The Dead Rise

Prologue

Day 1 - 13:45:00 CST

Ruins of San Perrara, Amazon Rain Forest

The pale bluish-white light of Dr. Alexander Tomlin's flashlight illuminated a massive, apparently empty room. He stepped inside, followed by his research assistant, a dishevelled graduate student who staggered under the weight of a large backpack stuffed with all sorts of exploratory and recording gear. Somewhere behind them trailed their guide, a native to the area who had been guiding them through local customs and showing them around the area for the last three weeks of fruitless labours. The trio had spent the last two days exploring the depths of the ruins of San Perrara, a newly-uncovered ruin which would have remained hidden if not for Dr. Tomlin's extensive research pointing his team in the right direction. After uncovering the ruin, they had spent hours painstakingly mapping the area, recording images of every square inch of the ruins, and carefully cataloguing each find. This painstaking exploration had revealed a hidden stone door set into the floor of a stepped stone pyramid. Once opened, the door revealed a steep staircase down into the chamber they had just entered.

The walls of the chamber were made of an ancient, yellowish stone that Dr. Tomlin couldn't immediately identify. Whatever it was, it didn't appear to be native to the area, and he took several samples which he scraped into small glass vials for future analysis. The stone walls were cool to the touch, built of tightly interlocked bricks of the yellowish stone that he considered to be in remarkable condition considering that they were part of a ruin which he could only estimate was several thousand years old. Everything past the hidden door had made it harder to identify the age of the ruins - unlike typical ruins in the area, there were no markings or paintings on the wall to indicate who had built the pyramid or why.

"Let's get set up," Dr. Tomlin said. "Just be careful. We have no idea what we're going to find down here. Record everything."

"Looks like there's nothing down here," Stephan, the graduate student, spoke up. “Not unless you’re interested in videos of dust and dirt.”

"Nothing down here? Have you ever seen anything like this?" Dr. Tomlins asked him. The graduate student only shrugged, obviously not nearly as interested in the ruins as the professor. Dr. Tomlins turned his attention to their guide and repeated the question. The guide only threw his arms up in a perplexed gesture.

"The entrance was hidden, in the midst of ruins found in the middle of nowhere. It's no stretch of the imagination to assume that whatever purpose this chamber served will not be immediately apparent," Dr. Tomlin chided. He sometimes wondered how the student had managed to blunder his way through his undergraduate studies and into his care. He would have cursed the situation, but the student, although not terribly bright and without much of an apparent future in archaeology, was a strong young man who excelled at carrying around the necessary equipment for an extended expedition into the rain forest. Secretly, he held out hope that Stephan would one day begin to comprehend the nature of the work that they did, and turn himself into a promising student. He remembered his own youth, and was certain that at the time he must have seemed much the same to his own mentor; it was for that reason that he was as hard on Stephan as he could be. Strict discipline and constant reminders of the basics of his field of study had been enough to bring Dr. Tomlin to become a highly skilled and respected archaeologist, and there was no reason to think that Stephan couldn't do the same, no matter how much the young student seemed to work to show everyone the contrary.

Content to allow his mentor to do all of the actual thinking, Stephan busied himself setting up large floodlights and cameras while Dr. Tomlins slowly walked around the edges of the room, studying it carefully. Judging by the height and inclination of the staircase that they had descended, they were currently at least a hundred feet underground; the chamber itself appeared to be a roughly 50'x50'x50' cube with no visible indications of what purpose the room served. The stone walls were smooth and bare, as was the floor and what he could see of the roof. The entrance to the room was in the centre of the south wall; as Dr. Tomlins examined the north wall, he saw a very faint outline of a similarly shaped door depression slightly recessed into the wall directly across from the south entrance.

"Bring those lights over here," he called to Stephan. He did as requested, carefully illuminating the depression and focusing the video camera upon it. Dr. Tomlins spoke to the camera. "This depression appears to possibly be a door mechanism of some sort. I'm going to attempt to activate it. I will begin by applying pressure upon the depression itself."

He applied pressure lightly to the depression in the wall. Much to his surprise, it slid back easily, pushing backward nearly an inch into the wall with a solid click. As soon as it clicked into place, the room vibrated and rumbled; a thick slab of stone slid into place over the south door, trapping them inside. At the same time, the east, west, and north walls slid down to reveal that the chamber was even larger than it had first appeared.

"Ummm, professor?" Stephan stammered. "Looks like we're trapped."

"Be silent, fool!" The professor snapped at him. "Learn to keep your mouth shut and look around at what we've found!"

The newly-revealed sections of the room were nothing like the stark spartan walls that they had originally seen; the walls were painted with bright, vibrant murals dotted with embedded gemstones and gold inlays. Each mural depicted a scene of idyllic pastoral life - men and women ploughing fields, sharing food, building homes, and other scenes that seemed entirely out of place on the walls of a temple hidden deep in a rain forest. In stark contrast to these murals, no less than four dessicated corpses lay around the edges of the walls, each arranged carefully under a separate section of the mural. The bodies all bore visible gaping wounds through their hearts, presumably caused by the wickedly pointed daggers held in each of their right hands.

Suicide , he thought. It must have been. Some sort of ceremonial sacrifice, perhaps?

Although the corpses were dessicated, dry flesh still hung to them, and they were preserved better than anything Dr. Tomlins could ever have expected, given how old they had to be. He could only assume that the corpses had been preserved by virtue of their shelter from the elements; the chamber had been so well sealed that even insects could not have penetrated inside to lay their larvae in the bodies. Stephan was busily investigating one of the other corpses; he ran his finger across the edge of the knife held in the corpse's hand and yelped, cradling his now-bleeding hand against his chest. Even after what had to be thousands of years, the knives were still razor-sharp. Dr. Tomlins shot a look at Stephan, a mixture of contemptuous reprimand and caution mixed with bewilderment at the student’s carelessness. As much as he needed Stephan on the expedition, he couldn't bear the thought of such amazing artifacts being damaged through the graduate student's carelessness.

"Keep your hands to yourself," he hissed. Stephan shuffled his feet and stared at the ground in embarrassment. Satisfied that the young man was suitably censured, he continued his examination of the chamber.

The north wall of the room had slid down to reveal an altar raised on what appeared to be marble steps. Behind the altar, the murals which covered the room's walls met in a bizarre and perplexing image; agricultural and pastoral scenes transitioned to a series of images of buildings, starting with small stone houses and growing in size and complexity until they met directly behind the altar in the shape of what was unmistakeably a steel-and-glass skyscraper, brightly illuminated and surrounded by what appeared to be some sort of aircraft, although they did not match the description of any sort of vehicle that Dr. Tomlin was familiar with. They were squat and curved, a strange cross between a stereotypical flying saucer and a sports car. The architecture illustrated in the mural was nothing like anything developed by any culture on Earth; it was all smooth, graceful lines, artful arcs and spirals that extended far above the ground below.

"Is that..." Stephan had also seen the mural which had drawn Dr. Tomlin's attention, but couldn't quite manage to formulate a sentence that could actually express his beliefs about the picture in front of them.

"Flying cars," Dr. Tomlin whispered. "And a skyscraper. This isn't possible. And yet, if it's a practical joke, it's the most elaborate one I've ever seen. Speak up, boy - did you have anything to do with this?"

"No," Stephan replied, and the professor believed him. There was nothing that could convince him that Stephan was creative enough to do this, or an accomplished enough liar to feign ignorance as well as he was right now.

Atop the altar rested an artifact the likes of which Dr. Tomlin had never seen before - a dinner plate-sized stone disc engraved with intricate carvings. Fascinated by the sight of this artifact, he leaned in towards it, until his nose was nearly touching the surface of the disc. He squinted, but couldn't quite make out some of the finer details of the carvings. Intricate characters from an unknown language scrawled across the entire surface of the artifact, written in a script much too small to have been created by any tools that Dr. Tomlins was aware of any native culture ever using. The language was even more fascinating than the techniques demonstrated in its construction. The letters - or perhaps more aptly, runes - bore a passing resemblance to cuneiform, though their elegance was far greater than the comparatively primitive scrawling of that script.

"What is it, Dr. T?" Stephan asked, breaking the professor's concentration. Dr. Tomlin suppressed a groan at the affectionate appellation.

"I don't rightly know," he replied. "This language is not one which I am familiar with. Certainly not something that's native to the area. If only I could make out some of these details...bring that camera over here."

While Stephan busied himself moving the camera into position, Dr. Tomlin gently blew across the surface of the disc, hoping to clear away some of the dust that obscured the more detailed portions of the engravings. Although he blew only very softly, the disc cracked and shattered inward as if it had been struck by the force of a hammer. As it splintered inward a solid thump resounded throughout the room, followed by an ethereal ringing tune, almost as if there were wind chimes hidden out of their sight.

"What happened?" Stephan's voice squeaked up into an octave normally reserved for castratos and prepubescent girls.

"I...I don't know. I didn't...there's no way it should have been that fragile," all of the professor's self-righteousness melted away in a flash. He knew that it would be difficult to explain this to the board of Regents when he returned. "I just blew some dust away. That's not..."

Dr. Tomlin's voice faded away, interrupted by a quiet groaning from behind them. All three of them whirled to face their guide, but he did not indicate that he had been the one to make the noise. He stared with his gaze transfixed at the corpses which had littered the edges of the floor; immediately upon the shattering of the stone disc they had begun to vibrate and writhe uncontrollably. The uncontrolled movements quickly settled into frenzied scrambling to regain their feet; within a matter of seconds, all four of the corpses had stood up, and each shambled towards one of the explorers. Despite the fact that their musculature was so ancient and atrophied that what little remains of it split and tore as they moved, they were surprisingly active. Their hollow and sunken eye sockets burned with baleful inner light, a different shade for each of them - red, blue, white, and brown.

The vast emptiness of the Amazon rain forest swallowed the hopeless screams of the explorers as the walking corpses descended upon them. The screams did not last long, and a peaceful silence returned to the lush forest. There was not a living soul for hundreds of kilometers around; this left no witnesses to see seven mutilated corpses slowly shamble forth from the entrance to the ancient pyramid. They moved slowly, but in unison, stumbling forth into the thick underbrush.

Chapter 1

Day 1 - 14:45:00 CST

Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada

Tap, tap tap. The thin black pen in Jeremy's hand rose and fell softly against his note paper. Tap, tap, tap. The soft tapping was as arrhythmic and disorganized as the thoughts spinning through his head. With each tap of the pen came a new thought. Tap. So bored. Tap. Differential Calculus test tomorrow afternoon - should probably study. Tap. Damn, Michelle Thomas' ass looks amazing in those pants. Tap. Still another half hour of this damned class left.

The class he couldn't wait to escape was English 30 with Mr. Barton, a tall, overweight man with a monotone voice and absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever. Combining the teacher with the subject matter meant that the class had the unfortunate characteristics of being both mind-numbingly boring and capable of stretching time to a crawl in ways that seemed to violate the very fabric of time and space. Even worse, it was the last class of the day for Jeremy and his classmates, which did absolutely nothing to speed things along - even the students who normally leaped at the chance to be the teacher's pet were reduced to near-catatonic states as they mindlessly watched the clock tick away second after second. Although it was a struggle to stay awake through Mr. Barton's monotonic droning, Jeremy had discovered that he could generally maintain his sanity by letting his mind wander to any and every subject that he could think of. Even if it didn't help time pass any more quickly, it at least made the time a little more interesting.

Amidst all of the disjointed thoughts and absent-minded pen-tapping, Jeremy stared intently at the closed textbook sitting on his desk. As he stared at the book, a curious pressure built up in his head, like his brain was pushing against the middle of his forehead. It started as a gentle pressure, no worse than the sort of headache that he had come to expect around this time of day as he struggled to wait out the clock. It quickly got worse, and his head thumped and pounded, as if he was suffering from a powerful migraine, despite the absence of pain. The pressure built up quickly until it felt like he was going to black out, and after only seconds it felt as if the pressure had burst through the wall of his skull and into the air beyond. Rather than being painful, it felt as if a third arm had emerged from out of his forehead, plunged itself into icy-cold water, and then flailed clumsily at the textbook. The analogy didn't seem entirely inept either, as he could barely perceive a faint silverish outline of a projection of force sweeping out of his forehead and towards the book on his desk. This nearly invisible third arm smacked the book, knocking it to the ground with a clatter that instantly drew the attention of each and every single otherwise-bored student in the room. As quickly as they had appeared, both the mental pressure and the translucent appendage vanished. As all of his classmates searched around to see the source of the commotion, Jeremy tried to cover up what had happened by smiling weakly and diving to recover the fallen book.

"Sorry," he muttered, adjusting his thick glasses by pushing them up to the bridge of his nose. "I guess I'm just a little clumsy today."

Clumsy , he thought as his heart pounded while he tried to wrap his head around what had just happened, is a reasonable explanation. I must have just been daydreaming, and accidentally knocked the book off the side of my desk. That seems to be well within the realm of possibility and abides by the laws of physics and the known universe. He was not quite ready to accept the possibility that things had actually just happened as he had perceived them, despite the numbing cold that he felt spreading across his forehead, originating from the point where the mysterious force had sprung from. Clumsiness was indeed a reasonable explanation - indeed, it was reasonable enough that he almost believed it himself.

"See that you take more care in the future," Mr. Barton droned without missing a beat, as if it were part of his lesson plan. Before Jeremy could acknowledge the reprimand, the teacher had already jumped back into his lesson plan with all the smoothness of someone who had given the same lecture a hundred times before, and knows that he will continue giving the same lecture for many years to come. Jeremy thought for a moment that things had gone rather smoothly despite his gaffe, until he caught the eyes of Chris Johnson, a burly football player who sat in the desk directly across the row from him. The look in Chris' eyes was one of disgust - he had a reputation for disliking anyone who didn't meet his criteria of manhood, which generally involved spending all free time either lifting weights or playing sports - neither of which were criteria which Jeremy or any of his friends met.

"Fucking freak," Chris mouthed silently at Jeremy while shaking his head. He pounded his fist against his hand in the universal gesture which indicated that Jeremy could look forward to being on the receiving end of Chris' wrath at some point soon. Chris and Jeremy had a long history together; the former had been a bully and tormentor to the latter for his entire life, starting with Kindergarten and moving on all the way to their final year of high school. As much as Jeremy hated being tormented by Chris, he had never found any way to stop it. Although Chris wasn't the biggest or strongest of his classmates, he was athletic and much larger and stronger than Jeremy. It was a common theme of the bullying sessions that Jeremy must deserve everything he got from Chris because he was barely five and a half feet tall and didn't even weigh a hundred and twenty five pounds. In Chris' books, this made Jeremy a runt, and runts existed in his mind to serve his every whim.

Jeremy sank bank into his seat, flushed red with embarrassment, hoping to escape everyone's notice for the remainder of the class. He covered his textbook with his notebook, and tried to forget about what had just happened.

***

Jeremy's life followed a fairly straightforward routine - wake up, go to school, then hang out with friends before heading home for the night. Usually this involved driving to his friend Adam's house and playing video or role-playing games with several other friends. Adam was a medium-height, stocky boy a year younger than Jeremy, but whose parents took a very laissez-faire approach to his upbringing. This generally meant that Adam and his friends were free to do as they pleased, with free reign over Adam's basement (although this was shared with his brother Steve). Today, Jeremy walked downstairs to see Adam and Jason - another friend, short and wiry with the sort of nasally grating voice that only a high school nerd could seem to possess - huddled over the glowing screen of Jason's laptop. This wasn't an entirely uncommon sight, as it could be hard to tear Jason away from his laptop. Jeremy had once suggested that Jason wouldn't be at home until he'd managed to turn himself into a machine - a comment that was joking, but received by Jason with a wondering look that seemed to say that he would love nothing more than to do exactly that.

"Hey man, you've got to check this out," Jason blurted as soon as Jeremy had entered the room. "This is unlike anything I've ever seen before."

"What's up?" Jeremy was less than enthused. Jason's excitement levels peaked easily - this level of vigor could stem from something as simple as a sequel to a popular video game being announced to something as complex as the discovery of a new data compression algorithm that provided a single-percent greater efficiency than before. Despite knowing this, he glanced at the laptop screen - a web browser was open to a popular streaming video site. The video that they were about to play was entitled 'OMG TOTALLY FUCKING ZOMBIES!!!'. Jeremy cleared his throat. "Seriously, Jason, I don't think I can summon the enthusiasm for movie trailers right now. It's been a really long day."

"It's not a movie trailer," Adam broke in. He sounded more serious than Jason, almost worried. "You've really got to see this. Trust me, it's worth your time."

"Fine," Jeremy said with a sigh as he huddled around the monitor with his friends. Adam wasn't as excitable as Jason, and Jeremy generally trusted his judgement - if he thought that this would be a good use of time, then it would probably be worth watching. Jason clicked the mouse and started the video playback.

An amateur-looking video of an attractive young couple sitting on the grass in a park began to play. Underbrush obscured the camera lens, as if it were being filmed by an unseen voyeur in the bushes. Shaking video, heavy breathing and a quietly muttered 'oh yeah, show me what you've got' as the couple kissed and fondled each other confirmed this. Not wanting to waste his time with a creepy voyeur video, Jeremy opened his mouth to protest, but Adam held up a hand for silence. Jeremy understood why almost immediately - a dark shape shambled into the background, blurry and out of focus. As the cameraman adjusted the focus to account for the slow-moving shape, it came into focus, taking form into what appeared to be a dishevelled old man dressed in torn and stained clothing. The young couple didn't seem to notice the ragged figure stumbling towards them until it was right behind them. The figure grabbed the young man from behind, pulling him to his feet; his companion let out a blood-curdling scream and ran out of sight of the camera as the dishevelled man bit and tore a large chunk of flesh from the boy's neck. Blood spurted from the wound, but that didn't stop the figure from biting and tearing at more of the boy's flesh. The unseen cameraman seemed to finally understand what he was seeing; the camera spun around to the sound of the cameraman cursing, and gurgling cries coming from the unfortunate young man. The camera bounced and jostled as the cameraman ran away, and the video cut off while he was still running. More screams could be heard, and then the video cut to black.

Adam and Jason were staring at Jeremy, waiting for his reaction. Jeremy disappointed them by rolling his eyes.

"You were excited over that? Looks like something a couple of stoned college students threw together in half an hour. It's pathetic. Don't tell me you got all excited about some low-budget horror movie, and mistook a trailer for reality."

"It's not a fake," Jason half-pouted, half-squealed defensively.

"He's right," Adam said. "It's all over the Internet. This isn't the only video, either - and people are talking about entire cities being put in lock-down in the U.S.. No communication in or out - they've just suddenly gone quiet, like nothing was ever there. News sites, blogs, social networking profiles - nothing. No updates, no changes, no news. Something big is going on, and whatever it is, it isn't good."

"Don't tell me you actually buy into this bullshit," Jeremy said with a snort. "Somewhere there are a few stoned bloggers, making stories up and laughing their asses off at the thought that some backwoods geeks actually believe some hackneyed video showing a 'zombie'. You've been watching too many horror movies. Hell, I'm probably the biggest zombie movie buff around, and even I know that they're fiction. Think about it - do you really, truly, deep down, think that it's more likely that some stoners are having a giggle, or that the undead have arisen and are attacking major urban centers, and the only trace of it is some viral video?"

Jason and Adam stared at the floor, trying to think of a way to rebuff Jeremy's argument. However, try as they might, they just couldn't come up with a justification for seeming to be gullible enough to actually believe an amateur film would reflect reality.

"Not only that, but what makes you think these reports could possibly be true? Someone says that all communication has been lost with New York city, for instance, and unless you know somebody in New York, there's no way of telling if it's true. You want to believe that it is, especially after falling for a video like that, so you jump to the sudden and dramatic conclusion that we're on the cusp of a massive zombie invasion. Does that sound about right?"

"What the hell are you little fags bitching about now?" A voice called out from the basement stairs. All three boys whirled around at once to see Chris Johnson and Steve staring at them. There was no telling how long they'd been standing there, but it had obviously been long enough that they'd overheard some of the conversation.

Great, thought Jeremy. Just great. This is exactly what I needed.

Chris and Steve advanced towards the trio. Steve looked slightly embarrassed - although he was friends with Chris, he obviously didn't approve of the bullying. Still, he remained complicit with it, just as he normally did.

"Take it easy on them," Steve said, motioning towards the pool table that dominated the rest of the basement. "We're here to play a few games, not make fun of my brother and his friends. Besides, I'm sure they were just leaving."

"Sure they were," Chris laughed as Adam nodded his assent. Chris turned away, as if he was really going to play some pool with Steve. Just as Jeremy let his guard down, Chris whirled around and shoved him backwards hard enough that he fell to the ground. Chris laughed in the braying way that only halfwit adolescents could seem to do, then turned back to the pool table.

Jeremy's eyes narrowed into slits and he glared at the back of his tormentor's head. The same pressure he'd felt build up in his skull earlier in the day returned with a ferocious intensity, and he once again felt it burst through his skull, accompanied by the arms-plunging-into-icy-water sensation. Chris was knocked forward as if struck from behind with a heavy object. He stumbled and fell, but regained his footing quickly. He glanced back at everyone in the room, as if to assure himself that he had not been pushed. Satisfied, he brushed himself off and smirked, as if daring the boys to say anything about the incident. Nobody did, and Adam, Jason, and Jeremy retreated to Adam's bedroom. Once the door was closed, they all burst into peals of laughter.

***

Jeremy arrived home that night to see his mother, father, and younger sister clustered around the television. Oddly enough, a news program was playing - certainly not the sort of programming they would normally watch together - and had their attention held so intently that they didn't appear to even notice that he'd entered the house.

"Hi guys," he said wryly. "Nice to see all of you, too."

"What?" His father muttered distractedly. "Just watching the..." His voice trailed off indistinctly. Puzzled, Jeremy shifted his attention to the newscast, curious about what could be holding their attention like that.

"To recap," a trepidacious newscaster voice announced over top of aerial footage of a large city, "Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle have all closed their borders and declared martial law. All communication to these cities has been severed, but a few unconfirmed reports have been circulating that a bio-terror attack may be responsible for these actions. We have also been hearing reports from our Canadian affiliates that similar measures have been taken in Vancouver and Toronto, and we'd like to encourage anyone in any of these five cities who might be able to shed some light on the situation to give us a call. That number is 1-800-"

Jeremy's mind reeled. Five major North American cities shut down in one day? The video he'd watched earlier with his friends nagged at him. Was it actually real? Could it possibly be? Combined with the strange occurrences that he was trying to insist to himself couldn't possibly be telekinetic manifestations, everything seemed to point to something unbelievable underway. It didn't seem possible that any of this could be real, but at the same time, it was hard to deny the facts of the matter. However, he pushed these thoughts out of his mind. Even if the video had been real, and that was the cause of the declaration of martial law, it didn't explain the strange phenomenon he'd experienced. He was falling victim to the same faulty logic that his friends had - connecting unrelated bizarre news pieces to one another and then jumping to wild conclusions. It was far more sane, far more normal, far more rational to think that he'd completely imagined the apparent telekinetic incidents, and that the video was just a fake.

"What could possibly be happening that's so severe as to justify the declaration of martial law?" Jeremy's mother's lower lip quivered as she half-asked, half-muttered the obvious question. His father was too glued to the news coverage to respond, so Jeremy silenced his thoughts and grunted noncommittally.

"Probably a huge overreaction to some nasty event. A couple of people in New York show up at the hospital with food poisoning, nurses gossip, and before you know it, rumours of bio-terror attacks are spreading rampant and starting riots in the streets." He considered telling his family about the video he'd seen, and what had happened to him already, but given their state of mind, it was likely to only cause them to panic more than they already had. Besides, he didn't really know what had happened, and causing his parents to panic would only confuse matters even more. There was no answer to his proffered explanation. Jeremy rolled his eyes and continued on to his bedroom. He tried to shake the nagging thought that all of the things that he’d seen and heard that day were really true, and the implications that would carry.

He tossed his backpack in the center of the floor and stood quietly in the cluttered room, trying to sort out the day's bizarre and stupefyingly improbably events in his head. He breathed slowly, softly. His eyes gently drifted shut, and he stood, listening to his own breath in a quiet proto-meditation. He stretched his arms out to his sides and inhaled deeply. As his mind cleared away all of the thoughts which threatened to overwhelm him, he felt a now-familiar pressure building inside his skull. He continued to breathe calm, slow, deep breaths, and the pressure gradually migrated from his head down to the tips of his fingers. Consciously trying to avoid the excitement which had lead to such unpredictable outcomes earlier in the day, he instead let his mind focus on a cup filled with pens and pencils which rested on his desk. Without moving a muscle, he thought about picking up the handful of writing implements. Although he did not budge from the center of the room, and the cup was well beyond his arm's length, he felt as if cold, numb limbs extruded from his body and reached towards his desk. Incredibly thin silver strands marked the presence of the otherwise invisible projections of mental force. Despite the numbness, he felt the small cylindrical objects in the grasp of these phantom limbs, and felt them rise out of the cup. The implements separated, but he did not lose his grip on any of them. Cautiously, Jeremy opened his eyes. Although he could scarcely believe his eyes, half a dozen pens and pencils were rotating around his body in a clumsy orbit. Disbelieving, he reached out and grasped a pen as it floated past his chest. The movement broke his concentration, and the numb phantom limbs vanished; the other pens and pencils clattered to the floor, leaving a dumbfounded Jeremy standing there, staring at the pen in his hand.

“Well, shit.” He threw himself to his bed, staring up at his ceiling in disbelief, trying to reconcile his otherwise solidly empirical conception of the world with the suddenly all-too real possibility that it was all true.

Chapter 2

Day 2 - 09:00:00 CST

Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada

The night was a sleepless one for Jeremy. He had alternated between being consumed by worry about the day's events and news, surfing the Internet for any sign that this all might be one giant hoax or mistake, and attempting to control his apparent new-found telekinetic abilities. The latter consumed most of his time, as his natural curiosity got the better of him far more easily than any compassion for his fellow man - although he worried about what might be happening in those other cities, they were in fact other cities, and something that apparently defied the laws of physics was happening right in his very bedroom. At the end of his sleepless night, Jeremy found that he was no closer to understanding what was happening to him than he had been when he started; every time he started to think that he had the ability to consciously control the telekinetic phenomena, the control vanished just as quickly as it had come. As best he could tell, he had no real control over when the power manifested or vanished, although he had gained some experience in controlling it when it did appear. Although it would not manifest at will, it did seem to respond in a more controlled fashion to him when he was calm and logical than when he became frustrated or excited; however, in the latter states of mind, he did find that although his control was diminished, the actual strength of the phenomenon was much greater. This was confirmed when, in his frustration at being unable to levitate a baseball off of his bed, he suddenly hurled the ball out his open window and far into the street beyond - this happened before he was even aware that anything was happening.

It was with great reluctance that he even went to school the next day. Still too excited to sleep, he wanted to spend more time experimenting rather than wasting time with school. However, his parents were in no mood to deal with any perceived misbehaviour from him - they had also been up all night, although their preoccupation was with watching the constant news coverage of the declarations of martial law. They were desperately hoping for any sign of contact from his grandmother, who lived in Vancouver. However, their repeated phone calls were met only with recorded "all circuits are down" messages, and no news seemed to be coming from the reporters, either. One particularly bold news station did attempt to fly a news helicopter to Vancouver from Victoria, but was intercepted by fighter jets before it even reached the edge of the city. Whatever was happening, the powers that be were obviously determined to keep it out of the public eye. When he arrived at school, Jeremy found that his classmates were abuzz with a thousand different theories about what could possibly be happening. Most revolved around severe outbreaks of highly contagious diseases, terrorist attacks, or simple mass hysteria. Despite the proliferation of theories, however, facts were extremely scarce, and Jeremy tried to conceal his contempt for their endless theorizing when they had no basis for any sort of notion of what may or may not actually be going on. He did carefully watch everyone around him, scrutinizing them in detail and wondering if any of them had been experiencing anything similar to the bizarre events that he had been privy to since the previous day. Nobody showed any sign of unusual behaviour, however, and he came to the conclusion that he was an oddball, a statistical anomaly that he couldn’t yet explain.

The early morning passed much too slowly for Jeremy's taste; he spent all of his time restraining himself from attempting to exercise his new-found ability, not wanting the unnecessary attention that it would bring. It wasn't until the middle of his pre-lunch Shop class that his excitement stopped, and life quickly became serious. Although Jeremy and his friends were not fans of Shop class, the alternative was a Home Economics course that promised to be even worse. Adjusting to the unfamiliar environment, Jeremy, Adam, and Jason had all become used to clustering in a quiet corner of the shop and working clumsily on whatever project happened to be assigned that week. This week was a carburetor rebuild, a task which none of the mechanically disinclined trio were particularly well-equipped to perform. While they were discussing the best way to approach this mysterious task, their work was interrupted by the shop doors slamming shut loudly. Even over the noise of the various machining instruments that were in use, all eyes turned to see what was going on. A freshman whose name Jeremy didn't know was doubled over in front of the door, red-faced and breathing hard. Mr. Gorsky, the Shop teacher, turned a deeper shade of red as he screamed at the student.

"Who are you, and why are you barging into my workshop uninvited?" Mr. Gorsky was not known for his patience or charm.

"They...I can't..." The poor student, already out of breath and clearly distressed, had obviously not been prepared for an encounter with the swarthy, vicious teacher. Then again, nobody was ever really prepared for an encounter with Mr. Gorsky.

"Get the hell out of my workshop, and don't come back until you're on my attendance list!"

The student held up his hands, still gasping for breath, pointed towards the door, and waved his hands in a "time out" gesture. His pleas fell upon deaf ears, however, as Mr. Gorsky grabbed the student's left arm and pulled the door wide open. The student screamed as the door swung open to reveal a horrifying sight. A tall, gaunt man occupied the doorway - at least, the remains of what once was a man. A torn and tattered tuxedo covered in dirt and grime hung from his frame; his skull was sunken, eye sockets completely empty, and large pieces of skin and flesh had fallen away from his cheekbones. Despite being obviously, thoroughly, and completely dead (indeed, long dead), the corpse stood on its own remarkably well - too well, in fact. The creature took a slow, clumsy step towards Mr. Gorsky, decayed mouth wide open. Mr. Gorsky moved quickly, shoving the terrified freshman behind him and out of harm's way, and wrapped his massive hands around the corpse's neck. The fact that the undead creature would not need to breathe didn't seem to enter the shop teacher's mind as he held tight and shook the creature with all his might. As hard as Mr. Gorsky fought to take down the zombie, his efforts were in vain. The unstoppable creature took advantage of the proximity of the shop teacher's meaty arms and bit down on them with amazing force; even from the opposite side of the shop, Jeremy could hear the ripping of flesh as the creature's head jerked to the side and tore part of Mr. Gorsky's arm away from the bone. He screamed in pain, releasing his grip on the creature, and pulled back to slam the door behind him as hard as he could. The door rattled and shook behind Mr. Gorsky as the undead creature pounded against it, but it held firm. The injured teacher cradled his arm and dashed towards the nearest first aid kit. He said nothing about what had just happened as he pulled out disinfectant and gauze. As if unable to believe what just happened, most of the students in the class stared on in disbelief.

"What the fuck," Adam muttered, "was that...was it actually..."

"It was a goddamned zombie," Jeremy said. His voice was distant and dreamy. The thumping of his heart in his chest sounded like a mighty bass drum to him, so loud that he could swear everyone else could hear it. As soon as the creature behind the door had been revealed, adrenaline had started flowing, and a powerful pressure began to build behind his forehead. His head was already pounding, far worse than it ever had before. Whatever was about to happen, he knew it was going to be epic. This seemed like the moment that he had been born for. He’d just seen a zombie - an honest-to-god walking corpse that had torn a chunk of flesh out of their shop teacher. For the first time in his life, it felt like an action movie was unfolding before his eyes, and he was the superhero.

"I told you the movie was real," Jason pouted. He seemed shaken at what he'd just witnessed, but being proven right about the video he'd shown his friends the day before seemed more important to him than being concerned about what was happening right in front of his eyes.

"What should we do?" Adam was looking around, desperate to find anything that could be used as a weapon. He settled on a screwdriver - an odd choice, given the shop's extensive selection of steel pipes, hammers, and the extensive selection of homemade weapons locked in Mr. Gorsky's office. Mr. Gorsky was not oblivious to this fact, however, as he tossed his key ring at the nearest student and gestured towards the locked chest where he stored the "forbidden" projects that he'd confiscated from students. Catching on immediately, the student dashed into Mr. Gorsky's office, pushed the chest into the shop, and fumbled with the keys until he found one that popped the chest open. Inside was a veritable treasure trove of student-made weapons: nunchucks, brass knuckles, knives, swords, baseball bats, and more. High school students left to work on their own projects in Shop class seemed inevitably to gravitate towards the same sorts of forbidden labours, and there was nobody better and remaining vigilant and catching the weapons before they could leave the confines of the shop than Mr. Gorsky.

“Guys," Jeremy said, staggering forward under the pressure that he felt building up uncontrollably in his mind, "I've...I've got something you need to see. It’s important."

"I think it can wait," Jason said, finally cluing in that he should join the mob of students rushing towards the weapons cache to desperately arm themselves.

"No, it really can't," Jeremy's voice dropped an octave as he unleashed the force building inside of himself. He operated on pure instinct, reaching out with a dozen delicate tendrils of force towards the chest. The unseen appendages grasped weapon after weapon, lifting them into the air where they waved menacingly. Jeremy laughed loudly, and all eyes were upon him.

"What the fuck," Chris Johnson sprang towards Jeremy. "Are you doing this, you fucking freak?" He planted a hand on Jeremy's chest, ready to shove the smaller boy backwards. Another tendril of force burst out of Jeremy's chest, knocking Chris backwards into the air. Jeremy laughed harder, giddy with glee at the incredible power he suddenly wielded. He had slipped into a mental zone which didn’t question, didn’t attempt to subvert the reality of what was happening, but which simply accepted it and acted within it. The control and power he felt was amazing, and addictive.

"Open the door," he said as his laughter tapered off. The students in the room stood still, rooted to the spot. They looked at each other, nobody quite sure what was going on. Jeremy’s eyes flashed with a brilliant silvery inner light as he repeated the command slowly. "Open. The. Door."

By now, the door was shaking under the pounding of far more than the one set of hands that had been on it when it slammed shut. Without a window to peer through, Jeremy could only estimate that there had to be at least a dozen zombies mindlessly thrashing against the locked door. Adam stepped in front of Jeremy, looking him up and down carefully.

"Are you sure about this?" He asked. He had never seen Jeremy so brazen, so confident. "We've both seen enough zombie movies to know that this isn't going to end well unless you've got more than this crazy parlour trick up your sleeve."

Jeremy didn't respond. He only smiled at his friend, the calmness in his eyes saying everything that needed to be said. Adam skittered to the door, carefully ducking under and around the array of floating weaponry. He looked back at Jeremy, waiting for a signal. Jeremy nodded, and Adam flicked the lock open, pulled the doors open wide, and ran as quickly as he could from the crowd of zombies which forced its way inside. Time seemed to slow down for Jeremy until it was only a crawl; he looked into the faces of each of the creatures which was barging into the room, and saw only long-dead eyes. The weapons which he held in mid-air sprang to life, moving with unnatural swiftness and silence, propelled with all the force of a hand grenade. The flashing wall of steel tore into the attackers; knives tore through skulls and torsoes, homemade swords slashed through atrophied muscle and bone, and crude brass knuckles struck harder than a professional boxer, snapping limbs and grinding tissue to dust. In a flash, all but one of the zombies had fallen lifeless - some dropped to the ground from their injuries, while others were impaled and flung out of the room into the hallway beyond. The remaining zombie made a beeline towards Jeremy, but the young man stood his ground. Time slowed down once again as the zombie stumbled in slow-motion towards his intended victim, arms outstretched. A small smile crinkled the edges of Jeremy's mouth as he waited until the creature was nearly within arm's reach of him. At that instant, he unleashed all of the rage he'd suppressed through years of bullying and torment, after a lifetime of being knocked around for being too small and weak. He screamed louder than he thought possible, and the dozens of phantom appendages which had wielded the weaponry against the other zombies all combined into a single massive invisible hand. This hand grasped the zombie and yanked, treating him like a baseball leaving a pitcher's hand. The zombie crashed upward into the roof hard enough that the cracking sound of bones being destroyed could be heard, before being slammed down into the floor three times with incredible force. When Jeremy finally released his telekinetic grip on the creature, little more was left than a small pile of dust and bones in the middle of the shop floor. At the same time, Jeremy dropped to his knees shivering with exhaustion and the unshakeable numbing cold that had spread through his body as he fought. Despite not having moved a muscle, he was breathing hard and struggling to remain conscious. His friends rushed to his sides and held his arms, gently lowering him to the ground.

For what felt like an eternity, nobody spoke. Jeremy slowly regained his breath, and with Adam's assistance was able to rise to his feet again. All eyes were on him in a mixture of admiration, fear, and confusion - although there was more of the latter in the mixture than either of the former two. Jeremy gently cleared his throat, feeling that he should at least say something.

"So...that was.." His voice trailed off. He wasn't quite sure what had happened himself, to be honest. The silence in the room carried the sound of far-off growls from the hallway beyond the classroom, followed by an ear-piercing scream of horror. "I know this seems a little hard to believe, but it looks like it's hard to deny what's going on. Those things - those rotting creatures that attacked us - those are zombies. And I wish I could tell you what it was that I just did, I really do. I wish I could explain it, but I can't. I assume that there's some sort of causal relationship between the presence of supernatural monsters and me suddenly becoming telekinetic, but I can't say that with any certainty. What we do know is that there are almost certainly more where those things came from, and that means that everyone in this school is in danger, and we may be the only ones able to help them."

