I found my self in the hollow shell of a house beside the eights this morning, with no recollection of how I got there. The sun had just began  surfacing over the horizon and I found myself thinking of how quiet it was. Closing my eyes I just listened, there was no traffic, no people yelling even the  wandering biters had gone silent.  The cool early morning wind brushed over my skin while I stood there savoring the sounds of nothing. I had never felt more alive then I did in that moment. My body a bundle of raw nerves, taking in everything.  I could feel the slight changes in the temperature on my skin as warm sunlight chased the cooler shadows, the gravity of my very body  against the sole of my boots as the earth pulled me down, the weight of the pistols in my hands as the barrels cooled filling the air around me with the scent of spent gunpowder. The heat dissipating, trailing up along my fore arms like a  serpent, working its way back into my veins.  Was this it? Was this  what the world would sound like as it finally died?

It didn’t take to long before the serenity of the moment passed.  The calm of the word replace by the chaos of my body, the sweat rolling down me, even in the cold air , had reaches the  scrapes on my knuckles.  The sweet sting of salt on a wound  snapping me back to reality. I didn’t want to open my eyes, to see what I had done, the  racing of my heart, the sting and ache of my muscles, I knew what it all mean. Taking a deep breath, reluctantly opening my eyes, tilting my hands to see the  weapons I held tightly.  Fuck, they weren’t even mine.  The slides were  drawn back and the chambers empty.  My knuckles were battered and bloody, apparently I had ran out of ammo first.  Taking a quick look around I surveyed the carnage surrounding me. There were more then a few biters laying about the area, their stench growing by the minute.  I groaned , wiping my brow with my wrist as when saw the last body, back in the corner  propped up beside some old pallets. Jet was going to freak on me.

He didn’t look to be more then his early twenties, the grey hoodie he wore was soaked in crimson as his hands clenched the wound in his stomach.  He was kind of a preppy looking kid, hell they were probably his pistols I held.  They were more flash then function , chrome plated and heavy , not a weapon a trained person would use willingly.  Question was how did I end up with them.  As soon as I stepped towards him I got my answer, he tried to scramble away moving his hands briefly exposing the gunshot wound in his belly. I cussed under my breath , tossing the guns aside letting them skitter over the concrete.

He was already dead, he just didn’t know it yet.  His hands slid in the pool of blood under him, leaving him face first on the ground, his mouth opening and closing  soundlessly like a fish without water. You could see the fear in his eyes, as he writhed around, holding on. It was to early for all this crap. I knelt on his back pinning him down as I drew my knife and  pressed it into his  skull sinking it deep making sure he didn’t come back as a biter.  I almost had pity for him, he reminded me of some of the others at the Eights. Teachers, Retail workers, Blue collar people all of them.  They weren’t killers, they were just average people like this poor bastard.  How long did they really think they would hold off the inevitable.

The kids bags proved to have little  of anything worth a damn, no ammo , no meds, no smokes. I did find a bag of M&M’s though so Sy would be  happy. Burning the bodies would have to wait,  it would draw a lot of attention and  if Jet so much as thought she saw a corpse without a bit mark…..

I could hear the Eights slowly coming alive. Jovy would have  her coffee stash going, Sy would be starting the  common stew with vegetables from the small gardens, and Jet…well she be Jet, handing out tasks and keeping order. Me, I would do me, wait and watch. The itch was filled for now, but who knows how long before I woke up somewhere else.