Greetings, fellow readers and writers of fanfiction!

The following story is a spin off of The End of Liberty, but you don't have to go read it(although I'd appreciate it if you did) to understand this one. Though I usually have a main OC in my stories, this story will not have one. I'm sure that'll make a few of you happy, and you know who you are ;) However, there will be minor OCs and a few of the minor canon characters.

Some things you should know:

* Timeline: The events of this story take place in 2012, so the events of GTA V have NOT taken place.
* Point of View: It'll be written in third-person, but I'm taking a George Martin approach, each chapter showing what's happening from Michael, Franklin, and Trevor's end.
* Updates: They'll be as unpredictable as life. I currently got another story going, so I'll be switching between the two.

Disclaimer thingy: I don't own shit, except the plot and those minor OCs I mentioned. The rest belongs to Rockstar.

Please take a moment to review. I love to hear what you readers think and constructive criticism is always welcome.

Enjoy.

Michael

"This is the National Emergency Alert System. We interrupt normal programming at the request of the White House. At this time, all cities are under immediate threat of terrorist attack. All citizens must seek shelter immediately. Do not venture outdoors until given the all clear by the authorities or the NEAS. Stay tuned for a message from the President of the United States or his representative, and for further news and information."

The radio had been playing that emergency message for the past three days. There had been no follow up from the President or his representative, nor had there been any further developments about what the hell was going on.

Michael De Santa suspected there never would be. For three days there had been nothing but noise from outside, terrible sounds that were deafening even in the reinforced basement, where he and his family had taken shelter; the unmistakeable rattle and pops of gunfire, bangs and booms that had shaken the house on its foundations, shattered windows and God only knew what else. At one point something gargantuan had past over the mansion, screeching like a failing jet engine. The noise had been accompanied by other nerve-rending sounds, undoubtedly the crumbling and collapse of the roof. The entire world seemed to quake and small aftershocks followed long after the chaotic noise had died out. As terrible as all that had been, nothing had shattered the fragile composure of the mansion's residents like the screams had; the shrieks of death, collective screams of panic and terror and horror, and the authoritative shouts of command.

It was like World War Three had been waged in the City of Saints.

Michael, being a former bank robber, didn't scare easily, but he'd lost count of how many times he'd almost shit his pants in the past three days. There were moments when he was certain the next explosion was going to be the end.

It was the end, but not for him and his family.

The deafening booms and bangs had ceased early that morning, but the all clear had still not been given by the NEAS. That had been nine hours ago, according to the gold watch on Michael's wrist, and he was growing impatient with sitting around in the basement.

The somewhat overweight man cast a glance around the cramped space, lit with the harsh blue glow of the battery-operated lantern hanging from a hook in the ceiling. His family huddled together on a cot, his wife between his grown son and daughter, a comforting arm around each. It was a rare sight, this togetherness without the usual screaming fits. Michael loved his family...God, he loved them, but they weren't a normal family; they hadn't been a normal family since leaving North Yankton. Life hadn't been any easier there, far from it, but at least they had been somewhat happy. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he'd never made that deal with Dave Norton, if they'd never left home. Perhaps his marriage never would've deteriorated, perhaps his children would've grown to respect him and not resent him as they did now. Perhaps he wouldn't have become depressed with the normal life he'd given himself and his family, stuck in a clichéd midlife crisis. He had only tried to do the right thing for himself and the ones he loved.

Lot of fucking good that did. With a sigh, Michael turned to the radio, where it sat on a folding table, and gave it a look of contempt before switching it off. He was tired of listening to that emergency message loop and loop like a broken record. It was like it was mocking them.

"Keep it on," his wife Amanda insisted. "They could be giving us the all clear soon."

He didn't want to scare her or the kids, but he couldn't stand hearing that pointless message anymore, either. "It's been nine hours since shit out there settled down. If they were going to give us the all clear, they would've done it already."

Amanda's face paled. "It sounded like bombs going off out there. What if the cops...or the army...what if they all got killed?"

"Fucking terrorists!" Tracey wailed, clinging to her mother. "Why do they hate us so much? Why doesn't the army just like go to Pakistan or wherever and bomb them all to hell?"

