Confusion

A wide, blue sky that was trapped and limited by the looming obelisks of stone and iron and glass.

Ash and flakes of gray floated down towards him in a haphazard array, covering the blue sky with a sign of an event that he was unable to fully recognize.

There was a consistent, invasive ringing in his ears, and aside from that, there seemed to be a profound lack and muffling of sound.

David felt like he was out of and yet within his body, in a strange halfway point that rendered him unable to move. When he attempted to do so, he felt weak, as if the part of him that used to allow him to move with efficiency had been disconnected from his control.

'Up,' he thought, the after effects of the explosion lodging its way into his thought process, slowing it down phenomenally. 'I need to... you... you need to... up... get up...'

In this great haze of confusion and general inability to move well, there was a warning siren blaring in his mind, as if warning him of something to come. He tried to connect why this feeling of unease had come over him—to figure out exactly what was so dangerous about the situation he was in aside from his slowness.

Then, all at once the sound rushed back to him in a great swell.

The growls and screams of zombies and colleagues both new and slightly familiar greeted his stuttering mind and staggering body; his eyes that had focused for so long and so hard on the sky was brought back to the ground, with the rubble and the ash that surrounded him.

A nightmare was occurring before his eyes.

Carnage seemed to spread out on all sides around him. There were zombies—lean, toughened fleshy hosts that had become brutal machines that the virus steered, ones that grabbed, and bit, and scratched, and snarled at the humans who remained on the defensive.

The said humans were more numerous than he had expected, and in his half-conquered delirium, he saw the figure of Louis slamming zombies out of his way with a black spear, yelling over the madness and into his walkie-talkie for what he bet was for reinforcement.

He suddenly recalled, as adrenaline rushed through his veins to ready his body for better combat, that two platoons of workers had been sent to the clear the lower section of Quadrant 4. That would account for the fact that back up arrived faster than he would have expected.

He also remembered how he had been pissed off over how he had been assigned to the cleaning platoon, while the other half—which was being led by some bigshot—was off acting as a defensive unit and 'clearing' zombies that were attracted to the noise the clean up could make, or were just wandering around.

He still wished he was with that platoon—he would have been unaffected by the explosion at least physically if he had been with them.

David was forced out of his thoughts when he realized a zombie had noticed his body—which had been thrown into some rubble that he was slowly crawling out of.

He staggered up as the zombie began its approach, screaming bloody murder while fumbled for a weapon, grabbing a piece of rubble and chucking it towards its head. The rock smashed into the zombies head, throwing its neck back with a crack, but merely slowing and not stopping its advance.

David cursed and grabbed another rock to throw, only for someone who he recognized as Andre to slam into the zombie, a black spear in hand that he drove through its head like a pike.

"What are you doing?! Get out your spear, you numskull!" shouted Andre before he kicked the zombies now limp corpse off his spear shaft.

"Where is it?!" yelled back David as he chucked the rubble at another zombie, clocking it over the head again; for a man who had just got up from the after effects of an explosion, he had surprisingly sound aim.

"The broom! It's the broom, you idiot, where's your broom?!" Andre said, grey eyes wide and maddened as he halted another zombie by shoving the shaft of his spear into its mouth.

Grunting with effort as it tried scratching at him, he kicked it back before whacking it over the head with the butt of his spear, ending the confrontation when he finally drove the sharpened part through its neck, shattering the connection between the spinal cord and brain.

David cursed colorfully as he rummaged through the wreckage of the building which seemed as if it would collapse at any moment, unearthing his broom before removing its head—which he figured was detachable—before wielding it like a baseball bat, smashing in the zombies heads with the end of the spear.

"What are you doing?!" Andre shouted over his shoulder incredulously while he grappled with a zombie, avoiding its teeth, "Wield it like a spear, not a bat, you moron! You're gonna get bit if you don't use its range!"

"Shut up!" David hollered back, adjusting back into the stance he had been taught from the CC training officers before clumsily holding them off; he was used to using a bat on the frontlines, not a spear!

Even so, his adrenaline was roaring and his combat experience was guiding him, so he managed to hold off the zombies for a decent while in spite of his lack of proper familiarity with the weapon on hand. He regretted not taking the classes too seriously—if he had bothered learning how to use the spear, it would have made holding them at bay expend far less energy.

