GJ! Keep up the good work.

NICE JOB MAN! STORY ROCKS!

"I left her in the house," Tom said finally, after they'd been sitting together a while, watching the news warn again and again of a disease that was sweeping the nation. "She's one of them."

"You left her there? How he started, but decided against asking his friend to relive the experience. Maybe there's a cure, he added carefully.

"Maybe." Toms face was without emotion.

At a moment like this Nick would have hoped to be able to depend on Tom for strength, rather than see him so devastated, but this was not the case. Instead he looked to the TV again. In one live report, a reporter was talking in front of a scene of carnage. Cars were burning and garbage was littered everywhere, and then from out of the rolling smoke came a group of the infected. The news crew ran out in front of the camera and yanked the reporter into a van, saying hurriedly, Ok thats good enough. We need to get out of here. That was the end of that particular report. They sat for an hour watching the television with slight interest and then Nick stood up. "Let's go upstairs and look out the window. See what we can see."

"Alright."

Nick's apartment was clean. He lived alone, had no pets and didn't keep garbage. His bedroom was neat as well. They crossed the carpeted floor and Nick opened the window, ducking his head out. The doors to the adjacent apartments were all closed and it was quiet outside. One man shuffled clumsily by a tree about a hundred yards out.

"Nick, look at that tree," Tom said, putting one hand on the window sill and pointing with the other.

"Yeah you think that guy is infected?"

"No, look! I think there's someone in the tree!" He was right. "Nick you have any binoculars up here?"

"Yeah somewhere," he replied, leaving the window and searching the room.

"HEY!" Tom yelled out the window, calling to the helpless survivor. Had the situation not been so dire, it may have been amusing. Nick came back to the window looking through the binoculars. It was a woman with brown hair, her face red from crying. She looked up at the window and called something back but they couldn't hear. She resumed watching the man as he continued to circle the single tree.

"We gotta do something.."

Nick grabbed a jacket from his closet as Tom went back down the stairs. Thinking he might need some protection, he grabbed a baseball bat from beneath the bed. A Louisville slugger. He used to enjoy baseball a lot.

Tom had turned off the TV by the time Nick came down the stairs, carrying the wooden. "So what are we gonna do? Kill the guy and grab the girl?"

Tom ran his fingers through his short brown hair, sighing. He still felt no emotion. A part of him wanted to give up. "I guess... You think I'll have to shoot him?"

"I don't know. I could club him, I guess, maybe knock him out?"

"That sounds like a better idea. It would save ammo too."

Tom unbolted the front door and poked his head outside. Raindrops fell softly on him and on the parking lot, but nobody was in sight. The tree was around the left side of the building, so they quickly ran around. They jogged about three-quarters of the way to the tree and then slowed down.

"Are you ok?" Tom shouted, and the woman looked up, shaking her head.

"It's my husband!" She cried. "Something's happened to him! Just like the rest!"

The man who was apparently her husband didn't seem to notice the presence of Tom and Nick, even as they drew nearer. His movements were slow and labored, they couldn't see his face, but the back of his neck was pale. He clawed with lazy persistence at the trunk of the tree, reaching for his wife. His clothes were completely dark with wetness. She could see in her husbands eyes no facet of what they once were.

"Don't hurt him! Please!" She shouted, even though they were close enough to talk normally. "Oh God, what's happening?" she asked.

"Nick, just give him a whack," said Tom. He readied the shotgun just in case, but aimed for the legs. If he had to shoot the guy, he didn't want to hit the girl too. The tree wasn't very big. Her feet were just out of reach of the man's fingers.

"You think I should?"

"I don't know, ask her."

"Uhh, hey, were gonna hit him in the head. Hopefully it'll knock him out, ok?"

She looked at them for a while, a tear running down her cheek. She was pretty. Dressed in a conservative green turtleneck and jeans. Her hair was long and curled, but it was ruffled. Everything was damp and clung to her. Finally, she sighed and put her forehead against the trunk of the tree, closing her eyes. "Just hit him. Please dont hurt him."

Nick stepped up slowly and the man stood stock still, apparently waiting for his wife to come down. Nick had no idea how hard to hit someone in the head with any desired effect, so he aimed right for the middle of his skull. He drew the bat back and brought it forward with an unpleasant -thwack!-. The woman shrieked at the sound.

"Oh! groaned Nick, as he felt brittle bone crack beneath his swing. He had to hold on to the bat tight for it to come out of the head as her husband fell lifelessly to the ground. "Oh my God..."

She screamed at the top of her lungs as she saw the back of her husbands head, the flesh sunken inward over a split skull. She jumped out of the tree and ran past Tom and Nick, crying hysterically.

Nick dropped the bat.

They stood over the corpse while in the distance, the woman heaved sobs into her hands. Shed made it half way to the apartments before collapsing in the wet grass.

"Jesus, I didn't know how hard to hit him! I didn't hit him THAT hard!"

"You cracked his skull"

"Yeah, but, it was soft... maybe the disease does that or something... makes your bones rot."

Tom knew Nick was a cautious man. He knew that he wouldnt have used excessive force against any foe. He believed him. "He looked really pale... Maybe he'd been dead for a while. Maybe the longer you're infected, the slower and weaker you are."