"This is bullshit," Chris shouted. His face was red, and a vein bulged out of his forehead. "I don't know what the hell is going on, but you seriously expect us to believe that those are zombies? Did you put something in the water?"

"Shut up, you little brat," Mr. Gorsky's voice boomed. Considering how severe his injury was, he seemed remarkably vibrant. "There's no sense in arguing over what happened. Whatever it was that took a bite out of me, it wasn't a normal person, and I know I wasn't drugged or imagining things. From the sounds of it, whatever those things are, there are more of them out there. We can debate what they are when we know that everyone is safe. Everybody grab something you can defend yourself with, and follow me. I think that Mr. Bearson has earned the right to choose his weapon first."

Glancing around the room, Jeremy tried to decide what would work best. He was recovering quickly, and could already feel the welcome pressure building up throughout his entire body, focused behind his forehead. It seemed safe to assume that he'd be able to wield his telekinetic ability again, and if this time had been any indication, he'd be able to do so with more finesse and power than before. Whatever was happening to his body, it was certainly becoming adjusted to the foreign power that surged through his veins. This realization cued a smile on his face as a bucket on the wall caught his attention.

"I'll take that," he said as he gestured towards the bucket.

"Ball bearings?" Mr. Gorsky seemed confused momentarily, then shared Jeremy's smile as he realized what the teen planned. He placed his good hand on one of the shop's garbage pails - a massive blue plastic drum set on wheels. It was filled with debris from countless classes, but the powerful teacher was able to upend it with a single hand, dumping its contents onto the floor. He pointed at Chris. "Pick that up and make sure it's empty. Then fill it with whatever Jeremy wants."

Although he seemed to resent being turned into an errand-boy for the teen that he normally preferred to bully, Chris listened to Mr. Gorsky's commands, and did as he asked. Jeremy pointed at several buckets of shop supplies. Within minutes, the massive drum was nearly full of ball bearings, nails and screws of varying sizes, heavy nuts, and washers. Chris was sweating profusely - he had been moving quickly, and the drum's contents weighed several hundred pounds. Even set on wheels, it was not an easy load to move.

"What good is all that garbage going to do?" Chris seemed genuinely interested and mildly humbled for the first time. He didn’t like Jeremy, but there was certainly a fascination about the events unfolding around them.

Jeremy waved his hand towards the drum full of odds and ends. A single ball bearing rose up from the pile, hovering silently in midair. With a flick of his wrist, he propelled the projectile towards the wall of the shop. Although the bearing moved too quickly to be seen, the thundering thump it made as it slammed into and embedded itself inside the far wall of the shop could not be mistaken. Chris nodded silently as he realized just how potent the makeshift weaponry could be. Jeremy nudged the heavy drum with an unseen hand, and it jerked forwards. It took him several seconds to gain proper control over it, but he was quickly able to move and steer the drum with virtually no physical effort. By the time he had it under control, he saw that his classmates had all found some sort of weapon that they could use.

"We may not be movie heroes," he said to Adam, "but I think it's safe to say that we're going to kick some zombie ass."

All Adam could manage was a weak grin. He held a three foot long piece of pipe in his hands, and it was all that he could do to hold it steady as his eyes remained fixed on the zombie corpses that littered the room's doorway.

With everyone apparently prepared to proceed beyond the relative safety of the shop, Mr. Gorsky took the lead, wielding a vicious-looking student-made short sword in his good hand. He gestured for everyone to follow him, but all of the other students were frozen in place until Jeremy took up a position behind the shop teacher. Mr. Gorsky furtively glanced around the corner and then strode into the hallway, beckoning for everyone to follow him quietly. Jeremy strode confidently into the corridor, his drum full of shrapnel following behind him, and did a double-take in horror. Although there was no sign of movement in the hallway, it was apparent that the zombies they had destroyed had taken several students by surprise. The warm, coppery smell of blood hung in the air, and only a dozen feet down the hallway a pair of bodies lay in small pieces. The skulls had been crushed, and their brains apparently feasted upon, and large pieces of flesh were missing from the bodies. The group was silent as they passed this first pair of bodies; although nobody dared to say anything, they all recognized what little was left of the faces as those of two popular athletes. Acknowledging who they were would only lend credence to the fairly obvious conclusion that their entire world was rapidly crumbling around them.

The school's shop was located in an isolated wing of the school, where only two other classrooms were located - one was a woodworking shop, which was empty at this time of day, while the other was the school's graphic arts studio, which should have been bustling with a senior class. With Mr. Gorsky in the lead, the group slowly approached the studio, trying to move as quietly as possible. The door to the graphic arts studio was partially ajar, but no sound could be heard from within. Mr. Gorsky paused, looked back at the students in his charge, and motioned for them to stay still. With his good hand, he cautiously pushed the door to the studio open wide. He froze in place, unable to move. The only students within eyesight of the studio were Jeremy and Chris; Chris took one look at the scene inside the room and promptly dropped to his hands and knees and vomited. Jeremy stared in morbid fascination. When nobody else seemed able to summon up the courage to step inside, he did so, followed by his drum of shrapnel.

Although they had thought that the hallway was a terrifying sight, it paled in comparison to the slaughter that could be seen in the studio. Over two dozen students could be seen in various stages of dismemberment throughout the room. The entire floor was covered in a thick pool of rapidly congealing blood. As Jeremy gingerly stepped into the room, he heard a soft squishing sound underneath the sole of his shoe; he glanced down to see that he'd stepped on a dismembered finger. He grimaced and kicked the grisly object aside. Mr. Poole, the ever-friendly graphics teacher, had apparently been caught off guard, and was slumped over his desk, his neck stripped of skin, muscle, and nerves, down to the bone. His head had been struck repeatedly, and a crack in the top of his skull still slowly oozed a blackish-red liquid. The smell of blood and gore was thick in the air, and Jeremy had to hold his breath to keep from choking on it. The utter silence of the room was shattered by pounding on a closet door. Jeremy startled, slipped and fell into the pool of blood on the floor. As the closet door rattled, he struggled to regain his footing, trying not to think about the thick, slimy coating of blood that now covered most of his clothes. He reached out mentally to his drum, lifting nearly a dozen small pieces of metal out of the container and holding them in mid-air. He gestured with his left hand and pushed aside the desks in the room, clearing a path between himself and the closet door, then allowed the bits of shrapnel to position themselves directly in front of him, providing a simple and clear line of fire. Prepared for the worst when the door sprang open, he grasped the door knob with a mental tendril. The strain of manipulating an object more than a few feet away from his body was far worse than he had expected, and his entire body shivered and trembled from the mind-numbing cold and exhaustion that enveloped him as he twisted the knob and pulled the door open wide. He was prepared to unleash his volley upon what he imagined must be yet another zombie hiding behind that door, when a terrified girl fell to the floor. She had been pounding on the door when it was opened, and her momentum carried her far enough into the room that when she fell, she was face to face with a disembodied head laying on its side in the vast pool of blood. She screamed, and quickly scrambled into a corner. Jeremy released his mental grip on the shrapnel, satisfied that the terrified girl was actually alive, not another mindless undead creature. The shrapnel clattered to the floor and several of his companions rushed into the room to see who had screamed. None of them were capable of Jeremy's detached curiosity at the scene, and recoiled in revulsion. Nonetheless, while Jeremy steadied himself on a desk, trying to regain his breath and sense of composure, his repulsed companions carefully picked their way through the horrifying mess of the room towards the girl. Chris, who Jeremy had to give credit for braving the scene more readily than the others, seemed to recognize the girl. He called out to her as he approached.

"Sarah...it's OK, we're here to help." His words did not lend any comfort to the girl, who rocked back and forth in the fetal position in the corner. Chris tried again. "I don't know what's going on, but we're going to get you out of here."

"Don't come near me! You're one of them!" Sarah's voice was shrill and panicked, although nobody could blame her.

"No we're not," Chris said, standing his ground with his hands at his sides, doing his best to appear non-threatening. "They attacked us, too. We...well, we fought them off. It's hard to believe, I know. But you've got to trust me - do I look like one of those things?"

Sarah continued to sniffle, but lifted her head cautiously to look at Chris. She shook her head without saying a word.

"You know I wouldn't hurt you," Chris said. "Come with us. We'll keep you safe."

"Nobody can keep me safe," she whimpered. "Nobody. Those things weren't human. Not anymore. We were just sitting here, learning about photography when they came in. We didn’t see them until it was too late. They killed everyone, Chris! How can you possible say you'll protect me from them?"

"Because they didn't kill everyone," Chris' voice quaked a bit. "And as fucked up as they are, we have something just a little bit weirder on our side."

"Yeah right," Sarah said, staring at her blood-soaked shoes. "What could be weirder than rotting corpses running wild?"

"Him," Chris said, gesturing towards Jeremy. Sarah looked up, then laughed derisively.

"He's weird, I'll give you that. But so what? Is he going to give them a computer virus?"

Jeremy's lip curled up defensively. He knew full well that everyone thought he wasn't quite normal, and that he'd rather spend time in front of a computer screen than with other people his age, but it wasn't often that they were abusive right to his face about it. Aside from Chris, he hadn't really thought that anyone had a bad opinion of him.

"If that's how you feel," Jeremy spat each word out slowly and deliberately, "I'll leave you to the zombies. I'm not going to waste my time convincing some airhead cheerleader that she'll be safer in a group than she will be crying in a closet. Stay here and rot with the rest of the meat."

Jeremy whirled, slipping slightly on the damp floor. The students who had gathered in front of the door parted for him, none quite wanting to actually see what would happen if they got in his way now that he was capable of doing...well, capable of doing whatever it was that he could do. He stormed down the hall towards the exit doors that lead to the school's classroom wing. He mentally reached out towards the doors, intending to shove them open. The force with which the blow was delivered against the doors was far greater than Jeremy had expected or desired; in the heat of the moment, he felt his control slip away from himself, and the doors were torn off their hinges and flung into the stairwell beyond. They impacted against the stairwell's support column, embedding themselves into the concrete with enough force that the floor shook. Jeremy never even broke stride as he walked into the stairwell. His foot brushed against the first step before he heard Chris calling out to him.

"Jeremy," he cried. "Come back here. Don't be like that - she didn't mean anything by it. She's freaked out - can you blame her? We have to stick together!"

The words stopped Jeremy dead in his tracks. He turned slowly to face Chris, who had ran from the graphics studio to only a few feet behind Jeremy. He took two slow, deliberate steps towards Chris; on any other day, trying to look menacing towards a bully of Chris' calibre was a sure way to invite a beating, but he seemed to be aided by the fact that he was suddenly able to command forces that could not be comprehended. With each step another handful of shrapnel rose out of his ammunition drum and orbited around Jeremy, forming a twinkling wall of metal. When he spoke, it was with the conviction of someone who had both the power and the will to never be a victim again.

"I've put up with your bullshit for years," he spat. "I've never done anything to you, but you attack, and you insult, and you humiliate me over and over again. I don't know why you do it - frankly, I don't care. If you and your little friend think it's funny to laugh at me, you go right ahead. And you can take your 'we need to stick together' routine and shove it up your ass. The only thing that kept you alive in the shop was me, and if there are more of those things hiding in the shadows around here, the only thing that'll keep you alive is my good will - and frankly, I don't have any left for you. Let me say this the simplest way that I can, since I know you've got problems with words that contain more than two syllables: go fuck yourself." Jeremy tried not to let his astonishment at hearing this outburst come out of his mouth show. In fact, once it was said, he wasn't quite sure what to do next. Chris stared at him, his mouth hanging wide open, trying to formulate a reply.

"You're right," was the unexpected response. "I'm a jerk. I always have been, and you've had to take a lot of abuse from me. That wasn't cool, and I won't make any excuses for it. And however it is that you're able to move stuff around without touching it, you're right that it's what's keeping us alive - you're what's kept us alive. But you've got to recognize that we've got a much better chance of making it out of here alive if we all stick together, and you shouldn't leave someone to die just because they insulted you. I mean, you have a reason to hate me, and I'd understand if you abandoned me...but she doesn't even know you. She just watched a lot of her friends die, and she doesn't know what to say or do...I don't think any of us do."

Is that genuine, real emotion coming from Chris Johnson? Jeremy wasn't quite sure how to react. Granted that the circumstances they found themselves in were overwhelming, he genuinely didn't expect to ever hear words to that effect coming from the mouth of his greatest tormentor. He gently guided his orbiting shrapnel back to the ammunition drum, letting them drop unceremoniously back into the container as he calmed himself. After all, he assured himself, it's better to remain rational about this than to act out of emotion. For all I know, this telekinetic ability may be a purely temporary phenomenon, and it would be good to have not alienated a potential ally if it suddenly stops working.

"Fine," he said to Chris. "I won't hold it against her. For now. Let's just...let's keep moving. I don't know about you, but I don't like being trapped in a slaughterhouse. We need to see if we can help anyone else out here."

"OK," Chris said, as the rest of their group gathered around the two boys. "So where should we go next? I mean, for all we know we were the last stop on their list, and the school could be completely deserted now - or worse, stuffed to the brim with those things. I say we make a break for it - get the hell out of here and find somewhere safe to hole up."

"No," Mr. Gorsky interjected. "We can't leave until we know that everyone is accounted for - no matter what's happened to them. We can't risk leaving someone to their fate at the hands of those things. They won't be as lucky as me." He held up his bandaged arm to emphasize his point.

The remaining students had expressed various degrees of agreement with both Mr. Gorsky and Chris as they spoke, but none were committed enough to do anything more than grumble quietly. Everyone looked at Jeremy; it was obvious that this choice was his to make, since he was their secret weapon.

"I've already said that I don't want to be trapped in a slaughterhouse," Jeremy muttered. "And it's probably a safe bet that we're the only ones left alive in the building. Still, that doesn't excuse us from abandoning our friends - and if anyone is still alive, it's our responsibility to make sure they stay that way. The courtyard isn't far from here - I say we start there, and see how things look." The courtyard was the school's main hub - a three-tiered classroom building with an open courtyard in the middle. Around each tier were multiple classrooms - the open design would make it easy to spot both survivors and any attackers, should there be more lurking somewhere unseen.

"It's settled then," Mr. Gorsky said with a deranged grin. "Keep it quiet, and get to the top floor. We'll start there and work our way down. You see anything moving that looks like it shouldn't be, and you kill it."

Although it seemed unnatural to hear his shop teacher talking so eagerly about causing physical harm to other people, the circumstances were exceptional. Thoughts of his family fluttered through Jeremy’s head - he wondered if they were trapped in similar circumstances, or if they’d already been claimed by the zombies, or even if they were blissfully unaware of what was happening in the school.

The group crept up the stairs and carefully into the hallway above. It lead to another staircase which could take them to the courtyard. Their progress was slow but steady; every last one of them was on edge. Although there were no immediate signs in the hallway or staircase of the slaughter that had been found in the lower level, the building was eerily quiet. Jeremy couldn't remember ever hearing so little noise in the entire time he'd attended the school. There was always something going on, from classes to breaks to extracurricular groups chatting away. None of that could be heard now. The only sounds were their ragged breaths, and the squeaking wheels of the ammunition drum that followed behind Jeremy.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the upper level of the courtyard unmolested. Their relief was short-lived as they considered the task that was before them. The nearest classroom door was only a few feet away, leading to one of the high school's two chemistry labs. Mr. Gorsky positioned himself to the side of the door, and gently pushed it open. The group waited breathlessly for any sound or movement from the room. When none came, Mr. Gorsky peered around the corner, then reached inside and slowly pulled the door shut again. He glanced towards the rest of the group and shook his head. The expression on his face told them all that they needed to know - no survivors. Wasting no time - indeed, being all too painfully aware of the possible consequences for such hesitation - to grieve for their fallen friends, they crept up to the second classroom door - this one housing the school's only biology lab. Faint shuffling sounds could be heard from the other side of the door, and everyone immediately sprang into action, assuming defensive stances. Several dozen small pieces of metal rose up out of Jeremy's ammunition drum, ready to strike as soon as the door opened. Mr. Gorsky took one last look at his students to ensure that they were ready, and carefully reached up to the door's handle. He never had the chance to make contact with the handle, however, as the door splintered into a thousand pieces; what was left of a zombie flew through the debris, propelled by an unseen force; it smashed into the concrete ledge of the courtyard with enough force to shattered the concrete, carrying both chunks of the ledge and the zombie down to the floor of the courtyard below. Almost immediately thereafter, a loud crashing sound could be heard from the room. Jeremy stepped forward and peered inside, emboldened by the thought that whoever propelled that zombie from the room was obviously wielding the same sort of abilities as him; inside the room he saw a single girl standing over a prone zombie. The slim, tall girl wore modest clothing - a generic sweatshirt and jeans that didn’t cling to whatever curves might have been hidden underneath - and her arms were outstretched over her head, holding one of the lab's stainless steel dissection tables in the air. She brought this down on the zombie's head with yet another deafening crash that utterly destroyed the creature's skull. Jeremy stood in awe - he knew that those benches weighed well into the hundreds of pounds each, and the girl had wielded it as if it were no heavier than a baseball bat.

The girl finally took notice of her admirer, and jumped back in surprise. The shock quickly gave way to a wide smile as the pair recognized each other.

"Tanya?" Jeremy was surprised. He wasn't great friends with her, but knew her well enough to have assumed that she would not have been able to defend herself.

"Jeremy?" The surprise in Tanya's voice was just as apparent as it had been in his. She was clearly as bewildered and disoriented as everyone else.

"You...that table," Jeremy stuttered.

"Yes," Tanya said with a shy smile. "I don't know how, but for the last few days, I've been getting stronger. Really strong. Good timing, too. I didn’t think I’d be left behind when Armageddon happened, but at least I can unleash the fury of the righteous upon the demons!"

"I know what you mean," Jeremy said. He flourished his hand in the direction of one of the lab stools, mentally lifting it into the air. Tanya did not seem as shocked to see it happen as his other classmates had. “Although I don’t think it’s Armageddon.”

"I guess I'm not the only one granted amazing powers by the Lord," she said. She sounded relieved, and Jeremy was not surprised. Tanya was a shy, meek girl, and if she had become as strong as she appeared so quickly, he knew that she must have been very shocked. “And if this isn’t Armageddon, what is it? The dead are walking the Earth, feasting upon our flesh and blood, and seeking our destruction.”

"I can’t explain it, either. And no, you’re not the only one who has suddenly developed amazing powers," he said. "I mean, I'm not strong or anything, but I can definitely do things that don't really make any sense to me. What happened to everyone else up here?"

Tanya shrugged. "We were in the middle of an English class when some of these things," she gestured to the zombie's remains, "forced their way inside. They...they killed everyone. I was on the other side of the room, and managed to make it out the fire exit." Her eyes teared up as she spoke. "I came up here to hide, and locked the doors. There was nobody in here...I just kept quiet, and hoped this would all go away. It did, too, until about five minutes ago. They came in through there." She pointed at the side door of the lab, which connected it to another classroom.

"So you haven't seen any other survivors?"

"Nobody," she whispered. Tears welled up in her eyes. "I heard them die, Jeremy. Those...those things killed them. I've never heard screams like that before. We need to get out of here."

A startled shout from outside the lab seemed to confirm this claim. Jeremy dashed out the door with Tanya following close on his heels. He almost immediately regretted doing so, as he saw dozens of walking corpses shambling towards their group from both sides of the courtyard. They swarmed out of classrooms on all three tiers of the open courtyard. Jeremy lost count of how many zombies were filling the entire courtyard. Dozens, possibly hundreds of them could be seen, and judging by the casual dress and fresh bloodstains covering many of them, it seemed likely that their former classmates were part of the horde.

"Where did they all come from?" Jeremy wasn't entirely certain if his question was rhetorical or not.

"I don't know," Adam replied, trying and failing to mask the fear in his voice. "You were in there, and then they just...swarmed. What do we do?"

“Duck,” Jeremy said. Without hesitation, all the males in the group dropped prone. Tanya was confused at the display, but followed suit shortly after them.

The entire mass of shrapnel in Jeremy's drum lifted into the air. He grinned maniacally. Without budging a muscle, he mentally hurled handful after handful of shrapnel at the charging horde. He tried not to reflect on the numbing cold that spread through his body with every volley, or the exhaustion that robbed him of the strength to move. Time slowed nearly to a standstill as he fired off more and more of his rapidly dwindling supply of ammunition. With every volley, more of the attacking creatures fell to the ground. His classmates and Mr. Gorsky carefully rose to a crouch and surrounded Jeremy and Tanya, forming a low defensive wall against the apparently endless number of undead. When Jeremy fired his last volley of ammunition, his eyes rolled into the top of his head and he collapsed in an unconscious heap. Chris and Adam picked him up, each stringing an arm over their shoulders, and Tanya plucked Adam's length of pipe from his hands. Although the floors were stacked with corpses of the undead army, still more approached them from the north side of the courtyard. Mr. Gorsky charged towards the south stairwell, motioning for everyone to follow him. Tanya took up the rear, holding her new weapon at the ready. By the time they reached the stairs, the shambling zombies had reached the group. Tanya swung her pipe like a baseball bat, striking the nearest zombie with the force of a truck slamming into a wall. Bones cracked and the creature fell to the ground.

The group moved down the stairs as quickly as they could, encumbered by an unconscious Jeremy and wary of the creatures hot on their trail. With every downward step, Tanya swung upwards at the zombies. She was obviously not accustomed to wielding a weapon, and several of her swings hit nothing but air, slamming into the concrete walls at the end of the swing. The concrete cracked and buckled, sending small clouds of debris and dust into the air, obscuring their vision and doing absolutely nothing to help the group descend towards the ground floor. Although Tanya succeeded in destroying nearly a dozen zombies by the time they reached the ground floor of the courtyard, the dust that she had thrown into the air with her missed blows clouded everyone's eyes; Mr. Gorsky and the students at the front of the group were rubbing their eyes madly, trying to clear their vision. Had it not been for this, the hapless forerunners of the group would have been more likely to notice zombies were not only approaching from the stairs above them, but also were waiting for them at the bottom of the stairwell. Mr. Gorsky stumbled headlong into their waiting arms, and was quickly torn to shreds by the ravenous creatures. His screams came too late for the students immediately behind him, too - they were caught in the grasping, grappling arms of the undead. Hearing the screams of the dying and wounded, Tanya took one last desperate swing at the creatures closing in from the stairs above them, then leaped around the group and into the middle of the zombies at the bottom of the stairwell. She closed her eyes tight and swung her length of pipe in large, windmilling circles; the blows rained down upon the zombies with terrific force, and considerably more effect than she had on those on the stairs.

Once the last of the creatures at the foot of the stairs fell to the ground, she ushered the remaining members of their group towards the nearest emergency exit. Horror gripped Tanya as she witnessed two of the zombies that she had been unable to destroy on the stairs descend upon the rear of the group of students; before she could even call out a warning, the students had been caught in the zombies' grip. The zombies ripped and tore at the students' necks, silencing them before they could cry out for help.

By the time the group reached the school's fire exit, only Tanya, Adam, Jason, Jeremy, and Chris remained. When he saw the doors of the school swing open through the haze of partial consciousness, Jeremy half-expected to be greeted by another rampaging mob of zombies ready to tear them apart. He was pleasantly surprised when the crisp fall air greeted them with nothing but silence and peace. He staggered to his feet, relieving Chris and Adam of the burden of carrying him, and Chris wasted no time in grabbing the pipe that Tanya was carrying slipping it through the handles of the emergency exit, preventing it from being pushed open by any pursuers.

"Come on," Chris said, nodding in the direction of the nearby parking lot. "My truck is down there. We should all be able to fit into it. It'll get us away from here, somewhere safe."

"If there's anywhere safe that we can go," Jeremy said, suppressing a cough that rose unbidden with the exertion of speaking.

Chapter 3

Day 2 - 13:30 CST

Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada

After a great deal of animated discussion about what to do next, the group found themselves driving further into town. Jeremy had argued against this course of action, telling the others that based upon the evidence they had available, it was clear that the zombies which had descended upon their high school were part of a larger uprising; it clearly explained the declaration of martial law in large cities all over the continent, and was obviously spreading quickly. He argued that the safest thing they could do was drive north on the gravel-covered grid roads that intersected the province, find themselves an easily defensible farmhouse, and stay there until they'd had a chance to plan a careful incursion into the town. His three companions had all disagreed. None were willing to just leave their friends and family to suffer at the hands of the undead horde that occupied the school, and possibly the entire town. Chris was the one who ultimately made the decision to accept the risk and venture into town - in his words, "the one with the keys makes the rules". Jeremy had protested, but only weakly. He knew all too well that his companions were driven by fear for their families, and that the only way they would see reason was if they endangered themselves first.

I just hope that I can keep them safe, he thought. Fortunately, between the mobility afforded by the truck, Tanya's incredible strength, and my own mental prowess, we should be able to make a quick escape if the worst has happened.

“Nobody’s answering!” Jason was frantically dialing number after number from his cellular phone’s address book in an attempt to reach anybody that he could.

“Consider yourself lucky,” Adam said, holding up his phone so that they could read the display. “I’ve got no signal. I’m guessing at least a few towers are down right now.”

The rest of the ride into town was eerily quiet, broken only by Jason’s repeated dialing attempts. Estevan Comprehensive School was on the edge of the town limits, but the all-too-long drive south past the athletic fields was far too long. Not a single vehicle could be seen on the road, but that was hardly unusual for a town as small as Estevan during a workday. As they drove past the shopping mall which stood a kilometer south of the school, Chris pulled to a stop in the middle of the road. Everyone stared at the mall's parking lot, which was not entirely empty. The empty vehicles in the parking lot, however, betrayed no sign of movement or life (or undeath).Jeremy breathed a quiet sigh of relief as Chris slowly accelerated away from the silent mall. Their first stop was several kilometers away, past abandoned residential neighbourhoods. The truck's windows were down, and Jeremy and Adam remained crouched at the ready in the cargo box, listening and desperately hoping for any sound, any sign of human life. There was nothing.

The truck pulled to a stop at a red light across from the small, squat office complex that they were headed towards. The stop was entirely unconscious; Chris was driving entirely on instinct, too preoccupied with searching for any sign of danger to care about the fact that obeying traffic laws was probably not the safest course of action given the circumstances. While they waited for the light to change, all eyes were on a convenience store to the left of the truck. The large plate glass windows in the front revealed that the store was empty; there was no sign of a cashier or any customers. Even for Estevan, that was unusual.

"I don't like this," Jeremy's voice broke the silence as the traffic light turned green and they coasted through the intersection. The truck pulled in to the office complex's parking lot, and stopped. On all sides, they were surrounded by squat, ugly buildings. Directly in front of them was a hotel bar; to their left was an insurance building, and on their right was an apartment building. Although he wasn't normally claustrophobic, Jeremy tried to suppress the sudden closed-in feeling that threatened to overwhelm him. He could already feel his pulse quickening, his breath becoming short and ragged, and a steady pounding building behind his temples. “Why is this city so quiet? Shouldn’t there be police cars racing back and forth, and zombies shambling after us wherever we go?”

"Hang on," Tanya said as she leaped out of the passenger side of the truck. She left the door wide open, apparently ready for a quick escape. "I'll just check on my mom, and be right back."

"Are you sure you want to go alone?" Chris' tone didn't seem to be one of chivalrous concern, but a shared fear of what might by lurking behind the dirty brick facade of the insurance offices.

"I'll be fine," Tanya said with a happy-go-lucky smile. "Those things are far behind us, and you guys should stay with the truck and keep an eye out. You need to be ready to roll if they're following us. Besides, I think I can take care of myself. If I have to go all kung-fu on some zombies, I don't want you guys to be getting in the way."

Nobody disagreed, and Tanya hurried to the door of the office. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she slowly pushed the door open and glanced around. She looked back at her companions and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say that the path looked clear. She disappeared inside the building as the door slid shut behind her. All three boys kept a careful lookout as the seconds agonizingly crawled by. Jeremy's head continued to pound harder and harder, until his vision blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, hoping to clear out the rhythmic pulsing. When he opened his eyes, his entire body shook spasmodically, and suddenly his field of vision shifted; he was no longer outside the office building, but rather inside. He had only been inside the building once before, but he recognized the faded blue carpet, the cheap mass-produced abstract art hanging on the walls, and the dusty plastic plants that lined the hallways. Tanya was in the same hallway that he could see, walking towards him. He called her name, but his voice sounded hollow and distant. The distorted and confused reply, as hollow and distant as his own voice, came not from Tanya, but rather sounded more like Adam. Jeremy's confused utterance of her name rose to a scream as he saw a walking corpse shamble out of a door behind her. Tanya did not seem to notice it, but whirled around as he screamed.

With all the physical force of a punch to the head, Jeremy's field of vision flipped, twisted, and was suddenly back in the cargo bucket of Chris' truck. Chris and Adam were both staring at him, puzzled.

"Damnit!" Jeremy shouted as he leaped from the truck to the pavement. He meant to land gracefully and dash towards the office door. His intentions, however, were defeated by his own clumsiness as he landed awkwardly, twisted to try to regain his balance, and fell flat on his face. His ill-fated but noble effort was ultimately in vain - as he struggled to get back on his feet, Tanya charged through the closed door of the office building. It exploded outwards with terrific force, knocking the door off its hinges without even slowing her down. With the grace of an athlete, she bent down and picked up Jeremy with one hand, then leaped into the back of the truck.

"Go!" She shouted. A groaning zombie of a man, still dressed in stylish business-casual attire, stumbled into sight in the doorway. The telltale moans of more undead could be heard from behind him. Like moths drawn to a flame, more undead appeared, as if from nowhere. They slowly poured in from the lanes between the office buildings, and the group was surrounded by dozens of walking corpses before they even knew what was happening.

“Go!” Adam shouted.

Chris gunned the engine and the truck roared into gear. He plowed through a crowd of nearly a dozen undead; their fists clunked hollowly against the side panels of the truck as it roared through them, and the vehicle bounced and jostled as several of the creatures were knocked to the ground under the truck's wheels. All three of the passengers in the back of the truck crouched down and held tight to the side of the vehicle. After a tense moment, the truck cleared the crowd of zombies, tires squealing as it tore into the northbound lane of a street heading away from the cluster of office buildings. Jeremy looked up to see the creatures giving chase as best they could, given their slow movement and limited mobility.

He scanned the nearby area, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon to slow or stop the oncoming mob. Parked in the bar's parking lot was a gasoline tanker; he presumed that its driver was amongst the crowd which gave chase to them. He reached into his pockets, desperate for anything he could find to fulfill the devious plan that burst into his mind. He pulled a pair of dimes out of the pocket and smiled.

"Stop the truck," he shouted at Chris. Although he hadn't expected Chris to comply, the truck dutifully screeched to a stop only a hundred meters from the tanker truck. "Hold on," he muttered to everyone.

As the zombies shambled closer to the tanker truck, Jeremy concentrated on the pair of dimes. Both rose out of his hand and hovered; the first streaked away with incredible speed, propelled towards the tanker truck with all of the mental might that Jeremy could summon. The coin struck the truck's massive fuel tank, tearing through it as if it was made of paper. A large stream of gasoline poured out of the hole and onto the ground. By this point, most of the zombies had reached the tanker truck and were headed towards the pickup in the middle of the road. The second dime streaked through the air, striking the pavement with terrific force. The strike caused a spark to jump from the pavement which immediately ignited the rapidly growing puddle of gasoline that was forming beside the tanker. This was followed by a powerful shock wave and incredible roar as the flame reached into the tank of gasoline and ignited its contents. The explosion was like nothing Jeremy had ever seen before - he was knocked to his back by its sheer force, and the sound of the shock wave shattering windows filled the air. In the wake of his shock at the explosion, Chris slammed his foot onto the accelerator. The truck tore away from the scene as the remnants of the shock wave tore through the crowded office buildings. Wood and stone flew through the air, whizzing past the speeding truck, and although smoke from the blast obscured the air, the sound of a building crashing down could be heard. For the first time in his life, Jeremy cried out in true celebration. The rising flames and smoke, the acrid smell in the air, and the tiny pieces of zombie flesh and bone that flew everywhere were emotionally freeing in a way that he couldn't even pretend to understand in the heat of the moment. As Chris finally realized just what had happened, the truck screeched to a halt again. There was no sign of any movement from the distant cloud of smoke and flames. Chris' door swung open and he stepped out of the truck so that he could face the chaos behind them. The passengers in the back of the truck all leaped out, and everyone stood staring quietly at the destruction they had wrought.

"That was..." Tanya's voice trailed off. She didn't quite know what to say.

"Beautiful," Jeremy finished her sentence, although the awkward look on her face indicated that she didn't quite agree with his assessment of the situation.

"It was something, that's for sure," Adam said. He sounded bewildered and astonished, but thrilled to have seen what he'd seen. “If this was a movie, I’d be making fun of the direction right now for trying to pull off something so absurd.”

“Fortunately,” Jeremy said, “this isn’t a movie. That truck wasn’t a prop, and those zombies weren’t extras. Let's not start getting overconfident.”

"It was effective," Chris said, unable to think of anything more profound to say. "But what do we do now?"

"As much as I didn't want to come this way," Jeremy said, "I think it may be just what we needed." He gestured to a store at the side of the road. Jack's Hunting and Sporting Goods , the sign read. It was a popular place for hunters to pick up any supplies they needed for hunting season, from rifles to ammunition to camping supplies. Jack Osler, the proprietor, was also notorious for being slightly off balance mentally. In particular, the “Sporting Goods” portion of his store name was a running joke in the town - aside from a token few baseball gloves tossed in a corner to maintain his licensing as a sporting goods store, the entire shop was always packed with guns and ammunition. The rumours of his "special stock", hidden boxes of exotic and not-entirely-legal merchandise which were always kept just out of sight, were legendary. Jack's paranoia often lead to rants about doomsday, and his plans for surviving the inevitable. Although Jeremy didn't think that this was quite what Jack had in mind, if anyone was likely to have survived to help them, it was him.

"I don't think that's a good place to go," Tanya said. She sounded nervous, as if repeating a parental caution that had been ground into her head over and over until it was repeated by rote instinct.

"I don't think there's anywhere else we can go," Jeremy replied. "At best, old Jack has hidden himself away in there with a stack of guns at can help protect us. At worst, he's been killed and we can help ourselves his merchandise. I don't think anyone could disagree that regardless of how widespread they actually are, the dead have risen and are hunting us down. You and I seem to have developed some kind of superpowers - I don't know how, and I don't know why. All I know is that whatever the reason, it won't hurt for us to be carrying a little extra protection."

"Do any of you even know how to use a gun?" Chris chimed in.

"How hard can it be?" Adam asked. "Just point and click, right?"

"Point and click? It's not a damn computer game," Chris said with a mixture of disbelief and amusement. He paused to reflect upon their situation, then continued. "I don't think I trust any of you with anything more dangerous than a pointy stick. However, since some of you seem to be goddamned superhumans now, I don't think I really have a choice in the matter. Jeremy's right - if we're going to stand the best possible chance of keeping ourselves alive, this is the way to do it."

"Let's go," Jeremy said, jumping up onto the median between lanes on the road. "And be careful - if he is alive, it wouldn't surprise me if he's set up some traps to take care of anything that gets too close. Move slow, and keep your eyes peeled."

***

The door of the hunting supply store swung open slowly, and the four teenagers carefully stepped into the cool, dark sales floor. Their approach had been slow and painstaking, and to their surprise (and mild disappointment), they had not encountered any sort of dangerous traps. It looked like nobody had stepped foot inside the shop all day - the lights were off, the door was locked, and the normally full coffee pot set on a table beside the door was empty. The lock had been a trivial matter to deal with - as nervous as she was about entering the shop, Tanya had no qualms about giving the door a stern whack with an open palm - the sheer force of her blow cracked the wooden door and pulverized the lock.

While their eyes adjusted to the darkness of the quiet store, Adam instinctively reached out and flipped the light switch on. The lights were so bright that they nearly blinded everyone; all of the group staggered around disoriented while they tried to adjust to the brilliant light. When their eyes finally adjusted to the light, they beheld the store in wonder. It was apparently untouched by the hordes of the undead outside, and offered some semblance of hope against the onslaught. The walls of the store were lined with weapons of all imaginable sizes and types; massive hunting rifles stood alongside tiny pistols and swords. Shelves filled the sales floor area, loaded up with tents, hunting vests, camping stoves, and more. They spread out, each picking various weapons off the wall racks and getting a feel for them. Chris settled on a hunting rifle with a massive scope attached. Adam lifted a pump-action shotgun from the wall of weapons, hefting it with a barely-suppressed grin. Jason settled on a small revolver, while Tanya found a pair of collapsible metal batons that she seemed to like. Jeremy was less decisive, pacing back and forth in front of one wall of guns until he finally picked up a massive semiautomatic pistol from the wall. He hefted it, squinted down its sights, and seemed satisfied. He set the pistol down on a shelf, and did the same thing with five other pisols.

"You going a little overboard there?" Chris seemed confused at the sheer amount of hardware which Jeremy was picking out. Jeremy didn't need to reply; he set his last pistol down on the shelf and closed his eyes. He concentrated, and the half-dozen pistols lifted into the air, forming a protective line in front of their master. Understanding dawned in his eyes, and Chris nodded his approval. "Carry on, then."

