Third Person

Things hadn’t gone to plan during the town’s evacuation and everyone wound up separated from each other one-way or another.

Hannah and Erin had left their house with Jamie and Emersyn and they had started making their way into the woods to meet the
guys at the van, but they had run into a hoard of Stiffs and Erin had been the one to stay behind and take them out while Hannah
made a run for it with the kids. Erin had promised to meet up with them at the van in five minutes, but she never turned up.

Matt, Zack, Jimmy, Johnny and Brian had made it to the van together safely, but they were joking around a little too loudly and
drew the attention of some Stiffs of their own – they could only take out so many of them with their weapons so Matt had ordered
Brian to wait with the van and get it loaded when the girls and the kids made it to the van and ordered the guys to lose the Stiffs
within five minutes and get back to the van as quickly as possible, but they never turned up.

Hannah made it to the van with Jamie and Emersyn – Brian almost shot them when they emerged from the trees, but he quickly
realised who they were and they loaded up the van, waited for the others and left when they realised that they couldn’t wait around
anymore.

It had been over a week and Brian was almost positive that Hannah wanted to tear the head from his shoulders with her bare
hands and toss it to some Stiffs. He’d crashed her beloved van and ultimately lost them their only safe place to sleep and their
quick way to travel, so now they had to walk to wherever they wanted to go but they had absolutely no idea where that actually
was.

The sweltering afternoon sun was beating down on all of them and sweat covered every inch of their skin. The only sound that
could be heard was that of their steady breathing and the crunch of the gravel underneath their feet with every step that they took.
Hannah carried Emersyn awkwardly against her stomach and had the baby girl covered with her shawl to keep as much of the
sun off of her as possible, she felt weighed down by the backpack that she carried on her back and the slight, constant tap of her
gun holster against her thigh as she walked was starting to get quite annoying.

Jamie was walking up front so that Hannah could keep her eye on him and make sure that he didn’t wander off anywhere and
Brian kept to the back so that he could make sure nothing was coming up behind them, but it also helped him avoid conversation
with Hannah that she pathetically attempted to make whenever the silence got to be too much for her to handle.

Eventually, the little group came to a fork in the previously straight and open road. They could either continue the way that they
were going for God knows how long, or they could take the new direction with signs that seemed to point out a town in a more of a
secluded area off of the road.

“Which way should we go?” Jamie asked after they had been stopped for a minute, looking to Hannah and Brian for the answer.

“Well, we’re low on water,” Brian grumbled.

“We’ll be running out of formula for Emersyn pretty soon, too,” Hannah added.

“I’m pretty sure we only have a couple of hours of daylight left, so maybe we should make our way into town, find a store and hope
it hasn’t been looted too much,” Brian looked to Hannah and then to Jamie, waiting for them to agree or disagree with him. He
expected the latter, but he was pleasantly surprised when Hannah finally spoke.

“I think that’s a good idea,” She nodded, adjusting her hold on the baby “We can grab whatever we can and take shelter inside
somewhere for the night and head out again in the morning,”
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Hannah

It took a little over an hour for us to reach the run-down little town that had been sign-posted at the fork in the road and the sun was starting to set by the time we got there. I had been surprised – back when we were only halfway into town – Brian suddenly scooped the restless baby girl out of my arms and held her with such grace and ease all while humming to her and calming her almost instantly. Emersyn must have been so restless with me because she was able to tell how frustrated I was getting with the heat and all of the weight I was carrying, but she must have sensed how calm Brian was in comparison and she settled right in with him.

I had no idea where we were exactly, but luckily we didn’t have to venture too far into town before we found a convenience store. It
was small and just as decayed as the rest of the town but the exterior was barricaded in ways that looked as though someone had
been trying to protect themselves, but there was no other signs of life inside so we swung open the small front door and stood just
outside the doorway for a few moments.

“I don’t hear anyone,” Jamie whispered, leaning into the store for a better look.

“Just hold on,” I chuckled, pulling him back and shoving him behind me “We gotta make sure before we go on in,”

I drew my gun from my holster and reached up into the doorway and rattled the weapon against the bell above he door and let the
ringing of the bell sound throughout the building until it stopped. We waited for something to come at us, but nothing did, so we
decided that it was safe enough to go inside.

Logically, behind the counter was the safest place to bunk down for the night. So, Brian handed the baby back over to me, tossed
his backpack to Jamie and went off to do a sweep of the store and find us something to eat while I got settled down with the kids.
There was a generous amount of floor space behind the counter, but the size dramatically decreased once sleeping bags had
been rolled out and Jamie started pulling comic books from his backpack while I started making a bottle up for Emersyn while she
wriggled around a little next to me.

When Brian came behind the counter with us Jamie was already lost in another comic book and Emersyn was guzzling her
formula. I smiled up at Brian silently and he gave me the signal to say ‘All Clear’ before he started handing out different types of
tinned food that he had found.

“They’ve got plenty of shit in this place,” He commented, handing a tin of fruit salad to Jamie “No doubt they have more in storage
through the back but we can take a look in the morning,”

“Sooner or later we’re not gonna have such an easy time when it comes to food,” I commented, placing the now empty bottle on
the ground and shifting Emersyn into a new position so that I could burp her.

“I’ll learn to hunt rabbit,” Jamie chuckled from behind his comic book “Live meat never goes out of date if you eat it fresh,”

“He’s got a point,” Brian agreed, sliding an open tin over to me “I’ll show you a few things that I learned,”

I smiled, watching the two interact for a few minutes before it was time to change Emersyn’s diaper and put her down for the night.
I changed her quickly and made a mental note to stock up on diapers in the morning, too, since we were now running low on those.