"I don't know. What are we going to tell that lady?" asked Nick, picking the slugger back up from the moist ground. The tip had a little blood on it. "I can't just say I'm sorry."

The rain started to come down harder. The sun had finally set and the lights went on in the parking lot, casting a glow on Tom's car. Thunder rumbled like a warning in the distance, warning that the worst was yet to come. They walked back through the grass to the apartment. She had gotten up and made it to the tiny porch, sitting on the wet cement, crying into her hands.

"Look, lady, I'm sorry. I don't think he could be helped. How long had he been infected?"

She continued crying for a few moments and then settled down enough to say, "We go in a fight two days ago... he went out drinking and didn't come back. He was gone all yesterday too."

They stood out in the rain listening. Tom hunched over the shotgun to keep it as dry as he could, but the rain came down mercilessly.

"I was going to go to his parents house tonight and see if he was there... he was standing right outside the apartment... and then..." she was over come by a fresh wave of sobs. Nick felt obligated to help her stand and to get her inside, so they made their way back in.

The woman sniffled and shivered as Nick took her to his bathroom to dry her off. She whimpered like a child. Hands shaking, Nick took a dry towel that had been hanging on the door and wrapped it around her. He had no idea what to say to this women, especially after what he'd done.

"Look..." he said, wiping rain water off of his face with his hand, "I'm going to get you something hot to drink. Dry off in here. I'm sorry..."

She looked at him with blue eyes that were red from crying. Her lip trembled but she said nothing. Nick left and closed the door behind him, and then went into the kitchen. Tom was there, peering out the window that provided a view of the parking lot.

"Nick, you need to see this," Tom said, stepping away from the window.

"What?" Nick asked, looking out for himself. "What the hell?"

The parking lot had been empty when they let the girl into Nick's apartment, but now, it was full of the infected. Men, women and even children moved around the parking lot, some walking in circles, others standing stupidly, looking up into the rain as it fell on their cold bodies. Some moved faster than others. One sprinted full speed across the parking lot and into the darkness, causing a startled response from both Tom and Nick.

nice i think i should make myself a story.

Wow man you should make this very long and then get it published I would love to read this in school. Please continue this very chilling and excellent story. The words that you use in this story are very well used and make it sound even better when I read these. I can't wait for the next episode

Hey Fox i made a story check it out! Also comment me becasue that is only the beggening of the story.

Your work remains excellent foxtrot.. I see originality throughout. Nick's neatness and cautiosness, rather than being the classic clumsy dullard friend with a bat... the woman actually condoning them to knock her husband unconcious rather than being violently hysterical and delisional.

I also liked the way you are truly using Brainbreads specific points, with the severe cranial damage the bat caused... You could have made a generic zombie tale but this is very 'Brainbread', so to speak.

Nice work, keep going, let's have a good siege!

fox this is a great story! But we need to keep posting freqnetly becasue it will go off this page.

Well lets just put it this way. If Fox kept releasing something new like lets say every 5 minutes the story wouldn't be as good as it is right now. Maybe he is writing it right now and just taking his time on it I hope. Fox GET PUBLISHED I SWEAR THIS IS THE BEST FAN FICTION EVER!!! It would make a great novel to read everywhere. So consider it lol . Well keep up the good work and looking forward to the next one ^.^

"So they're not all slow?" asked Nick, without taking is eyes off of the parking lot.

"What if some of them are smarter than others? What if they get in? Nick they're everywhere..."

Across the parking lot there was another complex of two story apartments. Many of the infected had gathered on the porch of one of them, hands pawing at the door. "You think there's people in that apartment?"

"I dont know, man," Tom answered. "What if they can smell us, or hear us?"

The question was answered by a soft, sliding sound against the front door. Tom shuddered as it reminded him of Rachael, sliding against the bedroom door. They wanted to come in. Tom and Nick slowly moved into the living room and stood looking at the door and listening. First they could hear soft groans which rose to a constant moaning, but soon the sounds grew more persistent. They began to growl, snarl, hiss, their sounds were haunting and without intelligence. One of the infected let out a full fledged scream at the top of it's lungs, and began to bang it's fists against the door.

"Oh my God," Nick said, wiping his hands on his shirt compulsively.

The woman in the bathroom began to feel strangely exhausted. Her clothes clung to her skin, cold and soaking wet. Her nose was running profusely and she assumed she would probably get sick from spending so long outside in the cold. She looked at her face in the mirror. Her skin was pale. She felt horrible. Sounds were coming from outside and she wanted to get back to the men that had saved her, even though one killed her husband.

She sat down on the toilet. Her legs felt wobbly.

Someone knocked on the door. "Umm... Tom and I are going upstairs to get some stuff together. We're gonna need to get out of here, ok?"

She took a deep breath and then looked at the bite mark on her arm that had begun to throb. She had no idea why it still hurt so bad. "Ok..." she answered, but consciousness was escaping her.

Wow... Nice Work, cant w8 until your next part

NOOOO!!! SHES BECOMING A ZOBIE!!!

Maybe at the end of this story (or if there is one) you could maybe get a Word Pad and copy all the seperate stories and paste them all together to make one story, put it on ebay and sell the stories.