"We need ammunition," Jeremy said. "And the keys for the locks on these things." Locks had been placed on the triggers of all of the weapons; a safeguard against would-be robbers simply picking up a gun and loading it with their own bullets. He stepped behind the counter where the cash register stood and looked around. He rattled a locked file cabinet that rested behind the counter, but it held fast. Tanya saw what he was doing, and stepped in front of him. She grasped the handle of the cabinet and pulled; the file cabinet's lock made a popping sound as it snapped open, and the draw rolled out. The two sorted through the miscellaneous contents until Jeremy picked out and held up a ring of keys triumphantly. He tossed them to Chris, who began flipping through the keys one at a time, trying each on the gun locks. Adam and Jason busied themselves stacking other supplies near the exit; hunting knives, lanterns, freeze-dried rations, matches - everything that they could anticipate needing.

"Why are they doing that?" Tanya asked Jeremy as he looked around to find where the ammunition was stored.

"Night's going to be coming soon," Jeremy said. "When it does, we won't want to be in town.

"We need to get somewhere where we can see all of our surroundings, so we're not caught off guard the same way we were when we went looking for your mom. Best place to do that will be outside of town; keeps us away from areas where the population was concentrated before, so it's unlikely we'll even encounter any zombies. If we do, we'll have nice, clear shots at them, and plenty of room for an escape. Jackpot!" His exclamation marked his discovery of an unlocked back room where box upon box of ammunition were stacked. "Let's get this all out to the truck, and get out of here as soon as we can."

“Just like that?” Chris seemed surprised. “What about everyone else's families? What about other survivors?”

“What choice do we have? We tried finding Tanya's mom, and look what happened – we barely got out of there alive! Do you really think it's wise to be cruising around town right now on the off chance that someone else has actually managed to survive?”

“So we just give up on everyone?”

“No.” Tanya broke in to the conversation. “We aren't giving up on anybody.”

“But-” Jeremy spoke out.

“No buts,” she interrupted him. “We're not giving up on anybody, but we have to understand that there's only one way for us to help them, and that's for us to make sure that we stay alive.

“If anyone else is still alive – and as painful as it is to admit, the chances of that are pretty slim – then they're going to be doing the same thing. They'll be locked up and hidden away, or trying to find safe shelter. Running around blindly is just going to endanger both us and them.”

“My family is still out there,” Chris said, a hint of sadness creeping into his voice, lending an air of humanity that Jeremy had never seen him exhibit before. “My Mom...my Dad...my little brother. I can't -”

“You can,” Jeremy said, grasping Chris by the shoulders and looking into his eyes. “And you will. There are two possibilities here, Chris: either they're already dead, or they're trying to survive. Think about your Mom – do you think she'd approve of you risking your life, heading into almost certain death? You know what she'd want you to do – she'd want you to survive. You have to survive, at any cost. We all do.”

“I really hate it when you're right,” Chris said. “But I can't deny it when you are. Let's get going.”

***

Twilight was looming as the group set up camp in the middle of a farmer's field nearly two kilometers outside of town. Jeremy considered it to be the best possible choice of locations - harvest time had already come and gone, so the field was bare, allowing easy visibility in all directions. Chris' truck was ready to roll out at a moment's notice, and the nearest road, although coated in gravel and not the most pleasant to drive on, was sufficient to carry them to safety if required. During their looting of Jack's hunting shop, they had come across a pair of night-vision goggles, which would allow them to sleep in shifts, with whoever was awake being the eyes and ears keeping them safe. Although the freeze-dried rations they'd been able to scavenge did not look delicious, they were certainly more attractive than hunting through the grocery stores, with the risk of death lurking around every corner. They sat around a small campfire, warming themselves against the fall chill as they discussed their future.

"So what do we do now?" Tanya asked the question they were all wondering about. Tears leaked from her eyes as she spoke. "Our families...they're gone, or at least hiding the same way we are. There's nowhere in town that's safe for us right now. We don't know where these things came from, what they're doing, or when they'll leave."

"It may not be nice to think about," Jeremy said ominously. "But I think we need to consider the most likely reality of this situation. These 'things', as you call them, are zombies. Undead. Animated corpses. Ghouls. What they're doing is what movies, books, and folk tales about them have foretold them doing for centuries - they're slaughtering the living and feasting upon their bodies. We've seen that. We've also seen that those they kill come back as even more zombies. Barring them just vanishing as quickly as they appeared, I think we can conclude that their numbers will grow at an exponential rate until the entire human race has been extinguished, at which point they will shamble mindlessly over all of the earth, undying until our sun goes nova billions of years from now and wipes this miserable chunk of rock into oblivion."

"You want us to just give up and die, then?" Chris spat. "Maybe they outnumber us, and maybe their numbers will grow and grow and grow, but that doesn't mean I'm just going to surrender and become one of them. Besides, you two have some kind of goddamn superpowers. That's got to count for something - maybe those that they don't kill are going to grow stronger and stronger and fight them off. Hell, maybe I’ll get superpowers of my own."

"God help us all if that happens. Anyway, I don't deny that some weird things have happened to us," Jeremy said, staring at Tanya. Her gaze was downcast into the fire. "But that's not going to change much. I'm not planning on laying down and letting those things gnaw on me, but let's be realistic - if they haven't already succeeded in wiping out most of the human race, then they will soon. It may be hours, or days, or weeks, but there will be six and a half billion of those things wandering around soon enough. Think about those numbers. Six and a half billion. I like the idea of killing as many as I can, and if we pick our battles, with these crazy superpowers, I may be good for reducing a couple thousand walking corpses to dust. Hell, maybe I could do a couple of tens of thousands...I somehow doubt that we'll be able to take all of them on. Our best-case scenario right now is to just fight for survival. If we’re lucky, we may be able to do it in style, but look back at this afternoon - they’ve been one step ahead of us the entire time.

"If - and this is a big if - there are more people that can do the sort of things that Tanya and I can do, then maybe there's a fighting chance. Maybe some of us will survive until our old age. Maybe. Doesn't change the fact that we're facing the end of civilization as we know it, though."

A silence fell over the group. Nobody said anything, and nobody moved. They all stared reflectively into the fire, watching the flames lick and dance at their firewood. Aside from the gentle crackling of the flames, there was no sound at all.

Chapter 4

Day 4 - 02:45 CST

Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada

The quiet of the night was broken by the staccato crackling of gunfire in the distance. Adam, who had been assigned to be their lookout for that time of the night, was roused from sleep by the distant crackling. He leaped to his feet, gun at the ready, trying to shake off the grogginess of sleep. He shouted to rouse the others, hoping that none of them had been conscious to notice his inability to remain awake.

"Guys, wake, up," he said breathlessly, bending down to shake each one of them awake in turn.

The gunfire fell silent, but everyone begrudgingly shook off the veil of sleep and rose to their feet.

"What's going on?" Jeremy sounded dazed and confused, as if he was having trouble remembering that they were in the middle of an apocalyptic nightmare rather than blissfully sleeping a lazy night away in the comfort of their own homes.

"I don't know," Adam said as he flipped on an electric lantern. The pale flicker of the fluorescent bulb seemed brilliant in the pitch black prairie night. "It came from somewhere in town. The way I see it, either there's at least one more survivor back there, or the zombies have learned how to use guns."

"A survivor isn't all that unreasonable a possibility," Jeremy said thoughtfully. He shrugged his shoulders. "We made it out alive - no reason to think we're the only ones. The only question is whether we want to risk going back there to save them."

As if to punctuate Jeremy's point, several more gunshots echoed through the darkness.

"If they're still shooting, then whoever it is must be under attack," Tanya said. She rubbed her eyes sleepily. "We should help them. There's safety in numbers."

"That's the same principle that the zombies work under," Chris said with a morbid giggle. "The more of them there are, the safer they are. Should we really risk our necks for someone who might be dead before we even get there? Hell, even if we get there in time and save them, it's one more person to haul around with us. One more mouth to feed - frankly, what food we've got isn't going to last long as it is."

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Jason's face flushed bright red as he spoke. He wasn't normally a confrontational boy, but circumstances had a way of changing people. "This is Estevan. These people - these are our friends, our family, our community. We can't just leave them out to dry. We have to stick together if we're going to have any chance at all of keeping ourselves alive."

"Be careful what you wish for," Jeremy said. "Because we've already seen that our friends and family are amongst those monsters, too. Live long enough and you may have to put a bullet through the head of your closest loved ones." He paused. "But...I don't disagree. As dangerous as it is, and as unknown as the situation we'll be walking into is, those sounds - " he gesticulated towards the sounds of gunfire, "are the sounds of someone who has survived thus far. Someone armed. Someone with the potential to be a very valuable ally in the hours and days ahead of us. We've got to help them."

"That's a little mercenary," Tanya said with a resigned sigh. "You're both right, though - we owe it to whoever that is to try to help them out, and to try to survive together."

"I'll be damned if I'm going to stick my neck out for something like this," Chris spat defensively. He jangled his truck keys in front of his face. "And since I'm the one with the truck, looks like you all have a long walk if you want to get there."

Jeremy smiled peacefully. His body was already energized with the constant harmonic pounding which seemed to foreshadow his ability to manifest a telekinetic limb. Sure enough, he outstretched his hand towards Chris, and a frigid tendril burst from the palm of his hand and effortlessly snatched the keys which Chris dangled mockingly. With the speed of a tape measure sliding back into its housing, the translucent tendril retracted and dropped the keys into Jeremy's hand in the blink of an eye. Tanya had to fight to stifle her laughter.

"Since we're the ones with the keys, you're going to have to either come with us, or be stuck in the middle of nowhere with the threat of the undead looming all around you." Jeremy's tone was acerbic.

"Safety in numbers, eh?" As quickly as it had surfaced, Chris' attitude vanished. "I suppose there's something to be said for helping out our neighbours."

"Glad you see it that way," Jeremy said. He tossed the keys back to Chris. "It's your truck. You may as well drive. I trust that I won't have to take over the steering wheel halfway there."

Chris nodded. "It'll be fine. I'll get us where we need to be. Just make sure you're all ready with your triggers. If we drive right into the middle of a gigantic undead cluster-fuck, I'd like to know that someone other than me has their eyes open."

Jeremy patted the pistols at his side and winked. Everyone clambered into their positions in the vehicle - Tanya took the passenger seat, batons held at the ready dangling between her knees. Adam and Jason sat on either side of the truck's cargo box, holding their firearms at the ready. Jason's pistol seemed tiny in comparison to Adam’s massive shotgun, but despite the difference in firepower and instead of being overwhelmed by their situation, the young boy seemed ready, almost eager, to face the undead again. Jeremy sat cross-legged on the roof of the truck's cab; thin silvery-white threads of force extruded from his arms and legs, securing him tightly against the surface.

The truck's engine roared to life, and its wheels spun frantically in the loose soil of the field as Chris slammed his foot on the gas pedal. As it finally gained traction, the vehicle surged forward onto the gravel road. Adam and Jeremy struggled to retain their seating as the vehicle lurched forward and fishtailed in a barely-controlled line. Jeremy didn't even budge - the force which held him down seemed stronger even than the truck itself.

The ride into the outskirts of town was short and uneventful; as they entered the town limits and passed their high school, all of the group were wary. Chris slowed the truck down to little more than a crawl as they all kept their eyes wide open for the source of the gunfire. The crackling and popping bursts had become less frequent, but could still be heard to the south. Satisfied that whatever creatures had been trapped in the school earlier in the day had not found their way outside, Chris accelerated down King Street, a long, smooth, flat straightaway lit in the bright yellow-orange glow of streetlights. A blazing fire could be seen at the end of the street, accompanied by the occasional white flash of muzzle flare. Adam and Jason held their weapons at the ready; even Chris reached for the pistol in the middle of the bench seating. The fire that blazed came from the hood of a large Jeep; flanking on either side of the vehicle were two men dressed in the green battle fatigues of the Army. Their assault rifles were at the ready, pointed at the truck as it approached. At least two dozen corpses of rotten desecrated bodies littered the ground at varying distances from the Jeep.

"Drop your weapons," the closer of the two soldiers yelled. "Step out of the vehicle."

The second soldier did not budge from his position, holding his rifle at the ready on the other side of the Jeep, scanning all around for any sign of movement. The five youngsters did as they were instructed, reluctantly setting down their weapons and stepping out of the truck. Jeremy set two of his pistols down on the roof of the truck and jumped down carefully, trying not to let his t-shirt slip up high enough to reveal the other four pistols holstered beneath. All five of them held their hands up as the soldier approached them. The flickering flames from the Jeep danced and leaped, revealing a man in his mid-40s who had obviously not shaved for days. His eyes were narrow slits as he approached; the glint in his eye did nothing to reassure anyone of his intentions. He stopped in front of Chris, standing so close that they were nearly touching. He stared into Chris' eyes as if he was a prize fighter sizing up his opponent. He moved from Chris to Jeremy, then to Adam, then Jason, and finally stopped in front of Tanya. He licked his lips lasciviously.

"Look at what we've got here," he said with a throaty laugh. "Just when I was starting to think I'd never see a live piece of ass again." He reached up and brushed aside a lock of Tanya's hair with one greasy finger. She recoiled in disgust, and the soldier snarled and took a step backward. He levelled his assault rifle at Tanya's head. When he spoke, the agitation in his voice brought out a latent maritime accent. "Now you listen here, Missy. I don't know if you've been paying attention lately, but this place is going to hell in a hand-basket, and ye don't want to be insultin' the ones that are keepin' ye alive. I don't think ye need me to be repeatin' myself when I say that you're going to keep myself and Private Jameson happy," he inclined his head towards the other soldier and simultaneously grabbed his crotch to emphasize just what sort of happiness he was looking for. "If you cooperate, you and your friends might even live long enough to see some sort of order restored to this hellhole. Now be a good lass and take off those clothes."

Whether it was the adrenaline pumping through his veins, or whether he'd simply forgotten that Tanya was more than capable of defending herself against unwanted advances, Jason leaped forward to play the part of the white knight defending a maiden's virtue. He grabbed at the soldier's rifle, but the soldier moved far too quickly for him. A combat boot met Jason's midsection, knocking the small teen flat on his back. Shock and horror couldn't even register with any of the other captives before the soldier raised his rifle to the ready, and let loose a small burst at Jason. The rounds struck their target, tearing open a massive hole in the side of Jason's head; his lifeless body dropped to the ground. Jeremy dropped to one knee beside his friend, grasping at the lifeless body in shock. Time seemed to slow down, and he heard the soldier's echoing laughter in between heavy, pounding pulses of pressure that thudded furiously against his skull.

"Didn't I warn you? Did the little son of a bitch think he was actually going to do something?" The second soldier joined the first in a hyena-like howl of laughter, the sort of laughter one normally expects from madmen. Time stopped for Jeremy. He rose to his feet and screamed furiously. This time it was the soldier caught unaware; he tried to raise his rifle at Jeremy, but his movements seemed impossibly slow. The force of Jeremy's scream erupted into a shock wave that rolled outwards in all directions; at the epicenter, he was unmoved, but the force of the shock wave knocked everyone nearby to the ground. Two silvery appendages of pure mental force erupted from Jeremy's hands and lashed forth to grasp the pair of soldiers. Each appendage moved swiftly, and with terrific force lifted its soldier into the air, then smashed him repeatedly against the ground. Even through the temporary damage that the shock wave had dealt to their ears, the group could hear the telltale cracking and snapping of bones being crushed into submission. Droplets of blood danced through the dank air, carpeting them with crimson stains that echoed the carnage that was being wrought. Splinters of bone severed skin, shearing outward and shredding the bodies in a horrific hail held helplessly suspended by his telekinetic field.

When he was finally satisfied that the bloodied and broken bodies of the soldiers had no life left in them, Jeremy waved his hand and dismissed his telekinetic appendages. The bodies of the soldiers crashed to the ground unceremoniously. He knelt at Jason's side again, for the first time showing signs of worry and fear. The lifeless body was all too real, a sight that pierced him deeper than anything he'd seen so far – more than the betrayal he felt at being assaulted by alleged agents of the governent, more than seeing the corpses of the city's residents rising from the dead, and even more than the notion that his family members were almost certainly among them. This was real, solid and substantial. Tears slowly rolled down his face as he fought to come to grips with the death of his friend.

"I am sorry, my friend," he whispered to the body in front of him. "You deserved better than this."

"All of us do," Tanya said sadly. Although she hadn't been a close friend of either Jeremy or Jason, she seemed to be hit hard by his death. “Is he...is he going to come back? Tell me he's not going to become one of them.”

“I can't say for certain,” Jeremy said sadly. “I don't think so. Everything I've ever known or heard about zombies says that damaging the brain is the key to stopping them, and he's been shot in the head.”

"I can't believe that we even have to ask questions like that. It's one thing to know that some sort of evil has been unleashed on earth that's bent on our destruction. That's simple - we can run from that, we can fight that, we can hide from that. But this...killed by fellow human beings? How do we fight it when our destruction comes from our own kind?"

"There's no avoiding it," Jeremy said as he rose to his feet. "Power has always corrupted humans, and with society falling down around our very ears, there's no question that whoever is left with any sort of power is going to become very corrupt. That goes for both of us, too."

"So what's our choice? Get torn apart by ravenous hordes of hell-spawn or watch ourselves betray our own humanity and defile everything we should hold sacred? If that's what's going to happen, I'd almost rather take the easy way out."

"No you wouldn't," he said with a soft finality. "You want to believe that we're all good and kind at heart, and that we have some sort of soul that's going to prevent us from stooping to horrific depths.

"I know you don't want to hear this, but we don't. We're just animals - what you just saw is definitive proof of that."

"You don't even know me," Tanya's voice rose an octave as she turned on Jeremy. "Just because I think that people have hearts and souls that they can dedicate to a higher purpose doesn't mean I don't realize that those same hearts and souls can be soiled by Satan and twisted into forms that make us no better than these things that are overrunning us!"

"Can we not have a theology debate right now?" Adam broke his silence for the first time since they'd left their camp. "A friend of mine - a friend of ours - is dead. Does it matter whether he was killed by zombies or men? Does it matter if they were motivated by hate and fear, or controlled by some supernatural entity? He's dead, and he's not coming back. This is real, guys. We'd better accept that, and find a way to keep our heads in this. We need to do it for Jason, and for ourselves."

"Adam's right," Chris chimed in. "I didn't know him really well. Hell, I didn't even like him very much. That doesn't matter, though - he was a good guy in his own way, and there's no excuse for members of our military - the people we trust to rescue us and keep us safe - to have done this to him. I don't know if we can trust anyone besides ourselves anymore. I do know that I trust all of you with my life right now. Even if I thought I'd have a chance of making it to safety somewhere without you guys, I don't think I'd try. We've got to stick together, and that means no fighting. And no offense, but if anyone needs to fight, I'd rather it not be the two of us that seem to have developed superhuman powers. That makes me a little nervous. Well, more nervous that I already am, having seen my entire life crumble to pieces in a little less than 24 hours."

"I never thought I'd say this to you," Jeremy said with a ghost of a smile, "but well said. I'm sorry, Tanya. I'm sure that there will come a time when we'll look back at this and finish this discussion, but now isn't the time."

"Agreed," she said with a reconciliatory nod. "But speaking of that, what should we do now? I don't know about you, but I'm not really looking forward to spending the rest of my life camped out in in fields in the middle of nowhere."

"I've got an idea," said Adam. He had been digging around in the open back of the Jeep, and held up a piece of paper he'd found. "Listen to this - primary directive is to rescue surviving civilians. No further infected specimens are required for study - eliminate these at all opportunities. All rescued survivors are to be rallied at base camp Majesty, downtown Regina."

"I guess that tells us we're not the only survivors," Chris said.

"Not only that, but the military is studying these things and that means there's a chance that they'll find a cure," Tanya exclaimed.

"I'm not that optimistic," Jeremy grunted. "Especially if these are any indication of the sort of high-calibre individuals they have rescuing others. However, this seems like the only reasonable chance for us. If we stick around here, the best we could hope for is to survive long enough that we die of exposure in the winter months. I don't think that any of us are particularly anxious to see that happen, so I say we head for Regina and see what we can find."

The other three all murmured their assent. As their voices faded, however, the quiet murmur they had created did not. Their hushed tones reverberated and echoed, seeming to dance and spin in all directions, growing in volume and pitch until it it buzzed like a nest of hornets in their ears. As the buzzing grew to a fevered pitch, the ground beneath their feet began to buckle and churn, and a new sound, the sound of groaning and splitting rock, joined in the chorus. The ground ripped and tore like a sheet of paper, tearing open a deep fissure. As the ground gave way, the group tumbled down to the bottom of the newly-opened fissure. In the violent tumult, Jeremy lost track of his companions as he tumbled, fell, twisted around, and was bounced along the steep downward slope of the new chasm. It seemed like an eternity before the earth's rumbling settled and he rolled to a standstill, no less than fifty feet below where he had started. He groaned and stared upwards through half-closed eyes; he wasn't quite sure if he could move in the aftermath of the chaos. What he saw was amazing - the chasm that had carved itself directly through King Street and beyond was not only deep, but the walls were steep and sheer. The angle they sloped at was high enough that he did not think he would be able to scale it, even assuming that none of his bones were broken. He couldn't feel any of the telltale sharp, stabbing pains that would normally indicate this, however, and believed that he was free from any major injuries. Minor injuries, however, abounded - even without moving a muscle, he could already feel bruises swelling up all over his body, and a thick, warm fluid dripped down from his temple.

Carefully pushing himself first to his knees and then to his feet, Jeremy stood with all the grace of a newborn deer. He steadied himself against the wreckage of the soldiers' Jeep, which had come crashing down only inches from where his head had landed. He gave silent thanks that he had landed where he did; otherwise he would have been little more than a crushed smear on the crevasse floor. Once he was satisfied that he was not going to tumble the ground again, he carefully surveyed the area around where he had landed. To his horror, he saw that Adam had not been so luck in the fall as he had; the rear end of the Jeep lay atop the upper half of his unmoving body. There was no sound or movement, and Jeremy knew without a doubt that his only remaining friend had perished in the fall. A solitary tear welled up in the corner of his left eye, clearing a trail down the dirt and soot encrusted mess that covered his face. He stared blankly at the corpse, not knowing how to react anymore. He was completely and utterly drained emotionally, knowing that he should feel pain and sadness, and deep down he did; the grief at seeing the fate of both Jeremy and Adam comingled, but his logical brain forced the emotions down, silencing them so that he could continue to function in some sort of meaningful way.

His other two companions seemed to have fared much better than either he or Adam had. Tanya stood up from where she had fallen, only a few dozen feet away. She appeared to be entirely uninjured, but she struggled to keep her footing amongst the loose rock and debris that dotted the uneven floor of the fissure. She quickly picked her way over to the Jeep and knelt down beside Adam's body. The Jeep shifted and moved as she pushed against it, lifting it off of Adam to reveal a body that was battered and crushed beyond nearly all recognition. She averted her gaze in horror and slowly walked to Jeremy, embracing him in an empathetic hug. Although comforted by the gesture, he found it difficult to not mention that what she undoubtedly perceived as a gentle hug carried enough force to push all of the air out of his lungs. That didn't matter to him, nor did his ragged attempts to regain his breath seem to register with Tanya as they found some small measure of comfort in each other's arms. Jeremy closed his eyes and rested his head against hers. The smell of lavender and vanilla perfume was faint, but still noticeable even after all they had already been through. For perhaps the first time in his life, his silence wasn't a result of biting his tongue to avoid castigating his peers, but because he was completely and truly speechless. In the space of only a few minutes, he had lost the only two close friends he'd really ever had. He was thankful for the comfort he found in Tanya's arms - without it, he couldn't imagine how he would react. The quiet moment was interrupted by Chris clearing his throat behind Jeremy.

"Hey, Jeremy," his voice faltered as he struggled to find any sort of words to convey feelings that he had never felt before this day. "That sucks, man. I'm sorry. I know I've always been a bit of a dick towards you guys, but I want you to know that I never wanted anything like this to ever happen. He was...well, he was a good guy."

Tanya and Jeremy released their grip on each other, and Jeremy turned his face to the sky. The orange-red streaks painted above them were beautiful and completely indifferent to the suffering that took place beneath their welcoming folds. He turned a thousand thoughts over in his mind, trying to think of how he should respond. Part of him wanted to scream at Chris, to somehow blame him for all that had happened, and to spread around the pain he was feeling. However, he swallowed those instincts, and when he spoke it was with a quiet conviction.

"We've all suffered great losses today. Just because I witnessed my two best friends die in front of me doesn't change the fact that we're all in this together. It also shouldn’t make your losses seem any less severe - you’ve both lost family and friends, and so have I, even if we haven’t actually seen the bodies yet. There's no time for grief now. We need to try to get ourselves to some sort of safety."

"I don't want to be the one to get all sciencey on you," Chris said. Even the word 'science' seemed ill at ease coming from his mouth. "But how the hell did this just happen? I thought this kind of thing could only happen during an earthquake, and we're as landlocked as you can get. Doesn't there need to be some kind of tectonic stuff going on to do this?"

"There are no fault lines here," Tanya said. "So yes, you're right that this shouldn't be possible. Of course, we've been under siege by the undead for the last day, so I think that we should probably realize that whatever we previously considered possible or impossible doesn't actually make a difference to what really is possible or impossible. In the grand scheme of things, the implausibility of walking corpses seems a little greater than an earthquake so far from where we’d normally expect to see one. I think we should consider that this is all part of the End of Days - the apocalypse."

"Don't cheapen this by making it part of some silly bronze-age superstition," Jeremy spat. "Whatever is happening has to have some sort of logical explanation. I'd lay my money on some countries going completely batshit insane and trying to stamp out the undead with nuclear weapons. Enough of that would cause all sorts of messed up geological phenomena, and could probably cause new fault lines to appear."

“Science doesn't have to explain everything,” Tanya was perplexed that Jeremy was trying so desperately to hang on to his rational beliefs. “Listen to what you're trying to say – it's perfectly normal to think that nuclear weapons are being deployed against the undead, but not that the undead are the harbingers of doom and destruction that could have a physical effect on the earth itself?”

“We also don't need to jump immediately to supernatural assumptions,” he said with a trace of a sneer. “There's no reason to believe that the zombies are anything more than the manifestations of some sort of virus or chemical mutation that's causing electrical activity to continue in a brain even after death. And yeah, I think it's more likely that military powers would resort to their most powerful weapons to stomp out that sort of a menace than it is to assume that some ridiculous backwards beliefs have any sort of basis in reality.”

"Whatever it is," Tanya said, trying to ignore Jeremy's attack on her deeply held beliefs, "we don't know, and we can't and won't know until we find somewhere that still has some means of contact with the rest of the world. We should get moving - this chasm leads north, which is where we're headed anyway. If we follow it far enough, it's got to eventually end, and we should be able to find a way to climb out of it."

The three cautiously set out along the floor of the chasm; as it proceeded northwest, it widened until it was wide enough for them to walk side by side. Most of the chasm was barren, having torn itself through an undeveloped field on the edge of town. They had been walking for nearly twenty minutes before they encountered their first obstacle - the earthquake had torn apart a conduit stuffed with underground power lines, and the severed cables still dangled out of the shattered conduit on either side of the chasm. Sparks sputtered and danced menacingly across the bare copper of the exposed wires. Jeremy cautiously stretched his hand towards the wires; he concentrated, and two thin silvery streams slipped forth from his fingers and pulled the wires safely to the side. He struggled to maintain his concentration on holding the wires at bay as the trio carefully stepped through the danger zone. When he was sure of their safety, Jeremy's concentration faltered, and the silvery strands vanished. The wires fell back into place, continuing to crackle viciously, but well out of the path of the three companions.

"So," Jeremy said, finally interrupting the silence of their march through the crevasse, "has anyone given any thought to what we're actually going to do if and when we manage to get out of this hole?"

"We're going to Regina," Chris said, sounding confused. "Right? I mean, the memo that we found back there..."

"Yes," Jeremy snapped harder than he'd intended to. "But how do we plan on getting there? In case you didn't notice, your truck and all of our supplies nearly came crashing down on our heads just now. "We're alone, mostly unarmed, and on foot; by all appearances, it seems that we are surrounded on all sides by ravenous hordes of the undead, and our nearest realistic possibility for sanctuary is over two hundred kilometers away. I don't want to be a pessimist, but this isn't exactly a winning situation."

“Mostly unarmed?” Chris said.

“Down to just two of these,” Jeremy pulled a pair of pistols from the waistband of his pants, where they’d successfully remained hidden from the soldiers. “I’d had more, but lost them in the scuffle. Still, it’s better than nothing.”

“Give me one,” Chris half-commanded, half-pleaded. “Please. You’ve got other ways of defending yourself - I’m not so lucky.”

“Fine,” Jeremy said, handing one of the pistols to Chris. He offered the other to Tanya, who gently pushed it away.

“Not my sort of thing,” she commented.

“Fair enough. So, what’s our plan?”

"We could steal a car," Tanya said. Her voice was flat and matter-of-fact.

"I never thought I'd hear those words coming from your lips," Jeremy said with a laugh. "It's probably our best hope, though. This hole we're in is headed in the direction of the mall; assuming that it ends somewhere between here and there, we may be able to find something in the parking lot. Any preferences for the route we take?"

"There's probably a better chance of finding survivors if we go northwest through Weyburn," Tanya said after a thoughtful pause. "More population equals better chance of survival."

"It also equals more potential zombies," Chris argued. "Not to mention more traffic that could be blocking the roads. It would be suicide to head up that way.

“If we head north through Stoughton and then on to Regina we should be able to skirt around the most heavily populated areas. There's nothing but open prairie and a few small towns in our way on that route."

"Agreed," Jeremy said. "We've seen how quickly Estevan was reduced to nothing more than a hive full of undead. The chances that Weyburn has fared any better are slim to none. We should be prepared for a fight no matter which way we go, but it's far less risky to go through Stoughton than Weyburn."

"Maybe," Tanya responded, "but don't forget that Weyburn has its own police force, and is more likely to have a detachment from this armed forces base searching for survivors. Even if there's a little more risk, we could be far more useful there helping protect survivors."

"Survivors are a hopeful myth right now," Jeremy said. "We need to face it: with every minute that passes, it becomes more likely that we're the only ones left alive between here and Regina. It's an incredibly remote chance that we'll find anyone alive out there, and I don't think we should be risking all of our lives on the faint hope that we won't be killed while looking for survivors."

"That's a very pessimistic way of looking at things," Tanya frowned. "Think of it like this - if there are survivors in Weyburn, and we take a different route, those survivors will have a dramatically lower chance of survival. They might even die. Do you want that on your conscience?"

"The same could be said of us going through Weyburn. If there are survivors in Stoughton and we take another route, their chance of survival is dramatically lower, and they might die. It's a toss-up."

"I think we should pray for guidance," Tanya's voice quivered as she spoke. Tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes as she realized that wherever they went, carnage was sure to have already arrived.

"Or we could spend our time doing something useful," Jeremy said bitterly, "like getting out of here. Look, there's our way out."

He pointed up ahead, where an end to the chasm that they were traversing was indeed in sight. It narrowed over the course of several dozen meters until it would only accommodate a single person, and sloped gently upwards. It met ground level at the corner of the town's only shopping mall; it appeared as if the quake that had created the chasm had also torn the corner of one of the largest sections of the mall, a large grocery store that had once served the entire town. The slope of the chasm's edge led directly up and inside the store, and there was no apparent way to circumnavigate the building. Jeremy grimaced - making his way through any sort of enclosed space was exactly what he'd been hoping to avoid.

“Looks like we don't have any choice," Chris said. "Up and in. Maybe it'll be quieter in there than everywhere else."

"That doesn't seem likely," Jeremy replied. "But you're right - unless we want to spend hours trying to scale the walls of this damn hole, and that's as likely to draw attention to ourselves as making our way through there. All we can do is be quick and quiet - and don't stop for anything."

Both boys looked at Tanya, but she could only shrug in resigned agreement. The weight of being the potential saviour of her fellow man was not proving easy to accept. Resigned to their fate, Chris took the lead and slowly and carefully ascended through the shattered floor of the grocery store. Tanya followed right behind him, and Jeremy took up the rear. Both Chris and Jeremy drew their pistols as they ascended through the floor, keeping the weapons trained on the space beyond.

The slope which they ascended rose into what had once been a baked goods aisle; shelves and loaves of bread were scattered all over. The fluorescent lights above their head were continually flickering and strobing as they desperately attempted to maintain their lighting in the face of what Jeremy could only assume was extensive damage to the electrical systems in the store. Although he comforted himself with the assumption that the flickering lights were a result of entirely natural damage from the quake, the strobing effect did nothing at all to calm his fears about what dangers the store might hold. When Jeremy finally pulled himself entirely into the store and rose to his feet, the group stood in silence for what felt like an eternity. Nothing could be seen from their vantage point aside from overturned shelves, and large racks of foodstuffs which obscured any further insight into what lay beyond. Nothing could be heard except for the unpredictable chittering of the flickering fluorescent overhead.

Jeremy cautiously stepped forward, skirting around the upturned shelves and brushing aside loaves of bread with his foot. He tried to move silently, fearing what might be hiding in the depths of the store. Chris and Tanya followed directly behind him, mimicking his every step. It seemed to take an eternity to cover the twenty feet from where they had ascended into the building to the nearest upright shelf. Edging his way along it to the end of the shelf, Jeremy risked a brief peek around the corner. The flickering and buzzing of the fluorescent lights created a strobing effect that briefly illuminated the long stretch of the meat section. A short, fat zombie stood over one of the refrigeration shelves, holding a large cut of red meat which it bit into and tore a large chunk from. The creature chewed once, spat the meat out, and tore another chunk from the hunk of meat in its hands. Startled, Jeremy leaped back. His left foot landed on a bag of bread and slipped. In an effort to keep himself from falling over, his arms flailed outward and grabbed on to the first thing they found - in this case, it just happened to be Chris' arm. Jeremy's vision blurred and faded away as his pulse pounded in his ears, and the world faded to darkness.

A terrifying vision filled Jeremy's consciousness as his perspective rapidly shifted, moving out of his body with terrific speed. He saw himself grasping desperately to Chris' arm, trying not to fall or make any news that might alert the nearby zombie to his presence. His field of vision expanded to a 360 degree view of the entire grocery store, swooping past the meat-eating zombie and down a maze of aisles, past empty checkout lanes and into the mall beyond. Although there was only a single zombie to be seen in the grocery store, he saw dozens of them slowly shambling through the wide central corridor of the mall. All were covered in blood and dishevelled, but obviously very recently dead. As his consciousness swooped through the corridor and back towards the grocery store, he realized that this crowd was composed of citizens of the city, obviously struck unaware by an attack, probably at the same time as the school had been.

Many of the mangled walking corpses that he saw were recognizable as students at his school; it was no great mystery to anyone that the mall was a common place for students ducking out of classes to hide out. Given how small Estevan was, and how utterly devoid it was of anything resembling culture or entertainment, the default behaviour of most citizens seemed to fall back into the comfortable habits of mindless consumption. It was no small irony that their overreliance upon that mindless consumption had doomed them to a potential eternity engaged in more mindless consumption – to be sure, the exchange of violence for human flesh might seem different on the surface from the exchange of money for goods and services, but the behaviour, the mindless need for ever-increasing quantities of stuff, was always the same. The difference between most of the glassy-eyed mindless shamblers in the corridors now compared to the same glassy-eyed mindless shamblers in the corridors last week was merely in the state of their clothing and pulse. It was with a deep-seated dread that Jeremy realized that the one whose position in the world had changed most was him – no longer part of that mass of humanity, mindlessly mobbing entertainment venues and shops, he had now become a product of his very own, a tasty meat-snack which the zombies would eagerly seek out and consume with the same mindless abandon which they had destroyed each other.

Jeremy's consciousness snapped back into his body with enough physical force to knock himself backwards; even with Chris holding on to his arm, he tripped and fell backwards. As he landed on his back, his foot kicked out and knocked over a can of soup from the shelf. It fell to the floor with a clank that seemed as loud as a gunshot. He cursed under his breath as he scrambled to his feet, but it was too late - the telltale groan and shuffling footsteps from beyond the end of the aisle were unmistakable signs that his clumsiness had been heard. He outstretched his left hand and pointed at the can, focusing on it with the intent of lifting it into the air. It seemed fitting that he use the same instrument that had revealed his presence to end the unlife of the zombie that was stalking towards them. However, he found for the first time since they had begun their fight against the zombies that his mental prowess failed him; the can did not budge a single inch. He shook his head and tried to clear his mind, focusing on the can again. His concentration was in vain, however, and the can remained in place.

While Jeremy was trying to recover and turn foodstuffs into improvised weaponry, Chris looked around the corner, still having no idea of the danger that lay beyond it. As his head poked out to see what could be coming, he discovered too late that his curiosity should have been tempered by caution. The zombie, now nearly around the corner, slammed its fists mindlessly into Chris' head. It groaned as Chris reeled from the force of the blow, dropping his gun in the process. The fat zombie managed to wrap its fingers around a lock of Chris' hair and pulled him in close towards its wide open mouth and red-stained teeth. It bit down with enough force to crush and tear apart the skull of the teenager, unleashing a spray of blood that spattered onto Jeremy's back, and Tanya's shirt. She screamed and clawed at the shelf beside her, trying to get her hands on anything solid enough to throw at the creature. When she finally had grasped a tin of soup from the shelf, the zombie had already torn through Chris' skull and was reaching inside with grubby and ragged fingers, tearing out pieces of brain tissue and stuffing them greedily into its mouth. Its appetite was so voracious that it bit off the tip of one of its own fingers as it chomped on the grey tissue that it fed itself. Tanya flung the can at the creature with all her might; the force of the impact tore through flesh and bone, opening up a soup can-sized hole in the zombie's neck. Vertebrae snapped, and the creature's head flopped towards the ground, attached only by thin slivers of decaying skin on either side of the gaping hole. This skin proved insufficient for supporting the weight of the creature's head under the momentum of the falling head, and the skin tore apart, causing the head to drop unceremoniously to the ground. Both Chris's body and the remnants of the zombie's body fell on top of the head in a sloppy dog-pile of blood, viscera, and decaying flesh.