Jimmy groaned and rolled his eyes. "You're a fucking idiot, Tracey. Have you even been paying attention to what's been going on in the past decade? The war in Iraq? Afghanistan? What the fuck do you think they're doing over there, picking flowers?"

Tracey scowled at him and tried to kick him in the leg. "Shut the fuck up, Jimmy! I was talking to Daddy, not you!"

"Knock that shit off, both of you!" Michael scolded. "Fighting isn't gonna make this situation any easier. You're all scared, I get that. So am I. But we need to keep our heads." He knew it was pointless, that it wouldn't last; telling his children not to fight was like telling the sun not to rise, but as long as it got them to stop bickering for the time being, he could live with that.

"What do we do?" Amanda asked, running a soothing hand through her daughter's blonde hair. "Do we stay down here, wait till someone comes to find us?"

"Come on, Mom, nobody's coming for us. They're all fucking dead," Jimmy responded.

At that, the two women looked petrified. Tracey let out a small whimper.

"Nice, James," Michael growled. "Let's scare your mother and sister more than they already fucking are!"

The younger De Santa gave his father a helpless look. "What? It's true and you fucking know it! We should just go check shit out ourselves."

Micheal actually considered this. "You know what? For once, you're right. I'll go check shit out. The three of you stay down here." He got perhaps two steps to the steel, reinforced basement door that had kept them safe, then felt a hand wrap tightly around his wrist. He turned around to see the concerned face of his wife.

"You are not going out there, Michael James Townley."

His brows rose at her speaking to him like he was one of their misbehaving children. The whole 'full name' thing wasn't going to work on him. He put his hands on her shoulders, giving them a reassuring squeeze. "It's fine, Mandy. I'm gonna have a quick look. I'll be back before you know it."

Amanda's concerned look turned stern. "Five minutes. Promise me, Michael."

Smiling, he held up two fingers pressed together. "Scout's honor."

She scoffed. "You were never a Scout."

"Okay, okay," Michael laughed. "I promise. Five minutes." He gave her a quick peck on the forehead, then turned back to the basement door.

Michael struggled to get it open, as something was weighing against it from the other side. He had to toss his own weight against the door numerous times before whatever was obstructing it finally gave. He stepped out, quickly closing the door behind him, not wanting his family to see what he was seeing; they would eventually, he knew, but he could delay it for now.

Michael cringed at the sight of his home, even though it wasn't half as bad as he thought it had been. Sometimes when you couldn't see what was making the terrible noise, your mind conjured up the absolute worst; a distinct creak in the middle of the night was a serial killer coming for you, or, in this case, the loud banging and crashing was his entire mansion falling to the ground.

The walls were still standing, but a gaping path split through the roof from one side to the other, daylight spilling through it. It was like something huge had dragged through it. He suspected it might have actually been a jet, given the powerful screeching he'd heard a few days ago; perhaps the tip of a wing had struck through the roof.

The living room was a disaster. His sixty-two inch film screen lay shredded among the bits of roof and broken furniture, as well as some of the book cases which had once been full of books, family photos, expensive trinkets and knick-knacks, and...

A lump grew in his throat. There it was, the shiny, broken pieces of DVDs that had once been his old movie collection, one he had been amassing for some ten years.

Michael had to turn away, and reminded himself that he had closer things to his heart that had survived all this, and were waiting for him in the basement. He made a promise he had best keep, but first he needed to take a peek outside and assess the situation.

Michael could still hear screaming and gunfire as he stepped carefully through the debris toward the front double doors, though the sounds seemed far off, perhaps coming from several blocks over. One door was still standing, though the colored glass was shattered and the wooden frame splintered in places. The other had been blown right off the hinges. To where, he had no idea. He stepped through the opening and stopped dead in his tracks on the small porch, his jaw dropping open.

The front yard was littered with bits of roofing, broken glass, and chunks of bricks from the destroyed fence around the property. An old oak tree had uprooted and crashed down on his fifty grand sedan. His wife's convertible hadn't been spared, either. The back end of it was crushed under the collapsed carport.

