The End ....

Prologue 1 -

War torn Europe in the early 1500’s was not a safe place to wander even during high noon. Tomas could not fathom why he was skulking in the shadows on this cold November night. Finding his sister as she passed from cruelty to cruelty had been an all-consuming endeavor. It had been five long years since they had sat together and shared a meal in their father’s small one room hut. They had clung to each other like only siblings could in a world so violent.

Tomas had wept for weeks when his father had sold his sister for some corn meal to help them get through the winter. For a year longer Tomas had suffered under his father’s severe tutelage in an attempt to beat out the ‘insanity’ in his own son. Tomas had finally had enough and ran away. Barely into his teens with no apprenticeship and no master, he narrowly scraped an existence. The meager gains he made were used for any information he could garner to find his sister.

Many times he had come close, only to have her whisked away to some distant town. He would doggedly follow but always a moment too late. Finally his break had come. He could see her at the end of the alleyway. He shook not only from the intense cold that blistered through his ragged garments but also for the joy of reuniting with his beloved sister. The dark cloaked figure she was with held Tomas at bay as he sent waves of malice radiating away. Tomas didn’t dare move from his concealment behind some crates. Fear jogged through his spine. The fluid that leaked down his leg was most likely the only thing that kept him from freezing where he crouched.

Tomas noticed the man look exactly where he hid, but that was impossible nobody could see him in this darkness. Tomas watched as The Stranger ‘kissed’ his sister’s neck. A flash of anger welled up in him. ‘How dare someone do that without a marriage first!’ He stood up just in time to see his sister swoon and fall. The Stranger looked back once at Tomas, laughed a small cruel laugh and then seemingly vanished into a darker shadow. All fear vanished with the removal of The Stranger. Tomas ran the length of the alleyway dropping to his knees to cradle his sister’s head.

Her eye’s fluttered open as he cascaded her face with his tears. “Tomas? Is that really you Tomas?”

“It’s me Lizzie, it’s me!” He cried. “We’re finally together again! How I’ve missed you! Now we can be together again forever!”

“Tomas.” Lizzie said sadly, stroking his face gently. “It’s too late for me.”

“What are you talking about Lizzie? I’m here you’re here, we’re together.” He wept for joy, but something evil was coming he could feel it. Tomas had always had a highly developed sense of apathy. It had proved an invaluable tool while he lived on the fringes of a distraught society. “What is the matter Lizzie? You are burning up.” The heat emanating from her prone form was melting the snow around her.

“You should go Tomas.” She said closing her eyes.

“I can’t leave you Lizzie. We’re all we have, you and me. You told me you would always look out for me. You were the only one that told me I didn’t have witches living in my head.” It was common in early Europe to convict the mentally challenged of witchcraft. “I love you Lizzie.” Even as he said it, he could tell his sister was slipping away.

“I love you too Tomas. And that is why you should go.”

“Why won’t you open your eyes Lizzie? Please, please look at me.”

Tears pushed through her closed lids. “Please Tomas don’t look at me this way. I’m not the sister you used to know. Unspeakable things have been done to me and I found a way to right those wrongs and I took it. I will exact my revenge.”

“That’s not how my Lizzie talks.” Tomas said wiping his blurring eyes.

“GO!” She said pushing him away. Her eyes seemed to produce their own light as she looked at him menacingly.

“I will not!” He screamed, even though his inner thoughts revolved around one word ‘RUN’.

Lizzie sat up. Factions warred within her. The looks she sent him fluctuated between love, sadness and predatory awareness. Tomas kept backing up even as he shook his head in denial of what was happening right in front of him.

With an ungodly speed Lizzie wrapped her hand around Tomas’ neck. He found himself suspended 6 inches off the ground.

“Lizzie, please.” He begged.

Lizzie pulled him in close and punched two neat holes into his exposed collar. Tomas screamed in pain.

“Lizzie please, I love you!” his tears splashing down on her upturned face.

Some last remnant of Lizzie rose to the surface. She pulled her extended canines out of his neck. “GO!” She screamed again. “I won’t be able to stop next time.” She looked defeated, with her head bowed. Tomas dropped to the ground as she released her grip.

He scurried away scarcely believing the turn of events. “I love you Lizzie, I will follow you until I find a way to fix whatever has happened here tonight.”

Prologue 2 -

Eliza’s biting of her brother Tomas’ neck had profound effects on his physiology. It was not enough to ‘turn’ him into the monster she was to become but it nearly stopped his pineal gland in its tracks. Tomas would age but at a rate the giant sequoias in Northern California would envy. The link that Tomas shared with his family, not always willingly, intensified.

Over the years Tomas repeatedly sought ways to communicate with his sister, only to have every avenue closed to him. Eliza was stronger than him and would not allow the contact. But still he was aware of her presence and would follow her around the world hoping that one day she would once again sit with him and tell him bedtime stories. As for his clairvoyance? Who knows, maybe he does have ‘witches in his head.’

Prologue 3 -

I swear to God I had better be dead if this, my third journal turns up and I’m nowhere to be found. My first journal sits in my office at whatever remains of my homestead in Denver Colorado. I had no time to save that book as zombies flooded through my master bedroom wall. As it was I lost Bear, the Rottweiler who had saved my life. My second journal, I was to learn, was burned with all the clothes that I had been wearing when that asshole Durgan shot me with a crossbow. Seems I had bled like a stuck pig and they did not want to risk infection from the clothing so they peeled me out of it and tossed it into an incinerator. Most likely the journal would have been unreadable coated in that amount of congealed leakage anyway, but maybe I would have been able to salvage some of it. So my dear fellow survivor IF you find this journal, you will notice I am dead because this thing will be stapled to my forehead and I’m not moving!

CHAPTER ONE -

“Can you see anything?” Tracy said nervously as she looked out over the expanse of the dead.

Travis stood on top of the truck roof, looking over the same vista as his mother. His grandmother’s house stood almost a half-mile away. A citadel under siege, thousands of zombies enshrouded the house. His dad, BT and Jen had made a plan to lure their enemy in and destroy as many as possible, hopefully taking with them their presumed leader Eliza. Travis stood stock-still but rage and anxiety coursed through his body. His father, Michael Talbot, had not figured on this many of the living dead assembling. He was going to need all the help he could get to make it away from that house.

All he could do was stay here with his mother Tracy, his sister Nicole, his brother (who he was convinced was an agent of the enemy) Justin, Henry the wonder bulldog and Tommy, who Travis had no classification system for. Tommy played the part of a smiling simpleton, but that was becoming a cover that was increasingly difficult for him to pull off.

“Can you see anything yet?” Tracy asked for the fifth time.

“I can see that they’re going to need help.” Travis answered back.

Tracy looked up the truck at her son who at 16 was rapidly and forcibly becoming a man. Tracy had known the moment Mike had made this shitty plan what his true intentions were. He had never been a good card player, his emotions always bled through. When he had held her tight and kissed her tenderly as the rest of the family went to the storm shelter out in the south fields, she’d known his plan was a one-way trip. She should have left an hour ago, like Mike had told her to, but she’d known that crap about meeting down the road was just that, ‘bullshit’. Could she sit here not helping and on top of that watch her beloved die? She felt there had to be something she could do, she saw it in Travis’ eyes. He was like a snapping pit bull on a thin leash. He would rush into the fray in seconds if she did anything more than nod at him. His sense of duty to the rest of the family though was what was keeping him in check. Mike fearing that Travis would attempt this rescue had made it abundantly clear that if anything were to happen to him that it fell on Travis’ shoulders to keep the family safe. As much as it pained Travis, he would not join the fight.

“The house is on fire.” Travis said flatly.

The end game was in play. Tracy knew her window of opportunity to escape was rapidly closing. “Help me up.” she told Travis as she climbed into the bed of the truck and onto the roof.

Hundreds of zombies had entered that house and still the brunt of them remained outside. With the house burning, Mike’s chance at a viable defense no matter how feeble, was over. There was nowhere for Mike, BT and Jen to go. Tracy wept. The look of pain and anguish on Travis’ stoic face ripped her heart. Nicole was in the backseat of the truck sobbing quietly, she couldn’t watch. Justin slept the sleep of the drugged. Henry stood guard over his dreams. Tommy had witnessed the assemblage of the abomination and then left to sit in the minivan by himself. Even through the closed windows they could hear him periodically wail to the heavens.

“Mom I can help.” Travis said through clenched teeth.

She almost relented. She’d drive. He’d shoot. They could get there. If they didn’t? Could she watch her son die? “No, we’re leaving, we’ll go to the place your dad said we’d meet and we’ll wait for an hour like he said.”

Travis’ eyes blazed. She could see the hurt a thin level below the surface. “What happens after an hour?” He asked her straightly.

“We go on.” Tracy said resignedly.

Tracy and Travis turned as they heard the door to the minivan open and slide shut. Tommy’s face was puffed up from his excessive crying. “They’re out of the house now.” He said in a monotone voice.

“How…how could you possibly know?” Tracy asked. “You can’t see them from there.”

Tracy was still looking at Tommy. Travis knew better than to question his abilities and had swung his vision back to the farm house trying to verify the new information. “I see them! He shouted.

So did Tracy, she didn’t know how, they appeared as clearly as if they were being viewed through a good pair of binoculars. Three lost souls in a miasma of death. The house burned so brightly it was difficult to look in its direction. She saw the futility of hope. There was no escape. She had crossed the line. She had stayed long enough to witness Mike’s death. A large piece of her would go with him.

“Mom, let me go?” Travis nearly begged.

“For what Travis? So I can watch you die too!” She snapped.

Travis turned away. His gaze fell upon Tommy who was looking off to the east and away from the house. Travis followed his line of sight. On the fringes of his vision he thought he saw something. A trail of whipped up snow made him realize he was not witnessing an illusion. Hope crept dangerously close, but he forced it down, for all he knew this was zombie reinforcements, although he couldn’t see the point. They wouldn’t even be able to get into the fight before it was over.

The air ripped open as .50 caliber chain gunfire erupted. Zombies fell in sheets. Tracy turned to the din. Three vehicles raced into the coalescent horde of zombies, two military vehicles, one a fortified troop transport and the other a humvee with a white Ford pick-up in between.

“Brendon?” Tracy asked.

Tommy wept silently and nodded.

Three feet of fire spewed from the turret mounted guns on each military vehicle. Zombies couldn’t die fast enough as bodies were shredded, decapitated, de-limbed, disemboweled and de-lifed. The carnage was on a scale none of them had seen, even at Little Turtle’s final stand, and yet it wouldn’t be enough. The zombies didn’t turn to face this new threat. They still pressed forward and toward the doomed trio. The staccato burst of Mike’s AR had been replaced with the much tamer 9mm, she knew he was running low on ammo. Hope was on the verge of breaking through but was being held back actively by reality.

“Come on Mike, don’t die on me now!” Tracy screamed, barely able to hear herself over the ear splitting bursts of large caliber rounds.

“Come on Brendon!” Travis shouted.

Nicole came out of the truck. “Brendon? Did you say Brendon?”

Travis pointed, but his sister at all of 4’ 11”, who would have a hard time making height at an amusement park to ride the teacups, could not see anything. He extended a hand down and lifted her clean up.

“Oh my God.” Nicole whispered.

The hummers were cutting swaths through the zombies. The carnage was beyond comprehension. The small caravan picked up speed as it approached the stranded castaways. The dire straits the trio was, in spurring the usurpers on.

“Are they going to make it mom?” Nicole asked.

Tracy wasn’t sure if she meant Mike, BT and Jen or Brendon and the Marines or just plain all of them. The flood of relief Tracy felt as Mike hopped into the back of Brendon’s truck nearly made her swoon with relief. Travis gripped her shoulder to keep her from pitching head first off their perch.

“Yeah!” Travis screamed a battle cry.

The caravan was pulling away from the destroyed house with its precious cargo.

“Someone fell out of the truck!” Nicole screamed.

The flood of relief turned into a dirge of dread for the watchers.

“What’s going on? Have they pulled him in yet?” Tracy asked, trying to focus her eyes through the smoke and blood screen.

Nicole turned away from the scene, tortured and twisted by the drama unfolding before her.

“That’s Jen.” Travis said gravely.

“What is going on?” Tracy cried.

Travis jumped from the truck roof, running full speed towards the battle.

“Travis!” Tracy screamed. She shuddered at his response.

“Dad’s been shot!!” He said without turning or slowing down.

“Nicole! Tommy! Get in the truck! Fred, Esther get out of here!” Tracy bellowed as she alit from the truck roof.

Fred didn’t hesitate. He had his own family to take care of. Tracy swore though if she lost her family because of his, she would find him and even the score. Tracy had covered half the distance to the melee in the truck before she caught up with Travis.

“Get in!” She yelled into his ear.

He didn’t break stride. “I’m going to help!”

“So are we! Get in!”

He glanced over at her making sure this wasn’t a ruse, her expression was stone cold. He jumped into the bed of the truck. The fifty cals from this close were making the Ford shake. Tracy’s teeth hurt from the percussions. Travis rifle started to explode rounds. Zombies were caught in a crossfire. If she hadn’t hated them so much, Tracy thought, she might actually feel sorry for them.

“Fuck that.” She fishtailed the truck into couple of zombies on the fringe of the excitement. Spines shattered as the heavy truck crushed over one of the unlucky ones heads. She was running parallel to the military convoy, which was fighting desperately to get away from the entanglement. Tracy could barely control her gorge as the trucks began to inch closer and closer.

The bottom of Brendon’s truck bed looked like a swimming pool of blood, BT was cradling her husband, the tears streaming down his face matched the crimson flowing freely from Mike’s chest.

“Oh my God!” Tracy wailed. Her truck was skimming into the outer ranks of zombies in a desperate bid to be with her husband at the end. For that’s what it was, nobody could lose that much blood and survive.

Tracy was alongside Brendon’s truck trying desperately to look over Nicole and into the bed of the truck.

Nicole was screaming. She couldn’t hear anything over the hell fire from the military guns. A zombie crashed over the hood of the truck, Tracy instinctively hit the brakes as the zombie slid back down. The trailing hummer caught up, the corporal was bellowing at her. She couldn’t hear him but his gestures were universal and you didn’t have to be a lip reader to understand ‘GO, GO GO!’

She wanted to stop she wanted to hold her husband one more time. BT’s face was towards the sky, he was yelling something to the heavens.

“NO!!!” Tracy screamed. Tommy had thrown up. A caustic aroma mix of vomit and strawberry Pop-Tart.

“What the fuck is going on!” Nicole screamed. “Pull up mom, pull up!”

Tracy gunned the engine. BT had put Mike’s lifeless body down and was reaching through the rear glass. Brendon was slumped over the steering wheel, his foot lodged on the gas pedal. BT had moved his body to the side so that he could steer the truck. The truck had rammed into the rear of the lead truck, the gunner swung around to realize the new threat.

He thumped the roof of the transport letting the driver know about the new development, and then resumed his place as judge, jury and extreme executioner. BT had regained relative control of Brendon’s truck. The lead hummer had slowed and allowed itself to be used as a braking mechanism. Speeders were keeping pace as the four trucks raced alongside the mob of dead. The lead driver veered away to make distance.