Already he was panting and dripping with sweat, the overexertion caused by his harsh and unpracticed moves that were only vaguely known by his body wreaking havoc on his speed and strength.

It only got worse for him when a headache formed, and feelings of dizziness and nausea as the adrenaline high he had been coasting off of slowly fizzled down overcame him, making him realize the full after effects of the explosion.

He paused for a moment, desperate to catch his breath and regain his cool, but instead he had to ward off another zombie, his movements sluggish and his mind becoming overwhelmed.

Why were there so many of them?

Had a hoard been close by when the explosion went off?

How many had been in the area?

How many more were coming?

Would he make it out of this alive?

There seemed to be an endless supply of zombies closing in on the cleaners, and even with two platoons, that was only 40 or so people max—sleep deprived, worn out people who had been cleaning up rubble and moving corpses since the early morning; it was around noon by now, judging by the shadows on the ground.

David's footing slipped over a puddle of blood and rubble he had stepped on, and he went to his knees, desperate to keep the zombie's teeth from biting into him. Even with the shaft of his spear lodged in its mouth, it continued to bear down on him, scratching at the thick material of his uniform before aiming for his head.

A familiar black spear staked through the zombies head, but not before one of the zombie's fingers managed to scratch David's face, wounding his left eye. David nearly started screaming, but he held in the pain as he scrounged for his cleaning cloth that hung at his belt to stave the bleeding.

"Hold on!" Andre said, anxious at the cut that was most likely infected before kicking the zombie corpse away and pulling out his bottle of cleaning solution; the solution was developed by the science officers at the CC to insure that any zombie infected items—from things like saliva, blood, or even scratches in this case—could be dealt with.

It was able to stave off the infection, but it was unable to complete cure the affected area; they used it to clean off the virus on materials, not cure wounds, like how a 99.999% percent cleanser removes most germs, but not all.

'Still,' Andre thought before spraying the mixture, eliciting a groan from David this time, '1% infected is better than 100% percent infected.'

A lull had begun to settle over the battle while the two of them had stopped for a moment, and the pause allowed them to both catch their breath, David especially. He was pressing the cloth to his eye tightly, his head down casted from pain and exhaustion.

"Looks like," Andre huffed, regaining his calm. "Looks like it's over."

"Huh?" David wheezed, squinting as he looked up to see what was going on.

"What do you..." he trailed off as his uninjured eye widened with shock at the sight before him.

There, standing a top a mound of headless zombies that had somehow been cleared in the midst of the chaos, stood a lean figure who sliced off the final head of the last standing zombie.

The figure smoothly sliced his blade through the air, the blood and guts that coated it sliding off of it before he used his cloth to wipe it down once, twice, thrice, finally sheathing it.

The person then slid down the pile, landing on the ground and immediately going to Louis. It was there, next to Louis, that David realized the mysterious person was a kid—a teenager at most judging by his height and now more distinctive youthful features.

"What the... a kid? Who the hell is that?!"

Andre looked at David funny, as if asking him if he really was unaware of who the 'kid' was.

"You seriously don't know who the Vice-Commander is?"

David turned to stare at Andre blankly, his expression informing him of his disbelief more effectively than any words he could have spoken, before turning back to face the kid who was apparently the "Vice-Commander" of the CC.

"Vice-Commander?" he echoed dumbly, his brain short-circuiting at the thought.

"Yeah, though calling him one of our leading SROs, our Senior Ranking Officers, would probably describe him better."

"Senior Ranking...?"

David trailed off as the kid turned, spotting Andre before smoothly approaching him, a serious expression on his face given his forceful stride. Slowly, his features came into focus for David who blinked the sweat out his eyes before he could note them.

He looked even younger than he had assumed, 15, 16 at most with the baby fat still within his cheeks, but his expression was serious. The kid's dark brown eyes with an odd undertone of silver flickered to David—making him realize he was of at least Asian descent, though he did not know which of—before returning to Andre.

"I'm surprised you're still alive, considering you were pretty close to Philip from what I hear."

That was the first and last thing David heard from the kid, as the world around him turned black, and he seemed to hear no more.