When life was “normal,” just over two weeks ago, the woman that lunged from the shadows would have been found to be extremely attractive. But her emotionless gaze, curled back lips snarling in hunger, and with her taut drawn skin immediately dissipated any beauty or serenity that her face had ever known. Her exposed flesh had an unnatural sheen that almost hid the light green grey of her flesh. What appeared at first glance to be mascara running down her cheeks was actually congealed blood that tricked in to her mouth.

Her hands lashed out like claws that sank in to Simon’s shoulders with the strength of heat maddened bulldog, half pulling and half pushing him to the ground. His scream was just audible above the roar of the massive gun that protected them as teeth bit down in to his shoulder, cutting through flesh like knives to gnaw at his collarbone. Jaira turned, and looked in to his eyes; wild and wide as the creature pulled up, tearing flesh as Simon screamed two words, “Shoot me!” She hesitated for a moment, as Simon repeated himself, partly ordering but mostly begging. Flesh tore and blood splattered on the asphalt as a wail of agony split the downed man’s lips. Her finger tightened on the trigger, one burst for Simon, the second scalping his killer.

“Jaira!” The shout snapped her out of a daze and she flung herself in to the vehicle. The passenger door had yet to close when Natalie floored the accelerator and they streaked down the street. In the turret, Denniken brought the reloaded .50 Caliber to bear and delivering a parting barrage to the horde. They turned a corner and sped towards Burnside Bridge and the Willamette River, drawing the undead mob away from Sparta's general direction. They would draw them across the river before shaking them off and returning home. A minute from home the radio squawked, “Broken Arrow! This is Salvage Two to any receiving unit! Broken arrow! Request immediate reinforcements at Highland Park, QFC Grocery Store! Need immediate support!” The shout were laced with fear and half drowned out by the heavy roar of at least two roof mounted weapons and a half dozen other weapons on full automatic fire. They weren’t fighting, they were spraying and praying.

Snatching the radio from its cradle Cameron fumbled with it for moment before acknowledging the request, “This is…” Natalie hissed the answer even as she put the vehicle through a tight hundred and eighty degree turn, “Salvage Three,” he paused as they ran down another pair of straggling zombies standing in the center of the street, “Responding to Broken Arrow,” Acceleration pushed Cameron back in his seat as Natalie somehow pulled both additional speed and power from the already taxed engine, “Three minutes!”

“Sparta to Salvage Two: Rescue dispatched! Hold the line we’re on our way. Where we are needed we are there!” was the gruff voice of the radio man.

Jaira looked at him as if he was slightly crazy, and said as much. He shrugged his shoulders, “Whatever…” and took the pair of proffered Glocks that had been borrowed a little earlier. He snapped in fresh clips and topped off the half empty ones. Jaira cleared the jam in the breach of the MP-5 and slapped a fresh clip home and cocked the weapon before pulling a Remington 1100 shotgun and box of 12 gauge shells. A belt of fifty caliber rounds fell in to the vehicle as Denniken cursed, obviously having difficulty reloading the weapon as Natalie took corners at a suicidal ninety kilometers an hour. She slammed on the brakes and they were tossed around roughly as they came upon the scene of a massacre.

Two humvees were in the middle of an ocean of zombies, the barrels of both fifty calibers still smoking. The dead closest the vehicles were kneeling, almost prone around the bodies of the recently killed. The sound of tearing flesh rending the air as the air took on a sickening copper tinge. One of the guardsmen was draped across the hood of one humvee, his neck and throat having been ripped open, arms and legs covered in dozens of bites. They had dragged him through the windscreen and devoured him, corpse twitching as they continued to tear at him like dogs fighting over a bone. It would only be a matter of minutes before he rose to his feet as one of them. Keying the radio, Natalie brought it to her lips, “Sparta Command – Salvage Three. Abort rescue. Repeat: Abort rescue. No survivors.”

Sparta acknowledged the radio call as Natalie looked up and over her shoulder at Denniken, who was trained upon the masses of undead now meandering in circles without purpose to direct them. She gestured to him, a clenched fist which she then spread apart and he nodded his understanding as he reached in to a pouch at his waist and extracted a pair of M2 fragmentation grenades. The pins were pulled and lobbed in the heart of the carnage, followed seconds later by another pair. They grenades detonating, destroying both vehicles as the circling dead were thrown off their feet, the carcasses of the vehicles reduced to shrapnel grenades.

Slamming her foot on the clutch, she threw the gear stick in to reverse and floored the accelerator, as they reversed away from the confused mob of undead, as she stamped on the brakes, throwing the vehicle in a hard 180 degree turn before a quick shift in gears had them streaking down the road towards Morrison Bridge.

The mood of those who had survived this first salvage mission was somber. The sun shone brightly in the mid morning sky but it warmed nothing, a chill having settled over the four survivors of an expedition gone hopelessly wrong. Eleven men and women had died, and they had died for a cache of firearms and ammunition – a truly unfair death. Natalie cued the radio, “Sparta Command - Salvage Three: Request status of Salvage Four,”

“Salvage Four, has not checked in the past hour,” came the same gruff disembodied voice, “Come home Salvage Three… that’s an order.”

