As the gun was knocked from his hands he quickly jumped off of the truck to get it, swinging his baseball bat at a zombie that got to close. The bat connected with the jaw of the infected being and made it double over, the jaw hanging by a thin strip of skin. He bent down and clasped his hands around the gun and pulled himself up to the truck again, shooting at an infected. The bullet slammed into the forehead, making it fall over and into other zombies. He sat down his back against one side of the truck bed. As they were driving an infected tried to climb into the back. As he saw it come up he fell over, onto his back, and fired at the thing's neck. The bullet went into the neck, from the angle the bullet had hit the neck. The bullet had went up into the skull of the zombie, blowing a small hole in the top of its head. He held the bat against his chest as he sat back up staring at the crowd of zombies around them.


"What about the guy who was in the flower shop? Are we just going to leave him behind?", Keith said, breathing heavily as he finished the sentences. He had never been surrounded by this many zombies, even when he was in that building. And that had been a lot of zombie. Was the outside of New York safe? He had just started thinking about these question, if it wasn't they were going to have to fight for their lives every single day, until they were bitten or died naturally. He looked at Ethan, he had a gas mask on maybe he should get or make one, too. He tried to rip a piece off from his shirt, but it didn't tear. He would have to hope he could find a gas mask, knife that he could cut a piece of his shirt off with, or any other thing that could stop him from breathing in those toxic fumes that might be left after the bombs exploded. He just prayed that he didn't breath in any of the fumes for now.

Keoni had been following close behind the others, keeping silent so as not to say anything dumb or stupid. He simply did as he was told and stayed out of the way as much as possible. So far, he'd only been a burden and he knew it. Tripping, getting caught by a zombie gang, even wasting bullets. He was completely hopeless. He sighed. What was he going to do?

Well, at this point, hold on to the truck bed for dear life. The truck was driving through the city very quickly, and there was so much motion, Keoni almost felt sick. However, he was able to keep himself together well enough to swing his sword at any zombie that got too close. But what worried him was the blood. The blood was spattering everywhere, and it supposedly contained the virus that infected these people. So what would happen if they were to be infected by the blood. Keoni shuddered at the thought. He didn't even want to think about it.


"What about the guy who was in the flower shop? Are we just going to leave him behind?" Keith asked.

This time Keoni couldn't stay silent, as his fear took over again. "N-no! We need to get out! Out I say! I'm so done with this city! Out of New York we go! Please!" His breathing started to pick up a lot of pace, as was his breathing. "Death, disease, destruction, devastation, an impending doom of disastrous proportions!!" Keoni, realizing he was hysterical again, slapped himself harder than usual, almost losing his balance in the truck. Regaining his composure, he quickly muttered, "N-never mind, please. Continue."

"The guy from the shop is fine! He probably made it into the jeep with the others." Ethan called as they plowed through a dense group of infected.

"Just worry about keeping these things off of us." Ethan called as two zombies slammed into the passenger door. The zombies were quickly thrown off by the sheer speed the truck had going. He spun the wheel wildly making a wide arc around a heavily clustered group of zombies. He mildly swerved as he corrected the arc, and continued to weave through the cars that littered the exit of the city. Ethan gazed through the already cracked wind-shield, and he slipped through a gap in between two cars which were parked sideways in the middle of the road.

Ethan then realized that they had cleared the bulk of the hoard, and had also cleared the city. He breathed a sigh of relief. However the relief was short lived, for the infection was spreading, and no doubt this wasn't the last time they would be seeing these monsters. He calmly slowed the truck down to a more reasonable pace. Ethan still had his M9 in his lap with his hand gripping it. Ethan would assume by the force he was gripping it, his knuckles were turning white.

Keith fired stood up as Ethan was driving, hoping he wouldn't fall out, he fired a couple times into the crowd of zombies not bothering to check how many times he had shot. He kept on pulling the trigger until he heard it, the click, click, click of firing without any bullets, he kept pulling the trigger even after he heard it the first time, for some reason. He ejected the magazine out, into the crowd of zombies around him, and injected one into the gun. He ducked down again, as the car swerved, and stared up at the sky. As he stared up his view of the sky was blocked out by, you guessed it, a zombie. He jabbed the baseball bat upward, causing the zombie to fall back into the crowd of his man-eating friends. He stood up and looked over the truck to make sure it had died, he saw its body lying on the street with blood seeping out of the back of the skull. Its head must have slammed against the ground when it fell off the truck, he didn't care how it died. A dead infected was better than an undead one.

