As the two Jeeps left the garage and moved towards the gate, the onlookers cheered.  As they rolled past the growing crowd, Sam picked up the receiver so he could talk to both jeeps and said, “Go ahead and wave, this may be our only chance to please a crowd like this for a while.”

            When Sam gave the okay, everyone in the two jeeps leaned out of their windows and waved.  The crowd grew louder.  Other than weekly food runs and football, basketball, or baseball games, nothing much happened in the colony.  And this was a bigger deal than any of those.  They may as well get a show before they go back to their normal lives.  Some of the troops may not return and there was no harm in letting them have a moment in the spotlight.

            As they got closer to the gates, Sam watched them crank the doors open, and send out soldiers armed with torches to block any ghouls from entering.  Sam could see the snipers already in position.  Any spare guards aimed firearms towards the opening, ready to shoot if they needed to.  This was the same procedure they have been doing every time they sent out a unit and they had not suffered casualties in years.

            Sam could see the ghouls backing away from the flaming torches.  A few of the gunmen opened fire on the crowd outside.  They were handling themselves quite well.

            As they passed, the gunfire grew louder, covering the torch men who were retreating back behind the gate.  Sam heard nothing out of the ordinary.

            As the gates closed, the time to think of the people they left behind passed and the time to think about what lies ahead began.

            They had loosely planned their route, with a few stops along the way, but they had no way of knowing which roads would be blocked or if they would meet any real resistance.  The basic plan was to stay away from cities and other areas once heavily populated so they wouldn’t have to face thousands of zombies during a pit-stop or if they had a mechanical failure.

            As they sped through the ghost towns and decaying streets, Sam only saw a few zombies up and about.  The rest were in hibernation because there was no food around.  They had no reason to walk, so they slept.  The few who did walk around were reenacting daily routines, rituals, going to places that were once important but were now in ruins.  They seemed unaware of the two jeeps speeding through their home.

            “Which way do you want me to turn?” Tom asked as they reached the outskirts of the county.  It was going to be the most urban sight they would see until they reached the target if all went according to plan.

            “Turn left at the next intersection,” Sam said and then repeated over the radio.

            “My finger itches,” Zach said, “when do we get to shoot something?”

            “Listen here and listen good boy,” Sam turned around and gave him a stern look.  “I know we’re all on the same team here and we all hate those things, but if I think that for one moment you are endangering the lives of everyone else, I won’t hesitate to throw you out of this jeep and feed you to those things!  You got that soldier?”  The boy nodded.  “Good.”

            There were a lot of people who didn’t like Zach, and Sam could see why.  The kid was not only gung-ho and reckless, but he enjoyed mutilating the corpses.  The sight of rotting flesh or fresh blood didn’t affect him.  It seemed like this whole situation was just a game to him.  Though he was serious enough when others depended on him, Sam was going to have to watch out for Zach.  The kid had signed up for this mission for all the wrong reasons and might get someone killed.

            As they left the county, Sam looked behind and watched the buildings fade into the background.  They would soon be traveling into unfamiliar territory.  Sam leaned over and picked up a map so he could track where they were.  If they got lost, they would surely die.

            “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day out,” Peter Wilks, the ranking officer on the other jeep, announced over the radio.

            Sam looked up and noticed there were no clouds in the sky.  It was a pleasantly cool summer morning.  It must have been around seventy-four degrees out.  Back home they were certainly having some sort of outside celebration.  The weather was perfect for it.

            “Yes it does,” Sam answered.  “Maybe we can teach these ghouls how to play volleyball!”

            “I’d rather drive balls at them with a four-iron,” Peter said.  Sam could hear chuckling on the other end of the radio.

            “Why clubs, we got guns,” Sam said and put the receiver back in its holder.

            “Shit!” Tom said.  “Look up ahead.”

            Sam did and saw two cars, or what was left of them, in the middle of the road.  Their front bumpers touched.  One of the cars was upside-down, the other was on its side.  From the look of the scene, they had both been in a hurry.  There was broken glass and scraps metal lying in the middle of the road.  It had not been disturbed for over twenty years.

            They stopped the jeep about ten yards away from the wreckage, and the other jeep pulled beside them.  Sam could see an animated corpse still stuck in the driver’s seat of the car that had flipped over, trying to claw its way out of the steel coffin at the sight of food.

            “Can we pull around?” Peter yelled from the other jeep.

            “Yeah, there’s room, just hold on a minute and keep your eyes opened for trouble,” Sam instructed.

            “Got it!”

            “Zach, would you like to do the honors?” Sam asked.

