The days following the Safeway debacle should have been quiet and peaceful but what peace there had been was about to be shattered. Cameron had been spending a lot of time in his apartment putting the finishing touches on a pet project that had consumed a fair amount of whatever free time he had.

Steven had for the past week, been sentenced to nightshifts of guard duty, under the watchful eye of the other on duty guards who took a delight in making his shifts as uncomfortable and taxing as possible. Generally, one had a single overnight shift every week whether it was on guard duty or in the radio room. Steven however, was on his seventh consecutive night shift thus far, with another twenty five shifts awaiting him. The crime had been gross negligence regarding both the vehicle and the radio room with the cost his ineptitude standing at three injured and one destroyed humvee.

Cameron had demanded that Steven be punished, and Natalie had demanded that Steven be thrown out to the undead. Jaira had argued for punishment and she’d managed to bring both of her comrades round on the point that the banishment of anyone - even Steven - would set an ugly precedent. Steven had refused to accept that he had failed in any of his assigned duties and responsibilities but had listened to his own self preservation instincts accepting the punishment.

He yawned and then wrinkled his nose in disgust at the smell that wafted towards him upon a gentle breeze, as he turned to the closest man standing upon the wall with him, “Excuse me, but what is that disgusting emanation?”

“Just shut your hole and keep your eyes on that road. After your last screw up…” somebody shushed the speaker, pulling him farther down the wall. Steven had stood his ground, but then his courage was fortified due to the presence of the shotgun in his hands

Beyond the sight lines of anyone atop the wall cold and rancid decaying corpses that had once been scattered throughout the city had converged. The kilometer long undead serpent moved forward with relentless endurance, deadly intent and an unsteady gait. Each creature within the serpentine horde had once been an individual life with hopes, dreams and reasons to exist. Now they were an emotionless husk of tattered clothing encasing greasy flesh of withered muscle and brittle bone. They had been stripped of their individuality, and along with it, their humanity as they continued onwards, driven by chaotic thoughts of unknown origin.

Steven panned the light farther out and shadows jumped away in fear, punching through nearly fifty feet of darkness. A gentle breeze stirred and carried with it the same damning stench from before. As a human survivor, one got used to that smell as it was the scent of the undead that left their taint on any place they visited.

It was a sudden thump, a heavy foot landing upon a step behind him that caused Steven to jump like a scalded cat twisting around and overbalancing. His hand slid along the edge of the wall looking for something to help him regain his balance, but the wall proved to be of the less than supporting variety as he landed on his prosperous posterior. He found himself staring up at Brennan’s outstretched hand, which he took. Brennan had continued to treat him with politeness and civility, even if it was of the “white kid gloves” variety. Steven knew better than to comment on it, as the majority treated him as if he was one of the diseased living outside the walls. Brennan hoisted Steven back to his feet, scanning out across the gloom in the no man’s land beyond the walls, “How's it going?”

“It’s been quiet, like it has been quiet for the past five nights.” Steven replied cordially as the same foul smell wafted along, borne on the wind to catch Brennan full in the face as Steven wrinkled his nose in disgust again. Brennan scratched his chin, irritated that the stubble upon his face was beginning to grow out in to a full beard. The sad fact of life was that he could only shave once a week with the shortage of razor blades and shaving cream, and he was not yet desperate enough to start shaving with a combat knife unlike some.

“What do you make of that smell?” he asked. The smell had Brennan concerned because it was the same kind of smell from the beginning, when the undead had begun their global takeover just after the walls of Sparta were raised. The undead had beaten themselves against those very walls until they had massacred and burned dozens of bodies in mass funeral pyres that had stained the sky with inky black smoke and the smell of burning flesh and fat for days if not even weeks afterwards. Brennan gesticulated, searching for the right phrasing as Steven panned the searchlight out in to the darkness again, “It’s that smell that only the walking dead possess... like that smell just after we raised the walls and finished the gates and we had a few of the banging on the wall every morning and during the night.

Steven shook his head, the spotlight stopped in the middle of the wreckage strewn street, “I still dream, on occasion, about those men, women and children. Their moans and groans, the sounds they made. They way they pounded their fists against these walls until they bled and their bones shattered… and then how they continued pounding on the wall, their only care and concern being getting to us.”

Brennan was about to reply when something flared brightly in the darkness of the night sky, something that made Brennan hand snap to the radio on his hip, “Warning Flare! Sound internal alarm!”

The flares lit up the sky a hundred meters away, throwing pools of light that cast half shadows across the ominously silent cityscape. The light streamed down and in the distance, something was wrong. Both men scrambled for the one set of binoculars. Steven was fractionally quicker and could only stare in shock as his took a deep breath, “Those undead you mentioned….” Stevens’ hands shook as he lowered the field glasses from his eyes. A look of fear was etched across his features as he struggled to keep his voice even and level, without wetting his pants at the same time, “There are hundreds of them out there, coming this way.”

