"Shit! Shit! Shit! Alice!" The new guy cursed. In one hand he had his bat scraping the floor, while the other dug into his eyes. Sage wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. He wasn't sure how to console crying men. So he said nothing.

"She was dead weight anyways." The girl with the gun said.

"How could you say that?" He was becoming hysterical.

"She was our friend!" He yelled at the girl.

"She was your friend," she retorted.

"So what because you didn't like her, that means she deserves to die?"

"No..." The girl said, her eyes dipped as if she felt guilty for not caring.

"Im sorry Cairn. I know how much you cared for Alice."

Cairn kneeled down on both knees as if appealing to the Gods. His bat clattered to the floor.

"She had such a sweet ass, why did you have to take her so soon?" He beckoned, squeezing his eyes shut.

This was getting awkward.

"Really? That is sad." Luris chimed in. Sage rolled his eyes at him and he shrugged.

Cairn now seemed to realize that they weren't the only ones in the room. Sydney grabbed his shoulder, her tiny body barely able to lift him up. Sage helped her lift his dead weight.

"Thanks man. Thanks for everything." He said when he was finally on his feet. He brought his forehead to Sage's, their sweat mixed and mingled.

"Uh, no problem." Sage responded feeling extreme levels if discomfort.
Cairn still had an arm draped over Sydney's shoulder.

"I do not understand his reaction. Were they having coitus?" Proto said stepping into the last light streaming in from the only section that was not blocked off.

"Whoa what the fuck is that?" Cairn exclained picking up his bat and charging at Proto.

Before Luris or Sage could stop Cairn, he had already swung at Proto's head. Proto  dodged him and grabbed his bat with his robotic arm. He clenched his fist, crunching and denting the thin metal shaft in his grasp.

"Michelle! What the fu-" was all Cairn could say before Proto used his human arm to shove him backwards. Proto was now charging at Cairn.

His icy blue eyes had changed to a fiery red.

Sage and Luris jumped between the two. Sydney had reloaded her gun and had it aimed at Proto's head.

"Control your guy or thing" Cairn begged.

Luris spoke first saying Cairn was an idiot, who was like the dumbest version of 'Dumb and Dumber'. That didn't help much. Proto must have been programmed to attack anyone that attacked him.

Sage tried to appeal to his human side by saying Cairn was stupid and didn't deserve to die. When that failed, Luris began to call out various commands that might get him to stop.

"Halt! Quit! Stop! Sleep! Power down! Reset!" Proto responded to the reset command and all his movement stopped in an instant.

"Dude, I did not think that was going to work"

"Well did you kill him?" Sage asked worried about his half human half robot friend.

"I dunno. I said reset so maybe he's doing just that. At least we know how to stop him if he ever tries to wipe us out right?"Luris said patting Sage on the shoulder and taking a seat on the cot he'd made.

He noticed the third person that had been with Cairn and Sydney.

"What's up with your friend?"

"Oh that's Perth, he's a little off" Cairn said after he inspected Proto to make sure he wouldn't come alive and murder him. He picked up his now dented bat and caressed it.

"What's he doing?" Sage asked intrigued by the fellow.

"He's hunting." Sydney said simply.

"Hunting? For what?" Luris asked.

"Spiders, cock roaches, bugs, but mainly spiders." She responded as if this was normal. She was posted against the window, watching the dead go by.

"Ok Steve Irwin is kinda creeping me out" Luris said as he crawled on all fours towards Luris, chasing down a fine legged spider. The little thing disappeared into the darkness.

"Oh I'm Cairn by the way, and that's Sydney."

The six of them exchanged pleasantries, and began having a chat about who they were before the world went to shit.

Cairn was as tall as Sage. His muscles rippled below his skin whenever he moved to caress his bat. Before the place was taken over by the undead, Cairn was a college baseball player.

Apparently, he was the best batter of his team. He named his bat Michelle after he and his then girlfriend, named Michelle broke up. He explains that he couldn't quite let go of her.

Sydney's skin was almost as pale as Proto's, a stark contrast to her tar coloured hair and depressing clothes. Her eyes were a bright blue, but the pain in them hid their brilliance. She was the daughter of a gun shop owner. It explained why she was so good with her aim. 

Perth didn't have much of a story to tell, since he didn't speak it all. He simply wondered around the lobby searching for spiders. When he caught them, he'd bring them to Sydney. She'd nod in approval, but kept her distance from the little creatures.

"Y'all got anything to eat in here? Ya boy is hungry." Cairn asked after a few moments of conversation.

"Not if you like mold as a topping" Luris said, referring to the food he'd found in the fridge earlier.

"Is that why the place stinks so bad? Smells like something died in here"

Mildura had retreated to the lab in the back of the first floor before any of the new people saw her. But her fowl essence still lingered. Sage and Proto had gotten used to it but the newcomers would need some time to get used to adjust to the stifling scent.

"No it's uh..." Sage hesitated, looking at Luris for approval.