"Damnit," Jeremy muttered, witnessing the last of the carnage as he finally realized what was happening and turned his attention away from his attempts to exert his mental power over the fallen can. Finally remembering the weapon at his side, he lifted it to the ready. "We've got to move, now."

“It just..." Tanya seemed at a loss for words. "It came out of nowhere."

"Yes," Jeremy said, his pitch rising in panic, "and there are more of them that are going to have heard that commotion and be coming our way. Lots more."

"How do you know?" The shock of the situation finally seemed to have set in for Tanya, and she didn't seem as if she was quite sure whether he should believe Jeremy or not.

"I'll explain later," he said as he gently grasped her forearm and tugged her towards the exit. "For now, we have to move. I don't know what's happening, but I can't seem to actually do anything telekinetically right now, and I happen to know that there are a lot of goddamned zombies in the mall which would be more than happy to catch the two of us in an enclosed space without the chance to defend ourselves."

Both Jeremy and Tanya carefully stepped around Chris' corpse, moving as quickly and quietly as they could towards the exit. They passed through the meat aisle and through the produce section, and the glowing red exit sign was in sight. The grocery store's exit would take them out into the mall corridor, right beside the exit to the mall itself. The entire wall of the grocery store facing the mall entrance was glass, providing what would have been a pleasant view of other shoppers on a normal day. That was not the case as the pair rushed towards the exit, however, as they could see slow-moving shapes shambling through the dimly lit corridor and towards them. Jeremy reached the exit first, barely slowing enough to actually open the door instead of slamming into it, and he held it open as he ushered Tanya through.

Thankfully, he thought, these creatures don't move very quickly. If they were any faster, we'd be dead already.

As they forced their way through the mall exit, they could hear the groaning and shuffling of the undead mere meters behind them. They bolted out into the dazzling daylight in a full sprint to the parking lot. Jeremy's years of sitting in front of a keyboard rather than on a track field caught up to him, and he was forced to slow to a slow trot to catch his breath. He cast a hurried look behind him to ensure that their pursuers were far enough behind that he would not be endangering his own life to catch his breath. His glance satisfied him that only a few of the zombies had even staggered out of the mall's front door, and they were far enough away that they would be unlikely to catch them. The brief exaltation he felt at this realization melted away as his conscious mind finally caught up to his subconscious, and he stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around to look at the zombies again. He pointed his pistol at them and squeezed the trigger. The weapon discharged with a loud pop . Having never fired a pistol before, he was utterly unprepared for the recoil of the weapon’s discharge; that didn’t stop him from pulling the trigger over and over again, firing wildly at the slowly advancing crowd. He saw one of the lead zombies fall to the ground, although he wasn’t sure if it had been killed by a lucky shot, or if it was simply knocked to the ground by the zombies behind it.

He closed his eyes, letting the adrenaline rush take over enough for him to focus on the situation. As he opened his eyes, his heart dropped to the bottom of his chest as he stared aghast at the closest of the creatures. Although covered in blood and dirt with torn clothes, there was no mistaking it for anything other than the reanimated corpse of his own sister. Her neck had been torn open, and bloodied cords of muscle and nerves hung raggedly out of the wound. Blood had spurted forth from the site of the injury to soak her clothing, and her once-vibrant skin was now pale and grey. Her lifeless eyes beheld him merely as prey, with no sign of recognition or love, and certainly none of mercy. Aghast and bewildered, he tried to will his legs into motion, to forcibly propel himself away from the horrid sight, but found that matter could not overcome mind, and the force of his horror held him rooted to the spot. In her eyes – those pallid dry eyes, covered in a thin milky film that did nothing to diminish the hunger coming from deep within – he saw only death; not just her death, but that of his family, his friends, and himself. Those eyes were windows into a cold, soulless future where mankind marched in lockstep with hungers that overrode any trace of humanity that may have remained inside. They spoke of a universe which stood, uncaring, as human civilization ground to a halt and crumbled.

"Come on," he heard Tanya's voice as if it were a recording being played back in slow-motion. A gentle breeze which had been ruffling his hair seemed to pause, as did a plastic grocery bag carried by its current, frozen in midair. Time stopped, but Jeremy's heart beat on, faster and faster as he fought with the realization that for the first time the events of the last several days were truly sinking in. He wanted to bolt, to run as far and as fast as he could, but his feet were frozen to the ground, as unmoving as everything else in that frozen scene. Summoning his final reserves of courage from the very depths of his soul, he realized that he could not leave his sister in such a state, doomed to shamble endlessly until...well, until she stopped, whenever that might be. Although she had died, she was not at rest, and that was a favour within his power to grant. His conscious mind stepped aside, allowing his instincts to run rampant and control his actions.

The air around Jeremy's body crackled and sizzled, and he felt himself hefted up into the air as if by an invisible hand of force. Floating no less than two full stories off the ground, he raised his hands to the sky, then brought them down to point at the mall entrance, as if he was dashing a large object against the pavement below. The deafening roar of thunder accompanied an instantaneous flash of brilliant bluish-white energy from the sky. The bolt of lightning slammed into the pavement, which shattered outward, radiating from the source of the strike into the very foundations of the mall itself.

***

The building shivered and shook, then collapsed into its own footprint, raining down dust and debris upon the parking lot. The detritus crushed the zombies which had made it out of the mall entrance, and mercifully, hid Jeremy's sister from his sight as it did so. As the cacophony echoed and faded, he slowly sunk down to the ground until he was gently deposited upon terra firma once again. As the invisible force which had guided him upwards released its grip upon him, Jeremy's muscles gave way and he lost consciousness.

When the world came back into sight, everything was blurry, indistinct, and painful. Jeremy blinked twice, trying to focus his eyes in the harsh sunlight. Despite the pain, he moved his head from side to side, trying to fixate upon any sort of landmark which might indicate where he was. He only vaguely recollected the incident at the mall, and wasn't entirely sure if it had actually happened or had only been a daydream. Half-expecting the latter but unable to find any kind of useful visual indicators while laying prone, he carefully pushed himself into a sitting position. As his gaze levelled at the area around him, he saw that he was surrounded by row upon row of shiny new cars; a large dealership building stood not far away, built of gleaming glass and steel, somehow seeming both cheerful and imposing at the same time. He held his head and groaned as he rose to his feet. He staggered from side to side as he tried to keep his balance, and was only partially successful; fortunately, the bumper of a large SUV broke his fall and held him mostly upright.

"Shhhh," Tanya's voice echoed from inside the SUV. "I don't think there are any of those things around here, but we shouldn't draw more attention to ourselves. I don't want a repeat of the mall incident happening here."

"So it wasn't just a dream, eh?" Although disappointed, Jeremy was not surprised. The ephemeral memory which circled through his mind of the events at the mall seemed much too surreal to have been anything but reality, given the events of the last several days.

"That depends," Tanya's voice said, and Jeremy heard a hint of a smile even though his companion was nowhere to be seen. "Were you dreaming that you were on a tropical island, surrounded by scantily-clad busty women?"

"Nothing as pleasant as that," Jeremy said with a forced chuckle. "Although if that's what you're interested in, I'm sure we could find you something a little more revealing to wear."

"Don't push your luck," she said, in a tone that Jeremy would normally ascribe to flirtatiousness if it weren't for the circumstances.

"Where are you?" He walked around to the open driver's side door, carefully supporting himself with one hand on the hood of the vehicle. He could see her legs dangling out underneath the bottom of the door, and as he closed in, he could see her laying on the driver's side floor, fiddling with a mass of wires above her head. "What are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious? We need a vehicle," she said sheepishly. "I thought I could hot-wire something. I see it in movies all the time...green wire goes to red wire...or red goes to yellow...or something like that. Turns out, it's a little harder than they let on. I have no idea what I'm doing. I just didn't want to sit around doing nothing."

"I see," Jeremy remarked. "But...wouldn't it be easier to just find some keys? This is a dealership...they've got to be somewhere."

"I'm a little shy about going into an enclosed space after...well, you know."

"Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Jeremy was impressed by the genuine concern in her voice. Nobody had ever shown him that sort of worry before, and certainly not an attractive girl. “I mean...I saw her there, you know.”

"I...no," Jeremy cast his gaze at the ground between his feet. "Soon, maybe. I just need some time to sort out what's going on."

"Don't take too long," she said with a suddenly wistful smile. "At the rate things are going, you won't have anyone to talk to soon. Or I won't have anyone to listen to, depending on how things work out."

Not wanting to acknowledge the truth of what she said, Jeremy strode over to a large picture window in the front of the dealership. He cupped his hands on either side of his head and gazed inside, trying to see exactly where the keys might be stored. A small metal box mounted behind the receptionist's desk caught his eye, and he stepped back. He closed his eyes and stretched his hands toward the box, trying to summon the energy that he had been unable to summon back in the grocery store. This time was more successful, and the small metal box rattled and shook on its wall mount, then tore itself away from the anchors that held it in place and flew towards Jeremy. It shattered the plate glass window and sailed on through, bouncing to a stop at his feet.

"Subtle," Tanya called out to him. Jeremy shrugged his shoulders with an impish grin. "Next time, did you want to just use a grenade? That might be a little quieter."

Making a show of waving his hands to dismiss the criticism, he bent down and picked up the first key that had fallen out of the box. There was no obvious label or indication of what vehicle the key was for, but a small red panic button on the edge of the key brought a smile to his face. He pushed the button.

A whooping, honking alarm sounded only a few cars down from the SUV where Tanya sat, having given up on her attempts to hot-wire the vehicle. She jumped out of the seat with a surprised yelp.

"What was that?" She couldn't quite control the volume of her voice.

"Our ride," he said, gesturing towards a bright green sports car and silencing its alarm with another push of the panic button.

"Green doesn't seem like your colour," Tanya said, gently nudging Jeremy's arm. Her gentle nudge nearly knocked him off his feet, but he recovered quickly enough that she didn't notice.

"Any port in a storm," he said. He slipped into the driver's seat and began fiddling with knobs and dials.

"It's not that I want to interrupt your careful adjustment of your mirrors," Tanya said, "but I think you should keep two words in mind: zombie invasion. Maybe we should be focusing more on getting out of here, and less on whether your mirrors are perfect, or the climate control is set to your specifications?"

"You're the boss," Jeremy said with a sheepish smile. A nagging part of his conscience tried to tell him that it was wrong to be smiling and joking when he had just witnessed the death of many of the people he had been closest to, but he found himself oddly drawn to Tanya. Although he'd never been particularly inclined to spend time with her before all of the strange and incredible events of the past few days, he had already found himself accepting that the two of them would be spending a great deal of time together - in all likelihood, the rest of their lives, however short they might turn out to be. The idea wasn't quite as frightening as he would have once thought, and while he had spent most of his young adult life trying to summon up the courage to even talk to a member of the opposite sex, she seemed easier to talk to than anyone had been before.

Finally convinced to stop fiddling with the luxury vehicle's extensive control system, Jeremy turned the key in the ignition and the car roared to life. He felt a brief moment of dismay as he realized that the vehicle had a manual transmission, which he hadn't handled since their single driver's education class which covered that material. He mentally coached himself through the process before touching anything. Clutch first, then gas, then shift, he thought, then release the clutch, and you're golden. He did exactly this, and the car lurched forward with a powerful growl...and promptly stalled. After clearing his throat in embarrassment, Jeremy amended his mental procedure. Parking brake first, then clutch, then gas, then shift.

The sports car growled powerfully again, and this time when it lurched forward, it didn't stop or stall. It roared out of the parking lot and onto the road with more force than he had ever experienced from a car, and Jeremy fought to maintain his grip on the steering wheel as they sailed down the road towards the highway.

Chapter 5

Day 4 - 14:45:00 CST

Stoughton, Saskatchewan, Canada

The drive down the northbound highway was quiet, almost peaceful. They had been driving for nearly an hour when a roadside sign alerted them of their approach to the town of Stoughton. Although he had only driven through the small town a handful of times, Jeremy was familiar enough with the approach and getting comfortable enough driving the manual transmission sports car that he gently slowed down as the neared the edge of town. Highway travel had been difficult, though not impossible - abandoned vehicles left in the middle of the road had slowed their progress, although the absence of occupants troubled them more than the delays. As a matter of conscience, Tanya had forced - or perhaps more accurately, strongly encouraged - that they stop at the various farm houses close to the highway in search of survivors. There were none, although there also appeared to be no undead or even bodily remains left in their wake. In all, they had made six separate stops at six separate farms, none of which had an occupant in sight - not only were the humans utterly absent, so was all wildlife, and livestock, and pets. It was as if all life had simply been scoured from the face of the Earth while they had been fighting for their lives in Estevan. Most of the drive had been in uncomfortable silence, broken only by suggestions about buildings to check, routes to take, and observations about how quiet things were. The small town that they approached looked no more heavily populated than any of the abandoned homes which they had inspected on their drive; small squat buildings lined the road, the only sign that civilization had once flourished there.

"I've never been to Stoughton before," Tanya remarked as matter-of-factly as if she were on any other road trip and not fleeing a horde of undead attackers who had slaughtered nearly everyone they had ever known.

"You haven't missed much," Jeremy said. He slowed down even further as the vehicle entered the town limits. He scanned the houses and small, squat commercial buildings searching for any sign of life. "It's mostly a drive-through community. Not much to see or anything worth stopping for."

"Do you think anyone is left here?" Tanya noticed how intently he was scanning their surroundings. Jeremy turned left at the town's only major intersection, heading towards the northwestern highway that would take them to their destination. As he rounded the corner, the car rolled to a stop.

"It seems likely," he said as he stared out the windshield. A barricade had been erected in the middle of the street; 15-gallon drums flanked either side of the barricade, filled with wood blazing dangerously. The barricade was a hasty amalgamation of a construction barricade, several cars, and random pieces of lumber. Despite this structure, there was no sign of life anywhere to be seen. "I don't see anyone, but we need to get around this thing. Think we can manage to clear a path together?"

“Between my strength and your telekinesis," Tanya said, "I have no doubts that we can get that flimsy thing out of our way. Hopefully we can find whoever put it up, too. There’s not much room in here for passengers, but I’m sure we could appropriate another vehicle."

“Listen to you,” Jeremy said, nudging her gently. “Appropriate another vehicle...talking about stealing someone’s car like it’s just part of the daily routine.”

“Perspective is a tricky thing,” she said, blushing slightly. “And I don’t think of it as theft - the original owners are long dead, so it’s not like they’re being hurt by us using them.”

Jeremy put the car in park and the pair stepped out of their vehicle. Jeremy stepped up to the barricade and examined it closely, running his fingers absent-mindedly over one of the pieces of lumber that criss-crossed the haphazard structure. His careful analysis was interrupted by the now-familiar cracking boom of a gunshot, and a large chunk of the lumber his hand rested on exploded in a small hail of splinters. Both Tanya and Jeremy instinctively dropped to a crouch and looked around to find the source of the gunfire.

"Don't you be thinking about moving," a voice called out from the distance. Jeremy squinted to make out the indistinct form of a man perched atop a nearby building, holding a large rifle in his hands. Thoughts of how to disarm the newcomer were in vain, however, as a pair of rough-looking men stepped out from either side of the barricade. They both carried rifles of their own, and had them levelled at Jeremy and Tanya.

"Are you stupid?" Jeremy's voice was bitter and brave. Having already faced down an army of the undead, he wasn't nearly as frightened of the situation as he knew he probably should be. "Do we look like we're the real threat? Have you seen any goddamned zombies driving vehicles? Get the hell out of our way, and we'll leave you backwoods drunken rednecks here to cornhole each other in peace."

While Jeremy ranted angrily, the face of the nearest man flushed redder and redder and his face screwed up in anger. His dirt-stained index finger slid across the trigger and squeezed. A thunderous shot rang out, punctuating the end of Jeremy's outburst. He felt a ripping, tearing pain shoot through his right arm, followed by cold and numbness.

"Shut your goddamned mouth," the man spat. "This is our town, and you do what we tell you to. And we're going to have us some fun," he licked his lips and winked at Tanya. She shuddered, but was too frightened to move as both men lifted their guns up and slammed the butt of the rifles into Jeremy and Tanya's heads. They fell and lost consciousness.

***

When Jeremy awoke, it was in a dimly lit, filthy room. Judging by the beer and liquor advertisements plastered to the walls, the tables scattered everywhere, and the neon signs flickering quietly along the walls, it had once been a bar. He tried to move, and was greeted with shooting pain from the wound on his shoulder for the effort. He struggled a little more carefully, and quickly realized that he was sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair, his arms secured behind him with heavily knotted rope. Tanya was in a similar predicament a few feet away, having apparently regained consciousness at around the same time as him, and a woman they had never seen before was tied to another chair near the bar's front window. She was a First Nations woman, who Jeremy guessed to be in her mid 30s, and who would have been attractive if not for the fact that her face was bruised and bloodied, and she didn't move a muscle as she stared into the street beyond. Jeremy watched her stare, and noticed a thin glazing of frost expanding and contracting along the bottom of the window near where she sat with each breath she took. He dismissed this as a trick of his imagination.

"Tanya," he croaked. His voice rasped and sputtered and he fought through the aching pain from his arm to form coherent words. "Are you OK?"

"I...I guess so." She didn't sound much better than he did. "My head hurts. Are you OK? You're bleeding."

"I think it's mostly stopped," he said as he glanced down at his wound. "Probably looks worse than it really is."

"Can you move?"

"I don't think so. It hurts when I try. They did a good job of tying me up - I can't budge my hands at all, and I can't focus enough to try anything else. Can't you just...you know...tear your ropes apart?"

"No," she burst into quiet sobbing. "I'm scared, Jeremy. I don't want to die here, not like this."

"We aren't going to kill you, little lady," the voice from the door sounded like the man who had shot Jeremy earlier. Jeremy saw that while he was talking with Tanya, their captors had stepped inside the front door of the bar. They swaggered in, each holding their rifle in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other. The unknown woman by the window kept her gaze fixed on the street beyond, as if trying to block out their very presence. The man who had shot Jeremy stepped in front of Tanya, a wide grin on his face. "We won't get to have any fun if we just kill you."

He dropped the bottle of gin that he'd been carrying to the floor, and tossed his rifle aside on a nearby table, then reached down and began unbuckling his belt. The lascivious grin on his face grew so wide it seemed like it might split his head in two.

Realizing what was about to happen, Tanya seemed to go into a catatonic shock. She trembled and tears poured freely from her eyes, but she didn't dare move. Jeremy wanted to yell at her, to scream that she needed to fight back, that her tremendous strength was more than enough to crush the scum who was doing this to her. He opened his mouth, but couldn't speak. His rage overwhelmed him, his pulse thumped loudly in his ears, and the pain in his arm vanished, replaced instead by a more powerful pain in his head than he had ever felt before - a pain worse than he had felt even the first times that his telekinetic power had been unleashed. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the pain that made it feel like his head was going to burst, and he growled. It was no mere growl of pain or fear, but a guttural, feral growl, the sort of thing you would expect to hear from a wounded animal backed into a corner. His eyes flew open, revealing orbs of empty blackness. Where he had once felt like a man with appendages that could reach out of his body, he now felt his consciousness occupying the entire room. That consciousness was a part of his body, a part of his mind, a part of the chairs and tables and the very air itself. He willed the bonds holding him down to be gone, and they dissolved into a fine, airy puff of black soot. He didn’t stand up so much as release his physical form, reappearing in front of the chair standing tall, the wound in his arm suddenly gone. Now the grin was now on his face instead of their captor's. The man who was about to open his pants and assault Tanya whirled and reached for his gun, while his companions raised theirs at Jeremy and fired. He felt the bullets in the air, flying towards him, and they too fell prey to his mental might, dissolving into airy puffs of smoke that dissipated long before they reached him. Likewise, the bonds that held both Tanya and the unknown woman fell apart, torn to tiny shreds by an incredible force. Tanya sat still, still virtually catatonic, but the other woman rose to her feet, turning her eyes to their captors with murderous intent. She raised her hands towards the pair of men nearest to her, and a gentle blue pulse burst out of them and enveloped the men. They screamed in agony, but their screams faded first to garbled cries, then to silence as their bodies twisted, contorted, and froze in place. Their skin turned blue, and a sheen of frost covered their bodies; small icicles dangled from their extremities. They stood as perfect icy statues for only a fraction of a second before large cracks appeared over their entire bodies, spreading with incredible speed until the bodies tore themselves apart, collapsing in a small pile of frozen rubble. The final remaining man in the room, the one who had shot Jeremy and stood still beside Tanya, was slowly reaching for his rifle on the nearby table. Jeremy turned his attention from their new apparent ally, and turned it towards the man. He inhaled deeply, and all of the tables and chairs in the room floated into the air six inches off the ground.

"Don't kill me, man," their former captor's face was pale, and he trembled as he spoke. He kept gradually reaching for his gun, but the table it rested upon floated in the air just out of his reach.

"After all you've done, you have the guts - the sheer unmitigated gall - to beg for your life?" Jeremy was incredulous. He watched the man reaching for the gun, moving slowly, as if he believed that his visibility was dependent upon his speed. "Go ahead, take it," Jeremy urged. Incredulous, the man stepped forward and grasped the weapon. As his fingers slipped around the the stock of the rifle, Jeremy focused on the weapon, applying force from within the weapon in a twisting motion that tore it to pieces; the weapon shattered outwards, embedding large pieces of wood and twisted metal in their would-be assailant's hand and arm.

"Weapons," Jeremy said with a grim smile as he twisted the air around the injured man to lift him into the air, "are useless. You are useless. You had the choice of helping your fellow man in our time of need; you chose to attack us, and would have tortured and eventually killed us if you'd had the choice."

"Please don't do this," Tanya's voice was weak and shaky. "Nobody else needs to die."

"Yes he does," the other woman in the room's voice was raspy and broken. "He did horrible things. He can't live."

"Shut your mouth, woman!" Between blubbering howls of pain from his injury, their former captor lashed out verbally at her. "Please, let me go."

Jeremy stepped aside, motioning for the other woman in the room to step forward.

"He hasn't done anything to me but give me a headache," Jeremy said. "Obviously, he has done worse to you. You can do with him whatever you choose - his fate is entirely in your hands."

The woman staggered forward to stand in front of the floating man, who writhed and struggled in a vain attempt to back away. As she stepped in front of him, Jeremy noticed thin blue patterns tattooed on the dark skin of her neck, barely visible above the neck of her shirt. They were obviously homemade and amateurish, not a sign of a woman who had led a privileged life. She picked up a broken shard of glass from the shattered whisky bottle that the man had dropped. Holding it up to the light, she studied it carefully, then gazed at the helpless man, then back at the shard of glass again. When she struck out, it was with a speed and strength that took Jeremy by surprise. She let loose a powerful scream from the very depths of her lungs as the sharp shard tore through skin and muscle, tendons and veins to embed itself in his neck. The man gurgled briefly, then stopped moving. A thick splatter of blood drops shot out from the wound, coating the woman in viscous red fluid. An errant drop struck Jeremy's lips, and the coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth. His consciousness snapped back into his body and all of the floating furniture and the floating body dropped to the floor. Jeremy stumbled backwards, suddenly feeling very small now that his consciousness no longer filled the room. Tanya, having snapped out of her near-trance at the sight of the unknown woman killing their former captor, leaped forward and grabbed him, carefully supporting his weight in her arms. He relaxed, and took a moment longer than absolutely necessary to regain his balance. As he rose to his feet, his eyes met Tanya's and they smiled.

"So what do I do now?" The unknown woman looked at Jeremy and Tanya expectantly. She seemed confused, as if she had been seeing the world through a veil that had suddenly lifted.

"You could start by telling us your name," Jeremy said.

"Oh...I'm sorry. I'm Luna Fairchild."

"Hello, Luna. I'm Jeremy, and this is Tanya. To answer your

question, I don't really know what should happen next. If you've got anybody left here, any friends or family, you should stay with them."

"I don't have any family left," a tear streaked down Luna's face, followed by another. "I was home with my husband and son when those...things attacked. I was in the basement, and when I heard the commotion upstairs, I hid. When I came out, they were both dead, but they didn't stay that way. They tried to..."

"It's OK," Jeremy said. He knew the words were untrue; there was nothing about this entire situation that was anything that could even resemble being "OK", but there weren't any comforting phrases that he knew to express sympathy with seeing one's family rise to unlife after being slaughtered by wandering undead.

"You had to defend yourself, and they weren't the people you knew and loved."

"You don't understand. I didn't want to defend myself. Seeing them like that - mangled and lifeless on the floor of the living room - was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen. I wanted to join them. I didn't want to be alone. When they came at me, I just stood there and waited."

"What happened? Not to be too blunt about it, but you're pretty obviously not dead, and I haven't seen anyone who didn't defend themselves survive a zombie attack."

"It's hard to describe. They came at me, and I closed my eyes. I was just hoping it would be over quickly and wouldn't hurt too much, and all of a sudden I felt...cold. My entire body went numb; I thought I was in shock, and that I was going to be dead soon, but nothing happened. It was just...quiet. When I opened my eyes, all I saw was a pile of shattered chunks of ice and blood on the floor in front of me.

"I ran away, but didn't get far. As soon as I stepped out of the house, there were more of those things waiting for me. They rushed at me, same as my boys did. I kept my eyes open, and just stood there. I wanted them to tear me apart, to kill me, to let me join my family. At that point, I didn't even care if it hurt. But when they were so close they could almost touch me, I went cold again. A blue wave spread out around me, and it flicked over all of them. They froze in place and then cracked and fell apart...all that was left were the same little piles of ice and blood.

"I didn't know what was happening, so I kept walking. The further I walked, the more of them I saw, and the same thing happened over and over again. No matter how much I wanted to give up and die, no matter how much I wanted them to take me and let me join my family again, it just didn't happen. I cried, I screamed, I yelled until I was hoarse...and finally I met these assholes.

"They seemed nice at first. They were sitting on the porch of a house on the outskirts of town, drinking beer and joking around. They told me to come to them, to sit down, and just relax...that they'd keep me safe. Like I needed anyone to keep me safe - those things couldn't kill me, no matter how much I wanted them to.

"I think they put something in my drink, because I started feeling really woozy and fell asleep. When I woke up, I was tied up here alone. They'd come by every now and then and untie me just long enough to..." Jeremy was briefly glad that she didn't finish that thought. They all knew what had happened, but he didn't know if he could handle hearing what the men had been doing to Luna, and what they had been about to do to Tanya. "There's not much else to say," Luna said. "I don't know how long they kept me here until you showed up. A day, maybe two. It's all a blur."

The room was silent after Luna finished speaking. She didn't have anything else to say, and Jeremy and Tanya couldn't think of anything worth saying. When the silence began to feel oppressive, Tanya spoke just to break the silence.

"I don't want to say I know how you feel," she said. "I can't, and I don't. I know that I've lost my family, too, and all my friends, but I didn't have to see it happen. There's nothing we can do but pray for you and hope that we can help you find a little peace. If you'd like to come with us, we'd love to have you."

"What difference does it make?" Luna sounded distant and defeated. "If I come with you, or if I stay, it's all the same - I'm just waiting until somebody or something comes along that can kill me. It's the same for you - you look like you've got some fight in you, and you're not ready to give in, but it doesn't matter. All this that's happening...it's the end of the world. Everyone dies, and I don't think we're the lucky ones for living as long as we have. We'll meet the same fate as everyone else."

"Maybe not," Jeremy said. "I think there are a few things we need to be clear on. First, we're headed to Regina - we have it on good authority that there's an army base that's been put together there to keep people safe and help take care of survivors. It's not much, but it's a start at finding out what's going on. Before things starting falling apart, there were signs that this was happening everywhere, but that just means that everyone has had a chance to fight back. It's a chance at life - a new life, and even if it's not what we wanted the old one to be, it's better than nothing.

"Second, there's a difference between the three of us and everyone else out there, and it's not just that the three of us are still walking around with heartbeats. We've all manifested a strange and powerful ability since this happened. Luna, you've got some sort of control over frost and cold; Tanya is incredibly strong and resilient, and I've developed telekinetic powers, and some strange foresight...or maybe just the ability for my consciousness to leave my body. I’m still not entirely sure what that is or how it works.

"It can't be a coincidence that the dead start rising out of their graves, and all of a sudden three different people all start doing things that would be considered superhuman. I don't claim to know what's happening or why, or where it's going to lead, but I do know this - we're different. Special, somehow. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that means that we're here for a reason. All we can do is find out what that reason is."

"I knew something was up when furniture started floating in the air," Luna said with a weak smile. "And I don't know if I can make any promises about what sort of travelling companion I'll be or whether I'll be of any use to you, but I guess you're right - there's something different about us. We may as well try to figure out what it is."

Taking the lead, Jeremy walked out the front door of the bar and into the twilight that laid beyond. He inhaled deeply, enjoying the crisp fall air as he tried to catch his bearings. The overhead street lights were dark, and in the fading light of the day he could see small piles of glass shards pooled underneath them. He couldn't resist rolling his eyes at the foolishness of their former captors - no matter how remote this town was, and no matter how well armed they were, the most foolish thing they could possibly have done was to remove one of the most prominent sources of overhead lighting. All they had managed to accomplish was make themselves easier targets in the dark. He could see the green sports car they had rode in on parked further down the street, in front of the makeshift barricade they had first encountered. As Jeremy, Tanya, and Luna cautiously walked towards the vehicle, all three of them were hyper-aware of their surroundings, reacting to every bird chirping and cricket humming just beyond their field of vision. As luck would have it, they reached the vehicle without incident. Jeremy's heart soared as he saw the vehicle's keys were still in the ignition, and then his heart dropped as he saw that their captors had apparently been using the vehicle for target practice; several large bullet holes were torn through the hood and into the engine, and a glance underneath the car revealed a thick pool of various viscous fluids pooled underneath.

"Damn it!" Jeremy swore forcefully. "So much for an easy getaway."

"There have to be other cars around here somewhere," Tanya sounded hopeful. "We should find something before it gets too dark."

"I don't know about the two of you," Jeremy replied, "but I haven't had anything resembling a proper sleep since all of this started. We could look for a vehicle, but we're not likely to find one, and would almost certainly leave ourselves exposed in the darkness. I think we should find somewhere a little more defensible and hole up for the night. We can find something to drive in the morning. It'll be much safer."

"I want to get out of here," Luna said, "but I think you're right. I've seen enough of those undead things to last the rest of my life - however long that may be. I don't want to have to fight my way through them in the middle of the night with no light to guide me."

"That seems reasonable," Tanya said with an accommodating smile. Jeremy wondered how she could seem so relaxed and at ease when everything that they had known was falling apart around them; he certainly had no problem remaining calm and rational about it all, but he was anything but peaceful.

"What about up there?" Luna pointed to the roof of a nearby motel. "It's taller than anything else nearby, and I used to work at the motel - there's only one way up there, and we should be able to block it off."

"I think that's a great idea," Jeremy said as he gazed up at the roof. "It should be easy to defend, and we'd have plenty of warning if anyone tried to come after us. It's the best chance for a good night's sleep."

"Not that I disagree about trying to get the high ground," Tanya said, "but there was an earthquake in Estevan just a few hours ago. You saw what that did - are we sure we want to be on top of a building if something like that happens again?"

"I've been thinking about it," Jeremy replied. "And I don't think the earthquake was entirely natural."

"You think so?" Tanya scoffed.

"Setting aside the obvious fact that there's no fault line in Estevan that would cause an earthquake," he continued without acknowledging her interruption, "it was directly after a violent manifestation of my telekinetic abilities that the earthquake happened. I'm not sure exactly the details, but I think I somehow set that off. And before you say it, yes, I realize that what we did to those guys back there wasn't exactly a happy and peaceful encounter, but it doesn't seem to have kicked off any kind of seismic events. Whatever happened to cause that earthquake doesn't seem to have happened again. I think we'll be OK."

"Well, I guess the alternative is hiding out in the open, which would likely result in us being zombie food. Let's do it."

"Let's get going," Luna motioned to the motel's front entrance.

"Just a minute," Jeremy said. He stretched his hand out towards the barrier that blocked the street, and a web of silvery-white strands twisted and leaped out of his fingertips, intertwining and rushing towards the barrier. The strands slid over and through the barrier, interweaving themselves and locking together until he could feel a solid grip on the barrier. He pulled the strands with sheer willpower, yanking and twisting at the barrier until it crumpled and tore itself apart. The broken remnants of the blockade slid across the road, bouncing and jerking themselves to a stop at the edge of the motel's wall. "We'll need to blockade the exit, and make sure that nothing sneaks up on us," he explained. "That seems like a good use for this garbage, and it leaves us with a clear path for a quick exit tomorrow morning."

Both Luna and Tanya assented that it was a good idea, and the trio proceeded to the motel; the lobby was deserted and silent. Luna stepped behind the front counter and rummaged through a drawer until she fished out a small keychain.

"This should get us up there," she said with a triumphant grin. The expression was contagious, and Jeremy and Tanya both couldn't help but break out in wide grins. It seemed that victories were becoming fewer and further between, and they all knew that they had to find solace in any small victory that they could. The trio continued up to the roof with Luna leading the way. Tanya broke open an emergency fire enclosure, smashing the glass clear and pulling out a razor-sharp axe. She hefted it as if it weighed as little as a feather, and held it at the ready. Realizing that he was at a bit of a loss for improvised weaponry, Jeremy reached into a small candy bowl sitting on the edge of a counter in the lobby. He pulled out a handful of small breath mints, which lifted up into the air and circled around his hand with almost no conscious effort on his part. Tanya giggled and shook her head, but all three kept moving towards a door labelled "stairs". Five flights of stairs later, they stepped out of a heavy wooden door and onto the roof. The sun's light was already nearly completely gone, and flickering streetlights struggled to light themselves without much success. The power grid must be failing, Jeremy thought. Hardly a surprise, given that the people who once maintained it are all either dead and buried, or worse.

Surveying the rooftop, Jeremy looked for any possible spot which could be vulnerable to attack. The door behind him was the obvious choice, but he also saw a large tin ventilation shaft open on the opposite end of the roof; covered with a cone-shaped top, it likely descended into the kitchen below. He reached out mentally and crushed the top of the ventilation shaft, crumpling it and crushing it into the shaft, effectively blocking off access from within, no matter how determined a zombie might be to scale the shaft. As Luna closed and locked the door behind them, Jeremy leaned over the side of the building, looking for the remnants of the broken-down blockade down below. When he spotted the debris below, he focused his mental energies on it and heaved it upwards, lifting the entire mass of wood and sheet metal to the edge of the roof. The exertion caused beads of sweat to break out across his forehead, and his entire body trembled with exhaustion. He did not stop to rest, however, and directed the individual pieces of debris into place by pointing at them and sweeping his arm towards their destination, much as if he were conducting an orchestra. The debris moved at his command, seized by invisible arms of force that leaped from his fingertips and carried them through the air. It took only a moment to arrange the debris in front of the door on the roof in such a way that the door was effectively barricaded off.

"There," Jeremy said with a mixture of satisfaction and hopefulness. "Providing that the zombies haven't learned how to climb walls, I don't think any are going to be getting up here any time soon. I think we can all try to get a good night's rest."

"I think I'm actually too tired to sleep," Tanya said. "It's been a long couple of days, and I think I'm running on enough adrenaline to keep a herd of elephants moving."

"It seems like it's been a lifetime since I slept last," Luna's voice was little more than a hoarse croak. "At least, since I've had anything more than being passed out for a minute here and there since they..."

She never finished her thought, and for a brief moment silence reigned. The awkward silence was finally broken by Jeremy.

"You know, we have plenty of firewood up here. If we're careful about it, I'm sure we could rig up a campfire that wouldn't burn down the building. I don't know about the two of you, but I think it's going to get pretty chilly out here tonight, and I've been cold ever since we first started running from zombies. We may as well enjoy what little comfort we can get up here."

"I've got a lighter," Luna said, digging around in her pockets until she was able to produce it. Tanya nodded her approval of the idea, and the three set about building a makeshift fire pit from the remnants of a metal barrel that had been part of the barricade on the street. In moments, a blazing fire had been built, and they gathered around it, each sitting cross-legged in front of the fire and basking in its warm glow.

"Jeremy," Tanya picked her words carefully, almost reluctantly, "I've been wondering...how does it feel when you...you know..."

"When I what?" Jeremy feigned ignorance. "When I dance a jig?"

"You know what I mean," she said, playfully slapping at his leg. He grimaced and tried not to recoil in pain, though she obviously noted his flinch.

"Yes, I do," he said, the smile fading from his lips. "It's a bit hard to describe. It starts with this weird pressure in my head, like a bass drum is being pounded in the middle of my skull. Then it feels like...hm." He struggled to find the words he wanted. "Have you ever ran across a beach covered in hot sand, only to leap into the water and find that it's absolutely frigid?"

"No, but I think I have an idea of what you're getting at."