Tracy could feel the lost seconds as they slid away, like so much sand in an hourglass. Over untended fields the trucks careened as the hounds of hell were chomping at their heels. Mike’s hollow body bounced around, more than once he rose as high as the sidewalls and threatened to be tossed into the North Dakota wilderness. Ten minutes later the lead hummer had finally come to a stop. Tracy had nearly dropped the transmission when she shoved the gearbox into park.

His body was so cold as she hopped into the back of the truck and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one. A small blue frozen smile was splashed across his lips. Nicole was torn between her father and her fiancée. One of the Marines had come from the first hummer carrying a medical bag. He stopped briefly to check Brendon, and then slowly shook his head. Nicole fell to her knees. Her keening so high that it was barely audible. BT screamed in rage.

He came over to Mike, Tracy wanted to run away, she couldn’t handle that all knowing and death certifying shake of his head. The corpsman was in no apparent rush when he stepped up into the truck. Nobody could be the color of blue that Mike was and be alive.

Tracy pulled Mike away from the corpsman. “NO! You will not tell me he is dead!” Tracy screamed.

“Ma'am let me see if I can help him.” The corpsman told her, though even he didn’t sound believable to himself.

Tracy relented. The corpsman spent considerably more time than he should have to pronounce someone dead. “Corporal Beckett! Bring the morphine and a blanket! Quickly!” The corpsman shouted.

“He’s alive?” Tracy whispered.

“What’s going on?” BT asked through the veil of tears.

Tracy hushed him, fearful that his words might break the tenuous grip on life that Mike clung to.

The corpsman had ripped Mike’s shirt open. Tracy had momentarily become fearful that Mike would die from the cold although that seemed the least of his problems as she looked at the bolt from the crossbow that had punched a hole damn near straight through. The force of the impact had created a melon sized black and blue mark that radiated broken blood vessels in all directions. She wouldn’t swear it on a bible but she thought she saw the arrow rise a fraction of an inch, though she couldn’t tell if it was from Mike breathing or the buffeting wind.

The wound had stopped bleeding, congealed blood of the dead or just plain empty neither symptom a good sign. “Corporal NOW! If this man dies, you're next!”

“Sir, yes sir.” The corporal shouted from beside the truck he cautiously handed over all the supplies asked for.

“He’s alive?” Tracy asked again, still not sure why the corpsman was taking the time to administer pain killer to a corpse.

The truck rocked slightly as BT extracted himself from the scene. BT pulled Brendon out from the truck and laid him gently onto the ground. BT knelt beside Brendon. “Thank you.” He said softly as he covered the body up with one of the blankets that the corporal had brought over. BT grabbed Nicole they sat together like that for long minutes. Long after, Mike’s IV-laced body was placed onto a stretcher and placed in the lead hummer, even after Brendon’s still form was taken and placed in the second hummer, blood dripped in a puddle from the tailgate of Brendon’s truck. Tracy was in shock as another Marine placed her into the rear of the hummer with her husband.

“Miss.” One of the Marines asked Nicole. “Do you want to ride in the hummer?”

Nicole looked up from the ground, cradled in BT’s arms. She let the Marine take her hand and help her into the military truck.

“Speeders!” Travis yelled.

A wall of zombies was running full tilt across the fields. “Mount up!” A sergeant who had been smoking a cigar said from the driver’s side of the lead hummer. “Private how much ammo you got?” The sergeant asked the gunner on the second humvee.

“Couple hundred rounds max.” The private shouted back.

“Richmond, you?” The sergeant asked the gunner on his own truck.

“Seven, Sarge.” Richmond answered back.

“Seven hundred?” The sergeant asked for clarification.

“Seven.” Richmond said. “Just seven.” He added for clarification.

“Alright let’s get the fuck outta here.” The sergeant bellowed. “Big man, you want a ride or do you want to drive that truck?”

BT didn’t want to do shit except sit on his ass and wait for the end of the earth, which according to the zombies was roughly four minutes away. BT got up and without answering got behind the wheel of the Ford.

“Guess that answers that.” The sergeant said.

Travis and Tommy hopped into the Ford with BT. Henry stayed with Mike and Tracy, Justin was still under the influence of some heavy sedatives and had missed everything. For seemingly endless hours the trucks traveled across a ghost land. Nobody spoke in the Ford as each person was lost in their own thoughts, trying with great difficulty to reconcile the events that had just happened.

“Is this worth it?” Travis asked of BT.

BT looked over, his eyes burning. “Well you are your father’s son.” And he turned back to the road.

Long minutes passed, the road blurred past. “That didn’t really answer my question BT.”

“No, it sure didn’t. Before today I would have given you a different answer.”

“And now?” Travis prodded.

“Now...now I’m not so sure. I just watched two people I care for die and a third who is nowhere near out of the woods. I’m no philosopher, but I am a religious man. I know that eventually every man has to meet his maker in his own way. It’s what you do while you’re alive that defines how that meeting is gonna go. I cannot imagine that there is a God who wishes for us to merely survive, we would be no better than sheep. We are left behind for a reason, Travis. It is up to us and others like us to right this great wrong. Some will fall along the way. It is the price that must be paid, sacrifice of the ultimate kind. Without the blood of the righteous, the wicked cannot be smote.”

“You’re not going to go all Reverend Sharpeton on me? Are you?”

BT nearly lost control of the truck his laughs shaking him to the core. “Holy shit if it was ever in doubt whose son you were, you slammed that door shut.”

CHAPTER TWO -

“Yes, they got away.”

“How is that possible, you pathetic human?”

Durgan fell to his knees as it felt as if someone had laid his scalp open and was dragging razor blades across his exposed brain. The pain was terrifyingly blinding. He could not even begin to comprehend how to answer his master. Blood began to flow freely from his nose from whatever form of psychic torture was being administered.

“Please.” He said weakly. He buried his head into the snow hoping that would diminish the shards of glass rattling around in his brain bucket. It didn’t.

Eliza wanted to crush his feeble brain. It would have been no harder than smashing an egg. She hated the fact that she had to rely on a human but she was not yet strong enough to pursue Talbot and The Other. She released her death grip on Durgan and he gasped in great gulps of cold refreshing air.

“That is the last time you will fail me.” She said directly into his mind.

Durgan could tell that Eliza had turned her attention away from him. The feeling was both distressingly lonely and agonizingly wonderful. He stood up, wincing, his missing leg still pained him as he gripped the plastic coated prosthetic. His other leg itched uncomfortably from whatever Eliza had done to him to make him heal so rapidly. She had given him power, not enough, but it helped him to walk months ahead of what the most optimistic orthopedic surgeon would have set for a timetable. Blood flowed rapidly from his nose. He absently brushed it away with his cuff. The fat droplets fell to the snow covered ground and were quickly descended upon by the zombies. Durgan was fearful that with so many chomping teeth close by he would be inadvertently bitten. "Vermin, I hate being around these things, just one more reason I’m going to enjoy killing you and your entire family, Talbot!” The zombies eyed Durgan greedily. More than one looked like they were a moment away from taking a bite of his flesh. Only Eliza was keeping them at bay and she was hundreds of miles away. Durgan tried his best to not break out into a run as he pushed past the zombies and stood as close to the burning house as he could to regain some heat. The zombies followed him closely, trying desperately to break through whatever was gripping them and tear the warm meat carrier to bloody, ragged, tasty shreds.

CHAPTER THREE -

“Clear!” The medic shouted as he applied the defibrillator paddles to Mike for the fifth time. Mike’s lifeless form arched 6 inches off the stretcher. The monitor still blazed a bright flat line, the monotonous wail of its siren more piercing than the worst alarm clock.

Tracy and Nicole embraced each other as they watched. “What are you doing?” Tracy asked the medic as he turned the monitor and the paddles off.

“Ma'am it's been seven minutes.” He replied as if that explained everything, and ultimately it did.

“You will not give up on me!” Tracy screamed.

The medic didn’t know if she was talking to him or her husband. He figured it out though when she slapped him.

“Ma'am!” The medic said. “He’s dead!” He yelled hoping the volume would solidify his answer.

“He’s fucking dead, when I say he’s fucking dead!” She yelled. “Hit him again.”

The medic thought she was probably insane, but the best way to prove someone’s insanity is to show her the light, so to speak. Against his better judgment he sparked the paddles back up. ‘Great’ He thought to himself. ‘We get to ride the rest of the way back to camp with the smell of burnt flesh, that oughta make the MRE’s go down better.

“Clear.” The medic said without any sense of urgency.

Mike’s body arched up again and struck back down with a solid thud.

“You see? He’s dead.” The medic said trying to put as much sympathy into his words as he could, but after seeing so much death it was becoming a more difficult emotion to muster.

“Hit him again.” Tracy growled through gritted teeth.

The medic couldn’t stop himself. “He’s going to start to burn.”

“So help me you little FUCK, you hit him again now or I’ll take those paddles to your balls!”

The sergeant turned from his driving. “You’d better get to it Murphy, I think she’d do just that.” He said half laughing.

Murphy was nearly in shock as he said the word “Clear,” for the seventh time.

“Seven times a charm.” The sergeant said without looking back.

Mike’s body didn’t so much arch as it did spasm, as if the hand of God himself was thrusting his life back into his disabled and broken body. The medic had never taken his eyes off of Tracy as he had administered the charge, fearful she would grab the paddles and do just as she had threatened. “He’s dead.” Murphy the medic said with a hint of fear.

“Mike?” Tracy asked as she pushed past Murphy. “Mike?”

The medic looked down to the fluttering eyes of a cadaver. “No fucking way.” He said as he turned the monitor back on, fearful that they had brought a zombie into their midst.

The sergeant had an inkling of what might be going on. “Get the fuck away from him!” He shouted as he pulled his 1911 out of his holster. The transport had pitched to the side as the sergeant slammed on the brakes. The sergeant's gun was pressed to Mike’s head the trigger half depressed just as the monitor sounded to life with the telltale beating of a human heart. “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” The sergeant said as he holstered his weapon and got the hummer moving again, no more out of sorts than if he had found some extra change in his pockets.

“He can’t be alive.” The medic said clearly confused.

“You’d be amazed.” Tracy said as she held Mike’s head.

“I already am.” Murphy said in all honesty.

Murphy muted the volume on the monitor when it appeared that his patient was in no imminent threat of dying again, at least not on his watch. He could however not stop watching the green line as it made its way across the screen, not out of caution but out of awe. “He was dead for seven minutes.” He mumbled to himself. “He shouldn’t have enough brain function left to beat his heart. Do you mind?” Murphy asked Tracy, as he pulled a penlight out of his pocket.’’

Tracy was momentarily fearful of what he might discover and was inclined to say no, but nodded in ascension instead. Murphy reached over and gently pulled an eyelid back, shining the light into first one then the other eye. Both pupils reacted.

“I don’t understand.” Murphy said to no one.

“What’s going on?” The sergeant asked as he pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket. “Anyone mind?” He asked as he showed the cigar to everyone. He bit the end off and lit it before anyone had a chance to respond.

“This motherf…should be dead.” Murphy said. “Or at least brain dead. But his heart is beating strong and his pupils are dilating normally. He’s lost somewhere in the neighborhood of half his blood. He was clinically dead for damn near ten minutes and for all intents and purposes this guy could be asleep. Everything I’ve ever learned tells me that this guy should be dead.”

“I guess you need to learn some more.” The sergeant said as he took a big puff from his cigar. “He must have a lot worth living for,” the sergeant said as he looked over to Nicole and then Tracy. The medic shook his head again and not for the last time either.

CHAPTER FOUR -

The hummer rocketed towards its destination. Nicole had long since fallen asleep, her mind’s way of coping with her immense grief. Tracy cradled Mike’s head. His eyes rapidly moving below the closed eyelids threatened to open on more than one occasion but never did. The arrow bolt stood like a blunted tree branch out of Mike. She had wanted to just rip the vile invader from his body but she knew the futility of that endeavor.

“We have a great surgeon at the base.” Murphy told Tracy as he saw her looking at the arrow. “But I bet if we gave Mike another day or two he’d just take it out on his own.”

Tracy half laughed half cried at his words. “Sorry about the whole balls thing.” She said.

“No, no, you were right.” Murphy said.

“How much further?” She asked Murphy.

Sergeant Stanton answered for him. “Another hour at our current speed.”

Fifty caliber rounds broke the silence of rubber meeting roadway.

“Bandits,” came over scratchily through the MUCS radio receiver. “Seven, no eight cars and trucks bearing down on us. Multiple gun fire, we’re taking hits back here.”

“Shit they must be desperate if they’re attacking military.” Sergeant Stanton said as he ground his cigar into the ashtray. “Base Custer, Base Custer, this is Rover seven, can you read?”

“Custer huh.” Tracy said. “Couldn’t think of anything better?”

“Seemed appropriate at the time.” The sergeant said. “And now it just stuck.”

“Well I hope for all of our sakes it’s not really the last stand.” Tracy finished.

“Rover seven, this is Base Custer, haven’t heard from you in a while, what is your status?” Came the even scratchier, static laced voice.

“Had a bit of a detour.” The sergeant said summing up the battle of Carol’s homestead. “We could use a little assistance Base, we’re on route 80 mile marker 94, just outside of town and we’ve acquired some company. We’ve got eight militant vehicles chasing us.”

“Roger that, Eagle two is in flight, eta 12 minutes.”

“Roger that.” The sergeant said calmly.

“Twelve minutes?” Murphy said incredulously “We’ll never be able to out run them for that long.”

Tracy was looking questioningly back and forth at the conversation. “Murphy answered her unasked question. “ A hummer could climb a wall if it had too, but as far as speed goes, a not so well trained athlete on a ten speed could go faster than we could.”

“Wonderful.” Tracy said sarcastically.

“They won’t get too close with the fifties going.” Sergeant Stanton said.

“How many rounds we have again?” Tracy asked.

“Good point.” The sergeant retorted, pushing the gas pedal through the floorboard. The transport surged from fifty-five miles an hour to nearly fifty-eight.

“Sarge, they’re peppering the shit out of us back here!” A Marine’s voice came over the radio.

“No warning shots, Corporal.” The sergeant yelled into the handset to be heard. “Light ‘em up, help is on the way.”

“Private, light ‘em up!” The corporal yelled to his gunner, finger still depressing the send signal, the lead hummer was able to listen in stereo as the blasts came over the airwaves. Mutilated metal screamed in protest as high velocity rounds crucified the lead attackers sheet metal covered car. The dull explosion of the car could barely compete with the expenditure of the machine gun.

“They’re pulling back Sarge!” The corporal said excitedly.

“Take out another one before they get courageous.” The sergeant said.

The corporal relayed the message. Two rounds later an eerie quiet descended over the travelers.

“Any chance that’s a jam?” The sergeant asked the corporal.

“Fuck.” Came the corporal’s flustered response. Seems we’re out of ammo and those crazy sons-of-bitches know it.”

