"If we've got a chance, we might as well take it, we might not get any more," Jackson said, checking his gun to make sure it was fully loaded, then checking both barrels of the shotgun. Locked and loaded. The three ran toward the warehouse, weaving in and out of the aisles, taking down another few zombies on the way. Jackson covered the door as Dancer was preparing to enter. "Ready...one...two..."

Dancer nodded to Jackson, as he opened the door, they looked around, guns at the ready. He heard Jackson lock and dead bolt the door. Seth sweeped the room with his pistol, and saw blood along the ground. As he followed the splatter trail, he saw a grisly looking dog with it's jaw dislodged, and a zombie laying without a head. Whatever came through here was on a mission. He hoped it was on their side.

That was when they heard a noise, like a startled woman. A woman...Seth thought. He pinpointed the sound to a door close to the fallen zombie, and he kicked it open. Inside, he spotted a Korean female fighting off three zombies. He fired off three shots into one zombie, and then tossed her a gun. He plunged his knife into the one, but it kept moving. He then realized he couldn't get the last in time.

The shot rang out before Luke even realized he'd drawn, and the bullet hit the zombie squarely in the head, taking it down. That was the last of them. He waded first through the sea of gore surrounding them, trying not to step in anything...anyone...whatever.

"Are you ok, Miss...?"

Mi-Kyeong was silently cursing herself for letting these bastards surround her. Her fatigue would test her here.

She swatted at one of them. It stood back! Did these things retain some rudimentary intelligence? Never mind that now, she had to survive. She could speculate later.

The one behind her lunged for her shoulders. Luckily, these things were slow and clumsy. She shifted to one side, and bent her lead knee, putting her into a sidelong lean. She felt the bastard crash into her hip, as expected.

She fought her revulsion as she looped her free arm around its waist, pivoted on her lead foot, and pushed up with her hips, and the zombie was flipped over. With no time to get comfortable in her position, the zombie standing next to her lunged also.

Having switched her pipe to her other hand to throw the one behind her, and the dodging zombie having regained its footing, she was forced into another diving sidelong roll, which she executed with somewhat less of her usual vigor. She was tired, and it showed in her movements.

Mi-Kyeong tried to come up into her defensive crouch, but a spot of blood betrayed her footing, and she stumbled backward, swinging wildly in front of her to fend off the bastards as they came for her.

The thrown zombie was getting up again. Mi-Kyeong was not faring well. That wild swing knocked her onto her back.

She had to roll sideways to avoid the one that tried to fall on her. That move betrayed her as the first zombie lunged at her as well. These things did seem to retain some form of intelligence. Mi-Kyeong held her pipe jagged-edge out, aiming for the thing's throat.

Damn it, if they were going to eat her, they were going to choke! The pipe punched cleanly through its throat, knocking it to the side, but the pipe got stuck. She had to abandon the pipe in order to get up.

Mi-Kyeong rolled sideways onto her stomach, and rose to her knees. The third zombie came for her before she got ready to rise completely, and so she didn't try. Instead, she got into a ready position while on her knees. The bastard made a mistake lunging with its hands. Mi-Kyeong twisted and took hold of its arms, and pulled sharply with her left hand on the lead arm, while holding her right extended, to throw it off balance.

Success! She took its balance. She twisted forward, and pulled the bastard against her back, flipping it onto its back. She didn't even pause to do anything else. She threw herself to the side, and came up into a stance, ready to kick.

Mi-Kyeong looked to both sides, to make sure she would not find any more surprises, and saw walls on both sides. She was in a corner.

This is it, she thought. I should have waited in my closet.
Tears began to stream down her face as she braced herself for her final stand.

Then, a deafening gunshot. Then, a knife flew past her face to land in another. Mi-Kyeong turned to see a gun flying toward her. Five seconds too late, she thought.

She turned back and had gotten her knee in place for a head kick, hoping to knock the zombie's head off, and heard another shot. Flinging herself backward to the floor, Mi-Kyeong held her laptop bag to her chest, cradling it against the impact. She had to roll sideways again to avoid the one coming for her with the knife sticking out of it.

She saw her pipe in the throat of the one that hat taken the gunshot, and grabbed with no hesitation. It was lodged firmly. She stood up, placed her foot on its back, and pulled up with close to the last vestiges of her strength. The bastard's head came free with the pipe. Disgusting.

Mi-Kyeong swept her pipe at the level of the head of the one still standing. Knife-blade was getting up, and the uninjured zombie crumpled with a bullet in its head. She couldn't stop her swing, and it connected as if the thing's head was a tee-ball. She swung too hard, and took the top off of its head, spraying gore for yards.

Mi-Kyeong didn't wait for Knife-blade to finish getting up. He had attacked her on her knees, and she returned the favor with a downward swing that splattered its cranium.

She then registered the sound of the sliding gun hitting the corner, and was grateful it hadn't gone off. She picked up the gun, and put it into an ironically-sized pocket in her laptop bag, usually designed for a spare battery.

