Two young adults can be seen running through a derelict warehouse. One a man the other a woman.

Despite their outfits sporting rips and tears, and some blood; their faces only look as if they sat close to a campfire for too long. Their hair, though messy, is still stylish enough to be called anything but ugly.

But as they are running, and huffing along through the oddly cleared corridor; Moans and groans of something most foul chase the duo from out of sight.

The woman looks over her shoulder only to turn back forward, and redouble her effort after seeing the horde of shambling carcasses. Somehow gaining on them despite being slower than a geriatric grandma using a walker.

"They're gaining on us!" Shouted the woman who despite having ran full tilt is somehow not sweating.

A utility room is spotted by the man.

"Over there!" he shouts, pointing at the suspiciously ajar portal.

The beautiful couple bee lined to the opening. Slamming it shut behind them just before the horde of rot could envelope them at a casual march.

The gorgeous man wearing a torn and stained hoodie braced himself against the door as banging could be heard and felt by the two inhabitants.

Like a heartbeat the assault on the door issued by the corpses continued.

*thunk, thunk* *thunk, thunk* *thunk, thunk*

Feeling the beat upon his shoulder the man grunted out. "Fine... shomthin... to block jdis!"

Hearing the urgency in his voice, the woman looked about frantically in search of something large to use as a replacement for her partner's body.

Off to the side of the door, a tool cabinet stood tall. Judging the height, width, and depth of the red monolith to be of sufficient mass to block the door properly; she started to shove the beast ever closer to the door.

With each exertion a grunt escaped her full lips.

Each Shove eliciting a torturous screech from the behemoth's bottom scraping the concrete floor.

"Huurry!" The man growled, as his strength started to wane.

Slowly as she pushed the tower closer to the door, the very same portal slowly opened further revealing the monsters besieging their impromptu fortress.

With one final roar from the woman she tipped the steel titan onto the door just as the man's last resolve broke.

They both collapsed to the floor attempting to catch their breath as they now felt secure. The monsters who were once assaulting a crumbling wall, now found themselves beating against the likes of Hadrian's Wall.

Managing to get enough strength back in him the handsome man spoke to the woman, "That should hold them long enough till Gerold and the rest to come and save us."

"Yeah." She barely replies, still winded.

"Were you bitten when that meanderer ambushed you? I'm sorry it took so long to get it off of you." He asked her, worry dripping from his tone.

"No." she replied way too quickly. "But, no need to apologize. If it weren't for you I would have been on the other side of that door right now."

Somehow the man, not finding her reply suspicious in the least, exhaled a sigh of relief and embraced the woman.

"Great, I don't know what I would do if you were bitten." He spoke, clutching her closely.

"Me neither." she replied absentmindedly, now looking at her uncovered forearm with a wound that resembles a human's bite though it was no longer bleeding.

Almost inaudible, she continued to speak to herself, "me neither."

"Did you say some-*BEEP BEEP BEEP* the man's question was cut off by the sound of an alarm.

Kenneth paused the episode of The Meandering Deceased before silencing his phone.

"Man and it was just getting good too."

Kenneth grabbed the towel that was hanging from his door, and went into his bathroom to begin cleaning off the night's filth.

When Tommy had shown him his Bug-Out Bunker last night he was genuinely impressed with the scale of the damned thing. It was about the size of a mobile home, but underground. Racks of preserved goods mirrored racks of ammo. From Green beans to canned spam, and from .22 to 12 gauge. A diesel generator helped power the place while a water and air filtration unit was installed and waiting for the metaphorical shit to hit. Tommy told him it could comfortably support up to 4 adults for 3 months. Enough time for the shit to settle, and allow the bunker people to have a step up on any survivors. It wasn't a bomb shelter let alone a nuclear shelter, but for cases where there was complete anarchy it was quite sufficient.

Now Tommy, despite looking like a red-necked, white skinned, and blue collared 'Murican; was actually quite financially smart. He was still definitely a redneck. So 4 years back when President Shade got elected, He figured his stocks that were invested in Edison would be worthless when the inevitable civil war happened, and thus sold it all to afford to build this bunker. Only reason why he kept working at the warehouse was because he didn't like resting on his laurels, and Kenneth needed someone to assist him with keeping his "thoughts" focused on things that wouldn't get him sent to HR.

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Finally when Kenneth got out of the shower He stared at his almost naked reflection in the sink mirror...WAIT! Pause the scene.

Man, would you look at that Bod...MMMMhmmm! tasty. Then again when you bike to work for your whole working life THEN lift reasonably weighty boxes for 2 years; it does make a very nice figure. Standing at an average height with chocolatey hair matching his eyes, Mmph, and with those dark circles it is almost like he has natural eye shadow. 10/10 would stalk. Hell, if this was one of those #420"Lit"RPG stories that are always based off of Keeps n' Krakens his PC would look something like this:

STRength: 18

DEXterity: 18

CONstitution: 18

INTelligence: 18

WISdom: 18

CHArisma: 18

Truly peak performance of a male body. Who wouldn't wa-...What do you mean that isn't correct?...

How is it not correct?...

What do you mean “No HuMaN MaLe HaS ThOsE StAtS"?! Shutthefuckup, Carole, you know nothing about what a male would look like, even if there was one balls-deep in you!...