"It's pretty much like that. All of a sudden, it's like I have a phantom limb - or two or three - sprouting from my body. All of them feel like I've stuck an arm in freezing cold water and then starting reaching around. It's hard to control, but it feels like an extension of my own body. They’re a weird silverish colour...sometimes so faint that it’s almost invisible. I’m not sure how else to describe it.

"There's more to it than just that, though. A couple of times now, I've actually had out of body experiences. I was just standing around, doing my thing, and all of a sudden, bam! My mind was somewhere else."

"Isn't that how most of our teachers used to describe both of us?"

Jeremy laughed. He didn't expect jokes from Tanya - in fact, he was never quite sure what to expect from her. Less than a week before that day, he was only vaguely aware of who she was. He had, of course, taken notice of her in classes, and the halls of their school; he had spent at least as many hours staring at the back of her head in English class as he had spent reading Shakespeare. And although his attention generally wandered from girl to girl wherever he went, he could not deny that he had happy memories of letting his eyes wander from her auburn hair to the nape of her neck, and as she stood up at the end of class, letting his gaze wander down from her shoulders to the gentle slope of her hips, and back up to the curves of her breasts as she turned around...

"Speaking of your mind being somewhere else," Tanya seemed bemused at his sudden distraction.

"What? Oh," Jeremy snapped out of his reverie, "sorry. I was just..." He tried to think of a way to tell her that, despite having never held a particularly high opinion of her theological viewpoints, he was suddenly finding himself utterly entranced with her.

"I know," Tanya said sympathetically. She reached out and rested her hand on Jeremy's knee. Her touch was electric, and his stomach flopped over on itself, leaving him excited and nearly nauseous at the same time. She smiled at him, and his heart skipped a beat in his chest. It may have been the remnants of adrenaline that had been pushing them both for so long, or it may have been something else that had been welling up in him for far longer, but that simple touch of her hand was enough to energize him in ways he hadn't realized were possible. "It's been a long couple of days. We're all tired, and a little confused. It'll be OK."

“No," Jeremy protested weakly. "It's not that. It's just...I was thinking about something."

"What could you have been thinking about that had you so distracted in this situation?"

He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shout that, despite the hordes of undead that had chased them out of their hometown, and the horrifying things that they had seen in the last two days, he was falling for her. He wanted to scream that he loved her. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that he would always be there for her, and protect her, even if it meant vanquishing every single zombie on the face of the planet. The sum total of this tsunami of emotion manifested itself as a quiet whimper.

"Nothing," he mumbled.

"Oh, give it up," Luna's voice was animated and lively for the first time since they had met her. "Why don't the two of you just get a room, already? We're on top of a hotel, you know. It'd be easy. I could watch the door for you."

"What?" Tanya sounded shocked, and possibly a little excited - although Jeremy couldn't be sure that it wasn't just wishful thinking causing him to read in emotions that weren't actually there.

"Yeah, that's not...I mean..." Jeremy couldn't quite put words to the sentiment. He flushed deep red, and was thankful that the sun was rapidly falling in the background to help hide his embarrassment in the welcoming embrace of twilight. He didn't know why he didn't want to admit that he would like nothing more than to take Tanya to a private room, but he thought it may have been a subconscious way of protecting her from his impure intentions. He shook his head and tried to dodge the unexpected line of conversation. "So anyway, that's basically what it's like for me. What about you?"

"It's really no different than it was before," the blush that painted Tanya's cheeks was gradually fading. "I don't feel superhuman at all, and it just feels totally normal to be able to pick up something that weighs hundreds of pounds, swing it around, and toss it around like a baseball."

"That must make it hard to judge your own strength," Luna said, still grinning at the embarrassment of the younger pair. "You'd better go easy on the boy."

"And how about you, Luna?" Jeremy tried to pretend he hadn't heard her last comment.

"Oh, don't worry - you're not getting in my pants, so I won't need to go easy on you."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"I'm just teasing, sweetie." Luna's expression darkened as she considered how to put her experiences into words. "I feel numb. Not from the cold, which is pretty strange, all things considered. One minute I'm feeling normal, and the next, when I'm in danger, and waiting for something to put me out of my misery, my entire body goes numb, and...well, you've seen what happens."

"So you can't control it?"

"Not as far as I can tell. I haven't really tried, though."

"You should. Once you're rested, that is. We've got a long trip to make, and I'm not entirely sure how we're going to get where we're going."

"Now that you mention it," said Luna with the sheepishness of a woman who had just realized she'd forgotten to ask a very important question, "where are you going?"

"To Regina," Tanya piped up. Her voice rang with a distant, almost idolatrous hope. "An army base has been established to provide shelter and safety for survivors. It seems like the safest place to be right now. We're hoping to find other survivors, see what sort of progress the Army has been making in their research and fight against the zombies, and hopefully lend a hand."

"Regina, eh? It's been a while for me, but I guess the Queen City is better than here right about now."

"I'm glad to hear that. We'll leave first thing in the morning. Try to get some rest, and in the morning we'll see if we can find a car."

The trio laid down around the fire, huddling as close to it as they safely could for safety. Their adrenaline had faded, and they were quickly lulled to sleep by the silence of the night.

***

Jeremy awoke to the faint smell of flowers, and the rustle of hair across his face. His eyes fluttered open to see Tanya curled up against him. At some point in the night, she had moved close enough to spoon with him, and his face was pressed against the back of her head. Somewhat reluctantly, he lifted his head and saw the dead ashes of their fire; Luna still slept on the other side of the former fire pit. The bright light of dawn shone gently, filtered through the branches of the towering trees that surrounded their perch.

Wait, what? His mental gears struggled to start moving. Trees? There were no trees around here when we fell asleep...

He bolted upright and spun himself around. In every direction that he looked, a vast forest extended to the edges of his line of sight. The trees had woven themselves around, and in several cases through, the buildings of the town. Bright green leaves - an oddity for the time of year - adorned all of the branches, providing shade that was as welcome as it was perplexing.

His sudden motion had awoken Tanya. She slowly propped herself up on one elbow, looking around through groggy squinting eyes. The sight of the scenery took a moment to sink in, but once it had, her eyes widened and she gazed up at Jeremy with a confused look. He shrugged and shook his head.

"Were those here yesterday?" Although Tanya had been shocked awake, her voice still croaked with exhaustion.

"No," Jeremy said. "They definitely were not here yesterday. I'm kind of curious about how an entire damned forest can just spring up overnight without waking us up."

A groan could be heard from the other side of the fire pit. Luna turned over, trying to ignore the noise that Jeremy and Tanya were making and stay asleep. The effort was futile, as she opened her eyes and was greeted with the same sight that her companions had been. Her eyes widened in amazement until they were the size of quarters, and she pushed herself into a cross-legged sitting position.

"I've lived here for a long time," she said as she looked around in every direction, "and I don't think I've ever seen more than a handful of trees in this town. Where did these come from?"

“Your guess is as good as mine," Jeremy said. "When I got up they were just sort of...here."

"First zombies," Tanya muttered, "then superpowers. Then earthquakes in a town that's hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest fault lines. Now a forest springs up out of nowhere. I never thought I'd actually use this phrase, but...well...this is fucked up."

It took a moment for Jeremy's brain to actually process the words that he'd just heard come out of Tanya's mouth. He had never before heard her utter a single profane word, and it seemed like it would not have been possible for her to even pronounce those syllables. When he finally realized just what she'd said, he chuckled. The chuckle built into a laugh, which turned into roaring peals of laughter until he was doubled over, unable to stop laughing. The laughter was contagious, and both Tanya and Luna joined in.

"If you think that's funny," Luna gasped between laughs, "you'll probably have a heart attack when you see what's behind you."

Both Jeremy and Tanya turned to face the direction that Luna had indicated, and their frenzied laughter tapered off into fits of nervous giggles, then silence. Towering above the canopy of the new forest was a mountain that stretched up towards the sky. Jeremy's mouth hung open in shock.

"That...that wasn't there five minutes ago," he stuttered. "When I woke up, I looked everywhere. All I saw were trees."

"That can't be right," said Tanya. "How could you miss an entire mountain?"

"I didn't," Jeremy snapped defensively. "It wasn't there. I may be a little scatterbrained from time to time, but I'd definitely remember a damned mountain right in front of my face."

"It's OK," Tanya said, trying to calm Jeremy down. "I'm not accusing you of anything. But if it wasn't there just a minute ago, when did it appear? Did it just pop up out of nowhere?"

"That's an idea that would seem far-fetched," Jeremy remarked dryly, "if not for the fact that we're surrounded by a forest that apparently did the same thing. Either way, this doesn't exactly bode well for our plans. That mountain is right between us and Regina, and between it and all these trees, I can't imagine that the road will be passable by car, either."

"So what do we do now?" Luna's voice dripped with disappointment.

"We're not going to get anywhere standing around up here," Tanya said. "We need to get out to the street - or what used to be the street - and see what things look like from down there. Maybe it won't be as bad as it seems."

Nobody objected to the plan. Luna stood and stretched gracefully, and Jeremy reached his hand out to help Tanya to her feet. She grasped his hand and pulled herself up, but the sheer force of her pull yanked Jeremy to the ground. The two giggled, and Tanya stood and helped Jeremy to his feet. Luna rolled her eyes playfully.

The walk through the hotel was as uneventful as it had been going up the night before. The lobby appeared entirely untouched by the encroaching forest, and there was no sign that it had been invaded by zombies overnight. Jeremy heaved a sigh of relief at the latter realization - although he'd been confident that their fortifications were enough to make the rooftop safe for them overnight, he had been almost certain that their presence would be enough to attract any undead in the area to the hotel for a morning ambush. When they stepped out the front doors, they were greeted by a serene scene; the overhead canopy of trees provided protective shade, and despite it being a normally cool autumn morning, the air was warm and moist. The surreal scene was a stark counterpoint to their experiences over the last several days, providing them with inexplicable shelter and calm amidst a storm of destruction and death that had rained down over everything that they had ever known.

The forest had overtaken much of the town of Stoughton; many buildings were little more than crumbled shells surrounding a tree that had apparently erupted through the floor, and the already worn pavement of Main Street was shattered and broken in pieces around each piece of vegetation. Looking at the destruction that had been wrought upon the town, Jeremy wondered how it was possible that it had all happened while they slept; no matter how tired he had been, he was always a light sleeper. A forest rising up out of nowhere overnight and breaking through wood and stone seemed like the sort of thing that would have woken him up. He saw the look of confusion on his companions' faces, and knew that they were feeling the same thing. With a flourish of his hand, he pointed in the direction of the mountain.

"That's where we need to go," he said. "Doesn't look like we're going to have an easy path, so the best thing to do is start walking. We need to make the best use we can out of the daylight, and try to find some sort of shelter before nightfall. Preferably the sort of shelter that isn't going to mysteriously turn into a forest or sprout a mountain."

"How far do you think we'll need to walk?" Tanya asked.

"I'm not quite sure," he answered honestly. "Regina would have been another hour or so away by car, so that makes it...what? About a hundred kilometers? The highways weren't a very direct route, either, so we should be able to shave off some distance by walking directly there. If my guess is right, we should be able to skirt around the base of the mountain to reach the city, so we're probably looking at about 80 clicks. Depending on how bad the terrain is, we may not make it by nightfall, but we should be able to get pretty close."

"Let's get going, then," Tanya said. She tried tightening her expression into one of grim resolve, but couldn't quite muster the unfamiliar expression. Jeremy didn't quite dare to tell her that she looked constipated rather than focused. "It looks like there's even a path for us to follow - over that bridge and into the woods."

"There's no bridge in -" Luna's emphatic statement was interrupted when she saw that, in fact, a bridge did stand a few hundred meters from where they stood. It was small, much too narrow to be navigated by car, and as they approached they could see that it was made from rough-hewn pieces of grey stone. It looked like something out of a medieval painting. As they finally reached the edge of the bridge, they could see that it spanned across a babbling brook - another feature of the terrain which they all knew had not been there the night before.

"This just keeps getting weirder and weirder," Jeremy muttered. Both Tanya and Luna nodded their agreement. He was not prepared for the realization which was about to hit him - that he had just made an incredible understatement. As his foot brushed against the first cobblestone of the bridge, a booming laugh echoed out from underneath it. Faster than any of them could react, a great greenish blur swung out from the underside of the bridge, flipped into the air, and landed in the middle of the bridge. The blur, once it had stopped moving, was a massive humanoid creature, nearly ten feet tall and covered in greenish-grey scaly skin. Warts dotted its face, though much of its features were obscured by long strands of greasy black hair that fell across its face. It grinned, showing a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs, and peered out at the trio through malicious burning-red eyes. When it spoke, its voice rasped as if it had swallowed a mouth full of gravel.

"Who dares approach *my* bridge?" It sized up each of the trio standing before it, silently awaiting a response.

"We...uhhh...we do, I guess. We didn't know -"

"Silence!" The create roared, interrupting Jeremy's stuttering defense of their actions. "It has been many years, human," it spat the word out distastefully, "since I have seen one of your kind. A great many years indeed. Tell me - why should I spare your lives, let alone allow you to cross my bridge?"

"What are you, creature?" Jeremy called out to the mighty beast.

"Nothing you need concern yourself with, mortal. I am merely a bridge-keeper, a guardian of the path who ensures that only the worthy proceed."

"You'll understand that I don't just take your word for it. Where do you come from, and what are you guarding?"

"The question of where I am from is not one your mind could comprehend, mortal. What I guard is the Grim Forest, a land of ancient mystery and depth that defies your understanding."

With a deft flick of his wrist, Jeremy gestured to his left. A single blade of grass lifted into the air, hovering just above his shoulder.

"I tire of these games. Creature, if you have not seen humans in as long as you claim, there are many things about us you do not know." His voice dripped with a smug self-confidence that had never been heard from his mouth before. "For instance, we have developed weapons which we call 'atomic bombs'. When detonated, these bombs produce such a powerful concussive force that they are able to propel a blade of grass with enough force that it can tear through stone. A single blade of grass can become such a potent weapon that no living creature - not even one as impressive as you appear to be - can withstand it. We truly bring to bear all of the might of the elements against our enemies." He flicked his wrist in the direction of the creature, and the blade of grass shot through the air with incredible speed. It flew like a spear through the air, and impacted with the creature at a tremendous velocity. For all the incredible speed and the drama of the impact, the blade of grass flattened itself into a small pile of greenish paste against the creature's skin. It brushed the mess aside absent-mindedly.

"An impressive weapon," the creature said with a booming laugh, "but I believe that it could use some refinement."

"Yeah," Jeremy muttered. His face flushed bright red. "That wasn't quite...well, not what I was expecting, anyway."

"Please step aside," Tanya uttered meekly. She stepped in front of the creature, looking up into its baleful eyes with quiet confidence. "I do not know what you are, but I do know that you are in our way. I do not wish to hurt you, so please...step aside."

"You speak boldly," the creature growled, "for a human. You shall learn respect as I tear your flesh from your bones!"

With that bold declaration, the creature lashed out at Tanya with one heavy, scaly fist. The blow landed with what looked like enough force to crush a concrete wall, but she did not budge under the assault. She grabbed the creature's wrist with both hands, although even both hands together were not enough to clamp over the thick appendage, and twisted it viciously to the side. A sickening snap-pop echoed through the air as the creature's arm tore free of its shoulder. The gaping wound left behind spurted black ichor which splashed over all three companions. It bellowed in agony as it crashed to the ground. The creature thrashed and twisted momentarily, then fell still.

"Wow," Jeremy said, astonished. "That was incredible."

"Is it dead?" Tanya whispered.

"Looks like it," Luna said. She prodded the creature's midsection with a stick. It didn't budge or make a sound. "Good work, girl. I was worried that our knight in shining armour was the best weapon at our disposal."

"It was a good idea," Jeremy retorted. "Well, in theory it was."

"I'm sure that would have been a great comfort to me as that troll tore me apart and ate me," Luna snorted and giggled.

"Let's just move on," Tanya said. She stared off into the distance uncomfortably.

"What's wrong?" Jeremy asked.

"I just killed a living creature," she replied. "It was one thing when it was just zombies that we were dealing with. Even if they look human, I know they're really not. But this thing was a living, breathing, thinking creature. It may not have been good, and in fact seems to have been very evil, but even so...I took it upon myself to end the life of one of God's creatures. I...I had no right to do that, even if it was to save our lives. I don't want to dwell on it. Let's go."

"You did the right thing," Jeremy said, placing his hand gently upon her shoulder. "And if you want to move on, I won't blame you. I guess we're on foot now, so we'd better get moving."

The trio crossed the bridge and stepped into the embrace of the forest beyond.

Chapter 6

Day 5 – 18:45:00 CST

Outskirts of Regina, Saskatchewan

The path through the forest was long and unnerving; although the trio had expected danger to lurk at every turn, it had actually proven to be the quietest part of their journey. It took nearly a full day to hike through the forest's underbrush and arrive at its edge, within sight of a large sign that welcomed them to Regina. Dusk was rapidly approaching, lighting the gleaming glass of the city in the distance a glaring orange. Two lanes of highway, separated by a steep ditch, lead towards the outskirts of the city. Empty and dead vehicles dotted the mostly-empty roads, their former drivers nowhere to be seen. Their journey around the base of the mountain ended as the slope tapered off into the familiar flat prairie landscape.

"This must be Victoria Avenue," Jeremy said, trying to recall the last time he'd visited the city. "It should take us all the way downtown. From there, we can head south down Broad Street to Wascana Park, and we'll be at the Legislature before we know it."

"So in a city where there are now potentially hundreds of thousands of zombies wandering the streets," Luna said, "our plan is to walk through the areas that were once most heavily populated - where those creatures are most likely to be - to make our way to a military base that may or may not have any survivors, and which may or may not provide any useful shelter for us? And we're going to do all this at dark, since the sun is about to set. Does this strike anyone else as a bad idea?"

"I don't think we have much choice," Tanya replied. "No matter what route we take, it's going to be dangerous, and there's going to be the chance of attracting unwanted attention. If that's what we have to deal with, we may as well take the most direct route."

"Why not take Ring Road south towards the University, and then cut west to the Legislature? It's a lot more open, easy to navigate, and seems like it should be safer."

Regina was a small city, with simple topology - despite not having visited it on any kind of regular basis, Jeremy was familiar with its basic layout. Ring Road was a highway that encircled the city, while Victoria avenue ran directly through the heart of the city. The city was also bifurcated by a pair of streets running north and south, Albert and Broad. The Legislature, their ultimate destination, was in the southern end of the city, south of downtown (which Victoria Avenue ran through the heart of).

"If it's open and easy to navigate for us," Jeremy remarked, "then it's also open and easy to navigate for the very zombies we're trying to avoid. Amongst the buildings and alleyways downtown, and everywhere between here and there, we've got a better chance of getting a tactical advantage if there is high ground and cover. We won't find that in the middle of the road, and depending on how much damage has been done to the city's infrastructure, we may not be able to rely on streetlights - so we'd be right out in the open with no way of seeing a horde of undead sneaking up on us."

"I guess that makes sense," Luna said, shrugging her shoulders. "Are we going to find somewhere to hole up for the night?"

"That seems like a good idea," Jeremy said. Tanya nodded in agreement.

The trio set out down Victoria Avenue, walking down the middle of the deserted road. They passed several large retail outlets - big box stores that offered little protection or cover from potential attackers. As they finally passed the proliferation of massive retail fronts, they saw a large mall on their left, designated as Victoria Square Mall by the large sign out front. Jeremy gestured at it, and the trio stopped to discuss their options in front of a pair of cars that had collided in the middle of the street; one driver still sat behind her steering wheel, slumped over in motionless repose.

“What about the mall?" Jeremy asked. "It's close quarters, but lots of stores, plenty of cover, and if we choose our location well, we should be able to find somewhere to barricade ourselves that can be easily escaped in case of an overwhelming attack."

“I don't like it," Luna said. "It's too confined, and it'd be too easy for a crowd of zombies to back us into a corner where we're totally defenseless. We need to do something like we did back in Stoughton - a nice open roof somewhere. Those things can't seem to climb walls, and if we barricade off other entrances, it should give us a nice place to rest where we can see them coming."

Jeremy leaned against the driver's side window of the nearest of the crashed vehicles, pursing his lips as he gazed at the nearby mall. He turned the ideas over in his mind, weighing the pros and cons of Luna's suggestion. His deliberations were interrupted by a sudden pounding on the glass behind his back; startled, he leaped forward just in time to avoid the claw-like hands of the formerly still driver as they smashed through the window, grasping at air in a vain attempt to grab at him. Although still restrained by a seat belt, the animated corpse of the driver groaned and struggled to free herself. The struggles of the zombie were put to an end before the trio had a chance to truly react to its sudden reanimation as a distant -crack- coincided with the explosion of the creature's head. Jeremy, Luna, and Tanya all dropped to a crouch and spun around, gazing in each direction around them in an effort to find the source of the gunshot that had killed the zombie in front of them. They did not need to look for long, as Tanya quickly spotted the mystery sniper waving at them from atop a nearby fast food restaurant.

"Think he plans on doing the same thing to us?" Luna wasn't sure whether to laugh or shudder as she spoke.

"I think he knows that we're still human, if that's any consolation," Jeremy wasn't any more confident about the gunman's intentions.

"I'm fairly sure that if he wanted us dead, we'd be dead already," Tanya said. "Maybe we should go talk to him."

With no apparent choice in the matter, the trio set out across a grassy ditch which separated them from the parking lot in front of the building where the sniper was perched. As they approached, the mysterious sniper called down to them in an authoratative voice.

"I'm going to lower a ladder," he called. "Climb up slowly, and keep any weapons holstered. Don't worry - I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to make sure you feel the same."

"Believe me," Luna called up, "it's just nice to see another living, breathing human. We're unarmed."

A rope ladder dropped over the side of the building, and the sniper leaned over the edge and waved them up. Jeremy's stomach sank when he saw that the sniper was dressed in the same green camouflage that the soldiers they had encountered in Estevan wore. He caught Tanya by the arm and whispered in her ear.

"We can't go up there. What if he's the same as the last soldiers we ran into? We're unarmed, and climbing up a ladder to a sniper's perch where we know that he's armed. We could be walking right into a trap!"

"Maybe," Tanya whispered, turning her head in so that her lips brushed against Jeremy's left ear. A tingle rushed through his entire body at the contact, and for a moment he completely forgot his concerns. "But what choice do we have? He's armed, and honestly, if he wanted us dead, he could have taken us out at the same time as the zombie, and we never would have known he was there. If he was really sadistic, he could have let the zombie take us by surprise, and then put a few rounds in each of our bodies just to be safe."

“I'm not sure that killing us is the worst thing he could have in store,” Jeremy muttered under his breath.

Reluctantly, Jeremy turned and began to climb the rope ladder. It twisted and swayed sharply; Luna was so eager to see another living person that she had scaled halfway up the ladder before Jeremy took his first step. The twisting motion of the ladder was awkward, but the trip was short enough that there was no need to become accustomed to it before they found themselves pulled up to the rooftop by the sniper. As he pulled Jeremy off the ladder and let him down on the roof, the sniper clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly. He shuddered involuntarily, half-expecting the apparently friendly gesture to be followed up by something more violent, but that did not happen.

The sniper's roost was more elaborate than Jeremy had been expecting. The ledge facing towards Victoria Avenue was bare except for a tripod-mounted rifle; the adjacent ledges were lined with wooden crates marked with mysterious letters and numbers, and in the middle of the rooftop was a tarp raised overhead on four plastic rods. The shade underneath the tarp partially obscured a folding chair, and a small pile of books. Beside the soldier's rifle lay an open case of beer and a two-way radio.

After giving them a moment to take in their surroundings, the sniper addressed them.

"Good evening, ladies and gentleman," he flourished and bowed with a silly grin. "I am Private Kyle Grummet, and I'm here to provide overwatch on the road in case some fine people like yourselves manage to make it to the city. As I'm sure you know, we sent patrols around the province, directing civilians to shelter here whenever possible. You're the first that I've seen make it this far, and frankly, I'm surprised that you did. Fortunately, you're here now, and I've got some good news.

"A temporary base has been established in the middle of the city to provide safe harbour for you; I am to direct all civilians there, where you will be interviewed and then transported off site to a secure facility where you won't be at risk from these creatures that roam the streets.

"That was the good news," he said, holding up a hand to silence any interruptions. "The bad news is that it won't be an easy trip. Safe harbour is at Fort Majesty, established at the Legislature, several kilometers southwest of here. The roads are not passable by vehicle, and I need to stay here to help anyone else that makes it this far. You'll be on your own, but that's not to say I can't offer you any help."

Private Grummet reached into one of the wooden crates nearby and rummaged around for a moment. When he turned back to face the three companions, who were all still trying to digest the information that he had provided them, he held three pistols in his hands.

"It's not much," he said with a comforting smile, "but it should help keep you safe. Nine millimeter pistols, fifteen rounds each. I can give you each an extra magazine, so thirty rounds total. Try to stay out of sight, and if you do have to use these, I have two pieces of advice: First of all, take off the safety." He flicked a small lever on the side of one of the weapons.

"Second, aim for the head. Thirty rounds each is enough to take down thirty zombies each, if you can put a bullet in each of their heads. Body shots don't seem to have any effect on the undead, and the last thing that you need to do is waste all of your ammunition taking down a single zombie.

"Any questions?"

Nobody quite seemed to know how to respond. The speech had been so smooth, so well-rehearsed, that it seemed calm and natural - given the circumstances, it was hard to argue with that.

"Have you heard any reason why all this might be happening?" Luna's question was sharp and to the point. She hefted the gun that Private Grummet had handed her as if she had a great deal of experience with that sort of weapon.

"Best guess anyone had before I left to take up my position here was an outbreak of a rapidly mutating virus of some sort," he shrugged. "Whether or not that's true is anyone's guess."

"Unless a virus is also responsible for forming a mountain range in the middle of the prairies," Jeremy said with a snort, "that's not very likely. I mean, it's possible that the zombies have been created by some sort of virus that activates dead flesh, but there must be something else behind it all. Something unnatural."

"Agreed," Tanya said. "Why else would we have these super-"

"Superb senses of direction?" Jeremy interrupted her forcefully before she could finish her thought. Her puzzled stare was met with a very slight shaking of his head, indicating that now was not the time to discuss the fact that the three of them had also turned into something not quite human.

"Okay," Private Grummet sighed. He didn't quite know what to make of the newcomers, and seemed eager to be rid of them. "Whatever helps you get through the day, I guess. As much as I wish I had the answers you’re looking for, I don’t. All I know is what was in my briefing when I was assigned this position, and that says the best guess right now is a virus. I’m sure that if it turns out to be something else, we’ll be informed when the time is right.

“Look, you'd better get going. The longer you hang out here, the more attention you risk drawing to me. I'd rather not have the most defensible position in the surrounding area overrun with zombies."

"Yeah, we'll get moving," Jeremy said. He eyed the pistol he had been given up and down. Although Estevan was home to many hunters, and had more than its share of gun owners and avid collectors, he had never been one for either hunting or gun collecting. It was probably just as well that he wasn't - the firearm was neither attractive nor particularly high-quality. Its black finish absorbed the sunlight like a sponge, and it felt like a lead weight in his hands. "Can you give us more of these? Even one would be good."

"Sorry," the Private replied. "Rules are one pistol per refugee."

"I can see why you'd need to conserve them," Jeremy's voice dripped with bitterness, "given the overwhelming numbers of survivors that you need to arm. Seriously, it's not like it'll make a difference to you, and it could be the difference between life and death for us."

"Fine," Private Grummet muttered. He tossed another pistol to Jeremy. "Take it. Now get going, and good luck."

A cold wind blew through the heart of the city, rustling leaves and scattering the errant debris that lined the road. Night had fallen while they talked with the sniper on the outskirts of the city, and the temperature had dropped as soon as the sun vanished. Although a low temperature wasn't unusual for a fall evening in central Saskatchewan, the wind seemed to cut effortlessly through the thin layers of protection their clothing offered, chilling them all to their very bones. Jeremy took slow, deliberate steps down the sidewalk, Tanya and Luna following close behind. Each footfall seemed to ring out in the night, even over the howling of the wind through alleys and shattered windows. No matter how carefully or slowly he moved, he felt as if each step was so loud that it would draw unnecessary attention to them. Thud. Thud. Thud. He swallowed the bitter fear that was rising in his throat and found the strength to take another step. Thud.

Regina was a small city, in the grand scheme of things, although to a man and two women who had been born and raised in the rural prairies, it felt like a vast metropolis even when it had been lively and normal. Now desolate and abandoned, the absence of background noise was overwhelming. Surrounded on all sides by cars, houses, and the looming shadow of the towering buildings downtown, the absence of voices and roaring engines left the city feeling like a hollow shell of what it once was. Even the reassuring hum of the streetlights and power lines had been reduced to a staccato crackle as lights overheard flickered and blinked. There, walking down the arteries of the biggest city he had ever visited before, Jeremy felt more abandoned and alone than he ever had in his life. Even the company of Luna and Tanya didn't change this - even as he felt the tug and pull of Tanya's barely-disguised trepidation tugging at his heartstrings, and the urge to comfort her, he walked on. Thud. Thud. Thud. He watched the street names that they passed by, trying desperately to remember the layout of the city as they went. Coleman Crescent, intersecting Victoria Avenue and leading off into darkened residential streets to the north and quiet, menacing commercial shopping centers to the south. Truesdale Drive, leading south past a large shopping mall, and a handful of restaurants and home improvement stores. He hesitated when he caught sight of a familiar street - Ring Road. A highway that encircled the city, it crossed over top of Victoria Avenue, and where Jeremy assumed there would be bright lights illuminating the underside of the overpass, there was only darkness. Although the overpass only covered several dozen meters, the pool of darkness was absolutely impenetrable. Halting in the middle of the road, he let Tanya and Luna close the gap between them, and conferred with his companions.

"If this was a horror movie, this would be the perfect setup for disaster. Complete darkness, enclosed space, and ravenous monsters hungry for human flesh...that's just asking for trouble."

"I don't hear anything," Luna cocked her head in the direction of the overpass. "It's not like they're typically quiet creatures. I'm sure we'd hear moaning and groaning if there were zombies under there."

"We can't just stop here," Tanya's voice hinted at trepidation. "We're too exposed."

In his heart, Jeremy knew that she was right. As much as he didn't want to descend into that darkened underpass, they were standing in the middle of a wide street, visible from every side. It would be all too easy for a wandering zombie to spot them from a distance. Before they knew it, they could be swarmed by the creatures and torn to shreds without any hope of finding cover.

"Keep close," Jeremy said, stretching his hands out towards his companions, "and hold on. Don't stop moving, and if you feel something grab you that isn't one of us, we all run like hell. Everyone got it?"

"Sounds like the best choice in a bad situation," Luna muttered, taking Jeremy's left hand in her right. He could feel a rush of cold; even at rest, her skin was frigid.

"Got it," Tanya smiled slightly as she took Jeremy's right hand in her left, intertwining her fingers with his. Jeremy felt another tingling rush, but this time it wasn't because of cold skin. Even now, even amidst the chaos and confusion and destruction that had plagued the world for days, which had toppled every institution and custom that they held dear, and which threatened to consume all life in the world, something as simple as holding a young woman's hand just felt right to him. The thought of whatever nightmarish terrors might be hiding under the blanket of the darkness ahead of them suddenly didn't seem quite so frightening. With a lighter heart and an almost imperceptible smile, he stepped forward, leading his companions towards that pool of darkness.

A shiver ran down his spine as the darkness enveloped them. With his sight useless, every one of his senses grew sharper, and he trained every available sense on detecting anything that could pose a danger to them. Without any conscious prodding, he could feel the cool, tingly-numb sensation of a telekinetic grip on the pistols holstered at his side. A telekinetic limb also carefully swept out in front of the trio, swinging from side to side, up and down, seeking out anything that could be felt before it could be seen. It was almost a disappointment when, after what felt like an eternity under the overpass, they emerged out of the other side and into a flickering pool of light cast by a nearby streetlight, unscathed by the imaginary horrors that they had all concocted to anticipate laying in wait.

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Tanya muttered with a nervous giggle. Luna released Jeremy's hand, but Tanya's grasp lingered. He didn't complain.

"If I didn't know better," he said with a widening smile as he quickened his pace, "I'd say that things are going the best they have since..."

His voice trailed off into silence. Since leaving the underpass, the road had been rising in a gentle slope, finally tapering off into a nice, flat, straight street - a good prairie road, with nothing to block the view. Nothing, that was, except for a flaming wreck of a car surrounded by a mob of what had to be at least two dozen decomposing zombies, slowly shambling around the dancing flames. They hadn't noticed the trio yet, and they froze in place less than a hundred meters from the wreckage. Jeremy watched the zombies curiously; they shuffled around the fire slowly, never taking their eyes off of the flames that licked at the remnants of the vehicle. All of them wore clothing that was ragged and torn, and stained with blood. The flickering light from the flames lit up their pale, rotted skin, making them look eerily like animate wax sculptures. The only thing that made it clear that they had really once been human were the remnants of the wounds they bore; an older man shuffling along in a ripped three-piece suit was missing most of his neck, having had it gnawed off apparently prior to his rebirth into undeath. What would have been an attractive young woman had she still been alive was missing her right arm – a small stub ending in a sharp piece of cracked bone protruded from her shoulder, wiggling in a sickening imitation of life as she danced. Their movements seemed careful, slow, almost scripted - as if they were enacting a carefully choreographed dance with all the grace one might expect from a rotting animated corpse with barely enough intact muscle and ligaments to actually remain upright.

Despite the hypnotic effect of the zombie fire-dance, Luna was able to tear her attention away and, grabbing Jeremy and Tanya by the back of their shirts, pulled them backwards towards the relative safety of the dark underpass. The jerking motion was enough to startle both dazzled teenagers, tearing their attention away from the spectacle. They ducked into cover, twisting and peering and trying to get a better view of what was going on.

"I don't think they spotted us," Luna whispered. "But what are we going to do?"

"Sneak around them?" Jeremy pointed to a nearby service road.

"Going through the ditch is too risky. Too much potential for noise, and if we get spotted, I don't want to risk being on the low ground."

"Double back and find another route?" Tanya sounded hopeful, but Luna was resolute.

"We'd lose too much time. Every minute we're out here is a minute that we're vulnerable. If we can make it to shelter, we'll be safe. Until then, we may need to take some risks."

"What sort of risks?" Jeremy objected. "We're already hundreds of kilometers from home, creeping through the streets of a city that none of us are all that familiar with, surrounded by potentially hundreds of thousands of flesh-eating undead, and we've hardly eaten or slept for days! I don't think we could take any more risks if we walked through the streets waving our arms and screaming for the zombies to come have a snack!"

"Funny that you should put it that way," she said. "That's pretty much what I was thinking. I say we charge them, and whoever comes out the victor gets to carry on with their evening."

"You want us to pick a fight with those things?" Jeremy was incredulous. "In the middle of a city where there could potentially be hundreds of thousands of them? Are you insane?"

"I wasn't planning on picking a fight with every single zombie in the entire city," she said. "Just the couple of dozen standing in our way. If we take them out quickly enough, we won't necessarily draw too much attention to ourselves. Hell, what's the use of having super powers if we don't actually put them to use, right?"

"I suppose she's got a point," Tanya said. "They're slow and mindless; we may be outnumbered, but between the three of us, we shouldn't have any trouble taking down the ones that are in our way and then moving on. It's the safest option right now."

Jeremy's entire body stiffened. He didn't like the thought of fighting these creatures, not again, and not in such open ground. Still, he couldn't argue with his female companions. There didn't seem like any sensible alternative in this case. He shrugged his shoulders in assent, and the pair of pistols hanging from his belt lifted into the air above his shoulders. A heavy *click* indicated that the safeties had snapped off. Luna drew her weapon, hefting it with an obvious experience and skill; this was in direct opposition to Tanya, who balanced her weapon in her hands as if it as a live grenade - delicately turning it over, afraid to handle it too roughly lest it explode in her hands. After contemplating the weapon briefly, she outstretched her arm and held the gun out to Jeremy. Without physically touching the weapon, Jeremy lifted it into the air above his head, the three guns forming a pyramid over him. He reached out his hand and squeezed hers, giving her a look that he hoped would be encouraging. It must have been successful, because when she released his hand, she turned around and grasped a piece of rebar that protruded from one of the columns of the overpass. She yanked, and a four-foot long bar tore out of the concrete and into her hands. She held it with a grip that looked like a cross between a swordsman and a baseball player stepping up to the plate.

The trio stepped forward, into the sight of the undead who slowly danced around the licking flames and revelled in the ruins of the city. Clearing his throat, Jeremy stepped forward two steps ahead of Tanya and Luna. When he spoke, he enunciated clearly and carefully, his voice ringing out in the otherwise quiet street.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, please give me your attention," his weapons swept out in front of him, fanning out in each direction. "I'm afraid that there has been a terrible misunderstanding. Your deaths were not, in fact, intended to be temporary, but rather permanent. Please step forward now if you'd like us to correct this oversight.

“Oh, come on,” he shouted, his voice increasing in volume as he felt an unsettling disquiet in the pit of his stomach as they apparently ignored him. “You and your kind have killed my friends, my family, destroyed everything I've known. You don't get to take that away from me without facing my retribution, you soulless scum-sucking piles of flesh!”

