“Come on man, get down from there. We can talk about this… Please. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The man looked at Robin with a sad gaze in his eyes, and he whispered, “Don’t let me turn Robin. I don’t want to be one of them. I won’t become one of them.”

Robin watched his friend stagger forward as if he was trying to take a step, but then he stopped and pulled his gun out of his holster. Robin realized what his friend was going to do, and he whispered, “No. No, please no.”

His friend looked at him sadly and raised the gun to his head. He stepped backwards until the border of the bridge they were standing on was against his back, and then he said to Robin, “You and I both know you’re built for this kind of world Robin. A world where the strong reign supreme. So promise me something.”

Robin looked at his friend, tears in his eyes, and he whispered, “Anything.”

“Don’t let the power corrupt you. Don’t let the power that will come from this kind of world distract you from saving the people who need it. Don’t let yourself die, Robin. You’re a good man. Stay that way.”

And then he was leaning back, and the gun went off. Robin saw the blood splatter, saw his friend falling, and then he was gone. The sound deafened Robin, to the point where he couldn’t even hear his screams, to the point where he didn’t notice the Bleeders coming up behind him until he felt one hit his leg.

He turned around and saw almost ten of them, stumbling at him. Robin’s sadness turned to rage as he didn’t bother to draw his gun. He punched the first Bleeder in the face and watched it stumble back, but it didn’t die. So he punched it again.

In seconds, the creature was on the floor, and Robin was whaling on it, bone cracking from his fists, not his bones, but the skull of the creature that had killed his best friend. By the time he was done with the first one, there were two more approaching, too many to be able to target one without the risk of being infected by the other.

So he grabbed the first one by the throat, and punched it in the face too, then grabbed the second one by the side of the head, and pushed. The two skulls collided at a speed fast enough, for their heads to shatter, splattering blood and brains all over Robin’s face.

None of the other Bleeders stood a chance. Robin’s rage alone was enough to make him unbeatable. When they were gone, and the echoes of his friend's suicide were gone, he went down from the bridge, climbing down the small incline that led to the river where his friend’s body had fallen into.

The river was shallow, filled with rocks, gray rocks, and black rocks. Brown rocks, and the rocks that were dyed red, by his best friend’s body. There, he found him, eyes open. The gun was still in his friend's hand, but he noticed something as he bent down, there was no hole in his friend's head. At the same time, the creature saw Robin and lunged forward, and Robin stumbled backward.

The Bleeder stumbled towards Robin, dropping the gun as he did, and Robin’s eyes centered on it. He stood up shakily, holding out his hand towards the Bleeder, and as soon as it was about to touch him, Robin dived.

He jumped underneath the Bleeder's arms, and grabbed the gun, turning around to land on his back, and shot his friend in the back of the head. He didn’t have time to react, he just fell to the ground. Robin looked down, and then whispered, “I’m not a good man. There are no good men in this world anymore.”

After that whole debacle, Olivia and I climbed our way up the stairs. Muramasa was sitting on the floor, with his bloodied sword out, wiping it clean. I’d run down the stairs about two or three minutes ago, so Zack was incredibly surprised when we came back, and he asked, “What was it?”

“A child. Bleeder. Will and I probably missed it in the initial sweep, maybe it was in a bathroom or shower. And then she saw Olivia and came out. Olivia managed to hold her off, and I threw her off a balcony.”

“Then why’d I hear gunshots?”

“I might have been a bit melodramatic when killing the Bleeder. Probably too melodramatic. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. The point is, no one was a bit, and now the eleventh floor is cleared.”

Zack looked at me, and then looked at Olivia and said, “Well then, now what?”

“Wait.”

Will spoke up, asking the question that was probably at the forefront of everyone’s minds. “For The Sheriff?”

“Yep. He’s gonna come for us. It might be ten minutes from now. It might be tomorrow, it might be in a month, but you can rest assured, he’s going to come for us. And when he does, someone’s going to die. The trick is to make sure that those people aren't us.”

I had intended my words to be cheerful, and uplifting. But the group was looking around nervously, and then John said, “You want us to kill people?”

“Do you want to die? Because if you don’t, you will die. This isn’t the world that we grew up in. You can’t bring a bouquet and expect everything to be fine. Life doesn’t work that way anymore. So yes. If people come trying to kill you, I expect you to fight. You don’t have to kill. You can incapacitate. Dismember. But you have to fight. Cause if you don’t there is nothing on heaven or earth that will save you from The Sheriff. ”

John looked visibly more nervous than he had been before, but I shrugged. I was a bit different from most people. And I'd killed before the apocalypse. It was important to remember that. Not many people knew what it was like to watch someone die in front of you. And even fewer people knew what it was like to have been the one to have robbed them of that life in the first place.

So with those delightful words, I turned around and walked into my room. Looking over my bookshelf, I grabbed one of them at random, sat down to read, opened it, and then growled. The Hunger Games.

I don’t know why I still have it, the book’s fine but I want to read something that’s going to make me happy. Especially when the world is this screwed up. I sighed and stood back up to put away the book when a soft voice stopped me.

“You don’t like Susan Collins? It’s a classic.” Olivia reached over and pulled the book out of my hand.

I shrugged, grabbed another book, and said, “I prefer fantasy personally. It’s more…” I stopped for a moment, searching for the word, then said, “Entertaining.”

Olivia paused for a moment and looked at my bookshelf then said quietly, “It’s very hard to not notice that the books you read the most are the ones about crazy people.”

