A light fog rolled through the streets as a single jet-black bird soared through a dark sky. A chill wind swept through the air, ominously pushing thin white clouds along the ground.

A moonless night, only the stars served for light as four young men almost of age scrambled down cracked streets littered with abandoned cars. There was an occasional flash accompanied by the sound of a gunshot in the darkness.

"Move move, move! We need to get off these streets, there! That alley, go! Xin, watch the rear!" Ryan shouted to his friends.

"They're still chasing! What the fuck are these things?!" Xin shouted back.

"Dead people walking! Zombies! Who the fuck cares right now?! Dan's hurt and we gotta get him to the doc now!" Ryan cursed under his breath. Between him and Alex, they were desperately moving as fast as they could, dragging Dan between them. He was bleeding heavily from a grisly wound on his shoulder, near his neck. An almost fist sized chunk of flesh was missing, exposing some of his collarbone and staining his checkered shirt at an alarming rate. Aside from audible groans of pain, he looked pale and was barely awake.

"How much farther?" Xin asked.

"We just passed 5th street, six blocks!" Alex replied.

The group turned the corner of an alleyway, and Ryan swore as Xin collided into his back, unable to stop himself completely.

A pale lifeless corpse was scrambling towards them at a pace of a jog down the alley, moving with a clumsy shambling motion.

"Get down!" Xin shouted, and leveled a pistol to the corpse. He fired four shots into the corpse's chest and it fell backwards. Despite almost black liquid oozing out of the wounds in terrifying quantities, the zombie clambered onto its feet and resumed its advance.

"Dumbass! Shoot it's head!" Ryan shouted.

"I need to reload!" Xin was frantically fumbling with his pistol, trying to remove the magazine from the gun.

"God dammit! Alex! Take Dan!" Ryan charged towards the zombie with a wooden baseball bat and shoved him to the ground. Flailing on the ground, the zombie tried to grab at Ryan's legs but he began bludgeoning the zombie's head repeatedly until it finally stopped moving.

Out of breath and panting, Ryan walked over to Alex, his hands shaking from the adrenaline. Alex had a deeply worried expression on his face.

"Guys, Dan's not making any more noise, he's losing so much blood, there's no way he'll make it at this rate." Alex said with desperation in his tone.

"We gotta do something about the bleeding, Xin, watch the alley. Alex, prop him up so he's sitting." Ryan instructed as he took off his shirt. He fastened it around Dan's bleeding shoulder and tightened it as much as he could, tying a large knot.

"It's not much but it's better than nothing, we don't have time to look at it now, we gotta keep moving. Xin, can you take Alex's pack?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah, let's go." Xin picked up Alex's backpack and slung it over his shoulder, now wearing two backpacks packed full of a little bit of everything they could take from a nearby drugstore they had broken into.

Carrying Dan down the alley, Xin ran up ahead to check if the street was clear. "I don't see anything, let's just beeline it straight down, we're only six blocks away, if we get close enough the guys at the warehouse should hear us." He suggested.

"It's too dangerous to take the street, we'll be completely in the open. They seem stupid but they're too fast with Dan like this. Stick to the side alleys, I know them well." Ryan said.

"Ryan, it'll take too long, Dan's barely breathing as it is." Alex countered.

"Fuck.. fine, two-to-one. Xin, give me that trash can cover, we can put Dan on it and push him along the street."

"Got it."

"Alex, help me with his legs."

Sitting Ryan on a large trash can lid, Xin burst out of the alleyway with Ryan and Alex pushing Dan from behind, using the lid as a sled.

The sound of screeching and scraping disturbed the whole neighborhood as the three bolted down the street as quickly as they could.

"Too much fucking noise!" Alex swore.

"Doesn't matter, keep going! We can make it in five minutes at this rate. I'll try knock over anything that comes out." Xin was running in front, carrying Ryan's baseball bat and the two backpacks.

Not even thirty seconds later, a pair of zombies came running behind them.

"Shit! XIN!!" Ryan called. Xin turned around and charged at the pair, using the backpack like a shield he knocked them over and doubled back to catch up.

Running as fast as they could while pushing Dan along, by the time they had made it three more blocks there was a dozen zombies ravenously closing in on them. They would not make it another block before they would be caught.

"Xin, do something!" Ryan shouted.

"Do what?! There's too many! Move faster!" Xin was desperately chucking anything he could grab at the pack chasing them as he ran.

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"We're going as fast as we fucking can!" Ryan snapped back.

"Then we have to leave Dan, or we all die." Xin's knuckles were white as he uttered the thought that had occurred to everyone at some point or other.

"No, we're not leaving Dan!" Alex had a terrified look in his eyes. The thought had occurred to him as one he was terrified the other two would suggest.

"You four, alley on the right. Take your friend through there, quickly." A soft voice sounded clearly nearby.

"Wha?" Xin looked around in alarm.

"Alex, let's go!" Ryan immediately threw caution to the wind, desperate for a way out for the four of them. Hoisting up Dan between the two of them, they took to an alley separating two buildings.

"Ignore the left path, continue straight through." The voice sounded again, this time from above.

The zombies clambered into the alleyway, but it was barely wide enough for two grown adults, let alone three or more. Xin tossed the bat at them and the zombie in front tripped on it, slowing down the small horde.

Clearing out of the alley they reached a street with no zombies in sight.