            “Yes!”

            “One bullet,” Sam said, “I don’t want you to waste ammunition on one ghoul.”

            Zach jumped out of the jeep with his pistol in hand and ready to fire at anything bleeding out of the eyes.  There were no other flesh eaters walking around so it was safe for the time being.  The gunshot would wake up the horde of undead, but the jeeps would be gone by the time the ghouls reached their position.  They had no worries for the time being.

            Sam watched as Zach crept closer to the zombie trapped in the car.  The thing wouldn’t pose any threat to anyone while it was trapped in there, but it just seemed sort of cruel and disrespectful to leave somebody’s corpse like that.  There was no dignity in it.

            As Zach moved closer to the zombie, its attempts to escape became more frantic and desperate.  The thing hadn’t eaten in over twenty years and it was hungry.  Zach aimed his gun at the creature’s head and fired.  The thrashing and clawing stopped.  Its hands dropped to the ceiling.

            Right after he executed the ghoul, Zach hurried back to the jeep.  He knew they didn’t have much time before more of them came along.

            They would probably be able to handle however many of them showed, but Sam didn’t want to waste the ammo.  Besides, they would have plenty of time for this on the way back.

            “There’s plenty of room on the shoulder,” Sam shouted to the other jeep, “Let’s get a move on it, we don’t have much time.”

            On his command, Eagle One passed the wreck and Eagle Two followed.

*

            It was noon when they made their first pit stop and it was well overdue.  All of the troops were restless and eager to get out.  They wanted to stretch, walk around, and more urgently they all had to take a leak.

            They had stopped near a farm.  As Jack looked around, he could see an open field.  Save for the tall grass and rampant weeds, the place was perfect for spotting trouble in advance.

            “Alright everyone, I want you to stay in groups of two and don’t wander off too far,” Sam said.  “No telling what’s crawling around in these parts.”

            “Should we scout around and see if we can find anything useful?” asked Michael Davis, the driver behind Eagle Two.

            “Yeah, we’ll camp here for a little while,” Sam said.  “Eat something.  See what we’re going to do next.”

            After everyone had gone off in pairs and taken care of personal business, they returned for further instructions.

            “Okay, Jack and Zach, you guys have the barn.  Paul and Gerard, the west woods.  Peter, Tom, you guys get the house,” Sam instructed.  “Mike, you’re with me.”  Everyone began to go off when Sam said one more thing: “Take the walky-talkies.  I want to stay in contact at all times.”

            Yuck, Jack was going to be paired with Zach again.

            “Okay, move it, move it, move it!” Sam shouted as everyone ran off on their separate missions.

*

            The woods were creepy.  Gerard had never liked being in spots where there were lots of places to hide, especially not outside of the base, where zombies roamed freely.  They could be hiding anywhere out here, and he couldn’t see far enough through the trees to fend off a whole group of them.  He would rather torch the woods and search later.  Sending the troops out seemed like a questionable decision.  They weren’t likely to find use anything useful, and there was a chance that they would run in to the undead.

            Though there was a lot of potential danger, he could understand why Sam had sent them out.  The team had started to become wrestles sitting in the jeeps all day, waiting for some action.  He just sent them off on a little adventure.  If there was trouble, there was a lot of room to movie.  And contacting the others would be easy, so he would not need to be guarded while planning the rest of the trip with Mike.  They could take a while just looking at the map.

            Never the less, Gerard didn’t like being out in the woods where any number of things could happen.

            “Hey, take a look at this,” Paul shouted.

            “What’d you find?” Gerard asked before he saw where Paul was aimed his rifle.

            There was a dead body, not animated.  From the looks of it, the cadaver had been dead for over twenty years, but put down recently.  Judging by the clothes, corpse was male, probably a farmer.  It had been about five feet and eight inches tall and slightly overweight.  As he inspected the maggot infested corpse, he noticed a bullet wound in the side of the skull.

            He looked over his shoulder in time to see Paul cross himself and say a quick prayer.

            “We should bury him?”  Paul asked.

            “There’s no time.”

            “We should put him in a proper grave.”

            “This whole world’s become a grave,” Gerard said, realizing the implications of what he said.

            It was true.  The dead had risen and were killing the living.  There’d been more people in the colony ten years ago.  In another five, the human race might be extinct.  It was an ugly thought, but it was the truth.

            “It just seems wrong to leave it here to rot in the open like that,” Paul said.

            Gerard knew he wasn’t going to win this argument so he went for the compromise.

            “Fine, but we have no time to bury it.  Find a sheet or something to put over it,” Gerard said.

