would be OK this year." Michael smiled as he looked back to the baseball diamond.

The local kids usually watched the teams practices from the woods since they thought they would have to pay money to watch just like the regular games.

A loud noise from the woods behind him caught his attention and Michael casually looked over the shoulder. "Damn kids," he muttered under his breath.

"Hey! You can come up on the bleachers you know!" He shouted over his shoulder as the pitcher lobbed the first pitch to the batter.

CRACK! The sound of the bat making contact with the ball caught his attention, and he turned to see the ball fly over his head and slam into a tree.

Michael whistled and tipped his hat to the morning shift foreman, Jim Jones, who stood watching the ball instead of running around the bases.

Michael turned back toward the woods to see a pair of faces staring back at him. The pair of dirty faces looked at him unblinking and started to emerge from the cover of the woods and walk towards him.

Instinctively Michael began to walk backwards. He looked at the figures with pity and stopped moving away.

The man on the left was the stereotypical definition of a homeless man, with long, unkempt hair and a beard that would put the men from Duck Dynasty to shame. His clothes were torn and tattered in the knees and elbows; they appeared covered in mud and grime.

The man on the right was dressed in a tailored suit and covered in as much dirt and mud as the other man. His hair was slightly ruffled, the gel he used was obviously incredibly resilient. The only thing that stood out about this man was the blood stains covering his face and unbuttoned shirt.

From forty feet away Michael could smell both men, it was a stench that he would never get out of his nose.

"When was the last time you had a bath?" He asked the men. He waved his hand in front of his nose. "Phew."

Michael had not noticed the man in the suit drop something in the field as he made his way through the brush. Michael was too busy seeing the other ten men and women emerging from the woods behind them to pay that much attention if he was, he would have noticed the man drop a small hand.

"What's going on, coach?" Joey Loraine, a mechanic from the shipping unit, said as he came running over from left field.

Michael tried to wave him off once he heard the footsteps approaching from his right.

"Hey, coach. I said 'what's going..." Joey looked past his coach and stopped in his tracks. "... W-w-who are all these people?"

Joey could feel the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stand as his level of fear began to rise as more people stumbled out of the woods towards his field of players.

Michael turned his head towards Joey and whispered, "I do not know what these guys want, but you might need to get everyone's attention quietly, this could end badly."

"Uh, sure," Joey said, sounding relieved to get away from these strange people.

With that said he turned towards the infield and began trying to get the attention of the other players on the field all huddled around the pitcher's mound.

Michael took a few steps backwards as the group of people, about twenty in total, had all emerged from the woods and began to move towards him. He turned his head towards the other field where a small group of teenagers had gathered to play a game of ball in the smaller field, none of them had noticed the group of strangers.

He turned his attention back towards the group and was startled to discover that every single one of them was focused on him. A cold sweat ran down his back.

The first person to emerge completely was the homeless man that Michael had seen earlier, now that he was through the brush Michael could see more of the man that made him wonder if he should be running.

Scars, bruises, and fresh cuts covered the man's face; the dried and congealed liquid was dripping from his chin. The front of his shirt was wet, not with mud like he formerly thought, but with the same blood-like residue that was on his face. His jacket was torn and slashed; Michael could see skin and bone in the holes in his clothes. From his time playing professional ball, he knew that when you bone was visible there was nothing but agonising pain to go along with it, there was no pain on this man's face. There was no emotion at all on his face. With most addicts, you instinctively know where in their high they are by the emotions on their face.

Michael's heart was beating so hard in his chest that the only thing he could hear at that moment was the thumping in his ears. He tried to take a few deep breaths to calm his nerves, at his age, he knew that a heart rate this high could lead to a heart attack. His new group of friends did not look like the kind that would be willing to dial 911 for him.

After a few breaths, he could hear again.

"What was that?" Michael asked himself.

He put his baseball glove up to his ear to use it as a receiver to hear the noise better. He turned his body slightly trying to locate the source when he finally picked it up he was looking directly at the homeless man. The only comparison that Michael could make was the sound that a dentist drill made as an unskilled dentist tried to get a filling from a tooth.

Michael's eyes opened wider as he heard more and more of the people making that same noise as they all walked toward him.

He began to move away from the group advancing on him, his heart beating in his chest again. Michael began to hyperventilate as he walked. His heart was beating faster and harder, trying to pump adrenaline through his limbs to get him to move faster.

Joey reached the infield and began to quietly shout at the rest of the players on the team.

"Hey! Guys!" He stammered as he tried to find his voice through his fear.

Unable to get their attention Joey pulled the glove off of his hand and threw it toward the group of players huddled around the pitcher giggling.

The glove slammed to the ground by Edward's leg. He and Scott jumped.

"What the hell!?" Scott shouted.

The rest of the team looked up and towards the edge of the infield where Joey was standing with his shaky hand pointing back towards centre field.

In centre field, Michael continued to peddle slowly back, trying to find a way to communicate with these people to find a way to escape any injury. The only thing that he had for a weapon was his glove, and that was laying in the middle of the group of people and getting further away with every step that he took. Michael could feel his level of fear rising, he could begin to taste bile in his mouth, and a sharp searing pain shot through his body originating in his chest, stopping him in his tracks. The pain hit him like a freight train, and he doubled over, falling over landing face first on the grass in the field while the large group of people approached him.

Michael could not understand what was happening to cause these people to behave the way that they were. The look of desire, hunger, and hatred that he could see in their eyes while their faces showed no emotions at all.

"Th-th-the coach n-n-needs us." Joey stammered again as he dropped to his knees on the rock covered infield and began to pant. Up until this point, Joey's fear of confrontation had only ever been an issue when dealing with marital issues with his wife, his supervisor, or even the waitress at the diner who was always screwing up his order at lunch. Joey found himself unable to keep his balance, catch his breath, or see clearly; he was sure he was going to die of fright as he felt the breeze of the rest of the team running to aid their coach.

"Come on dude." Edward said as he shook Joey to get his attention."Let's help coach." He took hold of Joey's elbow and helped him to his feet. Edward turned and left in a hurry to join the rest of the team.

Joey took a couple of deep breaths and found his vision began to clear. As he focused back on the outfield that was when he noticed the coach fall forward clutching his chest.

He gasped in surprise and found himself running into the chaos as the homeless man bent over Michael and knelt beside him.

Scott, who was normally the accountant for the company, was always the rowdy person in any group. His typical Friday night involved going to Sally's Pub downtown and drinking until he felt like getting into a fist fight with someone. Every time there was a martial arts event on the television he knew he missed his calling, "Where was this sport 20 years ago when I was fighting in alley's all the time?" He would ask the same question any time given the opportunity.

Scott ran towards the group with a smile on his face as he clenched his fists and pounded them together.

"You picked the wrong person to fuck with," Scott yelled as he approached the men huddled around the coach.

Close behind Scott was Edward the company's machinist and second baseman. He gripped the aluminium baseball bat in his hand as he wondered what Edward was going to do with it when he got to his coach.

The only thing the team noticed while they advanced on the group of people milling around the field was the few people huddled over their coach, touching him, ripping at his clothes.

"Hey! You! Assholes! You get away from our coach." Scott yelled as he closed the distance.

Seven of the closest members of the group snapped their heads in the direction of the sound and changed their course to Scott as he arrived. Somewhere hidden under the muscles that no longer worked properly, hid a deadly smile.

Edward was close enough to Scott to reach out and touch him, he was almost their fastest base runner, he approached the men with a full head of steam like it was the bottom of the 9th, and he was the winning run coming around 3rd base. He could not let them touch his coach like this. He looked at these men like they were less than nothing, and he planned to show them how he felt about it.

Edward tripped over his own feet with shock as he saw a lovely dressed woman lean up from inspecting Michael as he lay on the ground and pull a large piece of intestine out of his stomach as she looked around the field. The shock of seeing it happen in front of his eyes, and not on some cheesy horror movie he rented from the video place downtown.

Edward skidded to a stop and stared in disbelief as he watched the woman begin chewing as she stood up and started to walk towards him slowly.

Scott lowered his shoulder as he got closer to his fallen coach. "I'll get you out of there coach!" He called as he slammed into three of the people bent over the body of his beloved coach.

The impact that Scott made of the few people hovering around Michael did not go unnoticed by the rest of the group as they quickly moved to surround him.

As Scott lay on top of a few of these people his anger flared to a level he had not achieved since his younger days, he let loose with a torrent of punches, gouges, and elbows that would have rendered any average human being unconscious for days, but these did not seem like regular people.

After delivering a devastating punch that dislocated the jaw of the man closest to him Scott slowly began to pull his arm back thinking that this man had taken enough of a beating. The man turned his head and bit down on his arm pulling a chunk of flesh off with it in the process. Scott screamed at the man and pulled his arm away quickly ready to deliver another blow to the man. He tried to force his hand through this man's skull but found that he could not move his arm.

Scott turned his head to the right to see who was preventing him from hitting this man; he saw several snarling faces of the group who had his arm in their grasp. They fell upon him in a mob and began tearing at his flesh as he writhed in agony.

A scream tried to leave his lips, but it quieted when a hand reached into his mouth and removed his tongue.

The rest of the team came slamming into the herd of people milling around the coach and their pinned down teammate and tried to force their way through the crowd. Each member of the team met a similar fate after being knocked to the ground and then attacked by several people at once.

Still not believing what he was seeing, Edward rolled onto his back and sat on his behind and watched the events unfold before him.

Joey came to a stop beside Edward.

Bodies of his teammates littered the field before him, each being beaten and eaten by this group that walked out of the woods. There was a dozen fully grown men who will never get to see their loved ones again. The only person standing in the field was the lady dressed in the suit dragging a piece of the coaches intestine as she walked towards them.

"What the hell just happened?" he asked.

Edward looked at Joey, "I have no idea man."

Edward looked at the lady advancing towards him, and then back to Joey. He slowly began to stand up and grasped the baseball bat in his hands, tightening his grip.

"I'm sorry man," Edward said to Joey as he knelt beside him.

"What for?" Joey asked as Edward swung the bat towards Joey's knees.

The force of the swing had enough force to shatter his knee caps causing him to collapse suddenly to the ground in a crippled heap.

Joey's scream pierced the air. The people in the parking lot and other fields suddenly became aware of what was happening on the baseball field.

Edward leant down to Joey, "It's you or me, and I have to get home to protect my kids. Who do you have to take care of?"

Edward took one look over his shoulder and ran off the field and towards his parked SUV next to the dugout.

Joey tried to understand what his friend had just done to him. He wiped at the tears streaming down his face and tried to find where Edward had gone.

"Edward!" Joey cried out, "Do not leave me here! You cannot do this to me."

Joey listened for a response, hoping the Edward was coming back with help to get him out of here.

The only sounds that he heard were the sudden sound of a vehicle starting and the constant chomping and slurping sounds coming from 30 feet away.

Joey screamed out in agony again as he tried to stand. He collapsed back to the ground with a thud, landing on his hands and knees, sending another shock wave of pain through his body.

Joey heard a rustling sound close by and remembered about the lady coming towards Edward when he arrived in the field. Joey rubbed his face on his shoulder, trying to wipe away some of the tears. He squinted his eyes and saw that there was a shape coming towards him.

Joey began to crawl away from the approaching figure and move towards the safety of his car or the dugout. "There must be someone out there who can help me." Joey thought as he fought through the amount of pain that he had to accept while he put weight and pressure on his injured joints.

After a few minutes of adrenaline-fueled movement, the sudden urge to vomit washed over Joey as he tried to regain his composure and focus on his task. The world around him became blurry and slowly grew darker as his vision began to fail.

He felt a few fingers brush by his lower back trying to grab hold of his belt and Joey sought to scramble as fast as he could. He started to hear the laboured and ragged breathing of the person in pursuit of him. Joey looked forward again and saw that he was just a few feet shy of a dugout, and inside it was his duffel bag with the new revolver he bought for protection after being assaulted after work last year.

Joey continued his crawl, knowing that he was almost within the confines of the dugout.

He rounded the corner of the dugout and looked over his shoulder to see how close this person had gotten when he forgot that two stairs were going into the dugout. His entire body was thrown to the ground dislocating his shoulder. He groaned in pain as he pulled himself along with his other arm. Determined to make it to his duffel bag just inches away.

Joey stretched and reached into his bag as the body of the other person fell the stairs as well, landing on top of his dislocated arm, popping it back into place. Joey roared in pain as he felt the teeth of the person sink into the soft flesh of his neck.

Cold hands reached around and grabbed his face, pulling on his nose and jaw. He could feel the pressure in his neck building as the person pulled harder trying to get closer to Joey's flesh.

He begins frantically searching through his bag, thinking that all of this was for nothing when his fingers find the cold steel of the barrel and wrap around it. He quickly pulled the gun from the bag and pointed it over his shoulder as the teeth of the person on his back began to sink into his back again.

Joey put his finger on the trigger, closed his eyes, and squeezed it lightly.

The force of taking a bullet at close range was enough to push the body back down Joey's body, the only issue for Joey was that the person did not or could not let go of his face.

As the bullet impacted the person's face, the sudden pressure caused their muscles to spasm and squeeze tighter. Joey's head snapped over his shoulder as he looked at the expression of the middle-aged woman on his back and then his head hit the floor soon after as something had let go.

The sound of the gunshot was so loud in the stillness of the early morning, Joey's ears rang for what seems to be an eternity before he began to hear some of the sounds around him.

He shrugs off the body lying sprawled on his back and tries to roll into a sitting position.

Joey looks to his right and sees the body of the lady in the suit laying face down with a large gaping hole in her head, a thick pool of blood is forming around the wound. She's still clutching the intestine that she pulled out of Michael's body.

A little movement catches Joey's eye, and he looks back out into the field to see the rest of the strangers begin to stand up and walk towards different parts of the compound.

A lone tear rolled down his cheek as he sat staring out at the bodies of his teammates. "Why did it have to happen to these good people?" He tried to say out loud; only sputtering noise came out.

Joey looked over at the woman and noticed that she now had something else in her other hand. He looked at it and put his hand to his face, where his jaw used to be. A scream started to form in the remnants of his throat. The shock of it all still has not let him feel any of the pain.

He looked out at the body of his coach laying motionless in the middle of the field, surrounded by the brave souls who tried to save his life today.

Joey jumps from his thoughts as his coach suddenly begins to sit up and look around the field, the colour drained from his face, sagging chunks of flesh hanging on by nothing at all. He watches his coach stand up, and begin the slow, lumbering walk towards the parking lot.

The colour slowly began to run from Joey's face as he watches in horror as the rest of his team began to stand up one after another, each heading in the direction of the remainder of the group.

A sense of peace and exhaustion wash over Joey as he looks down at his hand and the gun within his grasp. He tries to find the strength and energy to raise the weapon and end the pain that he's feeling.

Joey blinks and sees that his team is 10 feet further from where they were.

He slowly begins to close his eyes as exhaustion, shock, and blood loss has finally caught up with him.

Joey's final thoughts are of his mother, who had passed in the nursing home where she was living less than two weeks ago.

11

Henry walked across the baseball field towards the other dugout; he was no longer in much of a hurry anymore. Killing that man had taken a toll on him, he had already stopped to vomit in the dirt and on the third base before he made it to the fence.

He reached for the fence and wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the links and rested his head on his forearm. Henry let the baseball bat collapse on the ground beside him with a hollow clank.

"What have I done?" Fresh tears started streaming down his face. "I just killed a man..." Henry spat on the ground to his right.

"How can I live with myself?" he continued to sob. "I cannot spend the rest of my life in jail."

In the distance, a loud bang interrupted the silence and shook Henry from his momentary lapse in attention.

He reaches up and wipes the tears away from his face while looking in the direction of the noise.

"It sounded like the noise came from up Commerce Drive. I wonder what's going on?" Henry looked towards the sound and took a few steps to see if he could see more further away.

Another explosion, this one louder than the previous, shook the ground violently and threw Henry backwards. The world around him is spinning, and a bright flash of light has temporarily blinded him. The world is silent again for him, and it is quickly replaced by a high pitched buzzing noise.

"Dammit!" He said as he tried to push himself up off the ground. "I do not want to know what's going on over there anymore. Screw that, I'm crossing the highway."

Henry reached down and picked up the baseball bat and held it up to look for the cleanest spot on the barrel and placed it on his shoulder as he stumbled out of the baseball field. To anyone watching him from a distance, he would have easily been confused for one of the monsters or blindingly drunk in the middle of the day. At this point, Henry was not sure which one was worse.

He walked across the parking lot full of empty and abandoned cars, dead bodies and a strange collection of shoes that he just could not comprehend. Henry stopped and looked at this strange sight. Piled beside the back tire of one of the empty hatchbacks was a small pile of mismatched shoes and sneakers.

"What was someone trying to do?" Henry glanced at it sideways and kicked at the pile of shoes as he stood there.

Henry's heart melted and was instantly full of regret.

Buried underneath the pile of shoes was a red-haired doll dressed in a purple outfit. The child's doll, damaged during the happenings earlier in the day, was missing an arm, and part of her leg was broken off. That did not stop some little girl from taking the time, in the midst of all of the chaos, to give her beloved doll a proper burial.

Henry, filled with tears, bent down and did his best to recreate the careful pile of shoes that the previous owner had painstakingly stacked in a show of remorse and sadness.

He stood, looking at the shoes one more time, trying to remember the proper way to give a blessing from when he attended church when he was younger. Satisfied with what he remembered, he said a little prayer.

"God, I do not know if you're out there looking after everyone today, but if you could stop everything you're doing and keep this little girl safe for a while longer I would be forever grateful."

Henry turned and started to walk away.

"Oh right," Henry turned around again, "Amen."

He continued his progress across the parking lot, carefully checking around the corners of cars as he approached them to make sure that he was not going to be ambushed by another supposedly dead body.

"That's only going to happen once today," Henry said as the memory of the dugout came flashing back to him.

Everybody that Henry saw on his slow progress across the expansive parking lot was either missing a limb, portions of their stomach, or the head. And there was no way someone could still be alive with that much damage to their body.

Nearing the end of the parking lot, Henry began to get a little more nervous. He was no longer close to the safety of the forest, getting to the trees now was going to be a sprint of at least two minutes, and that was a pace that he could not keep up with how his body was currently feeling now that he was empty after vomiting so many times.

On the bright side, the hearing in his ears was starting to get better, much of the ringing and disorientation he initially felt had passed. The only thing he was still feeling was a nagging headache from the shockwave and explosion when his head slammed into the ground.

Henry took the time to look around the area to make sure that he was not being followed now that he was entering an area that was fully exposed. To his right, all Henry could see was the far end of Commerce Street with a couple of car dealerships, a coffee shop and an old run down motel.

Directly behind him was the parking lot and the playing fields full of dead bodies and destruction.

To his left, was where the worry was. No more than 100 meters away was the side of the Civic Centre. Most of the cars in this parking lot would belong to people who would have been inside the centre watching their kids have their weekly hockey practice. Henry could not imagine the number of people trapped and dead inside that building.

The edge of the Civic centre went right to the sidewalk, allowing the people arriving via bus to gain access to the facilities quickly. Henry could not see around the building to know what was down there and how many monsters were ready to ambush him.

Henry knew that this end of Commerce Street contained mostly fast-food places, coffee shops, a couple of hotels and a strip mall full of women's clothing stores. "At this time of day, Commerce Street should be a complete and total zoo of people and cars. Where is everyone?"

He took a few steps beyond the safety of the last line of parked cars and carefully peered down the road looking for any signs of danger that might be hidden by the building.

What he saw down there should not even be possible if Henry had not seen it for himself. Cars littered Commerce Drive, they were upside down, up on the sidewalks, wrapped around telephone poles. There were two cars through the front window of the coffee shop; he did not think the shop was big enough to fit two cars, let alone ones stacked on top of one another.

Next to the Hilton chain hotel was the billowing smoke from the gas station. There was not much left of the gas station, and the hotel was missing most of the front half of the building. Henry could see sheets, curtains, and towels fluttering in the wind was those rooms were now exposed. A couple of beds and dressers were piled in the parking lot on top of a minivan, most likely having fallen out of rooms after the explosion settled.

Henry shuddered to think what that explosion would have felt like if he had been where he was standing now, being sheltered by the Civic centre probably absorbed much of the shock but had still managed to throw him on his ass.

"Wow. I could have died from that explosion."

He continued to gaze up the street looking for more people, hoping that someone survived that blast, or would be out looking for new shelter.

The one thing Henry did notice when he looked up the road, despite all of the evidence of death and destruction – the broken glass, blood stains, and pieces of limbs and flesh –? was the total lack of bodies on the ground.

He took a few steps out into the road, cautiously looking both ways before stepping out onto the pavement. He continued to glance all around him, trying to spot any danger before it spotted him.

Being out in the open like this made Henry nervous, constantly being on the lookout while he crossed the road made him anxious and he sprinted the last few meters across the road and into the parking lot of the car dealership.

A nervous Henry dashed behind a row of cars and looked at the parking lot for any sign of movement. He began to breathe slowly to try and catch his breath.

Henry leant over and placed his face on the pavement. The pavement felt cold on his face as the sun had yet to reach this part of the parking lot. He used his new position to look underneath the cars to see if he could see anyone hiding by the cars.

He took a few deep breaths trying to find a way to get himself to relax and calm down. After a few more breaths he was beginning to feel calm and relaxed. He took a few more deep breaths and closed his eyes as he exhaled.

Henry snapped his eyes open and sat upright.

"I cannot get this relaxed." He slapped himself in the face to wake up. "I'll die if I fall asleep out here."

Henry slowly got to his feet and stretched his back out.

"I cannot wait for all of this to be over. I'm going to get the most expensive massage package from the spa and spend an entire week there." He smiled as he groaned with relief as the joints in his back and shoulders cracked.

"Let's get to the store, Betty." Henry held the bat out in front of him so that he could look at it while he spoke to it. A brief look of terror crossed his face as he finally understood what he just did. "Did I just talk to the bat like it was my best friend? I think I've been through too much today."

