Now all but one dead, living with distant echoes of absent comrades.

He walked through the mess hall. It was almost eerily empty, with it's one occupant slumped on the ground. The smell of rotting food, and of the corpse assaulted him almost immediately. That smell seemed to dominate everywhere his combat boots took him. He remembered once hearing about troops in one of the distant world wars, where man's only enemy was man, that survivors plugged their nostrils with cigarettes to escape the smell of rotting corpses. This place was not like the jungles of the long ago wars, but the same smell was beginning to pervade the place none the less.

Morgan stopped, and the echo of his steps lingered on for a few moments, resonating along the empty and devoid halls.

As he had often done so over the last few weeks, he stood in silent contemplation of the corpse.

PFC Pavlaski. 21 years old. He was born in Utah. He had died here.

Master Sergeant Morgan hefted the Armalite assault rifle with its underslung grenade launcher. His breath rasped with the recycled air of his ABC re-breather. The suprisingly soft, yet very distinctive smell of decay and corruption was becomming too pervasive. Not even maggots touched the bodies of the dead, and no ants sought to break the body down. 

He would have to start burning the bodies soon. But it was such a large task, so many bodies... too many bodies. 

The armed and armoured figure of Thomas Benedict Morgan heaved a resigned sigh. He idly wondered if he was the last human left in Washington. 

His steps resumed, and the echoes preceeded him into the empty halls...

As he paced the corridors like a warden without charges, a lone soldier on his Remembrance day route, long after the war has ended, he became aware of another, subtle presence. The fine hairs on his arms stood. Ghosts, perhaps, still on sentinel duty, or likewise imagined beings. But no, it wasn't the air was humming.

Passing #3 Dormitory, once the new kids on the block, now 12 decaying corpses, dead long enough for rigor mortis to set in, each with their grey matter splattered against white pillows, and guns no longer at attention, Morgan heard a disturbance. A static white noise.

Silence.

As his footsteps and their echoed shadows continued, it sounded again, this time louder, more insistent. But only for a second. 

Again, the pause.

But, it had sounded for all the world, like the cawing of a crow, over the white static of an untuned radio.

He did not speak, for he had not spoken for time now immemorial. But his breathing increased. The grip on the rifle tightened, and a knuckle popped loudly under the pressure.

For a moment he considered. A shortwave, forgotten in the radio station? No, not in his weeks of patrol. A stereo radio set, left plugged into a socket.

No matter. Hurried steps took him along, trying to follow the resonant echoes of the squawk. The rooms and corridors blurred as he sought the source of his quiet world. And then, he found it...

The C company dormitory. He had not entered it, having seen no reason to. No noises had issued forth in all his solitary time here. The handset was lying next to the outstretched and decaying hand of a radio operator from Charlie Company.

He dropped the radio back as if it was on fire, scrambling backwards as the screams increased in intensity and pitch after barely a moment. Who knew if the machines were still affecting things, hunting the surviving homo sapiens.

The dead eyes of the soldiers continued to stare mercilessly as he gathered himself. His breath was rasping in his throat. He had leaned the M208 against the door frame when he set about looking into the lockers. With a shaking hand he drew the Desert Eagle holstered at his side.

The cacophony continued, driving into his mind through his ears. Was there one particular moan that seemed more prevalent? He coud not tell.

The sound of the heavy pistol being cocked was rivalled by the screams, those human screams. With courage, and greater fear than he had felt against any engagement, he stepped towards the locker that contained the radio. 

Though his ABC gear made him as faceless as Death, he trembled as he aligned the dark barrel with the radio. Did the moans and screams turn to triumph?

Thunder echoed once, twice, thrice, as he pumped .50 calibre slugs into the transistor radio, obliterating it.

Was it him or did the eyes of the dead suddenly shine with glee.

The radio disintegrated into a million shards of smoking plastic and metal, bullets tore through it, hit the floor of C company dormitory. The eyes of the dead stared at Morgan in dull amusement as silence invaded once again.

A fly buzzed lazily through the mid afternoon heat of the dormitory, prenaturally loud in the blanketing quiet. It circled Morgan's head, then landed on the face of Lt. Rodney Jackson. It crawled to his nostril and supped there. How awful was it to watch this! Lt Jackson had died in such a position that from here, he looked as if he were merely awake, staring at the bunk above. Why didn't he just bat the offending fly away? But it didn't happen.

A commotion at the window, and in the ceiling. By the sounds of the cooing, pigeons or doves had taken up residence in the eaves of the old dormitory, now free from the nuisance of human habitation, and soon enough to have more than enough fat maggots to feed upon.

Off in the distance, Morgan heard the approach of a vehicle. Even with his gear on, his sensitive hearing told him it was an army jeep or very similar automobile.

He cast a final, aghast glance at Lt Jackson. Morgan had known him as a recruit.

With loathing and apprehension he reached for the M208, fully intending to cast a hail of lead at the loathsome flying rats. He shuddered as one of the pidgeons looked at him with those tiny beedy eyes.

But then he heard the transport, be it jeep or hummer. It sounded like it was comming down by the PX, but he couldn't be sure. Another look at the flying rats, and he bolted out the dorm door, his boots slapping hard on the floor. He headed towards the firestairs, which would lead him to the roof of the square, blocklike, building.

He shouldered open the firedoor, shattering the lock as he bull rushed his way through. He ducked low, not wishing to skyline himself. The PX was in the south of the compound, and so he crept silently towards the edge of the building.

When he poken his head up, his left hand held a pair of field binoculars , fastening onto the moving vehicle. His right was supporting him, braced so he could drop out of sight with a moments notice.