            He had thought about burning the corpse, but he didn’t want to start a fire around all of the dead foliage.  That fire would be out of control.

            He decided to radio the group in the house.

            “Hey Peter, Tom, either of you guys see some sheets or something?” Gerard asked.

            “Yeah, there’re some up stairs.  Why?” Peter asked.

            “Never mind that now.  We’ll be right over for them,” Gerard said.  “Over.”

            They had not been as deep into the woods as Gerard thought.  The walk only took about a minute.  There were about twenty yards of field between the trees and the house so it wasn’t a long walk at all.  They would be able to find the body again pretty easily.

            When they got to the back door, they found Peter and Tom waiting with white bed sheets.

            “Find anything?” Gerard asked.

            “Nothing, it’s all rotten in there,” Peter answered.

            “Come on,” Gerard instructed, “we’re going to a funeral.”

            As the four men moved into the woods Gerard explained what they had found in the woods.

            Finding the spot where the corpse rested only took about a minute or two, once they moved into the woods.  When they got there it was just as dead as it had been ten minutes ago.  The thing didn’t try to get up and attack, it was just dead.

            Gerard suddenly realized that he had never been to a funeral.  Death was a common occurrence and he had lost a lot of loved ones and family, but the bodies were disposed of at the time of death to prevent reanimation, even if the brain had been destroyed.  They did conduct memorial services at the church, but they had to be requested and put together by friends and family of the deceased.  The guest of honor was never invited.

            Gerard handed the sheets over to Paul, who put them over the decayed corpse to cover it head to toe.  He then fell to his knees and prayed for the soul that once resided in the long dead body.  As Paul prayed, Gerard, Tom, and Peter all bowed their heads out of respect for the dead.

            When he was finished, Paul got back to his feet and said “now we can go.”

*

            “You guys find anything?” Sam asked when he saw two out of the three groups come back.

            “Not a thing, sir,” Gerard answered for the group.  “Have Jack and Zach returned yet?”

            “No,” Sam informed them.  “I’ll go ahead and radio them in.”

            Sam picked up the receiver from the jeep.

            “Hello, Jack, Zach,” when there was no answer, he said.  “Jack, Zach, come in.”  When they didn’t answer the second time, Sam put the receiver back and shook his head.  “We’re just gonna have to sit and wait.”

*

            Jack didn’t know why they were taking so long in the barn.  They had spent the last half an hour examining dead horses and looking into the woods.  Jack felt like a little kid, and that wasn’t a good thing.

            There was nothing there except for a twelve gage shotgun and twenty shells.  The odd thing about the gun and ammunition was that it didn’t look like it had been resting in the barn for twenty or even two years.  It wasn’t covered in dust or cobwebs, and was not corroded at all.  Jack’s guess was that the shotgun had only been sitting in the barn for a few days, which meant that someone had been here not too long ago.  Whether he was still alive was anyone’s guess, but it was something.

            “Hey, what do you say we head on back?” Jack said.

            “Not yet,” Zach answered.  “I was getting damn antsy in that jeep!  You know he only sent us out so we’d have something to do don’t you?”

            “Yeah, but aren’t you getting bored with this barn?  I know I am.”

            “It beats the jeep, besides what could go wrong out in the middle of nowhere?” Zach asked.

            “Anything,” Jack answered.

            “You worry too much.”

            They began to examine the hay barrels.  Jack knew it was stupid, but Zach was right about one thing.  Sam had sent everyone out so they could stretch, but he still had a bad feeling about staying away this long.

            After finding nothing, Zach wandered to the barn door to search the outside.  Jack didn’t follow.  This was just insane.  He didn’t like being near those woods.

            He figured while Zach was out making an ass out of himself, Jack could report in so everyone would know they were okay, but he couldn’t find the radio.  He searched around the barn and didn’t see a damn thing.

            “Shit!” Jack said loudly then moved out of the barn to where Zach was scouting.  “Godamnit, Zach did you lose the fucking radio?” Jack yelled.

            “Hey would you shut up and listen?”  Zach responded.

            As Jack fell silent, he could hear movement in the woods.  He could hear the snapping of twigs under the feet of an oncoming crowd.  He could hear several hungry moans and groans in the distance, but not far enough away to offer any comfort.  It sounded like fifteen or maybe even twenty of those flesh eating bastards and they would be out of the woods any second.

            “I think maybe you were right,” Zach said while stuffing the box of shotgun shells into his backpack.

            “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jack said.

            “Ten steps ahead of you,” Zach said as he sprinted away from the woods.

