It was well into the afternoon as Jessica busily straightened the oil lamps within Manhattan's REI store. Even though the store was surrounded in this boundless city, people still found the time to enjoy the great outdoors. On select weekends of the month, REI hosted outings for its co-op members. She often led the outings. In fact, last weekend, she and half a dozen others made a backpacking trip at the nearest state park. The cliff diving was the highlight of the weekend in her opinion.

When things were nice and tidy, Jessica moved to the front of the store as she heard the store's radio tuned into the news station. Ever since the recent reports of very strange and violent occurrences, every single bit of news was about this new outbreak. Supposedly those infected with this disease became maniacs. Not only had they murdered their families, but police officers and doctors alike were injured as well. Though there wasn't anything conclusive or definite, it was still significant enough to cause a slight stage of panic. Grocery shelves were much barer these days as were gas stations. The price rose ten cents because of shortage. While whatever was happening was horrible, Jessica went about her day. If things truly got bad, she had a place outside of the city limits. Though it was by no means a fallout shelter, it had supplies that she could live off of for a while.

"They mentioned more cases of this crazy thing." Arl stood right next to her as he wore his trademark green REI cap. She swore he wore it everyday. "The wife wants to get the hell out of here. I just tell her she's overreacting. An infection making folks kill one another? Sounds like a cliche horror film."

"That may be so," Jessica said, "but these people are killing people. Heard Manhattan's seen its fair share."

"Drugs. Hard core drugs is the culprit here. God damn, I knew legalizing that marijuana shit in Colorado and Washington would severely mess things up!"

"CDC's fairly certain it isn't drugs," Jessica replied. She felt her phone vibrate. Resisting the urge to check it, she looked around the store. "Pretty slow day isn't it?"

"Gotta love them. I'm going to ask the manager if I can scoot on out of here a little bit earlier. The misses wan--"

The two stood stock still as a scream pierced the otherwise tranquil store. Jessica looked at Arl and Arl looked at her. Simultaneously, the two slowly looked towards the back of the store. Another shrill wail followed as loud thuds came from the direction of the screams. Slowly moving a away, Jessica reached for the phone. She dialed 911. She rose an eyebrow when the lined directed her to a 'line is experiencing overflow' message. "Arl...! The police won't pick up."

"No shit?" The older man said as he reached for a blunt object. Jessica could see his adams apple bobbing up and down. "Manager's back there. I'm going to go take a quick peek. You stay right there Jesse. You other folk stay here too."

Every instinct in her body screamed for her to pull Arl away and forget about the manager. However, they couldn't just leave Melinda back there. But what the hell was that thumping sound? That scream? It wasn't human Jessica thought as she walked towards the front door. As she stared outside, all she saw was chaos. Cars swerved past each other as another literally ran over a pedestrian. People were running for dear life from something she couldn't see. Suddenly the small voice of fear wasn't so small anymore.

"Jesse!"

Jessica looked back as she saw Arl struggling with a man. Though very human looking, there was something off. There was blood. A lot of it. She picked up a climber's axe as she ran over. As she neared, the attacker faced her and howled like a rabid dog. She was frozen as absolute fear paralyzed her. Then it charged.

Instinct taking over, Jessica swung the axe at it caught the man in the chest. As the thing howled in anguish more so than pain, she pounding the axe on the man until he collapsed onto the ground. Moving but too mangled to get back up. Dropped the axe, she looked at her hands as blood splatter stained them as well as her REI uniform.

She felt a firm grip on her shoulder as Arl shook her. "Nothing you could've done differently, sweetheart. That man ... was like the one's from the TV. Come on." Before she could respond, Arl grabbed a backpack and threw in several handfuls of hiking bars and a water purifier. He made a similar bag for himself. "Grab another climber's axe and lets go. Outside looks just as bad. We've got to get out of the city."

Without uttering a word in protest, Jessica grabbed an axe as the two ran out the door. It was then that the smell of gasoline, fire, and something coppery assaulted her sense of smell. In the background she heard gunfire, shouting, and a great many other noises that she couldn't distinguish. She could feel herself running after Arl. In the middle of all of this chaos, she felt a million miles away. Everything had been normal minutes before. How could things spiral so quickly out of control?

Rounding a corner, she nearly screamed as more of those things came running after her. Arl pushed her behind him as he swung at the assaulters.

"Arl! Watch out!"

As he turned to look, an attacker, a woman, threw her head back as she bit into his shoulder. He hollered as he swung the axe and lodged it straight into the infected's head. "Get out of here Jesse!" he said as he tried to fend off the others. "Run goddammit!"