The pops and bangs of multiple small arms fire dominated. “Shit they got a tire Sarge!” The corporal shouted.

“You’re fine corporal, the ‘run flats’ run rough but it's drivable.”

“Run flats?” Tracy mouthed the question to Murphy.

“Yeah all military vehicles have them, it’s a hard rubber insert within the tire. So if the tire is shot out the truck can still move. Kind of a necessity.”

“Apparently.” Tracy said with concern.

“Eagle two, eagle two this is Rover Seven, can I get an updated eta we seem to be in a little bit of trouble, over.” The sergeant spoke into the hand piece.

“Rover seven, this is eagle Two, when aren’t you in a little bit of trouble.”

“That’s what everyone needs, a smart ass.” The sergeant said to the occupants of the transport.

The sliced air percussion of the chopper blades was an unmistakable sound as the Apache helicopter closed in. The attackers were either extremely desperate or extremely stupid or both. Three of the attackers peeled off as the helicopter came in. The other six pressed the attack. The Apache hovered in the sky, a lone sentinel dispensing justice one tank-busting round at a time. Thirty seconds later four cars and two trucks were nothing more than twisted, shredded remnants of their former selves. The small military convoy raced away from the scene. The Apache hovered for a few more seconds looking for any signs of life, nothing moved except for the lazily drifting smoke from the wreckage.

"Base Custer, Base Custer this is Eagle two."

"Eagle two this is Base Custer, over."

"Base Custer, six of the attacking vehicles have been disposed of, permission to pursue the three that have fled the scene."

"Eagle two, that is a negative. Repeat that is a negative. The Colonel wants you to watch Rover Seven's back."

"Great babysitting duty."

"Say again Eagle two."

"Roger that Base Custer. Eagle Two out."

CHAPTER FIVE - JOURNAL ENTRY 1 -

Holy shit, I’m in Heaven. Any place that smells like fried chicken has got to be heaven. My mouth worked on its own volition as orts of something wondrous crossed my lips. My eyes fluttered open.

“Dad! Dad! He’s awake!” The shouting came less than six inches from my face. That was my introduction to ‘Porkchop’ as he leaned down looking at me, flakes of deep fried goodness spilling down from the chicken leg he held close to his mouth. I was mildly repulsed as his yelling let pre-chewed bits of food fall from his mouth and into mine. I might have pushed him away if I had possessed the strength. The second part of the equation though was the sheer look of exhilaration in his face at my awaking. His sincere visage and husky features completely endeared him to me, and then the cold cruel world shattered the well being that had momentarily enveloped me.

“Brendon?” I asked him. His look of not knowing of whom I was talking about answered my question.

‘Dad’ came over to my bedside. “Didn’t think you were going to make it, Michael.”

He looked regular army in his pressed digital battle fatigues and captain bars. He might have been a little on the heavyset side but that was nothing new to the army.

“Hardly seems worth it at this point, Doc.” I answered. Abdication was interwoven with my words.

He ignored my self-pity. “You’re family has been here for three days straight. I finally had to send them out to get some sleep. I don’t think they would have left except the big kid, what is his name?”

“Tommy”

“Yeah Tommy said you were going to be alright. At that point I wasn’t so sure but they deferred to him. Sure is something about him.” The Doc said with a faraway look. “Your daughter is a mess. I’ve been keeping her lightly sedated.”

“Oh my God, Coley!” I lamented even harder. I was too mired in my own depression to realize there might be someone else grieving harder than I was.

“She’ll eventually be alright Mike.” The Doc answered more familiarly.

I braced myself for my next question but it needed answering. “Doc can you give me a list of everyone who did come in with me?”

“You up for this?”

I nodded in ascension, but my heart said abso-fucking-lutely not.

“There was your wife, her mother…” He hesitated. I almost shit myself in panic. “Then your older son Justin who I have on antibiotics, he was in rough shape, some sort of low grade fever was running rampant through his body. I went in…”

“DOC!”

“Sorry, umm okay, and then your younger son, Travis, I believe is his name. This mean tempered giant.”

“BT” I answered. He looked at me inquiringly. “Big Tiny or Bad Tempered, take your pick.”

“And then of course Tommy.”

He stopped. As heart struck as I was that my family had survived, I was still desolate. We had suffered two devastating losses. I turned from the Doctor not willing to cry in front of him. He respectfully walked away. Porkchop, however did not.

“Hey mister what’s the matter?” He asked, as chicken still spewed forth from him. I could feel the bits as they clung desperately to my previously fever streaked face. “Why you crying? Do you want some chicken?”

“Porkchop let him be.” His dad called from across the room.

“I’ll get you some chicken.” He stage whispered to me.

A few minutes had passed and the depth of my mourning had somehow deepened. A bottomless chasm of despair, I gained momentum as I sank deeper and deeper.

Porkchop came back, ruddy with exertion. “I would have been here sooner, but Buddha knocked me down and then Henry took the piece of chicken I had got for you so I had to go back and get another piece.”

A brilliant beam of light pierced the darkness. I wouldn’t believe it, not just yet. False hope is worse than no hope at all. I looked piercingly at Porkchop. My red-rimmed eyes making me look a little more unstable than usual. “Who’s Henry? Porkchop.”

“He’s Buddha’s newest best friend.” Porkchop answered back innocently.

“What is it with you and your dad? Why do you guys keep circumventing answers?”

“Huh?” Porkchop answered as he tilted his head.

“Dad, I think this guy needs some more medicine or something.” He said as he absently took a bite of the chicken that he had promised for me.

I wanted to grab the boy’s shoulder and shake the answer out of him, but it became unnecessary as a large brown bundle of fat and slobber walked through the door, most likely after the piece of chicken that got away. I bawled like I was 3 and my favorite balloon had loosed from my wrist and was now halfway to the stars.

“See dad. I told you he needed more medicine.” as he took another bite.

Henry didn’t hesitate. He somehow launched himself onto my bed, the pain as he stirred my injury was nothing in comparison to the relief that flooded through me as he licked my face. Now I’m not ignorant, I know a large part of the licking had to do with Porkchop’s chicken, but not all of it. His stubby tail spoke volumes as it shuffled from side to side. Within moments a brindle colored bulldog of roughly the same size of Henry sauntered in.

“That’s Buddha.” Porkchop filled in.

Buddha looked to his partner in crime. I watched as the dog looked at the floor and then at the bed trying to figure out how Henry had got that high. He also smelled the chicken. His great head swiveled towards Porkchop.

“Dad?!” Porkchop yelled, looking for backup.

“Both you mutts out of here.” The Doc ordered them.

True to their breed, neither moved. Oh it wasn’t that they didn’t understand. They just weren’t given the proper motivation. The Doc reached into a drawer he had filled with biscuits just for these occasions. Both dogs were ‘rewarded’ with a cookie for doing what they had been asked to do, leave the room. A tear fell from my eye as I watched his ass waddle out. A quick smile came to my lips as I wondered if we had the dogs trained or they had us trained.

"Fuck can't a guy get any sleep around here?" BT bellowed as he pulled his privacy curtain open. BT's massive body was laid out in an undersized bed. His leg suspended in some sort of medieval torture device was wrapped in a blue cast. "Good to see you Talbot." He said with a broad smile across his features. Puffiness around his eyes threatened to limit his vision. The pain of losing Jen and Brendon was still a fresh oozing wound upon us all.

"Good to see you too BT." I said honestly. Neither of us commented on the others wet eyes. We bonded like all men, silently and in pain.

"Lawrence why are you awake?" The Doc asked.

"Who the hell is Lawrence?" I asked of the only other two occupants in the room. BT directed a stare at the Doc that should have stopped him in his tracks. The vapid gaze did not go unnoticed by me. "Lawrence? Your name is Lawrence?" I asked BT.

"I'll wring your scrawny little neck Talbot if you let anybody know!" BT threatened.

"It's not like you're going to be able to catch me in that get up." I answered him.

If the human body contained gaskets, BT would have blown one. He shifted around on his bed looking for a way to get out of his traction. BT grabbed the stand that was holding up his IV bag and started to use it like an Italian gondolier, pushing his bed closer and closer to mine, which in itself was pretty impressive, considering the rubber wheels were locked in place.

"Doc!" I yelled in near panic as BT inched nearer. "Doc!" I yelled again as I tried to sit up.

"Hold on you two!" The Doc yelled. "This isn't a frat house! This is a fucking hospital!"

"Sorry Doc." BT said as he lifted up his IV pole and swung it towards me, narrowly missing my leg.

"Do you want me to put restraints on you, Lawrence?" The Doc yelled.

"No Doc." BT answered, bowing his head.

"He called you Lawrence." I taunted. "Ow!" I yelled as something pricked my arm.

"Nightie-night Talbot." BT said smiling. "It'd be a damn shame if something happened to you while you were sleeping."

I turned to my left. Doc Baker was just pulling out a needle roughly the size of a turkey baster.

"You're next Lawrence." The Doc said.

"Aw come on Doc. I just woke up." BT Pleaded.

"He said Lawrence." I mumbled right before sleep dragged me down into the twilight.

CHAPTER SIX - JOURNAL ENTRY 2 -

To say my dream was vivid would be an understatement. I don't know if it was due to the drugs the Doc had used, my battered consciousness or a message from a higher entity. I found myself in a small valley, surrounded on all sides by majestic peaks. Fields of bright orange poppies were all around me. Don't think for a second that the irony of that wasn't lost on me as I walked around in this preternatural world. Hummingbirds flitted from plant to plant, a cool breeze caressed my face, a bumblebee nearly the size of the hummingbirds drifted by, slowing slightly to look at me as it passed. Is that possible?

I walked a few steps reveling in the world I found myself in. It had much the same feel as Tommy's playground, but I could not sense the kid's hand in any of this.

"Where am I?" I asked aloud.

"You're in between." A familiar voice answered.

"Brendon? You're alive?" I asked incredulously. I wanted to cry with relief.

"Not quite Mike." Came the measured response. There was a sadness intermingled with expectancy. Sadness for what was lost, expectancy for what was to come.

"Are you…dead?" I choked out.

"I guess by the standards of the living Mike, I am. But I have never felt more alive in my life." He laughed. "Will you tell Nicole that I love her?"

"Of course Brendon, and thank you. But why, why did you come back?"

Brendon sighed, the echo of it reverberated throughout the valley. "I should have never left you guys, Mike. I let pride and ego get the best of me. Those petty human qualities mean so little here, Mike."

"Is Jen with you Brendon?"

"She was for a while. But the pull from the other side was too great. Jo kept calling for Jen to join her. She did want me to pass a message on to you though. She wanted to thank you."

"For what, I got her killed," I sobbed.

"For giving her a reason to keep living."

I dropped to my knees, the weight of the message driving me to the ground. Brendon appeared in front of me. He bent over, extending a hand to me. "Take hope away from here, Mike." He said as he pulled me up. "That's why you've been allowed to come. If not for yourself, then for your family." He paused. "For your grandson."

"I don't have a grandson." I answered him, the dawn of the realization slow to shine on me.

Brendon smiled as he slowly faded away. "Tell Nicole I love her and Chase is a fine name."

I shook violently awake. BT was softly snoring off to my side. Henry had at some point in the night snuck back into the hospital, and was crowding in on my bed. A small light had been left on in the far corner. Night had fully descended on this place. Shit, I didn't even know where I was. That hadn't happened to me since my college days, and that usually involved copious amounts of alcohol.

"Hi Talbot." For the minutest of seconds I thought Henry had spoken. His head still rested comfortably on my thigh.

"Hi hon." I answered, as my drug addled brain began to put the pieces back together.

"How you feeling?" My wonderful wife asked.

"Like a truck ran me over, then backed up to hit me again, then put ice chains on and then…"

"Enough!" She said exasperated. "I get the picture. There's something I need to tell you."

"Nicole's pregnant." I said.

I could hear the sharp intake of breath as Tracy tried to understand how I got that information. "There's more."

"Brendon's dead."

"How do you know all this? You've been unconscious for over three days."

"Brendon told me."

Tracy just about cried. "How Mike? Brendon died in that damned truck and Nicole herself didn't know she was pregnant until this morning."

I shrugged my shoulders, which in light of my present condition might just have been one of the singularly most stupid things I have ever attempted. Blood ruptured from an opening that by all accounts shouldn't have been there. A distant klaxon sounded, the night darkened around me, blackness tunneled my vision into twin pinpricks.

"Mike!" Tracy screamed.

I heard some panicked voices and then I found myself back in the safe, warm valley. This time I was alone. "Brendon? Jen?" I yelled. It wasn't that I was scared I was alone, it just would have been nice to share the experience. When I had first arrived in the valley the colors had all seemed muted. Everything from the smallest speck of dust now all shone with their own brilliance, so much so that I found myself squinting. The sun, which had seemed no bigger than a marble in the sky earlier, now threatened to overtake my entire field of vision. I found myself once again drawn to the light like a kid to a Toys R Us.

"Mike, not yet." An agitated voice said. "How many times do I have to send you back?"

"God?" Oh shit, I think I've annoyed God, that can't look good on your personal resume.

"It's not yet your time, Mike. Soon but not yet."

"Mom? Is that you? Mom, I'm tired. I don’t know how much longer I can do this."

I was full out sobbing now, my feet shuffling ever forward. As I write these words I find myself ashamed. I had given up. I wanted to crawl onto my mom's lap like I was five and she would tell me the Indians were coming to get me.

Ever forward I moved; the light didn't diminish this time. I was being repelled and accepted at the same time.

"Mike." A voice said forcibly from behind me.

I paid it as little attention as I could, left foot forward, right foot forward. The sweet summer grass I glided across became six-inch thick heavy mud. My feet became mired. Forward progress was slowed to a crawl. Still I pressed. If nothing else, I'm a stubborn son of a bitch.

"Mike!" The behind voice yelled. "A few more steps and it'll be too late."

"Don't you think I know that!" I screamed with everything I had. The rawness of my rage scraping against the linings of my throat.

The six-inch thick mud, turned into some sort of twelve-inch thick tar and mud mixture. I pushed forward straining with all my being to push through this obstacle. I could feel my essence being sucked up and into the light, like I was made of dust and the light was a giant Dyson. I was close! I pulled my left leg up out of the soup to rest it on the once again soft summer grass. I knew instinctually that once I pulled my right leg up and placed it onto the grass I would have passed a barrier from which there was no return.

"Mike." The behind voice cried once more. "We need you here."

I pulled my right leg up. It released with an audible pop from the ground. How long it hovered I don't know, not sure that time is relevant in purgatory. I looked upon the faces of my mother, of Brendon, Jen, Jo, Jed and dozens if not hundreds of relatives, this I knew not from sight but by the feelings of warmth and love that emanated from them. They all stared at me expectantly, waiting to embrace me within their collective grasps. I screwed up, I turned to look and see my pursuer. Tommy stood no more than ten feet away, tears streamed down his face. His body shook violently.

"Mr. T, it's not your time yet."

"Are you sure Tommy, because it really seems like it is."

"Have I ever lied to you Mr. T?"

