Prologue

We have witnessed the tale of two chapters in this saga so far. The first ended in the loss of their leader, and the madden voyage to an island away from the destruction. The second chapter . . . well we don't actually know how that one ended. As far as I know there still on the run from the military after escaping their 'infection proof helicopter.' But regardless of this, they survived the destruction of a bridge and have reached the other side knowing that they started out as strangers, and come out as a family. Now we set out on our third chapter. One that will twist and turn, shock and awe, and maybe even spill tears of sorrow. It is a chapter unlike any other. So read, enjoy. And above all, survive.

Dillon

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. It was supposed to be the faces of unknown people, of strangers he never meet. It was never supposed to be the ones closest to him.

Dillon was a 5'11'' boy in his 13th year in high school. It wasn't because he wanted to; it was because he lacked the money to advance into university. His hair was a jet black shag on his head the framed his face and glasses. He wasn't what some would call athletic, but he still had the beginning of a defined muscle pattern on his chest and arms, always wearing a graphic tee and jeans. His face was long and his jawline rather rugged.

Dillon started out as a rather anti-social high-schooler. He wasn't exactly what you would call an outcast either. He fit into every crowd in high school but enjoyed the regular company of his closest friends and computer the most. It was when he was on his beloved computer that life as he knew it would cease to exist and his new one would begin.

School had been cancelled for the past two days due to the recent outbreak in Philadelphia, of what the media was calling the Green Flu. The government quickly responded with what they called CEDA but the infection was still spreading at a wicked rate. This was the first time that he was actually concerned about catching the media's newest string of health scare, as it came from seemingly nothing and spread like wildfire throughout the entire country. He rarely got sick and had never gotten a flu shot but he still remained healthy in nearly all situations. He was sitting at home, playing Portal 2 with his best friend Matt. Matt also seemed to have a certain resistance to this flu. They were playing custom maps that were already completed as no one else seemed to be online making maps since the flu had started. "What do you think is going to happen?" He asked Matt through his headset.

"I don't know. What happened in Philly is slowly coming our way." He sounded generally worried, he had every right to. But /matt was never one to admit it. "All I know is that we're not going back to school for a while." Matt replied in a somewhat grim tone. It was just a way for the two of them to talk without the boredom of being on the phone.

Everything was going rather well when there was a loud bang on the door. It was Matt's door. "That was loud." Matt commented. "Hang on a minute. I'll be right back." He replied in an annoyed tone. After all who would be at the door at a time like this, during a time like this? He was setting up for the next step in the puzzle when he heard a struggle on the other end. "Matt!" He shouted. What was happening, he had to know. "Matt! Are you alright?" There was no longer any noise coming from the other end. Not even a raged voice of the sounds of footsteps. "Matt?"

"Dillon." Came a staggered response from the other end. It was so sudden that it scared him half to death. "Matt! Oh thank goodness I thought you were dead."

"I may well be." He said in a strained voice.

"Don't say that!" Dillon was not about to let his best friend die from some mad man. "I'm coming over. Try and hold on until I can get there." He picked up the phone to call the police but was stopped by Matt himself.

"NO!" He shouted over the headset. "Don't come over. And don't call the cops. They can't help us now."

"Matt, what's going on? You're starting to scare me." And he was. Not even five minutes before they were having a great time playing games and now Matt was talking about himself dying? Something was terribly wrong.

"Go to your window." Matt instructed, his voice continually getting worse. "Go, and you'll see what I saw."

With slow steps he did. Scared of what he would see, be still he went. With portable phone in hand he slowly peered through the curtains of his small room in the tiny apartment he lived in with his dad, and he saw. He saw what Matt had seen. It was crashed cars and it was people running rampant, it was fear and it was pure chaos in the streets, it was zombies. Zombies chasing after everything that moved and tarring them apart to eat them while they were still screaming. It everything he had hoped for and it was what he feared the most. Total and utter anarchy. "Zombies." He whispered into his headset.

"Zombies," Matt whispered back, "that's who was at the door, and that's what is no lying dead in the next room." His breathing was laboured, Dillon could hear that now, he could also hear how much pain Matt was in.

"What, happened?" Dillon demanded. He was now scared beyond recognition but he had to know. He had to know how his friend had died.

"He bit me." He said in a ragged, half-hearted voice. "It's interesting how much muscle there is covering the bone until you see it for yourself."