Shamefully, she ran. She ran as her legs burned from the flight. The screams of more infected followed her as more hounded after her either dead set on catching her or branching off when an easier prey was spotted. Jessica's chest heaved as her lungs fought for air. She rounded a corner as the screams were more distant. She turned back and saw nothing there. As she continued to run and looked back straight ahead, she saw a lone figure as she ran straight into the person. She yelled as she brought her axe to bear, but stopped short. She blinked. She knew this person.

"Katherine?" she said in disbelief. the woman wasn't infected or she'd be trying to claw her face off by now. Not asking any questions, she grabbed the bike messenger's hand as she found an unlocked door and bolted in. She slammed the door shut behind her and locked it. They were in a storage room of some type. Judging from the stacked tires, she guessed an auto shop. Walking around to make sure there weren't any more of those things, she plopped down on top of a tire. She dropped her axe. "Didn't mean to run into you back there. But seriously ... what the fuck is going on?!"

The afternoon sun beat down through the sparse openings between the towering glassy buildings, its blinding shine reflected in their abundance of windows, making it seem as if there were a thousand hot orbs instead of only one. Its heat, having already forced her into a tank top and cargo shorts, barely touched the bike messenger's skin, all thanks to the wind that whipped past her as she pumped on the pedals, half raised from the black fabric of the seat. Other than the heavily used black helmet snug on her head, decorated with a medley of faded stickers and magic marker drawings, and a pair of matching black gloves, she wore no other protective gear. The only other items of note on her body were her sports watch, which clung to her right wrist, a pair of worker's sunglasses, and the worn messenger bag that was slung tight around her body.

Weaving in and out of lanes to beat the traffic of Manhattan, the female on the speeding bicycle couldn't help but savor the things she had known all her life; the smell of sewerage and vendor foods wafting towards her from the sidewalks, the swerve of her bike as it barely dodged a bumper, and consequently, the loud swearing of the owners of those bumpers. Ah, yes, it was just another glorious day in the fabulous life of Katherine Weller, adrenaline junkie and artist extraordinaire. Of course, by extraordinaire, one understood it to mean still operating from the comfort of her small studio apartment, shared with her slightly hermitic roommate and her many feline friends. But this was never a damper on her spirits - if anything, it only drove her to making more appointments and more pieces.

Lately, her work had been greatly influenced by the late-night news, which were becoming more and more centered around this new disease that seemed to be taking the country by storm. As if people didn't want her art enough, right? Still, she couldn't stop from letting her thoughts wander to the stories about 'infected humans', running around, trying to pummel and take chomps out of whoever was unfortunate enough to be around at the time. If there weren't so many cases already reported, Kat might have pinned it all down to damned bath salts or something. But the reports were getting more common every day, and even she couldn't deny that something was definitely off. People were being driven out of the state by paranoia, and though she told herself that everything was fine, there was that constant voice in the back of her mind telling her otherwise.

All of that was none of her concern at the moment, though. She had just been called in for a job, and was currently speeding her way towards headquarters. Her iPod was blasting in her ears, urging her on, but as she squinted ahead, she could see a build-up of cars, blocking her way. With a sort of annoyed grunt at having to take an alternate route, she put on a burst of speed and cut off the vehicle to her right, making the turn first and just barely grazing his side. Before she could congratulate herself on the close-call, however, she swerved hard to the left, just narrowly avoiding a stopped car that had been waiting for her around the corner. Avoiding the collision there did nothing, though, since only seconds later she was facing the hood of a car that seemed to have veered over from the opposite lane.

Too late to turn another way or break hard, Katherine's front wheel hit the metallic bastard head on, her beloved bike bucking into the air and throwing her off so that she flew over the car and landed with a hard thud on the concrete. Although she'd wiped out like this many times before, it didn't lessen the blow as her back made contact with the ground, knocking all the air out of her lungs. Gasping, she forced herself to look out of the corners of her eyes in either direction to check for oncoming cars. Thankfully, and quite luckily, there was a truck stopped just in front of her, and behind her, from the street that she'd come from, the traffic had overtaken the intersection. She was safe, for the moment.

After taking a few moments to regain her breath, the biker pushed herself up into a sitting position slowly, wincing at every movement. She did an internal check to find that everything still seemed to be working, then heaved herself up from the ground, panting from the exertion. It was only when she had straightened out and was leaning against the car that had caused her the accident that she realized something peculiar; All of the people around her seemed to be running away.

What the hell? All senses were on alert now as Kat looked around her, rotating her shoulders painfully to stretch them. But then she hesitated, her green eyes resting on the windows of the vehicles nearest her. There was no one inside any of them, and the doors all looked to have been thrown open carelessly. Now thoroughly weirded out, she turned and stretched her neck to see the rest of the street, where she found that indeed all the other cars on it had been abandoned as well. People were sprinting between them towards her, but every so often they glanced behind them with an unmistakable expression of what she guessed was fear.

