Three weeks passed.

Nothing changed. Cameron's wound didn't heal, but he tried to hide his limp. Occasionally, he would steal a bottle of Tony's alcohol to clean the wound.

He was sentenced to a month of office-keeping, cleaning their shelter, reinforcing it against the cranks, and organizing the supplies.

But no matter how much work he was assigned to keep him occupied, Cameron couldn't keep his mind off the bite.

One day around noon, he took his break early and went directly to his 'room'. Basically, an old office, with the desk and cabinets pushed to the side to make space for his 'bed'.

He sat on the two thick quilts, laying his throbbed head on the pillow and staring at the ceiling. It was worse than dying, he thought. Becoming a crank. Forced to kill by the disease eating away at your mind. But, he still didn't want to die. Not before he had to.

He hoped that, once he had finally went past the Gone, somebody would take him out quickly. Could cranks feel pain? He had originally assumed that the answer was no, but after seeing just how insane they were, he had his doubts. If they would carve out their own eyes, he was pretty sure a bit of pain didn't bother their twisted minds.

A couple hard knocks shook him out of his thoughts.

"Hey, you okay in there, buddy?" The voice was unmistakably Johan's. He had a thick middle-eastern accent, and it alway sounded as if he was talking through a grainy speaker, which was likely because of his constant smoking. Of all the things they had found in the city, the most common was drugs, hidden away in the unlikeliest of places. Johan had recently discovered a new stash of marijuana, and was having a ball, smoking at least three every day.

"Yep," Cameron called back, faking cheerfulness. "Better than ever."

He could hear the young man chuckle before he entered the room. Of everyone else in the group, Johan was the closest in age to him, having just turned nineteen the month past. It was weird, being surrounded by adults for most of his life, never experiencing what it was like to have friends, go to school, be normal. He was only sixteen, but had seen more death and destruction than anyone should ever have to.

Johan sat in the office chair, spinning himself around several times before stopping to face Cameron. "So, what's new? Any news about you-know-who and you-know-who number two?"He grinned slightly at his own, overused joke. He was speaking of Lawrence and Veronica, who had been eyeing each other for the past few weeks.

"Nope. Nada. Nilch. Nothin'. Just the two if them making goo-goo eyes at each other whenever they're assigned to search the same area." He rolled his eyes in exasperation, both about the mushy end-of-the-world love story and the fact that, after ten years, they still hadn't came across any other survivors. Survivors that were still sane, that is.

Johan nodded, and they both sat in silence for a while, Johan attempting to guess what other places people would hide drugs, and Cameron's mind consumed with fear for what was to come.

After about twenty minutes of this, the friends heard another knock on the door, and upon opening it discovered a dishevelled Harvey.

"We... We found..." The sturdy man was gasping for breath, sweat creating a sort of v-shape down the front of his olive shirt.

"You found what? You found..." Johan trailed off at the end, waiting for Harvey to finish the sentence.

"Well," the bearded man said shakily,"I think it's best if you come see for yourselves.

Raising an eyebrow at Johan, Cameron reluctantly followed Harvey as they travelled down the stairs. What had they found? Another survivor? A new hovercraft? Some way of communicating with other people? The possibilities raced through his mind, filling him with anticipation.

Don't get your hopes up, he reminded himself. Maybe it's something bad, a dead body, or... He shuddered slightly and pulled his arms around himself. Maybe it's a crank.

When the trio reached the bottom of the shadowy stairwell, Cameron hesitated before following the others into the blinding sunlight. Finally, he decided that whatever was out there, it must have been pretty important to make Harvey run.

Stepping outside onto the dry, cracked ground, Cameron allowed his eyes to adjust before looking around to see what the commotion was about. He spotted a flash of movement out of the corner of his left eye, and turned to it.

He was shocked by what he saw.

Running over to a small crowd, he gawked along with the other twenty-two people. A large, deformed blob sat in the middle of them. It was a pale green in colour, covered in a fine yellowish hair. A few metallic spikes popped out of its skin, and a three-pronged mechanical arm glinted in the sunlight, occasionally lunging at the spectators.

Most shocking, though, was the plastic tag attached to one of the spikes near the top. Cameron had to squint slightly, but after a second could make out the text.

The tag read, in blocky red letters:

TO BE DESTROYED