Dillon could mentally see an image of a large hole in Matt's arm and the torn flesh that came from it. He could also see the amount of blood that would be lost from such a big hole and how it would be pooling beneath him. He felt physically sick just picturing it let alone wanting to see it, but he didn't. He knew that things would likely get worse before things were over.

"Looks like he won't be getting that sequel." Matt joked. His voice raised at the end as a spasm of pain raked through him.

Dillon laughed softly despite the situation; there was irony in his statement even if Matt didn't know it. The irony was that Dillon was currently wearing his Lambda shirt. It was probably the last thing he would wear anyhow. "Maybe someday."

"Might be. Ungh. Maybe I'll get to show when I, Ang, when I see you next time." Matt staggered out.

"No." Dillon said defiantly. "There won't need to be a next time. Hang in there; I'm not going to let you die." But before he moved to the door Matt called him back.

He almost didn't hear him as he took the head set off and the voice coming from the other end has so weak and ragged. "Dillon." It said.

"Matt?" He hesitantly replied, putting his headset back on. "What is it?" But there was no answer. "Matt? Are you there?" All he could do was listen to his heavy breathing from the other end and watch as his logo clicked into offline. "Matt?" Dillon shouted at the now lonely screen. "Matt!...MATT!" But it was no use. Matt was gone. It was a symbolic thing to do but it did more for Dillon than he would have thought. It drove the urge to rush to his house and save him, and replaced it with one of mourning. It was his way of saying goodbye and he wouldn't ruin his message by going and getting himself killed.

It was only a few moments, but the phone in his hand started to ring. He had forgotten that he was still holding it. Could it have been Matt? Was he really still alive? He fanatically answered it in hopes that it was his friend. "Matt? Is that you?" He answered.

"Dillon, thank god you're safe." It wasn't Matt, It was his father. A part of him was happy to hear him; the other was disappointed that he would never get to hear his friend again.

"I'm O.K. dad," He reassured him in a child-like voice, "Where are you?"

"At work, I just had to kill my boss to stop him from eating me. Unfortunately he wasn't the first I had to do that to." His tone was serious as he spoke what he was had to do to his son. "We need to leave and go find a safe place to hide until this mostly blows over."

"How about the cabin?" Dillon asked trying to think quickly.

"Good idea. I only hope that the fish aren't affected by this flu as well." He heard some kind of noise from the other end of the phone and his father started talking in a fast low voice. "Here's what I want you to do. Grab every scrap of food and something to defend yourself. I should be home within half an hour, if not...I love you son." His father was never one to say goodbye, even now his stubborn habits remained.

"I love you too dad." And then he was gone, just like his friend.

After Matt had gathered everything his dad told him to, he waited. But his father never came home. Not after a half hour, or an hour, or two or three or even five hours. His father never made it back. All the while he was waiting; he heard the screams of the dead and dying slowly fading into the distance. Soon he was left with nothing but the hum of his computer that he still had yet to turn off. He didn't think that he would have time to. Maybe his dad would come through the door now, this moment, maybe the next or the next but he never did.

After the fifth hour of waiting he decided to head off on his own. He grabbed the bigger backpack of the two he had prepared, and headed of towards the CEDA outpost set up in the high school. It was all over the radio. One didn't have to turn the station to hear it, because it was on all of them. It was only the same recording playing over and over again. "If there is anyone left to hear this, the Civil Emergency and Defence Agency will be setting up a vaccination and evacuation sight in your town's largest public place. It may be a mall or a park. Others may be inclined to check city squares or schools. There will also be posters set up around the city about location. It is also advised to report unusual behaviour. If you do not wish to venture outside, then barricade your homes. It is vital that you are to avoid contact with any infected individuals. Wait for official instructions." There is a three second pause before the recording repeats again.

He knew the direction to the school and thought to himself aloud, "Looks like I'm going to school sooner than you thought Matt." It was a long way there without a bus, and he had to get out of the building first, and he knew there were so many people that were sick. Only they probably weren't sick anymore.

He doubted taking the stairs was a good idea as the might be crawling with the infected, so he took the elevator. There was no fire, yet, so it should work smoothly. But before he went, he noticed a fire axe by the stairs. He smashed the glass with his elbow to get at it. This was both a good and bad idea. As he took out the axe he heard screaming coming from all around. "Oh crud!" He said figuring that in their new state, the infected were sensitive to noise. He jammed his hand onto the button but it was too late. They knew where he was, and they were hungry.