Although she was already forming a conclusion in her head, Katherine threw herself in denial. There was no way this could be happening. But even as she shook her head, like that would dispel the suspicion, her gaze fell on a particular woman, some 500 feet away from her, that had just pounced on one of the men that was fleeing. Immediately she began gnashing her teeth at his throat, pounding against every part of him she could reach with her fists. "No fucking way," Kat breathed as she tore her vision away from the two and scanned the rest of the field, slowly backing away herself. She could see others like the woman, like the people she'd seen on the news, coming up quickly after the divide of those trying to escape.

With a jolt of adrenaline, she whipped around to look at her bicycle, and though she expected as much, her stomach still dropped at the sight of it laying there, mangled and broken from the collision. "Ah, shit!" She hastily gave it a loving pat on the handlebar, muttering "Sorry, baby" under her breath before she too began sprinting away from the street, her sneakers pounding the pavement as she maneuvered her way through the completely still traffic.

Eventually she managed to locate a deserted alleyway, into which she dashed, but unsure of which direction to head in, she paused at the intersection. Her eyes darted to each possible route, quickly doing some GPS work in her head, and just as she had made her decision, something - or rather, someone - crashed into her from the side. "Jesus!" Kat yelled angrily just as the stranger did the same, except this person had an axe in her hand. Staring wide-eyed at the weapon, the biker prepared herself to dodge and make a run for it as her attacker swung, but the opportunity never came.

"Katherine?" came a familiar voice, and only then did she look away from the blood on the blade to see who had spoken. Much to her surprise, she recognized the woman to be Jessica Asher, leader of the hiking trips she'd taken weeks. But before Kat could get out another word, her new companion had grabbed her hand and began dragging her around until she found an open door, through which she pulled her. As Jess locked the door and examined the space for danger, she reached up and unhooked her helmet, throwing it aside unceremoniously before pressing her back against a wall and sliding down until she sat against it. She could now feel the scratches on her arms and legs that she'd obtained from her accident, but they didn't seem so important right then. The relief of having found a moment of silence was all that she could think about, and as Jesse spoke, Kat leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, brushing her hair back from her sweaty face.

"I have no idea…" she replied, though both of them probably knew exactly what was going on. Finally she opened her eyes, staring at the woman who sat across from her in silence for a few moments. Jesse didn't seem to want to take a bite out of her, or else she would have tried to do so already. Wiping the sweat on her neck with the back of her glove, she stated, "You have blood on your clothes." It was meant to be a question, but Kat was too tired to put too much infliction into her tone.

For once, after all all hell broke lose, Jessica looked down at her clothes. She looked at her hands. Caked and fresh blood stained them like finger paint. Feeling Katherine's eyes on her, Jessica frowned as she tried to rub it off. Without uttering a single word, she staggered to her feet as she threw up against the tires on the wall. Several dry heaves later while nursing her hurting stomach, she sat back down. The bile stank as embarrassment seeped in. She had hunted before with her father. Why did the sight of blood make her do that? Though she rationalized and rationalized, the answer freshly burned in her mind. She had killed a human. Two in fact. She was a murderer. But it was in self defense. Surely that was legal?

"One of those crazies attacked my store manager," she finally said. The chaos continued in the background; but for now, they were safe. "Then the man attacked one of my co-workers. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't want to! But it all happened too fast. The thing attacked me, and I used the axe. More attacked us on the streets. Arl was dragged down while I ran. I just ran. And left him."

It was rare for Jessica to get shaken so, but this was an extraordinary event. Not something that occurred in the U.S. That was for sure. Taking out her cell phone, she checked it. It was a call from her brother. He lived in Maryland, not too far from here. Trying to call him back, she was met with another overflow message. Cursing aloud, she held her head in her hands. She should've taken the news more seriously. Each evening, she just flipped the channel believing whatever this was wouldn't have affected her.

"We ... need to get out of the city," Jessica said when her nerves began to calm down. She got to her feet and walked over to Katherine whom was still perched against the opposing wall. "We need to go before more of those things come. Do you have anything you can use? A weapon or something? I hope to god we won't have to use it again, but just in case. I have a place outside of the city. We can go there until things blow over. A car isn't really an option. Any ideas?"

It was hard watching the woman finally notice her appearance, immediately attempting to scrub off the dried blood from her hands in silence - though Katherine was sure her mind was reeling with justifications. She made sure to turn her head away to give privacy as Jessica staggered to the other wall and heaved up what words could not express. The gagging seemed so out of place in the auto shop, having nothing to do with a stomach virus or a bad night of drinking. Only when she heard the other begin speaking again did Kat pull herself from her reverie, tearing her distant gaze from the large tire jack resting a few feet from her.