Luris only shook his head, deciding not to help. Sage thought that if these people were going to stuck around, they'd have to get along with Mil and Proto. But he feared they'd try to kill her. Maybe it's best to wait.

~~~~

The warmth of the air shifted to a cooler temperature as the last stages of dusk retreated.

Cairn and Luris had gotten into a slight argument over building a fire. Cairn didn't seem to understand that the undead were attracted to light and would gather around the building.

A few of them used their dead hands to scrape the glass whenever they heard a sound. In those moments the group stayed extra quiet.

Cairn had been gathering scraps of paper into a a rusted cabinet drawer. He was adamant about building the fire. Whenever he lit his match, Luris was there to blow on it, extinguishing the flame.

"Dude!" Cairn exclained every time Luris puffed out a breath of air. It took seven matches sticks before Cairn gave it up.

All this while Sage watched in amusement and Sydney stayed by the window, watching. The conversation shifted to the reason Cairn, Sydney, Perth and Alice were even in the city. It was a dead zone. Apparently, they had been searching for a place named the gardens, that was supposed to be a green zone. Green zones were places that had eradicated the dead and had massive fences around them. 

Sage's group was actually coming from such The Garden. It had been overrun. Places like those didn't last very long. Humans were the real enemy. Even after they had fought the dead, they still fought each other for power and control. It didn't take long for the walls to fall. 

Cairn especially was shocked to find this out. That was their sole purpose. They were even more taken aback that the had been travelling in the wrong direction for days; travelling East, when they should have traveled West towards the river. Sydney of course scowled at him, saying they should not have listened to Alice in the first place. This of course sparked another argument. 

When the group was finally asleep, Sage took the opportunity to find Mil. She was in the back corner of the lab and had lit a piece of paper soaked in a flammable liquid.

She looked up when Sage's feet crushed the broken glass.

"Hey you" she said sweetly.

"Hey" he responded pulling up a stool that was over turned.

"What you working on?" He was truly interested, he needed to know that she had found something.

"Actually I found something promising. Dr. Gene had been working on some sort of cure for this disease." She stressed.

They weren't really sure what to call it. Some say it was the apocalypse, others say it was the government attempting to wipe out the population and restart it with better, healthier humans. And by other people, he meant Luris.

They were sure how it started. They just knew that someone went feral in another city and started to bite other people. Before long, those people started to have those same traits and it spread and spread. At first their flesh would begin to rot around the bite mark. Then the tips of your fingers and toes would change colour, rotting like a sudden case of gangrene.

The pupils would become cloudy, and their teeth a deep rotting gray. They were still sharp though, much like their claw like fingernails. Some had an even more drastic transformation where they skin would fall off completely, leaving their darkened bones.

When Sage chopped through their skull, there was not much a brain left. Just a dark mush, coated with putrid slime.

"What did you find?" He asked being careful not to get his hopes up. They had been here before, only to be let down when the testing had failed. She had downed and injected three different concoctions that she hand mixed and none of them came close to solution.

"We'll see here," she pointed at the paper she had been reading. "This is Dr. Gene's research. And she had actually brought in specimens for testing."

"Uhuh," was all Sage said, as he could barely see the print on the paper in the dim light.

"Well one specimen she tested was, her son." She continued.

"That's sad." Sage empathized, he didn't have children but couldn't imagine his child being turned into one of them.

"Yea I know, but look here." She said shoving the paper to his face so he could read it.

" Results of specimen #31 is promising with a 20% increase in cognitive function. His vital signs remained steady. The aggressive nature dissipated in 36 hours with hourly dosage of 5ml every hour. With an additive of C5H39" Sage read.

He scratched his head and furrowed his brows.

"I don't understand," he said after a few seconds of rereading.

"It means that we have been missing an ingredient all along and Dr. Gene found it!"

"So that means we have a cure?!" Sage said getting excited for the first time in a while. Maybe they could actually be together.

"Yes! Well no-" she responded shattering his hope.

"According to the research its not a cure, more of a treatment. When they stopped dosage he went into remission."

"So it might not work?"

"Well my case is different. I've been bitten and my transition has been slow."

Sage turned away.

"I don't want you to get your hopes up again that's all." He admitted. He did care for her.

"Sage, I'll be fine. If it doesn't work, I'll accept my fate. I hope you will too."

He looked into her eyes that were now had a slight haze to them. He nodded reluctantly.

"There are two problems though, we need electricity to make this serum and what are we going to do about your new found friends?"

"Well I'm sure if we just introduce you, they'd-" Sage's sentence was cut short by a gunshot that echoed through the building.

On high alert, Sage pulled his machete  that he kept in his leather belt. Unaware of what could have caused it, he feared that the shot would attract more of the undead.

Mildura followed him as he cautiously made his way back to the group. Luris' grunts echoed down the hall and the growls of the undead grew louder and louder.

Luris had drawn his own machete that was a little shorter than his own. Luris expertly sliced through the skulls of two zombies at once. The good smearing his weapon.

Sydney was shooting at them from on top of a desk and Cairn used a dented Michelle to strike their heads. They ignored Proto, since he wasn't human. They seemed to be able to sense who was human and who wasn't.

"How did they get in?" Sage shouted at Luris.

"It's the fuckin' kid! He opened the door."

"Where is he?" Sage couldn't spot the kid in the crowd of zombies. While he was looking for him, one of the undead latched on to his arm. Luckily he was cladded in thick layers of leather from head to toe. It would take several tears to cut through to his skin. He used his weight to push the thing back into a wall, smashing its skull. 

More of them were streaming in, attracted by the noise Sydney was making. Sage slashed through the horde of them surrounding the desk she stood on and told her to stop shooting. 

"Are you fuckin' crazy?" she shouted before putting another undead out of its misery, again. 

"You're attracting them with the noise!" 

"What else am I to do?" She pulled the trigger one last time as Sage made his way to her. There were no more bullets left. She reached for another magazine but one of the caught her leg. She lost her footing and fell into the mass of them. Sage couldn't see her anymore but he still slashed through them. When he got to her she was curled up in a fetal position, her hood pulled lo over her head. 

"Are you ok? Get up we have to move!"

"Sydney?" Sage asked cradling her head.