            As they moved past the side of the barn and to the field, a skeletal set of hands grabbed Jack and pulled him to the ground.  His attacker was more skeleton than body.  It had definitely been dead since they had started to rise and from the looks of it, the rotten corpse had been a snack for the other ghouls before it began to walk.  Most of the skin around the face had been torn away and the ghoul’s hair was a wavy gray tattered mess.  With no skin around the mouth, the ghoul expressed an eternal macabre grin.  The eyelids were gone, but strangely enough, the eyes themselves were intact, yellow, but intact.

            As the ghoul tried to pin Jack down, it’s thick, slimy drool oozed down and onto Jack’s face.

            Without thinking, he fired his rifle several times, hitting his attacker in the chest and stomach.  It wasn’t enough to kill the ghoul, but it did nock the flesh eating asshole off of him.

            Seeing the window of opportunity, Jack quickly sprung to his feet and shot the ghoul in the head.  The blast blew away half of the flesh eater’s skull, scattering its brains on the front side of the barn.

            Jack quickly looked around and saw maybe ten zombies closing on their position from the direction of the road and maybe twenty coming from the woods.

            Jack looked to his side to see Zach spray the barn and light a torch.  The soldier said “let’s see how these mothers like this,” and touched the flame to the wet spot on the barn, setting it ablaze.

            The fire had scared several zombies back into the woods, but the ones from the field were still approaching.  Jack took aim and fired, hitting the closer of the ten in the head.  Zach did the same.

            The fire would offer some cover, but they would have to get back to the jeeps before any flesh eaters did.  Otherwise, they would be stuck here.

            “Come on,” Jack shouted over the commotion.  “We can outrun them.”

            Zach nodded and they both dashed through the field.  One of the flesh eaters tried to grab Jack, but he hit the ghoul with the butt of his rifle.

            As Jack looked to his left, he saw Zach using his torch to fend off any ghouls who got too close.

            By the time they had gotten past the ghouls, the two soldiers were only fifty yards from the jeeps.

            “Come on, come on God damn it!” he heard Sam shouting.

            Engines running, the jeeps were waiting for them.

            The two soldiers reached their rides, and leaped inside at the same time.  As Jack buttoned his seatbelt, he could see even more ghouls giving chase.  Maybe fifty now.  Where had they all come from?

            “Go, go, go…” Jack could hear Sam yelling at the driver as he sped away from the oncoming horde.

            As Jack looked back, he could see what all the commotion was about.  The fire Zach had started had just spread to the woods.  The fire wouldn’t be very devastating, and it wouldn’t cross the road, but it would be enough to wake up the locals.

            As they sped away from the burning mess, several zombies stepped out into the road from all sides to get a free lunch.  However, they were oblivious to the fact that that free lunch could smash them into the pavement.  Several ghouls demonstrated this by stepping out in front of either jeep only to get flattened or flung through the air.

            It was a bumpy ride, but the jeeps could take it.  Jack along with the other passengers occasionally looked back at the fire.  It wasn’t going to be a problem and as soon as they were out of this town the undead horde would die down.

            As if nothing was going on and this was the smoothest getaway he had ever been a part of, Zach said “I got another shotgun.”  Nobody answered him.  “It’s got ammo and everything, twenty rounds,” he said with a smile.

*

            A few hours later, they reached another deserted location.  There probably weren’t going to be as many zombies as before, but Sam wasn’t going to be as stupid as he had been on the last stop.  He almost got two of his own men killed.

            They would be in the city by nightfall, which was only an hour away.  He figured it was a good idea to make a quick stop before they searched for their target, so they would be ready for anything when they got there.

            After all of the troops took care of their personal business, Tom and Mike checked both of the jeeps, just to make sure there wasn’t any further damage.  They had checked shortly after the farm, but it never hurt to be careful.  Besides, it gave Sam a chance to go over their plans with Peter.  They weren’t quite sure what they were looking for, but Sam hoped he would know when he saw it.  The operator had been able to disclose the geographical region where the base was located but not the address.  Their base might be a huge fenced off compound supported by concrete walls just Sam’s home.  It might not be though.  It could be based underground with a few secured, functional buildings on the surface.

            Sam also worried about what to do when they got there.  If ghouls had broken through the walls, the compound may still be crawling with them.  They could be anywhere and since the base was in the middle of a city, thousands, maybe even millions of the flesh eaters could pop up out of nowhere.  They had become like cockroaches.

            With the inspections finished, Tom and Mike gathered all of the soldiers around and told them that there was no new damage.  There were a few dents and dings here and there from colliding with a skull, or a whole corpse and a head light was busted, but there was no major damage to be found.  They were good to go.

