"A fuck-ton of zombies?" Bill asks sarcastically, slipping his last magazine into his M16 with trembling, blood soaked hands. "What kind of number is that?"

"Look," Louis replies from where he's standing against the door. There's an air of desperation to his voice, and it's not like him to get so riled up, at least not anymore. "You asked what I saw, and I'm telling you, I saw a fuck-ton of zombies."

Bill opens his mouth to scold the man, but it's Francis who cuts him off. "He's right. I looked out when I was downstairs, and that is a fuck-ton of zombies."

"Did they have anything?" I ask, cutting into the conversation myself. Francis has returned from his little trek, and I'd asked him to look for something for me. He gives me a rather cocky grin before tossing a can my way. I hardly manage to catch it without dropping my pistol.

"Might be a bit warm, but cola is cola."

"Heaven in a can," I sigh wistfully, popping the tab on it. I ignore the fact that I leave a bloodied fingerprint right where my mouth lands, and this drink is long since flat, warmer than my food had been, and tastes like a car battery.

I can see Bill looking over me with a pursed smile. I'm sure he's glad that I have this little moment to myself, sad that this life has been forced on me, or feels nostalgia about a time long gone. Whatever it is, it only lasts a moment before he turns and looks out the window.

"It's going to get dark soon, we should set up here and rest."

Louis automatically shakes his head vehemently. "Nu-uh. Not with a fuck-ton of zombies in the parking lot. We have to move."

Before Bill can even open his mouth, Francis is agreeing. With three scared men in my care, there's little I can do to make any point, so I've long since stopped trying. I don't care to say that even if we do get the ladder across the alley to make our escape, there will probably be as many zombies in the next building. I don't care to say if we board up the doors we'll be woken up in less than five minutes by something breaking in.

I'm tired. It's been weeks since I last slept, the pistols at my side have two bullets between the two of them, and there's a body that ate a bullet lying in the bed they expect to occupy. I can feel the stench rising off me, but I just don't care, not anymore.

I can't feel my legs when I'm running anyway, and after that last hunter got a good swipe on me, that's a good thing. The three of them are arguing even more heatedly now, and I'm sure Bill's own opinion is that we need to rest for me, because I need to.

"We can make use of that old clock-" he's saying when I cut him off.

"Bill. We need to go."

He turns to me, a question in his eyes, but I nod and stand, groaning as I put weight on my injured leg. The blood from Bill's chest has leaked down his arms and slicks his rifle. Louis lost his sense of smell and taste two days ago, along with his eyebrows and a piece of his cheek. Francis whines every time he has to sit down because a "hunter raped him."

We're a sorry bunch, but we're almost at the city limits, and that's something to be proud of.

Goodbye civilization, I'll miss you.

Pow! Sploosh! Ker-click.

Pow! Sploosh! Ker-click.

Click. Uh-oh. Click. Click-click-click.

Not now, any time but now.

The last zombie turns my way, face contorted in a drooling snarl with empty eyes glaring straight into my head. Food, his empty glare seems to say before he unleashes that unearthly howl and rushes me.

I still have a single bullet to my pistols, but by the time I reach down the snarling mess is already on me in a flying tackle. I barely manage to flip his weight off me before we land and he ends up chomping a mouthful of dead grass. My pistols are forgotten, and I scramble away, reaching for anything, anything, that could help me.

Before the moment is gone he's on me again, mottled grey flesh breaking off as I claw him back and mouth open and rasping as he tries to take a chomp out of my throat. Just as his teeth graze my neck I swing my other hand up and a dull clomp comes from his head.

Have you ever killed a man by beating his head in with a rock? It turns out that it really doesn't matter whether he's living or undead, it leaves the same impression.

Only after I take the fourth strike and the stone is dripping with blood and brains do I realize what I just did. My throat locks up, my eyes can't close, they can't look away. He's staring at me and I just can't look away.

I turn and run, not from the screeching dead, but from his damning eyes. Unable to catch my breath, unable to see, hear, or feel, after I'd just cracked a man's skull in two, I end up resting against a slick stone wall, my hands shaking in shock.

