Author's Note: Insert apology here I guess it's just too hard to write three stories at once for me. Well, enjoy this chapter while you can, and hopefully I'll be able to write a nice chapter for you in less than a week.

Cody Fischer bounded through the streets, clenching his fire axe with an iron-hard grip. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and blood ran from the gash on his shoulder. It had been a very close call. Portland Theater, at the center of town, had been absolutely filled with zombies. He hadn't meant to leave Greg behind, but hopefully he could survive until Cody got some help...

Turning the corner, Cody was met with the remnants of a pileup, the cars strewn across the road, blocking his path. Cody cursed, his blue eyes shaking in their sockets.

Zombie blood caked his shaggy brown hair, sweat covered his hands, and his blood was splattered across the front of his brown-and-green striped shirt. Cody was a wreck, but there was no where he could go to hide. Infected swarmed through the streets.

Cody grabbed the roof of a nearby car and swung his legs up onto the hood. Cody couldn't climb that well...he was a bit short. The 24-year-old-man jumped to a telephone pole and began to shimmy his way upwards. He could see the the roof of a nearby building had been destroyed and was touching the pole. The roof was his escape. There would be no zombies on the roof.

Luckily, Cody wasn't high like he usually was. There were no drugs at Portland Theater, except for some pot that he had found under some seats in the front row. But Mia had thrown it out when she discovered Cody about to smoke it.

Cody, Greg, and Mia had been a good team, but the Infected trapped them in the theater. Cody's mind drifted back to when he had escaped...

"I'm serious. If that Dozer does not leave, I will personally go out there and beat the shit out of it. Nothing better than a catapult zombie lying dead on your doorstep." Mia said calmly, leaning back in her seat. Greg smiled.

"You go and do that. Cody and I will protect you."

"Pfft. Cody couldn't kill a Dozer if he had a rocket launcher."

"Hey, I'm not that bad of a shot!" replied Cody. "And anyway, after those Infected with guns showed up, I'm not going out there anymore."

"Yeah. Who knows what other kinds of zombies could be out there. I'd never heard of a Dozer until I met you two."

"Fine. Scaredy-cats." Mia picked up her assault rifle and jumped over the seats, headed towards the front door."

"I wasn't being serious!" Greg called. Cody suddenly felt a burning sensation in his shoulder. He looked up. A Spitter looked down at him, having burned a hole through the roof with her acid.

"Crap!" Greg spun around, only to be knocked down by Cody in his rush to get a gun.

"Watch it!" yelled Greg,clambering up onto a seat. Mia glanced back, not noticing the Dozer rushing towards the theater's glass door.

The door was smashed to pieces as the Dozer charged through it and grabbed Mia.

"No!" yelled Greg, but it was too late. The Dozer threw Mia through the air, where she hit the wall on the far side of the theater. Still concious, she grabbed onto a light so she wouldn't fall onto the seats below, breaking her back.

Greg pulled out a shotgun and rushed towards the Dozer. The shotgun discharged, and the Dozer fell backwards, yelling.

"How do you like that, you ugly fucker!" yelled Greg, firing again into the Dozer's face, killing it. While he was distracted, Infected began to climb in through the glass.

Cody came out of his daze, only to see Mia fall from the light, having been pulled by a Smoker. He rushed over and cut the Smoker's tongue with his fire axe, but it was too late. It had been too hard a fall for Mia. Her lifeless eyes stared back at him.

Greg, chased by the Infected, ran up the stairs in the lobby, headed towards the projector booth. He shut the door and slammed the desk against it, looking around for the key.

Meanwhile, Cody busted through the back door to be met with a shotgun in his face.

The Grunt grinned and fired.

The bullet took off part of Cody's shoulder, and he screamed in pain. Decapitating the Grunt with his fire axe, Cody ran away from the theater, ignoring Greg's yell for help. Cody just kept running.

"Mia..." Cody muttered. He was such an idiot. Greg was probably dead, and what had Cody done? Abandoned him. It was all his fault. Cody fell backwards onto the roof, gasping for breath. He wasn't as fit as he had been four years ago.

Cody could see most of the city from his vantage point. He could almost see the coast in the distance. Cody sighed. Maine had been his favorite state.

To his left was Portland Medical, a large hospital that was probably the tallest building in town. But to Cody's surprise, he could also see searchlights to the left of the hospital. Were there possibly other survivors? Other survivors that could help him retake the theater?

Cody judged that it was a residential district, but he knew that there was probably a supermarket near there. The classic horror movie, Cody thought. Supermarkets and malls.

With one last look back at the Portland theater, Cody began to climb down to ground level, where he would make his way towards the searchlights.

Austin sat back in disbelief as the man in front of him nonchalantly cleaned up Tallie's body and covered her in a white sheet. The man then pulled a rose from nowhere and put it on top of her. Jackson was still unconcious and it seemed that the man would tend to him next.

"So, your name is?" Austing asked.

"Michael Colt. But you can call me Ghost." said the man, looking at the blood smeared over Jackson's face.

"Seems your friend Kara found a drug stash. Must've exploded when she died. Then Jackson here fell into it. I guess that's what was causing his hallucinations." Ghost wiped the blood off of Jackson's face with a handkerchief. "Just let him rest. When he wakes up he shall be fine."