Keith sat down, hoping this would be over soon. As the truck began to slow down he stood up to see why, they had gotten away from those monsters. He hoped the others would be joining them soon, he didn't want to find out they had left them to die. He sat back down breathing heavily. "If there are that many in the city, there must be a whole hell of a lot more throughout the entire country.", Keith said, relieved for the moment. He looked at his baseball bat it had blood spattered all over it the gun had a few specks of blood also, from close encounters when before he didn't have the baseball bat.

Ethan holstered his M9, and calmly drove the truck through the various back-roads, trying to avoid any congestion on main highways. He silently glances back at everyone making sure it was all right. Some of them looked a little shaken up, which was a good thing. It meant that they were still sane, and breathing. Ethan was calm about the whole situation though. He was unable to worry anymore after he found his brother lying on the ground dead. He slowly came to a stop once they had gotten far enough away from the city for the Zombies to stop pursuing their chase, and even if they did it would take them a around thirty minutes at a dead run to catch them.

He stopped, and yanked the back window open, and spoke through his gas-mask, not deeming it necessary to take it off just yet, for the fumes may still linger. He looked at the three people in the back of the truck, and sized them up. Personally he thought their group was just the right size, they didn't have to many people to feed, and they were small enough to avoid any attention if they had to go in on foot. But if all of them were outfitted with guns they would make an interesting firing squad.

"How is everyone holding up?" He said indicating that it would be nice if people suffered any bites they should come forward. He looked them over, and at first glance none of them appeared to have any wounds to note. "And would you guys prefer to wait for the others, or head in a specific direction?" Which brought another question to mind. Where would they go? The national guard failed to do their job correctly, and effectively. Ethan never even caught one wiff of a evac site.

Danny had been silent the whole time. After he dropped the head of the child, he had packed away his gear and hopped inside the truck with the other survivors, listening to them banter and chitchat while the truck bounced outside of civilzation. The roads reminded him of his family vacations out to the old Civil War battle sites his great-grandfather had fought in. They were panicked, scared, unsure of themselves; a bunch of scared kids. What horseshit. One of them was asking about what came next, the next step in their attempt at living through whatever was shooting for the opposite, but the guy was wearing a gas mask. It didn't make any sense; none of them were wearing gas masks, and they were fine. Danny spoke up.

"Hows about you take that fucking mask off, Rambo, before you collapse from heat exhaustion?"

Danny opened the bolt to his Lee-Speed, catching the ejected shell and reinserting it into the magazine, followed by a handful of more .303 rounds.

"If y'all are feeling brave enough, there's a gun shop back in town that we can go to. I own it, and there's a good chance it hasn't been looted or burned or nothin'. A couple blocks away from that is a supermarket; we need to be more prepared before we go anywhere else."

He suddenly felt very stupid as he sat there in his reenacting uniform, covered in mud and other delicious gunk.

Keoni shook his head vigorously. "No! No we are not alright! This is insane! Where should we go? Away! From this city! Far, far away!" Keoni gripped his sword tightly to keep in control of himself. He listened to Danny speak. "S-sorry, but I don't want a gun...I'll just be w-wasting ammo I think..." He then got an idea. "We sh-should go underground. The gas shouldn't have gone down there...gas goes up...so there should be no zombies underground, right?"

Keoni was trying keep calm but he wasn't sure how he was doing.

As Ethan waited for a response one of the older men in the back of the truck spoke up.

"Hows about you take that fucking mask off, Rambo, before you collapse from heat exhaustion?" He spoke rather bluntly. Ethan couldn't really beleive the man was worried about heat exhaustion at a time like this, plus if he needed to shoot an infected individual in a close range scenario he would need protection from the blood splatter. The way Ethan saw it was that if one drop hit your eye, or got in your mouth it was a for sure game over.

"I like your first impression almost as much as I like your getup. Now that we have got that aside you do realize how many people live in the New York Metropolitan area right? 19,000,000. that means there are around 2,000 per square mile. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough ammo." Ethan explained, clearly having thought of this already. "I do agree with the fact that we need more supplies than we have right now. The way I figure it is if we get ahead of the other looters, We need gas, and I doubt we will find a better place to get food, water, and gas than a gas station. Though this plan doesn't involve more weapons, and ammo unless if we get lucky." He finished clearly pondering the flaws in his own plan.