"Left, then turn right, take the first left after that and keep going till you reach the warehouse." The voice instructed.

Following the instructions, the boys saw two red road flares illuminating the end of the street. A few men were waiting when they saw them approach, alarm growing on their faces when they saw two of the boys carrying another between them. One of the men issued some instructions to another as the rest ran up to help the boys.

"What happened?" A man in a police uniform asked.

"Dan got attacked by some kind of zombie, he's lost a ton of blood from his shoulder, please, wake up the doctor!" Alex pleaded.

"Your dad's already gone to get a stretcher, we'll take care of Dan. Leave him to us." The policeman assured as a large man took Dan from the two of them and carried him into the warehouse.

"Hey, Jim, thanks for the assist back there." Ryan said.

"What are you talking about?" The policeman called Jim looked confused.

"Weren't some of your guys on the rooftops guiding us away from the zombies?" Ryan also looked confused.

"Everyone is inside, we're only out here because Sophie told us you boys stole a gun and some ammo, then left after curfew. You better get inside, Chief Richard is a whole different level of furious." Jim said.

The three boy's faces all paled a shade or two at the same time as they quietly followed Jim into the warehouse.

Perched nearby on an extinguished streetlight, a raven seemed to smile, then took off into the night.

. . .

In the warehouse, a trio of teenage boys stood quiet as mice in an office trying to avoid the intense glare of a middle aged man with graying hair wearing a police uniform. On his desk was a handful of papers, pens, and a placard with 'Chief of Police, Richard' carefully written in bold permanent marker. Before the world ended he was the actual Chief of Police of the city, and afterward he had gathered the survivors with the remaining police force.

"So, which one of you boys would like to tell me whose bright idea it was to climb the fence into the armory, steal a handgun, 72 rounds worth of magazines, and leave the perimeter 4 hours after curfew." Richard asked.

Before Ryan could utter a word, Xin and Alex next to him simultaneously blurted. "Ryan."

*Motherfuckers.. Some bros you two are.* Ryan thought.

The man sighed. "I figured it was my idiot son. You're all detained for the remainder of the month. You will not step a foot out of this warehouse, you will assist the kitchen and you will not say a word about anything you saw or did tonight."

"Hold on, we were just trying to help! We heard everyone talking about how we needed medical supplies from the pharmacy, we brought back at least 40 pounds of supplies!" Ryan complained.

Xin and Alex stared at Ryan, jaws partially agape, wishing he would shut up before they got a worse punishment, at least helping the kitchen meant first grabs before the good food ran out. Alex was trying to mouth the words "Dude. Shut. Up." But Ryan was ignoring him.

Richard's cheeks flushed with anger and his voice took a threatening tone as it raised to nearly a shout. "You can help, by making my job easier. You can help, by not waking half the fucking warehouse in the middle of the night and nearly killing Dana with grief! Her only son is being treated by the only doctor, who by the way, is doing his damned finest to take care of nearly a hundred people without either the staff or equipment he needs to properly do his fucking job! Dan, by the way, would not be missing a chunk of his shoulder, and struggling for his life right now had you not concocted an idiotic and reckless adventure without telling anyone! Had Sophie not seen you four and told her dad about it, Dan would probably be dead right now."

Defeated, Ryan stood in silence, his face pale, frustrated but unable to stomach the results of the night. His friend was being treated right now and he knew they did not have the proper equipment to handle a case like this. It was for that reason he drew up a plan to gather supplies from a nearby hospital or pharmacy, had it not been the unexpected appearance of those walking corpses, everything would have been perfect. They only expected to deal with wild dogs or maybe even other people.

"Dad, please.. I'm sorry, I was an idiot, but you have to know about what we saw out there." Ryan said weakly.

Richard's expression softened as he reclined in his chair and sighed at the ceiling. "I know what you saw out there. Walking corpses right? Zombies straight out of the movies?"

This time Xin spoke up. "Wait you knew about those things? How come nobody told us?"

"Why do you think there was a curfew put in place a week ago?" Richard leveled his gaze on Xin, making him a bit uncomfortable.

Xin shrugged. "I don't know, just thought it was dark out there and you didn't want anyone getting lost or something.."

"The issue of medical supplies isn't new. A week ago I took the doctor and six of my men to the nearby urgent care for the exact same reason. Inside were dozens of crazed corpses walking around. We thought they were survivors hiding out in the hospital but when we got closer one lunged at Jim and bit him on the arm. That was when we noticed they were very much dead. We got the hell out of there and they did not follow us outside. We noticed they won't step into the sunlight, even a road flare will scare them off." Richard explained.

"Why haven't you told anyone about them?" Ryan asked.

"What good would that do? Would they all believe us if we told them? You want us to go catch one and show it around to prove it? I'm responsible for 97 people in this compound, the world's gone to shit and you think inciting a panic is going to help? They seem only able to move around when it's dark so we established a curfew and we're still trying to figure out how many there are and where they are. Guns don't work well on them, we have limited ammo and weapons here, even when you nail them in the head, unless it's destroyed completely they seem to just get right back up after a time. Regardless, you boys zip it. If I hear any of you breathing a word of this to anyone, all three of you will be cleaning the toilets 3 times a day for the next month. Do I make myself clear?"

Alex and Xin nodded vigorously, after a small pause, Ryan also nodded once.

"Good, go get some sleep, report to Dana in the morning." Richard instructed, waiving them out of the office.