His taunt had the desired effect, drawing the attention of the nearby zombies. Their heads snapped in the direction of his voice; the force was apparently too much for the rotting musculature of of one of the undead dancers, and even from a distance the audible *pop* *rip* of cracking bones and tearing ligaments could be heard. The corpse's head tilted back, leaving an apparently headless creature behind, although that didn't seem to deter it from taking one slow, shuffling step after another towards Jeremy. He was joined by at least two dozen others, shambling out from behind the overturned car and nearby street corners. Although his knees felt weak and the impulse to flee was strong, Jeremy resisted and stood his ground. He could feel the cold, numb grip of his telekinetic limbs grasping the pistols in front of him. He ran through some mental calculations.

Three pistols, he thought, fifteen rounds each. Forty-five rounds before I need to reload all of them. No way I'm going to be able to grab for clips in the middle of a firefight, not if I want to keep my grip on three different guns steady. Guess that means I'm not reloading. OK, I can deal with that. Forty-five rounds; Luna has another 15, and there can't be more than thirty of these things. Maybe forty? Keep cool, aim for the head, and don't waste your shots, and this won't be a problem.

As he weighed the odds and decided that they were in his favour, Jeremy was all too aware of the shambling crowd making their way slowly towards him. Tanya still stood behind him and to his left. Luna had stepped up parallel to him, on his right. She held her pistol in both hands, staring down the iron sights at the approaching zombies. He inhaled slowly and closed his eyes. Instead of darkness, he was amazed that he could see - no, feel - the entire street scene. He was simultaneously looking at the approaching undead through his own eyes, and down the sights of every one of his pistols, and from between and behind the crowd. When he mentally pulled the trigger on his first pistol, he experienced the flight of the bullet firsthand, rushing through the weapon's barrel and into the cool night air with incredible speed, closing the gap between the pistol and the nearest zombie with ease, and tearing through rotting flesh and decaying bone effortlessly. When the first zombie fell to the ground, his eyes snapped open. He was reeling from the bizarre experience of his expanded consciousness, but retained enough presence of mind to shout an order.

"Kill them all!" His voice was loud, but clear and calm. He felt more at ease in this battlefield than he ever had before in his life. He proceeded to make good on his own order, dashing forward into the crowd in front of him, which had closed to only a few meters away. The barrels of his pistols blazed with righteous fire as they spewed forth a rain of hot metal that spelled the second death of those who stood in their way. As fast as he fired, the crowd soon surrounded him, and in a moment of panic he felt the ice-cold grip of a zombie's hand upon his arm. He jerked away and rocketed into the air, carried up by a telekinetic shove against the pavement. Time slowed to a standstill as he catapulted through the air; his pistols fired blast after blast at the thick crowd below him, until pulling the triggers yielded only a quiet clicking. He was aware of falling through the air, down towards the pavement - and zombies - below. He closed his eyes and braced for what he was sure would be his death, but the expected violent impact never came. As his eyes closed, his body lost all cohesion, billowing outward in a rush of dust and air. He was once again conscious of the entire scene below him, but felt unanchored and helpless to assist his friends. Luna stood her ground, picking her shots carefully, but he could feel that her clip was getting dangerously low on ammunition. The zombies had already closed on Tanya; surrounded on three sides, she swung her piece of rebar with all her might. He could feel the power of the thin strip of metal slicing through the air, and heard the soft, sopping squish of brains and blood and flesh as it ripped through the attacking zombies with more ease than his own bullets had. He struggled to anchor himself to a single point in space, fearing that his conscious awareness of the entire surrounding area was keeping his body from manifesting as a physical entity. His struggle was powered by panic as the zombies, in far greater numbers than any of them had expected, threatened to overwhelm his companions. Tanya continued to swing her makeshift weapon zealously, tearing apart the rotting creatures left and right, but Luna was in a somewhat more precarious position. Her weapon had been emptied, and she struggled with her spare clip. The air around her pulsed and shimmered with cold, although this did little to slow down the walking corpses.

The frantic pace of the firefight diminished as the dark sky suddenly lit up brightly; a white-hot fireball streaked down from the sky and slammed into the middle of the crowd of zombies; waves of flame licked outwards from the point of impact, searing tattered and rotten flesh off of bones. The fiery waves of destruction were gone nearly as quickly as they had started, but what had started as a thick crowd of hungering undead had been reduced to a handful of zombies staring mindlessly at the last twisting flames in the middle of the street. Although he knew he had not been the cause of the dramatic display, the shock of such an unnatural sight focused him sharply, and his consciousness drew near to the point of the fireball's impact. As his consciousness began to take form into a body, he perceived a man stepping out of the shadows and into the light provided by the streetlights. The man was tall, thin, and clean-shaven. His dirty blonde hair was a tousled mix that shouted a message somewhere between "I take care of myself and my appearance, even if I seem casual", and "I just turned a crowd of flesh-hungry walking corpses into a puddle of smelly goo, so I think you can forgive me for a few stray hairs". The newcomer, clearly every bit as alive as Jeremy, Tanya, and Luna, nodded at Jeremy in solidarity before waving his left hand towards the closest zombie, a ferocious-looking older woman in tattered and torn rags. Her bared teeth and sputtered growls were silenced by a jet of flamed that arced from the palm of his hand and surrounded her entire body, melting and dissolving it with terrifying efficiency.

Spurred on by the newcomer's dazzling display of power, Jeremy whirled around to see a pair of zombies staggering towards him. As they approached, he studied their apparel with a vicious grin. Leather jackets and stained t-shirts, greasy hair and skin pitted with acne; setting aside some flesh which was ripped and bloodied (presumably a result of another zombie feasting upon them), he didn't imagine that they would have looked a whole lot better while alive. Hell, he thought, death may have worked out well for them. Now they're on the same level playing field as everyone else.

The thought didn't inspire sympathy. Mimicking a boxer, he jabbed his right fist at the closer of the two - still a good meter outside of Jeremy's armspan. As his arm fully extended, a blast of telekinetic force followed, crushing the zombie's skull as if the punch had been delivered by a speeding train, crushing its skull and brain in much the same way that a sledge hammer would crush a grape. Blood and grey matter erupted backward in the direction of the blow in a volcanic blast. Jeremy ducked, then rose and delivered an uppercut with his left. Again, a powerful blast of telekinetic force crossed the gap between him and the zombie and crashed into the creature with tremendous force. The incredibly powerful blow lifted the hapless creature into the air and flung him into the night. Judging by his speed and trajectory, Jeremy estimated that whatever was left of the walking corpse would slam into the pavement several blocks away. Turning to face his companions and the newcomers again, he saw that Tanya had apparently cut apart the last of the zombies near her with her rebar sword. Two ice-statues of what had once been zombies stood near Luna, glistening and glittering in the orange glow of the streetlight. For the first time since his body had rematerialized, he was acutely aware of two things: he was stark naked, and the new arrival was checking him out intently. He wasn't the only one, either - Luna's eyes were riveted directly below his waist, and although she pretended to be innocently averting her eyes, he could see that Tanya was sneaking glances at him, too. Suddenly very self-conscious, he frantically looked everywhere in the vicinity for his pants. Nothing. Thinking quickly, he pulled the leather jacket off of the twisted remains of the nearest corpse and creatively tied it around his midsection. The end result was something of a cross between a leather miniskirt and a diaper, neither of which were a flattering prospect, but both of which seemed to hold more dignity than being subjected to the lascivious stares he had been receiving a moment before. It was, however, sufficient to allow him to fumble with the tattered remnants of a jogging suit that one of the zombies had been wearing, and which almost fit him properly. He cleared his throat as he adjusted the clothing as best he could. Unfortunately, there were no signs of his glasses anywhere. He squinted to make out the forms in front of him, surprised to find that his vision was much better than it had been a week ago; although he couldn't see everything around him in full detail, he could certainly see enough to get by without worrying about his spectacles.

"Uhhh," he struggled to find words that were appropriate. How exactly did you welcome a stranger with apparent superpowers who had just saved your collective lives from an attacking mob of bloodthirsty undead ghouls and then ogled your naked body in the aftermath? With no answer to that dilemma coming to mind, he settled for the easy route. "Hi. I'm Jeremy. That's Luna, and that's Tanya."

"Hello, Jeremy," the newcomer's voice was effeminate, with a hint of a lisp. He seemed content to ignore Tanya and Luna. "I'm Chris. I must say, it's not everyday that a naked young man just falls from the sky in front of me."

"Well, uhhh," Jeremy's face flushed bright red. "I don't think it's every day that my friends and I are saved from the walking dead by..." His voice trailed off awkwardly.

"By a flamer?" Chris' laugh sounded more like a giggle, or perhaps a titter. He held up his left hand and a flash of flame erupted from his fingertips. "Don't worry, the irony isn't lost on me. I mean, bad enough that this horrible disaster hits, everyone I know dies, and leaves me to fend for myself, but I get a superpower that just happens to validate every joke I used to hear whispered behind my back? Just great."

"At least you're taking it well," Tanya said with a hopeful smile. She was inching closer to Jeremy, feeling a territorial need to draw a metaphorical line in the sand and make it clear that he belonged to her. Her efforts were for naught, because Chris didn't even seem to notice her presence.

"Have you seen any other -"

"People with superpowers?" Chris cut Tanya off mid-sentence. "No. You three are the first I've seen. I guess it means that at least I'm not a complete freak. Well, I guess it really only means that I'm a freak in the company of other freaks."

"Not quite what I meant," Tanya's retort was tinged with bitterness. "Survivors. Have you seen any other survivors?"

"Not today," Chris' overly cheerful mood suddenly deflated. "Not since...I don't know. Late last night, maybe. It doesn't sound like a long time, but the last three days have felt like decades. Last night...may as well have been another lifetime ago."

"I think we need to stay together," Jeremy said. "It can't be a coincidence that we just happened to bump into each other here. What are the chances that four people with superpowers just happen to find themselves together in the middle of..." He couldn't quite finish the sentence - not because he didn't want to, but because he realized that he couldn't think of any words that would adequately describe the situation they found themselves in.

"An apocalypse?" Chris offered helpfully. His high spirits were returning quickly.

"I suppose that's as good a word as any," Jeremy admitted. "We're on our way to the Legislature. I hear there's been a base established there; sounds like it's our best chance for both protection, and maybe evacuation to somewhere safe."

"There's nowhere safe from this," Luna grumbled.

"Sweetie," Chris said to Jeremy, oblivious to Luna's complaint, "I'd get behind you and follow you to the depths of hell."

Having been raised in a small town without any real exposure to gay men, Jeremy wasn't sure how to react to Chris' gentle flirtation. Back in Estevan, when life had been good and safe, the normal response would have been to lash out, to mock Chris for being different, and then either ignore him or torment him. In retrospect, he realized acting like that had been childish and idiotic. Now that such foolish behaviour was so obviously self-destructive, he realized he needed to set aside the small-town prejudices that had been bred by lack of exposure to anything outside of an idyllic small-town life. He smiled at Chris.

"I hope you're serious," he said. "Considering what we've been through so far, 'hell' may not be a bad way to describe what we're likely to encounter."

Chapter 7

Day 5 – 21:00:00 CST

Downtown Regina

Following the violent confrontation where they had met their newest companion, the group was able to resume progress towards their destination, making their way slowly but surely westbound down Victoria Avenue's cramped streets, sticking to what little cover they could safely find, and sound found themselves within sight of the next landmark in their trek towards the Legislature - the intersection of Victoria Avenue and Broad Street, one of the city's two main north/south arteries. Towering hotels stood watch over the north-east and north-west corners of the intersection, and a 12-story black glass-and-steel office building stood over the south-east corner. The south-west corner of the intersection was occupied by a parking lot and a large billboard. The billboard had once hosted an advertisement for a local clothing store, showcasing an attractive young model showing off her stylish clothing. Somebody had spray-painted black X's over the young woman's eyes, and the motto "TOO LATE FOR US" across the body of the billboard. A shiver ran down Jeremy's spine, only partly brought on by the cold night air.

The intersection itself was eerily empty; it had always been one of the busier parts of the city, bustling with life and the roar of traffic and bleating horns. The horns were silent now, and no engines could be heard anywhere. Compared to the highway leading in to the city, there were comparatively few cars in the road in the blocks surrounding the intersection, leaving nothing to block the cold breeze that howled through the nearby downtown core with a terrible moan.

He had barely taken a dozen steps into the intersection when Jeremy stopped cold in his tracks. He held up his hand, signalling the others to stop - Tanya and Luna did so immediately, but Chris had been walking several steps in front of Jeremy (despite his earlier flirtatious promise to stay behind him), and it took a few seconds before he realized that he could no longer hear footsteps echoing behind him. He turned to see what the matter was, opening his mouth to ask why Jeremy had stopped, but was silenced by the intensity with which Jeremy shook his head, demanding silence. He cocked his head, and listened to hear something, anything over the distant howling of the wind. At first he heard nothing; it took great concentration before he could finally hear a very distant clip-clop sound. Glancing around, he couldn't find the source of the noise, and he shrugged at Jeremy.

"Probably nothing," he said dismissively. "Let's get going."

The sound rose sharply in volume, turning into the distinctive clattering of horse's hooves coming from the north. As the foursome turned to face the sound, they could see a form on horseback in the distance, galloping towards them with terrible speed. As the distant horseman passed beneath streetlights on the way towards the group, the orangeish-white glows flickered and died, preventing them from catching a good look at the horseman until he was nearly upon them. By the time the rider was a block away, they could see that he rode a pale grey horse and robes; a hood obscured his face, but there was no mistaking that he held a sword in his left hand. The blade glittered and flashed in the flickering lights as he approached, showing no signs of slowing as he neared. The pale horse cried out as the rider descended upon the group; the sound was less like a horse and more like the cry of a ravenous predator swooping down upon its prey. Jeremy was the closest to the rider, having pushed Tanya away at his approach. He twisted and jumped backwards to escape the ancient pitted blade that the rider swung towards him, but was too slow. Time slowed down as the blade descended towards him, arcing in a deadly motion that would tear through his neck and shoulder and bury the blade into his chest, but as the deadly instrument drew so close to his flesh that he could sense the warmth being sucked out of the air in its vicinity, his body lost all cohesion. With a puff, his entire form dissolved into the air, and the blade whistled angrily through the spot where Jeremy had stood. The horseman roared in rage, his momentum carrying him on past the rest of the group as he pulled on his horse's reigns and attempted to turn the beast around.

With an audible whoosh, Jeremy's body rematerialized back where it had been standing. Rather than fear, Jeremy's face was a mask of bemusement and violence as he sneered at the rider, who had now turned around and was bearing down on the group again. Focusing himself on a point in space directly in front of the rider's mount, he thrust his arms outward, fingers flared. A burst of telekinetic energy erupted from his palms, vibrating and so powerful that it visibly shimmered in the air as it lanced out and smashed into the head of the horse-beast. A shock wave burst outward at the point of impact, rupturing the pavement with its force; the creature reeled, shook, and collapsed from the powerful impact, throwing the rider through the air. Any elation he might have felt at the blow was quickly lost as the rider slammed into the pavement, driving its shoulder down with inhuman force, bouncing itself into the air, and landed on its feet with supernatural grace. The rider's hood had fallen back, revealing a greyish-white skull beneath; its mouth was filled with teeth that had been filed down to razor-sharp points, and burning red globes of malice hovered in its eye sockets. It still brandished its sword in its left hand, having never dropped the weapon despite the fall.

Jets of flame were loosed upon the rider from its left; Michael cackled as he unleashed the firestorm upon the creature. At the same time, waves of frost filled the air, pulsing and churning from Luna's position. The cold cracked and shattered bones on the rider's right side, even as Michael's assault seared and scorched its left. The two attacks met in the middle, fire and ice combining to form clouds of superheated water vapour which immediately began wearing down the creature's skull. Tanya hurled a human-sized chunk of concrete, torn from the road by Jeremy's assault on the rider's horse, and struck the rider in the back, knocking him to the ground. A lashing tentacle of force extended from Jeremy's right hand, grappling at the hilt of the rider's weapon, trying to pry it free from the unearthly creature's grip. Shaking off the devastating blows that had already been rained down upon it, the rider rose to its feet again, wrenching the sword to shake free Jeremy's telekinetic grip, and swinging the blade at the tentacle of force, as if trying to sever it. The blade crashed against the telekinetic limb with a clang, as if it had struck a solid object. Jeremy reeled from the force of the blow, but quickly adapted, wielding the telekinetic limb as a sword of his own; steel crashed against shimmering air in a rapid-fire flurry of parries and thrusts. Although there was no denying the superior skill of the rider, it suffered from its inability to see Jeremy's telekinetic limb, and the rigid sword found no easy purchase against the agile, writhing tendril of force. As the rider delivered a powerful overhead blow down against the telekinetic limb, Jeremy twisted and wrapped the force-tendril around the blade and pulled sharply. The movement took the rider by surprise, and the weapon was torn from its hands. The situation took a turn for the better as Jeremy's telekinetic limb wielded the rider's blade as its own, hacking and slashing at the rider as it attempted to escape the weapon's keen edge. The rider's unnatural speed and agility proved no match against its own weapon, however, and the blade finally struck home, cleaving down through the rider's skull as if it were no more substantial than papier-mache. The creature crumbled and collapsed into a heap, its body dissolving into a faint grey powder around the blade, which clattered to the ground atop the corpse. The rider's horse, still unmoving on the pavement, also dissolved into nothingness, and after a brief gust of wind blew the powered corpses away, all that remained was the mysterious rider's sword.

It was with great caution that Jeremy approached the sword. Michael stood by his right side, and Tanya his left, while Luna lurked in the background, unwilling to approach the weapon. After a gentle nudge with his foot did nothing except move the sword slightly, he reached down and grabbed the hilt of the weapon in both hands. He lifted it gently, holding it out in front of him at arm's length, tip pointed towards the sky. The blade, despite having shone in the streetlights during the attack, was made of some sort of ancient, dull steel, pitted with countless black marks. Despite the obvious age of the weapon, it held a viciously sharp edge, and tapered down to an elaborately decorated hilt scrawled with runes that Jeremy did not recognize.

"What was that thing?" Michael's voice barely rose to a whisper. His face was ashen grey, and he trembled slightly in the wake of the adrenaline rush the fight had provided.

"I don't know," Jeremy's voice was also a whisper, but one of reverence for the weapon in front of him. He couldn't take his eyes away from the way that the remaining streetlights glinted and sparkled against what seemed to be a dull blade.

"I do," Tanya muttered.

"Don't be afraid to chime in," Michael implored her. "I'd like to at least know what just about killed me."

"When the Lamb opened the fourth seal," Tanya recited, drawing a measure of steadiness from the rote recitation, "I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, 'Come!' I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him."

"Let me guess," Jeremy said with a sideways glance, "Revelations?"

"Good guess, for a heathen," Tanya's laugh was the first positive sound she'd made in far too long. "More specifically, a passage discussing one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse - Death."

"This is usually the part where I'd made a sarcastic joke or snort derisively," Jeremy said seriously, "but considering that I just had a telekinetic sword fight with a horse-riding corpse that survived a hammering by fire, ice, and a pretty damned big piece of pavement, I have to say..." His voice trailed off thoughtfully.

"You have to say what? Don't leave me hanging," Michael gave Jeremy a playful shove that broke his reverie.

"I...not sure where I was going with that. But hey, I just got a brainwave. Does anyone else think it's a coincidence that these superpowers the four of us have developed are elemental?"

"What?" Tanya and Michael were both confused.

"Well," Jeremy said, pointing to Michael, "Fire is pretty obvious, right? Then water," he gestured at Luna, "and Tanya's strength and durability can only be earth. And me...well, what's telekinesis but control over the air?"

"I'm confused," Luna spoke up. "She says that thing was one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Christian beliefs, right? Elementalism isn't Christian - it belongs to much older traditions than that. Indigenous cultures all over the world have venerated the elements...so are we in some Christian apocalypse, or some crazy elemental nightmare?"

"Can't it be both?" Jeremy lowered the sword to his side, turning his attention on his companions. "I'm not much of a philosopher, but I've never been much for religion, either. I've always had this feeling deep down that everyone has things just a little wrong...but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have some parts right, too."

"So you're saying," Tanya said slowly, "that the apocalypse revelation talked about is happening now?"

"Well, yes," Jeremy said, then shook his head. "And no, too. Think of it like this - some holy man in a bronze-age tribal society has grown up hearing the stories and myths of his ancestors and contemplating them, and working what he calls magic around them. Suppose he suddenly has a breakthrough - smashes through whatever boundaries we call reality surround us with, and force us down to this existence with. He gets a quick glimpse at the universe as it really is - but not enough to understand it all. What's he going to do with what he saw? It'll be incorporated into his existing set of beliefs - he'll add some things, and take out others that don't fit nicely with what he already believes. So yeah, maybe someone once had a...I don't know, a vision, an experience, whatever you want to call it. Something that showed him that there was something that would eventually swallow up all life on earth. And maybe, just maybe, whatever he saw was an army of undead being lead by a skeletal horseman...one of several. He'd tell that story to his fellow tribesmen, who would tell it to their children, who would pass it on to their own children, until it eventually got written down, translated, re-translated, interpreted...and eventually you end up with the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

"I guess what I'm really saying is that maybe what we're witnessing is actually the end of the world - but the real end of the world, not the one we've heard told over and over again by people who didn't understand what they were seeing. Something distinct from human religion. And maybe elementalism ties in to it - hell, I don't think it could be a coincidence that we're imbued with some sort of elemental power, fighting against an encroaching chaos that threatens to engulf us. Seems more symbolic than anything - the constituent parts of Earth fighting back against that which would destroy it."

"Not that I don't appreciate the opportunity for heady philosophical debate," Michael said with an impish grin, "but we did just about get cut in half by something - whatever you choose to call it. Maybe we could adjourn the conversation to somewhere a little more comfortable?"

"You have any suggestions?" Jeremy asked. "I'm afraid none of us are all that familiar with the city."

"There's a bar nearby," Michael tilted his head. Two blocks down the road, Jeremy could make out the flickering glow of a rainbow-coloured sign that Michael was indicating. "It's not much, but it'll be quiet, and should be safe."

"Should be safe?" Luna emphasized the word "should".

"It's been keeping me safe since all this trouble started," Michael said with a shrug, "except for my little foraging run that ended in...well, zombies. And if you want to get technical, it's really been keeping me safe since I turned legal age, but that’s a story for another time."

The group scurried to the doors of the bar in silence. Once they reached the front door, Michael pulled a ring of keys from his pocked and unlocked the door. Once the group had ducked inside, he locked the door behind them, then lead them inside. A darkened coat-check area had been converted into a makeshift barricade, with tables pressed up against the stained-glass windows that kept what was obviously once a gay bar private. Michael slid another table in front of the front door, bracing it against a chair that he pushed up against the wall, wedging them together tightly. Beyond the coat-check and foyer, stairs lead upstairs and downstairs - the downstairs was blocked off by closed doors, and Michael lead them upstairs. In the dim lighting of the bar, they could make out a dance floor on their left, which they bypassed as they made their way into a lounge just beyond. The lights inside were on, providing a dim light throughout the lounge. The building had obviously been rundown but well-cared for before the entire world had fallen apart, and it was obvious that Michael had converted it into his own personal living space - the tables had been cleared and pushed to the side, barricading a set of glass double-doors leading to an outdoor patio in the rear of the building.

“Alright, ladies and gent, welcome to my humble abode. I’ve got drinks and...well, beef jerky and potato chips are about all the food I have left.” Michael tossed a few bags on the counter. Jeremy and Tanya tore into them, while Luna held back.

“Not exactly a feast,” she said with a smirk.

“If you’d rather head out to the grocery store and pick up some supplies, I’m sure they’d be happy to help - oh, wait. No, they wouldn’t, because everybody is dead! I scavenged what I could from the convenience store down the street, but it’s not like we can reasonably expect to have gourmet cuisine at our disposal, given the circumstances.”

“This used to be a gay bar, wasn’t it?” Luna’s voice had taken a subtle edge.

“Yes,” Michael said. “Is that a problem for you?”

“Maybe it is,” Luna said, her upper lip curling into a slight sneer. “What makes you think that I want to be counting on a den of faggotry to be a safe haven?”

“Luna!” Tanya broke the stunned silence. “Michael has taken us in to his home, shared his food, and offered us shelter for the first time in days. His personal preferences are a matter between him and the Lord, and nobody else. You may not like them, but please - accept his help with us..”

“Not sure where you’ve been for the last few days, girl,” Luna spat, “but the Lord isn’t exactly helping us out here, either. If we want to keep ourselves safe, we need to rely on ourselves, and that means we need to trust each other. You two I think I can trust. This one? I don’t know.”

A bottle of rum floated down from a shelf full of liquor behind the bar, coming to rest on the table nearest to Luna. Although obviously guided by Jeremy, his attention wasn’t on her - it was focused on the blade he cradled in his hands. When he spoke, his voice rang with an authority unlike any he had ever wielded before, surprising even himself.

“All of you, stop it. I don’t care what your personal feelings are right now, but they’re not helping the situation. If you need a reality check, I’m happy to provide it. We’re in the middle of an undead city, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of zombies, in a landscape which has been changing before our very eyes, and where the undead are only half as strange as the other things we’ve seen, including one of the goddamned horsemen of the apocalypse. If you want to step outside and shed yourself of the burden of being around a gay man, you go ahead and do it, but don’t expect to live long. My suggestion is that you relax, take a seat, and have a drink. We should be able to wait out the night here, and in the morning we’ll try to get to the Army base. It’s our best shot at survival.”

With a snarl, Luna picked up the bottle of rum. Spiderwebs of frost spread outwards from where her fingers gripped the glass bottle, and she took a swig, grimacing as it went down. She took a seat with her back to the wall, keeping a careful eye on Michael, but not stirring up any more trouble.

The sheer level of attention which Jeremy was paying to the sword in his hands brought both Michael and Tanya by his side to assist him. He placed the sword on the counter, and carefully traced several of the complex runes on the blade with the tip of his finger.

“Are you really sure you should be playing with that?” Tanya’s voice trembled slightly. She was obviously unnerved by the presence of the artifact. “Are you even sure you should have taken it?”

“Yes, and yes,” Jeremy said, the corners of his mouth wrinkling upwards in the hint of a smile. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t hear it - that you didn’t feel it.”

“Hear what?” Michael and Tanya asked in unison.

“The sword,” Jeremy said, closing his eyes and letting his fingertips dance over the runic impressions. “It has a voice. It called to me.”

“And what did it say?” Michael was suddenly serious.

“The words...I didn’t understand them. They were in a language unlike anything I’d ever heard before - like music heard from a great distance.”

“What did it sound like?” Tanya asked.

“I'm not sure I can pronounce them, either,” he said with a laugh. He took a deep breath. “But I'll try,” the words that followed tumbled clumsily from his mouth like a toddler trying to imitate its parents' speech. Even his fumbled pronunciations and stuttered guttural attempts at pronunciation carried an air of familiarity to Tanya. She recognized slight bits and pieces of a language, and in much the same way that she could differentiate between Mandarin and Japanese based on the vocalizations, even without speaking either language, she could also place the language that he spoke.

“I've heard that somewhere before – one of my Bible Studies classes. It's called Enochian. The speech of angels,” Tanya whispered. She placed her hand gently on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Fallen angels in this case, most likely. Jeremy, I know that you don’t believe the things that I do, and that’s fine, but please listen to me: we need to get rid of this sword, before it brings down evil upon us.”

With an impossibly practiced ease, Jeremy hefted the sword and flicked it about in his hands, pulling away from Tanya and spinning it around like a martial artist with skill beyond his years. With a deft twist, he pulled the tip of the blade across the back of a chair, and the chair split apart with a whispered whoosh. He stopped his movements and looked at Tanya.

“This may not be what you want to hear,” he said, his voice distant and still, “but we’ve had evil brought down upon us already. We can run, and we can hide, and we can force our way through the crowds of undead here and there, and we can live to fight another day, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t already face-to-face with evil. This thing is a weapon - and if what you believe is really true, it’s the sword of Death himself. That seems like a useful tool to have at our disposal.”

“Well...” Tanya sighed. Try as she might, she knew that she couldn’t win this battle, and that Jeremy had a point. “OK. But please, do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Promise me that if you start hearing that thing talking to you again, that if it’s telling you to do anything that would harm any of us, or that it’s going to hurt us, you’re going to throw it away and forget that it ever existed.”

Jeremy considered her request and nodded. “That seems like a fair deal.”

“We’re all going to die,” Luna muttered as she took another swig from her bottle of rum.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Michael exclaimed, popping open a can of beer and slamming his head back to take a deep draught. He then reached behind the bar and hit an unseen button. The thumping bass of dance music reverberated from the nearby dance floor.

“We’re definitely going to die,” Luna muttered.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Won’t the sound draw a little too much attention to us?” Tanya was smiling at Michael’s enthusiasm, despite her reluctance to actually play along.

“I don’t really care,” Michael said with a crazed laugh. “What are they going to do, break in here? Not like that wouldn’t be totally obvious, and it’s not like we can’t defend ourselves. Besides, I’m not sure about the rest of you, but if I don’t let loose and relax for at least a few minutes, I’m going to go totally crazy, and I don’t think that’d be a whole lot better than being dead. Better to be a corpse that lived his life in the way he chose than to be a cowering, shrivelled shell of a man clinging to his life desperately, begging for it not to be taken, even if all he gets to feel is fear and the icy hand of death hovering just over his shoulder.”

Jeremy and Tanya exchanged doubtful looks, but eventually shrugged and followed Michael to the dance floor. It didn’t take long for Luna to follow, grumbling and muttering, and bringing her bottle of rum along with her.

Although Jeremy had suspected that allowing himself to relax enough to enjoy the moment was going to be difficult, he found that the energy in the room changed drastically once they stepped on to the dance floor. Realizing the he was still carrying Death’s sword, he instinctively plunged the blade into a wall; the unknown metal of the weapon tore through the wooden wall with ease, embedding itself with all the effort of a dart slamming into a cork-board. With his burden released, Jeremy felt the thump-thump-thump of the music coursing through his veins, and began to dance. He had never been much of a dancer, only awkwardly shuffling around at school dances the rare times that he was able to put together the courage to ask someone to dance. It was a great surprise to both himself and Tanya then, when he began to leap and bob and twist with a grace that seemed almost superhuman. Michael needed no invitation to join in, and even Tanya began to let herself loose, spinning around the dance floor with a grin on her face. The pent-up frustrations and fear of the past few days were gone, leaving only three young people free to flow and move in a beautiful and expressive symphony of limbs and sweat. Although she did not join in the dancing, even Luna couldn’t help but crack a smile as she watched her companions let go of their troubles and dive into the music.

So entranced in the music were the entire group that they wouldn’t have had any chance of noticing a disturbing turn of events, even if they’d been at a vantage point where it was visible. In the lounge, peering between gaps in the tables stacked against the walls which barricaded the patio, was a pale, gaunt face that stared through the opening not with mindless dead eyes, but with burning pits of malevolent energy that pierced the material shell of the building to glare hungrily at the living souls inside. A long, bony finger tapped at the glass, cracking and popping it until a small hole was open; the baleful apparition began to lose its shape and material form, dissolving into a sickly yellowish vapour that flowed up and through the open hole in the door. As the vapour swirled and took form inside, all of the food - heavily preserved and dried though it was - crumpled and shrank; beef jerky turned black spotted with white mold, and the liquid in the bottles around the bar evaporated, leaving behind a spoiled and rotten scent.

On the dance floor, other unforeseen events were happening. While the young men and woman danced, and Luna looked on, the runic engravings on Death’s sword began to glow with a gentle blue outline, pulsing softly in time with the music. The flashing of the runes grew in intensity until, as Jeremy leaped past the sword in a frenzied dance, a blue-white bolt of electricity jumped from the pommel of the blade, fueled by smaller sparks and flashes of power that crackled from the blade’s runes to the pommel. The force of the discharge lifted Jeremy off the ground, suspending him in mid-air, frozen in place and howling in pain. Michael fumbled at a control panel in the corner to silence the music, while Tanya fought the urge to grab Jeremy and pull him away from the blade.

“We have to do something!” She was almost in tears, her joy having melted away as quickly as it formed.

“What? If we touch him, it could kill us - or him!” Michael was just as panicked as her. Luna remained silent in her corner of the room.

The energetic discharged lasted for a matter of seconds that felt like an eternity. When it ceased, Jeremy dropped to the ground, gasping for breath, and Death’s sword was nowhere to be seen. As Michael and Tanya rolled him over onto his back, they saw thin, spidery lines of script running up from his wrists and disappearing below his shirt sleeves.

“He...he didn’t have tattoos before, did he?” Michael was certain he would have noticed ink as prominent as this.

“No, nothing. He’s too young for tattoos - but what...” Tanya’s voice trailed off. She couldn’t finish the sentence. In a flash, all of the joy and elation that had filled her heart had vanished, replaced by a cold uncertainty that gnawed at the pit of her stomach.

“It’s OK,” Jeremy rasped, still gasping frantically for more air. He pushed himself to his knees, and with the help of his friends, pulled himself up to his feet. He wobbled dangerously, but did not collapse when they let go. “It was...I don’t know how to explain it. The sword...became part of me.”

“I knew you should have never taken that thing,” Tanya said.

“I knew I should have brought another bottle,” Luna spoke up from the corner. She tilted the bottle upside-down, but not even a drop spilled out. “Guess I need a refill.”

“Yeah, you go help yourself, honey,” Michael dismissively waved his hand at her. “Don’t worry at all about your friend just about getting electrocuted to death by a magical sword. No, alcohol is much more important.”

As she staggered out of the room, Luna extended her middle finger, flashing the gesture behind her head at Michael as she headed to the bar. She had only taken one step outside of the room when she slowly backed in again, her face pale and her body trembling.

“Um, guys?”

“A little busy right now,” Michael turned his back to Luna, and stepping so that he was positioned between her and Jeremy. “Are you sure you’re OK, big guy?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he said with a weak smile.

“None of us are going to be fine,” Luna’s voice quivered fearfully. She was continuing to creep backwards, her gaze never leaving the doorway, until she stood beside her three companions.

“Bitch, what are you talking about?” Michael whirled to face the doorway and see what had startled Luna so much. He wasn’t prepared for the sight of a lean, almost skeletal, seven foot tall creature gliding in the doorway, its head scraping against the top of the opening. In its hand was a scale made of gold, and its thin lips were stretched out into a gruesome mockery of a smile. When it spoke, its voice rang with echoes of distant cries and whipping winds; it stunk of ruin and starvation and decay.

“Behold the living,” it spoke, its horrific voice sending shivers down Jeremy’s spine. “Your efforts have been weighed, and you have been judged, and your sentence shall be delivered. Your greed has consumed you, filled your bellies with bounties you do not deserve, and elevated those who should have been ground to the dust. I have come to claim repayment.”

“Famine,” Tanya whispered, mesmerized and unable to move.

“And who are you to judge?” Jeremy’s voice was suddenly much stronger than before, and he stepped out in front of his companions to confront the Horseman.

“You know who I am,” the Horseman replied, staring at Tanya with an intensity that weakened her knees. “She has told you.”

“You’ll have to forgive me,” Jeremy said, snapping his fingers to draw Famine’s attention. It worked, and the creature’s unsettling gaze turned towards him. He turned his forearms outward so that the spindly script imprinted upon them was clearly visible to the Horseman. “You see, I’m not inclined to take threats from you, or anyone else. I do not recognize your authority, Horseman. If you value your existence, I suggest you depart.”

Famine roared, and with a flick of a skeletal wrist, a blast of greenish-yellow light flew across the room and enveloped Jeremy, expelling all of the air from his lungs and causing him to hack and cough uncontrollably.

“Foolish child,” the Horseman’s voice rose, finally betraying a hint of a human emotion - anger. “Your death will be slow and painful.”

From behind Jeremy, a jet of flame flashed outward from Michael’s outstretch palm, searing the air and washing over the Horseman in an angry blaze. His action spurred on Luna, who released a plume of ice in the Horseman’s direction; the ice and flame collided, forming a column of superheated steam where the Horseman stood, and Tanya reached for the only weapon she could find - a nearby bar stool, which she flung at Famine with all her might. The assault caused the gaunt figure to reel backwards, stumbling and flailing to regain his balance; this in turn caused the nauseating vapour surrounding Jeremy to disperse, freeing him to breathe normally again. An instinct that he couldn’t explain kicked in, and he propelled himself through the air towards the Horseman with a shove of telekinetic force; as he arced downward towards the imposing creature, a pair of blades appeared in his hands, shimmering into existence out of nothingness in a silvery flash of light. Each blade bore a startling similarity to Death’s sword, and the weapons tore through Famine’s skin like paper, slicing through brittle bones as if they weren’t even there, and splashing black ichor across the wall.

A cold wind blew through the room, keening as if mourning the loss of its master, and Famine’s body faded to dust, which swirled and vanished, leaving behind only the golden scale. Jeremy kicked it cautiously with his foot, and breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened. The blades in his hands vanished as suddenly as they’d appeared.

“Well, that was...interesting,” he said.

“That’s an understatement,” Luna said with a shrill laugh. The encountered had served to sober her up, although she was more than a little shaken by the sudden turn of events.

“How many more of those things are there?” Michael nudged Tanya’s shoulder. She didn’t respond at first; her gaze was drawn to the golden scales, her eyes locked on them in rapt fascination. When Michael nudged her shoulder again, her reverie broke, and she shook her head.

“Two more. War and Pestilence. Do the rest of you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Jeremy took Tanya’s arm and gently guided her to a seat.