Soon enough Emersyn was tucked in comfortably next to me and Jamie was curled up right under the counter and his breathing
had evened out so I knew that he was sleeping – sort of.

“Thank you,” I murmured to Brian, looking over at him. He looked up at me from the baby with a slight shocked look on his face
that was illuminated by the glow from the trash can fire that he had started.

“What’re you thanking me for?” He asked, frowning slightly.

“Taking care of us,” I shrugged.

“You’re taking care of yourself alright I’d say,” He chuckled softly, continuing to carve something into the floor with his knife.

“You didn’t have to stick with us,” I pointed out “You could’ve hung back and waited for everyone else at camp or you could have
abandoned us there and taken off in the van alone... I truly am grateful that you didn’t do either of those things, I don’t think I could
have done this without you,”

“I might be a dick most of the time but there was no way I was abandoning you with a teenager and a new-born baby out there in
the middle of all of this shit,” I laughed and he glanced back up at me for a split second “We all gotta have somebody, I reckon, and
if the three of you are really all I have left in this shit-hole of a world… I’m not complaining.”

Comfortable silence filled the air for a few moments before I decided to speak again since I was finally enjoying talking to Brian for
a change. Sometimes it just gets too quiet out there.

“We used to be huge fans, y’know, before all of this,” I admitted with a small laugh “Right from the beginning I was crazy about you
guys and your music, then Jamie started listening to your songs with me and became just as obsessed as I was,”

“Seems like forever ago,” He said with a fond smile on his face “Those were definitely the best years of my life and I spent them
the best way that I possibly could – doing what I loved with my best friends,”

“Got any favourite stories you like sharing with estranged fans like myself?” I asked, smiling a little brighter.

“Oh, absolutely!” He laughed, a little louder than he meant to since he practically silenced himself when Jamie shifted in his sleep
“I’m sure it’s in some magazine interviews and on one of our DVD’s somewhere… the one where Jimmy spent the night in the
slammer?”

“I think I know what you’re talking about, but carry on,” I insisted, shifting a little so that I was more comfortable.

“Well, Jimmy’s always been a crazy bastard and I doubt that there’s a person out there who doesn’t know that,” He looked up at
me with a huge smile on his face “He was being his usual self and getting into bother, and when the cops turned up they had to
pepper spray him before they hauled him off for the night… but we had a show the next day, and by the time we bailed him out
there wasn’t enough time for him to take a shower before we went on stage,” I was smiling just as widely as Brian by this point “It
didn’t take too long for us to notice that something wasn’t quite right with his drumming, and when we looked back he was trying to
play and wipe his eyes at the same time – the pepper spray had still been all over him and on stage with all of those lights and the
pyrotechnics he was sweating like a pig and it was all running back into his eyes and completely blinding him but the son of a bitch
just wouldn’t stop!”

I realised now that I actually did like Brian, we had just gotten off to a rough start and met each other at the worst possible time so
I’d gotten the wrong impression of him. He’s really a great guy, and I don’t think travelling together is going to be too much of a
problem for me anymore.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Third Person

In the morning, Jamie woke up from the sound of Emersyn starting to fuss. He was going to tell Hannah or Brian to get the baby,
but when he saw that the two of them were sleeping soundly on top of their sleeping bags he decided to do them both a solid and
take her himself.

He’d lifted her carefully from her make-shift bed on the floor and walked around the store with her, talking to her and bouncing her a
little to soothe her. He could smell what had woken the little girl up, and he had seen Hannah change her diaper enough times to
know what he was doing so he grabbed a pack of diapers in the right size off of the shelf along with some wipes and changed her
all by himself. Feeling like the proud uncle that he technically was, he decided that he could handle her himself for a little while
longer while Hannah and Brian rested a little more.

He knew that they had been up late talking the night before. He was quite the restless sleeper these days and whenever he woke
up again he would hear Brian sharing a tour story or a family story, and sometimes he could hear Hannah telling stories of her
own. It made him happy to know that things were alright between the two of them, and he was pretty sure that Brian made his
sister happy.

At the back of the store, Jamie rounded a corner with Emersyn in his arms and came to a stop in front of a door marked ‘OFFICE.
STAFF ONLY.’ And he looked down to the baby.

“There is no staff anymore,” He told her in his best baby voice “Nobody to stop us from seeing what they’re hiding away in here,”

He reached out with his right hand and gripped the door handle and slowly turned it with ease, and once the handle was turned all
the way to the right he pushed the door but it didn’t open. There was a slight shuffling sound from behind the door when he pushed
on it again and he realised that there was something propped up against the door to keep it shut from the inside. That didn’t
discourage him, however, and he placed a very alert Emersyn in an open, empty box that was on the floor just outside of the door.
Once she was in the box, he used both of his hands and as much strength of he could muster to shove the door wide open and
officially piss off the monster on the other side.

A large built ‘Bloater’ (Infection Stage 2) was staring at him. The sight and smell of the thing made Jamie sick to his stomach; his
pus-filled wounds and green fungus patches covering his skin were letting off a disgusting smell and the heightened temperature
was creating excess acid or gastric liquid and causing the decomposing corpse to swell to an even larger size than the size the
man used to be.

Shit. Jamie knew that he was in trouble now.

Notes

This is sort of a filler and a cliffhanger! We'll find out what happened to everyone else over the next few chapters! Who else made it? Who else didn't?

Enjoy!!

~ LMV