A somewhat squat, stocky white man approached Mi-Kyeong. He was walking with purpose, straight for her. He had a look of concern on his face, avoiding what gore he could.

Turning to Mi-Kyeong, he spoke, but with the ringing in her ears, she didn't hear him very clearly. It didn't matter. He was the first human being Mi-Kyeong had come into contact with since she had lost Ji-Soo.

Mi-Kyeong broke down. The stress had caught her fully. She threw her arms around this stranger, sobbing violently and jabbering unintelligibly in Korean. Mi-Kyeong could no longer stand; her exhaustion claimed her, and she fell to her knees, using the last of her strength to cradle her computer to her head as she fell sideways and passed out.

She was now at the mercy of these strangers. She could do no more until she rested. Through her haze, she belatedly recognized one voice as she lost consciousness. It was from the phone call. Maybe she would be safe, now.

Dancer watched as the woman collapsed into Jackson.

"Finally found you a girl, eh?"

Dancer decided to take a break here until the girl woke up and they could talk. He turned to colton.

"Hey man, can you do me a favor? I'm gonna try to get some sleep. Can you keep watch, and wake me the second she is?"

Colton had just watched in awe as the other two had saved the womans life. He nodded at Seth absently and turned back toward the door, pushing the butt of his M-16 against his cheek and crounching behind some rubble.

Dancer patted Colton on the shoulder.

"wake me up in 30 minutes if she isn't yet. Then I'll take over, and you can rest. Jackson isn't going anywhere. Not with that woman there. And she'd better take care of my pistol."

Seth walked over away from the corpses. He managed to drift into sleep quickly. How he did that with the stench, he did not know.

Jackson lit a cigarette and joined Colton in watching while Dancer slept. He was jumpy after all that had happened. He heard scuttling sounds all around that he hoped were rats. Very small, non-mutated ones after all this.

He punched Colton in the ribs with his elbow and said, "Quite the babe, huh? I guess this is our new hacker. At least she's not one of the creepies."

Mi-Kyeong was back on the airplane. She had just removed her laptop from the overhead compartment, and gone toward the exit door. She went through the airport taxi, and heard screams issuing through the doorway once it opened. Ji-Soo was behind her. Ji-Soo spoke to Mi-Kyeong in Korean.

"What's going on, Mi-Kyeong?"

"I don't know. Stay here while I go look."

Mi-Kyeong opened the door again, and saw airport personnel being born down under the torrent of cannibal-like people. She had little time to react, and shut the door. Mi-Kyeong ran back down the taxi toward Ji-Soo.

"Ji-Soo, we have to find a different way out! They're eating them!"

"What?! What are you talking about?"

"The flight attendants, everyone! They're being eaten! We have to get back on the plane and get the pilot to take off!"

The two ran to the exit door, but found it closed. Mi-Kyeong tried the door and found it locked. Ji-Soo began to panic.

"Mi-Kyeong, where can we go?!"

"The runway access door!"

The pair ran to the access door, and opened it. Mi-Kyeong saw only a few people out here, so it looked safe. She beckoned Ji-Soo down to meet her, and Ji-Soo followed unquestioningly. Mi-Kyeong saw a warehouse in the distance, roughly a two-hour walk.

"Ji-Soo, let's get to that building. We might find a place to hide."

Ji-Soo followed wordlessly, as if her voice were stricken from her. Mi-Kyeong reflected for a few minutes on their past.

Ji-Soo had aspirations of becoming a doctor. She had gone to Harvard for her Ph.D. Mi-Kyeong was an aspiring teacher, but majored in computer science, so she went to MIT. Even though they stayed in different areas of Cambridge, they still stayed in touch intermittently.

They had gone to Boston to catch their plane home, and had even gone so far as to arrange their travel plans to put themselves on the same one.

Mi-Kyeong was snapped back to reality by the sight of Russian soldiers firing AK-47s into a crowd. The sound was nearly deafening. She turned to Ji-Soo, only to see her crouched into herself covering her ears. Mi-Kyeong picked her up into a standing position, and urged her on. They continued to the fence, hoping that they would not be stopped, or worse, mistaken for these cannibals.

They came to a line of corpses and both started to vomit. Mi-Kyeong was able to come under control in time to see an impossible sight. The corpses were starting to rise. Ji-Soo was startled from her revulsion by Mi-Kyeong's scream of disbelief.

The corpses started toward the pair of them, reaching out for their throats and issuing low moans. Ji-Soo stood in shock until Mi-Kyeong startled her to the very real situation unfolding before them.

"Run! These are the ones who were eating everyone!"

"What?"

"RUN! NOW!"

They ran for a section of fence looking to have been torn through by the weight of hundreds of bodies. There appeared to be no one there, so they darted for it.