The desperate price of their success was higher than any of the four thought that they could bear when a bear like grunt reached them and Denniken collapsed in to the vehicle. He was smoking, shrapnel having ripped in to his flesh, hissing slightly as blood hit the still cooling metal, “He’s hit! Shrapnel wound to the shoulder and upper arm!” Jaira’s hands immediately clamped down on the worst of the bleeding wounds, applying direct pressure to minimize the bleeding.

Natalie floored the accelerator and Cameron snatched the radios, microphone from the vehicle’s dashboard to relay the worrying news, “Sparta! Be advised we have wounded aboard! Prepare medical to receive one major with multiple shrapnel injuries.”

As they made their way through the ruined city, a straight line towards the south gate of Sparta, Denniken was somehow preventing himself from screaming, as they had no choice but to leave the metal shards in his arm, none of them certain what they should attempt to do.” The gates opened and Cameron drove in, before he turned and backed them up towards the waiting gurney and medical team.

The rear hatch of the humvee flew open as they rolled up. Denniken still conscious, and felt every touch, twist and jerk as he was lifted out and unceremoniously piled on to the gurney. Natalie maintained a firm grip on Denniken’s left hand to comfort, and support him and also keep his free, functional hand away from the cooling metal embedded in his arm.

The Spartan medical bay is a misnomer, at best. They had medications and the tools of the trade but no actual doctors or physicians to call upon. Without hesitation, the wheeled him under the rigged up angled floor lamps, casting pools of pearly light on to him and his wounds. The blood flow had slowed to a trickle, but it still continued to soak in to his fatigues and then drip on to the floor.

Their resident medic hesitated for a moment, before reaching for the scissors and cutting through the seams of the vest and fatigues to reveal the extent of the carnage: Shrapnel had also carved a series of shallow cuts along his ribs and down towards his hip. With the full extent of his wounds visible, her hand began to shake, with nerves that got more than a little concern out of Natalie as she leaned in and asked the obvious question, “Do you have any idea what you’re supposed to be doing?”

She looked up, and with a start, Natalie realized she was staring at a young twenty something with fiery red hair who possessed a Russian accent. Blood dripped down the tarp on the table to the floor, “Some,” as she conducted a quick trauma workup of her first patient in what was essentially her one woman hospital, “I’m just a med student with an ER rotation and Trauma sub internship.” She unscrewed the cap on a bottle one handed and gestured to Natalie and Cameron, “Hold him down. This will hurt.”

The alcohol disinfected everything it touched but the caustic liquid also had Denniken shrieking like a banshee from the pain. His screech continued as if he no longer had to breathe. Cameron and Natalie struggled to hold him down as he trashed like a marionette in the hands of a mad puppeteer, “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing! You should have knocked him out,” Denniken managed to free an arm that lashed out like whip for a moment, before Cameron latched back on, “Or given him something for the pain!”

“We don’t have much in the way of painkillers, and the morphine I do have, I’d rather save for when it’s really needed!” she shot back.

The word morphine seemed to snap Denniken to his senses for a few moments, and it grabbed Natalie’s attention as well, for all the wrong reasons, as he gasped through the pain, “No morphine! No morphine! Allergic!” he gasped through the pain.

Cameron looked at their doctor who wavered uncertainly, “Well do you have anything? And don’t you dare suggest some cheap over the counter crap!” That statement brought everything to a standstill, and Cameron groaned inwardly, “There is nothing else is there?”

She shrugged. Denniken had settled in to the comfort of delirium mumbling about a priest a roll of the dice and a quick, fast acting healing spell. Natalie looked around the converted shop, and then remembered the layout of the building and the liquor store just across the corridor. She bent and whispered something to Denniken, who grimaced as a fresh wave of pain lashed through his already flayed nerves as Natalie bolted from the room.

She returned moments later with several bottles of liquor, to which Cameron could only stare, “What the hell?” the confusion spread to the others in the room as she placed the bottles on a side table and opened them, mixing a suicide cocktail of vodka, whiskey, and tequila. Denniken downed its contents and did the same with the refill and in minutes, he wore a large, almost happy grin before his head fell back and struck the table, unconscious from the alcohol merrily coursing through his bloodstream, a highly unorthodox but effective anesthetic.

Cameron looked over at her and jerked his head, a clear message that she should get on with whatever needed to be done. To her credit, NAstia did just that, incising the skin and muscle above and below the wound caused by the shrapnel to lay open the arm. Mercifully, he was unconscious as Natalie used cotton and a clean shirt to staunch the flowing river of blood as the metal chunk shaped like a boot was extracted. Satisfied that the largest problem had been resolved, their doctor carefully closed up the layers of muscles and skin before stitching it closed. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and their young doctor blew a bead of sweat off her nose, removed the blood stained gloves that she tossed in to a bucket filed with a concentrated bleach solution for the precise purpose of disinfecting used gloves and other formerly considered disposable medical supplies.

With the worst of it behind them, the rest was relatively standard as they removed the smaller fragments and stitched up the much smaller wounds. Denniken remained blissfully unaware, until they had done everything that they could do for him, as she answered the unasked question, “He’s going to be just fine.” The reply was soft spoken, quiet and accented. The Russian accent was one he had some familiarity from university.

Cameron nodded, “The important thing is that he’ll make it,” he turned away and pushed out through the doors of the converted store. He hesitated for only a split second before turning and looking over his shoulder, “I was a little… ok, a lot out of line…Thanks Doc.”