Sam was tired.

The day was getting on into the evening and he had walked for distance. Occasionally he would dodge a horde of undead. But the little road he had been following, well the old dirt track that he called a road, wound its way through the wooded foothills of northwestern Georgia.

He hadn't seen a house for some time. Not even a paved county road. Sam was beginning to wander if he hadn't wondered off into nowhere when he heard the shots. They were distant. Checking the sun in the sky he turned to the face the sound and realized the sound was coming from the southwest.

The weapon reports were muted, as if fired from some distance, maybe a mile or more. But there were plenty of shots. He could make out the distinct sounds out multiple automatic weapons. Someone was knee deep in one hell of a fight.

His boots shuffling along the ground and his hand sweaty, gripped around the metal briefcase handle, his head shot up when he heard gunfire. Still unaware to the extent and effects of this contagion, he assumed the gunfire may be from a nearby military training operation. He had been walking for hours and the thought of finally finding people filled him with excitement. “I need to explain that my squad was ambushed by some strange marauders so that they can send a recovery team back that way” he thought to himself. “I can handball this off to them as well” he glanced down at the dinted briefcase. “Not my problem”.

Sam heard the crack of breaking wood.

Looking to his left he saw a dark shape stumbling through the trees. Then another. And another. Then the wind washed over him carrying the unmistakable smell of decay. It was the undead, he knew, and it occurred to that they were being drawn to the sounds of gunfire.

Suddenly the hollow boom of an explosion startled him.

That would draw undead for miles. Looking back he could make out dozens of the undead now.

A distant explosion rocked the ground below Sam’s feet. “That doesn’t sound right” he thought. Birds erupted from the trees, squawking and flapping in a flurry of confusion. In the commotion, Sam almost didn’t notice the silhouette staggering through the tree-line in the corner of his eye. However, he couldn’t possibly mistake the heavy stench of death that followed on the breeze only a moment later. His face coiled in disgust as he turned in the direction of the wind. A dozen more figures were following the first through the trees and some more appeared  further down the road. The gnawing thought that had been at the back of his mind since the ambush had finally garnered more attention and he realised that these weren’t normal people. Surrounded, but evidently not  noticed just yet, Sam backed into the other tree-line just enough to be camouflaged to a degree, but not enough to lose track of the road. He continues to follow the path for lack of a better choice, keeping a cautious eye on his new friends.

Sam was getting a little concerned. There was another explosion. Louder than the first. More undead were coming from the woods. Many were actually in his path ahead of him. Several had spotted him and were following with clacking teeth and hunger.

Sam’s hopes of finding a military base were swiftly diminished upon the unsettling boom of a second explosion; It was definitely out of place in his vision of a training exercise. “Woah, that doesn’t sound right” he muttered under his breath. After a brief pause, he noticed the stumbling and somewhat entranced beings around him fill with a new sense of motivation. More were appearing out of the foliage, staggering towards the explosion. Having stopped for a moment in shock of the sudden boom, Sam noticed that he was no longer invisible, with some of the figures behind him averting their attention towards him. He sped up and reached up across his chest drawing his pistol from its holster. He was on high alert now; he needed a way out and to keep ahead of the animalistic barbarians behind him as not to end up like his squadmates.

Sam came to sliding stop on the dirt road. There were so many undead now. They drifting through the woods heading towards the sounds of the gunfire and explosions and moving across his path. There just wasn't anything he could do other than head toward the sounds through the woods himself to stay ahead of them or the fight his way down the dirt road.

“What the!? What’s even going on here!?” Sam re-holstered the M1911. Feeling the awkwardness akin to accidentally merging into a funeral procession, Sam figured that perhaps he has got caught up in some re-enactment tradition or something. He didn’t know. He WAS in a different country and as far as he knew Americans did have some re-enactment traditions. Though this was on a different level. “I don’t really have a choice here” he muttered to himself. “I’m just gonna have to follow the flow until I can see a gap anywhere”. He tried to keep his presence to a minimal as not to evoke any more disrespect to whatever was going on.

Sam kept a careful eye out behind him as he made his way through the woods trying to avoid the undead. He had gone about two hundred yards when he was startled to hear someone calling to him.

