When he looked at her again finally something was different. She wasn’t just some creature, she was like a distant relative almost. He couldn’t destroy her. He had to protect her.

They had to protect each other.

Her head darted left and right as she sniffed the air. Danton could smell it too.

Burning wood.

There was a small pile of scrap metal behind her. She turned and pushed it away. Danton’s duffel bag was there.

Despite the situation he found himself smiling. He had enough in there to take on a small army.

“Hide,” he would’ve said to her, but she was already gone. Something told him to go with her, to defend her if needed.

Well the best way to defend was to offend. Danton thought so anyway.

He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and dug out a grenade launcher and an AK-47.

Danton could smell them. Burnt wood singed his nose as he strolled down the street. It didn’t take long. One of them came out from behind a two-story wall that was all that remained of a brick-faced building. It began throwing rocks at him. No, not rocks. Jagged chunks of concrete.

Danton dodged out of the way of one that came a little too close and spied movement to the other side of him behind some double-stacked road partitions.

He leveled off the rattler and squeezed the trigger. The partitions and everything behind them exploded into quarter-sized chunks.

The first Ziggy promptly dropped his rocks and hid behind his wall again. Danton brought it down on top of him. While the dust was still settling he walked over and put a bullet in the ziggy’s skull as he was crawling out.

Something roared ahead and Danton looked up to see three more heading his way. These were different. Still slow like Ziggy, but he could see purpose in how they moved. They had the same single-mindedness as Ziggy, but they actually thought as to how to achieve this goal.

Something Boyle said floated into Danton’s mind. He remembered the brain talking about how the virus had been constant in all the subjects he’d studied. How it had always behaved in the exact same manner up to and after death. He was convinced, even though he had no evidence, that the virus had to mutate at some point; all viruses did.

Maybe that’s what I’m looking at now, Danton thought as he peppered the three with his AK-47.

It was how any organism thrived in unsuitable conditions. Ziggy was always a danger, but over the past few years had become less and less prevalent.

Maybe something had happened to make it adapt and that’s where these guys had come from.

Danton couldn’t worry about that now. They were still coming at him and if the pack were big enough they might be trying to make him use up all his ammo. But why sacrifice themselves?

Danton had a guess. They were doing the same thing he was and it was instinctual: protecting their master. They were throwing themselves at the danger in order to protect the one that lead or created them. As soon as he’d sensed they were near he’d automatically done the same thing.

But they were zombies. He was still alive—wasn’t he?

His heart pounded in his chest and he could feel his blood surging inside him, but now that he saw the similarities between him and the dead people he was shooting at he couldn’t be sure.

Maybe the virus had adapted to mimic life.

Better leave this line of thought to the brains.

They seemed to be concentrated around a building on the corner ahead. Danton hoped they weren’t smart enough to be trying a bait-and-switch play. He launched a grenade into the crowd and they scattered.

He wasn’t sure how he would tell which one was the head ziggy, but he had a sense he’d know it when he saw it.

The building looked as though it had been shelled a few times, that it would topple like a house of cards with one good shove.

Danton loped inside, his AK leading the way. A ziggy at the top of the first flight of stairs leapt out of the way as he chased it with a trail of bullets. He was about to go up, but those stairs didn’t look right. Danton kicked at the first one and it crumbled like it was made of cardboard.

That meant that they were setting a trap.

Danton dived back out of the building as a center foundation gave. The whole thing groaned and fell into the building next to it. The ziggies nearest him became agitated, some throwing their heads back and howling, some clawing at the air, all of them converging on the remaining structure.

It groaned but stood. Danton whirled and squeezed the trigger on the grenade launcher, but it clicked on empty. He tossed it away and grabbed the AK, still slung over his shoulder. He didn’t have enough rounds in the magazine to take them all on and didn’t have enough time to reload, so he fled into the building, hoping to buy himself time and catch them in a pinch-point.

But if their master were in here, they might fight even more furiously to protect him.

He ran down the main hall and stopped at the stairs. There was no way to figure where the master would have gone, but he guessed it would have gone to high ground. Maybe the roof to see how the battle went.

Danton threw open the door and pounded up the stairs. Despite its load being significantly lightened by the absence of the grenade launcher, the duffel was still heavy. He couldn’t afford to give it up, though. Who knew if these things knew how to fire weapons?

The door pressed open behind him before it could shut and Danton turned and fired until the AK clicked on empty. He didn’t have time for headshots, but if these things had enough of an appreciation for bullets to dive out of the way when fired upon then this should buy him some time.

He tried to locate another magazine by hand while running up the stairs, but had to draw his sidearm and shoot a ziggy that opened a door at the top of the flight of stairs leading to the third floor. It fell and after he stepped over it he gave it a heave down the stairs.

They were drawing closer again when his hand closed around the 12 gauge in the duffel. Danton didn’t remember how many rounds he had, but he got down low and turned as one reached for him no more than three feet away. He squeezed the trigger and its head evaporated. The others pushed it aside and Danton racked the shotgun and fired center-mass into the next one.

It didn’t go lifeless like the first, but struggled against the blast, managing to knock two others down just behind it. He racked again and took another one’s head off before racking and turning back to the stairs.

He was almost to the fifth floor when he could feel them just behind him again. Danton turned and pumped three rounds into the surging crowd before dropping the empty shotgun.

The mob of ziggies had to climb over the litter of bodies in his wake and he fed the first two a few headshots apiece before his sidearm was empty.

He put it back in its holster out of habit, but brushed against something on his belt loop.

Aw shit, was that a grenade?

Danton pulled it free, squeezing it as if he didn’t believe it was real.

He had to use this right. They were too close.

Danton reached into his duffel and felt a trigger of something in there. He yanked it out and stared at a pissy little .22

“The hell?”

Danton had no clue how that got in there. He hated .22s. He would have to make due with it.

He pulled the pin on the grenade, spun around at the top of the stairs and began pumping itty-bitty bullets into the lower legs and knees of the ziggies nearest him. They fell but tried to keep coming. He underhanded the grenade to the bottom of the flight of stairs, hoping that in the crush of bodies they wouldn’t be able to grab it and toss it back if they understood what had just come their way.

Danton counted three! And threw himself on the next flight of stairs, clapping his hands over his ears. A moment later there was an ear-shattering THOOMand the walls shook. He prayed he hadn’t just brought down the whole building with him still in it, but that meant there was even less time to waste. Danton didn’t plan on being inside when the thing came down.