The rifle was by his side, a grenade ready in the underslung launcher, and the rifle itself cocked and ready. Who ever that joker down there was, he was about have a bad day...

The driver of the jeep was a young man. Strangely enough, he had a white rag flying from a pole that he had erected in the rear of the jeep. As he grew closer, Morgan could see he looked to be in the final stages of the grey sickness.

"D....don't shoot!" His words were mushy - the nematodes that the grey sickness spawned made it difficult for the body to function normally, "Come...in...peash...."

He pulled the jeep to a stop, casting a baleful glance to Morgan and his gun. His eyes were pale blue against the dull greyness of the rest of his body.

"Not sick... why?"

Then he gently slumped unconsciously over the steering wheel of the car.

Morgan was glad for the impassivity that the ABC gave his features. From behind darkened lenses, he shuddered at the slumping man. The man was dead already. The grey rot was consuming him this very moment.

Thomas Morgan raised the M208 to his shoulder.

How had this man found him? Why did he come out with a truce flag at all? Why had this walking dead man sought him out?

For one silent moment, Morgan considered what to do. Napalm grenade? Rounds fired by the rifle, a grenade from the underslung launcher? One thing was for certain, he loathed the sight of the man, felt his flesh shudder even looking at the grey skin of the dead man. It would be a kindness.

He took aim, and fired a grenade into the Jeep.

The jeep exploded in slow motion. He saw the automobile explode before he heard it! Even behind Morgan's protective gear, he felt like he had received a sudden, and good dose of sunburn.

The fire burnt low rapidly, low and smoky, obscuring visibility in it's opaqueness even where Morgan stood upon the building. There was a noise, under the dying after-effects of the explosion. It sounded metalic and very quiet. A clicking noise. Perhaps just the cooling of metal.

But it didn't sound random, like that, rather deliberate.

All was silent.

And then, even upon the hot asbestos roof, Morgan could hear the sodden dragging of something animal.. and incapacitated or dead. Surely something living would raise it's extremities. But the sound, just dragged on and on. Even there, upon the high corrogated roof, Morgan could sense something watching him.

A high pitched keening noise. The television in The Loungeroom burst into flame.

Morgan felt a chill run through him. Not for the deliberate destruction of the vehicle, or even his murder of the man inside. What struck terror into his bones was that metallic clicking. It was an interesting sensation. His face burned, and yet a cold, cold sweat suddenly beaded his forehead. He started feeling ill in the pit of the stomach, a clenching sensation which turned his insides to ice and molten fire besides. Fumbling with the underslung barrel of the grenade launcher, he clumsily ejected the spent shell, not even noticing as it clinked onto the surface of the roof. Hastily, he inserted a second shell pulled from the bandolier across his armoured chest. The clicking did not stop.

He remembered frantic radio messages, garbled by static and gunfire, explosions and blood curdling screams. Underneath all that, a clicking. Those messages were the last out of Fort Bragg. He started making a circuit of the roof, knuckles white on the rifle beneath the gloves, the rifle itself in advanved patrol position, triggerfinger a breath away from twitching into sudden violence, and a rain of leaden hail. His breathing came short and raspy in hsi throat, as much from trepidation, as shortness of breath brought on by the apparatus. His eyes scanned frantically, looking for the source fo the noise, ready to obliterate it at a moments notice...

The M208 whipped up, and he released a grenade through the window of the 'Loungeroom', the dull thwwup of the expelled shell drowned out by the shattered glass and moments later, the explosion as orange flames licked out of the window, followed by grey smoke.

Morgan had not been standing idle though. Very much conscious that he had been skylining himself, he threw himself forward, bruising his elbows as he landed. A moment to recover nerves, and then he dogcrawled back towards the roof access door, gaping open, off to his left.

Scrabbling almost like a madman, he reached the door, hoisted himself up and barged through it and into the stairwell beyond.

He had one goal in mind... the armoury.

Clanking down the stairwell, Morgan could hear death passing behind him, the hairs raising at his neck, the very honeyed adrenaline travelling through his veins, and the pounding in his temples told him so. Luckily it was only three flights to the armoury, and he had travelled this path often: but never with so much desperation.

One flight accomplished, he could hear the steady progression of whatever guise it came in behind him, almost feel it's Vibrations as he used to rail to pull himself along. Second flight.... it had to be closer, it felt closer, almost the way that your leg feels when it has gone to sleep, tingling and numb, but nonetheless there....

Third flight.

Morgan was forced to jump over detritus blocking his access onto the floor, but he could see the outside door to the armoury was open, the interior dark.

Morgan's boots screeched on the linoleum floor as he came to an abrupt stop. The skid line he left would have been impressive... had anyone been there to see it.

With barely a pause, Morgan lets loose the M208 and lets it dangle by the strap over his shoulder. With speed born of need, he obtains two items, one from his belt, the other from a pouch in the flakjacket that was strapped on over the ABC gear. One was a chemical blue light, the other a flare.

The bottom of the flare cracks against the wall, and a nimbus of light glares into life at the top even as he smashes the chemical light against the holster on his side. The plastic makes a breaking noise, before springing back into shape and emitting a steady blue light from its chemical composition.

Both of the items sail through the air to land in the armoury itself, one casting a harsh white glare, and the other a soft blue light. Morgan pauses for a single moment as strange and fancifull shadows are cast from the light, but the polarized and dark lenses in his ABC rebreather effectively cut down on the glare.

He advances, M208 once more advanced, and ready to fire, just in case.