"Len! Come on! Hurry, man!" Tony hissed as he checked his pockets again for any bullets he might have missed. He was down to only one or two rounds, if he was lucky.

"What you going that way for? We gotta get out of here!" Len lagged behind, obstinate as usual.

"I saw Joe take off in that direction. Just come on!" Tony kept walking.

"No, man. What do you think is happening right now? You heard the 50 cal. go quiet, same as me. Lou got overrun. I don't care what you think you saw. Joe split and we should too."

"You want to just ditch him?" Tony replied, even more irritated than usual, "Seriously?"

Since the turn, Joe had saved Tony's life more times than Tony cared to recall. He owed it to the man to at least look for him a bit.

"I'm telling you, we're humped, man. It's over. Every man for himself now," Len rambled on.

Tony tuned him out and kept walking, letting Len fall behind. He didn't care one way or the other if Len followed him.

After several minutes of winding through the trees, Tony was about to take off when he saw Joe. With that grey hair, it had to be him.

It looked like Joe was grappling with a strange man. Tony broke into a run.

He got there in time to see the man lunge forwards and take a bite out of Joe's neck. Guess it wasn't a man; it was a corpse after all. Really, Joe should have been able to handle that.

Joe fell back, collapsed onto the forest floor, red blood spewing from his gaping neck wound.

Tony stepped closer and raised his gun, ready to kill the dead man that had killed his friend.

The corpse stood still for a moment, then spit out a mouthful of blood and flesh.

What the hell? Tony froze. Corpses don't do that. They don't. This man was alive and he tore Joe's neck out with his teeth.

The man turned and saw Tony, looked down the barrel of Tony's rifle.

"DAD!" someone yelled.

The man turned his head to look for whoever had yelled but Tony was too terrified to take his eyes off the man.

Tony pulled the trigger.

Click.

The man's eyes met Tony's again. He pulled the trigger again.

Click.

Nothing. He was out of bullets after all. Tony took a step back at the same time that the man took a step forward.

Out of reflex more than anything else, Tony swung his rifle, trying to bash the man's head in. There was a solid crack as his rifle hit the man in the side of the head, but the man was still moving and the rifle fell out of Tony's hands as he lost his balance.

The man collapsed heavy to the ground.

Tony recovered his footing in time to hear hurried footsteps coming up behind him.

BAM!