Huh?... It came from the execs?... They want me to quit going off script else they'll back out?.. FUCK! Fine, the true "stats" then:

STRength: 11

DEXterity: 13

CONstitution: 15

INTelligence: 15

WISdom: 7

CHArisma: 8

Luckily this ain't a LitRPG so none of that matters really. ANYWAYS back to the story...

Kenneth Finished with brushing his teeth, got dressed, and grabbed his Lichenberg 500 with a box of shells. Placing the shotgun and shells in his carry case he left his apartment walking his bike. Finally reaching the street he hopped on, and began to cycle to his destination.

Mr.Robbins' Big Irons was a gun store that had an indoor range located halfway between his place and his job, so getting there was never really a challenge. With it being past rush hour, he could probably make the 3 miles in less than 15 minutes if the lights stay green the whole way.

Stopping at a red light Kenneth finally noticed a siren in the distance.

"Hmm what sorta trouble has them going about?"

Noticing the light turn green he focused back on the road ready to start pedaling again. Having not been entirely focused though, he fumbled his foot placement and almost tipped his bike over.

"Shit!" cursing at himself he stopped to readjust, and get a better footing on the pedals. Right before he finished his readjustment a blue sedan ran the red light at high speed, nearly clipping his front tire. "Fucking psychos everywhere" he muttered to himself before trooping on ahead to the gun store.

Having arrived, he racked his bike, and secured it with a padlock and chain. Entering in the front door, the bell overhead announced his presence to the occupant inside. Martina Robbins, the beefy middle-aged proprietor, was fussing over her bandaged arm when Kenneth walked in, startling her out of her obsession.

"GAH!" She attempted to go for the double barrel under the counter, but luckily a timely interruption from Kenneth stopped her progress.

"Woah! There Marty, What's got you on edge?"

"Jesus Christ! Is that you Ken? I nearly pulled on your sneaky ass. Fuck."

"Wait. You knew I reserved a spot on the range today, so why are you acting like me being here is a surprise?"

Checking the computer for the times Martina found Kenneth was telling the truth.

"Well, shit. Sorry Ken, today's been one helluva day for me that I forgot to check the schedules. First a fuckin' Coon attacked me while I was taking out the garbage this morn', then some probably drunk nutjob came shamblin' in talkin' mad bout 'damned voices'. Christ, to top this day off, the damned coon bite is startin' to itch and hurt like a mutherfucker."

"Well that does sound like a shitty day, Martina, why not just close up for the day, I don't mind rescheduling the range time for another day."

*Sigh*"Unfortunately, my dear sweet Kenneth, I can't afford to do that. With the lack of steady customers I fear I might have ta start cuttin' back on expenses, WHICH MEANS, no mo' specialty ammo for you boys, an' God knows that when I start pushin' you guys away from the store, Dad's gunna come back from the grave to lynch me. Rest his soul"

"Hehe, yeah knowing him after lynching you, he'd then challenge me and Tom for our souls."

Martina sniffled before releasing a chuckle." Yeah he probably would.*sigh*"

The two stood there in silence reminiscing about the recently departed Morticai Robbins. Kenneth mumbled this thought with his head down, and Martina eyes closed and her head facing the ceiling. This lasted a few minutes longer before finally ending with a clap from Martina.

"Okay. Well get on back there Ken, Don't want to be wasting your range time. I'll be upfront if you need a resupply on double 'ought or Slugs."

"Thanks Martina, I'll be sure to get a few boxes. I'll probably be out of mine after an hour. By the way, Tom's going to be dropping by for range practice soon; would you mind letting him know I’m here?"

"Will do, now go on, GET!"

Chuckling as he went down the hall he replied "Thanks, Martina you're the best!"

Kenneth got to the range airlock opening the first door. Inside he fished out his wireless earplugs, his blue shooting glasses, and put them all on. Exiting the airlock using the final door he found himself in an empty range, and went to his reserved spot. Setting his equipment on the provided table he took out a target sheet and clipped it to the conveyor. He pushed the 50' selector, and watched his target fly to the designated distance. He loaded his slugs, and started to fire for accuracy rather than speed.

After about 30 minutes he stopped to check his phone for messages. To his astonishment Tom didn't send any. Kinda wondering why he didn't even leave a message as to why he was skipping out, he started to type out a message for him.

"Hey Tom, where r u at man. Been 30mins u ok?" hitting send he waited for the check to be marked blue indicating he saw the message. Waiting 5 minutes the checkmark still wasn't blue. Now Tommy was a very honorable man, IF he had to cancel a get-together he would have called or messaged the reason why. Getting a bit worried he realized that he forgot the reception in the range was shitty. Hurriedly he grabbed his stuff and went into the airlock. "SHiiit!" Kenneth stopped before leaving the airlock as he forgot he had a few live shells in the mag. He started to eject some shells when a muffled gunshot rang out.

Normally a muffled gunshot in the airlock was a standard occurrence as only one door was insufficient to block out the majority of the sound, then again even two doors can bleed some sound. So, When Kenneth heard the shot he KNEW something was wrong, and instead of ejecting the shells he started to load the tube full, and finally chamber a round for what was about to come.

And boy was it coming.