            As the soldiers all got into their jeeps, Sam took one last look at the breathtaking city landscape against the orange evening sky.  From their distance, it almost looked like the dead had never risen.  Instead of dead the former metropolis looked merely asleep.  At that moment it would have been too easy to just forget the horrors around them, but that would be a fatal mistake.

            Yet again, Sam had to forget the world that once was and move on, but this time he had a new sense of hope.  As they got closer to the potential cure, Sam was more and more optimistic about what they might find.  He knew that he was setting himself up for disappointment, but it was the first time he was actually glad to be a part of the mission.  For the first time, he shared his younger comrade’s enthusiasm.

            When they rolled into the city the sky was still orange, but the ground and the buildings were eerily dark in contrast to the sky above.  It looked like some strange alien landscape, and not the wonderful city of gold Sam had seen earlier.

            Though the city no longer looked a beautiful, Sam’s optimism strangely held together.

            “What do you think we’re looking for?” asked Tom.

            “I don’t know yet, just look for something that might be a military base,” Sam replied.

            As they rolled through the ruined city, Sam and the others scanned the nearby buildings for signs of life.  He doubted that there were any survivors, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep their eyes opened.  They could use allies in the war against the dead, even if it would only give them some knowledge about a different region.

            Many of the buildings looked like they were about to topple after two decades of neglect.  Several of them had broken windows.  One looked like someone had used artillery on it.  Sam wouldn’t have been surprised.

            In the darkness, it was hard to tell if there were many ghouls wandering the streets, but Sam did see a few briefly caught in the headlights.  They didn’t seem to notice the live food moving through their home.  They were just dark silhouettes staggering through the city like drunken fools.

            As they moved deeper in, Sam spotted a clearing where there was a large fenced off area.  Enclosed by the barbwire fence, were several one or two story buildings.  Many of them looked like they might have been bunkers.

            Sam snatched the radio receiver, “Hey, I’m gonna take a closer look at that fenced off area.”

            “I was just thinking about doing the same thing myself,” answered someone in the other jeep.

            Before Sam could even give the order, Tom turned onto the next street which went in the direction of the base.  In the worst case, that wasn’t the base they were looking for, but they would get a place to rest for the night.

            As they navigated down a few back roads and alleys, the base seemed to become larger and larger.  They were only a mile or two away now and they would be there in about two minutes.

            “I want to circle the perimeter before we enter.  The ghouls got in before so I want to know how,” Sam said speaking to the people in both jeeps.  He wanted his orders to be clear so they wouldn’t wander into an ambush.  “Got it?”

            “Yes sir,” Tom said.

            “Got it,” the voice over the radio said.

            As they moved closer, Sam could see the chain linked fence.  Right away, he knew something wasn’t right.  If zombies had broken in, they would have just toppled sections of the fence.  It didn’t look like the fence had toppled at all.  Sections of the fence looked as though they had been violently torn away.  In place of the missing sections were either craters or just burn marks.

            “You think they tried to use artillery on them as they broke in?” Peter asked from the other jeep.

            “I don’t know, but something’s not right,” Sam answered.

            “We still going in?”

            “That’s what we’re here for isn’t it?” Sam said.

            As they patrolled the perimeter, Sam could see that a few of the support walls had taken damage.  One had even collapsed.  The flesh eaters couldn’t do this by themselves.  What the hell happened?

            Sam thought back to the tape.  He didn’t quite know what it was, but something just didn’t sit well.

            The damage had been done in several places on all sides of the base.  It looked like an organized assault.  The attack had happened very late at night, while everyone but the guards on the night shift would be asleep.  There would have been fewer zombies out at that hour as well.  They would either be roaming around their former homes, or what used to be the hot night spots before the dead began to walk.

            It just didn’t make any sense.

            Sam picked up the radio receiver.

            “Let’s go in and get this over with,” he said over the radio, “and I think we should hide the jeeps.”

            “Roger,” Peter said over the radio.

            Sam looked back at Jack and Zach, who both sat silently in the back.  He looked ahead and spoke into the radio again, “Okay soldiers listen up and quiet down!  This is the real thing.  We have the privilege of being the first bad asses to set foot in an invaded fortress.  You thought the food runs were hell; well those are a walk in the park compared to this!  This will take real skill.  I tell you though; I couldn’t hope to work with a finer group of grunts than I have with me now.”

            A few people from both jeeps cheered.

