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I tend to curse. Bad habit I suppose, but I think that the unique nature of the situation calls for it.”
    I looked at her and grinned. “Fuckin’ A,” I said.
    She shot me a quick smile, looked past me to her charges, and held up the keys she had found.
    “I got the plate number from the insurance card. All we need to do is find the car that matches these keys, and we’re in business.” Her ballsy claim was punctuated by the sound of crashing metal and tearing wood. No-Name sat bolt upright, staring down the hall. Erica continued to stare, spittle running from the corners of her mouth, where her lips failed to fully surround her hand, which was now in up to mid-palm.
    The barrier from the cafeteria broken, and nothing but stale air separating us from the lunatics with a hankering for human flesh, we moved toward the double doors leading from the waiting room and away from the intruders.
    Must lead to the parking garage or parking lot, I thought, not wanting to betray my ignorance of the building by asking. Although I couldn’t see that it mattered, all things considered, I wasn’t excited about revealing my identity to this doctor. While she seemed decent enough, I didn’t want her to think of herself as a caretaker for four, instead of three. And I sure as hell didn’t want her to be afraid of getting bludgeoned in the head while she slept.
    The voice that had until now remained quiet, spoke up. Should she be? Afraid of being bludgeoned, I mean?
    I had no answer for it. It didn’t ask for one; it simply chuckled softly and retreated for the time being.
    We spilled through the double doors in front of us, as at least ten of those things slowly came into view behind us. They caught sight of our group, and immediately turned the corner in pursuit. As we ran down the hall toward the dubious safety of a vehicle, I couldn’t stop trying to fill in the gaps from what I had seen on television.
    What the hell had happened?

    Chapter 5

    According to the news reports I had seen, it started somewhere on the eastern seaboard, and spread.
    Fast.
    Apparently, the first morning of the infection had been a morning like any other, albeit with strange reports filtering in from the initial infected cities and some small surrounding towns. But by the mid-afternoon of that same day, as I would soon bear witness, the shit got real.
    No one had a bead on where it actually started, but the consensus was that it was mid-Atlantic East Coast. Probably D.C., New York, Baltimore or Philly: areas that saw the first cases. But because it apparently spread through the blood stream quick, and the things were hardwired for aggressiveness, it went through the densely populated areas like wildfire. And when every person killed was another person added to the ranks of the killers, society was facing a pretty real threat in a very short time.
    The vast bulk of the military was in Iraq, but what was left stateside of the Guard was called out.
    They had apparently attempted ad-hoc evacuations of the cities, with barricades keeping the infected in and trying to weed the healthy out. Most of the news footage that I saw was from outside the barricades looking in. I even caught a helicopter shot of a huge throng of the bastards pressing against a barrier set up on an interstate, catching healthy humans between the collective mass of creatures, while the Guard opened fire. They cut from that shot pretty quickly after that. Still had standards of decency to uphold, I guess. What really struck me from that video was the numbers. It looked like a hundred to one ratio-and it wasn’t in favor of the living.
    The news channels also seemed to be making a lot out of the response times; apparently, those areas with local emergency plans were faring a hell of a lot better than those that were waiting for FEMA and what was left of the Army. The Guard was able to work pretty quickly in conjunction with the local guys, who had drilled emergency plans since the