Henry picked up the pace a little as he continued towards the back of the parking lot of the used car dealer so that he could cross the highway.

As Henry got further into the parking lot, his concern for his safety slowly disappeared as more of the roadway became visible. All four lanes of the highway looked abandoned for years. There was debris, refuse, and dried blood covering the asphalt as if an art student had decided to make a large exhibition in the most inconvenient location they could find.

Henry dropped his bat and with a wide-eyed and expressionless face, walked up to the fence and laced his fingers through the links.

"What happened up here?" Henry said, the noise broken the silence of the highway and several animals scurried into the nearby bushes frightened.

Looking up and down the road, he saw there was not a single thing that did not appear destroyed. A white pickup truck was resting on its roof flattened by a green minivan what was now perched precariously on the truck as if it was put there on purpose. The cab of the truck was crushed flat, and the windows of the minivan were destroyed, and the passenger side door was almost off its hinges, a tattered green jacket is blowing in the soft breeze caught in the seat belt.

The only car that appeared to be untouched was a little red sports car with a soft-top retractable roof, the kind of car that divorcees drive or middle aged men who are going through one of their mid-life crisis'. The top of the car was down, and there did not appear to be any damage to the car. It was not until Henry looked closer at the car did he realised that the car was originally grey and that the red was blood splattered all over it.

Henry shivered after seeing a mental image of what must have happened for that much blood to be in the car.

Cars and trucks sat motionless on a stretch of road that was one of the busiest within the closest four counties. It was hard to imagine the last time that this road was as quiet as it currently was.

A pungent smell of rotten meat wafted across the highway and hit Henry directly in the stomach. Henry gagged and turned sideways as if to vomit, fortunately for him there was nothing left in his stomach for him to expel. That also meant that he got to gag and dry heave some more.

Henry turned back towards the source of the smell and saw an 18-wheeler transport truck upside down in the valley of the median. At least, he thought it was upside down. The wheels of the trailer appeared to be on the roof if there was a roof left. The contents of the refrigerated truck were all over the highway. Cartons of eggs and bags of milk were broken open and rotting in the early morning sun; the sight was just as terrible as the smell.

Looking at the tire tracks on the road provided no answers as to any cause of the mayhem that he saw before him. Skid marks were swerving all over the road. Some were easy to follow as the tire tracks ended where a car was; while other tire tracks ended where there was nothing to be found even close by to the track.

What Henry saw on the highway did not give him much hope for finding anything other than monsters past this point.

He tried to spit onto the ground beside him, trying to get the taste of bile and vomit from his mouth. What spit that he could manage clung to his lips and would not fall to the ground; his body knew how precious this water was right now.

Henry took a couple of deep breaths, hoping that nausea would fade away once he calmed down.

A single tear rolled down his cheek.

He absentmindedly wiped the tear away, quietly wondering if he was crying for the people who have died here or if it was his tear ducts reacting to the dry heaving that he had just finished doing.

Henry straightened up and looked at the barricade before him. Running to his left and right was 4 kilometres of high-density chain link fence. The barrier was a good 9 or 10 feet high with a roll of barbed wire along the top. The fence was erected about ten years ago after some car accidents caused damage to the car dealerships and chain stores along the highway. The barbed wire was added a few years ago as an aid to help prevent robberies as some thieves were scaling the fence and dashing across the highway to evade capture.

He stood and looked at the fence in either direction looking for any damage that might make getting to the store a little safer and less dangerous. Any of the cars that he saw that were close to the fence did no damage to it.

"Well, I guess that's a benefit to paying the extra for the high-quality steel fencing. Maybe I should have done that too?" Henry thought about the damage that was done to his fence over the years by the kids in the neighbourhood. "Might have saved me money in the long run."

Henry looks carefully in each direction, taking a few steps backwards to gain a better perspective on his current problem, which way to go to get around the fence. To his right was a continuation of the parking lot for the car dealership and past that was another car dealership, but going in that direction would take him further from the Wholesale store. To his left, was the service building for the car dealership, some independent stores and a strip mall, this would bring him closer to the store but would also bring him closer to any potential danger as well.

As Henry thought about which direction to go, he was caught up in his thoughts and did not hear the faint sound of shuffling that was coming from behind him.

12

Henry finally snapped out of his daze, turned around in a frenzy.

"What. The. Fuck!?" is all Henry could get out before he fell into the fence from turning around too fast.

He reached out behind him with both hands and was able to catch a few of the links to keep himself from falling to the ground. The baseball bat fell with a loud clang that shook inside of his head as it struck the cement footing for the chain link support. It rolled away from Henry and under the front of a pickup truck.

Coming around the far corner of the service centre closest to the road is a group of a dozen monsters that he has been trying to avoid encountering all day. After his last attack on the baseball field, Henry is not sure he's ready to deal with another.

The creatures that walked towards him did not look like anything that he had seen earlier in the day. They did not look like they were in a war like the others. Instead they looked like they were any other person, except a few who had dried blood on their chin.

Leading the pack was a woman dressed in a business suit, still carrying what looked like a briefcase. "I wonder if that lady was a banker or a real estate agent?" Henry wondered, "I guess it does not matter anymore."

Henry could not understand that this group was just as dangerous as the ones he had seen downtown. Grouped in with the banker were a half dozen teenagers, most of them still wearing their backpacks from school; there were a few men dressed in their finest business casual outfits and a couple of younger people dressed in their work uniforms for the fast food restaurants up the road.

Nothing was threatening in this group. Henry could not understand how he could feel so terrified right now.

As the group got halfway across the side of the building, Henry could begin to hear the groaning that they were making. The closer the group got the more noise they started to make and the more animated their movements became.

The banker lady raised one of her arms and almost pointed at Henry, she then took her other arm and gestured to her right. At this point the noise that she made was indescribable, Henry covered his ears and slammed his eyes shut as the frequency of the sound was at the breaking point of his sanity giving him a terrible headache.

The noise began to fade, and Henry opened his eyes and looked up towards his attackers. The group were now within 200 yards of him, and Henry started to get worried.

He started watching the group a little closer and noticed that part of the pack was breaking off and heading towards his left, in the direction that the banker pointed.

"What the fuck are they doing?" He said out loud. "I have to get out of here."

He looked around on the ground in front of him for the baseball bat and finally noticed it sticking out from underneath the front bumper of the red pickup truck in front of him.

Henry scrambled to the ground and clawed at it, trying to grab the handle of the bat. He looked around and could begin to see the feet of the group getting closer when he was looking through the wheels of the car.

He took a deep breath to calm himself down to think.

"I could crawl under the truck and over the next one, and then let them walk past me. While those things are distracted, I could..." Henry stopped talking as one of the members of the breakaway pack bent down to look under the truck. Once it spotted Henry looking at him, he dropped to the ground and began to crawl towards Henry, flashing his teeth and biting at the air.

"Well, that settles that then." Henry grabbed the handle of the baseball bat and stood up. "I've probably only got a minute to get ahead of them before they're here."

Henry started jogging towards his right, away from the breakaway pack and towards the corner of the service centre that he was going to try to avoid.

He glanced over his shoulder as he passed by the monsters and noticed that the second group changed its course and was now heading towards him again.

Henry slowed down his jog to a fast walk when he was behind the service centre; he did not want any more surprises coming out at him.

"The next lot has those few office buildings; they should be pretty safe for me to hide. If I can get far enough ahead of them, they won't know where I went."

Henry had a new plan; he was going to hide from this group of people until they had moved on and started to bother someone else.

The back of the service centre was a generic building that contained only a single entrance door with no door handle and a loading dock. "That's probably only an emergency exit, which might be a little bit safer if I had more time to break in."

While the building would have been perfect for finding some weapons to defend himself the front of the building was all glass for showcasing the latest models and would not be safe for very long once these monsters figured out he was in there.

Next to the door were a couple of garbage bins. These bins had the covers locked shut, to keep people from putting in their garbage late at night and costing the business more money. It is also a deterrent for homeless people to go looking for recyclables and sleeping.

"Oh shit!" Henry came to an abrupt stop.

Coming around the far corner of the building was Trevor, the mechanic from downtown with a few more of his friends.

"How did you get up here?" Henry looked frantically for an escape route.

He turned around in enough time to notice that the group he had been running from had come around that corner of the building and was stopped looking at him.

He looked at Trevor and noticed that his group stopped as well.

Both groups of people had stopped and seemed to be having an unspoken war about who had found him first.

Henry lifted the baseball bat and placed it on his shoulder and assumed the proper baseball stance he had learned when he was a kid playing little league. He began to make a make a slow circle in the middle of both groups of people.

Henry looked out across the highway towards his destination that he was probably never going to make it to; he looked at Trevor and his group wondering why he had not started moving. Henry took a quick look at the loading dock wondering if he could make any last stand there, he made a note of the garbage bins as he could stand on them and try to get out of reach. His turn then took him back to the banker's group of people, and Henry could tell that this was going to end soon as many members of this group begun to sway back and forth as if they were waiting for permission to go.

A sudden idea popped into Henry's mind, and he quickly turned back towards the garbage bins.

"They have wheels!" Henry almost squealed with delights, "I hope they're empty."

Henry made a run for the garbage bins just as both groups started moving towards him.

He glanced to both sides as he moved seeing who was going to end up being the first threat. Both crowds seemed to be moving at the same incredibly slow pace. Henry figured he had about a minute to get this plan into action.

He reached the garbage bin at a flat out run and slammed into the front of it. He grabbed hold of the first one and tugged on it. It did not move more than a couple of centimetres. He moved on to the next one and grabbed hold of the side of it and pulled as hard as he could. Henry was thrown backwards when the garbage bin went sailing across the pavement and came to a rest a few feet away.

Henry smiled. "This will do."

He got behind the garbage bin and started running in a straight line. Henery did not care where he ended up; he just knew that he needed to get this bin to the fence.

After a few seconds of sprinting, the garbage bin slammed into the chain-link fence and bounced off of it, sending Henry sprawling onto his back. The trash bin rolled back and bumped him in the leg, taunting him.

He looked over his shoulders as he stood up, only to find that both groups of people were within a dozen or so feet. Henry manoeuvred that garbage bin closer to the fence and scrambled up the side of it, using the railings that the machine used to pick it up as a footrest to ease his progress.

Henry pulled his feet up and stood in the middle of the bin as both groups of people started slamming into it shifting the trash bin from side to side slightly. He put his arms out to his side to keep his balance.

"I guess I have to do this then." He said as he looked up at the fence and his next problem, the barbed wire.

Henry looked around at the large group of people who were surrounding the garbage bin, reaching for him and pushing each other out of the way for a better chance at getting him.

It was then that Henry noticed the mechanic standing about 10 feet away, holding the arm of the banker who lay dead at his feet with her head smashed in. The mechanic stood over his conquest resting his foot on the head of the banker as if he was showing his dominance to the others in her group.

Henry rocked on his heels as one of the group members was pushed by another into the side of the garbage bin causing it to roll away from the fence slightly. He saw the teenager wearing an orange hoodie and green baseball hat pulling himself back upright, in a fit of anger he swung the bat down and connected with the face of the teenager causing it to bounce off the edge of the garbage bin. The baseball bat slammed into the side of the garbage bin with a hollow gong, the vibrations from the impact sent a shiver through his entire body and the bat flew out of his hand and into the group. The teenager fell to the ground in a heap next to the bat. The rest of the group stepped on him as they occupied the space now.

He turned back to the fence and began to rock forward on his heels a little, trying to build the courage to throw himself at the barbed wire.

"One.... Two.... Two and a half.... Two and three... screw it." Henry said as he leapt in the air.

Henry jumped at the top of the fence just as a couple of people managed to get to the front of the bin between the fence and the bin itself. They managed to push the garbage bin out a couple of feet while Henry was in the process of jumping, this caused him almost to miss the fence and land on the ground.

As it was, Henry managed to make it a little more than halfway up the fence. He quickly tried to find some footing to use to pull himself further up it and hopefully out of the reach of everyone else. The running shoes that he was wearing this morning had a bit of a pointed toe on them which made it a little easier for Henry to get some purchase on the fence and start his climb.

Henry had only made it up a little bit when he felt the first hand grab his ankle. The grip on his foot was weak as if the person who got him had a broken hand that never really healed. If the grip had of been any tighter than they would have pulled him off the fence when he kicked out at them and landed squarely on their face, their hand slide off of his foot, and he started climbing again.

Henry reached the level where the barbed wire began and put his hand up to move a piece of the wire when he was pulled down. The force of the pull made him reach out and grasp anything that he could to stay on the fence. His fingers wrapped around the barbed wire and a bladed barb dug into the meat of his hand.

Henry screamed in agony.

A great strain was being put on his upper body to hold on. Henry squeezed his hands harder to make sure he stayed on the fence. His leg was getting pulled down more and more like the man holding onto his foot was straining to put the shoe in his mouth and take a bite from it.

Blood started pouring from the wound on his hand and running down his arm. The blood started dripping from his arm and landing on the forehead of the person holding his foot, a droplet of blood fell and landed in its open mouth. As suddenly as the hand grabbed his leg, it had let go.

Henry glanced down toward the group huddled around the fence and noticed that they were tearing apart the man who just had a hold of his foot. The scent and presence of fresh blood on his body was enough for them to kill and start to eat him.

He used this distraction to pull himself the rest of the way up the fence and over the top.

Henry did not care how badly he injured himself getting to the top, anything that he might endure climbing would not be as bad as getting torn apart by these monsters.

Hoisting himself up and over top of the fence was probably the hardest workout that Henry has ever done in his life. He had to move quick enough not to give the people below another opportunity to pull him down; he also had to be on the look out for the razor wire. On more than one occasion Henry had stifled back a scream of pain as a piece of razor wire stuck out and ripped through his clothes and skin.

Henry reached the top just as most of the group lost interest in the downed man. Judging from the look of the group, "He did not taste that good did he?"

The sharp razor wire that ran over his leg and under his arm did a number to his body to this point. Henry had a large diagonal slash on his cheek, that if he had a mirror would have run from the apple of his cheek all the way to his ear. If he had been leaning slightly further to the right Henry would have lost his ear when that man grabbed his foot. The gashes on his legs and arms would likely heal with time; they were only a superficial wound compared to the deep cut on his hand from trying to keep hold of the fence earlier.

Henry grimaced in pain as he flexed his hand open and closed to see how deep the wound was. Every time he opened his hand to see the depth he would only have a fraction of a second to look before it became full of blood.

"Ahh. That's not going to heal right if I cannot get to the hospital and get it cleaned." He said as he looked back down towards the ground.

He squeezed his hand shut and held it out over the side of the fence and onto the people below him. The scent of blood got the group into a frenzy as they pushed and shoved each other trying to get at the source.

One by one each member of the group trying to kill him turned their eyes up and looked deep into Henry's eyes.

Henry shuddered. "This is getting creepy. They look like starving dogs, and I just opened the last can of food in the house."

He took a moment to survey the area around him, sure that the noise of his friends below would have undoubtedly attracted some attention.

"There cannot be this much damage and no one around. Can there?" Henry asked to himself. "Then again, the baseball field was empty. Why would someone hang around when there is no one to kill?"

From this new vantage point, Henry could see in all directions.

On the other side of the overturned tractor trailer was an abandoned station waggon with all of the doors left open. The car left in the middle of the highway and another two cars slammed into each other trying to avoid it. Cars, trucks and motorcycles were all on the freeway, in the ditch, closest to him lay the wreckage of a bike, the driver of the bike was still holding the handlebars, the roof of a pickup truck pinned his legs.

Henry grimaced at the thought of what that driver must have gone through.

He peered into all of the vehicles that he could see, looking for bodies that did not look quite right; bodies that, like the one Henry encountered in the dugout, were not quite as dead as he thought. All of the bodies that Henry could see around him were in various stages of destruction, either by fire or dismemberment.

After a half dozen vehicles Henry was on the verge of vomiting again and had to stop. He placed his hands on his thighs and leant forward a little, making sure he did not throw up on his clothes if he did feel the need.

Henry looked down at the ground below him. While he was never scared of heights, Henry was afraid of falling and injuring himself. More specifically Henry did not want to fall and hurt his ankle since it was his speed that has kept him alive this long.

"How am I going to get down from here?"

As if hearing his problem, a few of the people at the bottom of the fence grabbed hold of the links in the fence and began to shake it violently.

Henry threw his arms out to regain his balance and managed almost to grab hold of another piece of razor wire. He saw where his hand was going before he made a fist around it and quickly moved his hand to the left to miss it.

Henry's body was rocking from side-to-side as the shaking fence become more and more violent. The people below were getting more and more animated as Henry started leaning further and further to the sides.

"Ah, shit," Henry said as his body started listing more to the side.

The only thing keeping Henry from falling over the side was his grip on the barbed wire.

"I gotta jump." Henry thought to himself.

He spotted a large patch of grass at the bottom of the fence that was going back up the embankment towards the road.

As he rocked towards the road, Henry released his grip on the wire and pushed off the fence with the foot that was on that side of it.

Henry smiled a little as he sailed through the air; he knew he was going to make it. Then his pant leg got caught up in a piece of razor wire, and his forward momentum stopped, and Henry fell to the ground at the bottom of the fence.

Henry did a small turn in the air, to try and put some of the force of the landing on his shoulder and hip as he knew he could take more punishment on those parts of his body than his ankles or back. He misjudged the grade of the hill and over rotated; he landed on the hill firmly on his chest.

A puff of air escaped his chest, and Henry struggled to breathe.

Gasping for air, Henry began to wheeze and suck air into his lungs. Panic began to fill his head as he did not want to die, not like this.

He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the sky, still trying to regain his composure. Tears started rolling down his cheeks as Henry began to accept the inevitable and he wanted to look at something happy for his last thought.

His breathing started to return to normal, and he was no longer sucking so hard to fill his lungs. Henry sighed with relief and let out a little laugh.

He closed his eyes and went to wipe the tears from his cheeks when he felt something like a blade of grass brush against the top of his head. He wiped away at it absentmindedly and tried to return to his peaceful spot.

The blade of grass brushed against his head again, as he reached up to wipe it away, he thought "I do not remember it being windy today."

Just then a hand wrapped around his arm and started pulling it towards the fence. Henry felt the grip of another hand on his arm as his body started moving up the hill.

He could hear ragged and excited breathing coming from the other side of the fence. In his mild panic after falling, he did not bother to check how far away from the fence he landed, he was only two feet away from it and several of the smaller teenagers had managed to get their entire arms through it and were pulling him towards their eager mouths.

Three teenagers had their arms through the fence and the faces of a half dozen others pressed against the chain moving their mouths open and shut waiting for his arm to get close enough to enjoy.

Henry pulled back against them using what strength he had in his arms after being deprived of oxygen and exerting all of his energy this morning; he could not muster enough strength against them. He rolled over onto his left side and using any power he could manage he was able to bring his feet up and put them on the fence a couple of feet away.

He wrapped his free arm around his other hand and brought it close to his chest then straightened his legs out using the fence for leverage. As he tensed his body, his chest moved up and away from the fence putting a lot of strain on the arms of people on the other side of it. He moved his feet up the fence and closer to his body and straightened again. He closed his eyes tight and mustered all of the strength he could.

Suddenly Henry's body was thrown back and away from the fence; he started to roll down the hill.

"They must have let go." He thought to himself as he opened his eyes.

Henry looked back towards the fence and could see several of the teenagers were missing the lower portions of their arms. He looked down as his arm and could see two hands and forearms still gripped around his wrist. He threw his arms around in the air to detach the grasp of the limbs.

The arms fell to the ground with a dull thud.

He looked back to the fence and the teenagers. Neither of the teenagers showed any sign of pain at the detachment of their limbs. The bloody stumps he expected to be spraying and dripping blood at the severing of a semi-major artery were dry.

"What that hell are those things?"

Henry turned and scrambled up the hill and onto the highway.

Without glancing back towards the fence, Henry crossed the road, walked down into the median and on the other side. Henry focused on making it to the Wholesale store that was at the other end of the mall.

If he had taken a moment to look behind him, he would have noticed several members of the group trying to mimic what he had done earlier by climbing the fence to get at him.

13

Henry walked down the embankment on the far side of the highway and crossed through a little clearing in a row of hedges and stepped into the parking lot of the town's mall.

The mall was a typical commercial mall designed in a plus shape to be able to put four large box stores at the end of each row to draw people to the mall just to shop at those locations. On an average day, the mall did not open until 10 am and seeing as how the monsters were downtown at nine the parking lot of the mall was pretty empty. There were a few cars scattered in different spots through the parking lot. Most likely the managers or key holders arriving to get the stores ready for the shoppers that day.

Henry was standing at the end of the mall that featured entrances to the movie theatre and chain bookstore. There were about a dozen cars parked in front of the movie theatre, probably a couple of cleaning crews trying to scrape chewing gum of the bottoms of the seats, and layers of butter from the floor underneath those seats. After working in a theatre when he was in college, Henry vowed never to go again after having to clean up when the first summer blockbuster came out that year. There was popcorn, candy, and pop spread all over the floor; Henry had to stay until 3 am cleaning a single theatre before he was allowed to leave for the night. That was the day he had failed his only exam in college.

"I wonder if the people inside the mall even know what's going on outside?" He wondered. "They're going to be in for a surprise when they get outside."

Had he have been standing closer to the mall, Henry would have seen the bloody hand prints on the glass doors leading out of the mall, and one of the doors was propped open with an overturned mop bucket.

He stood at the edge of the massive parking lot, thankful that is was barren except for those few cars 500 meters away.

The wholesale store that Henry was interested in was directly on the other side of the mall; he could see the roadside sign peeking over the top of the mall.

"I could just walk through the parking lot to get there faster." A sudden noise from the other side of the mall made Henry jump. "Or, I could just stick to the edge of the parking lot so nothing can jump out at me. There are a lot of corners around here."

