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Gabriel maneuvered his old, beat up diesel volvo through the streets toward his apartment, keeping an eye out for . . . well he wasn't sure what, but something wasn't right. He took the stairs to his apartment two at a time and was unsurprised his roommates weren't home. Probably hadn't taken off from work yet. Technically he wasn't supposed to have either, but if it were the end of the world, he'd be damned if he stayed at his post in the bookstore to die.

Plan . . . plan. Something . . . he had to do something, right? The television was telling people to stay inside and he wasn't really sure that was a great idea. But then again where would he go? He pondered this as he threw a change of clothes into his backpack, and got the baseball bat from under his bed. He'd never played baseball, but he'd smashed mailboxes, so he was pretty confident he could swing it solidly if he had to. As an afterthought he added a bottle of vodka to the bag. Couldn't hurt. He also, almost as an afterthought, got online and ran off a couple printouts of 's latest blogs, shoving the papers into his bag. Thus armed, he slung the pack over one shoulder and headed out into the hallway.

It was quiet and cool out, and he met no one until he got back out to the parking lot, catching sight of someone he thought maybe lived up the hall. The man was wandering around, looking almost lost, from behind anyway. Probably just back from the bar.

"Hey, man, need help getting to the door?" He asked, cheerfully, but his chuckle died in his throat as, with an unholy moan, the man turned, shuffling toward him and into a pool of streetlamp light. A small, wholly rational and much too calm part of him noted the fact that intestines looked rather different than in the movies. Of course these were also torn and ragged. Gabriel could only stare for a second, as the . . . thing . . . raised its arms, shambling stiffly toward him.

"JESUS CHRIST!" burst from his throat as he flung himself backward, stumbling in a panic, swinging the bat wildly. He got lucky with one swing, the wood connecting solidly with the . . . Zombie's (?) temple, staggering it. He swung again, cracking it hard in the head again. And again. When the zombie (!) went down, he kept swinging until he was sure it wasn't getting back up.

He slumped against the side of his car, panting raggedly, pulling off his glasses so he could wipe his eyes, wet with panicked tears. It was the end of the world. He tried to remember what people in movies did to survive. All he could think of was going to the pub and throwing records. He was going to die.

Jack lightely stepped over the dead janitor, carefeull to dodge the small pool of blood forming around his head. Jack was begining to walk down the hall when he stopped himself. He needed to know the janitors name. It wasn't right that he died without a name. "Godda**it Jack, pull yourself together." He ran over to the janitor and read his nametag. "Sorry John." Jack then ran down the hall with his crossbow. He pressed his back against the wide doors to open them and walked out into the street. Chaos wasn't the word for it. Chaos for the human world was a normal state of being. Fires were burning in the distance and gunshots were as common as human screams and moans. Jack quickly went to his bike. He lived only a couple blocks from his apartment and it was only a ten minute long bike ride to get there. He took it off the chain and began peddaling down the street.

Ash had systematically gone through every apartment in her building, searching for signs of life. A few people were startled by the tall girl's booted foot crashing through the door and her stern, Russo-Israeli voice commanding them to pack up what supplies they could and wait for her to come and lead them down to the parking garage they parked in. The sight of her covered in blood and holding handguns, along with the news reports growing increasingly more violent and uncertain made them comply. Her voice brooked no resistance and the people left alive huddled together in the stairwell, waiting for her to return.

A few of the tenants of the building had succumbed to whatever it was that was causing this and the people in the stairwell fearfully trembled every time they heard the massive blast of the two handguns whenever she found someone who was not among the living anymore. There were six people in the twenty four unit building that had died and come back from the dead, and she had taken careful pains to account for everyone. In one of the rooms she had found an infant, squalling and redfaced but safe from the dead mother that was locked in the bathroom where she had been showering after being attacked. She had paused long enough to take care of the mother and pack up supplies for the baby, strapping the child into it's carrier and heading out the door.

She could see the fear in the people's eyes as she passed out bats and hockey sticks and lengths of pipe and handguns scavenged from the apartments she had gone through, and that fear was even stronger as they looked at Tabby who stood beside her, solemn and silent with her eyes huge in her pale little face, the blood from the bite wound her mother gave her seeping through the white gauze slowly. She handed the baby in the carrier to one of the women and motioned towards the city. "Get into your cars, convoy together where you can for safety, keep the big pickups and SUVs in the front and back to clear the way. Avoid the main roads, stick to the back roads. Get out of town."

She turned to Tabby, taking the little girl gently by the hand and started to walk further into the parking garage. "You...you aren't coming with us?" A tall, slender older man asked her, running his hand through his thinning hair. "Should we...take the little girl with us?"

Tabby's reaction was almost instantaneous, latching on to Ash's leg and holding on tightly, looking at the others balefully and baring her teeth. Ash stroked her fingers through the little girl's hair, looking down at her. "No. I'm keeping her with me. Because if it has to be done...I'll be the one to do it." No one had to ask what she meant.

Tabby clutched the stuffed bunny in one arm as she held on to Ash's hand with the other. The little girl ached. Her whole body hurt, and she would whine, but she couldn't seem to get any sound out of her throat. All she could do was hold on to Auntie Ash and let the woman lead her up the ramps towards the top portion of the parking garage. She didn't know what was happening, but she knew that Mommy wasn't coming back again. She wondered if she was a bad little girl because she was hoping that Mommy didn't come back. She loved her Mommy, but after Mommy had woke back up again, Mommy wasn't Mommy anymore.

Mommy was a monster.