"Tommy I don't know if you've ever lied to anybody." And still my right foot hovered a foot from the ground. I was twelve olde English inches from literally meeting my maker. Maybe not the closest call ever, but then again not everyone truly knows HOW close they are to death.

"Think about your family, Mr. T."

"I have Tommy, but what's the point? Won’t they all end up here eventually and then we'll all be together again."

"Don’t you want your grandson to grow up, Mr. T? To have a life and a love of his own?"

That hurt more than I care to admit.

"If he dies before he's born Mr. T, he doesn't come here."

"That's a lie!" I screamed.

Tommy's features didn't change.

"Eliza knows about this place, she can keep your family away from here, forever." He added.

I wanted to scream at him, to throw him to the ground, to tell him that God would make him burn for telling those untruths. The problem was it was all true, instinctively I knew he was speaking the truth.

"I hate that bitch." I swore under my breath. What circle of hell do they reserve for people that swear on Heaven's doorstep? I nearly and literally almost fell over into the great abyss, only Tommy's steadying hand on my shoulder kept me from going over the edge. "Nice grab." I told him.

"You ready to go home?" He asked.

"I thought I was." I answered truthfully. I turned back. "Bye mom, I miss you."

"I'll see you soon." She said softly, with a ghost of a sad smile on her lips.

Now that I had made up my mind to stay on this side of the death divide, I hoped she didn't mean too soon or else this was going to be a short novella punctuated by my untimely demise.

"Thank you Tommy, you've saved me again."

"Want a Pop-Tart?" He asked as he pulled me close.

CHAPTER SEVEN - JOURNAL ENTRY 3 -

As the emergency room lights grew brighter, the field I was in grew dimmer. Like the Cheshire cat, Tommy's grin was the last thing to fade.

My eyes fluttered open, bright light pierced into my soul.

"We have brain function." I think a nurse might have said.

"Blood pressure is 70 over 20 and climbing Doctor. Another 20 cc's of epy?"

"No we've already pumped him with more than I feel comfortable putting in a rhino. Mike can you hear me?"

"Get…damn…light…out…of…my…eyes." I rasped.

"Good to have you back."

I wasn't quite as sure.

"You've lost a lot of blood again Mike. You're making me doubt my expertise. Nearly everything I did on your shoulder came unglued all at once. You were clinically dead for twelve minutes. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it."

Tracy was squeezing the shit out of my right hand.

"Hurts.." I muttered.

"I bet it does Mike." The Doc continued. "We had to go in…"

"No…" I took a breath. "Hand."

"No we didn't have to do anything with your hand we…"

"Oh I think he means me Doctor." Tracy said releasing her death grip on my hand. She began to rub blood back into my purpling appendage.

My head ached as I scanned the room. Travis' red-rimmed eyes were what I caught first. He turned away when he noticed me staring at him. "Not...quite...dead...yet." I said in my best Monty Python English accent. "I…think…I'm…getting…better." He turned quickly to leave the room, his shoulders bobbed up and down in heavy sobs. I knew what it was like to be a teen, all those hormones surging to the fore and there was always the constant cool that had to be maintained under any and all circumstances. It was nice to see that I had broken through to his humanity, something which I think had been slipping from him, minute degrees at a time.

Justin was next, his eyes were red-rimmed also but they were more the result from whatever poison surged through his body. His words froze me. "She knows we're here."

"Justin!" Tracy screamed.

Justin's face fell. "Mom." He began.

"You tell that bitch!" Tracy yelled. "That she can go to hell, and if she comes here I'll send her there personally. Why don't you and your girlfriend go for a walk!" Tracy sobbed.

"Hon…" I said almost grabbing her with my damaged arm. The Doc must have known I wasn't the brightest bulb on the string. This time he made sure that I would not be able to make any sudden movements. My arm, no scratch that, my entire upper half of my body, was immobilized. Tracy stopped her tirade to look at me, the pain and the hurt was etched in her eyes.

"I don't think he was taunting, I think he was just telling us."

"I don't care Talbot, I just don't." Tracy stormed out, her shoulders doing a fair impression of Travis' from a few moments earlier.

"Do…do you want me to leave Dad?" Justin asked, his eyes never picking up off of the floor.

I didn't want him to leave. I did however want Eliza to piss off. Was pretty sure she wasn't going to listen though. "No it's fine." I said through gritted teeth. The lingering effects of being dead were beginning to wear off and the pain of life was rearing its ugly head.

Next in line was Nicole. She looked worse than Justin. She wore the affliction of loss heavily.

"Hey Peanut. How you doing?"

Porkchop pushed past Nicole. "I'm doing good Mr. Talbot. Thanks for asking. Wanna see my transformers?"

"Porkchop!" Doc Baker called over from the corner, doing his best to be discreet while also actually monitoring my progress. "I'm pretty sure he's not talking to you."

"Dad yeah he is. You heard him right?" Porkchop asked Nicole.

"Well actually…" I began.

"So see this one is Bumble Bee. He goes from this guy into a yellow Camaro." Porkchop said as he hastily began to do the magical folding and bending of plastic to make the action figure turn into a sports car. Sweat began to bead on his brow as the arm assembly was not being very cooperative. "Almost got it." Porkchop said in deep concentration. I would have laughed a little when Porkchop's tongue came out while he was in deep concentration but I knew the pain that would have ensued was not worth the expenditure.

Doc Baker had to physically remove Porkchop from the vicinity. Porkchop was entirely too wrapped up in the transmorphing of his toy to realize that he had actually been moved.

"Dad I've got something to tell you." Nicole said, her eyes as downcast as her brother's.

"It's alright honey Br…" Holy crap I was half a sentence away from telling my grieving daughter that her dead boyfriend had already told me that she was pregnant. That wouldn't have gone over too well. Nicole picked her eyes up to meet mine. A questioning look fleeted across her features.

"Brendon's dead." Nicole sobbed flatly. The shock of those words spoken aloud stunned her. Up to this point I don’t think it had been vocalized. Obviously she knew but the spoken word carried its own weight, a finality, a punctuation to an ending.

A new fear wormed into my heart. Would my daughter begin to look at me as the person for whom her fiancée had died. Being Catholic meant I already carried an immeasurable amount of guilt around with me. I didn't want to add to the load. I wanted to reach out and comfort my daughter; the cloth strap bound tightly across my chest thought otherwise.

Nicole moved in for a hug, oblivious to the myriad of machinery and tubes hooked up to me. I wished that an EKG machine was also hooked up to Doc Baker at that point. He looked on the verge of a cardiac infarction, I knew because I watched ER.

Nicole wept as she gripped me tight, the deep sobs reverberated throughout both our bodies. The movement was causing me quite a bit of pain, which I was doing my best to squash down. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Doc unobtrusively working his way closer and closer to my bedside. Nicole kept her final secret to herself. That was fine with me. We all carry certain things we don't want the rest of the world to know, problem was hers was going to reveal itself no matter what she did or did not say.

She pulled herself up so we could see eye to eye, which was still difficult due to the copious amounts of tears being spilled. The big bad ass Marine side of me would like to say they were all hers or even mostly hers but this water works display was a joint effort.

"Nicole I know this won't help now and most likely won't make any sense, but in The End we WILL be all together." I told her. I wanted to finish with. 'Once I take Eliza's head and slowly feed it through a wood chipper.' Sounded good in my head, got the feeling Nicole wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much.

"I love you Dad." She said squeezing me tighter.

The Doc couldn't take it anymore. He gently placed his hands on her shoulders. "Miss, we really need to let your dad rest. If anything else happens to him, I don't know that there will be enough left to sew back together."

Justin led his sister out and I would imagine to their quarters. Nicole had always been a very petite girl. Somehow she looked even more diminished, like her soul was wrung out. I know mine was.

"Mike you should get some sleep." The Doc told me.

"Doc I'm sick of sleeping."

"I can see your point, but the more rest you have the quicker your body will heal."

"First things first Doc."

He stopped what he was doing to look at me.

"Where am I and what is going on?" I asked him.

"Well I guess a few more minutes won't make a difference," as he pulled up a chair. "Where would you like me to start?"

"I was thinking maybe the Mesozoic era." I said smart-assedly.

"The beginning it is." The Doc said immediately picking up on my sarcasm. "First off you are on an impromptu military base called Camp Custer in Indiana that abuts up against the great lakes, Lake Michigan to be specific."

It was nice to have someone recognize my acrimony.

"The newscasters had one thing right, it did start with a flu shot. When the vice president died from complications arising from the H1N1 Influenza strain, the administration, in an effort to squash public panic, pushed researchers and vaccine developers past their breaking point. Safety measures were cut or completely ignored. Tests on the vaccine's effectiveness were never validated. Most likely the tests weren't even conducted. I'm not going to go into what specifically went wrong, microbiology is not my area, suffice it to say that something went completely awry."

"You think." I grunted. "Did you say Custer?"

He nodded with a weak smile. "The vaccine they were inoculating everyone with was a live strain, something they haven't done in over thirty years because of the inherent danger this type of dose can cause. Obviously nothing on this level, but the live strains of vaccines used to cause upwards of a 7% infection rate. Meaning..."

"Meaning that out of every 100 people given the shot to prevent the flu, seven actually got the flu."

"Exactly." The Doc nodded. "Those were great odds back in the day, but as we learned more about how to combat the influenza virus, it was discovered that the success rate with 'dead' vaccines was much larger. Odds of actually getting the flu from a flu shot were infinitesimally small. So much so it was widely believed that the people who actually got sick already had the virus within them."

"Why the live vaccine then Doc?"

"Time, Mike. It would have taken another 3 to 4 weeks to adapt the 'dead' viral agent. The country was already on the verge of a pandemic. Thousands were getting sick daily. Hundreds, if not thousands of deaths were imminent. Schools, businesses, hell even government buildings were shutting down to prevent the spread of the virus. All of the president's admonishments that the flu was not as bad as the media was making it seem went down the drain the very minute the VP died. Vaccination producing facilities began to work around the clock to get enough doses out there, and even with those extraordinary measures it wasn't going to be nearly enough."

I could not get the image of small vials of zombieism heading down an assembly line. An innocuous clear liquid in a small bottle with a cap especially designed for the insertion of a needle. If I had not been laid off my family and I would have been first in line to accept the deadly shot. "There were no tests?" I asked angrily.

"Well maybe I spoke too soon. In a gesture of 'Goodwill," the Doctor said with air quotes. "The good old US government sent crates and crates of the newly fashioned immunization to third world countries around the globe."

"Bastards. They might as well have been giving smallpox laced blankets to the Yup'ik."

The Doc looked at me a little funny. "I knew you were a smart man Mike, I didn't know that you were educated also."

"There are a lot of things about me Doc that might confound you but my knowledge of that has more to do with my fear of conspiracies than book learning."

"I see." The Doc said looking off into the distance as he assimilated this new information.

"So didn't the scientists get a clue that maybe the vaccination wasn't so good when Peruvians began to walk around eating their relatives?"

"They would have, had they waited. Within a day or two of shipping out the crates they began the roll out the first shots to area hospitals."

"Are you kidding me? So being the assholes that we are, we use whole nations as our guinea pigs and then don't even have the follow through to see the results?"

"It gets worse Mike."

"How is that even possible?"

"I could probably get shot just for telling you, but it's not like you're going to be able to go to the media with this information." The Doc looked back to the door as if expecting Big Brother to be standing there, they weren't, so he continued. "There is every indication that the higher ups within the government knew the shots were tainted."

The look of shock nearly froze my features into place.

"No, no wait. It's not that they were trying to take down civilization as we knew it. I guess it was more of inaction that may have doomed our species. Just as the first few people in the states were coming down with the infection, the boxes of shots began to make their way ashore all around the globe. In typical government fashion, this new development of death and reanimation was immediately covered up. In its defense the government tried their best to quickly and quietly retrieve the shots. But with vague directions, hospitals and caregivers were reluctant to give their hard won shots back. They immediately began to dose as many people as was possible before government representatives could get there to retrieve the stock. What's infinitely worse is that once the U.S. realized it could not contain the shots within their own borders they didn't act to save any other country."

"They figured if we were going down then we were taking as many people with us as possible."

"Quite." The Doctor said resignedly.

"But you said third world countries, Doc. Is there anywhere that is zombie free?" I asked hopefully.

"We have satellite communication with most countries that are still people populated." He pulled his hand across his face. "It seems we lose contact with a handful every week as they go dark."

Going dark could mean a lot of things. Possibly running out of power, burnt out diodes, laryngitis, bad case of the hiccups might keep someone from broadcasting.

"Australia seems to be the least infected, but it really is only a matter of time."

"An exponential disaster, one becomes two, two becomes four, and so on."

"And so on." The Doc repeated sadly.

"How much of humanity is left Doc?" Where do you go, what do you do, when hope is gone?

"In the states, maybe 5% aren’t zombies yet. The rest of the world, well they're lagging behind like usual but are coming on fast, they may have upwards of 15% of their populations still alive."

"Is there any way to stop them?" 'Them,' being our neighbors, our friends, our families.

"We've been working on a vaccination."

I must have looked at him funny.

"I know, it seems a little late in the game for that. Haven't had much success anyway, volunteers have been scarce." He said weakly. "The new agent might counteract the flu immunization if someone were to immediately seek out help. But at this point I can barely give someone a saline solution intravenously. If we have generations left it will take that long for the fear of needles to subside."

"What if someone is bitten?" I asked hopefully.

"Maybe in the beginning a stronger vaccination could have helped, but the disease has mutated. The pathogen that floods the body in a bite now is much too virulent. It overwhelms the body's defenses in a matter of hours, what used to take a day or more now happens in half that time. Individuals don’t even have the capacity to die in the traditional manner before they are re-animated."

"The speeders." I said aloud.

"Speeders?" The Doc questioned.

I related our experience with this new breed of death dealing machines.

"With the original 'zombies,' I'll use that term because it seems to be the current vernacular to call them but not completely true. Anyway, the older agent could take up to 24 hours to overwhelm its victims. The patient's body temperature could swell well above the 107 degree threshold before the brain literally began to cook. Once the infected 'died' the microorganisms or parasites really began to go to work."

"How is that possible? Doesn't the parasite die when the host does? How can it keep going without that symbiotic relationship?"

"And that's the difference. Our little carnivorous sycophant values its existence above all others. Sort of like man itself." The Doc said wonderingly.

"Doc, come back."

"Right. So I can't even begin to go into depth about how, but apparently when the leech realized that its very life was on the line, it developed a way to reroute the functions of its host. It took control much like a marionette. Unfortunately, this type of hostile take-over requires copious amounts of proteins to sustain."

"Meat." I said softly.

"Precisely."

"What happens when their food supply runs dry?" I asked knowing full well I was talking about people.

"You may or may not have noticed that they will eat just about anything they can catch. Funny though they will have nothing whatsoever to do with high protein bars which would sustain them just as easily as meat based proteins."

I knew the answer but I asked anyway. "How do you know all this Doc?"

He didn't hesitate with his response. "We've got ten of them on base for studying."

"What the fuck?" BT yelled. "You've got those things on site? Are you fucking crazy?"