He's dead. He was already dead. And you will be too. I just have to remind myself that. He was already dead, and soon I'll be too. Mostly because I was busy trying to catch up with Francis when I shot off those pursuers, and now I've run the other way for who knows how long and I'm between two warehouses in who-knows where with no ammo, no friends, and no hope.

It doesn't take me long to hear the telltale rasping screech of a hunter either. I think that's the cough of a smoker too.

No. No, no, no. I refuse. I've been running well over a month now, there's no way I'll die here.

Unable to accept my fate I jog ahead, my lungs already long since past the point of burning. Out of the alley, take a left, down two blocks. There's the biggest building in this little district, a six story office building no doubt in charge of the manufacturing and shipping around here. If there's any chance I have of surviving it's there.

I hope so. Bill would know what to do. Francis would protect me here. Louis would somehow, somehow slip us away with no one the wiser. But I had to be stupid and sentimental, just because I bashed a man's brains out. I shut it out of my brain and run.

The undead are slow to react when I'm not shooting them or flashing lights in their eyes. That gives me the advantage, and just the amount of time I need. By the time I hear their howl behind me I'm already in the back door of the building and heading for the stairway.

But, if they trap me this early… Think, Zoey, think.

As I stop to think I see one crossing through the back parking lot. Not just one, but as the boys would say, a fuck-ton of them sprinting towards the back door where I'm standing. The door is small and confined, and that many…

I don't even consider the ramifications as I pull out my last Molotov and light it, tossing the flaming bottle just outside the door where the flames spread high and block out my view of the night beyond. I don't stop to make sure they're dead either. Flames don't stop them on the first few feet.

Instead I make my exit, shutting the stairwell door hastily behind me and scrambling up the first flight of stairs, only now aware of the burning in my sides, throbbing in my leg, and the smell of death that surrounds this place and me. Many people have lost their lives here, and I have to be careful not to join their shambling ranks.

Unfortunately the first door up is locked and the next after that and after that. It's only at the final floor, that I finally manage to break through, panting and locking it behind me. It's quiet up here, and from either way I can see into the cloudy night outside. It's about to rain.

It's so quiet here that, as the wind whips through an open window, I can hear the rustling papers that have covered the floor and smell the earthy scent of the coming rain on the wind. I also smell rotting flesh, pungent and coming from upwind. Knowing that, I head downwind, hoping to stay well clear of the bodies I know are there. After a month stumbling into room after room of infected feeding areas, I've earned a second sense about where the corpses wind up.

There's a ghost of civilization in this building. I can almost see it. Men and women once worked here, talking on the phones and laughing with their friends until the sirens came. But they still lulled about. An evacuation was called, and they laughed it off, taking their time to check all the rooms and lock them. Each of them remains locked, each one I end up at to jiggle the handle.

And then there's the final door, at the far end of the hallway downwind. The final doorway where the floor leader was still laughing with his friends and checking the rooms. His arm still remains, shriveled and rotten, clutching the keys. The rest is all blood soaking the carpet.

I feel like throwing up, but there's something more important to do now. He died, and his killer didn't escape down the stairs. I can guess he's back upwind, feasting on the pile that has sat there long enough to rot.

But I need to be sure, so I slip my remaining pistol from its holster with my very final bullet in it. As I approach the door, still open just a crack, I lean down and slip the keys out from the hand's deathly grasp.

My pistol enters the room first, nudging the door open a smidgen at a time until I can see enough into it. It's similarly dark, lighted by windows that take up the entire wall as the hallway is. They leave an eerie grey glow on the papers that cover the floor, and in some places they shine back a dull crimson. Blood and papers aren't the only thing that's in this meeting room. There's the faint crackle of movement, and over the tip of the long table I can see the barest glint of skin.

My pain, flight, and previous worries are all suddenly gone. They're replaced by something that sucks the moisture from my throat and threatens to burst my chest in its grip. There's an aura of death here and it's sucked me in and threatens not to let me go.

The door creaks open and I take my first, and last, step in, still holding the pistol level with the creature hiding on the other side of this desk. As soon as I do, I see the thin grey hair and a face contorted in pain and suffering.

And then her crimson gaze locks on me.