He looked to his left and saw that the parking lot continued in a straight line following the highway that he just crossed and then it made a sweeping turn to the right before disappearing around the corner of the building as the parking lot met up with the other end of Princess Street.

Princess Street was one of the main streets running through town. It stretched all the way from the downtown core to the edge of the city before it turned into rural highway 156 and continued to the coast. Every type of business, residence and government building is located off of this street. He knew that if there were going to be a pocket of survivors like him, they would be along that road; but a group of people, even hidden, is probably going to attract a bunch of those monsters as well.

"I'm going to avoid that place as long as I can."

The sound of the car crash from the other side of the mall grabbed Henry's attention. "Yeah, I'm going nowhere near there."

With that said, Henry crept out of the bushes and walked slowly along the edge of the parking lot. Hoping that nothing was in the mall watching him and planning on making a move.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. There were no fewer than four sets of eyes watching Henry's slow, deliberate movements from the shadows of the mall. Each of the eyes were encouraging and waiting for Henry to come inside. The pile of bodies and splatter just inside the mall doors tells the tale of how many other people thought to go to the mall to escape was a good idea. Somewhere inside the mall, one of the creatures tried to laugh.

The noise coming from the mall terrified Henry. It sounded like the noise Henry's cat made each time it went into heat and wanted to go outside to find a mate. The memory of his childhood almost brought him to tears but the fear of getting eaten alive because he stopped to have a cry kept the tears at bay.

Trying to watch the tree line ahead and keep an eye on the massive parking lot ahead and behind him was causing Henry to walk slower than he anticipated. He had expected to be on the other side of the parking lot by now, but the constant glances over his shoulder kept him from moving faster than he had wanted.

Henry was about half way across the parking lot when the next side of the parking lot started to open up, along with the view of Kings Road that ran along the edge of that part of the mall. Kings Road was one of those roads that were never built up, but now that the big retail stores had been put in the area more and more businesses wanted to move as well. There were several active construction sites along Kings Road. Henry could not hear a single machine or hammer today, though.

The closer he got to Kings Road, the more he could see the parking lot. This portion of the mall anchored by a newly re-branded and refinished Walmart Superstore, the kind of store that is supposed to carry everything from fresh fruit to charcoal and kids toys. Since construction finished, Henry had made a point to avoid it; The parking lot always packed on a good day, and he could not imagine what it would be like now that it had everything in it.

The Walmart opened it were doors at 7:30 am every day and did not close until midnight. Henry glanced down at his watch. "10:30. Ouch."

Henry took another few steps and jogged for 30 seconds before stopping dead in his tracks.

The parking lot in front of the Walmart had some cars in it. There were at least 4 or 5 dozen cars all lined up and parked neatly into the first few rows in front of the main doors. There were even still a few cabs sitting along the sidewalk as if they were waiting for the students to finish their shopping.

A few people were lingering around the parking lot, walking without a purpose it seemed. Henry thought about waving at those people until he spotted a young lady trying to sneak out of the cars in the middle of the parking lot when one of the people who happened to be on the other side of her car sprang at her and took a big chunk from her neck. Even from this distance, Henry could see the life vanish from her body as she had stopped trying to push her attacker away and let her arms fall to her side, defeated.

Henry stood frozen on the other end of the parking lot like the small group of people in the parking lot all converged on the body of the girl to feast on her flesh. He counted each as they disappeared behind a vehicle.

"Six. Seven. And... where is the last one? Where did that old man go?"

Henry was looking for the man who was wearing the fedora that he has seen walking near the line of taxis a few minutes ago.

"Well, if he's going to hide. Then I guess he cannot see me then." He said as he started sprinting across the edge of the parking lot. Henry hoped that the people would be busy with the latest body until he was well out of sight.

Henry kept running for what seemed like hours before he was close enough to Kings Road to slide down in the ditch that separated the mall from one of the first empty properties on the road.

Henry laid in the ditch with his back to the mall, keeping an eye for anything that might approach from where he could not have seen them before dropping into the ditch.

Henry sat in the ditch quietly trying to catch his breath. He wiped away some sweat from his brow as he watched and waited. After a few minutes, Henry slowly lifted his body and peaked out of the ditch and towards Kings Road, luckily for Henry there was a construction dumpster parked at the back of the building lot that covered his approach.

Satisfied that he was not spotted, Henry slowly turned around and looked towards Walmart to check if any of the members of the parking lot group spotted him. Henry sighed as he spotted the man wearing the fedora shuffling through the car park towards him.

"Crap," Henry said and ducked back into the ditch again. "I should have been more careful."

He counted to 30 before sticking his head out of the ditch and looking again. The man wearing the fedora was no longer walking towards him. He had turned around after another person in a car had tried to make a run for it.

Henry could not tell if this person was a man or woman, the group had already surrounded them when he had taken his second look.

He returned to the ditch again and let go of another large sigh.

"I did not figure I'd get this close to the Wholesale store." He said to himself. "Now I need a new plan, and to be extra careful."

Henry crawled down the ditch, luckily for him it was just for storm runoff and dry most of the year. About twenty feet from the side of the Kings Road, he stopped. Behind him there was a cement barricade that the mall had put up when they added in an exit to this end of the parking lot, to keep people from driving into the ditch.

Henry put his back to the barricade and raised himself slowly to peer out into the construction zone that was Kings Road.

For a road that was just a connector between the mall and a residential area, there were more cars on it than he expected to see.

"There was probably a group of monsters in the subdivision that people were trying to escape from, but they were not watching where they were going."

The first car to run into problems was a little brown European car flattened by the track wheels of the yellow bulldozer that was trying to cross the road. After that, cars had crashed into the back of that car and any other obstacles there were around. The only exception to this mayhem was a city bus that parked in the middle of the road with a pickup truck lodged into its rear axle. The bus looked to be only standing upright because of that truck.

Henry's eyes lingered at the bus since it looked so out of place in the rest of the carnage. That's when he saw it. Ahead peeking up over the ledge of one of the windows in the middle of the bus and then it disappeared again. His heart began hammering with adrenaline. "Could that be!? Is that a person?"

A smile crossed his face, and he almost jumped out of his hiding spot and sprinted towards the bus when he heard the familiar growl. The colour drained from his face as he tried to pinpoint where the sound was.

Henry glanced to the right to see a mangled and beaten man emerge from the construction site and walking towards the bus. He stole another look at the bus and saw a second head appear at the front of the bus. This new one was not paying Henry any attention as all of its focus was on the new person walking to the bus.

A man stood on the bus and pulled what looked like a gun from the back of his pants. Henry looked back at the man walking in enough time to see his head snap back followed by a cloud of red mist. The man crumpled to the ground.

Henry sank back into the ditch. "Holy shit. That gunshot did not make a sound."

He was shaking again in fear, only this was not a fear of getting eaten alive by these people, he terrified of getting shot by the people on the bus the next time he stood up.

"Hey!"

Henry was startled by the sudden voice.

"You, in the ditch!"

Henry looked around. "They could not be talking to me."

"I just saw you go in there!" The voice bellowed. "Get up and run towards the bus if you want some safety. You've got a little more than a minute before the next walker gets here. Now. Move!" The voice commanded.

Henry looked around from the ditch, "I guess it has to be safer than where I'm hiding right now."

He took a giant breath and scrambled up the side of the ditch and did not even bother to look around for any threats. He just ran towards the bus.

Henry used all of the adrenaline in his body and forced it to run without having any food or nutrients yet today. He approached the bulldozer in the road and vaulted himself over the scoop and continued his run.

It was now that he spared a glance around and over his shoulder only to see a large group of people approaching from the other end of Kings Road. They were far enough away not to pose any immediate threat, but they were coming this way and would likely find him soon enough.

"How do I get in?" Henry yelled as he approached the front of the bus.

"Pickup truck. Use it to get to the roof. I'll open the fire escape up there." The voice came from the depth of the bus.

Henry ran around toward the back of the bus and jumped into the bed of the truck without much of an effort. He took a second to have a look around and noticed the bodies that were littered around the area, many of them seeming to be missing a large chunk of their head or face.

"When you get on the roof, do not walk on it. Crawl, I do not want these bastards to know how you got in here." The voice startled him, and he jumped to the small portion of the roof.

Henry stood on the truck's roof and looked for anything to grab hold of to hoist himself up. There was a grate on the roof of the bus a couple of feet away, "Shit." Henry said as he stretched and strained to reach for it.

He bent his legs a little and jumped up reaching for the edge of the bus.

The side of the grate slipped through his fingers, and Henry came back down with a small thud. His right foot slipped off of the truck, and he started flailing his arms looking for anything on the back of the truck that he might be able to grab. His right hand found the edge of the exhaust stack that comes out of the top of a bus to eliminate blowing directly into a car's radiator.

Henry was able to steady himself and regain his composure standing on the roof.

"Not to worry you, but you might want to hurry up if you want any chance of getting through this." The voice said from inside the bus.

"I'm working on it," Henry said with a little frustration in his voice. "There is not much to grab hold of up there."

Henry peered around the side of the bus and nearly fell off of the truck. The large group of people were now by the first entrance to the Walmart parking lot and making their way down Kings Road towards him.

"One more shot at this," Henry says to himself, and he readied himself for another jump.

He placed his feet a little further apart than last time, hoping that he can get a bit more distance by crouching down more. He put his arms over his head and slowly inhaled and exhaled.

The energy he stored in his legs as he held that position vaulted himself into the air. As Henry cleared the edge of the bus, he leant forward and stretched as far as he could to reach the grate. His fingers gripped the edge of it, and he pulled himself onto the bus as quick as he could.

Henry did not even lift his head as he tried his best to imitate the marines and army guys he's seen on television as they crawl under a barbed wire fence. He was beginning to wonder if he had passed the emergency exit when it slid open just in front of him and a dirty hand came out of it.

"Over here." It whispered. "Come head first, and I'll help you down."

Henry could just picture the owner of that voice anxiously looking back of his shoulder as he said those words, wondering if it was too late to be letting someone into their safe area.

Henry worked his way over to it and judging from the size of the hands that were waiting for him. He had no doubt that they'd be able to help in into the bus.

He was at the edge of the fire escape and peered into the bus, but he could not see anything.

"Come in now or start running." The voice was harsh and full of force.

Henry put his arms into the hole and started to slide into the bus. The massive hands wrapped around Henry's ribs and lowered him to the ground. The man reached up and closed the fire escape before looking to Henry.

"My name is Dennis, and the girl over there is Meri." He offered his hand to shake.

"I'm Henry." He said as he reached his hand it became engulfed by Dennis'.

Dennis looked over his shoulder, "We'll talk more later. It's time to hide before those undead fuckers find us."

Henry scratched his head. "Undead!?"

"Shh. They can still hear." Meri said from somewhere in the shadows.

Dennis took a seat on the floor behind one of the seats near the middle of the bus and leant his head slightly so that he could still see out the front window. Henry did the same thing but from across the row. Meri sat curled into a fetal position a few rows in front of Dennis and hardly made a sound.

For the next few minutes, all Henry could do is sit there and watch the massive group of people slowly make their way around the bulldozer and come towards the bus.

14

At this moment in his life, Henry had never been as scared for his life as he was right now. The thought of close to what looked like more than 100 violent and savage people walking this close to something he was trapped and hiding in was unnerving.

Henry looked over at Dennis sitting calmly on the floor row across from him. A single bead of sweat formed on his brow and rolled down his cheek and dropped silently to the floor. That was all the nerve that Dennis cared to show right now.

He could see Dennis leaning out slightly trying to see where the horde of people was, Henry was going to do the same thing until a loud thud was heard on the side of the bus in front of Meri. She jumped and slammed her hands on her face to hold back a scream. Tears were streaming down her face continually. Her shoulders heaved up and down as Meri silently cried while the danger began to hover around the bus.

Henry looked over at Dennis to see a little look of worry on his face as he peered over between the seats in front of him.

"Shit" Dennis whispered as he lowered himself to the ground and pounded his fist silently into his thigh.

Henry followed Dennis' gaze out the front of the bus when he saw what was happening outside. Most of the group of people outside had stopped moving. They were carefully looking over and into the vehicles on the side of the road, making sure that they did not miss anyone.

Another thud startled Henry as the luggage storage on his side of the bus was opened. The door of the compartment blocked a little bit of light as it came up and covered a portion of the window.

Over the next couple of minutes, the bus had proceeded to get a little darker as each of the luggage compartments were opened and checked for hidden passengers.

Henry's heart was beating in his chest the world outside grew quiet again, he turned to Dennis.

"Where..." He began.

Dennis turned his head sharply and threw a single finger in front of his lips.

Dennis motioned to the front of the bus and made a gesture with his hands that Henry did not understand.

A puzzled looked crossed Henry's face as he tried to comprehend exactly what Dennis wanted to tell him. "What does his charade of a butterfly have to do with anything?"

Henry mimicked the motions that Dennis had done. He placed his two hands flat in front of him and touched his thumbs together; then he turned his hands towards each other until his pinky fingers moved.

"It's a butterfly!?" Henry mouthed the words to Dennis.

A slam coming from the front of the bus frightened Henry, and he jumped a little in his seat.

He finally understood. They're trying to open the door of the bus.

He could hear fingers gripping the door trying to pull on the edges of the door, fists began to batter the door as the group sought to get in. Quicker and faster the pounding on the door continued until it suddenly stopped.

Henry could hear some commotion outside and took a very quick look out the front of the bus to see some of the group beginning to leave. A smiled began to cross his lips as he had survived another close ordeal.

He turned to look at Dennis, but the same jovial happiness was not anywhere on his face. A look of hardness was all that he could make out from the man. Henry continued to look at the man unaware how he could not have any happiness that the group was leaving.

Another bead of sweat appeared on the brow of the large man, followed by another and a few more after that. A look of worry began to appear on Dennis' face as he continued to stare out the front window.

Henry turned his head and leant out from behind the seat just a little to have another look to see if the situation was improving. There was not much to see out of the windshield from this vantage point, but that all changed as one of the members of the group appeared to be peering inside of the front window.

Henry moved as slowly as he dared to pull his head back into the safety of the shadows as the man in the green suit peered in the window trying to see inside.

The man appeared to be standing on the bumper of the bus with his mouth held slack and open, he was drooling a thick congealed liquid from his mouth as he stared into the gloom of the bus. He held onto the windshield wipers with both hands as he swayed back and forth trying to get a better vantage point.

On an average day, the partially tinted windows of the bus kept the heat and sunlight from filling the cab with heat and humidity so visibility would have been minimal anyway. If they group had not looked under the bus first, the man in the green suit might have been able to see Henry watching him, but with the extra shade offered by the compartment, lids prevented most of the early morning light from reaching the interior of the bus.

The man in the green suit flung his head back in frustration before slamming it on the windshield. The noise filled the group outside full of noise and the thick black smudge on the windshield made it hard to see. He leant back again to hit the windshield again but went too far back, and his weight pulled on the wiper blades as they snapped off the bus and the man went tumbling to the ground.

Henry and Dennis looked at one another with wide eyes and an open mouth, both looking like they were going to say something. Neither man said a word.

Henry looked a few seats behind Dennis for Meri but could not see where she had been. Concern began to fill Henry as he frantically began searching the other rows for the girl when a small movement to his left caught his eye. In all of the concern and focus on the man looking in the window, he had not seen Meri climbing underneath the seats to get to the back of the bus and be further away from danger.

Henry let out a silent sigh as he found where she was hiding.

The world grew quiet around them again as the audible sound of the large group of people began to slowly move on.

Henry, Dennis and Meri sat in silence for another 25 minutes before anyone had the guts or bravery to stand up and check if everyone had moved one. Dennis was the first to slowly stand and look out the front window. Satisfied that he did not see anything he looked out his side of the bus, standing on his toes to peer down the side of the bus looking for anyone who might have been hiding.

He turned around and gave a very nervous Henry a thumbs up.

Dennis then nodded to Henry and motioned with his head towards the window.

Henry understood that sign and quickly got to his feet and peered over the side of the bus and out onto the road looking for anything. He could see the last of the group of people walking a few hundred meters up Kings Road slowly disappearing around the bend in the road.

Henry extended his arm out and gave a thumbs up as well, though he did not look to see if anyone had seen it or not. He continued to stare out the window, watching the group finally disappear around the corner before turning around to see his new travelling companions.

Dennis was turned around looking back out his windows when Henry turned around. He was a big man bordering close on 6 and a half feet tall and was wearing a ball cap over the top of his salt-and-pepper hair. Henry figured this guy was in his mid to late forties and judging by the condition of his hands, he was probably a mechanic or a carpenter. The bulge in Dennis' lower back caught his attention as he just stared at it. He did not even register that Dennis had partially turned arounHed and was looking at him.

"What's on your mind fellow?" Dennis said to him.

Henry shook his head trying to regain his focus. "Nothing, I had just forgotten you had a gun is all. Why did not you shoot them?"

"Are you serious?" Meri piped up from behind Dennis as she began to stand up.

Meri was not the typical teenage girl that Henry typically saw in his classroom. She was not wearing any makeup, her hair tied into a loose ponytail, she had on a pair of torn jeans and a ragged sweater. Wet marks covered her sleeves and front of her shirt; if Henry had not been on the bus with her for the past little bit, she would have looked like she had just suffered a significant loss. For all he knew, she probably did.

"What do you mean?" Henry said, looking back to Meri.

"Well, for starters those zombies would have known we were in here and probably would have turned the bus over trying to get inside." She looked Henry square in the face. "As it was, they were only testing us to see if we would give away our hiding spots."

"Wait... back up a second." A look of concern crossed his face. "What do you mean about zombies!? They're not real, those are just really sick people. Probably have some disease or ... some... thing?"

Henry stopped speaking as Meri shot him a disgusted look and folded her arms across her chest.

"What are not you telling me?" Henry asked her. "What have you seen?"

"What have I seen today? What you should be asking me is what have not I seen today. I saw a little girl get hit by a speeding car, only to get up and start biting people who came to her aid. I saw a factory worker walk up to a police officer and rip off his arm after he had been shot eight times in the chest. That same guy then went on to kill seven more people before getting mowed down by a delivery truck that was speeding out of control." Meri sighed as if reliving these moments was incredibly hard.

"And all that was within 5 minutes of this bus stopping right where it is."

Henry brought a hand up to his mouth and began to think about everything that happened to him today. The violence downtown, the mayhem in the baseball field and the bloodthirsty look the mechanic gave him as he was hunting him down through the woods.

Henry threw himself into the seat on the bus and stared off into the sunlight.

"Are you..." Meri reached out to touch Henry's shoulder, but Dennis reached out and touched her wrist.

"Just give him a minute. Keep an eye out for any more of those bastards, would you? I'm going to check on the door." Dennis smiled at her and turned around to slowly walk down the walkway towards the front of the bus.

Meri quickly looked over at Henry one final time before she took her post and scoured the surrounding areas for anything that moved, friendly or otherwise.

15

Henry sat for what seemed like hours, staring straight ahead at the seat in front of him but not looking at anything. He could vaguely hear noise in the background, maybe some people talking but he could not be sure.

Everything that happened today, everything he had witnessed, he had rationalised based on the belief that society had just reverted to a previous form, that it had gone back 500 years to the 'Dark Ages' of history and some people just let go of their social behaviour. Never once had the thought of a nightmare like this crossed his mind.

"Zombies!?" He thought to himself. "I just... I do not... How can this be happening? What could have caused this?" Henry was beginning to mumble out loud.

"How?... Why?... When?..." were the only words that Meri and Dennis could understand.

Meri brushed up against Henry as she was trading places with Dennis.

She looked down at him as she was walking by. Henry slowly turned his head and returned her gaze. "When did all of this start?" He asked her.

Meri looked up to Dennis, and he nodded at her. Dennis turned around and walked a few steps up and begun to do a slow sweep of the area, keeping an eye out for trouble while Meri sat down across from Henry.

"All right," she said as she turned her body towards Henry "this is what we know. At around 8:30 this morning while I was getting ready to leave town, on this bus, a man attacked my landlady in the front yard. I was screaming at him to stop, but he just did not hear me."

Meri turned her eyes to look out at the window while she remembered the events from this morning.

"I tried to pull him off of her, I grabbed him by the head and the throat, but he just would not let go. I ran to the front step and grabbed the garden shovel that Ms Rose kept there to clean up weeds. And... I... " A tear started to run down her cheek as she recalled all of the details. "I hit that man over the head with the shovel, three times before he finally fell off of her. It was too late for Ms Rose, though, she was the nicest lady I've ever met. I was three months behind on rent, but she did not care, just as long as I was off the street, she would tell me. I felt bad that I was skipping town on her."

She looked back to Henry. "I knelt next to her body and watched the life leave her eyes. I cried more that day than when my dad beat me and threw me out of the house for defending my mum. I closed her eyes, just like they do in the movies, and stood up to see if someone had seen anything and could offer me some help since I did not know what to do."

"My street was a mess; it looked just like this. Cars crashed in living rooms, through garage doors, bodies all over the place. People were running screaming in every direction. No one paid any attention to what was happening on our property, they all had their problems. I took a few steps away, trying to figure out what was the best way to run when I saw this bus parked on the end of the street with a man waving people on it."

Her gaze returned to the window, and she wiped away a couple of tears. "I went back to say goodbye to Ms Rose, pressed my fingers on her forehead and turned around again. That's when she reached out and grabbed me. She was dead!" Meri raised her voice as she looked at Henry.

"She was dead." Her voice softened.

Meri started to cry more. "I watched her die. The wounds on her face, chest and neck; you cannot come back from that." She started to raise her voice more. "The noise that my landlady made when she was trying to pull me closer to bite me will haunt me forever. I knew it was not her. It could not be her! I kicked her in the face, Henry. I kicked that sweet old lady in the face until she died, again. And then I ran to this bus. I got on it and just cried."

Meri stood up, "That's all I know! Good people are dying out there for no reason at all."

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and walked away.

