FSE

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Barbara awoke in a culvert sometime after dawn as the warm shine was pouring on her tired and battered body. She was still hurting from all the night's ordeal and the evening before wasn't going to be an easy one to overcome. Willard was only 5 miles more, but it might as well have been on the moon for her to reach. Sleep was taking her no matter where she ran and she had to find someplace safe to hide until the morning came. She was stiff everywhere as she stepped out to relieve herself, but never straying far from the gun.

Clenching the shotgun to herself, she climbed back up the embankment to the road and tiptoed past the ambulance left abandoned nearby. She had already checked to see if there were keys, but they were long gone after the fact and it wouldn't have helped anyway as battery was probably dead since the lights had been going since the night before. She came to a bridge with a section of guard rail missing and peered over the edge into the water to see what remained of a prison bus sticking up from the creek bed. The water was well past the windows and it was probably do there long enough that no one probably survived. A ghastly image of the prisoners still chained in their seats kicking and thrashing to escape long after their lungs took their last breathe. For a brief moment a hand thumped against the glass and disappeared back into the water beyond it.

Barbra kept on, finding more relics of the madness that had ensued during the events of last night. A lone Wal-Mart was in flames as it's front windows were broken out and looted TV sets lay scattered in the parking lot. A few dead bodies down there were a clear sign of what was happening, especially the one in the orange vest with a tire mark through his body. She shook her head and pressed on, coming into the Willard City Limits. Ahead was a SIP - N -Go gas station with a sign out front that made her believe her faith in mankind was now lost: IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS CASH ONLY!

The store front was open and the shelves ransacked while at least a dozen cars were packed at the pump, nothing to indicate that any of them might still have gas to get her to Rescue Center somewhere in town. It was coming upon a neighborhood that things began to get more and more strange. A man swinging from a tree in his front yard was wearing a sign that read: I DID IT FOR YOU ALICE! FORGIVE ME!

Further up on the stoop, halfway into the vestibule, was the decapitated body of a woman and the bloodied axe by the man's side from where he had hung himself. Barbara felt hot tears pouring from her eyes as the man's lifeless body began to thrash upon seeing her, swinging like some hellish piñata as it scrabbled helplessly in the tree. She couldn't hold back anymore and broke down further up the street next to an overturned ice cream truck. Everywhere she went, scenes of unspeakable mayhem had ensued. Dead bodies torn to pieces lay on yards and in the streets, abandoned cars sat up on blocks and stripped of an value were amid ones with their hoods up or tires slashed.

One house a basket of fresh laundry lay overturned whilst the linens were turning maroon with old blood sprays. Another further down looked as though an inferno had taken it out to the shell as a feral dog barking broke the silence somewhere in the distance, only to be silenced after a long baying howl of pain. Barbra kept going past a school bus crashed into a playground, all the elements telling her a story of unimaginable horrors that befell the people of Willard. She couldn't shake their ghosts as she went past watching what remained of the swings swaying in the wind.

Closer to the center of town she began seeing signs for the Rescue Center and felt some hope returning in the deafening silence, as the sound of an engine rumbling was the first sign of civilization. She hurried toward the sound almost running despite all the broken glass littering the streets as she dared to smile at the idea someone was there. The sound grew louder as she came upon a generator big enough to power a battleship began to sputter and die, the eerie silence returning as she followed the thick black electrical cables to the Willard High School football field.

It was there her heart sunk as the alley opened up to mangled cyclone fencing guarded by light towers around it's perimeter. She let the gun fall from her hand as she drew closer to the fence, seeing thousand of shell casings glittering like gold coins in the morning sun amid the scattered remains of the soldiers and the people they were trying to save. She could see a few heads, torsos without arms or legs and even a complete arm or leg without an owner all over the place.

"No," she choked out gripping the fence to hold her shaking body, "No."

A gunshot rang out and her shoulder exploded in pain, toppling her to the grass winded as men shouted in the distance.

"Goddammit! You didn't get it in the head!" a man roared as they hurried closer as Barbra writhed in pain.

The lion man stood above her with his revolver drawn, the massive Colt .45 was a long gleaming barrel of death above her head. The hammer drew back as she choked out a response.

"Please," she begged, "please kill me."

"Michael, Michael I'm sorry."

The lion man, Michael turned and said, "She' alive. Get the medic over her right away! Gordon! Gordon! Get yer truck! We need to evac now!"

He dropped to her side and looked into her eyes, "You're going to be ok."

"Please," she begged as the world began to fade,"Please, kill me."

"Gordon!" Michael roared as an truck rounded the corner at break neck speed, taking out a light tower, "We need bandages!"

Barbra was hoisted into the air and into the back of the truck as hands scrabbled to stop the bleeding just before she blacked out. "Alright let's put the hammer down!" the grey muzzle Gordon shouted hopping into the truck and speeding off like a bat of hell.