He could smell smoke and the sickening stench of gasoline as he weaved his way around the fallen tree. The iron fence gate lay in the entrance to the driveway, all twisted up, and as Michael approached the street, he could see more debris covering the asphalt.

"Fuck."

Rockford Hills was a disaster area. Some of the sprawling mansions of the rich and famous had been resorted to rubble, smoke rising from the remnants. On the block there was more debris, felled street lamps, and smashed up sports cars. Further south, at the heart of the city, Micheal saw the proof that it really was as bad as he'd thought. "Jesus fucking Christ..."

Downtown Los Santos was in ruins. The Maze Bank tower that had once hovered over the City of Saints was half destroyed, as if God had reached down and ripped the upper-most portion of it clean off. Large plumes of dark smoke snaked from the remains toward the heavens. The matching FIB and IAA skyscrapers had suffered the same fate, and were also smoking like chimneys. Smaller fingers of smoke rose up around the felled structures, likely from damaged buildings lower to the ground. It darkened the sky like a blanket of storm clouds, where not a bird nor a plane flew.

He was reminded of this documentary he'd watched a while back, about the terrorist attacks in Liberty City twelve years ago. There'd been an interview with a survivor, the man describing the event as 'a terrifying journey through Hell, barely coming out on the other side'. Michael thought 'Hell' was a fitting description for what he was looking at. Only evil could've done this. The real question in his mind, the one he desperately needed an answer to, was whether or not that evil was still out there. Had the ones who'd perpetrated this moved on after doing their damage, or were they still out there to kill off who was left? Searching for the survivors?

He didn't know, perhaps he couldn't know, but what he did know was he needed to get his family out of this broken city while he still could. But how? And where? And if the people that had done this were still out there, how was he going to protect his family? He had no guns, no transportation, no fucking idea where to go...

His concentration on the matter broke when he heard a clatter from somewhere nearby, followed by a loud groan. Michael's head jerked north, where the sounds came from. Up in the Vinewood Hills, perhaps a few blocks over, he saw the origin of the overwhelming reek of gasoline. The tail end of a fighter jet protruded from the remnants of a mansion that had once sat along the hillside, thick, dark pillars of smoke rising from the wreckage.

Then he heard the groan again.

Though Michael's conscience had taken quite the beating throughout his former criminal career, some shred of it still clung to him, and it was that shred that led him to investigate the groan, wondering if some poor soul was trapped helplessly under a pile of rubble somewhere. The person would get no help from the authorities, as it seemed they were no longer around. Michael hadn't heard a single siren since coming outside, and in a city that had been more or less leveled, sirens he should have heard. There should have been some kind of police and EMT presence on the streets. Maybe Amanda had been right. Maybe the entire police force had been wiped out. Maybe whoever had done this had planned it out that way; take out the police first and no one could stop them from doing their worst damage. But what of the army? Surely the perpetrators couldn't have taken out the army too.

The former bank robber moved around the debris and up the street, homing in on the groaning. Cresting the hill at the top and coming around the corner, Michael saw his neighbor Carl March, some fancy pants lawyer, kneeling over another man who wasn't moving. Carl was facing away from him, so Michael stopped where he was and addressed him, not wanting to startle the man and have him draw a weapon on him or something.

"Carl, everything okay? You need a hand?"

Carl stilled, every muscle in his body tensing. The man twisted a little and turned his head around slowly. Before it even got fully around, Michael knew something was wrong with him; it was in his body language. His instinct was yelling at him to get the hell out of there. Then he saw Carl's eyes and face and horror rooted him to the ground. Red, the irises of his eyes were red like the blood that stained the man's mouth and dribbled over his chin. Red like the fires of Hell. Red...unnatural...subhuman. His face was ashen, edging on a light gray, and a network of tiny blue veins protruded from under his flesh. Carl's lack of humanity was made all the more apparent by the severed arm clutched in his hands. The appendage appeared undamaged apart from the gory stump. Why Carl's mouth was bloody, why his eyes were red, why he was holding that severed arm as if it were a prize, Michael didn't even want to begin to guess, because this was impossible, beyond ludicrous. It couldn't be happening; it isn't, he tried to tell himself. Any minute now, he would wake up to find that he'd fallen asleep on the couch again, the credits to some vintage movie rolling across his film screen, and he would realize it was just some bizarre nightmare.