He saw his first infected through the glass of the stairwell door, and he knew he was in for trouble. Its eyes were black hole with shining white pupils and a smear blood across its mouth. The scowl of terror on its face did its job and struck fear into Dillon; he was frozen in place and missed the elevator doors opening behind him. It started banging on the door as several more came up from behind it to assist in the task of destroying the steel door. What did snap him out of his phase was the sound of a door smashing at the other end of the hall. He looked at it with as much fright as the ones behind the steel door. It looked around the hall for the source of the original disturbance for a few moments before making eye contact with Dillon. He then noticed what, or who rather, it was. It was old Mrs. Parsons, your little old lady that was so sweet and caring. She let out a terrible scream and Dillon knew to move fast. He spun and noticed that the door was open and nearly tripped trying to scramble inside. He tried to close the door but Parsons was now much faster than even he was and she slammed herself into the doors just as it was closing, leaving her arm stuck between the doors. The elevator wouldn't go down until the doors were closed and he could think of only one way that this was going to end. He picked himself up off the floor of the elevator and raised his axe. With one swift downward swing, he relived Parsons of her arm.

The door closed shortly after, and just in time. He heard the metal door to the stairwell being smashed open with a loud clang, followed by more frantic banging on the elevator doors slowly disappearing as he went down. The arm he had severed was still in the elevator so he decided to investigate it as he went down. Now that he started to look at it, he noticed how discoloured the skin was. It was a sickly grey with blood covering some of the hand, and now some of the floor. He noted the he cut the arm off near the shoulder, but the bone was sheered relatively clean through. "At least this makes them easy to kill." He mused to himself, "Although numbers might cause problems." He figured that if he could get to the evacuation site, then he should be safe from fighting any more. This idea soon left him as the doors open on ground level.

Inside the lobby alone there were only a handful of zombies, but outside, there had to at least be two dozen that he could see. If he wanted to live, he would have to go. He tried to sneak out the back door, but the same thing happened as upstairs; the first one saw him, screamed, and everything now wanted to eat him. Instead of running this time, he fought. After all there were only a few in the lobby, how hard could they be.

He swung at the first one that came after him with an upward swing, cutting its chest open from shoulder to kidney. The zombie stumbled backwards and fell to the ground instantly dead. The next leaped over it without a downwards glance and came at Dillon with as much ferocity as he had seen from a really ticked off cat. Of course they all did this, so it was hard to tell if it was more or less than the next. Dillon raised the axe to shoulder height and swung sideways and made contact with the zombie's neck, forcing a spray of blood across the walls. This zombie stumbled forward slightly by momentum and Dillon used this opportunity to cause a distraction. He kicked the headless zombie backwards causing it to stumble into the next. This caught it off guard and it too stumbled back into the one following. Dillon ran forwards with axe in hand and shoved the headless zombie out of the way and did another sideways swing. The fourth zombie had tried to side step before tumbling into the ragdoll, so Dillon managed to get a two for one special with his swing.

The next had been on the far side of the lobby so it was now only getting into striking distance. Dillon jumped over the four dead bodies and took a stance waiting for the right opportunity. When the zombie reached out to hit him, Dillon countered with a shove knocking the zombie off balance. With this wide open stance Dillon swung up hard with enough force to nearly split the zombie in two. The axe went from groin to chest getting shallower as it went. The axe hollowed out at about the lungs and hit her square in the head, as the zombie was looking down at the time. He wedged the axe free and the body went down like a stone. Dillon then felt a pain on his back as if someone had punched him. Without hesitation, Dillon raised the axe, and swung in a round arch. Not only did he get his attacker, but he clipped another that had raised arms posed to strike. Wait a minute, he thought, weren't there only five in the lobby? This would make seven. Sure enough, when he looked up from his mess, the glass doors leading outside were broken and an entire horde of infected were coming straight at him, and Dillon smiled. He had taken out eight already, what difference did another two dozen make. "He took a stance and yelled at his would be attackers, "If I'm going down," he hit the lead zombie in the chest and followed with another to its pursuer, "I'm going to go down swinging!"

And swing he did. He swung left and right, up and down, he even did a couple of spins with axe raised to hit anything around him. When all was said and done, Dillon remained. There were now heads and limbs and other severed parts now lying where the horde had once stood. The walls of the lobby also now had a red paint job. This is not to say that he got away unscathed. He had taken several more hits from all directions leaving both scratches and bruises on his upper body. His bag had been knocked off during the fight, or did he take it off, he couldn't remember. Either way, he picked it up and headed out the door ready to face what was next. Anything except what he found.