"Strange." The Doc said as he stood up and walked over to BT's bedside. He tapped on BT's intravenous bag. "I gave him enough sedative to keep him asleep for another eight hours."

"You know those things can talk to each other right?" BT said panicked. "Tell him Talbot."

"Lawrence, they can do no such thing." The Doc said as he plunged another hypodermic into BT's IV line. "The virus burns so hot in humans that it virtually wipes clear all higher brain functioning, like a magnet to a hard drive."

"Talbot!?" BT pleaded.

"Doc, they aren't hard drives." I said. "I'm not saying that they have conversations, but they have the ability to communicate somehow. They know when prey is available and they have a pack mentality. They know when to converge or even to diverge if a more readily available food source comes into play."

"These are all interesting theories, Mike," the Doc said with a small slice of condescension on top.

I could tell he was about to start rambling on with a myriad of explanations and reasons why this couldn't be true. I didn't give him the chance.

"How many battles you been in Doc?"

"That’s not the point."

"The hell it isn't Doc. How much about a wolf's behavior could you learn from him if all you knew was from a caged specimen."

"I understand the analogy Mike, I really do. But I am telling you that the host brain is quite literally liquefied from the experience."

"You said the host brain."

The Doc paused.

"Good one Talbot!" BT said barely able to muster a thumbs-up under the assault of the newly added sedative.

CHAPTER EIGHT - JOURNAL ENTRY 4 -

I don't know if the Doc didn't like my answer or was just done talking, he plunged a sedative into my IV line. Unlike BT, I was out in seconds. I slept wonderfully. No visions of Heaven or Tommy's playland. I think I dreamt something about the New York Giants playing the Red Sox in the World Bowl and somehow the Boston Bruins came out on top. Don’t judge me, you know you've had weirder dreams. I was graciously accepting Lord Stanley's Turkey Platter when I was rudely shoved awake.

"Michael B. Talbot, are you awake?"

"Fucking am, now." I don’t wake up very well. I wanted to sit up a little straighter when I noticed who had pulled me out of dreamland. This guy had more ribbons and shiny shit on his uniform than I had ever seen.

"Michael B. Talbot, I am Lt. Colonel Byron Fox, 1st Marine Corps Air Station."

"Little far from home Colonel?" I asked. First MCAS was at one time stationed in Hawaii, probably not anymore.

The Colonel did not even acknowledge my comment as he threw out his own question. "Doctor Baker came to see me a few hours ago with some disturbing new details about our enemy. What can you tell me?"

"How much time you got?" I asked him.

"I have to be in a briefing with the base commander at 1830, so about an hour."

Great, this guy was about as dry as toast. He grilled me for the entire hour, ringing out every iota of minutiae he could garner. He must have been a supply commander. I glossed over Eliza for the time being. I don't know why, maybe I was afraid that he would kick my family and me out if he knew we were being targeted. The Marine Corps is all about the greater good, sacrifice of the one for the many. I just wanted to make sure that my family was not the 'ONE.'

He knew I wasn't giving him everything but not from lack of trying. He would ask the same questions just with different wordings. More than once I had to stop and sort through all the 'half-truths' I had told him and make sure that I was consistent. I was exhausted after our verbal sparring, another half hour and I might have admitted to creating the tainted shots.

"We'll talk more." The colonel said as he abruptly rose and walked out of the room.

"Why didn't you tell him Mike?" BT asked.

BT startled the crap out of me. I had to remember that I did not have this room to myself.

"Shit, BT don’t you sleep?"

"Only when I want to. Something about this place has me on edge. Obviously you feel the same or you would have told him."

"I don’t know what it is BT. We are on a military base with more guns and trained personnel that we could ever hope for and I felt safer in Little Turtle. I think most of it has to do with the fact that we're pretty much stuck in these beds. Part of it could be that I just don’t think he'd believe me."

BT nodded in agreement.

"I mean we're living through it man, and still I am harboring doubts."

"It all seems pretty improbable. I always thought the downfall of civilization would be a socio-economic collapse. I fully expected China to demand all of our debt to her in one fell swoop. They would have won the war without firing one shot."

I looked over at BT. I must have had a confused look on my face because he asked me what the hell I was looking at. I could not reconcile the size of the man with the obvious amount of smarts he possessed.

"How in the hell do you have enough time outside of the gym to learn all this stuff?"

"Blow me, Talbot."

"Ah there's the BT I know and love."

"So what do you want to do about this place?" He asked more seriously.

"I want to leave. But not yet, I want us to be as close to 100% functional as is possible. This place has…something."

"A feeling of expectancy."

"That'll work. Calm before the storm and all that shit. There is just way too much food here for the zombies to pass on by. I don't give a shit how many bullets and grenades and claymore mines they have here, it isn't enough. They will either come on their own or Eliza will bring them. Either way I really don't want to be here when it happens."

"How long you figure, Mike?"

"It's never good when you use my first name BT."

He cocked a half smile at me.

"Well, provided I don’t find some new and unusual way to reinjure my shoulder, which may be difficult. I should be semi-functional in a few weeks. You on the other hand are probably looking at a good 3 or 4 months before you are even close to approximating something close to normal."

BT laughed before he asked his question. "So again Mike, how long?"

"Do I look like CNN?" BT's gaze withered me. "Fine, I've got to figure that the bitch is even now amassing an army. It'll take her a while to get anything together that can take on this base. I can only hope that the majority of zombies out there are still of the slower variety. I figure if everything goes our way we have a max of a month."

BT breathed heavily through closed lips. "When you feel better Mike you could leave."

"Yup sure could."

"But you won't." BT said resignedly.

"Yeah not really a chance of that BT, I've come to grow fond of you and the constant threat of getting my ass kicked by you."

"Mike, you've got your family to think of."

"BT you are part of my family now. I mean we might not be able to pass as twins and all, but we are brothers."

"Brothers in arms."

"I've been to war BT. There are not many stronger bonds that can be created than with your fellow soldier. When the world disintegrates around you and all you have is your buddy next to you watching your back and to rely on, well hell man, what more do you need? Don't sweat it for now, we'll see how we're doing in three weeks and we'll go from there. If we're up for it and these Army guys can see it out of the kindness of their hearts to give us a hummer, we'll just go."

"What if they don't have any kindness?"

"Eh, won’t be the first time I stole a military vehicle."

"You scare me Talbot."

"Those are the same words my parole officer said."

“What’d the Doc say about your leg?”

“He said I should have got a second opinion before I let you operate.”

I laughed, even though the movement caused extreme pain through my shoulder. “Asshole.” I mumbled.

“Hey I’m just telling you what he told me.”

“Seriously, BT.”

“Well my pole vaulting days are over.” He said with some serious lament in his voice.

He sounded so pathetic I was half tempted to believe him, but the guy would have had to use an oak tree to vault over a pole.

“BT, shit. You know it hurts me when I laugh.” I said gripping my shoulder.

“It’ll heal, in fact it’s done remarkably well in this short time span. I’ll probably always have a limp, but that just works in my favor.”

When he didn’t answer I asked. “How so?” Knowing full well that I was walking into a set up trap.

BT flashed a smile. “Now I won’t have to work so hard on my pimp walk.”

I sighed in feigned disgust. It hurt less than laughing. For long moments there was a calm silence between us. BT broke it.

“I miss Jen, Talbot.” BT said.

I thought he might have wiped a tear away but I couldn’t be sure and either way I wasn’t going to call him on it.

“I miss her too, BT. She saved my skin a couple of times. Did you know we were neighbors before?” No need to explain before what.

“I think I remember her saying something about that. How the hell did she put up with you?”

“Back when civilization ruled the world, I reined myself in a lot better. I guess now there’s nothing left to hold the crazy back.”

With no small measure of difficulty BT sat up so that he could get a better look at me. “Talbot you’re hilarious.” BT guffawed for a few long seconds.

“I was being serious.” I said to him. His laughing, which had been ebbing began to flow full throttle again.

For forty-five minutes we reminisced about Brendon and Jen, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, more times than not it was a combination of the two.

"BT I haven't had the chance to ask anyone, but what happened to Brendon?"

"He shot himself."

I couldn't think of anything to say. There were reasons why in these times someone might decide to off themselves, but why then?

"He was bitten?" It was half statement half question.

"He must have been there was a bandage on his hand and when they laid him down I saw one on his leg, I don’t know how he even managed to get to Carol's."

I missed the kid, allies were falling fast and replacements were slow to come forward.

BRENDON'S STORY - CHAPTER NINE -

Brendon could never remember being able to change a tire that fast. Lug nuts that should have literally been frozen on, seemed hardly finger tightened as he used the tire iron to unscrew them. Adrenaline, fear and anger seethed through his system. He had no direction to focus his turmoil on. Justin was a spy, he was also his friend and the brother of his fiancée. Mike could just about be considered his dad and he knew what was up with Justin but did nothing. Realistically, what could he do.

Brendon felt justified and cowardly as he sped away from the Talbots'. They would never be able to survive without him.

"Oh who the hell am I kidding." He said to the steering wheel. "I won’t survive without them." His gut wrenched from the inner conflict. He was thirty miles down the roadway before he finally pulled over to reevaluate his situation. "How could I leave her?" He wailed. Pride is listed as one of the seven deadly sins for a reason. Brendon knew his life was almost forfeit but he'd be damned if he would grovel back to the all-knowing Michael R. Talbot.

He drove another five miles before he once again pulled over to rethink this course. He knew to within a few miles where they were going. He could just meet them there, all would be forgiven. "No!" He yelled. "Mike will have some smart ass comment about, I knew you’d be back. Or couldn’t stay away could you?" Brendon punched the accelerator, gravel spun out from the back of his truck. A lone crow perched on a non-functioning phone line watched his departure.

Brendon spent his first night alone in a mini-mall parking lot. He slept in fitful starts, always fearful that something would go bump in the night. The truck windows kept completely fogging over, so even when he did thrash to full alertness he could not tell if something was out there or an overactive imagination was to blame. Brendon quickly sat up. Wiping his sleeve across the wet glass, images of yellowing chipped, meat encrusted teeth pressed against the windshield jump-started his heart. "This sucks." He repeated for at least the twenty-second time. A little ribbing from Mike was a small price to pay.

Brendon spent the majority of the next morning sitting in his truck, constantly shifting his decision to keep on driving away from or toward the Talbots'. He dozed in and out of sleep, his legs cramped under the dashboard. It was sometime past noon when his knee slammed up into the steering column, his eyes were drawn to the far side of the parking lot as a young woman of nearly the same age as Nicole walked steadily in his direction. Age was the only thing his former fiancée and this interloper had in common. His heart snagged on a barb of realism as he realized that his engagement was now terminated.

The woman that was headed his way was dead and just didn’t know it. Her gore-streaked hair covered most of her visage but yet she did not once reach up and brush it away. Ripped lips revealed blackened teeth and a cavernous throat. She looked something between a sea gull and a shark with her black eyes. Her once white sweat pants were completely ripped up the right side revealing purple-bluish flesh that had torn in more than one spot. Oval mouthfuls of muscle and tendon were neatly removed. Brendon fumbled with his gun as his pulse quickened and his pupils dilated. He debated whether to leave, get out of the truck and kill it or shoot from where he sat.

He decided he would get a cleaner shot if he got out of the truck. He was completely unprepared for what happened as his foot hit the pavement. The zombie shifted from the typical side-to-side ambling and started a full on sprint towards him. The buffeting wind pushed her hair back to reveal red-rimmed black eyes. Saliva spewed forth from her mouth and ran parallel to the ground on her cheeks as she picked up speed. Brendon’s shot went wide right, nicking the girl's ear. She would never wear hoop earrings again. Her pace never wavered as she kept locked on like a meat seeking missile. Brendon’s next shot shattered the right side of her head. Head plate flew into the air, gray brown brain was clearly visible and still she came. Brendon's third and final shot dropped the zombie a mere 10 feet from him, the push of the bullet forced the majority of her brain out of the exposed hole. His heart nearly cramped from the encounter.

"One zombie." He said shaking his head. "Just one more and I'd be dead." He didn't know it on an intellectual level yet but his instinctual side had clearly made up its mind. If he wanted to survive, which he did, he needed to get back with the Talbots. He pulled out of the parking lot, passing seven zombies who started their relentless pursuit.

He got a few miles away from his close encounter, his breathing finally under control. He stopped this time on the roadway with a 360 degree view all around him, with at least 100 yards or more of clear sight. Nothing or nobody was going to be able to sneak up on him, at least not until night. His fuel tank and his stomach were both running on empty; he would need to rectify those situations soon.

Brendon looked at the flat black matte finish of his 9mm pistol, one pull of the trigger could end all of his doubts and misgivings. “Would it hurt?” He asked no one. A response was not forth coming. He smacked his gun-laden hand against the steering wheel. The bullet pierced the cab roof, a brilliant beam of light struck him in the eye. “Holy shit!” He said sticking a finger through the new exit point. “Great that ought to make it a little cooler in here tonight and let anybody in the general vicinity know I’m around.” His ears stung from the noise in such a confined space, his mood souring by the moment.

There was a Wendy’s up ahead, but unless he wanted to eat frozen ketchup packets he didn’t see the point. In a few more hours though, those would probably sound good. Brendon started the truck and drove slowly up the roadway looking for a place to grab some food and to keep a look out for any signs of the dead. A mini-mart that had seen better days came up on his right hand side. Both front doors were smashed and an F3 tornado seemed to have swept through the inner aisles but there still seemed to be plenty of food available, or at least food-like products, this was a mini-mart after all.

Brendon pulled up close to the front doors and then reversed a few feet just in case he needed the extra space to get away from something. He hesitated in the cab whether or not to leave it running or take the keys with him. “At this rate I’ll just end up pissing my pants where I sit so I won’t have to get out.” He smiled at his own grim realization that paranoia was taking more than a foothold. He opted to shut the truck off. The idling diesel engine was loud enough to sufficiently hide the dragging foot falls of zombies. His only middle ground was to leave the keys in the ignition so that there was no chance he’d drop them and not be able to find them.

The popping of the door as it opened startled him more than the earlier gunshot. His breath lingered in front of his face causing a momentary smoke screen. The morning was quiet, there was no traffic, no bustle of everyday life. Just the occasional ‘caw’ of a distant crow and the more unsettling barking of dogs that were increasingly becoming feral without ownership. Brendon laughed as he thought of a snarling mad Henry, but then immediately chilled when he thought the same thing about Bear, the Rottweiler. A bunch of poodles and a Chihuahua might not be so bad but throw in a Doberman Pinscher or a German shepherd and things could really start to get ugly.

Brendon had his gun drawn as he stepped onto the broken glass. He noted that more than one person had been here just for the fact that most of the glass had been ground down to almost a fine powder. The thought that live humans were in the vicinity was of no comfort. People could be just as deadly as zombies and you had the added bonus of not knowing which side of that line they were on. At least the zombie didn’t try to pretend. As if to confirm his worst fear there were at least six or possibly seven scattered dead people, it was tough to tell because the aforementioned wild dogs had ripped them apart. They were nearly stripped clean and the bones that remained shone a bright white. Even the skulls had been crushed and the contents muzzled out.

