“We were going back to Alabama and everyone was totally hyped up, y’know? Getting to see their families again and shit. The guys on parade all had so much energy. A few of us heard them on the radio talking about some kind of vitamin shots - called them ‘super boosters’.

“They were laughing about being strong enough to lift a tank. Said the next boost would make them faster... stronger. I'm guessing they got given something that night ‘cause the next day they started dropping like flies. We got out of the trucks, tried to help when they started fitting and frothing at the mouth like they had fucking rabies.

“None of us knew what to do; our field medic went down with them, but then they started to try to get up. We thought they were concussed from falling or had heat stroke because they kept staggering and stumbling, but their eyes... their goddamn eyes...”

His lower lip trembles. Sam and Dean shoot panicked glares at each other as they silently converse in the way that only siblings can.

‘He’s gonna cry.’

‘Shit. Do something!’

‘No, you do something.’

‘Why me? It’s always me.’

‘You’re more in touch with your feminine cry-baby side. And you’ve got frou-frou hair.’

‘Frou-frou? I’ll give you frou-frou you asshole. I hope they eat your fucking brains.’

“Right then!” Sam plasters on a sickeningly fake smile and claps the kid hard between his bony shoulder blades. The trembling stops; replaced by open mouthed indignation. “Zombie 101; don’t get bit. If it’s dead, you shoot until it’s double dead.”

“Oh-oh-okay,” he stutters, staring warily at his rifle like it’s some kind of freaky soul-sucking alien tentacle.  

“Aw hell kid, it’s go time.” A figure shamble-lurches out of the dessicated field. Dean puts one hand to the knife in his belt; watching, waiting. No-one moves. It gets closer, picking up speed like a locomotive.

“Fucking shoot it!” Sam yells but the kid’s rooted to the spot. He’s holding his rifle but the aim is a good fifty yards off target.

“Zombie 101,” Dean grins, tearing the rifle from white knuckled fingers. “Don’t hesitate.” He fires off a round, lower that he was aiming for, but he’s not a rifle kind of guy - they’re too cumbersome.

The bullet severs the zombie’s spinal column and it crumples to the ground.  The trio approach the body slowly; its limbs are stilled but its jaws clack like castanets on a meth kick. Snappity-snap.

“Larry.” The reluctant soldier whispers the zombie’s former name as Dean drives the heel of his boot into its face - right in the nose. Bone shatters with a sickening series of cracks, splitting skin and sending gore oozing sluggishly from beneath his foot. Murky and brackish, it stinks worse than a swamp full of dead skunks on the hottest day of the year.

The kid’s face turns the same shade of green as Larry the zombie’s before he doubles over and loses his lunch.

“Dude, that’s nasty,” says Dean, wrinkling his nose at the puddle of vomit while casually flicking brain matter from his boot with a switchblade.

“S-s-sorry,” the kid wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “I’m just a tech guy, y’know like radios and computers. I do comms, not... corpses. That’s how we got you here,” he continues as they walk away from the recently re-deceased soldier. “The grave robbing reports, the songs on the radio... It’s not like you’re in the phone book.”

It occurs to Sam that they probably shouldn’t even be here. “Hey, kid-”

“Jim, my name’s Jim.”

“Hey, Jim. Why didn’t you just radio Alabama and tell them that their super-soldier guys went all Resident Evil on your asses.”

“You think we didn’t try?” Jim’s voice leaps up an octave. “Of course we spoke to Alabama. We begged them for help and they said we didn’t even fucking exist. They’ve left us here to rot with the rest of them so they don’t take the blame. We need to get out of here - it’s getting dark.”

* * *

What’s left of the military faction is holed up in Coyote Falls’ Town Hall behind clumsy barricades of hastily stacked office furniture. Jim pulls down the emergency

ladder and ushers them upwards.

“Go to the third floor,” he tells them and holds out a hand for his rifle. “I’ve got to get back to the roadblock.”

Dean takes the lead and moves swiftly up the stairs with practised ease while Sam follows, pistol at the ready.  Four more floors and they’re on the roof.

They look out over the town below them where storefront shutters are locked down tight against the approaching shadows. Not a single light can be seen from one end of town to the other - the apartments over the shops, the houses further out and the farms in the distance are blacked out like they’re about to face an WWII era air raid. A heavy blanket of silence unfurls with the dark and settles over the town center.

“Creepy much,” Sam remarks. A spine chilling moan tears through the reticence from the cornfield where they ganked double-dead Larry. A chorus of death rattles joins the first to make a wailing cacophony of sound.

The zombies surge forwards in waves. At first count it looks like there’s about three dozen in fatigues; the super-soldiers turned living dead. Behind them, a hodgepodge of civilians - the bitten, infected. Young and old they shamble blindly, the moon reflecting off of their opaque, milk-white eyes.

Dean presses a finger to his lips, tapping his ear then his nose. Sam nods in understanding. They can’t shoot from here without bringing the army of undead straight to the doors. A tom cat yowls from the next block over and the zombies freeze mid stride. As one, their heads jerk towards the sound as if they’re pinpointing its location before setting off again, heads rolling on their shoulders like cars on a tilt-a-whirl.

A zombie break free of the pack, heading straight for the ginger tom now frozen at an intersection. It hisses a warning, arching its back with its fur standing on end as the corpse advances at a disjointed run. The zombie roars as it grabs the cat with both hands, holding it aloft.

It pulls its hands apart, flesh rips and bone tears from muscle. Feline innards rain down upon the sidewalk. The zombie drops the severed body to the ground and shambles away. Sam and Dean look at each other in confusion - this isn’t normal zombie behavior, they don’t just kill, they feed.

Dean pulls a crumpled receipt from his pocket along with a pen.

They’re not flesh-eaters. Looks like they’ve been made to kill. Nothing else - perfect for combat situations.

Sam mulls the idea over for a moment before pointing back towards the fire escape.