            “This isn’t going to be easy.  When we park, we are all going to get out of the jeeps and stay together. You got that, safety in numbers.  I’ll take the lead, Gerard will take the rear.  I want you all to keep sharp and stay frosty!  Let’s get ready to kick some ass, hoorah!!”

            Only a minute after Sam finished his speech, the two jeeps had penetrated the base through one of the holes and had found a nice hidden alley.  It would be perfect for concealing a couple of jeeps.

            As the soldiers all got out of their transports, Sam saw nothing but mechanical precision in their actions.  They searched the nearby area then returned for briefing.  It seemed that the festive mood had shattered long ago.

            “Okay, I want to search the grounds first, then the buildings.  Let’s make sure we don’t have any unwanted company.  Stay together and watch your backs, and for the love of God, screw silencers to your sidearms.  We don’t want to wake the dead,” Sam instructed, his troops followed.

            As Sam took the lead, his loyal troops followed.  He just hoped he wasn’t leading them all to their doom.

            As they swept the area, Sam noticed a lack of corpses.  He saw blood spots everywhere, but there were no bodies.  Here and there he did see the mangled rotten corpse of what used to be a ghoul, but nothing fresh.  The casualties of the battle had either walk away or were consumed.  That wasn’t out of the ordinary.  The thing that bothered him was the damage to several of the structures.  There were bullet holes all over several of the buildings, on the ground floors where the troops could have been shooting at the zombies as well as the top floors.  Some of the buildings even looked as if they had been hit with artillery.

            The colonists had no reason to bomb their own buildings, even if they had been overrun.  The scene was looking worse and worse every second.

            “Look!” Paul shouted, pointing west.

            A ghoul was headed for them.  The flesh eater wore a military uniform and looked pretty fresh.  It had only been dead a day or two.  The former soldier clutched its rifle but intended only to use it as a club.  The ghoul was in pretty good shape for being the victim of a zombie attack.  There appeared to be no bites or chunks of missing flesh and all of its limbs were intact.

            “I got it,” Sam said as he raised his sidearm, aimed for about a second and fired, blasting the flesh eater in the head.  It was a clean shot between the eyes.  Sam pointed to Gerard, Tom, Peter, and Zach.  “Mike, Tom, come with me, the rest of you give us some cover.”

            On his order, Tom and Mike took Sam’s flank and the other five soldiers kept an eye out for any trouble.

            The fallen solder had no bite wounds, no missing limbs, and no massive wounds at all.  It did not look like he had been hit with a large object nor did it look like the soldier had died of disease.  However, he did have several holes in his chest and torso.  This man had been shot to death.

            “You think it was friendly fire?” Tom asked.

            “I don’t know,” Sam answered.  “Let’s join the others.  I want to get this over with.”

            When they got back to the group, Sam told his troops to keep their eyes out for any trouble.  If there had been some sort of foul play, Sam didn’t want to be caught in the middle of it.

            After they finished sweeping the perimeter, the troops began to search a few of the structures.  It would take them longer, but Sam wanted everyone to stay together.  They did not have the best communication equipment, and if this was an attack from the outside, it would be best to maintain radio silence.

            As they moved past a small shack, Sam could hear a pounding sound on the inside, like someone or something was trying to escape.  He doubted that it was a survivor, but he gave the order to look anyway.

            At his command, Gerard yanked the door open and jumped out of the way just incase something tried to grab him.  Instead of an undead horde, a single zombie fell out.  It was in the same uniform of the soldier they had seen before, but this one hadn’t been shot.  His arms and legs had been cut clean off.  It looked like the soldier bled to death in the shack.

            As soon as the ghoul popped out, several of the troops opened fire, laying waste to the crippled zombie.

            “Shit!  Zombies couldn’t have done this,” Sam said.  They were not skilled with sharp weapons or blunt objects.  They had been known to grab things like crow bars and start swinging, but these wounds were too neat.  Zombie wounds would have been crude and messy.  “Let’s just find were they did their research and get the hell out of here.”

            They had only spent an hour searching, but it had seemed like an eternity.  They had been sent out to this desolate hell hole, possibly to their deaths and they, did not even know if the cure would still be there.  Since the attack had been organized and executed by humans, it was very likely that their objective was to get their hands on the cure.  If the enemy had it, how in the hell were Sam and his seven troops supposed to retrieve it?

            In the center of the complex lay a large, domed building which Sam guessed was important.  It was surrounded by several barracks and guard posts.  Two sniper towers guarded the large structure.  One had been knocked over by a truck.  Debris were scattered everywhere, but the bodies of the snipers were nowhere to be found meaning that they had either been consumed or were walking around the base.  Sam supposed it didn’t matter.  There was no way to tell how many people resided in the complex, let alone how many of the dead were intact enough to come back as ghouls.  In addition to the personnel inside of the complex, there may be wandering zombies from the outside.