"Anyway...you said you knew where my sister was." said Max, crossing his arms. Ghost's grey eyes flashed, and he scratched a scar on the back of his head, his short brown hair sticking to his skull.

"If she looks like you, then yes. Does she have brown hair that's a bit long, about to her shoulders?"

"Yes! And she has brown eyes, and she was wearing..."

"I get it. There can't be that many people left alive and uninfected that look like your sister. Anyway, this girl, Mila, was hacking away at some zombie I have never seen before, something that made this concrete stuff that stuck her feet to the ground. Before I could say anything, some little crouching zombie came behind her and stole her gun, running away with it. Probably some looter that got infected."

"I thought the zombies didn't remember what they had been before they were infected?"

"I don't know why or how he did it, but that Looter ran and Mila broke the concrete with her concrete and ran after that zombie. I suspect they're in the basement right now."

"Then let's go!" shouted Max.

"Not so fast. Some of us are going to need to stay here to watch over Jackson."

"Hmm. Cliff, Wolf, and I will stay here. Is that okay with you guys?" Austin asked.

"Yeah, I guess." Ken replied. "We'd better get going before something happens to her..." Max bolted inside the supermarket, headed straight towards the back where the stairs to the basement were.

"Guess I spoke too soon." said Ken, before she and Ghost ran into the supermarket to follow Max.

Austin sighed. He had already lost one new friend, he didn't need to lose another. He was a bit wary about this new guy, Ghost, but at least he was helping to find Mila.

Mila Abernathy bit her lip, her head racked with pain. Blood dripped from her mouth and her broken hand. That damn zombie had taken her gun, leaving her defenseless. Who knew that there would be a horde of workers in the basement.

Mila was freezing cold, as she was hiding in a meat freezer. It was locked from the inside, so Mila was free to leave anytime she wanted, but she was afraid as to what she would see when she poked her head out. Probably two times the amount of zombies she had first seen when she had clambered into the freezer.

Hunks of frozen chicken and barbecued meat hung off of the shelves. It seemed that nobody had been in here since the infection had started. Was this stuff safe to eat?

Mila looped her arms around her legs, and rocked back and forth. She would freeze if she didn't find a way to keep warm. Mila crawled through the freezer, looking for anything that could help her. There was nothing. She crawled back to the door, and after a moment of indecision, opened it and poked her head out. She was met with a lovely view of a basement full of zombies. They turned their heads and growled, and started walking towards her. A far away Boomer started waddling towards her, when suddenly, it simply exploded. Max appeared from behind it, wielding a shotgun and an assault rifle. When he saw Mila he almost freaked out.

"You're alive! Oh, thank God!"

"Um, Max...a little help here."

"Oh. Yeah." He waded through the group of zombies, decapitating them left and right. He looked like some drunk cowboy that had broken into a gun store.

Two people came down the stairs from the upper floor. Mila recognized Ken, who wasn't wasting time beating zombies over the head with a baseball bat. The other guy was unfamiliar. He had two pistols and was a good shot, seemingly nailing every zombie with a bullet through the eye.

Max reached her and he brought her into a hug.

"Hey, watch it." Mila muttered as she almost tipped over from the weight of Max. He grinned and let go.

"Glad you're okay...but I got some bad news." Max peeked out the door behind him, but Ken and the other man were keeping the Infected at bay.

"...Tallie is dead." Mila stared back at him.

"Wha..."

"Tank."

"Oh...shit. Oh, god no. Is anybody else injured?" Max almost laughed, but he remembered it was supposed to be a sad moment.

"Jackson's doped up on some drugs. Fell into it. Kara had been caring a bunch of supplies she had grabbed off of the shelves. I guess she didn't see that she had picked up someone's stash of cocaine." That made Mila smile a bit, but she soon went back to being sad.

Mila stood up and regained her composure.

"Well, brother. Let's go kill some zombies." Max grinned.

"Hell yeah!" Max kicked the door open and smashed his gun into the head of the first zombie he saw. All Mila had was a crowbar, but Max threw her his assault rifle, and she joined the fray.

"So..." grunted Ghost and he grappled with a zombie in a hazmat suit. "How long you been with these guys?"

"Not that long. About a week and a half we've all been together." Ken bashed in the nose of a zombie that stumbled towards her."

"Well, have you guys heard of Lance?"

"Who's Lance?"

"Some guy evacuating people up at the hospital. He and this other guy have a helicopter, and they bring people to some military base farther north, almost up in Canada."

"Hmmm...I'll ask Austin about that."

A few minutes later, the basement was totally cleared of zombies. Every Infected lay dead on the ground, head smashed in or bullet through the brain. Mila and Max came over to the stairs, and Mila stopped in front of Ghost.

"Who're you?" Mila asked. Ghost extended his hand.

"Michael Colt. But every calls me Ghost."

"Thanks for helping Max rescue me."

"Yeah, I guess we did. But what if we had taken longer? I can bet that freezer is pretty cold inside. Find a better hiding place next time." With that, Ghost turned and walked up the stairs."

"Hmmm." Ken followed him as Mila scratched the back of her neck.

"Well, we'd better get back to everyone else before something bad happens."

Author's Note: Sorry to anybody who reads my stories, 'cause I took a two week break for Spring Break. Well, here's two new characters, both of whom will have an impact on the story. Unfortunately...there may be another death soon. Well, you can always tell me your favorite character and that might influence who dies and who lives...