"Hey, dumbass, go away." A man called to him in what amounted to a 'quiet' shout. "Bear it before you bring them walking corpses here."

Sam looked about for a moment then saw it; a hunting blind made from cut-down trees and sitting several feet up off the ground. A man in commercial camouflage clothing was staring him down from behind the sights of a long barreled shotgun. It vaguely registered with Sam that the man was holding a fowling gun.

"Those damned dead are following you right at me and mine." The man said over the shotgun. "Am-scray before I fill you full of lead."

“Corpses? Dead?” Sam was confused, but a view right down the duel muzzles of a shotgun didn’t allow much more thought. He was more confused about this crazed man in a tree pointing a rifle at a clearly distinguishable UN serviceman. However, he’d helped at nursing homes enough during high school community service to know not to press and so he, startled, but politely, nodded at the man with exposed and open hands before continuing on leftward from his original course.

There was a rustle that dew Sam's attention to his left before he could resume his course. A man, probably about thirty or so with part of arm and face missing in a particularly gory fashion, came stumbling out of the shadows of the trees reaching for Sam with its other arm extended. Foul stench rolled off it like so many waves of nausea inducing revulsion. Sam halted in his tracks.

"You damned idiot." The man with the shotgun shouted. "You led right to us."

With that he shifted his aim from Sam and blew the undead man's head apart with a blast of shot. Sam was raising the Enfield to his shoulder without thinking about it as several more undead began closing on him. The man in hunting blind kept going, cycling another round in his pump and firing. In moments the three undead suffered the same fate of the one armed man; their heads burst apart under a blast of shot.

"God damn you!" The man screeched, enraged, and he turned the shotgun on Sam and squeezed the trigger.

There was a quiet click. The shotgun was out of ammunition. Sam's heart raced, his imagination made the click as loud as a gunshot in his mind. His brain screamed at his feet 'rub!' as the man began digging shotgun shells out of his pocket.

Sams boots made heavy, rhythmic thuds as he barreled through the forest; small branches and leaves whipping his face as he ran. “H-he just killed a man!” Sam was in full flight mode, putting as much distance as he could between him and the maniacal ‘murderer’. “Several actually”. Sam noticed he was holding his SMLE and he held it out in front, sideways, shielding himself from the scratching branches as he ran. Sam had seen his fair share of injuries, but the ones on that first man were like nothing he’d ever witnessed; the flesh was torn and mangled. “Were they cannibals?” He thought to himself. Had he just stumbled into a forest of canniblistic tribes? All he knew was that he needed to get out of the forest.

There was a series of whizzes and thumps. Tree limbs to his right seemed to explode. There were several muffled booms behind him.

That man was shooting at him!

Same pushed on. Soon he broke into a clearing along a paved road. there where a couple of house along the other side of the road. Up ahead he could see the steeple of a church. Without warning a four-wheeler ATV came swerving past, a young woman in camouflage driving recklessly, and it occurred to Sam that was in the general direction of the gunfire and explosionshe had heard minutes ago.

Sam jumped backwards to avoid the surprise vehicle and landed on his arse by the side of the road, his rifle and the briefcase clattering to  the ground beside him. He didn’t notice it’s teen driver or the dated .30 Browning machine gun hanging on the cargo rack as he threw his arm across his face, burrying his face in his elbow to avoid flung pebbles and dust.

Looking back the way the ATV had come from Sam was surprised to see three things; rows of bodies of people that appeared to have been killed while waiting for something, a woman standing next to what looked like a motorized bicycle, and a man standing further down the hill holding something that made him think of a flamethrower. The day, having started off with tragedy and confusion, was now seemingly being hijacked by violence and surreal circumstances. To make things worse, there was a restaurant that was fully involved with flames down the hill behind the man.

The scene was like something out of an apocalypse movie. Sam sat there in stunned silence staring at the neat rows of bodies. Was this the military’s doing? This looked like a quarantine out of control; the sort he was here to prevent. Among the bodies was a woman and her motorcycle. She was still watching the ATV disappeare somewhere behind him. Was she a cannibal? Further down the road, another man. Sam sat for a moment and assessed the situation. Only moments earlier he probably would have walked right up to one of them and asked for directions, but now he wasn’t so sure.