“They had to have been humans, the dogs wouldn’t have touched zombies. Right? Who am I asking?” Dogs hadn’t done the initial killing though, various caliber brass littered the floor, and there were no guns around. The empty shells sounded like broken rain as he kicked through it. "It was bound to happen sooner or later." He thought. "Dwindling resources bring out the worst in folks." Brendon shivered as he saw the outline where the previous blood spills were. Tongue marks criss-crossed the floor, leaving red smears behind. His hunger, which had seemed such a pressing need only moments earlier, was rapidly losing its appeal. “You’ve seen worse.” He said aloud trying to bolster his nerve.

He nearly cried when he passed a smashed box of pop-tarts on the floor. “Maybe I should grab them and I can use them as an excuse to go back. You know Mike, I was heading to Mexico and I came across these cherry pop-tarts and I turned around because I figured that Tommy would want them. No.” He said shaking his head. “Tommy hated the cherry ones, are there any strawberry?” Brendon was so intent on looking for a different flavor he did not realize when visitors came to join him.

The deep bass growl was his first inkling that all might not be right in his world. He looked up at not the largest dog he had ever seen but clearly the most ferocious. A Siberian Husky stared back at Brendon, no wagging tail on its emaciated frame. “That’s a good fella.” Brendon said. “Want a pop-tart?” The dog’s growling increased. “I don’t blame you, the cherry ones suck.” The dog warily moved forward never taking its eyes off him. Patches of fur were missing from its black and silver coat. Dried blood had solidified on its right side, half of his left ear was torn. Brendon at first thought that possibly the virus had gone cross-species. Except for the eyes, they were a deep blue, he might have kept on thinking that.

Brendon held up his gun, the dog paused. “You know what this is don’t you!” Brendon said forcibly. The dog hesitated but only long enough to wait for three of his friends to join him in the hunt. A Golden Retriever, a Black Lab and a Dachshund joined the fray. The retriever and the lab could be trouble because of their size, but Brendon could not wrap his head around a violent dachshund. That was of course until the Dachshund seized the initiative and charged head long down the aisle at him.

“Oh come on.” Brendon pleaded. “A freaking wiener dog?” All the same, he scrambled up on the shelving, pushing some boxes of half eaten Cheerios out of the way. The Dachshund stopped below him, yipping up a storm. If not for his larger and fiercer friends this would be comical. The Lab and the Retriever slowly approached coming down the same aisle as the smaller dog. The Husky came down the aisle to Brendon’s rear. ‘Great, they know how to hunt.’ He thought.

The Lab looked ready to spring. Brendon placed a well-aimed shot in its chest, the dog skidded backwards and slumped against some Angel Soft bathroom tissue. The softest final resting place anybody could ask for. The dogs had backed up a bit but they weren’t leaving quite yet. Brendon turned to get a better shot at the husky, figuring if he took out their leader the rest of the pack might lose heart. Seemed like a great idea until the pack began to swell, Brendon stopped counting when the tenth dog came through.

“Three shots at the zombie, one at the Labrador. That gives me six, and there’s at least 13 of you.” He looked to his truck. The husky followed his line of sight. Backing it up earlier which seemed such a great idea now might end up being the last great blunder in a long string of them. Cognitively he knew the husky wasn’t smiling at him but it sure did look like a shit-eating grin from where he sat. Two more dogs jumped up at him only to be met with varying degrees of fatality. The one that was shot in the throat would die much sooner than the one that had its paw blown off, but it was still only a matter of time.

A few of the dogs were paying no heed whatsoever to the melodrama playing out, too busy foraging for scraps that previous hunting parties might have missed. A particularly vicious fight broke out between an Australian cattle dog and a Boxer over what looked like a bloody hairpiece but was in fact some poor soul’s scalp. Brendon absently touched the top of his head. A good portion of the dogs began to rip pieces out of their fallen brethren. “Glad to see that cannibalism isn’t just a human trait.” Brendon said darkly. No matter what else was happening in the store the husky never took his eyes off of Brendon. It was unnerving and to make matters worse the dog had pulled back far enough to make any type of shot difficult. "Does he know how much ammo I have left." Brendon didn’t voice his thought for fear that the hound might understand what he was saying. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing that had happened to him in the last few weeks.

Brendon pulled his gun up again. The husky retreated even further, placing himself squarely behind an unsuspecting poodle. Brendon shot. “Fuck it, I hate poodles anyway.” Two rounds later the white poodle lay on its side and other dogs began to jockey for position to get some of the tastier morsels on the cadaver. The husky had circled back around. “You are starting to piss me off!” Brendon yelled. The dog curled its lips up, exposing blood stained teeth. “Come here good boy.” Brendon said in a cajoling voice. “I’ve got something for you.” A cur from the back came up. Its tail tucked firmly between its legs, the sound of a human promising treats sparked a fading memory in its rudimentary ken. The husky bit its hindquarters for its disloyalty. The cur yelped its way back to the back of the pack. “Well it’s not like I didn’t know who the alpha dog was anyway.”

The dogs dispatched quickly of their former mates. The meal did little to stave off the effects of starvation that the majority of them were feeling. Most would die by the end of the month, but that would do little for Brendon’s present situation. “Three rounds left, do I kill two dogs and then myself?” It sounded like a decent plan. He just couldn’t reconcile being eaten by animals. There was some base part of him that this thought repulsed to the core. Must have been a hold-over from the early hominids. It kept them from letting a saber tooth tiger eat them.

Brendon didn’t think matters could get much worse. He chastised himself for his lack of imagination when three zombies ambled down the street and into the store. At least one good thing came of it, the dogs having realized that they were also on the zombies’ menu moved out of the way as the new hunters joined the mix. Two of the zombies started to go after the dogs, a young man somewhere in his early twenties, however, locked on Brendon. The dogs moved as the zombie approached. Always staying out of arm’s reach but close enough that they could grab scraps once the dominant hunter had taken down its prey. Like hyenas they cackled around the lion.

Two shots and one broken open brain bucket later the zombie man was on the ground. The dogs avoided the carcass like the plague-infested carrier that it was. The commotion did not go unnoticed by one of the other zombies, who had peeled off from trying to catch the dachshund and instead focused on the non-moving prey, Brendon. The third zombie had somehow managed to corner one of the dogs and was tearing through it. The blood strangled barks of pain were ignored by the pack. "Survival of the fittest." Brendon said, as he stood on the shelving almost falling over when his left foot came down awkwardly on a can of Spam.

The zombie that was coming for Brendon was also in his mid-twenties or so and dressed as if he had at one time been going to a dance club, a tattered black silk shirt and a thick gold chain still clung to his grimy neck. No shoes to speak of but his pants were still in pretty good shape, considering. Brendon couldn't help but wonder if the three amigos had all been together when they changed over, did their friendship transcend the change? That question got resolved fairly quickly as zombie number two stepped on zombie number one's family jewels; the egg cracking sound of bursting genitalia got Brendon moving.

The zombie was within arm's length. Brendon ran down the top of the shelf, gauging where a good jump would take him and then how long it would take him to get to the truck. The husky paced him on the floor. The zombie wasn't going to be a problem unless he jumped too far and knocked himself out on the top of the doorframe. The husky was the issue. He might have, against all odds, made it to the truck unscathed if his jump hadn’t landed him squarely in spilled dish detergent. His left leg shot out at an unnatural angle, the pain in his groin letting him know that if he survived it was going to throb for weeks. Brendon went down on all fours, traction was measured in inches when it needed to be feet. The clubbing zombie was closing in as was his friend that decided human tasted better than collie.

Brendon looked like an extra on Avatar with blue goo covering everything that made contact with the floor. The husky was able to avoid the spillage as it sank its fangs deep into Brendon's calf. He screamed as he rolled over to kick at the dog. The husky, like a professional wrestler, matched him move for move. The dog started to shake its head back and forth causing Brendon to nearly pass out from the pain. Red flowed freely into blue. Sparks danced in Brendon's field of vision. He didn't remember doing it, if someone had asked him later on he would have thought that someone else had taken the shot. The husky jumped away, a deep crimson gash perforated its side, rib bone protruded through the injury. Brendon turned back over to begin his crab walk out of the store. The clubber might have caught him if not for the same trap that had temporarily snared Brendon. The zombie went head first into a display of pickles, shards of vinegar laced glass peppered his face. Brendon stared in horror as the zombie tried to right itself, a jagged piece of glass sticking out of its now empty eye socket.

As it got free from the La Brea Dawn Pits, Brendon got to his one good leg and half hopped, half jumped his way to the truck. Blood followed him. He pulled himself into the cab and immediately shut the door. Some of the hungrier and more dominant dogs began to assert themselves, within seconds the truck was surrounded. The circle was only broken to allow the Clubber and the dog muncher entry. Brendon nearly broke the key in the ignition when the zombies smacked up into the side of the truck. The truck started immediately. He ran over at least one of the zombie's feet and had possibly hit one or maybe two of the dogs. Brendon had a mild sense of satisfaction when he left and saw three big dogs closing in on their former leader. "That's what you get!" He shouted, spittle flying on the inside of the windshield.

He could not, for the life of him, remember why he had stopped at that little shit-hole, that was of course until the blinding yellow light warning of eminent fuel depletion started to blink. His leg hurt so bad he could barely think, he feared pulling his pants up to look at it, thinking that his calf muscle might only be secured to his leg by a severely chewed through tendon. Droplets of blood began to merge on the rubber floor mat, an ant might not yet be able to drown in the burgeoning puddle but it sure could go for a nice swim. Brendon's head began to swoon. The previous bright sparks of pain began to darken and become blotched and that was making vision increasingly difficult.

He drove until the tank gave out, which was fortuitous considering he passed out at roughly the same time. The truck came to an unaided gliding stop on a snow covered embankment. There he would have stayed until time eternal if not for a long range military patrol on a search and rescue mission.

"Is he dead?" Murphy asked his sergeant. As he looked through the windshield, his M-16 pointed directly at the occupant’s skull.

"Why don't you get your stethoscope and see if he has a heartbeat." The sergeant said as he lit a cigar up.

"Shit he just moved!" Murphy yelled.

"Shoot him so we can get out of here." The gunner on the second vehicle shouted. "It's as cold as my first wife's tits out here." The gunner thought about his statement for a second. "And probably my second too."

"How many times you been married?" The gunner on the tracked vehicle asked.

"Guys, this thing is moving." Murphy shouted above them all.

The sergeant came up to the side window. "Looks pretty pale and there's blood on the floor. He's a gomer, hurry up and shoot it, Dickens is right, it is as cold as his second wife's titties."

That got a good round of laughter from everyone, even Dickens.

Brendon's eyes fluttered open. His throat was closed and as arid as the Sahara in high summer. He somehow croaked out. "Help me."

Murphy immediately went into medic mode, shouldering his rifle and opening the door to the truck. He handed Brendon a half full canteen.

Brendon drank greedily, half convinced that he already had early onset rabies. He snorted some of the water back up after trying to gulp it down too quickly.

“Take it easy bud.” Murphy said. “What happened to you?”

“Bit.” Brendon said as quickly as he could so he could get back to the canteen.

Murphy jumped back, and raised his gun half way up.

“Dog.” Brendon clarified bringing the canteen down quickly.

“You sure?” Murphy asked not wanting to get too close.

Brendon gingerly pulled up the bottom of his pants, wincing as the denim fabric snagged on a jagged piece of rended flesh.

“Yup definitely dog. Let me get my med bag.”

Brendon nodded going full tilt back on the canteen.

“What are you doing out here alone?” Murphy asked, trying to distract Brendon from the unpleasant sensation he was about to administer to his leg.

Brendon braced against the slapping sting sensation the disinfectant had on his wound. “I messed up.” Brendon said between clenched lips.

“How so?” Murphy asked rubbing the wound out with what felt like steel wool but was actually a sterile pad of cotton.

“How bad is my leg?” Brendon asked afraid to look down and only see bone.

“Eh ten, twelve stitches max, you won’t be dancing anytime soon. But you’ll live.” Murphy said as he reached into his bag for a suture needle. “So you were saying?”

“I got into a fight with my fiancée's dad and we parted ways.”

"Before or after the end of the world?"

"After." Brendon said resignedly.

“Must have been a hell of a fight, that you’d leave your fiancée and travel companions in this shit.” Murphy said as he snugged tight the second stitch. “Is that how all this happened?”

Brendon couldn’t blame him for his supposition. His leg was shredded from a dog bite. He was covered in blood and dish detergent and his face was all puffy from pain, tears and lack of sleep. “No I walked away from them in perfectly fine condition, the rest of this I blame on myself.”

“Seems like you should have made nice and stayed with them.”

“You think?” Brendon said sarcastically.

Murphy made sure to pull the fourth stitch a little extra tight, happy when Brendon jumped in response. “Did anyone die because of the fight you had?”

Brendon shook his head in the negative.

“Can’t you go back?”

“They’re on the road.”

Murphy stopped his suturing to look at Brendon squarely. “These aren’t the best of times to be out and about.”

“We had no choice, our home was overrun.”

Murphy nodded. He had seen many a home, town and even cities completely wiped out.

“Where were you going?” Murphy said tying up the last of his sutures.

“North Dakota first to get my girl’s grandmother and then ultimately back east to see if her dad’s family was still alive.”

Murphy kept quiet. The odds that either of those destinations were going to be fruitful ones were dismally low.

“I thought the same thing.” Brendon said picking up on Murphy’s lack of comment.

“Is that what you were fighting about?” Murphy asked as he began to bandage up the wound.

“Yeah something like that.” Brendon had not even the slightest desire to go into the true reasons, and Murphy didn’t look like the type that would believe anyway.

“How many were in your group?”

The word ‘were’ hurt Brendon more than the dog bite. He sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case. “Nine including Henry, he’s a bulldog.”

“English?” When Brendon nodded, Murphy added. “No shit! I love those dogs, couldn’t really afford one on military pay but I was saving up. But by the time this crap is over I don’t think there will be any left.”

Brendon nodded. Dogs like the Husky and hardy breeds like German Shepherds will have significant die off from not having human intervention, but they will eventually adapt to their new surroundings and most likely eventually survive. Specialty breeds like Henry or those stupid rat dogs won’t make it. They are entirely too dependent on their human masters.

“What are you going to do now?” Murphy asked after taping the bandage off and standing back up.

“Probably try and find them.”

“You can come with us, we’ve got another week or so on patrol and then we head back to what some might construe as civilization.”

“There’s some place to go to?” Brendon asked hopefully.

“Sure as shit, mankind's last stand, Camp Custer.” Murphy said laughing.

Brendon could not even begin to pick up on the humor, but he saw hope if he could find the Talbots again he could bring them back to this camp. “Could I get a map of where this place is?”

“I think I know where you’re going with this and I can probably do you one better. Hey Sarge!” Murphy shouted to the man behind the first vehicle who looked somewhere between asleep and smoking a cigar.