Dennis moved out of the aisle as she went past and tried to say something to her. Instead, he closed his mouth and walked towards Henry.

He stood in front of Henry and looked back over his shoulder towards the front of the bus where Meri was sitting looking out the windows still wiping away tears.

"Sorry about that, she was only just out of high school and been through a rough patch. Give her some time, and she'll grow on you."

He looked back to Henry.

Henry opened his mouth to say something, but Dennis cut him off. "Listen, I know you have questions, we all have questions, but we have to find someplace else to hide out. The front door cracked from that last group, and I do not know that it can take much more punishment. I have not told this to Meri yet, but I thought that if we get out of here and head to the mall..."

Henry spoke up and cut Dennis off. "No, that will not work. I just walked by, and the doors are all open, plus there's a bunch of roaming monsters."

"You mean 'zombies', right?" Dennis smiled as he said it.

"I'll never be used to saying that word." He shook his head. "Yes, there were about a dozen hanging around the front of Walmart and a few more hanging out by the theatre and bookstore entrances. That door was open, and I'm pretty sure something in there laughed at me when I went by."

Henry turned and looked out the front of the bus. "I was actually thinking of going to the Wholesale store just up the road. It's probably the safest place that I can think of." He turned to look back at Dennis. "There are no windows, the front doors are big heavy garage-style doors with another set of security doors inside. With all of that canned and boxed food, we should be set in there for a long while."

"That's actually an excellent idea." Dennis nodded at Henry.

"What's a good idea?" Meri piped up from just behind him.

Dennis jumped and turned around a little. "Henry was just telling me that he thinks the Wholesale store would be a great place to go next."

"It's pretty secure with lots of food," Henry added.

"You mean, go in the direction where all those zombies came from?" Meri asked, "I do not think so. I believe we should stay here and wait for help."

"I do not know that help is coming, Meri." Dennis turned to look at her, "With everything that I've seen today, I have not seen one police officer or official. Well, except the mayor that we ran down on the way here."

Henry gasped.

"Well, he was eating the leg off of an old man," Dennis smirked. "He practically threw himself in front of the bus."

"Think we can drive the bus over to the store?" Henry asked.

"Not unless we can find the rear wheel from when the pickup slammed into us." Dennis pointed out the back of the bus. "We're not taking this thing anywhere."

"I guess we'll have to make a run for it then," Henry added.

Meri smiled, tears still filled in her eyes. "You think he can run anywhere?" Pointing to Dennis, "Look at those boots."

Dennis looked down at his feet. "What's wrong with them? I can probably run faster than you."

"Only if there was a buffet ending in 3 minutes," Meri added before walking away.

"Why you..." Dennis smiled and reached out for her, but she was already gone.

"How long have you known her?" Henry asked.

"What time is it?" Dennis looked down at his watch. "About 2 hours now."

Dennis turned around and looked towards the front of the bus. "You think we have a chance of making it to the Wholesale? The mall is closer."

Henry stood in his seat and followed Dennis' gaze out the front. "It's the only chance we have, I think. There are just too many of them hanging around the mall for use to really make it there."

"It's settled then," Dennis spoke louder so Meri could hear at the front of the bus. "We're gathering our things and going to make a break for the Wholesale."

Meri sighed from the front. "It's not like we have anything anyways."

"Hey now. I have my hat and jacket to worry about. I cannot be getting any blood and guts on my leather jacket." Dennis said.

Meri turned around and rolled her eyes.

"How are we getting off the bus?" Henry asked. "I do not know that we can climb out of the fire escape in the roof."

Dennis looked up at the ceiling and jumped at the emergency exit. He pulled himself up a little and put his feet on the backs of a couple of seats. He grunted as he pushed his shoulders through the small opening and then kicked his legs as he pulled his lower body through the opening.

He stuck his head back into the bus.

"If you climb up on one of these seats first you should be good. I'll be here to help if you need it."

Dennis' head disappeared through the hole, and they hear him shuffle around on the roof.

Henry looked at Meri and looked at the ceiling. "After you."

Meri rolled her eyes. "Sure. I'll show you how it's done."

She walked to the front of the bus and grabbed a jacket and hat from the seat behind the driver. She stood on the seat below the hole in the ceiling and put her arms through. "I did not want you to have to drag us back her for these."

Dennis took them eagerly from her and put them on. "Thank you."

Meri stood on the back of the two seats with her elbows on the roof of the bus. With a grunt she disappeared through the hole, leaving Henry staring at the ceiling.

Alone on the bus, Henry stood in the middle of the aisle under the hole and looked around the bus.

"For something that's been through as much as they say, this bus is pretty clean on the inside." Henry thought to himself.

He stood on one of the seats under the escape hatch and reached up for the hole. While grabbing onto the edge of the hole, he put both of his feet on the top of the seat and jumped towards the ceiling; using his momentum he pulled himself most of the way through the hole before having to struggle to get his legs through.

Once on the roof, he could see that Meri was already at the back of the bus with her legs dangling towards the pickup truck. Henry looked down towards the end of Kings Road, to where that large group of zombie went. He turned towards the mall to check on the status of the roamers hanging around the parking lot. From this distance, it was hard to see, but he could definitely make out three of them, maybe the others joined up with the rest of that group.

Now that Henry was out, Dennis did a quick survey of the area to make sure that it was clear enough for them to get down without being harassed.

"Looks safe to me," Dennis said.

Meri was on the ground before Dennis had finished his sentence.

Dennis jumped into the bed of the pickup truck with a loud bang. And looked around to see if that had got any attention.

Henry whispered down from the roof of the bus. "What are you doing?"

"Have to check to see if anything is hiding out here," Dennis said.

While Dennis and Henry had started talking, Meri had begun walking up the road towards the front of the bus. She did not have the sharp instincts of Dennis to realise that she should be checking for hiding zombies before walking too far.

Meri was looking towards the construction site across from the bus, looking at the tools and equipment that would never be used. "Hey guys, you think we could find any weapons..."

Lunging out from one of the luggage compartment under the bus was the zombie dressed in the green suit that was looking into the bus earlier. Meri was too busy looking for weapons to clear the area of zombies before walking away from that she did not see the zombie until it had knocked her over and cut off her sentence.

The zombie had run into her hip with it's shoulder while she was turning back towards the bus to talk to the guys. The force of the attack knocked Meri backwards and into the side of the crumbled hatchback.

The zombie in the green suit, complete with the black smear of congealed blood on its face landed on its knees close by and snarled at her as it tried to climb back to its feet for another attack.

Meri kicked out with her leg while bracing herself on the side of the car. The zombie stumbled again to its knees and began to crawl towards her.

Meri screamed as the zombie grabbed hold of her ankles, pulling her to the ground with a thud.

She lashed out with her foot to keep the zombie from biting her flesh.

Henry, still on the roof of the bus, was frozen in fear watching the zombie crawl towards Meri looking for an easy meal. The ferocity that she was kicking the zombie was intense, and with every strike, Henry winced with the pain that he imagined the zombie felt if it could feel anything.

Hearing Meri scream Dennis quickly turned on the bed of the pickup truck he was standing on. He turned quickly and made a step towards Meri.

"I'm coming! Hang on!" He shouted as he planted his foot in a puddle of congealed blood.

His foot shot out in front of him from the force of his step. His arms started spinning as his body was leaning backwards.

He looked towards the bus and the roof of the pickup truck, looking for anything to grab hold of to keep himself from falling. There was nothing but a crumpled gun rack, he stretched his arm and reached for it.

Dennis fingertips ran by the end of the destroyed gun rack. He squeezed his eyes shut and leant his head forward as he braced for impact.

A loud bang grabbed Henry's attention, and he turned his attention back towards the pickup truck to see Dennis' head bouncing off of the bed of the pickup truck.

"Are you OK?" Henry shouted down to the sprawled out man.

"Um." Dennis groaned from the truck as he reached his hand to the back of his head and put it in front of his face to look for blood.

"Where did that come from?" He asked as he slowly started to sit up in the truck.

Dennis looked at the edge of the bed at the pool of liquid and scratched the back of his head again. He brought his fingers back to his eyes and looked for blood again.

"Was that here when you came up?" He asked Henry.

"No, there was not anything there. I would have killed myself on it when I jumped on." Henry added. "I do not remember any of those things leaking either."

Dennis began to get to his knee as slowly as he could. He rested his hand on his knee and looked down at the ground. Trying to get the woozy feeling to go away.

With Dennis where he was, there was no room for Henry to get down to help Meri. He knew that if he jumped from the top of the bus, he'd break both of his ankles from the fall. He'd dropped from a similar height when he was younger, and the doctors told him that since it happened before, it was likely going to happen again.

A noise of rocks falling down the embankment came from the side of the bus alerted grabbed Henry's attention, he turned his head and looked down. From the top of the bus, Henry watched in horror as another zombie came out of the other side of the bus and was walking towards Dennis.

The zombie had reached his hand up and into the bed of the mangled pickup truck and grabbed Dennis by the hair. Dennis reached up with one of his hands and tried to pull the zombie's hands from his head, his other hand was firmly planted on the ground to help him from falling down.

Dennis grunted in pain as his head was snapped down and into the side of the truck again causing his hand to slip out from under him making him fall to the ground. The zombie tried to pull Dennis towards his open mouth, but he was too big of a man for the zombie to move.

Dennis reached up with his other hand and put his both of his large hands over the top of the zombies and twisted them. Henry heard a crack as the bones in the zombie's hands shattered, Dennis continued to spin, and the hands continued to rotate. With another grunt, Dennis twisted and snapped his wrists making the zombie hands separate from the rest of its arm.

Dennis scrambled to his feet, his sudden burst of adrenaline making him forget about his head injury. He threw the hands in the face of the zombie.

"Asshole!" Dennis shouted at him as he punched the zombie in the face hard enough to knock the undead man onto his back and roll backwards down the embankment. The zombie came to a stop with its neck bent sideways and rotated around back. Henry watched the zombie make sure it was not moving anymore and jumped down onto the roof of the truck.

Dennis jumped down from the bed of the truck and ran towards the zombie that was still trying to take a bite from Meri.

With the quickness and agility of a high school track star, Dennis sprinted down the road and as he got closer to Meri lifted his leading leg and planted it into the jaw of the zombie. The force of the kick caused the zombie's head to explode as it was pressed against the side of the hatchback. Blood and brains splattered onto the side of the car and all over Meri's chest.

Dennis stood with the toe of his boot on the side of the car and the other just inches from Meri's own terror-filled face. His face was red from the exertion of running, something he had not done in years.

He was panting trying to regain his breath as he looked down at Meri and said, "I bet you like my boots now. Don't you?"

With a little smile, he pulled his boot from the car with a grunt and bent down to help Meri up from her position on her back.

Meri looked over at the headless zombie laying on the ground next to her, a pool of black blood was starting to form at the base of the creatures neck. A shiver came over her body as she took Dennis hand and was lifted to her feet.

Dennis looked at her and said, "Sorry about the mess. I was not expecting that to happen."

He took off his jacket and offered it to her. "It might be a little big, but it won't be as disgusting as what you're wearing now."

He extended his arm and turned his head away.

Henry saw the gesture and turned around and looked back towards the truck. The pool of blood on the truck was not just contained to the bed of the truck there were several lines of blood trailing down the side and smeared along the top of the wheel as well.

He noticed a trail of droplets leading away from the truck and towards the bus before disappearing in the luggage compartment underneath of it.

Henry followed the path and bent down to look in the compartment where the zombies had been hiding.

"Son of a bitch!" Henry said with annoyance.

"What?" Meri and Dennis said in unison.

Henry turned around to look at them, noticing that Meri was down to just a tank top and putting the heavy jacket on over top of her bruise-filled arms.

Dennis seeing the look of surprise on Henry's face turned as well. His mouth hung open as he looked at the battered girl.

"What happened to you?" Dennis asked her.

"Nothing. Everything." Meri said with annoyance. "It does not matter, I do not want to talk about it."

"What did you find Henry?" she said trying to change the topic.

"We'll come back to this," Dennis said to her with the glare of a man who cared.

"Whatever." She said back, annoyed that such a deal was made over it and happy that someone finally cares.

Dennis turned back to Henry. "What do you see?"

"Is that one missing its hands? I know the one that attacked Dennis had both of its hands since you tore them both off." Henry sounded impressed by Dennis' strength.

"You did what!?" Meri said with a smile. "Remind me to not get on your bad side."

Dennis turned around, "Yeah, actually this one is. Hey! Was not this the one that was looking in the front of the bus?"

"It was. That thing knew we were on the bus and set a trap for us." Henry said, "I found his hand in the bottom of the bus, the bastard took his hand off and smeared the bed of the truck with blood trying to get us to fall down. So he could ambush us. There are all kinds of marks and droppings along the ground and side of the bus."

"Wait, you mean they tried to make us slip and fall?" Meri looked scared. "Zombies are not supposed to act like that. They're supposed to be mindless and dumb, just like in all the movies."

"I hope this was a trap of convenience, not something that they planned," Dennis added as he looked back towards the pickup truck and the evidence that Henry had spotted. "Good eye, Henry. At least we know we need to be more careful."

Dennis walked back towards Meri and looked down at the zombie dressed in the green suit that was laying on the ground. He picked up it's left hand and looked at the stump where it's hand used to be.

"It's right about now that I wish I had gone to medical school instead of a trade." Dennis looked up. "I can't really tell if it was chewed off or torn off when it fell from the bus. You want to take a look."

Dennis looked to Meri and Henry. The two of them were slowly shaking their heads, Henry was white as a sheet with a hand over his mouth.

"All right, I do not want to stay here any longer than I have to. We should get going if we are going to get out of here anytime soon." Dennis stood back up and walked slowly towards the front of the bus, carefully looking around every corner and hiding place that he could think where a zombie might hide.

The group walks slowly at first, continually checking around corners and over their shoulders, waiting for any kind of surprise that might be waiting for them. Dennis was in the lead, holding a crowbar that he found embedded in the head of a body just in front of the bus. Next was Meri walking two steps behind Dennis, close enough that if he stopped quickly, she would knock him to the ground. She was carrying all of the food that they had scavenged from the few cars that were on the bus. Henry was in the back of the group, he had found a hammer in the cab of a tow truck and was wielding that in his right hand while carrying a small container of water from the same truck.

Their pace had quickened once they had located a few weapons that they could use to defend themselves. They also had Dennis' small gun, he only had a handful of bullets left and wanted to save them for an absolute last resort.

They were just about to walk around the bulldozer when Henry remembered about the number of zombies that he had seen earlier and wanted to warn the others.

"Hey," Henry said quietly enough to not be heard too far away. "There about 6 or 8 of those things when I came through here earlier. We should watch out for them."

Dennis gave the thumbs up from the front as he poked his head around the back of the large vehicle and looked up the road for any danger. Once past the bulldozer, the traffic on Kings Road was almost negligible. There was a single car wrapped around the set of lights on the corner, that pole had come crashing down into the roof of another unmarked delivery vehicle that stood in the middle of Princess Street, and after that, he could see nothing else in the road that might be a danger to them.

They all come around the side of the bulldozer and look into the parking lot of Walmart on the other end of the road. If it were not for the dead bodies and liquid that covered the surface of the parking lot, it would have looked like any other morning there. The front doors of the Walmart were left open as a shopping cart had been turned over and propped the doors ajar, the silence and eerie calm that came from the store sent shivers up the spine of Henry.

The only thing that was different about the parking lot when Henry went by earlier was the lack of zombies that were roaming around looking for people to eat.

"There's nobody in the parking lot." Meri had said. "How many did you say that you saw earlier?"

"Probably about 9, maybe less," Henry responded. "Maybe a bunch of them had joined up with the group that came by earlier. The need for people to be in a group is pretty compelling. I could see them just following along because they had the urge to."

"That's good news for us," Dennis said with a little bounce in his step.

The group took one final look towards the mall as they continued on their way towards the intersection of Princess and Kings Road. There was a line of trees and an old police building on the right-hand side of Kings Road which meant that the group could not see anything happening further down the road towards where Princess Street turned into Highway 156. At the end of the line of trees is where the car was crashed into the light pole on the corner.

Dennis slowly crossed over to the left side of Kings Road, to give them a better chance of seeing any trouble that might be approaching from around the corner of Princess Street. The group slowed down as they approached the car, it was then that Henry noticed that the downed light pole had wires laying on the ground.

"Hold up!" He said a little louder than he wanted. Instantly both Dennis and Meri froze in their tracks.

"There are power lines down on the road where that light pole went down." He pointed to the road behind the back of the delivery truck. "I do not know if they're still live or not. We should probably go between the van and the car to be safe."

Dennis looked at the road ahead, "You're probably right."

There was only a five or six-foot gap between the end of the car and the front of the delivery truck. The light pole was being held up by the roofs of both vehicles which meant that there were three and a half feet of clearance on one side and almost six feet on the other. On the other end of the car was a large embankment that was almost too steep for them to climb.

Henry had remembered seeing a car go off the road there one day. It took about 20 minutes for the driver of the vehicle to climb the bank to get to the road, the tow truck they had brought in had a hard time getting the car out as well.

"I do not know how I feel about this," Meri said, breaking the silence. "There's not a lot of room between the cars and I have a bad feeling about it."

"I'd rather go that way, then around the other side of the truck and get electrocuted," Dennis said looking over his shoulder towards her. "We just need to be careful not to touch the vehicles, just in case."

Dennis started walking again. Meri sighed and started following him. Henry took a look over his shoulder to make sure that nothing had tried to sneak up on them while they were stopped. Satisfied that nothing was coming, he followed the rest.

They carefully and cautiously approached the delivery vehicle. The group of survivors got in line with the car, Dennis got down on one knee and looked under the truck to see if the could see bodies or signs that there might be some activity on the other side.

Dennis grimaced as he stood up, still a little sore from slipping into the pool of blood getting off the bus. Standing up, Dennis put his hands on the small of his back and leant back stretching out his tight muscles.

"This is going to hurt tomorrow," Dennis says out loud, as he hunched his shoulders forward.

"If we survive that long." He muttered to himself.

"See anything?" Henry whispers to Dennis.

"No, there was nothing to see. There appears to be another vehicle turned on its side pressed up against this truck. Other than that, it looks OK."

"Do you hear that?" Meri says from behind the two men. "What's that buzzing noise?"

Henry stands still and holds his breath for a minute to listen to the sound. "I hear it too."

Henry listens to the noise for a minute longer. The sound appears to be coming from all around the group, it seems like it's coming from the front of the truck, the back of the truck and inside the truck.

"Do you hear bees?" Meri asks.

"No," Dennis responds. "That's live wires. Do not touch either of the vehicles or poles, if you want to live to see tomorrow."

Dennis goes first through the two vehicles, being a tall man he has to duck underneath of the pole. As he walks under the pole, he is looking up at it making sure there are no hidden wires before he motions the others through. On the other side of the pole, he stands up straight again and faces the others.

"OK. Come on through."

Meri is frozen in her tracks as two zombies stand up by the front fender and make their way towards Dennis' back. She sticks her arm out straight and points past him trying to mutter any words.

Dennis sees her pointing and trying to say something and immediately raises his crowbar out of instinct and recoils a little seeing two of them so close. He swung his crowbar across in front of him and catching the first zombie in the chin, the crowbar got trapped in the dead man's bone, and the force of the swing throws it to the ground. Dennis stomped on its head and yanks the bar out to get ready for the other one but is surprised to see it standing there just out of Dennis' swing zone.

"Guys, we have a problem." Henry piped up from beside the still horrified Meri.

Dennis looked up to see a group of six other zombies coming around the corner of the delivery van and walking towards Meri and Henry.

Immediately Henry recognised one of the zombies in the front as the mechanic that found him in the woods this morning downtown. Trevor had a few rough cuts and scrapes along his cheeks, and most of his coveralls were torn from trying to get over the razor wire fence on the other side of the highway.

"What the hell." Henry stammers backwards, bumping into Meri who turns to see the group.

"Run!" Dennis screamed at them.

Henry turned toward Dennis and grabbed Meri by the shoulders to turn her in the direction that he needs her to go.

"Move. Move. Move." Henry said as he's helping her along.

Henry reached up with his free hand and pushed Meri's head down as they get closer to the light pole.

Dennis took a step forward and swung the bar toward the still zombie catching it in the temple. The zombie dropped to the ground instantly as Henry and Meri go running past him.

Dennis turned around to see the first zombie approaching the pole and hit it with his face. The zombie convulsed from the amount of electricity running through its body. Stopping beside the zombie was the old man in the fedora hat that Henry had seen in the parking lot, he had stopped too close to the body of the electrically charged one, and its flailing hand reached out touched the old man's arm. Both zombies began to dance uncontrollably in the parking intersection.

Dennis backed up as the first zombie fell to the ground taking the other one with it since they became fused together.

16

Henry crossed the intersection and ran up the embankment on the other side. He turned around and pressed his back against the cold touch of the brick building. Meri was huffing beside him as she turned and placed her hand against the wall while spitting on the ground.

"You should not spit," Henry said as she looked up at him. "It's only going to dehydrate you faster."

Meri did not have the strength to reach out to give him the finger, and she did not have the breath to tell him what to do with his food. She just looked back to the ground trying to regain her composure.

Henry looked out at the road and saw the zombies moving uncontrollably as the pole electrocuted them.

"I'm glad we did not touch that pole then." Henry said, "I almost had to reach up to catch myself when Dennis almost hit me in the face with that crowbar."

Meri turned towards the intersection as another body fell to the ground.

He watched as the zombie dressed in the mechanic uniform then bent at the waist and stepped up to it's two fallen companions. His face never losing focus as it walked forward, all of its attention was on Dennis.

They both watched speechless as the mechanic bent down and walked underneath of the pole.

"Run!" Meri screamed at Dennis.

Dennis looked over his shoulder quickly and saw that Meri and Henry had their backs pressed against the back of the brick building. He returned his focus to the zombies that were making their way towards him.