            As they moved past the fallen guard posts, Sam kept his eyes open for any ghouls, as well as survivors, though it was not likely there were any friendlies around.  He instructed his troops to do the same.  They were in a situation like none of them had ever seen before.  Out of all of the troops there, Sam was the only one who had been old enough to fight, when looters tried to attack their settlement.  Even then it had been nothing like this.  The attacking looters were whipped out fairly quickly, but here, there was a hostile force, powerful enough to wipe out an entire settlement, which looked to be better armed than Sam’s.  They were a powerful force, and there was no way of knowing if they would be back.

            The large dome was only about one hundred yards away from the towers.  On his signal, Sam’s troops stopped advancing and took cover behind the wreckage.  Before they charged inside, Sam wanted to spot any possible activity, and get a good look at the structure.  Sam had a very bad feeling, so he wanted to be very careful.

            There was one entrance, and no windows on the first floor.  Sam guessed that the other entrances and windows had been blocked off, in case of trouble.  The structure was about four stories high, before the dome began, and had a very wide radius.  The windows on the upper floors were small, and looked as though they were designed for a firefight.  Sam wondered just how the enemy had taken the fortress.  He supposed that the residents in the settlement had not fought many humans since the dead began to rise.  At least in the visible areas upstairs, there were no lights on, which meant one of two things: either the power was out, or there was nobody home.  After careful consideration, Sam decided to go inside.

            “Okay, Zach, Gerard, Jack,” Sam said, “you’re coming with me, to the doors over there.  The rest of you, I want you to give us some cover.  If it’s ugly as hell, and bleeding, I want you to waste it.  If it’s still alive, don’t be trigger happy, wait until they fire at us.  They may be friendly.  When we get through those doors, I want the rest of you to join us, we’ll give you cover.  Got it?”  His men nodded, and Sam said, “Let’s move!”

            With their weapons raised, Sam, and his three escorting troops charged to the dome.  On the way, they met no resistance, not even one ghoul.  Nobody poked a gun through a window to open fire.  It was a ghost town, even void of tumbleweed.

            When they reached the front door, Sam inspected it to see if there were any external locks, or possible traps, then turned the doorknob.  The door simply swung open.  Nothing jumped out.  Sam signaled for the others to join them, and for Jack to watch inside, just in case something started moving.  Friendly or hostile, nothing stirred.

            Sam signaled that the coast was clear, so Tom, Mike, Paul, and Peter ran through the open space under the cover of Sam, Gerard, and Zach.  The ten seconds it took for the troops to reach Sam and the others seemed like an eternity.  Which was fine by Sam, he was not looking forward to the search.

            “Okay team,” Sam said when everyone was gathered around.  “Gerard, you’re covering the front with me, Mike and Tom, you guys cover the rear.  Got it?  Let’s move.”

            With that, the eight troops moved into the building.

            Inside, the hallways were pitch black, so Sam quickly lit his touch, and instructed Mike to do the same.  The hallway was a thin bottleneck, so they would only need to use the two torches.  They would only have to worry about ambush from the doors to each side of the hallway, but he was sure they were alone save for maybe a zombie or two.  He figured that there wasn’t much to worry about, but the hallway still gave him a chill.  Though there may not be anything dangerous still lurking inside, Sam had a feeling that they were going to find the ugly aftermath of the battle within the walls.

            “Should we try to find a light switch or anything?” Peter asked from behind.

            “No,” Sam responded.  “If a patrol comes by, that’ll tell ‘em that someone’s here.”

            Company was the last thing they needed, especially considering what company did to the last group of people it met.

            After a few feet down the dark hallway, Sam reached the first group of doors.  The hallway was set up like a hotel, or dormitory, with several doors evenly spaced apart.  Where there was one on the right, there was another to the left, making the left wall perfectly symmetric to the right.  Sam was on the left, so he instructed Gerard to open to door on the right.

            Inside was a small room, which looked like bedding quarters.  There was a bed in the far corner, a dresser, and a closet, which held some clothes.  On the floor, there were several shards of glass, as well as other bits, where a lamp had shattered.  There were several spots of blood, and a huge blood stain on the wall, directly above the bed.  Aside from the blood spots, the walls were painted an industrial white, and the carpet was an equally industrial gray.