Ash put all of her supplies into the back of the Highlander, settling Tabby into the passenger's seat and buckling her seat belt. "It'll be fine, sweetheart. We're going to get out of the city and go somewhere else, okay?" She said, smiling gently and stroking the girl's dark brown hair back from her face. The little girl's face was pale and a little sweaty, and she still wasn't speaking. Ash worried that the girl probably had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It wouldn't surprise her one bit after seeing her mother die and then being attacked by her mother's ambulatory corpse. That would give ANYONE a disorder.

Ash settled back in her seat, hesitating a moment. She was not going to be happy about this. This was not her idea of fun. This kind of crap belonged in video games, NOT in her back yard! Well, for now her one concern was getting somewhere with some medical attention for Tabby that was not the hospital, because that was the absolute last place a person wanted to be at this point in time. Pulling out of her parking space, she headed down through the twisting pathways of the building, keeping a sharp eye out for people in trouble.

Eventually Rose left the unit. There was too much uncertainty and she couldn't get the shift supervisor to answer the phone, n o matter how long she let it ring. Same for the admissions office. It was worrying.

Night shift was eerie anyway, but having the apparent disaster going on outside was doubly nerve-wracking. She took the elevator down to the first floor to see what was going on in the admissions office. The Shift Supervisor's office was also in the same part of the building, so she'd be able to figure out what was going on. Hopefully.

She glanced around the quiet halls, wondering where everyone was. Usually even at night, someone was about. She glanced outside, seeing the police cruiser still in the admission's parking lot. Weird. That made almost three hours there. Usually they dropped off and left. Why were they waiting? She frowned a bit, going to the locked door that led to the Admission's office and Shift Supervisor. She had her key in the door, when something slammed into it from the other side. She looked up,through the slim, wire-embedded window above the doorknob, and stared into the cloudy, dead eyes of a police officer with his throat torn out.

She stifled a scream, stumbling backward, clutching her keys in a white-knuckled hand as the dead man pounded at the door, unable to get to her, moaning. His pounding was joined by others and she saw, with sickening horror, a couple members of the admissions staff. People she knew. People she'd gone out to dinner with . . . their faces and bodies torn, rent, obviously dead . . . but pounding at the door anyway, staring at her with empty, hungry eyes.

It took him two tries to scramble into the back of the jeep, and he panted, clutching his bat to his chest, nervously. He stared at the woman, his saviour, and the little girl in the front seat, and waited to be able to speak.

"T-thanks . . . oh god . . . t-theres . . . those are . . . Z-zombies." He stammered, his voice shaky. "Oh god." He swallowed, trembling and pushed his hands through his hair. "Oh god. It's the . . . " He stopped himself. There was a kid in the car. Saying it was the end of the world was probably not the best thing to do. Even if it were true . . .

Ash glanced back at the young man who clambered into her car, panting and trembling like he was terrified. Ash had no doubt he was. The only reason she wasn't losing her mind was that once you live in Tel Aviv, everything else is a walk in the park. She checked the rear view window and then glanced over at Tabby to make sure she was okay, reaching down and handing the little girl a juice box. "Yes. I know." Her lightly accented voice was surprisingly non-chalant for such a thing, and the straps of hand gun holsters were visible under her arms. Her long dark hair was tied back in a braid and she seemed dressed for hiking, in boots and fatigues and a tank top. "I'm Ash. You have a name?"

She didn't even want to comment on the irony of her name being Ash and in the middle of a situation populated by the living dead. Let him make one Housewares or S Mart crack and she might throw him out into a herd of zombies. Then again, he was somewhat handsome, in a deer caught in the headlights sort of way. She glanced around and then headed out into the streets, taking the back roads and making her way towards downtown and the police station.

Tabby turned around and looked at him with her huge, solemn eyes, her little form huddled into the seat. "They're very hungry." she said softly, and the blood seeping through the white bandage on her arm was hard to miss. With that, she turned back around and faced the road. Ash grit her teeth a little. Tabby was pale and sweaty, her skin clammy and her eyes dark in her pale white face. She had to figure out something soon, or risk losing the little girl to the things that howled and moaned and shambled outside in the city.

((Is your car located near my character? If so, please hit him with the car....I like dramatic entrances))

Ash glanced into the rearview mirror at her passenger in the back, then glanced over at Tabby, her face tightening a little. "It's like the movies from what I've seen. Dependant on the amount of trauma, reanimation usually occurs within a few moments of passing." She deliberately used larger, more ambiguous words to keep Tabby from knowing what she was saying. She didn't want Tabby to turn, but she was going to have to accept the fact that it was entirely possible that the little girl was going to become a slavering, hungry denzien of the undying masses.

The spread was going to be exponential. Ohh yes, without a doubt. Blood borne illnesses were pretty horrible any way you cut them, but usually the blood-borne aspect made the spread easily containable. When the carriers were cannibalistic zombies, it made the potential infection rate triple, and that was a conservative estimate. She reached over gently and stroked her fingers through Tabby's hair. She wasn't going to give up on her. Not until the end. Not until there was no hope.

"Auntie Ash...you're going to hit him." That softly murmured comment by Tabby sent Ash's attention back to the road, only to see a guy on a bike coming right towards them. He didn't seem to know where exactly he was at, and Ash had to slam on the brakes, bracing her feet on the floorboard and flinging her arm back to push Gabriel back in the seat. Riding around in the middle of the road during a panicky emergancy was about as stupid as slathering potted meat all over yourself and wandering into a kennel of rabid Dobermans. She didn't know if he was bitten and infected or not, but Ash did know one thing.

If he wasn't dead already, Ash was going to kill him.