But Michael wasn't waking up, and the thing that had once been Carl March, the fancy pants lawyer, rose to its feet, tossing aside the severed appendage. His bloody face twisted in fury and with a loud, hellish bellow, Carl charged at Michael.

In survival mode, the ex-bank robber backpedaled with all haste, eyes wide, heart leaping for his throat. His foot trod on some rubble, twisting his ankle. Michael fell back, banging an elbow on something hard. "Shit!" Pain jolted up his arm as he fumbled around for something, anything he would harness as a weapon.

Carl fell upon him and Michael threw up his throbbing arm, wedging it against the man's throat to keep him back. "Get the fuck off me, asshole!"

Carl was strong, too strong for such a skinny man. He pressed forward against Michael's arm, trapping it between them as his teeth snapped itches from Michael's face. What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

Michael's free hand still groped around, blindly searching for a weapon. His fingers touched something solid, clutched it. His brain never registered what it was, only that he should use it.

He smashed the object into the side of Carl's head, not once but three times. Michael felt the warm spatter of blood on his face from the gash he'd made on Carl's head.

Despite the injury, the furious, red-eyed man was far from done.

His hands tore at Michael in a mindless frenzy, eventually clutching his throat, fingers digging in to crush his windpipe.

Michael gripped his makeshift weapon with both hands and slammed it forward into the lawyer's head over and over and over until his arms grew weak from the exertion. Even still, it hardly budged Carl. Blood dribbled down over his eyes and face, his grip on Michael's throat tightening. Michael continued to try to fight the man off, but his attacks had grown too weak to do any more damage.

How? he wondered as he choked for air and banged the chunk of stone he held into the man's head again. His vision grew hazy and dim, and he thought of Amanda, of Tracey and Jimmy. We should've stayed in North Yankton. God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry...I'm-

He heard something then, a loud, unmistakable sound. A gunshot.

Through his hazy vision, Michael saw Carl's head jerk in a spray of blood. The lawyer fell away to the side and Michael gasped, his lungs expanding painfully in his chest cavity as oxygen filled them.

"Woo! Got that motherfucker!" came an excited, masculine voice.

Michael pushed himself up on trembling arms as two men and a large Rottweiler approached. The men were both African-American, dressed in baggy clothes, most of it black with bits of green. One was tall and lanky, wearing a black ball cap on his head. The other was of average height, built a bit more sturdier and appeared younger than his friend. The drooling dog was on a chain leash held by the taller guy, and it stretched its head forward to give Michael a curious sniff before its owner gave the chain a little yank.

The younger man held a hand out to Michael, an offer to help him to his feet. "You okay, man?"

Michael accepted the aid. "I am now," he answered as he was pulled up. "Thanks." He looked down at dead Carl, where he lay in a pool of blood. "What the fuck is going on?"

"It's the motherfuckin' zombie apocalypse, dude!" the taller guy exclaimed.

Michael stared at him, mouth open, brows raised. He'd heard some crazy shit in his time, and this definitely made his top ten list. "...What? What the hell are you talking about?"

The younger guy rolled his eyes. "Don't listen to this crazy-ass fool. He seen Vinewood Zombie too many times."

"I know what I seen, nigga, and I seen motherfuckers eatin' motherfuckers out there!"

The young guy waved him off, dismissively. "Go on with that shit, man. I seen what you seen, and they wasn't eating each other."

"What was they doing then, huh? We seen that one crazy motherfucker tear some other motherfucker's throat out...with his motherfuckin' teeth, nigga!"

"He didn't eat him, though," the man argued. "He was like...shit, I don't fuckin' know, sucking the dude's blood or something."

Michael put his hands up. "Wait. Back up. You both saw this? More than once?"

Both men nodded in unison.

"Niggas gone fuckin' crazy out there!" the tall one said. "They everywhere, man, like the whole fuckin' city's crawlin' with these motherfuckers."