            The other five rooms they checked were the same.  There were no signs of life, natural or undead anywhere, which made Sam’s bad feeling worse.  Somehow, he would have felt better if they had entered the base and it had been overrun by the undead.  He was prepared to see hundreds of rotting, walking corpses limping out of the dormitory as soon as they opened the doors.  That’s what they had been equipped to handle.  That’s what they had been trained to deal with for the past twenty-two years.  Sam was the only one who had ever engaged in combat with another living human being.

            “Hey, look at the floor!” Jack shouted from behind.

            “What is it?” Sam asked, while lowering the torch, and looking down.  He wished he hadn’t.

            Leading from several of the doors were dried trails of blood, as if dead bodies had been dragged out, and moved elsewhere.  The ghouls would not have gone through all of that trouble.  They would have just consumed their victims where they found them.  The powdery brown trails led all the way down the hallway, probably where the stairs were.  There were several blood trails leading to a double door at the end of the hallway, from several unknown places.  Sam did not like this one bit, but he was going to check it out anyway.

            When they reached the door, Sam said, “Okay, Gerard and I’ll check out the other side of these doors.  I want the rest of you to cover the hallway.”

            After giving his instructions, Sam stepped up to the double doors, turned the doorknob to the right door, and peeked inside.  He immediately pulled himself out and hunched over, covering his mouth in attempt not to vomit.

            “Shit!” he said, as he pulled himself up straight, and swallowed a wave of nausea.

            He had never seen anything like that before, not even in his days on the police force.  He spent a full minute pulling himself back together as the rest of his troops stared at him.

            “Okay,” he said, and took a deep breath.  “Gerard, you’re coming in with me, but prepare yourself.  It ain’t pretty in there.  Paul, I want you to go in with us and say a quick prayer and I mean quick.”

            Paul nodded, and the three troops entered through the double doors.  They had set foot in what had once been a ballroom.  Sam could tell from the decorative design of the large room.  It was much bigger than any of the dorms, and was probably where they had the party after the colonists had managed to find the cure.  Now, it was just a place which housed the macabre aftermath of a savage attack.

            A tacky disco ball still hung from the ceiling, and there were still blue drapes and shrouds on the walls, reminding Sam of his high school prom; though his party had not included the live corpses bound and wiggling all over the floor.  Sam felt himself fight another wave of nausea, and once again he won the battle.

            “Jesus Christ,” he heard Gerard say, from his right as Paul crossed himself several times, and began to pray.

            “Shit,” Sam said, then cleared his throat.

            On the floor, there were several corpses wiggling on the ground, some tried to slither like snakes.  Some were bound at the wrists and ankles.  Others were hog tied, and unable to move.  There were two corpses crucified on the walls.  All of them were female, and completely nude.  Judging from the ritualistic nature of the wounds, none of the killing had been done in self defense, suggesting that none of the dead women moving around on the floor had been combatants.  They had just been tortured and butchered.

            To make the situation more revolting, Sam saw that several of the corpses had the murder weapons still stick in them.  Some had knives stuck in their throats, others had larger knives in the chest, or stomach.  Sam felt another wave of nausea pass, but he could not afford to lose it in front of his men.

            While Paul continued to pray, Gerard turned to Sam and said, “What do you want us to do?”

            “I figured we should take care of them, I’d hate to leave hem like… this,” Sam had to swallow hard after his words.

            “There must be at least thirty of them, Sam.  I don’t think we should be wasting our ammo like that.  I hate it too, but…”

            “I know,” Sam said, cutting Gerard off.  “You’re right, let’s get the fuck out of here.  I figure if the raiders went through this much trouble, they had enough time to find the cure.  Let’s regroup somewhere else.  The cure will do no good if we can’t get back to the base alive.”  Sam looked at Paul, who was wrapping up his prayer.  “Let’s move.”

            They left the ballroom without firing a single shot.

            Outside, the other five troops stood staring expectantly at Sam, and the others.  They had no idea what had just transpired, and for once, Sam felt it was best to keep them in the dark.

            “Okay troops, we’re heading back to the jeeps,” he said, his voice still shaky, and unsteady.

            Though they had a lot more on their minds, the trip back seemed to go a lot faster than the trip into the compound.  They did not bother to search anything else, for Sam was afraid of what he would find.  Nobody spoke a word.  They just traveled through the night in silence.

            By the time they reached the jeeps, the only light in the night was the light from the stars and their torches.  Thought the night had been silent for their trip back to the jeeps, a low grumbling sound grew louder in the distance.  Engines, there were vehicles closing in on their position.

            Sam turned to the others, and shouted, “We’ve got company!”

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