The mechanic and a woman wearing a puffy fur coat had managed to make it underneath of the pole. Behind them, two more had ducked down underneath of it with another three waiting in the background.

One of the men walking under the pole currently was taller than the others, and he did not duck enough to make it clearly through. The clothes that he was wearing started to smoulder from the direct contact with the metal pole.

Dennis smiled briefly as he was backing up across the road, never taking his eyes from his pursuers.

Behind the first two zombies, the larger zombie suddenly burst into flames. The zombie had fallen to the ground and continued to crawl across the ground.

"I guess it's stronger than the others. That's not a good thing." Dennis said to himself.

Dennis peered around the lady in the fur coat in enough time to see the large zombie get back to its feet covered in flames. With every step that the zombie took a trail of melted rubber was left on the road from the creatures shoes. The large strides of this zombie gave it the appearance of walking faster than the others, it also allowed the zombie to catch up with the first two zombies.

The flaming man bumped into the lady wearing the fur coat which instantly began to smoulder and burn. Within seconds the faux fur coat began to drip liquid fire onto the road. Dennis could start to smell the burning flesh as they inched closer.

"We have to do something!" Meri screamed as she turned to Henry. "We cannot just leave him there."

She reached over to Henry and grabbed his arms and shook him.

"Let me think a second." He said as he shoved her hands off of his arms.

Henry looked over at the man that had saved his life probably twice already today, and if he could find a way to help him, he'd probably protect him a few more times before the sun went down.

"Fuck it." Henry put the bottle of water on the ground beside Meri. "Stay here. And if it goes wrong, run like you've never run before for the Wholesale store."

Henry turned his attention back towards Dennis who was getting closer to the embankment, he was no longer looking where he was going. Henry knew he was leading towards him to keep Meri safe. The rest of the zombies had managed to get through the obstacle and were starting to surround Dennis.

Henry took a deep breath and started running down the hill, towards a fight. Something he had never done previously in his life.

Henry raised his hammer in his right hand as he started running up the embankment and towards the group of zombies that begun to surround Dennis.

Dennis slowly started reaching his left hand behind his back while his right hand was waving the crowbar back and forth to keep the group of zombies at bay. His hand fumbled with the edge of his shirt as he reached for his gun. The one thing that Dennis knew that no one else did is that he had only one bullet in his gun and he was going to use it to end his own life to give his new friends a chance to escape.

Dennis' fingers felt the cool handle of the gun, and his breathing slowed down knowing that this torment would soon be over.

"I'm coming!" Henry yelled as his feet hit the pavement running as fast as he could.

"On your right!" This was a familiar phrase that he used a lot while running on the trails and streets by his house to let walkers know where he was when he was overtaking them. Henry had hoped that Dennis knew this phrase.

Dennis heard the footsteps coming up behind him. They were coming too fast to be another zombie laying an ambush. Hearing Henry's warning triggered an urgency within Dennis, he realised that he was not quite ready to put his life down right now. He had people to take care of and people who were going to take care of him.

Dennis released his grip on the handle of the gun and put both hands on the bottom of the crowbar and sneered "Let's dance."

Henry came whistling by Dennis' right shoulder faster than he could have anticipated but he was not running by him, he was sailing through the air after he had jumped from just behind Dennis.

Henry had made a last minute decision that the towering flaming zombie had to be the first one to be taken down. That was the one that posed the greatest threat to everyone. He knew that running directly at the man was a bad idea as he could be tangled in his arms or burned by the heat of the flames.

Henry aimed his body for the small opening between the tall man and the lady wearing the fur coat. He swung his hammer down on the top of the man's skull and caved it in with a resounding wet thud. The momentum of his body flying through the air pulled the man over and knocked two more of the group down at the same time.

Henry hit the ground still running and make a sharp turn ready to take on the rest of the crowd.

Some of the group had turned to face him, and that left Dennis with the mechanic, the lady wearing the fur coat and a pre-teen girl wearing a mini-skirt. Henry felt bad for what was about to happen knowing that they used to be people too. He did not have much time to worry about it as the two zombies knocked down by the tall man were starting to get up.

Henry almost did not see the little old lady coming at him from the right until her arthritic fingers tried to grab his arm. He turned his body towards her and gave her a solid kick to her stomach as she brought her mouth closer to his arm. The force of the kick knocked the dentures from her lips, and she tumbled to the ground, even in death her hands did not have much use anymore.

He jogged over to her and put his foot on her head, turning her eyes away from his body and brought the claw end of the hammer down jamming it in between her eyes with an audible crack. Henry wretched a little and almost passed out from what he had just done when he hear the growling noise coming from behind him.

He turned quickly to notice that the pair advancing on him were identical twins. Without even thinking about it, Henry was trying to decide who was the older of the two women, it was always a game that he liked to play with his mother on the summer days they spent travelling through the city when he was younger. The woman on the left was wearing a business suit with a grey top, while her sister was dressed in a flower pattern dress. Even with this much damage and blood on their faces, it was hard to mistake their relationship.

"I think you're the older one," Henry said as he pointed to the woman on the left. "So, you should go first."

Henry took a few running steps before jumping towards the older of the twins. He brought his hammer down with more force than before since these girls looked fresher than the others.

Henry's arm swung through the air and connected with nothing. The woman had ducked to the right and avoided his attack. He landed on the ground a few feet away and quickly turned to see the younger twin lunging for him.

He took a step backwards out of shock and narrowly managed to avoid the woman's hands as they tried to grasp his shirt. He brought his hammer upwards hoping to be able to catch the woman off guard and regain his advantage. His hammer connected with the woman's throat as she fell to the ground, her body was heavier than he was expecting and the hammer slipped from his hand.

Henry looked as her body landed on the ground with her arms stretched out towards him. The hammer sticking out from underneath.

He bent down quickly and pulled on the handle trying to dislodge it from her head as her sister approached him. Henry struggled with the hammer, the fall had lodged the claw end of the hammer in the woman's spinal cord, severing it. Her mouth continued to open and close as her limbs no longer worked.

The woman in the suit approached him with a sense of urgency, knowing that Henry was unable to defend himself, she snarled at him and reached out for him. A blindingly fast object scraped his ear and the woman's head exploded out the back of her body and fell to the ground. A loud explosion recoiled beside Henry's face, and he slammed his hands on top of his ears.

Henry looked over his shoulder to see Dennis holding the smoking gun in one hand.

Henry fell to his knees, landing on top of the still biting lady in the flower dress, and started to have a mild panic attack. His heart was racing, and he was unable to control his breathing, he was on the verge of hyperventilating. Henry could barely hear anything his eyes darted around the pavement trying to keep himself from passing o

A clang beside him startle him, and he looked over to see the crowbar sticking out of the back of the head of the woman he was kneeling on.

Dennis stood with his hand out. "Come on, we cannot stay here for long."

Henry took the man's hand and was helped back to his feet. Dennis bent down and pulled the hammer from the dead woman and gave it back to Henry.

"Thanks for that. I did not think I was going to make it." He looked over his shoulder to see Meri sitting on the ground next to the building. "To be honest, I was saving that bullet for myself if things went terribly. You saved my life right now."

Henry looked a Dennis and then over to the building.

"Do not worry, I won't tell her about it." Nodding towards the gun. "Besides, I was just returning the favour, I'm pretty sure you saved my life a couple of times today already, and the day is not even half over yet."

Henry took the hammer from Dennis and wiped it on the dress of the woman.

"These things are smart." He looked towards the woman in the suit that Dennis had shot. "That one ducked my attack when I jumped at her."

Dennis looked back towards the hill where there was a pile body smouldering somewhere behind him. "Yeah, I do not like this at all. That mechanic was probably the worst of them all. He actually stood back and tried to walk around me while I was fending off the other two."

They walked back towards the building, and Henry noticed the bodies were laying on top of one another on the bottom of the embankment.

"I did say tried to ambush me. I swept the group all into the ditch with the crowbar, and they landed on top of one another. That old lady caught them all on fire, and so it made it easy for me to spike them in the head all at once."

Henry stopped to look down at the mechanic.

Dennis noticed him looking at the man. "What's up with that one? You recognise him?"

"Yeah, I do." said Henry.

"He works on your car before or something?" Dennis asked looking at Henry.

"No, nothing like that. That one tried to kill me this morning and has apparently been following me since then." He pointed to the man's face. "He figured out a way to climb the razor wire on the other side of the highway once I got over too."

Dennis whistled. "Say that again? He's been following you?"

"Yeah, I do not know how he managed to do it, though. I had a problem getting all the way here myself."

Henry took a final look at the body and started walking up the hill towards Meri and the building, Dennis took another look around at the carnage and followed.

At the top of the hill, Henry bent down and picked up the bottle of water. He opened it and took a drink before handing it to Dennis.

"Should we just run to the Wholesale store now?" Henry said, "Seems every time we move slowly we get attacked."

"There is not much between here and there now, though. Just the backs of these two sets of stores and then the parking lot." Dennis said as he exhaled and passed the bottle to Meri who shook her head.

"You probably should," Dennis said as he encouraged her again.

Meri reached up and took the bottle from him. "Fine."

17

The small group of survivors walked along the back of a small set of stores, the stores in this part of town are speciality shops, a couple of clothing stores and a few chain restaurants. Like most of the new strip malls popping up in town, the store fronts were not facing the road. Instead, they were all facing the giant parking lot that they all shared. Along with Princess Road, there were still cars in the ditches scattered along their walk.

They had been walking for just about five minutes before they saw any movement on the road. A noise to the right startled Dennis and he whirled around to face the noise with is crowbar ready to do damage to anything that moved. The noise occurred again, to Henry it sounded like it was coming from the other side of the road like something was trying to get out of a car. It was then that a large tabby cat landed on the ground. The cat was soaked, likely covered in the blood of the occupants of the car.

Dennis hissed at the cat and scared it off.

"Shit, that scared me," Meri said breaking the silence of the last five minutes.

"Me too," Dennis said and turned back to the path and continued to the back of the building.

They had quickened their pace along this stretch of the walk. The cold brick buildings had no alcoves, no place for them to duck or hide if they sensed any danger. Out here the group would only have one option, and it was something not of them wanted to think about.

Like after they left the bus Dennis was leading the way, holding his crowbar tightly in one hand but resting it casually on his shoulder for a quick reaction. Meri was in the middle holding onto what was left of their food, after the last encounter the group decided they needed to build up their energy reserve. Henry was following behind the others, always checking behind him looking to see if they were being followed or if that large group had decided that it wanted to come back.

He was more concerned with the return of one of the people that he met this morning. "If that mechanic can track me down, it's possible that someone else could have done that too."

Henry thought back to everyone that he saw up close this morning and could not picture anyone that stood out in his mind, he was always worried and concentrating on the mechanic that he never actually took a good look at anyone else that he would have been dealing with at the time.

"Anyone that I would have remembered, we dealt with already." He said to himself.

Henry kept such a vigilant eye on the route behind them that he did not notice when Dennis and Meri had stopped until he ran into Dennis.

"Holy!" Dennis snapped at him quietly. "You need to be a little more careful where you're walking."

"Sorry, I got caught up in making sure we were not being followed." Henry looked back at Kings Road. "After that mechanic, I've gotten paranoid about these zombies."

"It's OK, we're all concerned about them. I appreciate you being so watchful." Dennis said to him.

Dennis turned around and looked at the corner of the building. The corner marked the end of the temporary coverage that the group had from the massive parking lot for the area of strip malls. The end of this building was separated by about 100 meters of asphalt and a small grassy knoll. When the first set of buildings went in the town built 5 or 6 access points for the parking lots connecting Kings Road and Princess Street to alleviate traffic and let people gain access to the shops that they wanted quicker.

This access road was the biggest of them all, connecting Princess Road and Route 156 to the parking lot that fed into the Hardware and Wholesale store, among others. The road was 5 lanes wide with sidewalks on each side, the distance was too far for them to go the entire way unnoticed. The only thing that the group could do is hope that nothing was moving in the parking lot to see them.

Dennis sized up the distance first, "That's too far for me to run now, with my knee and back after the past few fights I cannot go fast anymore."

"Let just see if there's anything out there that can see us," Henry responded.

Dennis nodded in agreement and walked towards the corner of the building to peer out.

"No, no," Meri called back quietly. "Down there." She was pointing to the ground. "You'll be less likely to be seen if you're down there out of eye level."

She could tell the point when Dennis and Henry both understood the point she was making when they both smiled at one another and began to crawl along the ground.

Meri pressed her back against the brick of the pizza shop and slid down to the ground. She looked over at the two men still crawling on their bellies, "I guess I'll keep an eye out for danger this way." She said.

Dennis gave her a thumbs up while he was moving and continued on.

She smiled and slowly opened the zipper pocket of Dennis' jacket and took out the bologna sandwich stuffed into it. While looking through a car shortly after they got off the bus, she had found the sandwich and put it the jacket for safe keeping. It was the one thing that they found that she did not want to share with everyone else.

She looked up and down the road for any danger and looked carefully at the two men as they positioned themselves by the corner.

Meri took a bite out of the sandwich and leant her head back on the wall. Slowly chewing, the flavour of the mustard mixed with the spices of the meat brought back memories of her family while growing up. People she'd probably never get a chance to see again, she never did get a chance to tell her mum why she left in the middle of the night a few months ago. Even though she was only a few kilometres from where her parents lived she knew their habits well enough to have avoided them since then. Despite all of those lost moments, Meri knew that she was better off where she was then still with them.

Dennis and Henry position themselves behind one another and lay on their sides since Henry is the smaller of the two men, he stakes his claim closest to the building to give Dennis more room to look over his head.

"You ready for this?" Dennis says to Henry as he places his hand on his shoulder.

"Not really, but let's just do this." He says back to him.

The men begin to wiggle their way along the ground until they can start to see around the building and into the parking lot. Once they start to see the parking lot, they do not move any further so that they do not attract attention to their current spot.

The area where the strip malls are located can be broken into two regions, the big box stores and the strip malls. The box stores are the free standing buildings that require a lot of square footage to keep and display all of their merchandise. These stores are located on the fringes of the parking lot, mostly scattered to the back. The strip malls run along the length of Kings Road and Princess Street, but inside the parking lot, there are 4 more buildings like the one they are behind, making 8 total in the entire area.

Henry and Dennis can only see a significant portion of one of the buildings in the parking lot, but that was plenty for them.

They could see three businesses from where they were currently watching: a stationary store which was already open for business, a shoe store, and a clothing store. The parking lot in front of them was full of cars. Henry stopped trying to count cars when he reached thirty-five.

The stationery store and clothing store were quiet. The door to the stationary store was propped open with a body allowing a few racoons to go racing into the shop to look for their next meals. The picture window to the clothing store was shattered with a small pickup truck parked in the middle of the floor. Debris and body pieces littered the ground around the truck.

The shoe store was a different matter.

Gathered in front of the window to this store was a group of a dozen zombies that were banging on the glass. Henry was going to ask Dennis what he thought was going on when he saw a figure running by the window stacking boxes in front of the zombies to try to hide from them.

Dennis tapped Henry on the shoulder and whispered, "Watch the guy coming from the right."

Henry noticed the zombie walking along the front row of cars, the zombie staggered and wobbled as it approached the building. The group of zombies in front of the window started to separate as this one zombie got closer. The zombie approached the window and stood in front of it and looked into the store.

Henry could see the employee inside the shop freeze a few feet from the window.

"Why is not he hiding?" He whispered.

"I have no idea," Dennis responded.

The zombie took a step away from the store and brought its hands over the top of its head.

"Holy crap!" Henry gasped in surprise.

Held firmly between the hands of the zombie was a large rock that the zombie had gone to get from somewhere else in the parking lot. The weight of the rock almost pulled the zombie over backwards, but it was able to keep it's balance and slam the rock into the glass window.

A large noise echoed all around the parking lot scaring Meri from her happy memories.

She looked all around to make sure that nothing was happening in the immediate area that she had missed.

Meri scurried down the length of the building to where Dennis and Henry lay watching.

"What's happening!?" She said sounding mildly panicked as she looked to the men for answers.

Dennis just lifted his arm and pointed at the building.

Meri, sitting on her knees did not bother getting closer to the ground like the two men, leant around the corner in time to watch the zombie bring the rock above its head again and send it crashing through the window.

The window to the store shattered as the rock plunged through the window and into the stack of boxes and debris that was piled against the glass. The zombies started surging towards the opening in the window. They began reaching into the hole in the window, ripping the skin off of their hands as they broke more and more of the window away.

Glass started falling to the ground and shattered as it hit the asphalt, sending an eerie echo around the parking lot letting other zombies know that it was time to feed.

Meri could hear screaming coming from the newly exposed store. She squinted her eyes against the bright reflection of the sun and managed to see a middle-aged man charging out of the window as zombies started pushing and shoving as they attempted to enter the store. The man was carrying a small parcel under his arm as he charged with his elbow up to protect his face from any sharp pieces of glass. The man only made it past the first few zombies before the ones in the back swarmed him and brought him to the ground as they started ripping and tearing at his body. The parcel his was carrying hit the ground, and this lid opened, and a little kitten jumped out. The man watched as the kitten started running away from the terrible noises and took refuge under a car before looking back. Agony passed over the man's face as another zombie began to feast on the meat around his spine, ripping it from his body, and he was still.

Meri wiped a tear from her eye and leant back shielding herself from the horror that she just witnessed.

Henry and Dennis watched for another minute before they both sat up and looked at Meri.

Dennis put his hand on her knee and looked at her.

Meri reached out for his hand and took it from her knee and placed it on her cheek as she began sobbing a little more.

Dennis looked to Henry, "We should probably leave now, most of the zombies in the parking lot are going to be focused on that building for the next little while."

Henry looked at Meri, "You're probably right, but we can wait a minute if we need to."

Henry laid back down on the ground and looked out into the parking lot at the parts of it that he could see. There were a few latecomers to the shoe store who were just arriving and looking for leftovers.

Henry stood up quickly. "Alright, we should go."

Dennis reached his other hand out and put it on Meri's other cheek. He raised her head so that she was looking at him. "I know this hurts, and it sucks, but we have to get going to the Wholesale store. If we do not, then we're not going to make it through the day."

Meri slowly released her grip on Dennis' hand and wiped the tears away before moving the hair that had stuck to her face. She took in a big raspy breath and exhaled slowly.

"I'm ready." She said as she was standing up.

The group gathered what few belongings that they had and walked to the edge of the building. Henry leant over the side slightly, as he had seen spies do in the movies, and surveyed the parking lot. All of the zombies were either in the store or still hovered over the body of the man who tried to escape.

Henry held up his hand to the others in the group and slowly started counting down from five.

"5.... 4.... 3.... 2... Go!" Henry whispered with authority as the three people started running from behind the building.

Henry was the first out from behind the building, his adrenaline was pumping through his body as he tried to force himself to run as fast as he could across the entryway and up the little hill to behind the other building. If he had of been able to time himself, he would have noticed that he would have been close to breaking the 200m world record.

Meri was following closely behind Henry for the first few meters of the run before she started slowing down to watch every direction around her for danger. She almost tripped on the kerb of the median as she made it halfway across the road. She was able to catch herself while she was running but ended up dropping most of the food she was carrying to do it.

"Shit!" Meri cried as she continued running and behind the other building.

No one would have picked Dennis first to play any sports other than an offensive tackle in football. He was a large lumbering man who towered over most people that he met, yet he was good with his hands and able to perform well in the small confines of an engine. That did not mean that the man was able to run. Henry watched in suspense as the man ran across the road with his work boots thundering with every step, his face red with exertion and high blood pressure. As Dennis got closer to the other building Henry could begin to hear him wheezing and whining, his lungs were not used to this kind of workout.

Henry hurried over to the edge of this building and slowly leant out and looked into the parking lot, seeing an entirely different perspective from this side. Henry's eyes widened, and his mouth went dry and slack.

"Oh my god!" Henry said slowly as he looked into the other side of the parking lot to see it teeming with activity.

On the other end of the little strip mall where the shoe store was located was another larger strip mall where some of the more traditional and bigger stores were located. Here is where you could find the dollar store, a pet store, a craft store and the hardware store. Henry was not the first person to think that coming to this part of town would be safer. There were probably 20 or 30 other people walking around the parking lot, each of them slowly turning around with every loud noise that Dennis' boot made on the pavement when he ran.

Henry looked to Dennis who had slowed down to a jogging walk with is hands on his hips breathing in as much air as he could.

"Hurry up." He shouted to Dennis to get his attention. "We're going to have company soon." He pointed past Dennis towards the other side of the parking lot and the large crowd that was beginning to walk towards them.

"Fuck," Dennis said as he turned around and started walking backwards towards Henry and Meri.

"What!?" Meri said from somewhere behind him.

"Get going. Now!" Dennis said as he turned around and started walking faster.

Dennis raced to the building and got behind it. He looked to Henry "Man, I wish we would have known about that earlier."

"There's nothing we can do about it now, other than hope that they follow us back here instead of cutting us off on the other side."

Meri turned around and looked back at the men. "Well, stop squawking like a couple of old ladies at bingo and let's get going."

Henry smiled and looked at Dennis, "Shows what she knows," he said with a smile "I'm more of a shuffleboard man myself."

The two men shared a laugh and started hurrying to catch up to Meri.

Henry kept a vigilant watch on the path behind them turning around every 4 or 5 steps to make sure that nothing surprised them. Dennis focused on the road in front, there was not much of a chance that they could have gotten in front of them. Henry just hoped that these zombies had not learned to communicate yet.

Every time Henry came across a garbage bin or any kind of debris behind the stores he made sure that he threw it into the path. So far he had managed to put 4 hubcaps, 5 pallets, 3 garbage cans, and a small bag of trash into the walking path. He was hoping to give them any kind of advantage that he could as they made their way to the Wholesale store.

They had made it three-quarters of the way across the building when the first of the zombies came around the corner of the building behind them.

"We have company," Henry said to the rest of the group.