Inside the towering building behind them, the man on duty in the radio room acted. The system had been built and now came the acid test of reality. His hand reached out and turned a dial to its first setting, the farthest on its left labeled “Internal” before lifting the plastic cover off the top of a large red switch that had been built in to the console and slammed the button. Throughout the corridors of the shopping mall and the adjacent parking garage Christmas lights began to flicker and flash to a machine gun beat, as those on duty moved outwards towards their walls.

It was assumed that the undead would scatter and fan out, something akin to the inkblot effect. Given enough time, ink spilt on blotting paper would spread out across the paper until it had soaked the page evenly. The undead, having nothing to drive them beyond the sounds of life, should have followed the same pattern. Instead they had come together in a horde so large that any sound made by one member of the horde was echoed by others creating a sustaining organism. The prospect of Sparta actually coming under siege had once been discussed and determined to be a less than realistic possibility.

They were wrong.

Cameron was sitting in what passed for the recreation center, smoking, or rather just holding his third lit cigarette of the night when the alarms went off. He looked over the other players, but nobody left the card table. They were all off duty and the cards were dealt, the decision unspoken and unanimous that they would finish the hand.

Cameron returned his concentration to his hole cards where he had a pair of sixes. Considering that that a third six had been dealt in the initial flop and the river had given him yet another six, he had little to worry about. His betting was a sharp contrast to the strength of his cards as he strung the other players along.

In terms of competition, he wasn’t too worried as Natalie had been losing since the first hand of the night had been dealt but the fact that she was still in was a miracle in itself. The Russia medical student, who was arguably Sparta’s best doctor, had folded during the previous round, cursing the weakness of her cards. Cameron was pretty sure that Jaira was his only source of competition, as she was betting as if she had nothing to lose. But then she had the king and seven of diamonds showing with no pair up. Cameron was morally certain however that Natalie had the worst hand out of everyone, even with a pair of tens showing and it was upon her to make the first bet, “Check.”

Jaira smirked and threw in a half dozen pieces of chocolate and an equal number of cigarettes in to the small mountain in the center of the table. Cameron matched Jaira’s smirk and threw in a dozen cigarettes, before following it up with another dozen pieces of chocolate, “See you and raise.”

“Damn! I’m out,” growled Natalie as she threw her cards face down on to the table and sat back. Cameron retaliated, raising the pot by a further seven pieces of chocolate and five cigarettes.

Not hesitating either, she matched his raise and went all in. That put another packet of cigarettes and half dozen chocolates in to the pool. Now Cameron hesitated. There was better than a box of chocolates and almost two packs of cigarettes in the pool, in addition to what was there before the betting had gone high stakes. Whoever won this hand would be the big winner of the game and the night. Finally, he met her and it came down to the wire, revealing her hole card to reveal a full house of sevens over kings.

Cameron grinned as he flipped over his own hole cards and matched it with the two sixes already showing, “Four of a kind beat a full house any day!” He returned the cigarettes to their packet, tucking one behind his ear as he was doing so. The chocolates on the other hand, he pocketed a few pieces before pushing them back in to the middle, unwilling to indulge his sweet tooth too much. The others were scrabbling for the chocolates when the silent alarm suddenly turned audible, the converted fire alarm system’s ringing drowning out all other noise as it shocked people out of their sleep as it rang in short controlled bursts.

Controlled chaos gripped the inhabitants of Sparta, those former members of the National Guard quicker on the ball as those of a more civilian background moving slower but still moving as they should. Amazingly enough, the Portland City power grid had survived the fall of mankind and it powered much of Sparta’s needs. Light snapped on throughout the complex, driving away the darkness and shadows that had blanketed the corridors. Floodlights spread dazzling light on to the inner streets, making it easy for people to move around as the Spartans prepared themselves as they had done during their semi regular drills, and it took only minutes before a full complement manned the walls of Sparta, rifles ready to face the oncoming horde. But the truth of it was that all they had were plans and no plan ever survives contact with reality: The undead were far too numerous and only a few hundred meters away.

Cameron turned and made his way back to his room, stopping long enough to grab the shotgun and the belts of shotgun shells and the spare clips for his every present quartet. He would have preferred something with a little more ammo capacity but like everyone else he made do with what he could get.

Beyond the walls, whatever it was that had caused all of this to happen, perhaps a disease, had dealt its victims unimaginable cruelty. All who had been infected had eventually died, with only the fortunate minority remaining motionless and inert to simply rot away where they had fallen. The majority however, had been sentenced to an unnaturally extended existence composed of relentless suffering. The brain of the deceased humans had been given a spark of primordial instinct that left the body physically dead but still compelled to be incessantly animated. The flesh that covered these stumbling, lurching creatures had rotted and decayed to varying degrees but most had a thin layer of flint like flesh covering near hollow, brittle bones. They don’t know what or where they are. They don’t know why they exist or want. They have no need for food, drink, shelter or sleep, all sentenced to spend every minute, shuffling forward, following sounds or movement that attracted their limited but deadly attention, their only hopes being time and decay that would end the torment… if such release would ever come.