“Yeah?” The sergeant said through clenched teeth, tilting his cover back up.

“This guy was with eight civvies and an English Bulldog.”

“No shit?” The sergeant yelled back.

Brendon was completely convinced the sergeant’s interest was piqued way more by Henry than any of the ‘civvies’.

“This guy.” Murphy started.

“Brendon.”

“Brendon.” Murphy began again. “Says he knows where they are going.”

“How much time they have on us son?” The sergeant asked Brendon.

Brendon knew his answer was critical but he knew the sergeant would pick up on a lie. “About a day and a half.”

“I’m sorry son.” And Brendon thought he was. “But we’ll never catch them, not in these.” He said, slapping the side of his armored troop transport.

Brendon saw one chance to convince the sergeant. “My girlfriend's father was a Marine.”

The sergeant stared hard into Brendon’s eyes. “You wouldn’t be shitting me son? Would you? I really hate being shit on, makes everything smelly. And then I’d be really pissed off. You understand where I’m going with this son?”

“Completely.” Brendon nodded. “He was stationed in Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, Hawaii.”

“Air wing, huh.” The sergeant said derisively. “Still one of us though. Mount up everyone. We never leave a Marine behind.”

BRENDON'S STORY - CHAPTER TEN -

Murphy got one of the privates to put a few gallons of gas into the Ford while he fished out a couple of Motrin for Brendon. "Wish I could give you something a little stronger for the pain but Motrin is the medicine of the Marine Corps. You sure you don’t just want to ride with us."

"Naw." Brendon said for the second time. "I've always wanted a truck and I've grown kind of fond of this one.

Murphy shook his head, there were car lots full of trucks that would never be driven again, but who was he to say. The Marines' pace pushed Brendon to his extreme. They most likely wouldn’t have stopped that first night if Brendon hadn't nearly skidded off the road.

The sergeant got out of the lead truck and walked over to Brendon who was leaning over his steering wheel, a fresh bead of sweat on his forehead. "You ready for a break son?"

"About three hours ago." Brendon answered honestly.

"Well why didn't you say something?" The sergeant asked walking away.

"Dickens, get the radar array up. Ramirez you have first watch."

"It's because I'm Mexican isn't it?" Ramirez yelled.

The sergeant stopped. "No, we go to your room on Wednesdays for Mexican food because you're Mexican and you cook like a Latin God, now shut the hell up and do your watch."

The men smiled, this seemed to be part of a ritual the tight knit unit had.

Brendon pointed to the dish Dickens was setting up. "What's that thing?"

"This?" Dickens said, smacking a large plastic case. "Is our HAZARD."

"Your HAZARD?"

"Yeah Have Any Zombies Arrived Radar Detector, HAZARD."

"Don’t mind him." Murphy said. "Marines are really into their acronyms, otherwise they can’t remember anything. That thing is pretty sweet though. Originally, it was used to track tanks but they dialed up the sensitivity and it can detect kid sized objects up to a mile away."

"It's saved our asses more than once." Dickens said, as he attached the second pole for added length. "Man this one time we were in a valley and it was so foggy you couldn't see your dick when you took a piss."

"Real eloquent." Murphy said to Dickens. "But you should tell our new guest that you can barely see your dick when the sun is shining."

"Real funny Murphy." Dickens replied.

Murphy hand motioned to Brendon as if to say 'See what I deal with.'

Brendon laughed, but he was wondering how he could come across his own HAZARD.

Dickens started up anew. "So we were taking a break figuring that driving was more dangerous than just sitting tight until the fog blew over. I had no sooner flipped on the power and we had multiple bogies converging on us."

"You sure they were zombies?" Brendon asked.

"They weren't deer. Plus most of them were up ahead almost like they were lying in wait for us to get there. I know that sounds crazy though. No such thing as smart zombies right?" Dickens looked to Brendon for confirmation on this crazy idea. Brendon merely shrugged. Zombies might not be smart but their leader sure as hell is. "I took down the HAZARD real quick like and we buttoned down into the trucks not twenty seconds 'fore they started running into us. It really wasn't much of a fight but without the radar they would have been on us 'fore we knew what do to. The fog really has a way of deadening sound, never even heard them coming. Fog scares the hell out of me now."

Zombies were bad enough. Zombies silently appearing out of the mist were the stuff of acid infused nightmares.

"We decided to stay somewhere else that night." Dickens added needlessly. Dickens finished setting up the array. The other Marines were still on alert, tense even. They didn't visibly relax until the green control panel lit up and the small eight by eight screen began to light up bogeys.

Brendon was alarmed when at least 4 different 'bleeps' showed themselves on the screen. "What are those?" He asked.

"Deer." Dickens said matter-of-factly.

"How do you know?" Brendon asked not entirely ready to trust Dickens expertise.

"Well size for one thing and secondly cuz they aren’t headed this way."

Brendon couldn't argue with that. Zombies had an uncanny ability to detect fresh meat from long distances and some of the blips weren't more than 500 yards out according to the screen. "Why post a guard then?"

The sergeant joined the conversation. "I can answer that question. You see this here, is Marine Corps equipment. Which means it is probably in excess of twenty years old and the army most likely had it first. They only give their stuff up when it doesn't work so well anymore."

"Comforting isn't it?" Murphy said. Brendon could only nod. "Sleep with your windows up, I'll get you some blankets."

That first night went virtually trouble free. The second night more than made up for it.

The drive was mind-numbingly boring, a white world of desolation, and still Brendon’s heart continuously slammed in his chest. He knew they were too late. “I should have never left her.” He berated himself to the empty cab for the umpteenth time. Each time they stopped for fuel or food he became increasingly agitated to the point where Murphy had somehow scrounged a Valium and damn near threatened Brendon with his life if he didn’t take it.

Brendon had swallowed it, but it had done painfully little to ease his feelings of dread. When the small convoy had stopped for the fifth time for the day Brendon nearly ripped his door off the hinge trying to ascertain ‘why in the hell they were once again stopping, maybe Dickens should just piss in his pants for once! That is if he could find his dick.’

Dickens true to the nature of his miniature bladder was first out of the hummer but it was not for relief, he looked scared and with good reason. “Whaddaya make of that?” He asked Brendon.

Brendon was too hot to think of anything other than ‘let’s get going already!’ But that changed in an instant when he looked out across the expanse and saw what could only be described as a horde. The zombies were traveling at varying speeds and having different degrees of success navigating over the frozen ground. Speeders were well out in front, sometimes trampling over their slower companions. Many slipped and fell, got up and just started running full tilt again. The eerie quiet of so many zombies so close, traveling with what appeared to be a purpose only increased the tension Brendon was feeling. He knew where they were going.

“Well, will you look at that.” The sergeant said, lighting up one of his signature cigars that smelled suspiciously like chamomile. “They sure look like they’re in a real hurry to get somewhere. You ever seen anything like this?” The sergeant asked Brendon.

Brendon shook his head no, but somehow he got the distinct feeling the sergeant didn’t believe him. “Nope, never.” He said with a waver in his voice. ‘Great, that oughta really convince him now,’ he thought to himself.

“Sarge they aren’t even looking at us. They can’t be more than a couple of hundred yards away and they’re not even looking at us.” Dickens noted.

Murphy’s hand shook as he lit a cigarette. “Never did smoke before them.” He said motioning out into the field and he left it at that.

“I don’t like this at all.” The sergeant said.

“I do.” Dickens replied. “They ain’t coming after us.”

“Yeah there’s something to be said for that.” The sergeant said pausing to ponder the situation. “But they do seem to be traveling in the direction we’re going.” He made sure to lean forward and look directly at Brendon. Dickens and Murphy also looked but were not connecting the dots at all.

The heat of so many gazes, flustered Brendon. “We sightseeing or are we going?”

“Oh we’re going, if for nothing more than to see how this pans out.” The sergeant said.

“How what pans out?” Dickens asked. But no one was listening; they were all getting back in their prospective rides. Dickens watched as a lone zombie peeled off from the rest and began its pursuit of him. “Fucking Gomer.” He said, placing a round in the zombie's shoulder, spinning it around and to the ground. Dickens was back in his truck before the zombie had regained its feet and started back after them.

The line of zombies was at least a couple of miles long and stayed parallel with the Marines until the highway made a sharp easterly turn and the zombies faded from view. Even the sergeant felt better when they were no longer in sight. For another fifteen miles they traveled, finally gaining entry into North Dakota. Night had descended quickly and the sergeant was hesitant to keep moving with that many zombies around.

“Dickens, I want you to set a land speed record for getting the HAZARD up and running. Ramirez, Henderson, dual watches tonight.”

The most ominous thing Brendon noticed was that there was not the usual banter or complaining. The Marines went about their business professionally, their training kicking in to help usher out the welling panic that threatened to overtake them all. The HAZARD kicked on, the green display completely devoid of life or death. Almost as one the Marines tensed up.

“That’s a good thing right?” Brendon said looking at the monitor and not able to discern the current mood from what he was seeing.

“Not really.” Dickens said tensely. “There’s usually something on the screen, even if it’s only a raccoon.”

Brendon got it now. “Nothing living likes to be around when the zombies are.”

“You nailed it.” Dickens said, holding tight to his rifle.

“How far out can that thing see?”

“When it was used just for tanks and vehicles it was specced at almost 4 miles. When they dialed the sensitivity up it lost distance.”

“So?”

“Supposedly 1000 yards, maybe more maybe less, depending on the surrounding landscape.”

Brendon instantly began to do the math of how fast the average man can run 1000 yards full tilt. “What’s that give us, a couple of minutes warning time?”

“At the most.” Dickens said straining to see into the murkiness of the darkening night.

“That’s plenty of time right?”

“Depends on how many of them there are.”

The world is full of seemingly unrelated random events that have profound impacts, sometimes for the positive, sometimes for the negative. Tonight was of the latter.

A rogue wave in Taipei, which coincidentally had wiped one of the few remaining human strongholds off the face of the planet had also caused water vapor to go high into the atmosphere. The result was a thick cloud cover that slipped into the El Nino slipstream that was four months early due to the global fires that still raged in most countries. The cloud cover raced across the United States and right across the dividing line between North and South Dakota. The last Farmer’s Almanac that would ever be printed had called for clear skies but how could they have known. The moon which was three quarters full, should have supplied ample light; unfortunately it was veiled.

Ramirez and Henderson were three hours into their four hour shift. The nerve racking silence was grating on Henderson. A pack of howling wolves would have been more comforting. Henderson purposefully sought out Ramirez just to break the oblivion.

“Psst, Ramirez.” Henderson whispered. It sounded preternaturally loud with nothing to diffuse the sound.

“Scared the shit out of me.” Ramirez said, appearing out of the gloom. “What are you doing here, you know we’re supposed to be on opposite ends. The Sarge finds out you abandoned your post he’ll shoot you.”

Henderson shivered, that was not an idle threat. “I know man, I’m just going crazy. I needed to know somebody else was alive out here.”

“I hear you man, been seeing ghosts my damn self.” ‘Ghosts referring to phantom images brought on under duress.’

“You want some chocolate?”

“Do Mexicans hate fences?”

“Huh?”

“Shit yeah, I want some chocolate.”

“Fences?” Henderson asked.

“Poor humor, give me some of that.”

Henderson handed over half of a Hershey’s chocolate bar, which Ramirez promptly dropped. And to compound his error he booted the chocolate away, it skidded a good ten feet before it came to rest on the base of the HAZARD.

“Hell man, if you didn’t want it I would have eaten it.”

“Real funny and keep your voice down.” Ramirez' footfalls echoed off the stillness in the air. A cold wind blew through. Ramirez bent to pick up the fallen prize, the muzzle of his M-16 caught on the base of the HAZARD and as he stood the array came crashing down. One missed audible blip pinged the radar display before the whole assembly came crashing to the ground. “Shit.”

Henderson took off, not wanting to get caught this close to Ramirez’ post. Within seconds, Marines that had been slumbering heavily but uneasily were out and ready to face whatever threat had befallen them.

“It’s alright!” Ramirez shouted over the din. “I just knocked over the HAZARD.”

“Dickens!” The sergeant yelled.

“On it Sarge,” came Dickens voice from somewhere off to the left.

Brendon was beside his truck, his breath coming raggedly. Not from the commotion in the makeshift campsite but rather from the nightmare world from which he had just emerged. Nicole had been screaming in pain of his betrayal. 'Why did you leave me like this?' She had asked. It wasn’t so much the question as it was the condition of his fiancée. She had been completely skinned alive. Nothing remained of her to allow identification except for her diminutive size and her hair. Her fleshless lips had screamed his name, her bleeding arms had struck out seeking to cling to him. Her ravaged legs walked ever in circles as her sightless eyes moved rapidly looking for something that wasn’t there.

When the sergeant was convinced everything was in order he came over to see how Dickens and Ramirez were faring with the array. He could smell the chocolate on their breaths from two paces away. “I thought Henderson was the one with the sweet tooth.” Ramirez’ look of guilt was all the information he needed. Nobody was dead but this breach of protocol would not go unpunished. “If this thing doesn’t work Ramirez, you and Henderson are going to be on patrol every night until we get back. Get back to your post. How’s it looking?” He asked Dickens.

“Couple more dents than before but it should be fine. I think it was built with its users in mind.” Dickens replied. The sergeant trained his flashlight on the wingnut the Corporal was tightening.

Brendon walked up just as Dickens was getting ready to cycle the machine back up. Then hell broke through the flimsy film between normalcy and the abyss. The sergeant's flashlight was punched out of his arm as the zombie ran full tilt into his side. The scene was surreally lit as the flashlight did cartwheels in the air. For one horrible flash, Brendon watched as the zombie bit deeply into the neck of Dickens. With the light removed, chaos ensued. As the light did one last arc a blaze of iridescence was tinged with the red of Dickens blood as it cascaded out of the gaping wound in the side of his neck.

Brendon’s first and fatal reaction was to push the zombie away from Dickens. The zombie latched on heavily to the webbing that separated Brendon’s thumb from his forefinger. The pain was excruciating as the zombie tore free. Brendon rolled off to the side, wrapping his damaged hand in his shirt. Three quick rounds later from the Sergeant's 1911 .45, and the zombie and Dickens lay forever still.

“Someone get some light over here quick!” The sergeant yelled a little louder than normal, the only clue that he was flustered in any way.

Brendon knew time was short, if the Sergeant saw his wound he would kill him as fast as he had taken out Dickens. At least three different flashlights were bobbing in from around the camp. Brendon stood up forcing the gorge in his throat down. All the lights were thankfully trained on the horrid scene before them. Brendon feigned sickness at the sight. It wasn’t too much of a stretch. The congealed brain matter of the zombie was intermingled with the pinker healthier looking brain matter of the friendly Marine tech Dickens.

“You alright Brendon?” The sergeant asked as Brendon moved away.

Blood flowed freely from his left hand, he had to make distance before it soaked through his shirt and onto the snow covered ground where it would stick out like a sore thumb. ‘Not funny’ he thought to himself. “Fine.” He grunted out, it sounded more like a retch but that was still fitting to the circumstances.