They were nearly there when Ji-Soo tripped. She had been grabbed by a corpse which had narrowly missed Mi-Kyeong. Ji-Soo was completely caught unawares by it, and the corpse bit her left carotid artery. Ji-Soo collapsed, bleeding profusely from her throat and issuing a gurgling scream of mixed pain and terror. She struggled only briefly, and the life faded from her eyes.

Mi-Kyeong charged for the lone corpse, and kicked it in the temple. The corpse crumpled, and she began to try to revive Ji-Soo. Tears were streaming down her face, and Mi-Kyeong's composure was gone.

"Ji-Soo? Come on, we have to run! We have to get home! No! Ji-Soo!!"

She was snapped to harsh reality by her last vestiges of discipline instilled in her through Taekwondo, and bitterly continued on, but not before removing Ji-Soo's necklace and pocketing it in her laptop bag. She would have to tell Ji-Soo's family, and they needed something to remember her by. Mi-Kyeong had bought the necklace, and its twin, which she wore, as a gift of congratulations for their exchange. The corpse came back and began to eat her best friend.

With no warning, she sat up with a scream, and, seeing the expressions of the men around her, realized she had actually spoken all of her dialogue from that nightmare in her sleep.

OOC: Another continuity edit, owing to my send-off post.

Jackson ran at the sound of the woman's scream. He held her hand and tried to wake her up fully.

"Hey, hey, you ok? You must've been having quite the nightmare."

Seth Dancer jumped up as when he heard the yelling of the woman. He let out his own yell, until he saw what it was. He got up and walked over to her, kneeling in front of her.

"Jackson, if you need some rest, go ahead and get some. Tell Colton the same, I'm gonna take watch now."

He sat there patiently, waiting until the woman was ready to talk. He just said one thing.

"My name is Seth Dancer. It was my phone you contacted. Are you okay?"

Mi-Kyeong took a brief moment to compose herself before she responded. "Thanks for the assist. You saved my ass back there. I thought I was going to die."

"My name is Mi-Kyeong Park, and I have a backdoor into the old Soviet cameras, so, I saw your group. You only have three people? What do you hope to accomplish with three people against that flood of bodies out there that won't stay dead?"

"Well, Mi-Kyong, this wasn't quite our original plan. We had a job to do here, and now our liason is dead. We're cut off from the agency, stranded in Russia, and we have no idea how to get out. And I don't mean to sound like a jackass, but if you wanna keep that gun, you're making it four people." Dancer lit a cigarette and offered her one.

"The man you passed out on is Luke Jackson. I've known him since I was in the U.S. Army. The other man in the tuxedo is Colton. That's all we know. He's a good guy though." Seth started looking around her arms for any blood. "Do have any injuries? I can aid you if you need it."

He forgot about his wound on his shoulder. As he extended his arm, he twinged the muscle and grasped at it. He pretended like he had just popped his shoulder, but he was fairly certain blood was seeping through his clothes and that they were ripped. Oh well. Wasn't anything major.

Mi-Kyeong was somewhat relieved. She had half-expeted these men to judge her as helpless by her exhausted hysteria. It seemed that this wasn't the case. They didn't have a problem letting her stand on her own, and that was a good sign. She decided to let the apparent face for the group know just where her skills lie, however.

"I don't mean to sound like a-How do you put it? Slang was never my strong suit-donkey, either, but I need you to teach me how to handle that effectively. Civilians in South Korea are not allowed to own guns, let alone shoot them."

Their Korean pronunciation could use a bit of work, too, so, the least she could do was help out there. She was careful not to sound condescending. At least this man had tried to pronounce her name right, unlike the constant stream of foreign tourists she had found on vacation in Japan, mangling horribly their language.

"It's Mi-Kyeong. " She emphasized the vowel "yeo". In her experience, it was a common foreigner's problem. She didn't fault Dancer for it. Most non-Koreans could not readily tell the difference between the vowels "ya," "yeo," and "yo". She demonstrated the subtle inflection differences until she saw a gleam of comprehension in Dancer's eyes, and was delighted the man was such a quick study.

Maybe she could teach him the use of a tunneler, in case they had to run a team hack. Anyways, better that she preemptively smooth any potentially ruffled feathers now.

"Don't worry. I'm not offended, but if we're going to work together, you might as well know how to say my name."

"Oh, don't worry. Got all my anger out at names in Iraq. At least Korean is somewhat spelled how it sounds."

When she mentioned he needed to instruct her how to shoot, his eyes lit up. Now he could do that.

"Alright. Grip it firm, with your hand directly under this groove right here. If you don't hold it there, it'll kick like a damn mule right out of your hands. Alright. This switch on the slide is the safety. I'd recommend turning it on when you don't need the gun so you don't shoot yourself in the leg. The button by the trigger is the magazine release." He pushed it so she could see how to reload it. "Alright. Keep your eyes away from the gap in the slide here. It ejects the casing and some really hot gas. They will burn you."

That was his crash course. He slumped a zombie body against a wall to let her get some target practice. Never hurt to make sure it was dead anyways.