The stink of the vomit quickly permeated the air within the room and Kat couldn't help but furrow her brows and crinkle her nose at the stench, though she knew it was rude to do so. It must have been embarrassing enough for the female without her making faces. And so she lowered her head slightly, watching her hands on her lap instead as she listened to Jessica's story. Having taken off her helmet, she revealed a head of brunette hair, tied back in a messy ponytail that fell down over the sides of her face. A frown tugged her mouth downwards; Jess's sentences seemed to be punctuated by the screams and occasional honking from outside of their little haven, which made the messenger shift uncomfortably in her seat.

Would she be next to have to stick a blade in an infected's head? A person's head? Would she even be able to do it? Jess had said she hadn't meant to, and Katherine was sure that that would be the case for her, as well. She had gotten into bar fights before and knew how to trust her instincts - but to kill someone? Or something? Whatever the hell their new predators were? Yes. You can survive. It wasn't exactly a soothing thought, but she resolved not to think about the choice until the situation presented itself.

A glance at her companion after a moment of this inner conflict confirmed that it wasn't rude to ignore each other for a few moments. She couldn't deny that her mind was being quickly clouded by other, more pressing concerns as her thoughts strayed beyond the walls of the shop. Her mind kept prattling off names like a list as she swung the messenger bag from around her body and dropped it onto her lap, pulling back the zipper so that she too could fish her cell phone out of its depths.



One by one she gave them a call, giving her head a slight shake every time she got a machine instead of an actual voice. After she'd finished the round, she looked up to find that Jessica had come over to where she sat and was speaking, though Kat barely heard what she was saying. There was a small bubble of panic laying still in the pit of her stomach now, having gotten no luck getting through to any of them. She was staring at the screen of her phone, as if willing the others to ring her back. But she did catch the important things: weapon, transportation, and a place outside of the city.

In the end, she decided that her willpower wasn't going to be enough to get her phone to go off, and returned the cellular back into her back, a little more roughly than she'd intended. She zipped the bag and stood up as well, the frown still perched on her lips as she looked around the space to find herself a defensive tool. In silence, she padded over to the a corner of the room where she picked up a metal crowbar, testing its weight thoughtfully in her hands before turning around to face Jessica and finally deciding to speak. "I'll use this," she stated unnecessarily, but it was mostly to herself anyway. "No, we can't use cars. The streets are a maze of them right now, there'd be no way we could maneuver through. But headquarters isn't too far from here... There are bikes we can use if we can make it there." She paused then and cocked her brow slightly at her companion, as if wordlessly asking if she were up to that. Bikes weren't really the ideal for the occasion, she knew, but it would be much easier to outrun those things on some sort of wheels than on foot.

Jessica watched as Katherine handled the crowbar she had just found. It'd do she supposed. Not that she was in any position to critique. Her improvised weapon was a climbing axe. A climbing axe for christ sakes! It was supposed to be use for scaling up snowy cliffs and such. Not sticking it in the nearest sick person. She hoped no one saw her. Specifically the police. She laughed at the thought. The last thing the police would be worried about was some axe murderer while doped up cannibals ruled the streets and cars crashed into each other. Their problems were much worse.

Raising an eyebrow, the idea of bikes didn't appeal to Jessica one bit. However, they'd be more likely to distance themselves from those things versus running. "It's better than nothing," Jessica said as she shifted the weight of her backpack. She was thirsty. She wanted water. "We should get moving. The longer we wait, the worse it'll get. My opinion anyways. A little tip. Hit them before they get too close. Those things like to jump."

Motioning towards the door they came in, Jessica steeled herself before she once again rushed into the pandemonium raging across the streets of New York. As she pulled on the handle, she turned back, softening her gaze. "I hope whoever you tried to contact is alright. My brother called; I couldn't get through. Whatever the case, stay alive. That's the name of the game of the hour."

---

An hour had past since they left the auto shop. Opting for caution over speed, Jessica navigated the back alleys instead of the open streets. The number of infected had increased dramatically. A few blocks back, the two had run into a few infected that were clawing and eating away at a young couple. What was left of them anyways. Jessica wanted to do something, but it would've been suicidal. There was a pack, and she nor Katherine were the soldier types. Thankfully, the things were still restricted to hearing and sight. Jessica feared the thought of them being able to smell humans. It was a stupid thought she knew, but she didn't know what was possible or impossible. This whole situation had been a hodgepodge of impossibilities.

Leaning against the wall of a building, Jessica looked across the street as she beckoned Katherine to take a peek. "That headquarters over there?" she asked. A few of the infected milled about, which made matters worse. How would they get the bikes without calling over the whole damn neighborhood? Sighing, she clenched her fist and slowly released the tension. It calmed her down. "I'm ... not too familiar with this place. How do you want to do this? Going through the front certainly isn't an option. Unless you want to deal with them. Is there a backdoor? Or a separate storage building or something?"