He turned to the flustered youth that also spoke up. "If we don't stop moving the infected will follow us, plain and simple." He said as he pondered on the whole gas issue. "We all have inhaled the gas at one point or another, so maybe we are immune, or maybe virus only goes airborne for a certain amount of time. There are a lot of variables to account for." Ethan said as he contemplated the various ideas swimming around in his mind.

"The only way I see us surviving is if we keep on moving." He said with a thoughtful look under his mask. "People wear gas masks in desert climates all of the time, Thank you for the concern." He said as he unclasped his gas mask. He took it off to reveal the battle hardened expression his brother always wore when they both went into local gun ranges. And right before his brother was forced to relive any memories from his service in the military. "Corporal Ethan Reaver at your service." He said adopting a unemotional tone.

"So an army man, eh..." Ryan said with his voice trailing off, a hint of the south just noticeable.

"Listen, the gun shop is most likely a go, but I would like to recuperate and see what we all have right now. If you wouldn't mind, everyone put your guns and ammo in the middle of the bed." He said, unloading the remaining two shells from his shotgun and putting it in the center of the truck bed, the box of ammo next to it.

"Right now it seems that I have about thirteen shots left for the 1300. What about you guys?" he addressed the group, head still facing the guns but eyes looking up through the long bangs.

"Oh, and I'm Ryan for anyone who doesn't know or remember. Looks like we are going to be together for a while, so we might as well get to know each other."

Fucking kids. The whole lot of them; arrogant, stupid kids. He groaned slowly to himself as the older one, a hardass in military gear, introduced himself and tried to look tough and emotionless.

"Fine, but I won't carry your ass out of the frying pan if it gets plopped down into one, tough guy. Your mask gets dirty or bloody, obscures your vision, you'll be shitfaced like your daddy before dinner, except you'll be the main course."

Danny scratched his beard a bit before he continued.

"And the population doesn't matter if we've got enough firepower to knock them away long enough to get a job done; semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines make for a whole lot of dead shit, assuming it's all there."

Another kid requested a gun count. Danny lay his rifle down next to his USP, along with the .303 bandolier and spare .45 mag.

"This means jack fucking shit. And I don't think we've got any damn food; I've got some in my haversack, but it'll be gone in a day at best."

Ethan's face looked amused, almost as if he were reminiscing on a joke that he had just remembered. The older man continued to remain up on his high horse. Ethan shook his head lightly, and with a genuine smile, he spoke once more.

"Okay fair enough, but if I would be getting my mask dirty, than this would mean the infected would be close to you also. Unless if you decided to run away, in any case if my mask would be getting blood on it this would mean you would also be getting blood on your face, and once infected blood gets in your eyes, maybe you could close your eyes, but then again you would be obscuring your vision long enough to wipe the blood off. In any-case you would be the one participating in the main course." Ethan finished as a grinned at his ability to twist logic into his favor.

"And as for the guns, I wouldn't argue with a M4, even if it is semi automatic." He motioned at his pistol, and ejected the clip."I have about three bullets in this one including the one in the chamber." He said as he examined the near expended clip. "And I have about two clips in my duffel bag. While I am speaking about my duffel, I have about two days worth of food, and water." Ethan said clearly regretting he didn't bring more, he hadn't expected picking anyone up.

"Nineteen million is a very big number, so if we are going in it needs to be a quick snatch-and grab. If infected individuals get congested in entrances this will mean certain death." He said as he pulled his gas mask on while hopping into the driver's seat.

Keith leaned the baseball bat on the side of the truck bed and stood up, placing his hands on either side of him to help himself up. He took a minute to stretch his arms. Then turned around and picked up the baseball bat. He turned around and placed the bat in the pile of weapons, ammo, etc. Placing his hand beneath his gun he injected the magazine and tossed it, along with the gun, into the pile. He took out the rest of the magazines, two of them, from his side and tossed them into the pile along with the other one.


"Nineteen million is a very big number, so if we are going in it needs to be a quick snatch-and grab. If infected individuals get congested in entrances this will mean certain death." He heard Ethan say.


He then turned to Ethan and said, "We should send in few people to get the supplies, because a large amount would attract zombies. If zombies did find us in there then the other could drive a bit away, not so much that we couldn't reach them, and then the people inside could escape. Mainly through a back entrance or main entrance if the zombies hadn't gone through the main one yet."


As he waited for a response he took a minute to look at everyone, this was a bit too many people in his standards, but he didn't really ever like a lot of people in a same place. He would have to deal with it though, and after all most of them helped him at one time. So it looked like he was going to have to raise his standards of how many people he felt comfortable traveling with.