It was the body of a man. Not an infected man, but an unmistakable man. It was his father. When he realized that it has him and that he was not breathing, he broke down right there in the spillover of blood and parts on the street. As he wept two thoughts came to mind. The first: I guess he did make it home, and the next was simply: Why? Why did it have to be him? These thoughts came at the same time and he laughed as he cried a stream from his eyes. He didn't know how long he cried, it could have been an hour, a day, or even thirty seconds. All he knew was that when he looked up, he saw a long infected, and he heard a blood curtailing scream. What scared him the most was that he didn't know where the scream came from. Him, or the zombie.

What came next he could not say. All he remembers was screaming and the taste of blood in his mouth, and the distinct call of "Die you zombie bastards!" The next thing he knew he woke up, sore but alive, on a bus heading who knew where. He was slouched against the wall and woke up with a bang as his head smacked against the window. He jolted backwards and held his throbbing head with both hands. "It feels like I've been hit with a rifle." He moaned in a groggy voice.

"That's because you probably were, and those sedatives probably didn't help either." Came a silken voice from beside him. He turned to see a woman sitting beside him. She had short auburn hair and a small round face accented with small stud earrings. It wasn't the most beautiful face he had seen, but it wasn't hard on the eyes either. She was dressed in a rather sensual outfit, something that would draw eyes in a crowd but nothing that would suggest what she did for a living. It was a dark purple tank top that looked almost too small for her to be wearing. Over top was a black leather jacket that covered her arms, shoulders, and came down to about her stomach. She also had on some purple plaid pants that fit almost perfectly with a pair of calf high leather boot-heels with what looked like 3 buckles on each.

"I'm glad to see that you awake. Although, my eyes are up here." Dillon hadn't realized he was staring until she grabbed his chin very delicately and pulled it up. He was surprised that he was. She wasn't blessed in that area, in fact, she was very petite all around. She looked to be about 5'3" when he thought about it.

Dillon blushed when this woman noted that he was staring, and turned to inspect how detailed the floor was. "Don't worry kid," She reassured him with a hand on his shoulder, "I get it all the time." Dillon then realized that he wasn't wearing his backpack.

He almost panicked when he realized this. "My bag," He asked her, "what happened to it?"

"Whoa kid, calm down. I don't want anyone hitting you again." She tightened her grip on his shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. "Just calm down and we can talk about what happened."

He patted himself down looking for something in-particular. He felt his pocket and immediately calmed down when his hand met a small object. It took him several more moments to actually settle his nerves and he let out a long sigh as he thumped his head against the seat. "That's better kid. The CEDA agents took it. They said they were low on food."

"Low on food?" He almost laughed. "It hasn't even been, what, six hours since this whole thing started. And you would have thought that they would have planned for this after Philadelphia."

"It's been ten actually. You sure can take a put up a fight for a kid."

"Are you going to call me something besides just kid?" Rolling his head to the side.

"I would, if I knew who you were."

Dillon blushed slightly again, but it wasn't as deep as last time. He had been so caught up in trying to figure out the new situation he was in that he forgot to tell this woman his name. "You can call me Dillon then." He stated gesturing out his hand.

"Then you can call me Samantha," She replied, "or Sam if you prefer."

He gave Sam a kind handshake before breaking off and fully looking at his surroundings. He looked out the window and saw the dusk of a setting sun. He also looked around to see people of all shapes and sizes huddled into the seats, none of which he had seen before. "Any idea where all of these people are headed?" He asked.

"I'll know when you do." She jested. "But I do know one thing."

"And what might that be?" He asked after she trailed off.

"I know that whatever happens, were going to be in this together."

Dillon looked at her long and hard to tell if she was joking, but found no trace of sarcasm in her voice or features. "Deal." He said, giving a curt nod.

Yay for my first story. I hope it pleases everyone that reads it, and everyone that doesn't. Also, just a few quick notes.

I planned on only up loading this when I had finished all of the main characters. But alas, plans change.

If anyone noticed, I edited this myself. So if anyone out there is willing to be my editor, I would be much obliged. If anything needs rectifying, let me know.

I will never have an AN at the beginning of the story unless it is extremely important.

I hate to say this on my first Fic, but it would really help me if anyone bothering to read this little note to please R&R.

Final thoughts, I will never have a steady upload schedule. Don't expect me to promise periodic updates ever. But do not fear, for I will NOT abandon this story, I will see it through to the bitter end. Even if that bitter end is 20 years down the road.