They quickened their pace to put as much distance between them as they could now that they were being followed.

"We were walking that slow that they caught up to us so quickly?" Dennis said over his shoulder.

"I do not know. I did not get a good look at all the people before we ran, this might be another group altogether." Henry said as he emptied another garbage can and tossed it to the ground.

Behind them, the zombies began to trip over the first of the obstacles that Henry had placed in front of them. Two of the zombies got tripped up in one of the plates and fell to the ground smashing their chins on the hard surface. The rest of the zombies trampled over top of them as they continued their relentless pursuit of the fresh meat in front of them.

Dennis announced to the others in the group that they're about twenty feet from the other side of the building. "We're almost there."

"Once we get clear of this building we're not going to have long to check for danger before we run for it," Henry said back to him.

Henry turned around and tried to count the zombies following them. With the zombies so packed close together it was hard to get a good count until one of them fell over and revealed some of the ones standing behind it.

"There's probably only about 8 close behind us now." Henry said, "They lost a few along the way and trampled them. They're still mobile, but they're not walking anymore."

Henry took one last look at the zombies behind him and turned around to see the short distance they had left to cover.

Dennis took the crowbar from on his shoulder and held it out to the side, using it as a partial shield to keep it from Meri and any danger in front of them. Henry pulled his hammer from his pants pocket and wrapped his hand tightly around the handle. Dropping it could be the difference between life and death for the next few minutes.

Dennis stopped at the corner and waited for Henry to stand next to him.

Dennis turned to look at Meri, "Meri, we're going around the side of the building first. We tell you to run and which direction to head to get to the Wholesale front door, and you do exactly what we say. OK?"

"Yeah, I got it." She said as she nervously looked behind her to see how close the group of zombies was behind them.

Henry catching her glance, stopped her. "Don't worry about them. They are too far away to give us any trouble right now. If we're still standing here in... oh... five minutes, then we'll worry about them. But for now look forward."

Meri nodded at his words and turned her eyes forward and watched Dennis and Henry walk out from behind the building.

18

Dennis and Henry stepped out from behind the edge of the building and looked over the vast swath of roadway and parking spaces in front of them.

There was almost a kilometre of running in front of them to make it to the front doors of the Wholesale store with a five-lane roadway providing another entrance to the area from Princess Street. On the other side of the road was an empty parking lot. Luckily there was just a few employee cars on the far end of the parking lot and not a single zombie roaming around that they would have to be concerned about.

It was the hidden area on the other side of the building that they would have to be worried about. There were no glass windows along the side of this building that they could use to peek through to look at a small area in front.

"Meri, there's nothing between us and the door. No zombies or cars. Just run!" Dennis shouted. "And do not look behind you. No matter what you hear. Just keep moving."

With Dennis' words in the back of her mind, Meri started her long run across the hard surface of the parking lot. She was not much of a fan of sports growing up, and even this amount of walking and running was already doing damage to her feet.

Dennis and Henry started carefully walking sideways away from the building, never taking their eyes off the front corner of the building, waiting for something to come out after them.

The men had made it no more than 4 feet from the building when the first of the zombies came around the corner and started walking after Meri. The two men froze in horror after 6 zombies began to go after her.

Henry started to approach them when Dennis' hand shot out and grabbed onto his arm.

Henry turned towards him to see Dennis shaking his head at him while putting his finger to his lips.

Dennis wanted to be able to sneak up on the zombies and take a few of them out before the entire group noticed that they were there and turned on them. They watched the zombies travel across the roadway and waited until they were halfway across before they started after them.

Henry had taken only a few steps when he heard Dennis gasp and hit the ground beside him.

He turned around to see a zombie climbing on Dennis' back trying to bite through his shirt. Henry lifted his hammer and brought it down on the head of the zombie a few times before it caved in. The zombie stopped moving, and Henry kicked it off while pulling out the hammer.

Dennis lifted himself to his feet and turned around just as two more zombies had come around the corner behind them.

"We waited too long," Henry said as he readied his hammer.

Dennis stood next to him with his piece of metal at the ready. "You take a left, I'll go right."

"Yup." Henry agreed and lunged at the zombie on the left with his hammer.

Henry's hammer grazed off the front of the zombie's skull and slid down embedding itself in the fleshy meat of the zombie's shoulder. A flap of skin hung down over the zombie's eye after the hammer tore the skin free. The zombie reached for Henry now that he was closer.

Dennis did not have much of a problem with his zombie as the man already had plenty of damage done to him. He was missing part of the right side of his face, as it appeared to have been ripped off in a skirmish with a weapon of some kind. Dennis lunged out with the crowbar and placed the tip of it where the right eye should have been. The zombie crumpled to a heap on the ground.

Dennis turned to help Henry with his zombie when he was grabbed from behind but another set of hands. Henry could feel pressure on his shoulder. This was it, he thought to himself. He steadied his breathing and waiting for his painful death.

Henry started to pull on his hammer and push the zombie away from him at the same time. The zombie grabbed his arms and started reaching for them with his mouth. He turned the zombie towards the building and began to walk him towards it when he saw Dennis in the clutches of another one.

He began to focus on his own zombie and trying to free his hammer to help Dennis before it was too late. He took a few step towards Dennis and brought the zombie towards one of the crumpled ones on the ground and pulled his hammer hard. The zombie got caught up in the body on the ground and fell over it dislodging the hammer in the process.

Henry started to fall backwards as his hammer came free from the force of the pull. He landed on his backside and immediately shot up to put an end to his zombie. He swung his hammer using the claw end of the hammer to make quick work of it while he turned towards Dennis to see if he could help.

What Henry saw puzzled him, Dennis was standing in the arms of the zombie with his eyes closed looking towards heaven as the zombie was biting him. A few more zombies were standing off to the side waiting for Dennis to fall before they moved in.

Henry took a step towards Dennis when the three zombies waiting for the easy meal started towards him. He took a quick swing at the back of the head of the zombie holding Dennis and managed to sever its spinal column. The legs and arms of the zombie stopped working as it fell to the ground.

Dennis huffed as the weight of the zombie fell from his shoulders.

"You OK?" Henry glanced at him as he turned towards the new assailants.

"I think so, I don't know that one had any teeth to bite me," Dennis said as he readied his own weapon. "I figured I was going to die there. Thanks for the rescue."

"No problem."

"I think that makes us even," Dennis responded with a grin.

"Probably not yet." Henry shot back.

The three zombies approached the two men and split into teams as they intended to surround them.

Henry and Dennis began to turn as they followed the zombies as they walked around them. To Henry, it looked as though the zombies were just giving them room as they wanted to keep going without getting into a fight with the armed men. He was surprised when one of them stopped while the other took a few more steps before stopping and facing him.

"Uh oh," Henry said as he clued in what was happening. "This is not good."

"Yeah, I can see that," Dennis responded. "They're using some battle strategies on us. This is not what's supposed to happen with zombies."

Just as Dennis finished his sentence the zombie lashed out at him reaching for his face with one hand and using his other to knock the bar from his hands. Dennis caught what was happening quick and jabbed the zombie in the throat with the bar slicing it open from one side to the other. His head fell forward as the muscles in the next could no longer support the head anymore.

Dennis kicked the zombie in the chest and sent it flying across the area and down the little embankment.

He turned around in time to see two zombies holding the hand that Henry was using to hold his hammer. Each of them was pulling on the arm and his fingers trying to make him drop the hammer. Henry was swatting at the zombies and trying to pull free when Dennis came thundering over, he jammed the bar into the mouth of the closest zombie and yank it's head back and away from Henry. The zombie released Henry's hand as it tumbled to the ground and Dennis walked up to it and stood beside it and kicked in its skull as it was trying to get up.

Henry was pulling away from that zombie as Dennis had pulled it free of his arm. The force that he had been using to hold off the zombie caused him to smash his forearm into the nose of the other zombie. The blow had knocked that zombie off balance, and it fell away from Henry. Henry fell in the opposite direction and landed on his bum.

He saw the zombie land on it's back and begin to turn over when he jumped up and ran over to it. He raised the hammer above his head and brought it down just as he thought he had noticed a look of forgiveness cross over the zombie's eyes before his hammer disappeared in one of them. His hammer vibrated slowly as the flat end of it made contact with the cement of the walkway.

Henry turned his head and started to dry heave again.

"I'm never going to get used to this." He said in between coughing and spitting. "How's Meri doing?"

Dennis looked towards the Wholesale store and saw something he did not want to see. Meri has been leading the zombies in a large circle since she did not have any weapons.

"Not good. We have to go help her." Dennis reached his hand down and put it on Henry's shoulder. "We'll be inside soon enough, and we can forget about this stuff for a while."

Henry wiped the spit from his face with the back of his hand as he stood up and looked over towards Meri. She was jogging in a large circle in the middle of the parking lot, leading the zombies in a never ending chase to getting their meal.

Henry could see a subtle change in the zombie's pursuit, one of the zombies was starting to separate from the others moving to get a better position on the fleeing meal. The zombie began to head towards where she was running to, it was no longer chasing her, it was now hunting.

"Shit!" Henry exclaimed as he started running.

"Wait for me," Dennis shouted as he tried to keep pace with the now sprinting Henry.

19

Dennis and Henry stepped out from behind the edge of the building and looked over the vast swath of roadway and parking spaces in front of them.

There was almost a kilometre of running in front of them to make it to the front doors of the Wholesale store with a five-lane roadway providing another entrance to the area from Princess Street. On the other side of the road was an empty parking lot. Luckily there was just a few employee cars on the far end of the parking lot and not a single zombie roaming around that they would have to be concerned about.

It was the hidden area on the other side of the building that they would have to be worried about. There were no glass windows along the side of this building that they could use to peek through to look at a small area in front.

"Meri, there's nothing between us and the door. No zombies or cars. Just run!" Dennis shouted. "And do not look behind you. No matter what you hear. Just keep moving."

With Dennis' words in the back of her mind, Meri started her long run across the hard surface of the parking lot. She was not much of a fan of sports growing up, and even this amount of walking and running was already doing damage to her feet.

Dennis and Henry started carefully walking sideways away from the building, never taking their eyes off the front corner of the building, waiting for something to come out after them.

The men had made it no more than 4 feet from the building when the first of the zombies came around the corner and started walking after Meri. The two men froze in horror after 6 zombies began to go after her.

Henry started to approach them when Dennis' hand shot out and grabbed onto his arm.

Henry turned towards him to see Dennis shaking his head at him while putting his finger to his lips.

Dennis wanted to be able to sneak up on the zombies and take a few of them out before the entire group noticed that they were there and turned on them. They watched the zombies travel across the roadway and waited until they were halfway across before they started after them.

Henry had taken only a few steps when he heard Dennis gasp and hit the ground beside him.

He turned around to see a zombie climbing on Dennis' back trying to bite through his shirt. Henry lifted his hammer and brought it down on the head of the zombie a few times before it caved in. The zombie stopped moving, and Henry kicked it off while pulling out the hammer.

Dennis lifted himself to his feet and turned around just as two more zombies had come around the corner behind them.

"We waited too long," Henry said as he readied his hammer.

Dennis stood next to him with his piece of metal at the ready. "You take a left, I'll go right."

"Yup." Henry agreed and lunged at the zombie on the left with his hammer.

Henry's hammer grazed off the front of the zombie's skull and slid down embedding itself in the fleshy meat of the zombie's shoulder. A flap of skin hung down over the zombie's eye after the hammer tore the skin free. The zombie reached for Henry now that he was closer.

Dennis did not have much of a problem with his zombie as the man already had plenty of damage done to him. He was missing part of the right side of his face, as it appeared to have been ripped off in a skirmish with a weapon of some kind. Dennis lunged out with the crowbar and placed the tip of it where the right eye should have been. The zombie crumpled to a heap on the ground.

Dennis turned to help Henry with his zombie when he was grabbed from behind but another set of hands. Henry could feel pressure on his shoulder. This was it, he thought to himself. He steadied his breathing and waiting for his painful death.

Henry started to pull on his hammer and push the zombie away from him at the same time. The zombie grabbed his arms and started reaching for them with his mouth. He turned the zombie towards the building and began to walk him towards it when he saw Dennis in the clutches of another one.

He began to focus on his own zombie and trying to free his hammer to help Dennis before it was too late. He took a few step towards Dennis and brought the zombie towards one of the crumpled ones on the ground and pulled his hammer hard. The zombie got caught up in the body on the ground and fell over it dislodging the hammer in the process.

Henry started to fall backwards as his hammer came free from the force of the pull. He landed on his backside and immediately shot up to put an end to his zombie. He swung his hammer using the claw end of the hammer to make quick work of it while he turned towards Dennis to see if he could help.

What Henry saw puzzled him, Dennis was standing in the arms of the zombie with his eyes closed looking towards heaven as the zombie was biting him. A few more zombies were standing off to the side waiting for Dennis to fall before they moved in.

Henry took a step towards Dennis when the three zombies waiting for the easy meal started towards him. He took a quick swing at the back of the head of the zombie holding Dennis and managed to sever its spinal column. The legs and arms of the zombie stopped working as it fell to the ground.

Dennis huffed as the weight of the zombie fell from his shoulders.

"You OK?" Henry glanced at him as he turned towards the new assailants.

"I think so, I don't know that one had any teeth to bite me," Dennis said as he readied his own weapon. "I figured I was going to die there. Thanks for the rescue."

"No problem."

"I think that makes us even," Dennis responded with a grin.

"Probably not yet." Henry shot back.

The three zombies approached the two men and split into teams as they intended to surround them.

Henry and Dennis began to turn as they followed the zombies as they walked around them. To Henry, it looked as though the zombies were just giving them room as they wanted to keep going without getting into a fight with the armed men. He was surprised when one of them stopped while the other took a few more steps before stopping and facing him.

"Uh oh," Henry said as he clued in what was happening. "This is not good."

"Yeah, I can see that," Dennis responded. "They're using some battle strategies on us. This is not what's supposed to happen with zombies."

Just as Dennis finished his sentence the zombie lashed out at him reaching for his face with one hand and using his other to knock the bar from his hands. Dennis caught what was happening quick and jabbed the zombie in the throat with the bar slicing it open from one side to the other. His head fell forward as the muscles in the next could no longer support the head anymore.

Dennis kicked the zombie in the chest and sent it flying across the area and down the little embankment.

He turned around in time to see two zombies holding the hand that Henry was using to hold his hammer. Each of them was pulling on the arm and his fingers trying to make him drop the hammer. Henry was swatting at the zombies and trying to pull free when Dennis came thundering over, he jammed the bar into the mouth of the closest zombie and yank it's head back and away from Henry. The zombie released Henry's hand as it tumbled to the ground and Dennis walked up to it and stood beside it and kicked in its skull as it was trying to get up.

Henry was pulling away from that zombie as Dennis had pulled it free of his arm. The force that he had been using to hold off the zombie caused him to smash his forearm into the nose of the other zombie. The blow had knocked that zombie off balance, and it fell away from Henry. Henry fell in the opposite direction and landed on his bum.

He saw the zombie land on it's back and begin to turn over when he jumped up and ran over to it. He raised the hammer above his head and brought it down just as he thought he had noticed a look of forgiveness cross over the zombie's eyes before his hammer disappeared in one of them. His hammer vibrated slowly as the flat end of it made contact with the cement of the walkway.

Henry turned his head and started to dry heave again.

"I'm never going to get used to this." He said in between coughing and spitting. "How's Meri doing?"

Dennis looked towards the Wholesale store and saw something he did not want to see. Meri has been leading the zombies in a large circle since she did not have any weapons.

"Not good. We have to go help her." Dennis reached his hand down and put it on Henry's shoulder. "We'll be inside soon enough, and we can forget about this stuff for a while."

Henry wiped the spit from his face with the back of his hand as he stood up and looked over towards Meri. She was jogging in a large circle in the middle of the parking lot, leading the zombies in a never ending chase to getting their meal.

Henry could see a subtle change in the zombie's pursuit, one of the zombies was starting to separate from the others moving to get a better position on the fleeing meal. The zombie began to head towards where she was running to, it was no longer chasing her, it was now hunting.

"Shit!" Henry exclaimed as he started running.

"Wait for me," Dennis shouted as he tried to keep pace with the now sprinting Henry.

20

Henry was running towards Meri as she was approaching the side of the cart coral, the two zombies that were following her were now within 20 feet of her while the other zombie had made it to the other side of the coral and was waiting for her to come around the corner.

"Meri!" He yelled from a distance. "Stop!"

Meri turned around and looked at Henry coming towards her. A sense of panic came over her as she saw the look on his face, he was waving his arms in the air trying to convey some message to her. She turned her head to one side, trying a new perspective on his actions to make some kind of sense of them.

She looked to her right and saw that two zombies were coming from the direction where she came. She looked back at Henry and pointed at them with two fingers.

Henry had tried to tell her to turn around and come towards him, he waved his arms towards himself as he was running, but he just could not get her to understand the gravity of the situation she was currently in. Henry tried yelling again, but his voice was getting hoarse from sprinting this much distance. He could run the distance with ease; he could not do something else at the same time, any time he tried to text and run, he always tripped over something.

He saw her glance towards the two zombies that had been following her and then realised that she knew that one of them was missing when she was pointing at them with two fingers.

Meri began to turn around in a frantic circle, trying to spot where this other zombie could be.

"Oh, my God. Oh my God." She repeated over and over.

The two zombies following her had gotten closer and closer, they were now within a dozen feet of her. She could not waste any more of her precious time, she turned to look back at Henry who was now running with his arm extended, pointing to just over her left shoulder.

Meri slowly started turning to where he was pointing and noticed a pair of eyes peeking through the carts at her. The other zombie had crouched down next to the end of the carts and was waiting for her. She put her hand over her mouth and started backing away from the cart coral, towards Henry. She had given up on getting that extra weapon.

Dennis was walking as quickly as his heavy work boots would allow through the parking lot, heavily winded from his brief run as he tried to match the speed that Henry was running. He was well over half-way to the cart corral by the time that Meri had finally spotted the hiding zombie and was backing away, an indication that she had seen it. Dennis was not sure that he'd be able to continue on without her right about now.

Henry continued to sprint towards Meri as she was backing towards him, leading the trailing two zombies directly into his path. Henry rotated the hammer in his right hand so that the claw end was pointing out and focused on the two zombies he had to contend with first.

"Duck!" Henry yelled as he was closing in on Meri, the zombies were almost on top of her by the time that he had made it to her.

Meri was barely able to understand the words he said to her before he shoved her out of the way and jumped into the two zombies swinging his hammer at the closest zombie while extending his leading leg and kicking the other zombie in the chest, sending it sprawling onto the pavement.

Henry landed on his feet and continued running, dragging the zombie behind him for a few strides before he was able to shake the head from the end of the sharp hammer. Henry came skidding to a stop and turned around, his chest heaving as he took in as much oxygen as he could manage, congealed blood and brain matter dripping from his hammer making a thick wet sound as it landed on the ground.

His eyes were focused on the sprawled zombie that was trying to stand up again. The zombie stood and looked at Henry, with the shirt sticking to the large indentation was in the middle of its chest from the impact that Henry's foot had made when he kicked it. Rib bones were poking out through the shirt that was starting to make Henry queasy again.

Henry and the zombie both heard a muffled cry just behind it, and they both looked towards it. The zombie licked its lips as it saw Meri trying to crawl away from it a few feet away.

Henry noticed the change in its demeanour and lunged at the zombie striking out at it with the hammer only to have the hammer turn in his hand and the broadside hitting the zombie as it continued towards the slow moving meal.

Meri let out a little squeal as she heard the sickening smack that the hammer made on the skull of the zombie. She heard the zombie groan as it still came after her.

Henry grunted in frustration as his hammer caused no damage to the zombie with the first strike and he lashed out at it again, this time holding the hammer with two hands. The force and frustration that he put into this swing caused the hammer to penetrate the top of the skull and continue until the hammer stopped at the ear.

The zombie fell to the ground with a dull thud.

Henry stood over the zombie and kicked it's lifeless body.

"Stupid thing." He said as he turned his head and threw up a little on the ground beside him.

Meri turned around to see him wiping the bile and vomit from his chin with the sleeve of his sweater.

"Thanks." She said to him as she pushed herself up. Admiring her hands and pants for blood after being shoved to the ground by Henry.

"No problem." He said back smiling a little.

Dennis arrived on the scene and looked at Meri, "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I'll be alright. A little shocked is all." She said to him.

Henry walked over to the fallen zombie and grabbed his hammer by the handle and pulled on it. The zombie's body jolted upwards and fell to the ground with the hammer still stuck inside it. He put his foot on the shoulder of the body and pulled again, the head turned a little upright, but the hammer would not budge from the head.

He bent down to look at the body and noticed a blunt object in the mouth of the zombie. He turned the head using the handle of the hammer to get a better look. Henry saw that the hammer was lodged in between a few of the vertebrae in its neck and the flat end was in the mouth.

Henry yanked at the handle of the hammer and twisted it back and forth trying to dislodge the hammer from the mouth. After a few more twists followed by a loud cracking noise, Henry was finally able to get the hammer out.

"Damn. That was in there good." He said as he stood up and looked to Dennis.

Dennis glanced at him and then returned his gaze to the cart coral. Henry followed his gaze and noticed that the middle-aged rocker zombie was slowly trying to crawl towards the piece of pipe that Meri had been trying to go after.

"That's odd," Henry said as he stepped next to Meri and Dennis.

"You're telling me. It's been crawling towards it that slow for the past couple of minutes." Dennis responded, "It's like she's trying to remain invisible."

"Let's go take care of her then and get to the front door." Henry motioned towards the Wholesale store with his head.

"Yup." was all Dennis said as he started forward towards the crawling zombie.

Dennis started towards the zombie when it suddenly turned its head and hissed at him. The zombie started crawling faster towards the pipe on the ground as Dennis and Henry began to hurry to make up some of the distance between themselves and the zombie.