"We tried going downtown," the younger added. "But shit's fucked up bad there, man. Crowds of these crazy motherfuckers. It's a fuckin' death trap."

"What about the cops?" Michael asked. "Why ain't they doing anything about this shit?"

"What cops, man? They all gone mad like everybody else, or been killed. Them army dudes, too. Seen some tanks downtown, but ain't no one manning those motherfuckers. Some was destroyed, like them motherfuckers turned on each other."

"Jesus," Michael breathed. "How? What was this, some kind of fucking biological attack?"

The younger man shrugged. "We don't know anymore than you do. We're just trying to get the fuck out of here before we end up like the rest of those crazy-ass motherfuckers, or worse. If it's like germ warfare or some shit, who knows what the fuck they got, or if it's contagious."

"It was able to spread among the populace within three days. Whatever the fuck it is, it's serious shit."

"Nah, man. I mean, it is serious shit, but it didn't spread in three days. It spread in one. Who you think the cops and army were trying to fight off? The fuckin' people. Man, I don't even think there were any fuckin' terrorists. I mean, I ain't seen anyone but them crazy assholes. You the first normal dude we come across."

"We wasn't gonna help you at first," the other guy added. "Thought you was one of them till you told that motherfucker to get off. Them crazy ass niggas don't say shit, or if they do, it's just jibberish."

Michael looked down at Carl's corpse again, remembering the way the man had sounded just before he'd attacked him. That hellish, inhuman scream. None of this makes any goddamn sense. What the hell is going on? He shook his head, letting out a heavy sigh as he ran a hand through his hair. "How were you two planning on getting out of here? And where the hell are you going to go?"

"We gonna take our chances outside the city," the young one answered. "Paleto Bay or somewhere. All we can do. Gotta do it on foot, though, 'cause there ain't no way we getting a car over all the shit on the streets."

"Big fucking risk you two are taking."

The man shrugged. "Too risky to stay. We're heavy, you seen that. Those crazy motherfuckers are hard to kill. Only thing that's worked for us is lead to the head."

"Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a spare gun on you, would you?" Michael asked.

The taller man laughed. "Listen to this old white dude...you even know how to use a gun, Pops?"

Michael frowned, offended. "Listen, you little punk, I may be old, but I can blow a tire on a moving vehicle from sixty-five yards away with a fucking pistol."

The man put his hands up, grinning. "We got a badass over here!"

His friend rolled his eyes. "Man, ignore this fool. Look, we ain't got a spare, but like...shit, I think we'd all have a better chance if we stuck together, you know?"

Michael shook his head. "I'm not alone; I have a family. If these...people are crawling all over the city, a larger group will attract more attention. Smaller group would get out easier."

"Most of those crazy assholes are downtown. We go up through the Vinewood Hills, we ain't gonna come across many. Me and this fool can dispatch them easy enough if we do. There ain't no reason to stay here, man. There's nothing left, but maybe we'll find help or something outside the city, or at least a safer place."

Michael considered this. It was a plan, though not the best. Still, he needed to get his family to some kind of safety and he obviously was not going to find that in Los Santos. But he couldn't make this decision alone, either, not like he had done with moving away from North Yankton. His family resented him enough for that. "I need to talk this over with the wife and kids. I guess you can come with me if you want."

"You got some food at the crib?" the tall man asked. "'Cause this nigga's famished."

Michael shrugged. "If the fridge is still intact, raid it at your own risk. I'm sure most the food is spoiled by now with no electricity. But before we go, how about some names?"

"I'm Lamar," the tall one answered, then he swung a hand into his friend's chest. "This fat chump's Franklin."

"Man, I ain't fat. It only seems that way compared your stick-skinny ass."

"Whatever you say, fool. Oh, yeah, the little homie here's Chop." Lamar reached down and gave the Rottweiler a good scruff on the neck. Chop's little stump of a tail wiggled in response, his long, pink, drooling tongue lolling from his mouth.

"I'm Michael. Lamar, Franklin..." He glanced down at the dog. "Chop. Follow me, I don't live far." And as a dry afterthought, he added, "And try to excuse the mess."