“That voice. It’s saying...I don’t know, but it seems important.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Michael offered. Jeremy and Luna murmured their assent.

“It sounds like what I heard when Death was defeated,” Jeremy said, brushing a stray lock of hair from Tanya’s cheek and looking her in the eyes. “Do you think it wants you to do something? Something with that scale?”

“Yes,” Tanya’s voice was faint and distant, as if she was fighting the urge to give in to what the unheard voice was asking of her. “I think...I think I need to take it.”

Cautiously, Jeremy leaned down and picked up the scale from the ground. Given its small size, it was astoundingly heavy - so much so that he had to use both hands and all his strength just to lift it. When Tanya plucked it from his hands, it was as if she didn’t feel the weight at all. She held the instrument on her lap, staring at it, running her fingers across it as if she hoped to unlock its mysteries. Unlike Death’s sword, there were no markings, no runes, no ancient script - the golden surface of the scale was simply dull and flat, unmarred by any kind of imagery. As she turned the scale over to examine the reverse side, it seemed to lose its consistency, as if it was made of wax melting in hot sunshine. The metal bent and drooped, then melted entirely, turning into a golden viscous liquid that slid down her hands and forearms, and slipped below her shirt. In the blink of an eye, she was clawing at her skin and gasping for breath; Michael and Jeremy both tried to hold her and get a better idea of what was happening, but her thrashing knocked them both to the side like chaff in the wind. As her throes reached their peak, Tanya fell to her knees and cried out, slamming her fist to the ground in pain. The blow caused the floor to buckle and bend, though it did not break. Finally the pain and thrashing subsided, leaving her curled up in the fetal position on the floor, sobbing and gasping for breath. Jeremy knelt down beside her.

“Are you OK?” He didn’t know what else he could ask. For what felt like the millionth time in the last several days, he was thrust into a situation that was so bizarre, so utterly beyond his comprehension that language didn’t seem able to convey what he really felt.

“I...no,” Tanya whispered hoarsely. “That hurt...a lot. I think it’s over now, though.”

Cautiously, she rose to her feet, and was surprised when her legs did not betray her.

“Well,” she said with mild astonishment, “that’s odd.”

“What?” Jeremy was confused - he’d assumed that not falling to the ground was a good thing.

“I just feel so...I don’t know, so steady. Like one of those statues on Easter Island - you know, the big heads stuck in the ground?”

“That’s an odd analogy,” Michael said, “but I suppose it could be worse. Hey, that sword seems to have turned our boy here into a walking Ginsu set, so maybe that scale is turning into an internal gyroscope - keeping your balance?”

“That seems -” Tanya was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass from the lounge. The group rushed to the room to see what was going on, Jeremy guiding Tanya with a hand on her arm, not intending to let her fall if her newfound balance failed her.

Inside the lounge, the worst-case scenario was starting to unfold: a thick crowd of zombies could be seen behind the now-shattered patio doors, hamming away at the table barricade with their rotting fists. Although the barricade was holding, it shook and shuddered with every blow, and was clearly not going to last long.

Chapter 8

Day 6 – 02:00:00 CST

Downtown Regina

“Damnit!” Michael exclaimed, dashing off towards the front door. Luna followed suit, but not before getting in a verbal jab.

“So much for a safe haven,” she said bitterly.

“Front exit is no good,” Michael dashed back to them with Luna trailing behind. “We’re surrounded.”

“What are our options?” Tanya asked. “Make a run for it? Fight our way through the crowd? Put our backs to the wall and fight it out?”

“That many of them out there means that running would be suicide,” Michael offered. “Trying to fight them off while you run would just slow you down. Making a stand in here pretty much guarantees that we’re dead, too - too many to fight, and not enough room to maneuver.”

“So our choices are to die fighting or die running?” Tanya was crestfallen.

“Or we find another exit,” Luna said, pointing upwards.

“The roof,” Jeremy nodded with a smile. “Can you get us up there, Michael? At least we’d have a fighting chance.”

“Yeah, there should be access through here,” Michael gestured for them to follow and stepped into a side room off the lounge. It was a cramped office, with a flight of stairs leading up in the back. After fleeing up the narrow staircase and through storage rooms crammed with boxes, posters, and fliers, they finally reached a hatch labelled “ROOF”. In blue marker, someone had updated the text to say “ROOFies are fun!”, allowing Jeremy a brief snicker despite the overwhelming tension of the moment. Michael climbed a small metal ladder up to the hatch and shook it, but a heavy steel padlock prevented it from opening. He fumbled with his keyring, but was unable to find a matching key for the lock. He jumped down from the ladder and Tanya climbed up, grasping the lock firmly in her right hand and giving it a solid tug that snapped the lock’s bracket clear off of the hatch, popping it open with ease. She ascended, followed by Jeremy, then Luna, then Michael.

The roof was cold, and a sharp wind blew across it that chilled them all to the bone. In the distance, the horizon was starting to lighten up, although the sun had not yet risen. From their perch atop the roof, they could see hundreds of zombies swarming the streets below, hammering at the building with fists and bloody stumps.

“OK, we’re up here,” Tanya said, gesturing at the streets below, “now what?”

“I don’t think anyone thought farther than that,” Luna said. Her demeanour had turned serious; any trace of inebriation was gone, and her face was tightly drawn with concentration.

“We can try jumping across the rooftops,” Michael pointed at the adjacent building. The gap was on a few feet wide. “But once we get across to the next building, we’re not much better off. After it is the street corner, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to make the jump across the street. We could make our way down to the street from there, but as soon as we step out into the open, we’re zombie-bait.”

“Is anyone else sick of running?” Jeremy pounded his fist against a roof-mounted air conditioning unit in frustration. The hollow ringing as loud and clear, reverberating throughout the entire building. “Tanya and I have been on the run for...I don’t even know how long it’s been anymore. Wherever we go, there’s something new and dangerous waiting to rip our heads off and shit down our necks. I can’t keep doing this!”

“Not like we have much of a choice, bucko,” Michael said with a sad smile. He obviously sympathized with Jeremy’s frustration, but still retained his realism. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly a born fighter. I wouldn’t last a minute toe-to-toe with those things down there.”

There was no response from Jeremy for a moment. A thick, fluttering Canadian flag hanging off the office building next door had caught his eye, and an idea began to form in his mind. When he spoke, a grin began to slowly dawn across his face as he realized just what he had to do.

“Then we don’t go toe-to-toe,” he said. Telekinetic force reached out from his body, grasping the flag and pulling it off the flagpole. The flag fluttered horizontally towards him, held aloft by a disc of ethereal telekinetic force and looking for all the world like a flying carpet. Jeremy stepped on gingerly, cautiously ensuring it would accept his weight, and his grin broadened when it did. In a flash, the carpet sped forwards and banked down , approaching the street head-on and descending towards the writhing mass of undead below. Once again, a pair of vicious blades appeared in his hands, swirling into existence in a silvery cloud. As his ride swooped down into the crowd, he swung the blades with all the force he could muster; a telekinetic barrier in front of his flag-carriage ploughed aside zombies in front of him, while his swords snickered through the rotting flesh of the undead to his sides. He cut a long, straight swathe through the crowd, which was swiftly filled in by the pressing crowd of undead as they surged forwards to cover the ground their companions had lost. Having flown nearly a block from where he started, Jeremy banked his ride and turned around, taking a second pass through the thick crowd of undead, with similar results, and rose back up to the rooftops in a fountain of congealed blood and body parts that trickled off the flag, showering the zombies below.

“Get the idea?” He said, his grin having turned into a savage snarl.

“That looks unbelievably therapeutic,” Michael said with an approving nod.

“I can’t recommend it enough,” Jeremy said with a crazed giggle. “Seems like a good morning for a barbeque, right?”

“Never better,” Michael held his hands aloft, and a burst of flame flared outwards.

“Looks like we’re going to need to keep these dummies from getting hurt,” Luna said, a genuine smile playing across her face for the first time all night. “Are you ready, girl?”

“God commands me not to kill,” Tanya said quietly. She stepped forward to stare down the side of the building at the undead crowd below. “But I suppose that commandment doesn’t really apply when I’m fighting something that’s already dead.”

Jeremy stepped back on his flag-ride, making enough room for his three companions. As they all settled on to the flag, it lazily arced down past the farthest edge of the zombie crowd, dropping them off on the road several dozen feet away from the nearest zombie.

“Are you all ready for this?” Jeremy’s voice was strong and steady. A newfound courage gripped him, something he’d never felt before - a confidence that they were unstoppable, powerful, and righteous. His companions all nodded, sharing his newfound calm. “Good. Here’s the situation: we’ve been running scared for days, and that’s just wrong. We’re not frightened schoolchildren. Not anymore, anyway. We’re not weak. We’re not society’s rejects. We are goddamned superheroes, and it’s time we started to act like it.”

As his voice rose in volume and intensity, it attracted the attention of the zombie horde. They didn’t stop, or even hesitate, but turned and began shambling towards the group, intent on their newfound targets. The gravity of their approach was somewhat lessened by the burned-out shell of a car that suddenly flew over Jeremy’s head, tumbling end-over-end to land amidst the horde, crushing a number of the undead, and scattering even more of them. Jeremy turned to look at Tanya, who had a sheepish smile on her face. He grinned and winked at her, and took a small measure of satisfaction in the blush that spread across her face.

Bringing his swords to the ready, Jeremy dashed into the middle of the crowd. He suddenly leaped into the air with a telekinetic-propelled jump, carrying three zombies in the air around him. He twisted and flipped, his swords whistling through the air to slice apart the creatures. His blades bifurcated the first zombie, cutting through rotting skin, muscle, and bone with ease; as he rotated in the air, he beheaded the second zombie, simultaneously splitting its head in two with his second sword even as it peeled away from the remains of its neck; black ichor and foul-smelling grey tissue splattered over him as both of his blades pierced the chest of the final zombie. He pulled the blades horizontally, tearing through ribs and skin to utterly eviscerate the helpless creature. It still fumbled and groaned even as its innards dropped unceremoniously to the ground, though its flailing was soon ended by a sword slicing the head clean in half.

As soon as Jeremy’s body left the ground, Michael and Luna simultaneously unleashed blasts of flame and ice; each washed over half of the horde to great effect - those caught by Luna’s ice blast froze in place, ultimately shattering as Tanya pelted them with chunks of concrete and debris salvaged from the street, while those caught by Michael’s flames seared into nothingness, flesh melting off in crisp black waves, carrying flecks of black ash into the air. Unsupported by muscle or tendons, and with brains rapidly melting, their bodies crumbled and collapsed.

Even as Jeremy fell back to the ground amidst the carnage wrought by their combined assault, another wave of zombies approached, some flooding out from inside the buildings, others from alleys and side streets. The battle raged on for what felt like eternity; the sun’s feeble rays finally broke the horizon to provide light for their fight, revealing a scene of terrible destruction as the last visible zombie fell under the brutal assault of one of Luna’s cold-blasts, cracking and shattering into tiny flesh-icicles that shriveled and finally fell still. The nearby buildings were aflame, ravaged by the effects of Michael’s fiery blasts, while massive chunks of the road had been torn up by Tanya, and massive structural damage had been inflicted on the surrounding buildings by the shrapnel from her hurled missiles. A river of blood coursed down the street, congealed into a thick black sludge that weaved slowly around the heaped corpses, shattered bones, and severed hunks of tissue that clogged the road.

“How was that for therapy?” Luna cracked in Michael’s direction.

“Oh, honey, that was better than coming out to my parents,” he said with a wink. “I’d say I need a cigarette, but I don’t think it’d be a great idea to contribute to the smoke problem around here.”

“It certainly could be hazardous to our health,” Jeremy said with a laugh, kicking the severed head of a zombie over to Michael like a soccer ball. It landed with a thud-splat in front of him, its eyeballs popping under the pressure, splattering clear liquid out across the pavement and leaving its face in a grotesque mockery of a human face.

“Yeah, I’d sure hate to endanger my health,” Michael said, grimacing at the skull at his feet. “Destroying a city block, and hundreds of undead along with it, on the other hand...”

“Perfectly normal and acceptable,” Tanya interrupted with a smile. She’d enjoyed the carnage more than she was willing to let on.

“My goodness,” Michael said, feigning astonishment. “Does our good girl mean to say that maybe a little mayhem isn’t such a bad thing after all?”

“I’m just doing the Lord’s work,” she said, sticking her tongue out in Michael’s direction. Emboldened by the adrenaline rush of combat, she slipped her hand over Jeremy’s and gave him a peck on the cheek. It was his turn to blush now. “And if that means a little chaos here and there for the greater good, then that’s what I’ll do.”

“Lord’s work or not,” Jeremy said, recovering from his surprise at Tanya’s open display of affection, “I think it’s time we get moving. Even on foot we can be at the Legislature within an hour - maybe two or three if we run into trouble.”

The road stretched out in front of them, finally sunlight and bright, and eerily silent. Beyond the flaming buildings, the abandoned cars, and the silent streets, lay hope - hope that others were still alive, that they could help humanity, and that they could find sanctuary from the undead assault.

Chapter 9

Day 6 – 05:00:00 CST

Wascana Lake, Regina

The journey through the heart of the city was slow and nerve-wracking. Every whistle of the wind, every tinkle of distant wind chimes, every sound in the distance that could be heard and not immediately explained caused the party to fall in to a combat stance. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure whether he should have been relieved or disappointed when they made it to the shores of Wascana Lake without incident.

Wascana Lake was a man-made lake in the middle of the city, a scenic offset for a park that was once a favourite picnic and leisure spot for people who wanted to relax in the sun and enjoy a great view. On the opposite side of the lake stood the Legislature, an imposing green-and-white structure decorated with intricately carved columns and artwork, and which had once stood as a beautiful architectural achievement in a city that was otherwise severely lacking in that department. Even from across the lake, sandbags could be seen forming a perimeter around the building. Massive tanks flanked the roadways on either side of the building, and artillery cannons had been set up at regular intervals behind the sandbags. Despite the impressive military presence, there was no sign of any activity - the guns were unmanned, the wall of sandbags unpatrolled, and the tanks were silent. Even from the distance across the lake, they could clearly read the massive sign that had been erected atop the Legislature - “Fort Majesty”, and in smaller print below that “All Living Welcome”.

“Thoughts?” Tanya asked nobody in particular.

“Looks quiet,” Michael remarked.

“Not a good sign,” Luna sighed.

“Not a bad one, either,” Jeremy said. “Looks like the building is pretty isolated; chances are that they’re keeping everyone inside the fortifications and watching surveillance cameras - no sense in having people standing at attention outside, unless it’s to scream out ‘here are some snacks’ for any zombies nearby.”

“So where does that leave us?” Tanya asked. “Do we just walk up and ring the doorbell.”

“I was thinking of something a little more...dramatic,” Jeremy said with a sly smile. Before he could elaborate on what he meant, however, Michael tripped, falling backwards from the edge of the water, yelping in surprise.

“What happened?” Luna asked.

“I saw something under the water,” Michael said, his voice shaking. “Something big. Whatever it was, it moved fast...it was a dark blur, there one second and gone the -”

The surface of the water rippled and bubbled, and an enormous head rose above the surface of the water, carried aloft by a serpentine scaled neck and an unseen body. The greyish-green skin of the creature was covered in thick scales, and its face looked like something straight out of a fantasy painting - draconian features were accented by a missing eye, the empty socket surrounded by a web of scars, and the remaining eye was a narrow slit of baleful red with a reptilian black pupil that stared down at them in judgement. The creature’s mouth was partly open, and Jeremy could see row upon row of razor-sharp fangs; a forked tongue flicked across them and the creature hissed.

“That’s...” Jeremy’s voice trailed off into confused silence. “What is that?”

“Do we...do we kill it?” Michael didn’t sound eager at the prospect.

“That thing looks like it could swallow me whole,” Tanya said, unable to tear her eyes away from the magnificent and terrifying creature. “I don’t think that provoking it is the right idea.”

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The creature stared them down with that single baleful eye, its gaze burning deep into their souls. Its assessment - its judgement - of them complete, the mouth of the massive creature opened wide, and it made a sound that could not be explained. Half screech, half speech, it carried distinct meaning to them, forming a solid meaning in their minds even without words. The impression was dank and foul, a deep inner violation that lingered even as the creature vanished beneath the surface of the water again.

“Am I the only one who?” Luna couldn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t know how to express the foreboding dread that the screech had instilled in her. Even the meaning didn’t take form in words that she could express.

“No, definitely not,” Michael said, still frozen in place. “But...what did it mean?”

“It was a warning,” Jeremy said flatly. “I don’t know what it was warning us about, but that was its way of telling us that something is horribly wrong.”

“You think so?” Tanya said with half-hearted laughter. “Things have been horribly wrong for a while now. I don’t think I needed some creepy demon-serpent rising from the depths to tell me that. I was kind of clued in by the death of everyone I know and love, and their corpses coming back to life with the intent of eating me!”

“More than that,” Jeremy said. His voice was quiet, still, and self-assured. “Something else is wrong. That thing was an engine of destruction, every bit as much as those tanks over there, and yet it didn’t touch us. It’s like it knew who we are...like it as expecting us, and we didn’t quite live up to its expectations.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint it,” Luna spat on the ground. “But frankly, I don’t care. We’re alive. Whatever that thing was, whatever it thinks the proper state of affairs is, doesn’t matter. We’re still here, and it didn’t touch us. We need to move on.”

“What if it was warning us about the base?” Tanya asked. “Back in Estevan, the army guys we saw...they weren’t so friendly. Tried to kill us, in fact. What if it’s warning us that we’re walking into a trap?”

“Would it matter?” Luna asked. “Even if it was a warning, would it make sense to trust it given that it was delivered by some sort of sea serpent?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Jeremy said, stepping forward to the edge of the water. “That base over there is our only hope of finding human life in this city. I don’t know whether we’re here to help them, or they’re here to help us, or whether something really is horribly wrong, or whether they were overrun with zombies while we were trying to get here. There are a lot of unknowns here, but the one thing that we do know is that if we don’t press on, we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Michael clapped his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder, “I can’t really resist. Lead on!”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Tanya said, her last outburst fading.

“OK, here we go,” Jeremy said, a smile creeping back over his face. He raised his arms over his head and spread them out in a wide V shape. “I’ve always wanted to do this. LET MY PEOPLE GO!”

A frigid burst of telekinetic force erupted from his entire body, forcing the waters of the lake to part. A clear path appeared across the entire lake, the water on both sides held at bay by a telekinetic wall of force. Michael shook his head in disbelief.

“A little dramatic, isn’t it?”

“Drama is good for the soul,” Jeremy said with a wink. “Let’s go.”

Crossing the lake bed was easier than it looked; Jeremy maintained a wall of force parallel with the ground at the same time as the walls holding back the water on either side, allowing them to walk over the muddy surface quickly and easily. Even so, the walk took almost ten minutes, and when they finally stepped up on shore and the walls of force came crashing down, he nearly collapsed from the exertion. Accepting a hand from Tanya, he steadied himself, and they cautiously approached the sandbag wall separating them from their destination.

The wall of sandbags was thick and solid, but compared to the physical exertions that everyone in the group had recently subjected themselves to, clambering over it was relatively simple. Inside the barricade things were as quiet as outside - everywhere were signs that this had once been a bustling armed forces encampment, but although there were no signs that the security had been breached, it was entirely deserted.

The spot where they had ascended over the barrier used to be an open lawn covered in flower beds and surrounded by trees. The trees were gone, cut down to allow for greater visibility and space. The twin roads that ran south, flanking either side of the flower beds, were guarded by a pair of tanks that sat silent. At regular intervals, the sandbag wall was broken by machine-gun emplacements, all unoccupied. The flower beds had been crushed and trampled under boots and treads, leaving only a strip of dirt leading towards the Legislature. They walked this path slowly, searching for any sign of life – or unlife – and were greeted with none. The flower beds had once stretched out for nearly half a kilometer, ending at a wide road that ran east-west, allowing access from Albert Street to the Legislature, and to paths running around the boundaries of Wascana Lake on the other side. This road was also flanked by a pair of abandoned tanks, and the intersection where the road met the paths leading down to the flower beds held four artillery emplacements – each facing in one of the cardinal directions. Machine-gun emplacements could also be seen in the distance at the edges of the sandbag wall which they could now see encircled the entire Legislature. They continued their slow, cautious walk towards the entrance of the massive stone building. Posters had been taped all over the doors and nearby light-posts proclaiming that this was Fort Majesty, a safe haven established by the Armed Forces to provide sanctuary for any surviving civilians. I'd feel a lot better about this sanctuary , Jeremy reflected , if it looked like there was anyone left alive guarding it. Hell, I'd probably feel a little more comfortable if I could even see corpses – at least then I'd know what I'm walking in to.

With every step they took towards the massive doors to the Legislature, Jeremy half-expected a team of commandos to leap out of nowhere and surround them. They were unobstructed, however, and even opening the Legislature’s doors was simple; they pushed open easily, creaking with the weight of age, but revealing an empty room beyond.

Papers and books were scattered throughout the reception area; sunlight filtering in through the high windows provided dim illumination that assured them that nobody was there. As they stepped inside, the door creaked closed of its own accord. A sudden clink of metal against the the marble floor was the only warning they had that they were not alone - a small metal cylinder landed at their feet, and began hissing and spewing out greyish vapour. Michael whirled and attempted to pull open the door, but the gas overtook them all so quickly he had no chance to do anything more than grasp the door handle before darkness overtook him and they all fell to the ground unconscious.

***

Cold was all that Jeremy could feel as consciousness returned to his body. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he was not wearing any clothing, and was laying on some sort of cold stone. As he slowly shook the grogginess from his head and forced his eyes open, understanding slowly dawned upon him. He was laying on his back in what appeared to be a prison cell - small and cramped, surrounded on all sides by bars. He could see a row of similar cells stretching through a dark, dank room that he could only assume was located somewhere below the Legislature. The nearby cells held his companions, all of whom had also been stripped of clothes and thrown in the bare cells. Michael’s cell was directly adjacent to him; Tanya and Luna were in cells opposite him, separated by a narrow walkway. Up until that moment, he had expected that seeing Tanya naked would be the high point of his young life; under the circumstances, he tried to preserve her dignity by not looking any more than was necessary to ascertain her location. Sexual arousal was not likely under the circumstances, at any rate. Everyone else was still unconscious; even he was barely awake, and it took monumental effort to force himself up to his hands and knees. Vertigo was overwhelming him, making it impossible to stand up. He called out, his voice hoarse and croaking.

“Hello,” he called. His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “Is anyone there? You need to let us out! There’s been a mistake!”

After repeating his calls twice, he decided to save his breath. Fortunately, it appeared that someone had heard him; a reinforced iron door that opened on to the walkway unlocked with a loud clang and slid open. A short, slim man dressed in the neatly-pressed uniform of an army officer stepped through, walked to the front of Jeremy’s cell, and stood there, looking down at him. When he spoke, his voice was carefully measured and controlled, not betraying any trace of emotion.

“Who are you, and how did you get here?”

“There’s been a mistake,” Jeremy said. “We’re -”

“That’s not what I asked,” the officer interrupted. “Give me your names, and detailed information about how you got here.”

“Not exactly the hospitable approach,” Jeremy said, managing to muster up a sneer. “How about you go fuck yourself, and let me out of here?”

“Four apparent civilians,” the officer said, turning to survey the entire group in turn, “in a city that’s in ruins show up unarmed despite a hostile incursion into the city. A hostile incursion that has claimed the lives of - as far as we’re aware - the city’s entire civilian population, and a significant number of the military forces that have been deployed to secure and safeguard it. So you’ll excuse me if I’m not exactly hospitable, but you can see why I’m going to need to know how four unarmed and untrained civilians were able to survive and reach my base. This is the last time I’m going to ask: give me your names, and detailed information about how you got here.”

“We walked,” Jeremy considered the wisdom of revealing the full truth to the officer. It wasn’t a hard decision - he’d been drugged, stripped, and thrown in a cell, and was now being interrogated. Full cooperation was not in his best interests, particularly given the nature of the whole truth. He pointed at Tanya, still unconscious. “She and I are from Estevan. Some soldiers down there told us that there was sanctuary here, so we made our way up. We drove as far as we could, and met her - “ he gestured to Luna, “on the way up here. We met the other guy on our way through the city.”

“You walked,” the officer chewed the words over, his voice seething with barely-controlled rage. “My own men can’t go more than a kilometer without running into random wandering groups of hostiles that are extraordinarily tough and deadly, but you expect me to believe that you made it all the way from Estevan just as easy as you please?”

“I never said it was easy,” Jeremy said. He was finally starting to breathe normally, and regained enough composure to grasp the bars in the front of the cell and pull himself up to standing. “And I never said we never encountered any hostiles. Is that really what you’re calling them? It sounds so...neutral. You know what they really are.”

“I don’t officially know anything that hasn’t arrived in a briefing manual for me,” the officer huffed. “So why don’t you tell me what the hostiles really are, smart guy?”

“Zombies,” Jeremy spat the word out vehemently. “The goddamned undead. They’re our friends, our family, our neighbours, dead and risen to slaughter us all.”

Although he had been expecting to garner at least some sort of reaction from the officer with his assessment of the zombie threat, Jeremy was pleasantly surprised to see him merely smile instead.

“Zombies, eh?” The officer stepped to the side and hammered his fist against the iron door. It creaked open, and the officer gestured in the direction of Jeremy’s cell. A squat older man with a scruffy beard and a dishevelled uniform dragged in a homemade apparatus that consisted of a pair of car batteries, a tangled mass of wires, and a series of small devices that Jeremy couldn’t immediately identify. The officer withdrew a key from his pocket and opened the cell. The bearded man, moving with a swiftness that seemed unnatural for someone of his stature, stepped inside the cell and struck Jeremy with a small black club that he pulled from a hidden pocket as he entered. The blow knocked Jeremy on to his back, reeling and trying to retain his grip on consciousness. The bearded man quickly slapped shackles on Jeremy’s arms, hooking them through a loop in the cement wall, and then stepped outside so that he could wheel his apparatus inside the cell. When the bearded man began to untangle a set of electrodes from the apparatus and attach them to Jeremy’s chest, he realized with horror exactly what the apparatus was - a torture machine. The officer withdrew a small remote control from his jacket pocket and held it out for Jeremy to see. “Do you see this, smart guy? A bright fellow like yourself must have figured out what it’s for by now. I press this button,” he gently tapped a small red button on the remote, and Jeremy’s entire body convulsed, wracked by the agony of powerful electrical current surging through his entire body. The officer’s scowl was replaced by a grin as he watched the results of his work. “Ah, yes. That’s what happens. I don’t think I need to say more on that matter, so let’s get right down to it again. I’ve asked nicely, and now you’ve made me do this. How exactly did you manage to elude or defeat the hostiles and find this base?”

“Go to hell,” Jeremy spat a mixture of spittle and blood on the ground at the officer’s feet. His defiance was rewarded with another bout of incredible, spasmodic pain. When the pain finally subsided, the officer resumed his interrogation.

“Not the answer I was looking for. One more time. How. Did. You. Elude. Capture.”

“I brought the power of death and destruction upon the hordes of undead who stood in my way,” Jeremy grinned a mouthful of teeth that were now stained with blood. “And now it’s your turn.”

With all his might, with every fibre of his being, he reached deep inside himself to summon the full power of his telekinetic abilities to tear away the electrodes, crush the bearded man, and pin the officer against the cell wall. The pain of the repeated electrical assaults, coupled with the disorientation from being drugged was enough that his attempt failed. As dramatic as the moment had become, absolutely nothing happened - not even another jolt of pain.

“That’s so unfortunate,” the officer remarked. He nodded to the bearded man, who disappeared behind the iron door. “I was hoping that we wouldn’t need to escalate to these sort of measures, but I’m afraid that times are desperate. Just remember that you forced my hand on this. There is nobody to blame but yourself.”

The bearded man reappeared in the doorway, dragging a shackled and muzzled zombie, who thrashed and twisted with all its might in a vain attempt to attack its captor. With remarkable calm, the bearded man shoved the creature inside the cell, cuffing both of its hands to the bars of the cell, pinning it several feet away from Jeremy, restrained only by the steel handcuffs which it strained against. Once he was satisfied that the creature was secured, he removed the leather muzzle and mask, revealing a face full of rotted flesh and muscle and yellow-stained teeth that gnashed and chomped, frantically seeking any available source of food. Jeremy did what he could to remain calm in the face of the new threat.

“So now that we’ve upped the stakes a bit,” the officer resumed with a toothy grin, “maybe you’ll be a little more willing to cooperate? If not, I’d be willing to bet that our hungry friend here would be more than willing to make an example of you for when your friends wake up.”

“Speaking of his friends, sir,” the bearded man’s voice was rough and gravelly, “me and the boys were wondering if...well, it’s been a while since we’ve actually had female companionship.”

Braving vertigo and his still barely-working muscles, Jeremy leapt to his feet and rattled his chains trying to pull himself free to protect Tanya from even the hint of what the bearded man had suggested. His indignation was not lost on the officer, whose grin widened until it seemed likely to split his face in two.

“Now, Sergeant, that would violate too many regulations to count. That’s not how we treat our prisoners...unless they refuse to cooperate. Tell me, smart guy, are you ready to talk?”

The only response that Jeremy could formulate was a growl of unfettered rage. With a resigned shrug, the officer reached out and twisted a key in the lock of one of the zombie’s handcuffs. The hand was free and outstretched towards Jeremy in an instant, the zombie still struggling against the other handcuff with enough force that his rotten arm seemed likely to pull itself apart. The officer handed a different key to the bearded man, who grinned lasciviously and unlocked the door to Tanya’s cell. He stepped inside and knelt beside her unconscious body, running his grubby hands across her naked back.

“Still feel like keeping quiet, smart guy?”

Jeremy’s snarls of rage rose to a volume and intensity that overwhelmed even the similar sounds coming from his undead cellmate. The officer laughed heartily as he twisted his key in the handcuff on the zombie’s still-shackled left hand. As the creature freed itself and made a beeline across the cell for Jeremy, the officer also pressed and held the red button on his remote. Time slowed to a standstill, until his every heartbeat sounded in his ears like a thunderous drum, and his rage and agony melded into something entirely new. Pain turned to power, and rage to freedom; he felt his grip on his telekinetic powers return, escalating to a newfound level that he had never before imagined, not even during their barroom escape after meeting Luna. He was able to perceive every atomic bond, every molecular structure of the chains that held him, and with a glorious burst of energy, he disassembled those bonds, dissolving the manacles and chains to a fine powder. As the zombie closed in on him, his hand shot out to meet the creature’s face, his fingers blazing with visible power. They pierced the creature’s skin and bones, two fingers popping its eyeballs like grapes beneath the blow of a sledge hammer. He felt his fingers penetrate the rotten remains of what had once been a brain, and the electrical connectivity between its remaining synapses connected with the energetic field extending from his fingertips. A massive flood of information rushed through that link, as if a powerful supercomputer spontaneously decided to push out all of its stored data through a network connection. The flood of information was too much to dissemble at once, but clearly contained far more information than the simple memories of the man the zombie had once been. He could see and sense the memories as if they were his own, and he saw ancient battlefields, wars raging across devastated cities and continents that bore no resemblance to their own; he saw himself hunting and killing men, women, and children, and feasting on their flesh and bones, and he saw people fighting back with all their might. He felt like a droplet amongst a terrible wave, an undead tsunami that raged across the planet to scourge it of all life.

The overwhelming force of the link caused the energy field that Jeremy was emitting to fluctuate and pulse with terrible power, feeding back through the electrodes attached to his skin and causing the torture apparatus to explode in a rain of fiery shrapnel, followed shortly thereafter by a similar explosion from the zombie’s skull; bits of bone, blood, and brain shot outwards, coating the officer in a black and grey mist. Death’s blades shimmered into existence in Jeremy’s hands, sparking and glowing with deadly energy. He moved, not through his body’s muscular motive force, but by forcing his body through the air with sheer willpower. The bars of the cell were no obstacle, their molecular structure parting before his advance so that he could pass unobstructed through them. He buried the blade in his left hand deep into the officer’s belly, leaning in close to whisper in his ear as the weapon tore through flesh and bone.

“You wanted to know how we made our way here,” he whispered savagely. “The truth. We are unstoppable. We are the avatars of forces you cannot hope to understand, control, or dominate. I am the unstoppable storm, the power of elemental air, and the shadow of death.”

He twisted the blade and pulled it upwards inch by inch as he spoke.

“We came in search of others we could help, in the hopes that others had similar experiences to us, or that at least we could find that there were other bastions of human survival left in this world. Instead we find chaos and corruption - men who, in the absence of their chain of command, are willing to do anything and everything they please, regardless of who it harms. Your fate is the same as that of the undead.”

The blade flicked upwards through the officer’s body as if it wasn’t even there. The only other witness to the grim display that followed was the bearded man, frozen in terror over Tanya’s unconscious body. The sight of the officer’s body peeling apart, steaming entrails dropping from the shell of the body into an unceremonious pile on the floor. The upper quarters of the officer’s body split apart from his pelvis with a sickening, slurping crunch. Jeremy’s attention turned to the bearded man, still crouched over Tanya’s unconscious body. His muscles tensed up, as if to flee, but his speed was nothing compared to Jeremy’s. Blades moving so quickly that they flickered like lightning, he stepped through the enclosure of the cell and caught the bearded man in their grasp. Their tips flicked and dipped, twisted and thrust, tearing away tiny pieces of skin one at a time, flaying away flesh until all that remained was bone, and even before gravity had the chance to claim the bare skeleton it was cut to splintered shreds beneath the ceaseless advance of the blades. The entire cell was painted with the deep crimson of the bearded man’s blood, and splattered with bits of entrail, skin, muscle, and organs. Despite the utter barbarity of the carnage, however, Tanya’s body remained clean and untarnished by the brutality, shielded from the ghastly rain by a shield of telekinetic force. With a flash of light, Death’s blades vanished the same way that they’d appeared.

The commotion was enough to cause Tanya to stir from the depths of her drug-induced coma. She twitched, then groaned, then stirred, raising her head and trying to focus her eyes. The sight of the cell and the realization that she was naked was enough to cause her to try to scramble to her feet. Jeremy twisted and prepared to catch her, but to his surprise she did not lose her balance, despite obviously fighting the same vertigo effects that he’d experienced.

“What...what’s going on?” Her voice was weak and confused.

“It’s a long story,” he said, taking her hands gently in his. “Turns out we can’t trust the soldiers up here any more than we could back in Estevan. I should have known...in the absence of a command structure, things fell apart. Their leader became corrupt, and his men followed his every command.”

“Why is there so much blood in here?”

“That’s part of the long story. Do you think you’re OK to walk? We should wake up Luna and Michael, and try to find some clothes.”

“You mean you don’t like the view?” Tanya slid her hand across Jeremy’s back, and he shivered.

“I never said that. I would never say that,” he said with a wink. “But I would prefer to enjoy this particular view in private, and preferably not somewhere quite so dangerous.”

“That’s a good idea,” Tanya said.

They stepped outside of Tanya’s cell, hand-in-hand. Jeremy lifted his free hand and gestured at the doors to Luna and Michael’s cells. More easily than ever before, spindly tendrils of telekinetic force sprung forth from his fingers to do his bidding. While exercising his telekinetic abilities was normally an exercise in enduring cold, numbing extraneous appendages, these tendrils were merely cool, almost natural, and he could actually feel the air around them, and the metal of the locks on the doors. The tendrils ripped the locks to shreds, and the doors swung wide open. Tanya gave him a surprised look.

“Showing off, are we?”

“Not quite,” he said, trying to wrap his head around both the new experience of engaging his power and the information dump from his connection with the zombie - a process that was still ongoing, sorting itself into vague recollections and ideas, none of which yet explained what was really happening to him. “I’ll explain as soon as we’re out of here, but something happened while you were unconscious. I feel...different. More powerful. I’m not sure how to explain it yet.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense any longer than you need to,” she said sweetly, and they walked in to their companions’ cells - Tanya into Luna’s cell, Jeremy into Chris’. They shook their respective companions gently, waking them from their slumber. It didn’t take much effort; the effects of the drugs were rapidly wearing off, and it was much easier to help them to their feet than it had been for either Jeremy or Tanya. Realizing that they were also naked, Luna tried to cover herself with her hands, eyeing Tanya suspiciously. Michael, on the other hand, eyed up Jeremy with hungry eyes and a hint of a lustful smile. Jeremy rolled his eyes and clapped Michael on the back.

“Come on, guys,” he said. “I’ll explain as soon as we’re out of here. We need to find some clothes and go.”

Considering all that they’d been through, this latest development didn’t seem to bother either Luna or Michael as much as Jeremy had expected that it would. They nodded their assent, and Jeremy lead the way to the iron door at the end of the room. Death’s blades shimmered into existence in his hands again, and as he approached the door, he unleashed a powerful blast of telekinetic force - enough to knock the door off its hinges and blow it into the corridor beyond. As they stepped into the corridor, he was amused to see a startled guard, narrowly missed by the door’s trajectory, frozen in place at the sight of him. Jeremy levelled both of his blades at the guard’s throat, closing in on him in the blink of an eye.

“I’d rather not kill you,” he snarled, “but I’ve had a rough day, and it might make me feel better.”

The guard whimpered quietly in response.

“I’ll tell you what. Show me where our clothes are, and I won’t skin you alive.”

