We dragged ourselves up, my hand fleeting clasped against hers as I helped her to her feet, the touch between us sparked a flash of the intensity that flared earlier within me, and for a moment and my eyes shimmered against hers…
I as shaken into breaking my gaze as the infected seem to melt from the shadows and surround us in increasing numbers… for a moment true fear flashed through me, perhaps she had seen it… perhaps not
“This way I think?” came Trey’s call… I followed the invisible line from his finger to a narrow road ahead… I ran my fingers across the syringes, three remained and thankfully all had survived the fall, but the feel of the blade in my hand gave little comfort against such numbers.

We set off with Trey taking point… and me bringing up behind, my eyes seemingly fixed on this woman between us who had sparked such emotion within me… the air around us was suddenly lit by the flare from Trey’s gun and the howl of those that he cut down. The dark shadows of the damned closed in around us, my sight drawn to the side by the limp body of an attacker felled cleanly by a bolt, we pushed onwards. Trey had become surprisingly limber on his feet and had moved a little way ahead of me…they both had, there was something about seeing them in such close proximity that seemed to flare the most intense and irrational emotions within me… she turned her head catching my eye… I felt something register in her expression as she saw me, my eyes betraying my emotions…

We pressed on turning into another side street…the lightning flashed but down here it seemed only to lengthen the dark shadows that enveloped us all… the dark rumble of the storm was suddenly overshadowed by the wild howl of the pack as they descended on us… I heard a quiet curse from Trey as his gun lit up the darkness… the heavy thud of his weapon able to drop some of their number but they had us surrounded and closed in quickly

There was a howl from behind, I twisted as a group bore down on me.. the lead of their number drove forward crushing me against a wall, my arms braced against him as his fetid breath caught in my face, his wild desperate eyes clawing at my mind as he forced towards me… my body and mind had already been driven to such limits and deep within I felt a bubbling darkness… born from the depths of my hate… memories of my past, of a time when I felt so powerless…

… “Dammit Celene! Your so worthless… pathetic”… his hand clasped at my throat… eyes burning with such hate… my slim body held tight against the wall… my hand clasped against my fathers arm as he choked the air from me… tears in my eyes... I couldn’t stop him…

My expression twisted and contorted as he pushed towards me, I felt the cold stone building on my back… I felt a deep haze descend over me as I drove him backwards thrusting the blade deep into his gut and wrenching it upwards… more of them closed in on me, unconcerned of the fate that befell the first, but I was too lost in the dark to recognise the danger and seemingly the more blood that spilled the deeper the darkness in which I felt myself sinking… the expression in my eyes as twisted as those I felled, the blade seemingly filled with a life of its own as it let me on devastating dance through the night…the once silver blade now coated in a deep red…

Once more Trey’s gun bought light to the shadows and the flare illuminated the two infected that had bought her down and she desperately tried to hold them back, but I could see her strength failing… a deep wave of panic took me as I started towards her… rational thought was lost on me, but in a more lucid moment I would wonder whether I was driven onto her by the possibility that she held the key in her bloodstream… or by the deep driven desire that I felt for her, that would ache in my heart… I reached her quickly and lashed out with my foot, the heel cracked hard against one shattering his nose and staggering him back a little… I whipped behind the other and dragged his head back… he was still snarling as I drew the blade across his throat, his blood spray coating us both… for a moment I panicked as she was spray with his infection, but I probably had more to fear than she did… his body dropped limply to the side as a guttural cry came form behind, with blood streaming down his broken nose he charged me… my fingers dropped to my belt and felt out a syringe… he struck out, his nails perilously close as I ducked sideways and drove the needle into his skin pumping a high concentration of hydrogen cyanide into his diseased blood… his eyes fell wide as his body contorted under its effects… he dropped to the ground gasping.

I was dimly aware of their shrill cries as more of them poured towards us… Trey’s bitter cursing as round after round tore through the air… breathing heavily I held out my hand for the second time that night, a maelstrom of emotion in my eyes as in my heart I hoped she would accept my gesture…