The rocker zombie made it to the pipe and put it's hand over it as it let out another hiss and groan at the approaching men. The zombie closed its fingers and tried to pick up the pipe, but it fell through its grip and hit the ground with a clang.

Henry reached out and put a hand on Dennis' chest. "I want to watch this."

Dennis grunted but stopped walking forward. He was steadily swinging his crowbar back and forth in anticipation of the fight that was to come.

The zombie reached towards the rolling pipe and put one hand over the top of it and slide the other hand underneath of the pipe and rolled it onto its waiting hand. It grinned as it looked towards the two men and closed it's fingers around the pipe and held it in front of its face.

The end of the pipe started sagging towards the ground as the zombie did not have the strength necessary to hold the pipe with any threat.

"Well, that's not good," Dennis said as the zombie began to approach them, swinging the pipe wildly back and forth, pointing towards the ground.

Dennis reached out with his left hand and caught the pipe. He ripped it from the loose grasp of the zombie, and she charged at him with her arms up reaching for his face. Dennis swung the crowbar that was hanging down by his side and hit her squarely on the front of the head, caving in a good portion of her skull and sending her flying across the pavement. Her body stopped skidding across the asphalt and twitched a few times before it stopped moving.

"The more of these we see, the scarier they're becoming," Dennis said as he offered the pipe to Meri.

"Would you like this now?" He said to her with an extended arm.

Meri reached her hand out and took it in her grasp. The metal felt cold against her skin but refreshing with the small cuts that covered the palms of her hands from the accidents she's had in the past 5 or 6 minutes.

The pipe was a little heavy for her at first but the more she carried it and waved it around a little the better it felt to her.

"How does it feel?" Dennis said to her as he watched her move around with it.

"Not too bad, going to take a little getting used to carrying this around." She said as she put the bar over her shoulder, just the same way that Dennis carried his crowbar most of the time.

"Good. Now hopefully we won't have to worry about you as much now," Dennis said back.

"You should be worrying about yourself. You almost got eaten twice back there after I left." She smiled, "It's like I'm your good luck charm."

Dennis laughed at her comment. It was the first time in almost 24 hours that he laughed.

Dennis stopped laughing when he saw the look on Henry's face.

While Meri had been testing out the pipe swinging it around and getting used to it. Henry had taken the time to survey the area to keep an eye out for danger now that they were so far out in the open now.

At first, he did not believe what he had seen initially and shrugged it off as a mirage.

He kept glancing towards it as he was watching the other buildings in the area for movement. It was not until Dennis had laughed that he actually understood what he was looking at.

"Guys...." Henry trailed off as he was looking in the distance.

Dennis turned towards the buildings that they were walking beside when he saw it.

Walking towards them was a group of 40 or 50 zombies, all starting to spread out as they made it past the edge of the building. The zombies initially huddled into a group of 5 or 6 grew bigger and bigger with every zombie that made it past the corner.

"... We have to go. Now!" Henry turned and started for the front door of the Wholesale store.

Dennis turned around and put his hand on Meri's shoulder as she began to turn around.

"Don't bother." He said to her.

21

Henry did not bother waiting for Dennis and Meri before he headed for the store. He noticed earlier that the door was closed and possibly locked. If the door were locked, they would have no place to go as they could not fight a group this size. Those things never tire and would follow them forever if they ran.

Henry skidded to a stop and turned around.

Dennis and Meri had hardly made much distance from where they had originally started. That fall certainly was not helping with his mobility and Meri did not want to leave him behind.

"We could slow them down." Henry sounded optimistic as an idea popped into his head.

He ran back towards Dennis and Meri.

Dennis looked puzzled at Henry as his friend came running back with a smile on his face.

Before Dennis could ask about it. Henry started talking.

Without actually slowing down, Henry told as much of his plan as he could. "Keep going and try the door. I'm going to try to slow them down."

"What are you..." was all the words that Meri could get out before Henry was off again.

Meri looked at Dennis, "Alright old man. Let's get going."

She reached her arm through his and began to walk a little faster, encouraging him to do the same. Dennis grunted as the new speed made him feel every single step. He tried his best to keep up, even with the soreness, there was no way he was going to let whatever plan Henry was concocting to go to waste by being slow.

Henry raced towards one of two cart corals that were on this side of the parking lot. The first of them was the same one that Meri was leading the other zombies through not that long ago. There were a couple of dozen large shopping carts parked here, and Henry started pushing them out into the parking lot leaving them wherever they ended up. Henry ran out of the cart corral, after thinking about running over and kicking the dead middle-aged rocker mum in the face for being such a huge pain in the ass earlier.

"No," Henry said to himself, stopping the idea in its tracks. "I can't waste much time."

Henry started to run back out of the cart corral looking admirably at the maze of carts he was hoping would slow the walkers down. He put his hands on the handle of one of them and adjusted it's position a little to wedge it between a couple of others. He gave it a little shake. That should hold.

As soon as he thought about doing it, he knew he should not do it, but he still managed to do it. Henry turned his head and looked at the horde of zombies that was approaching him and his new friends.

The colour faded from his face, and he was beginning to feel a little nauseous now as well. Henry stumbled backwards and fell on the side of the cart coral and steadied himself as he regained his composure.

The only thing that Henry could see was a wall of bodies approaching him. Even the massive hoard that walked by the bus as he was hiding did not scare him as much as this one, this group was in hunting mode, the craze and determination that was in their eyes made Henry doubt his plan even before he finished setting it up.

The front line of zombies probably had 20 people in it, all of different shapes and sizes. Some taller people could have easily have been basketball or volleyball players in their college days, standing next to those men were a few average sized women who looked like dwarfs next to them. The only reason Henry knew they were not dwarfs was the couple of zombie children that were intermixed in the group, occasionally poking their hate filled face from between the legs of the group.

Every face that Henry looked at was smeared with blood, full of cuts and bruises. "It's like they all died to get a beating," Henry said morosely to himself. A well of hurt filled him thinking about how they all must have felt knowing they were going to die as they were all attacked.

Sticking out the end of the group was something Henry would not have expected to see. A little old lady was walking to the side appearing and disappearing behind them with every step that she took. It was only as they got closer that he could notice that she was still using her walker and one of her legs was completely broken, causing her to lean to the side almost tipping over with every step.

Henry watched in shocked horror as the group approached him. It was the sound of Dennis yelling to him that snapped him out of his daze. He looked over his shoulder and saw Dennis and Meri looking at him from just in front of the door area, and he got moving again.

He ran as fast as his legs would carry him towards the other cart coral, this one was a little out of the way, but it was full of shopping carts all neatly packed together and stored for the shoppers coming by today. Henry made a beeline for that coral so that he could gather the carts and make another obstacle slow them down.

Henry ran around the other side of the coral and started pushing on the carts with all of his strength but could not get any of them to move. He backed up and took a running lunge at them but only succeeded in partially knocking the wind out of himself instead.

He stood back and shook his head as he looked at the shopping carts. "How do those workers do it?" He asked himself. "How do they move all those shopping carts so quickly?"

Meri said something off to his right, and he turned his head. She was making a gesture with her hand, extending it out in front of her and bringing it back in as if she was trying to saw through something.

"Right!" Henry said as he looked back at the coral. "There's a wall in there."

He had thought it was a similar coral to the grocery store which ran the entire way through so that it would allow the boys were taking the carts into the store to push from one end right through the other. These had a barrier wall in the middle which meant that you had to push them out from there before you could bring them in the store, it also prevented someone from sending a shopping cart flying out the other side by violently pushing a cart in on the other side. That was something he had seen happen a few years ago and knocked a little boy to the ground that was walking into the store with his mother, the man who pushed the cart looked over his shoulder as he was walking way, apparently not caring about the potentially injured boy.

Henry ran into the middle of two lines of carts positioned neatly in the coral and pushed the two rows on the other side of the barrier out a little and then grabbed the ends of each of the rows in front of him and pushed with all of his might until they started moving. He continued to lean and push the carts until they were fully clear of the metal frame.

He grabbed the front cart of one row and lifted and turned, just like the grocery store workers did as they lined the shopping carts up as they move them. He ran around the other side of the carts and pushed them while running as fast as he could until the first cart rammed into the cement barrier separating the other section of the parking lot from the main road.

He turned and ran to get the next row of come over from the coral.

Henry glanced over at the zombies to see their progress and noticed that they were only about 20 feet from his first obstacle.

"Shit," Henry said to himself as he looked back at the carts still needing to be moved. "I'm not going to be able to get them all over here in time. One more, maybe two rows, though."

Henry ran back to the shopping carts and grabbed the front of the other row that he had previously pushed through the opening. He grabbed the front of the carts and violently shook them to move them into position. He ran the carts into the back of the other set but did not set them inside to make a massive chain, instead, he angled them slightly to create a point that led to the front of the store.

Dennis shouted to Henry. "Leave the rest, let's get inside!"

Henry turned to Dennis and shook his head. "Can't need one more or it's all for nothing." He tossed his hammer towards them, and it clanged to the ground a few feet in front of Meri.

"Hold this for me." He shouted as he ran back towards the carts.

Meri stepped forward and picked up the hammer from the ground, it felt incredibly light in her grip compared to the pipe she had slung over her shoulder.

"I do not like this." She said as she stood next to Dennis and watched Henry running towards the other carts.

Henry moved into the empty side of the cart coral and jumped over the small wall to the other side and started pushing one of the rows out from the metal fence. The carts seemed to move a little easier this time since there was a slight incline in the parking lot that pointed towards the road.

Before he knew it, the carts were out past the end of the area, and he began yanking on them as he heard the first clangs of noise as the zombies started running into the carts in his first barrier. Henry did not waste any time looking as he was more concerned with getting this last barrier set up than knowing how the other was doing at slowing down the group.

He pushed the last of the carts into a similar position as the last set of shopping carts to create a funnel to slow the zombies down to let them get inside.

He admired his work and quickly joined Dennis and Meri who were standing a few feet from the front door with a worried look on their faces.

"Why are not you inside?" Henry asked as he approached.

"Can't open the door," Meri said as she handed back the hammer to him.

"What do you mean?" It looked open before as he looked towards the door and noticed that it was fully closed.

A loud bang grabbed Henry's attention and he spun around to see one of the shopping carts in his barrier laying over on its side with one of the taller zombies standing on top of it with his arms held straight out. The other zombies in the group began filing through the larger hole in the barrier while others walked around the pile.

The great zombie looked up from the shopping cart laying on the ground and threw it's head back in the air. The low moaning howls that it made sent shivers up the spine of Henry. The zombie brought its head back down and looked back at Henry as it lifted its leg and walked over the cart.

The barrier that Henry had set up had slowed some of the group down, but the main accomplishment of it was that it created three new groups of zombies. One on each side that walked around the barrier and the ones who walked through the make-shift wall when the cart was tipped over.

The zombies continued on their journey towards them, undeterred by Henry's attempt at slowing them down.

"We need to get inside of there," Henry said as he turned around. "There has to be some way in."

Henry walked towards the door and put his hand on the handle and gave it a little shake. The door rattled and echoed across the empty space. The noise seemed to give the group of zombies something to focus on, and many of them began to groan as they walked with a renewed purpose.

"Fuck!" Henry yelled as he punched the door and slammed his head into it as he leant forward and let out a soft sigh. "I thought we'd be safe here. We should have tried Walmart instead."

Henry turned and placed his back on the wall and slowly slid to the ground. Sitting with a sigh, he put his hands on his head.

"Do not be so hard on yourself. We could not have stayed on the bus either." Dennis put a hand on his back. "We had no food there."

"If we're going to stay alive, then we need to find another place to hide." Dennis looked at Henry waiting to for a decision before he started off to find a new location.

Henry looked at Dennis out of the corner of his eye and only turning his head slightly. "Just give me a minute to get used to this feeling."

"What feeling?" Meri asked. "Disappointment? I know all about that, and disappointing others. Just find my mum and ask her, she'll tell..."

"No." Henry interrupted. "The feeling of always being hunted by these things. I was hoping that it was just a sickness that could be cured and isolated this morning, but now, I'm not so sure. I have not seen a single health care worker, police officer, or even military since I left this morning."

"I do not know if this is ever going to get better," Henry added.

Henry returned his eyes to the ground as he let out another sigh and stood up again.

He looked to Dennis, "Where do you think we should go?"

"Why are you asking me?" Dennis looked puzzled.

"I had this terrible idea that did not get us anywhere good," Henry responded. "So, I'm following your lead from now on."

Dennis thought about it for a second, "With these guys following us, the only thing we can do it go out Route 156 and circle back towards Spryfield to find someplace that might not be touched by this yet."

"Sounds good to me," Henry responded quickly and pushed off from the door and walked towards Princess Street.

"Not that way," Dennis said stopping Henry. "We'll lead them around the building and go into the woods to keep them from splitting off and surrounding us on the other side."

"See, I knew there was a reason why I defaulted back to you." Henry quipped with a smile.

He turned around and started walking towards the far side of the building.

Meri said something that halted them both in their tracks. "Are those keys?"

Dennis and Henry both turned around quickly and looked at her.

Meri stood behind them looking out into the parking lot where they were headed and laying on the ground in a bloody heap was a man wearing a shirt and tie. Next to his outstretched hands appeared to be a large set of keys.

"You think that's the manager or something?" Those words set off a chain of thoughts in Henry's mind that instantly altered his mood.

He turned his head and looked back towards the group that was closest to them. The small group of zombies that had walked around the first barrier and was approaching on the grass of the cement divider. Many of these zombies were smaller and showed more damage than the others. They also appeared to be walking slower than the rest.

"This might mean they're a little smarter, throwing us off the trail by pretending they're weak, like the one at the baseball field." He thought to himself.

"We can only do one thing. Go get those keys and try the door, or make a run for it around the building." Henry asked the group but was looking only to Dennis for an answer. "Which is it?"

Dennis looked past Henry towards the man laying by the car, and the keys next to him. "We have to chance it. We did not come this far to just walk away."

"I would rather die trying than just run away." Dennis was confident in his decision as he started towards the car.

"Not you cowboy." Meri reached out and grabbed Dennis by the elbow. "If you're going then we might as well just walk into a gunfight with a piece of spaghetti." The analogy from her childhood got lost on the men.

"What!?" Dennis said, more confused that inspired.

"I'll go," Henry said as he started bouncing on his feet. "Back in a minute."

Henry sprinted across the parking lot, jumping over the little dividers as if they were mud puddles. The car he was aiming for was halfway across the parking lot in the area typically reserved for store employees since no reasonable customer would park there if a spot closer to the door were available.

The closer to the body he got, the more confident he became in motion that this was one of the store managers. Littered around the body and blowing around this part of the parking were pages of paper from a spilt briefcase containing a letterhead with the company logo on it. This must be someone important.

Henry slowed down as he got closer to the body. He wanted to be able to make sure that it was not playing possum to lead him into a false sense of security. He approached the body cautiously and reached out with his arm carrying the hammer and nudged the man's hand. It rocked on the ground slightly. He watched the body for any other movements, a twitch of a finger, a flicker in the leg.

He looked closer at the body laying face down in the parking lot was missing a good portion of the left side. The man only had one arm and leg still attached to the torso. "At least it's not going to be moving very fast."

Henry could see nothing moving and looked down at the keys on the ground.

The keys that they spied from the front door were very plain and nondescript. They contained two standard keys, probably to the front door of his house, Henry thought. On the same ring was the key to the car.

"Damn. Why did not we all comeover and just get in the car and drive away?" Henry said to no one while glancing around.

There was another ring on the keys, this one contained about 5 or 6 more keys all of the various sizes. A couple really small keys likely for a filing cabinet in an office. The one that Henry focused on was a single key that was larger than any of the others on either of the key rings.

Henry bent down and picked up the keys from the pool of blood and wiped them on the back of the shirt of the man.

The largest key contained the logo of the local locksmith with the phrase "Do not replicate this key. Please contact Manny's Locksmith to obtain another key." These were the keys that all of the businesses in the mall used when Henry was going to college.

"This must be it." Henry smiled, and he turned around.

"Shit," Henry said as he froze in his tracks.

Starting to come between him and his friends was the small group of zombies that had branched off from the others and were approaching him while his back was turned. One of the zombies looked at the body on the ground and began to lick its lips, focusing on the fresh and easy meal instead of Henry.

Taking this as a queue, Henry began to side step away from the body. Most of the zombies were focusing on the meat on the ground that only two had started following Henry as he moved back towards the building.

"If these guys are so close, Meri and Dennis must be in trouble by now." Henry began to panic.

He put the keys safely in the pocket of his pants and started back towards the front of the store. His energy was starting to fade as his reserves of adrenaline have been depleted from running for his life most of the day. The muscles in his legs began to burn from the exertion, and Henry doubted that he'd be able to run-walk much more today before his legs collapsed.

He made a wide berth around the group that were approaching him, and he looked to the front of the store to see if Dennis and Meri were in trouble.

Henry was pleasantly surprised by what he saw when he looked. There was not a single zombie around the two. Both of the other groups of zombies were currently caught up in the funnel that Henry had made with the other carts.

Each of the zombies was pushing each other, trying desperately to get through the opening first. The carts were heavy enough that they were not moving just by the zombies leaning and pushing on them.

Henry almost started celebrating until he saw the tall zombies making their way through the middle of the pile to the front.

He began to push himself to go faster before they figured a way through the obstruction.

Henry arrived at the front door and pulled the keys from his pocket.

"I did not think that would work as well as it did," Dennis said looking over his shoulder. "I'm really impressed."

"Thanks," Henry responded. "Save that for when we're actually inside."

"If we get inside," Henry added to himself.

Henry fumbled with the keys, the pressure of being the one responsible for saving the lives of his friends was something he was not used to. He dropped the keys to the ground, and they hit the ground with a little clink.

He grabbed them quickly from the ground and found the key again. He put it in his hand and held it up to the lock on the sliding door. He had to hold the key in both hands to get it to stop moving long enough to be able to line it up and slide it into the lock.

As the key slide into the lock, a sense of relief and extra pressure came over him. "What if the key does not actually turn?" Henry threw the doubt from his mind as quickly as it entered, but he knew that the idea was still there in the background.

He turned the key to the left, and it did not budge. He tried putting a little more pressure on the key in an attempt to see if the lock was just stuck a little. It still did not budge.

Henry took a slow deep breath as he turned the key back to its original position and slowly turned the key to the right this time. The key turned easily, and Henry heard the audible thunk of the lock being lifted.

He turned the key and pulled it back out of the lock.

He grabbed the handle and yelled, "Everybody in!"

The door slides smoothly to the right as Dennis and Meri squeezed by Henry and into the dark entryway of the store. Henry quickly followed them into the store and turned around to close the door.

Before closing the door Henry looked back towards the last obstacle that he had left for the zombies, both of the really tall zombies had made it to the front and were each trying to pull the same cart in different directions as they tried to find a way through.

A sense of accomplishment washed over Henry's body as he slid the key back into the lock on the other side of the door and slammed it shut with a bang. He turned the key to the right and locked it again. He pulled on the door, and it did not budge at all.

Henry smiled and gave the finger to the closed door and backed away from it as he watched the zombies finally break through the barricade and continue their determined march towards the store.

Henry backed away from the door and into the darkness, never taking his eyes from the zombies as they got ever closer to the warehouse. He put his hands out behind him, looking for the wall of the entry way. Finding the wall, he braced himself and lowered himself to the ground and let out an audible sigh.

Henry closed his eyes and leant his head back against the wall.

"What I wouldn't do for a pillow right now," Henry said as he opened his eyes after hearing Meri take a seat beside him.

"I know," Meri whispered as she looked at her feet. "I just want this to be over."

Henry waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light and began to look around the entryway. To his right was the storage location for the large carts people used when shopping in bulk here. There was a small sliding door beside the door that they had just come through which looked to already have a lock in place. Henry made a note to check that out in a few minutes. To his left was a small area which sold the cigarettes. Over his shoulder, Henry could sense the dark and expansive central shopping area.

From somewhere to his left Henry hears Dennis' heavy footsteps as his shape appears as a shadow in front of light from the door.

"I'm going to take a look around for a second, see if there is anyone inside." He said as he looked into the store, squinting his eyes to see if he could make out any more detail. Dennis twisted his hands nervously on his pipe as he took a step forward.

"Hey," Henry said to Dennis.

Dennis turned to his voice.

"Just be careful in there. OK?" Henry said with some worry in his voice.

"You don't have to tell me," Dennis responded, with a hint of confidence. "I'm only going a few feet into just listen and have a look around."

Dennis took a few more steps forward and returned his gaze to the vast door that greeted him into the darkness. "Just listen for a sign of trouble." He whispered back over his shoulder as he stepped through the doorway.

Henry turned his attention to Meri, who was still looking down at her feet. In the darkness, Henry wasn't sure if she was vibrating with fear or crying silently for her friends and family.

Henry reached his hand towards her and placed it on her shoulder. Meri looked up at him with her cheeks glistening and covered in tears.

"Today wasn't supposed to be like this." She said as she wiped away a fresh set of tears.

22

After a few minutes, Meri's sobs start turning into sniffles, and her breathing returned to normal.

She looked off into the distance as she tried to regain her composure. She did not like having emotional outbursts, especially in a crisis like this. She raised her hands to her face and wiped away the tears that were still running down her cheeks.

Meri realised that she had been leaning on Henry's shoulder as she cried and pushed herself away.

"I'm sorry." She said looking towards him. She blushed when she noticed the small puddle of tears that had appeared on Henry's shirt from her outburst.

Henry looked down to his shoulder and casually wiped at his shoulder making the wet spot larger.

"I was a history teacher before all of this, I'm used to making teens cry around exam time." He flashed a smile at her.

She grinned back as she returned her gaze to her shoes. Her fingers fumbling with her laces.

Henry's gaze returns to the front door.

Seeing all of those lost and hollow faces looking back at him sent a shiver down his spine. Henry shuddered on the floor as he locked eyes with one of the zombies at the front of the pack.