The guard pointed to a pile by the empty frame where the iron door had once been. All of their clothing had simply been dumped into the pile; apparently the guards who had stripped them hadn’t been interested in sorting through it. Jeremy smiled, and struck the guard in the side of the head with the edge of one of his swords. The blow connected hard, with a sickening crunch, and the unfortunate guard dropped to the floor unconscious. The group wasted no time in donning their respective clothing. Satisfied that they were once again fully modest and ready for anything, they peered down the long hallway.

“I don’t suppose any of you are familiar with the Legislature’s floor plans?” Jeremy asked hopefully.

“Can’t say that I am,” said Michael. Both Tanya and Luna shook their heads.

“Right,” he said. “So much for the easy way. I guess that leaves the fun way.”

“Wait,” Tanya said, grabbing his arm with enough force to stop him in his tracks. He winced, and she released her grip. “Sorry...I keep forgetting that I’m a little stronger than I used to be. Anyway, you said you’d tell us what’s going on.”

“A little stronger? I recall you hurling a car through the air just a few hours ago, so I’d say that’s an understatement. But I suppose that I did say I’d tell you what’s going on. I’m still sorting things out, so bear with me a bit.

“I woke up before you three did. I guess that’s a good thing, considering everything that happened. An officer in an army uniform interrogated me - he wanted to know how we got here, and who we were. He didn’t say much, but it sounded to me like they’ve been running into some serious zombie problems. Serious enough that they’re losing men, and quickly. It doesn’t sound like there are any other civilian survivors here. The son of a bitch was so sure that surviving out there is impossible that he tortured me to try getting me to talk.”

“Didn’t you just tell him the truth?” Tanya was aghast at the idea that the armed forces - their alleged protectors, keepers of the peace and bulwark against the evils of the world - would actually do what he was describing.

“Tell him what? That we’ve got super powers, and we laid waste to everything that got in our way? I tried, actually. He didn’t buy it. Anyway, skipping the gory details, the peak of the torture was pumping electric current through my body while letting loose a zombie in my cell. I guess he figured my grisly death would get some cooperation out of the rest of you, but something happened. I don’t know if it was the stress of the situation, or the electricity, or both, but...well, all I know is that I suddenly became way more powerful than I had been before, and they didn’t survive it. The zombie that was attacking me...I somehow merged with its mind, learned things from it. Strange things - kind of like a genetic memory. I’ve been seeing glimpses in my mind of the rise and fall of the zombies, over and over again.”

“You mean this isn’t the first time that this has happened?” Luna laughed. “I’m pretty sure we’d have heard about it before now. Kind of hard to miss.”

“Yes, and no. I think...I think that this isn’t the first time that they’ve destroyed human civilization. I keep seeing cities - modern, advanced cities, but with architecture unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before. I see death and destruction come to them, and...I don’t know.”

“That’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Tanya spoke up. “I mean, we have bits and pieces of historical records going back, what? Maybe forty thousand years. Biologists think that Homo Sapiens has existed in basically the same form for over a million years, if not more. Our usual assumption is that we just cowered in caves and huddled around campfires for most of that, but it could be that civilization has developed before...only to be struck down.”

“Wouldn’t that set you at odds with the bible?” Luna asked.

“Maybe,” Tanya said. “At least, if you’re trying to take the bible literally. I’m honestly not sure how to reconcile my personal beliefs with what’s happening now, to be honest. Right now, I’m just hoping to keep moving and surviving, and sort it all out as we go.”

“And on that note,” Jeremy said with a flourish of his hand, “we should get moving.”

“Where?” Michael sounded, for the first time, despondent. “I mean, if what you’re saying is true, it doesn’t matter where we go. Civilization will die, and there’s no safe haven.”

“Maybe,” Jeremy said. “But I don’t think it really matters. The way I see it, we’ve got a choice - sit here and whine like little bitches that the world’s in rough shape, or man up and do something about it. If we do the latter, maybe we end up getting killed, but at least we’ll do it taking some of those zombies with us. Besides, we’ve met and killed two of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I’m not sure about you, but I’d like to find the others and let them know exactly what I think of their role in our collective destruction.”

“Go out with a bang, eh?”

“Something like that,” Jeremy said. Michael mulled the notion over, finally nodding his assent. With everyone in agreement, they stormed down the corridor, Jeremy in the lead, followed by Tanya, then Luna and Michael. They didn’t travel far before spotting a sign that said Main Lobby , with an arrow pointing them in the right direction. After ascending a short flight of stairs, they found themselves in the same trashed lobby where they’d originally been ambushed. This time, however, it wasn’t unoccupied - half a dozen soldiers lounged about, not even noticing the group ascending from the lower corridor. They were not granted an opportunity to rectify their inadequate diligence; sweeping tendrils of telekinetic force knocked them aside like dust in the wind. The blows were sufficient to render the soldiers unconscious without being lethal, although Jeremy decided that he certainly wouldn’t want to be in there position if some zombies should just happen to come wandering by while they were unconscious. He reached through the air, telekinetically probing the thick doors of the Legislature and severing their bonds at a molecular level; the doors crumbled to a fine grey dust that swirled in the breeze and vanished into the air. Jeremy and his companions stepped through the open portal, and into a world that bore little resemblance to the familiar one they had left behind when they entered the Legislature.

Chapter 10

Day 6 – 14:30:00 CST

Legislature Building, Regina

The parking lot and flower gardens that had surrounded the building was gone, as were the military emplacements, replaced by a wide cobblestone pavilion that looked like it came straight out of a fantasy movie. The lake beyond the pavilion was still present, though it stretched out to a distance far greater than it had previously; a wide cobblestone bridge stretched across its length, leading up to a steep hill beyond which had not existed previously. The path stretched up and off into the distance, fading out of sight long before it ended. The sun was setting, throwing brilliant orange and red light across the sky, streaked with thin grey clouds that hung ominously over the scene. The air was utterly silent and still aside from a very slight breeze; there was no sound of any wildlife, or even the far distant growling of undead that had seemed ever-present.

“Well, this is interesting,” Michael said, gaping open-mouthed at the scene as he stepped out of the doorway.

“Not quite the way we left it,” Jeremy said with a hint of a smile.

“You don’t seem very concerned about it,” Luna commented.

“I think I’m starting to get a little perspective,” he said. “I don’t claim to know what our fate is, but that path is a trail of breadcrumbs if I’ve ever seen one.”

The stillness of the water in the lake was broken by a ripple, then a fin that broke the surface. The fin sped across the water for a moment, then burst free and into the air - first, the massive, terrifying serpentine head that had confronted them in the lake once before, then its scaled, scarred neck, and then a massive body flanked by enormous wings and legs as thick as tree trunks; a long, thin tail trailed behind the creature, its scaly tip the last thing to break free of the surface of the water as the massive dragon took to the air, wings beating with enough force to carry the gigantic beast aloft and into the sky. It vanished behind the gathering black clouds, moving with tremendous speed.

“How’s your perspective feeling now?” Luna poked Jeremy in the ribs.

“It’s...well, not quite what I thought it was,” Jeremy said, his eyes still pinned to the cloud cover above, looking for any trace of the creature.

“What do you mean by that?” Tanya’s eyes were fixed to the same point in the sky as Jeremy’s, though she saw nothing that he did not.

“Turns out that perspective is tricky business.”

“Uhhh, guys?” Michael broke the awkward exchange. “I don’t think that’s the only tricky business we’re about to meet up with.”

He pointed off in the distance, at the very furthest point that they could see on the cobblestone path. Even from the great distance, bodies could be seen in motion, moving in smooth coordination. Torchlight glittered in their midst, marching ever closer by the second. No voices could be heard, and if not for the uniform lockstep of the footfalls that echoed across the lake, it would have been tempting to assume that the creatures were nothing more than mindless zombies.

“And so it begins,” Jeremy said. “I’ve seen this before. We’d best do what we can to get ready.”

“Why? What are those things?” Tanya strained to make out details from the distance.

“They are the harbingers of War, my dear,” he said. “His foot soldiers.”

“That makes that dragon...what? A general?”

“Not quite.”

As if on cue, a familiar screech cut through the air, and the massive dragon sunk below cloud cover once again, swooping down to the ground with meteoric speed. Despite the unbelievable speed it moved with, it landed at the nearby end of the bridge with catlike grace, rearing up on its rear legs, only to shrink and morph into something much smaller, but no less frightening. The creature’s form coalesced into a rider upon a massive warhorse, dressed in heavy armour the colour of coal, emblazoned with brilliant red accents. A heavy black and red cloak trailed out behind the rider, fluttering as if moved by a heavy wind, despite the stillness of the air. In the rider’s left hand was a massive broadsword covered in flames that licked eagerly at the air. The rider’s face was obscured by a heavy horned helmet that covered everything except for a pair of malevolently glowing red eyes.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Jeremy said, “I give you the third horseman of the Apocalypse - the dreaded War.”

The horseman’s foot soldiers had finally closed in, their forms finally visible in detail. They were covered from head to toe in the same coal-black armour as their master, with similar helms marred only by black pits where there should have been eyes. Although their weaponry was not aflame, they were very clearly their master’s men. The entire army - numbering over five hundred men by Jeremy’s rough estimation - came to a halt behind their master. For a long time, everything remained very still. Neither Jeremy nor his companions wanted to move or speak, afraid to draw the horseman’s attention, and the horseman simply watched them with those baleful eyes. The silence was finally broken when War spoke in a thunderous, booming voice that sounded like the clashing of sword against shield and armour, and the dying screams of men abandoned on long-distant battlefields to fight their most hated foes to the death.

“Your journey ends here. You have bested two of my brothers, and proven yourselves strong and resourceful, but you are no match for my might. The flames of War shall envelope you all, leaving nothing but charred ashes in their wake.”

For what could have been the first time in all of eternity, the horseman War was stunned to silence by the response he received: laughter. Jeremy howled with laughter that grew deeper and more malevolent as he willed Death’s blades to form in his hands, and the destructive instruments complied willingly. Arcs of lighting erupted along the blades, sparking and leaping between the blades threateningly. Michael held his hands out in front of his chest, palms facing up, and flames ignited in his palms, lighting his maniacal smile with flickering light that was emphasized by the blood-red shadow of the setting sun. Luna’s eyes glowed with a bright blue inner light, and spiralling whirlpools began to form in the nearby lake, matched by small spirographical patterns forming out of dancing vapour at her feet. Tanya assumed a combative stance, and the spindly tattoos that had formed on her skin after absorbing Famine’s scales began to twist and dance menacingly.

“Come!” Jeremy bellowed, his voice echoing with distant thunder. The black clouds overhead thickened and swirled as his feet lifted off the ground, leaving him hovering a foot in the air, dust swirling cyclonically at his feet. “Meet the same fate as your brothers. We are through with running and hiding.”

The horseman held his blade overhead, signalling his men to advance. The soldiers swept towards their targets, breaking their carefully composed lines and formations to tilt at Jeremy and his companions with caution thrown to the winds. They were an unstoppable tsunami, rushing forward to overwhelm the unfortunate souls who stood in their way. The tsunami broke upon an unexpected barrier; everyone fought with all their heart and soul - blades clashed against blades, fire rained down from the sky, calmed only by blasts of ice, and pulverising blows of incredible elemental strength. War’s soldiers fought with incredible tenacity that was absolutely no match for the combined powers of their opponents, turning the world into a chaotic din blurred by flowing blood and crushing bone. When the dust finally settled, only five combatants remained - War on his massive steed, impassively watching the fray, and the five elemental superhumans who dared to challenge his authority.

With a roar, War charged at them. His steed breathed gouts of flame from its flaring nostrils as it charged, and his blade seared the air with heat so intense that it scorched the very oxygen from its path. His charge lead him first to Tanya, who crouched and braced herself in the path of his mighty warhorse. They collided with incredible force, dismounting the superhuman warrior and causing the steed to vanish in a puff of flame and smoke the seemed to leave her uninjured. War rolled as he landed, leaping to his feet with ease. He screamed with untamed rage, swinging his fiery blade at Jeremy. War’s blade met those of Death, sparks leaping from both blades and shaking the very earth with their destructive potential. War fought with the skill of an experienced and powerful warrior; Jeremy did the same, his blades moving with speed and fluidity that his eyes could scarcely track. Even so, it took all of his strength to focus on parrying War’s blows, until he finally caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and leapt high into the air, carried up on a draft of telekinetically-propelled wind, leaving War far below him to be encompassed by a pillar of flame that erupted from the ground beneath his feet. Michael cried out almost orgasmically as his flames enveloped War, burning and consuming the fearsome foe.

As Jeremy drifted slowly to the ground, the flames faded, leaving behind only War’s flaming sword surrounded by a pile of thick black ashes. Michael circled the blade slowly, checking it out from every angle.

“I understand what the two of you said before,” he said, his eyes never leaving the sword, “about hearing the horsemen’s weapons talking to you. I can hear this one. That’s so...so messed up.”

“It’s a good thing, Michael,” Jeremy said reassuringly. “Trust me when I say that sword will bring you more power than you’d ever thought possible. Not just power...more control. Pick it up.”

“It’s true,” Tanya said with a comforting smile.

Needing no further encouragement, Michael picked up the sword and lifted it over his head. The flames that still danced across the blade swirled and twisted, working their way down the blade, then the hilt, and finally to his arm. Dancing lines of flame enveloped Michael, burning complex patterns into his skin. The sword itself shrunk as the flames leapt off it, until all that remained were the dancing flames that ensconced Michael in a burning cocoon. When even that faded, his skin was permanently marred with complex runic tattoos that took the shape of rippling flames spreading across his body.

“Oh, that’s good,” he rasped. “Not painless, either - you could have mentioned that part.”

“Part of the process,” Jeremy said. “Welcome to the next step in your evolution.”

“And where does that leave me?” Luna’s voice was bitter and cold.

“It’s no coincidence that there are four horsemen of the apocalypse and four of us,” Jeremy said. “I suspect we’ll find our next challenge beyond the end of this path somewhere. We kill him, and we should all reach the height of our evolution as elemental avatars, and from there...who knows?”

“Conquest,” Tanya intoned. “Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, ‘Come and see!’ I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.”

“I thought the other horseman was Pestilence?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s a common misconception,” Tanya said. “I’m not sure where it comes from, but it’s pretty persistent, and wrong. Of course, our encounters haven’t exactly been one hundred percent in line with what the bible tells us, so take from that what you will.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jeremy’s confusion was not abated by her partial explanation.

“Well,” she said, “in the bible, Conquest is the first horseman, followed by War, Famine, and then Death. We’ve met them in the reverse order. There are other differences, too - the bible didn’t say anything about War being a dragon, for instance.”

“Well, whatever the reason for the differences,” Jeremy said, pointing at the path, “there’s only one way we’re going to find the answers.”

“Does it feel to any of you like we’re just being strung along?” Luna asked.

“You mean do we feel like something has been pushing us in one direction over another? Absolutely,” Jeremy said. “Call it fate, or kismet, or whatever you want, but I think it’s pretty clear by now that some part of the universe has a particular destination set in store for us, and it’s not going to take no for an answer.”

“So what do you think would happen if we just avoided that road entirely?”

“I can’t say for certain, but I’m willing to bet that we’d soon find ourselves facing the same road again, whether we meant to or not. The world keeps rearranging itself wherever we go - mountains in the middle of southern Saskatchewan, earthquakes where there are no seismic fault lines, and cities shifting and changing before our eyes. We can try to outsmart the process, but I think we’d just be delaying the inevitable. Fate is a harsh bitch-mistress, and does not take defiance lightly.”

“What happens if we do decide to meet our fate, and take that road? After we meet Conquest, or Pestilence, or whatever is waiting for us at the end of the trail? End of the line? Full stop? Apocalypse averted?”

“No,” Jeremy said sadly, taking Tanya’s hand in his own and leading her towards the path. Michael and Luna followed close behind. “It’s too late for that. As soon as our society began to grow and rise, it doomed itself. There’s nothing we can do about that, but we can at least pave the way for a future for the human race.”

The journey across the bridge proceeded in silence. The weight of the last few days’ events was starting to come crashing down upon them. The deaths of everyone they knew and loved, the collapse of society, the destruction of the social order...all suddenly felt final and real in a way that they had not when they still held out hope that there might be shelter from the storm with the military. When heavy, fat drops of rain began to fall from the sky, slowly at first, then faster and faster, it was a welcoming, cleansing change. For the first time since their journey had started, Jeremy and Tanya felt the weight of their burdens melting off of them – their grief, their despair, and their pain fell to the ground, more droplets amidst the rush from the sky. Michael danced in the rainfall, and even Luna seemed calm and peaceful. The welcome storm caressed their, uplifted them, and vibrated within them, carrying their spirits high. As they resumed their journey, their footsteps no longer fell with the same dread and worry, but moved quickly and with a renewed sense of vigour and purpose.

The rain stayed with them throughout their journey across the bridge, and their ascent up the path, but even through the rainfall they could finally see what lay ahead of them. In the distance, towering above them was a massive Gothic castle constructed of black stone. White pennants were battered by the fat raindrops, though they bore no identifying marks. As they finally completed their ascent to the pinnacle of the path, their progress ended, stopped by an impossibly deep crevice that separated them from the castle. On the castle side was a raised drawbridge, but no means of accessing from their side.

Chapter 11

Day 6 – 17:00:00 CST

Unknown Fortress, Regina

“This is it, isn’t it?” Tanya asked. “This is where it’s all going to end.”

“Yes,” Jeremy said curtly. The memories he had inherited from his mind-link with the zombie were starting to make sense to him now. This same castle occupied them all, and in the same manner - a group of four individuals bearing the gifts of the elements standing outside, demanding entry. A chill ran through his body as he realized that everyone one of those groups had ended in the same way. He briefly flirted with the idea of running away, just turning around and sprinting full-tilt back down the path to the ruins of the city below. As tempting as the idea was, he couldn’t allow himself to be swayed, and stood his ground. “I haven’t put all of the pieces together quite yet, but this is where it’s going to happen - where we’re going to make a stand that will put an end to the zombies, and allow whatever survivors may exist to flourish, and for society to eventually grow anew.”

“And then ten, twenty, thirty, fifty thousand years from now...” Michael’s voice trailed off.

“Their society will soar to new heights, and be struck down the same way. Some other poor saps will end up standing where we are, and doing what we’re doing, and the cycle will continue.”

“I’d rather break the cycle,” Michael said defiantly. “Even if it’s too late for our old lives, our civilization, at least we owe it to our descendants to make sure that the same thing doesn’t keep happening again and again and again.”

“As would I,” Jeremy assented. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any way we can do that. Even with all the power at our disposal, how many zombies do you think we could kill before we finally got overwhelmed? A thousand? Ten thousand? A million? It’s a safe bet that there are literally billions of them all over the world at this point. We could spent the rest of our lives tracking and killing them, and not even make a dent in that number. No, the only way to make the world safe for humanity is to stop them at the source, and however we do that, I suspect it’s going to require that we participate in the roles fate has laid out for us.”

“You don’t strike me as the sort to believe in fate,” Michael said.

“If you’d asked me a week ago, I’d have agreed. Call me crazy, but after a few days of being hunted by zombies, abused by the people I trusted to protect me, and fighting the horsemen of the goddamned apocalypse, that’s changed a little bit. So first I started to believe in fate...I don’t know, I guess shortly after we killed Death. Then I began to accept my own fate sometime around the point where a giant dragon swooped down out of the sky at us.”

Michael laughed, a loud, ringing laugh that startled everyone. “I never thought of it quite like that. I suppose you’ve got a point, though. I guess if this has to be my fate, it’s certainly not the worst one that I could imagine. Let’s get on with it!”

As if on cue, the drawbridge began to slowly lower in complete silence, smoothly dropping into place, revealing a glimpse of an empty courtyard beyond. Throwing caution to the wind, Michael dashed across the drawbridge, beckoning everyone else to follow his lead as soon as he was safely across. They did, and were soon entering the courtyard. Surrounded on all sides by towering walls of smooth black stone, it was filled with dead grass and lifeless brown soil. At the farthest end of the courtyard, stairs lead up and into the heart of the castle. Several long-dead bodies littered the edges of the courtyard, flesh long since rotted away, leaving behind only cracked and yellowed bones. Jeremy started at this, but calmed himself as he realized that they showed no signs of movement. The group cautiously moved forward and up the stairs, alert and watching in every direction for any sign of trouble.

The interior of the castle was dark; despite lit torches hanging off the walls of the narrow corridor they entered, the flickering torchlight seemed to be sucked in to the black stone walls, throwing off only enough illumination for them to barely make out their path. The corridor continued, unbroken by intersections, doors, or markings of any sort, for at least a hundred feet, finally opening up into a vast, open throne room. Brilliantly bright red carpet lead up to a single massive black throne decorated with gold highlights. A towering figure was seated at the throne, watching the group with interest as they carefully entered the room. When he addressed them, it was with a clear, ringing voice.

“Come in, come in!”

Everyone in the group leapt to attention. Death’s blades materialized in Jeremy’s hands; Tanya assumed a combat pose; Luna’s eyes glowed with a deep blue light, and flames crackled across Michael’s skin.

“Now, now, don’t be so jumpy!” The giant sounded jovial and nonthreatening, even as they moved in closer to him. Nobody let down their guard. “I can understand that you aren’t anxious to trust me right now, my friends. Please, allow me to explain things to you.”

“We’re not your friends,” Michael growled.

“You may not think it, but you are,” the giant’s smile broadened. “Allow me to introduce myself -”

“Let me guess - Conquest?” Luna spat. “Or do you prefer Pestilence?”

The giant laughed heartily. “Yes, I’ve been known as both of those. Either appellation will suffice, as you prefer.”

“You’re not quite what I expected,” Tanya admitted. She wasn’t quite sure what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t a ten-foot tall man with pale skin and such a jovial demeanour. He seemed more like Santa Clause than the destroyer of worlds.

“Indeed not, though conquest need not be limited to brute strength and fear-mongering, my dear girl! I expect that what you’re about to hear also won’t quite be what you expected, either,” the giant said. “It’s been a long journey that has lead you here, and there is much to understand.”

“I understand that we need to kill you,” Jeremy said, levelling his blades at the giant. “Isn’t that enough?”

“I think you of all people would understand that’s precisely what you should not do,” the giant tapped his temple, then pointed at Jeremy. Floodgates opened in his mind, filling it with a dizzying rush of emotions, images, and ideas. “Perhaps it will be best if I start from the beginning.

“A very long time ago - over eight hundred thousand years ago, to be more precise - humanity was a new species, and one that swiftly grew in understanding and power until they dominated this planet, much as you do today.

“Your current history is little different from that of the first humans. They conquered, stole, destroyed, and corrupted the world to suit their needs, never stopping to consider the long-term ramifications of their actions.

“ Finally, they overreached. Their mastery of technology grew to the point that they created devices that could pierce the veil between dimensions, reaching out into depths and corners of reality where man was not meant to go. It was there that they found me, and I found them.

“As you may suspect, I am not entirely human. I am not even what you would consider a biological organism. I am - that which is beyond. As I encountered those bold travellers who intruded upon my domain, I felt the spark of their life-essence, the energy that animated and drove them onward. It was...delicious.”

“You...you ate them?” Tanya was aghast.

“I consumed their essence,” the giant rumbled. “Leaving behind a mere shell, an empty biological void. Nothing of value or meaning. As I consumed their spirits, they merged with me, grew to be a part of my own essence, and I learned that there were many more of them...so many more. I descended upon your world and made it my playground. I feasted upon everyone I could find, until all that was left were barren fields, decaying bodies, and a few scattered tribes of living mortals who I chose to spare. I knew that they would breed, and grow, and spread out, and once again reach for those lofty heights that their ancestors did, and on that day I would be there to claim them.

“And grow they did. They spread out, covering the face of your Earth, and when the time was right, I returned. That cycle has repeated endlessly since that day, and shall continue today. The honour of this is yours.”

“Honour? Where is the honour in consigning ourselves to be a snack for you?” Luna spat.

“That question is so tedious,” Conquest drew himself up to his full height, towering over them all and dominating the room. “Every time the cycle repeats, you simply refuse to bow before me immediately. Why? Is it simply not sufficient to recognize my dominance of your puny species?”

“Humanity does not generally bear the yoke of masters longer than necessary,” Tanya cut in. “What you believe to be superiority means little to us. You've invaded our world, destroyed our homes, slaughtered our friends and family, and all that we've ever loved, and then expect us to prostrate ourselves before you and simply go along with whatever you want without question?”

“Not without question,” Conquest's jovial demeanour was slowly being replaced by a guttural obstinacy. “The question, however, was settled long before any of you were ever born – before any of your civilizations were ever born, even. You will accept my authority, and you shall do so for a simple reason: if you do not, your entire species will be destroyed, completely and utterly. Think carefully, young ones – my hunger is nearly sated, and I ask for one mere sacrifice to complete my nourishment. Then I shall leave your race alone, allow you to rebuild and grow anew, and when the time is right, I shall return and we will dance our dance again.”

Like a knight throwing a gauntlet, Conquest threw a small golden box at their feet; it broke apart as it landed, transforming into four golden daggers, glinting and gleaming with an eerie inner light.

“Simply pick them up,” Conquest whispered seductively. His voice echoed through the chamber. “Plunge them into your hearts and accept your fate; give your essence to me, and I shall be sated. Dive into the comforting blackness of death's embrace, and comfort yourselves in the knowledge that your sacrifice will bring life to your species once again!”

“No,” said Jeremy, drawing himself up to his full height in defiance of the flood of information that threatened to overwhelm him. “We will destroy you. Your influence over our world has ended, monster!”

Leaping through the air, he landed on Conquest’s chest, driving his blades deep into where his heart would have been, had the giant been a human. It roared in pain. Tanya ran forward to assist him, grasping the giant’s arms and holding them behind its back while Jeremy stabbed it over and over again. Michael thrust his hands into the wounds the swords left behind, unleashing blasts of fiery rage within the giant’s body, and Luna directed a stead stream of dazzlingly numbing cold at the creature’s head. Pinned under the assault and unable to fight back, the giant screamed in true agony for the first time in its infinite existence.

The giant struck back with terrifying ferocity. His right fist, nearly twice as large as Jeremy's head, lashed out and struck him with the force of a speeding truck. He tumbled through the air, frantically lashing out with tendrils of force to slow his flight enough that the impact did not crush him into a fine paste. The horseman's left fist plowed into Tanya's chest with terrible might. The spindly tattoos on her arms glowed brightly, and his fearsome blow only forced her feet to dig deeply into the black stone floor. She struck with all her force at his wrist, battering him with enough intensity to drive him backwards.

Jeremy rose to his feet, eyes glowing a brilliant white. He screamed a primal scream, which Tanya, Michael, and Luna echoed. Michael's eyes blazed orange-white, Tanya's a deep brown, and Luna's bright blue. With one combined assault, they brought all of their power to bear on the mighty giant. Streaming bolts of force shot forth from Jeremy, joined by searing arcs of flame from Michael, jagged bolts of frost from Luna, and followed up with a leaping kick from Tanya, delivered to the giant's heart.

Conquest, the bringer of Pestilence, the destroyer of civilizations, the death of the world, fell to his knees and died with a roar. The castle shook and shuddered violently, creaking and groaning in a chaotic song of stone grinding against stone.

“Run!” Jeremy shouted. They fled to the exit, rushing out of the castle as swiftly as their superhuman bodies could carry them, and just in time - the structure collapsed in their wake, forcing a shock wave of dust outwards in all directions.

Everyone picked themselves up and dusted themselves off, looking around to ensure that they were all fine. Jeremy embraced Tanya tightly, sharing a tender kiss as they rejoiced in their collective safety and victory. Michael surveyed the remains of the city far below them - in the shadows of the night, fires could be seen, and damaged buildings threatened to collapse under their own weight. Luna was grinning, her eyes still blazing bright blue.

“I know that look,” Jeremy said with a smile, nudging Luna's arm.

“I never thought anything would be better than sex,” she said, her voice full of humble awe. “But that...that was something new entirely.”

“What happened?”

“Those knives that Conquest threw at us...on our way out, I picked one up. I guess when I fell on our way out, it did this,” she showed him a deep cut in her upper left forearm. Golden sparkles lined the edges of the wound, and sparkling traces of runic script were slowly spreading across her arm in gentle waves.

“So...what now? We beat the bad guys, saved the future...now what?”

“Now,” Jeremy said, turning his eyes to Tanya, “we rebuild. We provide the safety and shelter that our governments could not. We give guidance to those who remain, and we steer humanity in the right direction.”

“The future looks bright,” Luna said. For the first time since they’d met, she seemed to be truly at ease. “With us at the wheel, how could it not?”

“There are still plenty of ways things could go wrong,” Tanya reminded her. “We just need to keep in mind who we are, and who we were. We need to teach the truth to those who survive, and when we have done all we can, the future will be in their hands.”

“Not to be a downer, but what about all the zombies?” Michael asked. “Did they just...poof?”

“I doubt we'd be so lucky,” Jeremy said with a laugh. “I'm sure there are plenty of them out there – plenty to kill, and survivors to rescue. It won't be an easy job.”

“Ah, hell,” Michael said. “Count me in.”

“Me too,” Luna said.

“I guess I can't just leave you all to do something stupid, and end up dead,” Tanya said with a smile.

The cloud cover above them parted, revealing a sky studded with brilliantly bright stars, twinkling and shining invitingly. The luminous blanket above the Earth seemed to be a final reassurance that things would truly be fine, no matter what wrinkles the future may have in store.

Epilogues

Not all of those who perished in the great zombie apocalypse died immediately. Some died anonymously, victims of accidents and sickness, just as on any other day in human history. Some fell, not to the assault of undead hordes, but by their own hand. There were hard choices to be made, and humanity faced them as it always did. Jeremy, Tanya, Luna, and Michael were unique, each an avatar of the destructive tide of the apocalypse in their own right. The rest of the vast masses of humanity knew nothing of their struggles, their metamorphosis, and their fight to survive the undead threat, and their battles with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Here are some of the stories of those others, those souls whose battles ended not with clashes of glory and power, but anonymously. You are the only one who will bear witness to their tales.

***

Day 4 – 13:45:00 CST

New York City, New York

A handwritten letter lay on the table; the ink was still wet, glinting in the rays of the sun's dying light. The sun's rays streamed in through the half-closed blinds of the tiny tenth floor apartment, casting a faint gold pallor over the room's scant furnishings. Quiet classical music echoed through the room, doing little to mask the growls and thumps coming from behind the bedroom doors.

As the music slowly build into a crescendo, the distinctive sound of a round being chambered in a semi-automatic pistol undercut the rhythm. A quiet, mousy-looking brunette woman, slim and moderately attractive despite the gradual advance of age, looked down the sights of the pistol and breathed deeply. Steeling herself against the dread that seeped through her every bone, she slowly rose to her feet. As she opened the lock that held the bedroom shut, she took one last look at the letter on the table. From a few feet away, she could only barely make out the last few lines:

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for Darren, and I'm sorry for Sarah. Not just that, I'm sorry for me. I'm sorry for the whole human race. There's nothing left to do now but this one last thing. May God have mercy on me.

I'm sorry.

From the bedroom, a shot rang out. Then a second. After a long pause, and a soft sobbing that could be heard even over the music, one final shot erupted. A solid thud marked the falling of an unseen body to the ground. Slowly, steadily, a pool of crimson welled up and streamed out from under the bedroom door in dark rivulets. The apartment was silent except for the slow dirge of classical music.

***

Day 10 – 02:00:00 CST

Toronto, Ontario

The screech that pierced the night was laden with frustration and terror; a zombie slowly shambled down the street towards her. The creature had once been an athletic young man, and he probably would have been handsome if not for the fact that half of his face was missing, in its place nothing but bloodied flesh and dangling remnants of nerves. It moved with daring tenacity, shuffling towards her slowly but surely. She was unarmed, and exhausted. Her flight from the creature had left her breathless, and as it backed her into a corner, escape looked impossible.

“Get away from her, you son of a bitch!” From the shadows came a blur of fists and feet, tumbling towards the zombie with deadly intent. An older man, well into his 50's, greying but still bristling with muscles of iron, slammed into the undead creature, knocking it to the ground.

With a gurgling growl, the undead creature thrashed its head, trying desperately to gnaw at the newcomer. Its efforts were in vain, and the older man's fists slammed into the creature's head with adrenaline-backed rage. Fists as solid as granite and nearly the size of hams produced flat, wet squishing sounds, then crunches as they pulverized flesh and bone. Black-red blood splattered across his face and shirt in a gruesome rain; hot on the heels of the rain was hail – bits of skull fragments and disgustingly cold chunks of grey matter bounced against his cheeks, but the brutal assault did not stop. When he finally began to get his unbound fury under control, there wasn't much left of the zombie's skull, and his once-pale skin was stained dark red. He rose to his feet and looked at the young woman.

“Are you OK?” he asked. He was clearly short of breath, but did what he could to disguise it.

“I...I'm fine,” she whimpered. “Daddy, how did you find me?”

“It wasn't hard. I knew you'd be out here looking for that no-good son of a bitch.”

“He might still be alive! I can't just leave him to fend for himself!”

The son of a bitch that her father was talking about was her boyfriend, a young man that he'd never approved of. That she was willing to risk her life and leave the safety of their shelter for him made the man's blood boil, but he addressed her calmly.

“Darling, you know there's nobody left alive out here. Much as I can't stand the little shit, if I thought he was still alive, I'd have found him for you. This entire city is dead, except for us and your mother – and she's worried sick right now.”

“I didn't mean to worry her,” the woman said sheepishly, surprised that even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, her mother could lay a guilt trip on her without even being physically present.

“Don't think about it now,” his gruff demeanor softened slightly. “Let's get back home, darling...before more of those things find us.”

“Of course,” she said, taking his arm in hers. He winced slightly, and on closer inspection, she could see a bloody raw mark by his elbow. “Oh, Daddy! Your arm...”

“It's nothing,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Just a scratch from one of those things that caught me off-guard. Don't worry about it.”

The walk back to their shelter was thankfully short. They had locked themselves away in the sub-basement of their old apartment building, behind several solid metal doors held with heavy locks. What had once been a set of concrete janitorial storage closets had been converted to a relatively cozy home, complete with bedrooms and a cramped bathroom (this had taken several days and no small amount of cursing on her mother's part to clean enough for them to feel comfortable using). Power had failed the previous day, and when the building's automated generator systems finally ran dry, they resorted to using candlelight. When they stepped inside, she her saw her mother fast asleep on the couch, and they quietly locked the door behind them.

“We should clean up that scratch,” she said to her father. Using the small sink in the tiny bathroom, they managed to wash away the worst of the blood and gore covering his face and arms, and she carefully cleaned and disinfected the wound with a bottle of antiseptic they'd scavenged from a first aid kit. In the guttering candlelight, she could see that his face was pale, and he was sweating profusely. “Are you sure you're OK, Daddy?”

“Yes,” he said before doubling over in pain and coughing until he spat a glob of blood-infused mucus into the sink. “Just need a rest, that's all.”

The noise of his coughing fit had woken his wife, who was now standing in the doorway of the bathroom.

“Darla,” she said quietly, “I'm glad to see you're back. Please don't ever do that again.”

“I won't, Mom,” she replied meekly.

“Your father looks like he needs to lie down for a while. He can sleep on the couch.”

“I'm fine,” he roared, bursting into another coughing fit. His face contorted in anger, and when the coughing spasm ended, his eyes were blood-red.

“You're not fine, my love,” his wife said sweetly. She took his arm and guided him out of the bathroom. “You're burning up, and sound like you're about to cough out a lung. There's no way we're going to make it to a hospital, so you'd better relax and get some sleep.”

The man didn't reply with words so much as a guttural snarl. Grasping his wife by the shoulder, he opened his mouth wide and dug his teeth into her shoulder. She screamed in pain as he tore away a mouthful of flesh. All semblance of humanity and sanity vanished from his eyes as he chewed the mouthful of skin and meat, blood dribbling down his chin and splattering the floor in heavy droplets. His grip on his wife didn't diminish, and as he swallowed the putrid mouthful, his teeth found her neck, ending her anguished screams in a gurgling rush.

His daughter tried to flee, but the door was locked. Tears streamed down her face as she was forced to listen to the ripping and tearing of flesh as her father tore into her mother's body, fingers pulling apart flesh as if it was paper, spilling entrails in a sickeningly warm pile even as her body fell to the ground. The girl collapsed into a fetal position, gently rocking back and forth, sobbing quietly.

***

Day 1 – 19:30:00 CST

Outside Vancouver, British Columbia

Thumping bass and a roaring engine carried Irwin Leighs down the road at a whopping two hundred kilometers per hour – more than double the speed limit for that stretch of highway. It was a quiet night, and there was no sign of traffic on the road, so he was finally letting loose. It had been a long week at work, dragging himself through each day with just enough energy to survive to the next. Finally he got a chance to unwind, and damned if he wasn't going to use it.

Irwin fumbled with a cigarette, delicately balancing his lighter in his fingertips so that he could hold his grip on the wheel as tightly as possible. As the cigarette light up, a cloud of smoke obscured his vision. He waved his hand, shooing the smoke away from his eyes too late to see someone slowly shambling across the road, limping but moving with slow deliberation. His truck slammed into the body with incredible force, the impact causing him to spin out of control and into the ditch. He reflected briefly that it would have been wise to put on his seatbelt as his body flew through the air, crashing through his windshield as if it didn't even exist, and throwing him through the night air. He landed on his head with a sickening crunch, and the world went black painlessly.

Back on the road, the limping body was slowly peeling itself off the pavement, resuming its slow, steady course with grim determination, as if it was unaware of ever having been struck.