Brendon got back to the truck fairly convinced that he had staunched the flow, although his shirt told a different story. The dome light in the truck was equipped with a dimmer switch for which Brendon was thankful. Mostly because it would bring less attention to himself and also it would be more difficult to see the damage done. He took two quick breaths before he could muster the courage to look. He gazed long and hard at the death sentence that awaited him. It didn’t look particularly life threatening. A half inch thick jagged semi circle of skin and muscle was ripped free. That it was a bite was not in doubt. If he so desired, he could have marked out each individual tooth groove as it had sunk deep into his hand; he chose not to.

Brendon shut the light off. He sat there for long minutes staring out of the windshield. He was looking in the direction where the Marines were taking care of their fallen comrade and getting the HAZARD back up. His eyes saw it all. His brain registered none of it. The pain he felt at the loss of never seeing Nicole again far outweighed his life, which was now forfeit. After he had inwardly cursed out every known deity, he silently sobbed for each loss and made peace with himself. He had resolved to show the sergeant the wound. Would you feel the bullet as it punched through your skull? Or did it happen too fast? Would you be able to register the damage as the bone shards and lead projectile tore through the mind? More importantly would the Marines continue on this quest without him there? They had already lost one of their own and might be close to calling it quits especially if their guide was gone. No that was unacceptable! “I’m not a zombie yet!”

The sergeant startled the hell out of him as he came up to the window. “You alright?”

He could only wonder how close to the truck the sergeant was when Brendon had made his statement. “Fine.” He reiterated, doing his best to cover his hand and shirt up even though it was now pitch dark in the cab, guilt has a habit of shining bright.

“You sure?”

“Yep right as rain.” Brendon strained. ‘Right as rain? Who says that? If he was suspicious before you just gave him more to think about.' The sergeant walked away, he had more concerns at the moment. Sweat broke out spontaneously almost completely over his entire body. ‘Is this how it starts?’ He wanted to cry again but that would accomplish nothing, and he still had one thing left in this life to do before he died.

Brendon got out of the truck. He was looking for Murphy. He found him by the back of the troop transport smoking a cigarette next to the now body bagged Dickens. Dark circles and a drawn look punctuated his usually affable features.

“Hey Murph.” The medic nodded. “Hey are you bound by the Hippocratic oath or anything like that?” Brendon asked.

“I’m a corpsman not a Doctor.” The cherry of the cigarette lit up Brendon's features. Murphy could tell Brendon was weighing the merits of telling him something or keeping it quiet. “You got the clap or something?” Murphy’s attempt at humor fell flat for both of them. It would be a while before things looked funny again.

Brendon had made up his mind. He pulled his rag wrapped hand out of his pocket and showed Murphy.

“Oh shit, when did that happen?” Murphy said taking a huge drag out of the cigarette.

“I was trying to help Dickens, it didn’t go so well.”

“Does the Sarge know?”

“I’m still alive, what do you think?”

“Shit.” Murphy said pulling his cap off to rub his hand through his hair. He grabbed Brendon’s hand and poured the remains of his canteen over it, washing some of the detritus away. He started rooting around in his medical emergency kit grabbing disinfectant, gauze, a needle and some thread.

“How much time do I have?” Brendon asked as steadily as he could.

Murphy never looked up as he kept working on the wound. “Uh cleaning out the wound and putting disinfectant on it helps.”

“Listen Murphy I know I’m a dead man walking, I just need to know if I’m going to have enough time to help my fiancée and her family.”

“If we get there tomorrow, yes.”

“Is there a changeover period, will I be able to tell what’s going on?”

Murphy finally looked up meeting him eye to eye. “You’ll know, there’s about a three to five minute window where the person can feel themselves slipping and then...you know what happens. What are you going to do?”

“I’m not going to become a zombie, that’s for sure. I’m not a religious man Murphy, but do you think God will make an exception for me if I take myself out before it happens?”

“I think he will be able to find it in his heart to absolve you of that sin. The true sin would lie in you allowing yourself to become a zombie. That is not the work of God. I am truly sorry Brendon.”

“Yeah me too. Got an extra cigarette?” They sat in silence. Words carried no weight now.

The sun couldn’t come up fast enough. Brendon did not sleep at all. It was to be his last sunrise and he did not want to miss it. The air had a sweetness he could not bring himself to identify. “Almost like poppies.” He said as he stretched.

“Incoming!” Ramirez shouted from his perch atop the troop transport. “Henderson anything showing on the HAZARD?”

“Nope, wait there it is, holy shit! Sergeant, multiple gomers heading this way.”

“Alright vacation is over. Pack up and let’s get the hell out of here.” The sergeant yelled. His command was obeyed before it was finished being given.

During the drive to Carol’s, Brendon fluctuated between peculiar calmness, flushed sweating and searing pain. ‘This must be what menopause feels like.’ He mused.

Brendon’s truck shook as heavy armament was expended by the troop transport in front of him. Four zombies were reduced to ribbons of flesh on the side of the road. Brendon had a momentary pang of compassion for them and then quickly tore asunder the stray thought. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was to be his fate.

Three hours later they were in the center of Carol’s home town, if you can call a gas station, Post Office and a Piggly Wiggly grocery store a town center. From here Brendon’s recollection of exactly where Carol’s farmstead was became increasingly foggy. This would have been an issue if not for the near continuous line of zombies that cut across the town in a northeasterly route. A few zombies turned to appraise the new ‘eats’ but none strayed from their vector.

The sergeant halted the caravan and walked over to Brendon who had also exited his truck. “What are the odds they’re going to where we need to be?” The sergeant asked appraising Brendon. “You don’t look so good.”

“Nerves.”

“Oh that’s right, you have some pride swallowing to take care of.”

‘I hope I get the chance,’ he thought. He, however, answered the sergeant with a mere nod.

“Is there something I need to know here son? I’ve never seen zombies act like this. They look driven. The fact that they aren’t paying us any attention at all has me flummoxed.”

“Would you rather they were?” Brendon asked impatiently wanting this conversation to be over. The sand granules that measured his time remaining were running dangerously close to single digits in the hourglass of his life.

“Now that’s not really the point, is it? Something is not adding up, not at all, when this is all over you and I are going to have a long talk.”

‘Doubt it.’ Brendon thought. Brendon thanked God that Marines are more men of action than thought. The sergeant strode away, got back into the troop transport and took a right turn no more than 15 feet in front of the traveling zombies. It was another three miles before a left turn presented itself. Because of the zombies angling away, they had been lost from the line of sight for a few minutes. Another mile in a northerly route and the stain of them once again became visible.

It was another right and then left before the sergeant once again pulled over to a stop. The zombies' final destination was now clearly in view even though it lay a full mile away.

Henderson checked his ammo on the turret of the troop transport. Ramirez opened up the hatch on the hummer, readying his weapon also. “We can’t be going in there Sarge?” Ramirez asked bewildered at the sheer number of undead that surrounded the house. “We’re going in there.” He answered himself impassively. “I hate it sometimes when I’m right.”

“You done jawing over there Ramirez?” The sergeant asked him.

Ramirez rattled off a string of what can only be construed as eloquent foreign cuss words.

“That doesn’t look like a Country Buffet on kids eat free Wednesdays son. Any chance you could be a little more forth coming on any information?”

“I really wish I knew.” Brendon had no sooner finished the sentence and he bent over from crippling cramps. His stomach muscles nearly ripped under the strain.

“Murphy!” The sergeant yelled in alarm.

“Fine, I’m fine.” Brendon whistled through his teeth. Placing his hand on the sergeant’s arm to stop him from summoning help.

It was then the sergeant noted the bandage. “What’s this?” He asked suspiciously. “You didn’t have this yesterday.” The sergeant stepped back, fingering his holster.

Murphy rushed up and quickly accessed the situation that was quickly turning from bad to worse. Murphy had seen enough victims turn to zombies to realize that Brendon was close to joining the ranks of the enemy. His skin was taking on a gray pallor. Severe stomach cramping would immediately be followed by whole body spasms and then death. The body's last gasp so to speak.

Brendon was able to get himself under control and stand without a noticeable stoop. “I’m fine.” He slurred. “Let’s go.” Claws of stinging stitches tore out from his stomach and spread throughout his body. It took every fiber of his being to stand and endure under the scrutinous stare of the sergeant. Murphy placed himself between the sergeant and Brendon. Somewhat to hide the pain the kid was going through but mostly to keep the sergeant from just outright shooting him. “We’ve got to go now.” Brendon whispered. The strain of the words clearly evident.

“I think it’s rabies.” Murphy told the sergeant. “The sooner we can get him back to base the sooner I can get him treatment,” although that was a lie. Once symptoms of rabies showed, treating it was far too late. Murphy could only hope that the sergeant didn’t know this.

The sergeant thankfully stopped touching the hilt of his gun. “You stay here kid, we’ll get your future in-laws and then we’ll get you all back to Custer.”

“I’m going.” Brendon said defiantly.

“Don’t push it.” Murphy whispered.

“This is it for me Murph, I just want one more chance to see her.”

“Sarge, I can give him a heavy dose of antibiotics right now, it will get him through the next few hours.” Also a lie.

“Have it your way kid.” The sergeant got back in the transport and strapped himself in.

Murphy proceeded to give Brendon a mild sedative. “This will help a little with the cramping.”

“Thank you for everything Murphy. I’ll put a good word in for you when I get to where I’m going.”

“I’d appreciate that.” Murphy replied, and that was not a lie.

“What’s the plan?” Henderson asked leaning down from his gunner’s position.

“Guns blazing, I suppose.” The sergeant answered.

‘I was hoping for something a little more concrete.’ Henderson mumbled to himself once again checking that his weapon was fully ready to fire.

Murphy got into the passenger seat.

“Rabies my ass, Murphy. That kid’s dying." The sergeant said. "We all watched what happened to Greenfield after he was bit.”

“I know Sarge, he just wants to see his girl one more time.”

“Well let’s not disappoint him.”

Henderson cussed as his head smacked against the machine gun's breech due to the unprepared for acceleration.

“The house is on fire!” Henderson yelled down.

“Do you think I’m driving blind.” The sergeant replied. “You’d better start cutting us a path or this is gonna be a bumpy ride.”

The Browning M2 .50 Caliber roared to life as it dealt ever-lasting death. The full-throated scream of the bullets as they emerged from the barrel brought a certain sense of satisfaction to the Sergeant as he slammed the troop transport into the outskirts of the zombies.

“Fucking gomers.” He said grimly.

Murphy had grabbed every available handhold as the transport lurched from side to side under the assault, his ears almost bleeding from the noise of the small cannon above him. “Should have joined the Air Force.” He said, not for the first time nor the last.

Various pieces of zombie appendages slammed against the reinforced battle windshield. “Hope you topped off the windshield wiper fluid.” The sergeant needled a green tinged Murphy.

Time had slowed for Murphy. He watched a piece of hot brass as it lazily floated down and stuck to an eyeball of a middle aged zombie woman. The contact of the hot metal made her eye explode sending viscous fluid shooting out dislodging the offending ejecta. Murphy could not figure out how the sergeant even knew where he was going. Gore and blood covered every available port. It was like they were traveling within the innards of some giant beast of mythical proportions.

The smell of fire began to overtake the smell of zombies. ‘Must be getting close.’ Murphy thought. He felt the lunge of the transport as the sergeant decided that more speed was needed.

Brendon was having severe difficulty controlling his extremities. Tremors coursed through him; compounding the difficulty was the uneven ground caused by zombie bodies that he was traversing over. “Too late, too late, too late,” became his mantra. His legs were spasming just as the truck ahead of him sped up. Brendon had to will his leg to his bidding before he fell behind and without the grace of a machine gun hacking a trail he would be cut off quickly.

He scooted down on the seat, the movement forcing his leg down onto the accelerator. Control came back slowly and with difficulty. He was able to press the brake on his own as he pulled up to what little remained of Carol’s house.

“All aboard!” He said as he spotted, Mike, BT and Jen. His heart lifted at the sight of them.

“Glad to see you boy!” BT shouted from the truck bed. Brendon agreed.

Brendon heard some commotion in the back, but cognitive functioning was becoming increasingly hard to do. “I’m me!” He yelled.

“Yes and soon you will be mine.” A cold voice burrowed out of the depths of his mind.

“NICOLE!” He screamed, his second to last sane thought. The last being when he shoved the Walther 9mm under his jaw and double tapped his disease addled brain.

CHAPTER ELEVEN - JOURNAL ENTRY 5 -

“You’re Catholic right?” BT asked me.

I was hesitant to answer, religious conversations rarely go well, most in fact end in Holy Wars. Don’t believe me? If there are still any left, find a Muslim and ask him or her what they think of Christianity. That will be a short conversation revolving around the blade of a knife being inserted into various parts of your being.

“Yeah why?” I answered reluctantly.

“That’s the religion where you go up to the Priest and get wine and bread right?”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Yes, the congregation receives the Eucharist, the representation of the Body and Blood of Christ.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You just needed a semantics lesson then?”

“Not really, but I did wonder something.” He paused. I didn’t prod he was up to something I could tell by the way he was smiling at me, like a jungle cat getting ready to pounce. He was looking at me waiting for a reply. Apparently it would be funnier if I prompted him.

“Fine BT, what are you wondering?” The words practically oozed scorn, he didn’t care.

“How did you do it?”

I instantly knew what he was talking about, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him corner me that quick. “BT I’m tired and I’m in pain, I just want to go to sleep.”

“Bullshit!” He said sitting up. “You know what I’m talking about, spill it.”

“Is this really necessary?”

“I don’t have anything better going on right now. Not unless they’re hiding Naomi Campbell somewhere on this base.”

“I figured you for more of a Halle Berry type.”

“Don’t change the subject, but yeah she’s third.”

“Who the hell is second?”

“Man, don’t laugh, I’ve got this thing for…oh, you sneaky bastard you almost got me.”

“I tried. Alright if you must know I bought a carton of Eucharist wafers and had them blessed. I used to bring my own to church along with a thermos of grape juice, I hate wine.”

BT would have rolled out of his bed if his leg wasn’t in suspension.

“Have you ever been to a Catholic mass? Its friggen disgusting.” I said starting my defense. “First they make you shake hands with all your neighbors. There’s Kenny, the eleven year old that has had his finger shoved up his nose the entire time. There’s old man Baker, who smells like 4 day old meatloaf left on the curb during a heat wave. Then there’s Mrs. Porter with her infant and she just changed a dirty diaper without using wipes. Yeah real effen sanitary!” My voice was rising with the increase of potential germs. “So then we get through that particularly nasty infectious test tube archaic trait and move right along to sipping wine out of a golden chalice that the entire mass has put their cracked, canker laced lips on not to mention those with cold sores.” I was shuddering. “Then the priest hands you a wafer that he had clutched between his thumb and forefinger, but what’s worse than that is he’s been doing that to everyone else also and they have had the chance to breathe all their germs on those two fingers as he placed the wafer on their tongues.”

“Oh man, I needed that!” BT said holding his gut he was laughing so hard.