From the parts of its body that Henry could see, there appeared to be nothing wrong with this person. The with the lack of light illuminating his face, the pale complexion that he had been used to seeing up to this point was not visible. His clothes, what looked to be a uniform for a sporting goods store from across the parking lot seemed to be in good condition as well. Henry gazed at this man up and down trying to determine if this one was a zombie when Henry noticed that he was no longer looking at him. Henry followed his gaze down to the handle of the door as the zombie's bloody hand slowly started reaching forward towards the handle on the other side.

Henry gasped with panic as he could no longer remember if he locked the door when they came in a few minutes ago. Henry quickly got to his feet and put his hands in his pockets looking for the keys that they found. His hands started to pat down all of his pockets as he tried to remember where he left the keys.

A look of concern crossed Meri's face. "What's wrong Henry?" She asked as she watched Henry looking back at her with concern on his face.

"Where are the keys?" Henry asked.

Before Meri could answer, Henry heard the clicking of the trigger on the handle of the door.

Click. Click. Click.

Henry turned his head and watched as the zombie had manoeuvred closer to the door handle and had both hands wrapped around it as it pulled against the door. Henry's heart sank as he saw the door begin to move outward before it snapped back to place.

Henry sighed.

"You dropped them by the door when we slammed the door shut behind us," Meri answered, now watching the door carefully as Henry had been.

Henry looked down at keys faintly glistening in some of the morning light coming in through the door.

He walked towards the door and to retrieve the keys.

Henry started to become more aware of the increased activity of the zombies as he got closer to the door. He stopped as he approached the key and looked at the door, the zombies in the front were sliding their faces along the door, leaving a bloody and disgusting trail as they opened and closed their mouths on the Plexiglas. Small bits of steam could be seen on the glass as the breath escaped the lungs of the dead pressed against the glass. The ones further back were reaching for him with their outstretched hands, trying desperately to get him. Henry was aware of the subtle sound of fingers scraping on the glass as they reached for him.

Henry bent down to get the keys. He froze with his fingers brushing against the key ring and looked towards the lower pane of glass to see the sporting goods store employee looking at the keys as well. Henry glanced at the bottom of the door and saw the fingers of this creature trying desperately to get to the keys by reaching under the door.

Henry smiled at him. "Your fingers are three feet too short."

With that said scooped up the keys and looked at the key ring again.

"I wonder what the rest of these keys are for?" He said as he flipped through the keys one by one looking for any indicator as it's purpose. "I think this one was for the front door, it probably works in some of the other doors."

Henry held that key in his fingers as he continued to look through the rest of the keys.

Henry looked up quickly at the sound of a heavy boot echoing across the store towards them. He motioned towards Meri and she quickly got up and stood beside him.

Dennis came to a stop as he came around the corner.

"What did you see? Is there anyone else here?" Henry said excitedly as he welcomed his friend back.

Dennis gave a nervous smile back to Henry and stumbled to find his footing, catching himself on the door.

"Are you OK?" Meri asked as she stepped forward to catch Dennis.

"Yeah, I'm OK. Just hard getting used to the light out here after being in the dark for so long in there." Dennis said as he stepped back a little towards the darkness of the store.

"What aren't you telling us?" Henry asked, with his concern growing by the second. "Were you bit?"

Dennis put his hands up towards Henry, "Look. No scratches or anything." Dennis turned his head to one side and then the other to show the lack of any damage to his body.

Henry almost missed the signal that Dennis gave him when he turned his head to the left, towards the direction he came. Being observant was one of the key traits that Henry cherished while being a teacher, the old saying that you needed eyes in the back of your head to be a teacher was certainly true for Henry. There was not much that happened in his classroom that he missed; whether it was a paper aeroplane, a note, a kiss shared between students in the back row.

As Henry clued into the possibility that they were not alone in the store, he began to work quickly to remove some of these keys from the ring in case they needed to escape later. The keys began to jingle slightly as Henry nervously began to fumble with them.

"I'd stop doing whatever it is you're doing right this minute." Said the man with the shotgun who emerged from around the corner. "I think those are my keys."

The man came around the corner holding a shotgun and swinging it so that it pointed directly at Henry's chest. He could have been exactly what nightmares are made of. He was above-average in height, slightly balding with a scraggly beard that was growing in patches. He was wearing a black leather jacket that had some kind of insignia embossed on the arm, he had a stained button up shirt half-tucked into his pants with his belly showing between the places where his shirt was not buttoned up all the way. His eyes darted around the room, not really focusing on any one thing at a time.

Henry stuttered and dropped the keys as he looked up towards the voice.

"Ummmm... I-I-I'm Henry." Henry said, trying to find his confidence back.

"I don't give a crap who you are right now. All I know is you entered my quiet place and brought those things to you." The man's voice began to rise with each word. "Who gave you the right to enter a locked building in the first place!? I didn't invite you here! I should throw you back out on the street with the rest of that filth."

The man's face started turning red with anger, and his words were piercing Henry like daggers.

"Well?" The man said as he wiped the frothing spit from his mouth. "What do you have to say?"

Henry took a step forward, raising both of his hands towards the man, showing him that he had no weapons. "We did not mean to intrude, the parking lot was empty, so we didn't think anyone was in here. We just want a safe place to stay until these things lose interest and find something else to do."

The man's eye twitched as he stared at Henry and then noticed the teenage girl standing next to him. Henry watched as his gaze travelled to the girl. Meri groaned with discomfort as she was under the gaze of the man holding the gun.

"Don't let him..." Meri whispered to Henry as she tried to hide behind his back.

"Where do you think you're girl!" The man yelled as he motioned the shotgun towards her.

"Just leave her alone," Henry said as he stepped towards the girl putting himself between her and the gun.

A smiled crossed the lips of the man, and his body began to shake in a fit of laughter. The man bellowed a hearty laugh as he lowered the gun towards the floor.

"You didn't think that I was gonna?" The man said as he continued to smile. "I would never...."

Henry shot Dennis a concerned look. Dennis shrugged his shoulders and took a step away from the man.

"I'm Gilles, and welcome to my oasis." The man said as he opened his arms towards the visitors. "Come on in, and I'll show you around."

Henry grabbed Meri by the hand, and she squeezed it hard, refusing to let go for anything.

Henry took a step forward and bent down to pick up the keys.

"I think I'll be needing those," Gilles said to Henry as he stood up.

Henry had noticed that Gilles had casually pointed the gun back towards his hand as he grabbed the keys from the floor.

"Uh... sure," Henry said as he dropped the keys into Gilles outstretched hand.

Gilles closed his hand quickly on the key ring and stumbled getting them into his pocket.

"Thank you kindly," Gilles said as he smiled at Henry.

Henry nodded back to Gilles.

"Where are your manners?" Gilles said sternly to Henry. "The proper thing to say is 'You're Welcome' when someone says 'Thank you'."

"Uh... y-y-you're welcome," Henry said cautiously back to Gilles.

"Don't bother now, the sentiment is wasted," Gilles said as he rolled his eyes at Henry and began to walk away.

"What an inconsiderate bastard," Gilles said as he turned around and walked away.

"What the hell was that?" Henry said as he stepped close to Dennis.

Dennis only shook his head and nodded into the shadows as another man stepped forward with a gun and motioned to the group to follow.

Henry's eyes opened wide as he looked towards Dennis again. "I think we're better off with them." Henry motioned to the door to the outside with the zombies pressed against the glass. "If we stay here, we're fu.."

"Are you coming?" A voice boomed from the darkness. "I don't have all day."

The group of friends took one look over their shoulders before they stepped into the darkness of the expansive store.

As they rounded the corner, they passed from the light of the entry into the darkness of the warehouse. Henry wasn't sure exactly where he was going, but he was only following the sounds that Gilles made as he walked.

The group walked in total silence for what seemed to be an eternity before they found that they could start making out shapes of the shelves and cash registers as they walked. Henry looked up and noticed that the ceiling had about 16-20 medium sized skylights that were illuminating the interior of the store just a little.

Henry grabbed hold of Dennis' elbow as they walked and continued to look around the store, beginning to notice the layout and the piles of boxes that were starting to form at the front of the store by the first set of aisles. The light was too dim for Henry to read the writing on the boxes but with the type of merchandise that was sold here, it could have been anything from liquor to bullets. Either of those options did not leave a good feeling Henry when he thought about it.

His guides in the darkness slowed down, and Henry turned his attention towards the front as a flashlight was turned on and shone in their faces.

"Just checking your complexion to make sure you ain't a creature that's out there." A voice from the other side of the light said. "Show us your hands and arms."

The group of friends rolled up their sleeves and showed the voice their hands.

"Please lift up your shirts now." The voice requested.

"Hey!" Meri shouted in protest.

"We ain't going to look at you like that." The voice said. "You can lift it up to your bra if you like and then pull down your collar some. Would that make you feel better?"

Henry thought the voice sounded a little immature and condescending towards her.

Meri complied, lifting her shirt up all the way to show off her back and then lowered it down when she turned around to the front.

Henry thought he could hear the voice sigh with relief when she turned around to show her stomach.

"That looks good." The voice whispered.

Gilles stepped in front of the flashlight as it was turned off and the group struggled to see now that they were thrown back into the darkness.

Gilles motioned towards the rest of the store.

"Do you hear that?" Gilles put his hand to his ears and turned in a semi-circle. "Those are the refrigerators. We still have electricity here, but we are not turning on any lights, we were doing well at keeping those things away."

Gilles turned back towards the group. "Until you got here!" He spun around and pointed at the group.

"Everything that you see here is mine. I'm willing to share it with you, if you're ready to cooperate, that is. Here is how it works: you work, you get rewarded; if you don't work, you get punished. It's simple really." Gilles said. "If I need a drink, go get it for me. If we need the bathroom buckets emptied, do that too. If there's an unexplained death in aisle 4, clean it up. It's easy really."

Gilles pointed to the boxes that Henry had noticed when they walked in. "Those boxes there, are full of candy, marshmallows, granola bars, among other things. Those are my boxes of food. If I see you looking at them when you're working, I will throw you outside without even thinking twice about it. Got it?" Gilles glared directly at Henry with that last point.

Henry nodded in agreement.

"I didn't hear you," Gilles said as he walked up and bumped into Henry causing him to take a step backwards.

"Understood," Henry said back, not taking his eyes from Gilles stare.

"Great," Gilles said smiling.

"I've been wracking my brain with what to do with you since you crashed our simple little party here. I think you need to be punished for attracting so much attention, but my good friend Justin here thinks you should be put to work and earn some trust." Gilles said and pointed towards the small man holding the flashlight and looking sheepishly at his feet.

"I don't feel like listening to reason right now," Gilles announced as he stepped away from Henry. "Empty your pockets into the basket that Justin is going to bring around. It's time for you to have some alone time until we decide what to do with you."

Justin stepped forward as Dennis emptied his pockets in the basket. Dennis moved his shoulder suddenly, pretending like he was going to throw a punch. Justin dropped the basket and recoiled away from the man.

Gilles turned around, "What's going on over here?"

"N-n-n-n-nothing sir. Just lost my grip on the basket." Justin answered as he bent down to pick up the basket again. "I wasn't expecting his wallet to be so heavy."

Henry fished around in his pocket and found the couple of keys that he had managed to take off the ring before losing it to Gilles. He palmed the keys - bringing back memories of his junior high parties where he performed magic shows - and placed the change and cell phone in the basket before anyone noticed the extra keys that he was trying to keep hidden.

Justin moved to Meri and stood in front of her. He licked his lips as he waited for her to check her pockets. He jangled the basket in front of her, signalling his impatience.

"Done yet?" Gilles called out from somewhere ahead in the darkness. "I think I'll put you with the rest of those losers."

Justin walks behind Henry and nudges him forward with what could have been a gun, or a piece of salami. At this point, Henry had no idea what was happening anymore.

Meri and Dennis took Henry's lead and began walking in the dimly lit store towards the sound of Gilles singing an old Johnny Cash song. Henry recognised the song but could not understand any of the words that Gilles might have been singing.

Henry remembered the place where they were headed, he had been to this store enough when he was a teacher to know that they were being taken to the pharmacy to be put into isolation. Henry wondered what other kinds of people were going to be kept here with them and if there were dangerous at all.

Gilles stopped singing suddenly as the group approached.

"We've already taken the liberty of emptying the shelves in here, so I wouldn't be looking for a way of overdosing on anything." Gilles pushed Henry into the room. "I hope that you find the accommodations acceptable and that your roommates don't bite."

Gilles laughed as Dennis and Meri walked into the room with Henry.

Dennis turned around and opened his mouth to say something just as Gilles slammed the door closed. Dennis' head snapped back from the force as he clutched his face in agony, tears began welling up in his eyes.

Gilles fumbled with a few keys and locked the door and walked away.

Henry and Meri turned towards Dennis and put their hands on his elbows and guided him towards a place to sit down.

"Is it broken?" Meri asked from Dennis' right.

"I don't think so," Dennis mumbled from beneath his hands. "I don't even believe that it's bleeding either."

Dennis took his hands away from his face and held them out underneath his chin, ready to catch any blood that decided to run down his face.

"Over here seems OK," Henry said from around the corner to his left.

Dennis and Meri followed the sound of Henry's voice as he continued to talk in a very hushed tone.

"There are other people over here," Henry said. "They're the ones that Gilles was talking about before."

"Yeah, we're the 'other losers'." One of the men in the small group said. "I'm Malcolm."

"I know who you are!" Meri gushed. "You're Malcolm from 99.9, you do the evenings. I listen to you all the time!"

Malcolm laughed. "Yeah, that's me."

"Why are you folks holed up in here?" Henry asked.

"We were the ones who brought everyone here and organised this place." Malcolm said, "That was until Gilles, and his sidekick showed up and started shooting."

23

Henry, Meri, and Dennis sat in the makeshift jail for a few hours getting to know what had happened to the other guests that Gilles was holding hostage while the others did his bidding.

"When you said that you gathered everyone here, what did you mean?" Henry said as he sat on the floor across from Malcolm.

"Oh, that," Malcolm said. "I'm a DJ down at 99.9; I was just starting my overnight shift when things didn't seem right."

Malcolm looked directly at Henry, "I could tell from the moment that I walked into the building that things weren't going to be going right that night. Normally when I arrived, there were 5 or 6 people in the office finishing out their day. On an average day, they're usually waiting for me outside for a cigarette to fill me in on all the gossip that's been happening at the office."

"When I rolled in today. There was no one there, except for a stain on the stairs. Looked like someone got into a fist fight from the mess all over the place. There were a few people that I wished I could punch in the face before all of this happened."

Malcolm was lost in his own thoughts for a few minutes. Henry waited patiently for the man to return to continue his story.

"Right, sorry. Turns out there was a zombie hiding around the corner that almost got me while I was looking around. Ran inside and started broadcasting about safe places to go, where to avoid that kind of thing. I left the office around 5 am when I got a phone call from the manager here saying he'd be opening up the store for people to seek refuge until things got better.

"I made that announcement, and made a recorded message before getting out of there and coming here."

Malcolm looked down at the ground for a second and inspected his shoes a little closer.

Henry could tell there was more to this story but did not want to press for more details right now.

Malcolm introduced the others who had to be segregated for misbehaving.

"Let me give you a brief introduction to everyone that I've met here. Over there next to the photocopier is Beverly, she keeps to herself mostly, she's either a nurse or a daycare worker. She hasn't said much since she arrived her, so that's all we know." Malcolm looked at her for a few seconds longer before continuing.

"Here to my right is Thomas, he's a college kid, he helped Gilles clean this area out initially, and we're kind of sure he managed to grab couple fist fulls of pills. He's been pretty out of it since for the past couple of hours."

Malcolm leant slightly and nudged Thomas with his shoulder. The slumbering student slowly started falling to the floor. Henry watched in amazement as the boy took a slow-motion swan dive to the floor, not even attempting to use his hands to stop his fall.

Henry winced as his face made a hollow sound as it connected with the ground.

"That's going to hurt later," Dennis said from beside Henry.

"Hanging out over there with the young girl you came with is Oliver, he's a postal worker. He was on his way to the sorting facility to start work when the building came under attack. Luckily he managed to get out of there before he got bitten."

Dennis glared over at the man talking to Meri and started to get up.

"Easy big man," Henry said as he put a hand on his shoulder. "This is probably the best conversation that either of them has had all day."

Dennis tried to shrug off what Henry said and began to sit back on the floor.

"Give them five minutes. Then you can go over." Henry said with a smile.

Dennis nodded in agreement; refusing to take his eyes off of them.

"The punk kid over there smashing on his game is Theo." Malcolm paused a moment before continuing. "I don't trust him one bit, I have a feeling he might be working for Gilles, to see if we're planning anything."

Theo looked up from his game and gave Malcolm the finger. "Keep on thinking that, you has been."

Henry gave Malcolm a puzzled glance.

"I used to be the lead singer of a relatively significant regional band from about 10 years ago. There was an accident on the road, and we all called it quits." Malcolm looked at Theo. "I think he's just jealous that he didn't get to see us play, I've noticed him bidding on a few of my memorabilia pieces at some charity auctions. He'd never admit it to me, though."

Henry nodded.

"Now what do we do?" Henry asks.

"Nothing. We looked for other ways out, but the door you came out is the only one." Malcolm nodded in the dark in the direction of the door. "There's an opening in the window for talking to patients, but none of us can fit through there either. Trust me, we tried."

A smile crosses Henry's lips as a plan begins to form in his head.

"What are you thinking, man?" Malcolm grows concerned. "I don't want any trouble. They feed us in here, and it's much safer than being outside."

"I know, but I think we should be running this store." Henry raises his flattened hand. "I wonder what these go to?"

Glistening in the faint light from the skylights are several keys from the key ring that Henry was able to pull off the ring before giving them to Gilles.

"Oh!" Malcolm smiled. "I like where this is going."

\-----------------------

Somewhere on the other side of the store, Gerry, the store manager who opened up the doors of his store to the public, opened his eyes and gasped a frigid breath.

A little moan escaped his lips as he started rubbing his hands on his arms to try and warm himself up.

Gerry looked around the room and tried to remember how he ended up in the walk-in refrigerator in the loading bay. He leant forward and tried to bend his leg to stand when a shooting pain erupted from his knee and sent him sprawling back to the floor.

He groaned in pain. The memories of what happened came flooding back to him in an instant.

Gerry had just gotten off the phone with the radio station when he heard a noise from the back of the store, figuring that it was people ready for refuge he went to the loading bay doors and began to open the big heavy steel doors. As the early morning light began to creep into the storage area, Gerry could sense that something was not quite right.

Holding on to the big dark switch that housed the buttons for raising and lowering the doors.

Gerry bent down to look under the door he was greeted by a pair of hands that reached for his loafers and tried to pull him out of the door. Gerry's head hit the hard cement floor, and stars started filling his vision, he could feel his eyes going dark from the force of the ground on his skull.

He could feel pressure on his leg as the hands pulled him harder and forced more of him under the door. Gerry used the last of his strength to grab hold of the bottom of the door and pull against the hands the pulled him.

Gerry screamed in pain from his knee. He instinctively kicked his other leg towards the source of the pain and made contact with something.

He felt the hands on his leg let go and started scrambling back under the door. The adrenaline running through his body made standing on his injured leg tolerable until he got the door closed again. Gerry reached for the buttons and pressed the red button on the bottom making the door slide down. A thud echoed through the quiet store as the door slammed closed, trapping the horrible creature outside.

Realising he was safe, Gerry slid down the door and fell to the ground. He looked down at his knee and knew in an instant that the man outside had just bitten him. He was aware that from the news report that there was a sudden outburst of violence happening throughout the city.

Gerry decided to get the rest of the store ready for the incoming city folks when he collapsed after trying to put weight on his leg.

Sweat started beading on Gerry's forehead, and he looked around for a fan to keep himself cooled down. The loading bay did not have any fans for circulation like the rest of the store, but it did have a giant refrigerator they used to keep all of the dairy cool until they could get it on the floor.

Gerry began to pull himself along the floor, he was still sitting on his bum and used his one good leg to help push himself across the floor, trying not to leave a trail of blood on the floor as he went.

A few minutes later Gerry found himself laying on the floor in the middle of the refrigerator and closed his eyes as he began to cool down.

Gerry stared at the wall of the unit as he finally came to his senses.

He realised that he was now hungry for his lunch, his wife had packed him a piece of leftover chicken for his dinner, and he was eagerly looking forward to it.

Gerry sat up and noticed that the pain in his legs has since disappeared and that he could walk on it. Even without the feeling in his leg, he knew that he was limping and would be limping for the rest of his life if he did not get this seen to.

Gerry wanted to call the hospital, or his wife to let her know that he was OK but he was so hungry that he could only think about finding something to eat. He walked out of the refrigeration unit and began the slow journey to the front of the store where his lunch bag sat waiting for him.

As he walked, Gerry began to hear noises coming from other parts of the store, people shouting, and some banging on the front door. He thought that people were waiting to get in but with a store this big it was hard to hear the doorbell from the back.

He began to notice different smells in the store as well, it seemed as though there was fresh steak cooking on a grill from different parts of the store now. The closer that he got to the source of these smells, the hungrier that he got. Gerry tried to call out for whoever was in the store, but he found that his words came out muffled and garbled. Probably from the cold or the bang on the head, Gerry thought to himself.

Gerry rounded the corner of one of the aisles and found a man looking through the boxes on the upper shelf. He knew exactly what was in this area and wanted to help the man. The closer that Gerry got to this man, the hungrier he got, he could feel the saliva running down his face.

Gerry watched as his hands reached out for this man and wrapped around his throat. He began squeezing the life from this man and a smile crossed his lips when the man stopped struggling, and his body went limp.

He dropped the man to the floor and fell to the ground beside him. Gerry felt like crying, having killed the man, but he figured that he might as well see what this man tasted like first since he smelled so delicious.