I paused what I was doing and looked over at Olivia. “Before, the people who were crazy were locked up. The madmen were the crazy people. Now, it's the other way around. Madness is simply… rational.”

Olivia paused and looked over at me. “You believe that, don't you?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Why wouldn't I?”

Olivia paused and looked upwards for a moment, then looked back at me and said, “Why are you fighting the Sheriff?”

“Because he’s a tyrant. Anyone who resists his rule or doesn’t accept him as what he thinks he is, as a god, then he kills them. Anyone he might have breathed a word of his beliefs to, die. Anyone barely related to the man who didn’t believe in the Sheriff, die. He massacred an entire town once, just because one person resisted him.”

“And what makes you any different?”

“I’m not killing innocent people!”

“What about his soldiers? How can you tell their families, their friends, that you're a hero?”

I paused for a moment then said, “I never said I was different, Olivia. I’m just the murderer you got stuck with. The devil you know versus the devil you don’t.”

Olivia stayed quiet for a while, then left, closing the door behind her as she did so. I sat there not reading my book, watching the door. Hoping against hope that she'd come back.

She didn't and I gave up on waiting, returning to my book, and whiling away the hours.

Time passed slowly, and I finished that book within about an hour and a half, standing up cracking my neck, and stopping.

I reached behind me, grabbed my bow, and walked out into the storage room. I was reaching for a second quiver when I heard the echo of a door close in the stairwell, and I cursed, reaching over and grabbing the duffle bag instead and throwing it on the floor.

The clatter caused Muramasa to come out of his room and I walked back into the storage room and tossed him one of the semi-automatic rifles. “You know how to use that?”

“Yes. Why?”

“He's here. Get John, Will, and Zack. I need one set up facing that way,” I pointed to the western stairwell, “And I need everyone else set up facing that way. And get Olivia. Someone's probably going to get shot.”

He stared at me in confusion and said, “She's downstairs, setting up her whole doctor thing.”

“Damn it.” I looked around then walked back into the storage room and came back with a bunch of rope. “Can you guys keep him at bay for five minutes?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, I'm going to jump off of the building.” He looked at me as if I was crazy, and I grinned. “I'm going to use the rope, climb down to the sixth or seventh floor, and then ambush them from behind. And when you hear gunshots inside the staircase, everybody moves in towards it. Don’t give them an avenue of escape.”

Muramasa caught on to what I was saying almost immediately and he grinned. “Pincer.” And then he frowned. “Wait, you're gonna take half of the pincer entirely by yourself?”

“No. I’ll have Olivia.” I grinned. “And I don’t need anyone else. Close quarters, gunfire will be lighting everything up and deafening everyone, and only one person will be able to attack me at a time.”

“They’ll have the high ground…”

“Don’t worry mate. I’ll be fine.”

He paused for a moment then said, “If what you say about this sheriff is true, you’d better. Because if you die, and my group dies because of it, I will personally bring you back to life, just to kill you again.”

I grinned, then turned away, and walked back into my room. As I opened the balcony door, I called, “Don’t let them in Muramasa. No matter what. Don’t let them in.”

I didn’t bother checking to see if he nodded or not, I just tied the end of the rope to the balcony wall. Not the railing, I knew all too well how weak that was after I sent the child flying off of it. No. I tied it to the wall. I had no intention of hurtling to my death off of a balcony.

And then with the rope tied in a small loop around my wrist, I looked out and down below at the ground and decided to double up on the rope. With that, I took a deep breath, and stepped back a few paces, so that I had a running head start, and then I started to jog, slowly growing into a full-on sprint, and just before reaching the edge, I leaped.

There was a moment of weightlessness, a moment where I was a god, I was unkillable, I was immortal. And then it was gone and I was falling. In theory, I had gone horizontally far enough to stop myself from falling and tearing my arm out of its socket. And fortunately, I was right. There was a jerk, a sudden stop, and then I was swinging in a different direction, hastily, I pulled out my gun once again and aimed carefully, pulling the trigger in three short blasts, then throwing it onto the balcony, and curling myself up into a ball.

I crashed through a solid pane of glass for the second time that day and then rolled a few more feet before coming to a stop at the foot of a couch. I listened intently for a few seconds, then stood up, walking back over to the balcony, and picking up my thankfully still surviving gun. I grinned, then looked around the ground, and picked up a particularly large piece of glass.

I spun it around in my fingers a few times then turned and threw it, watching with some satisfaction as it arced through the air, and hit the skull of the Bleeder child who had been coming up behind me. I paid a little bit of attention to the kid as I realized that he was dressed in what looked like army fatigues, then I laughed and realized that they were fake. Probably some kid having some fun.

I looked behind me, and then into the room where another Bleeder could be heard. I smiled and grabbed my piece of glass out of the kid's face, then went into the bedroom, and without even looking, I plunged the glass piece down into the eye socket of what looked like his mother.

I was turning to walk out when I realized that the mother had something in her hand, and I went closer to get a better look. A small gun was in her hand. It looked like she had had it in her mouth and was going to pull the trigger when she turned.

I grabbed the gun and stuffed it in my back pocket, then moved on, opening the door, and running past the copious amounts of Bleeders outside waiting for me. One managed to grab my shirt, but I jerked my shoulders, and the fabric came off with a tear, leaving my tank top dangling off of one shoulder. I growled and pulled it off of my arm with a single movement, then dropped down to the ground and swept a Bleeder off of its feet, pushing off of the ground with one hand, and vaulting over the prone Bleeder.

I landed on my back, fortunately, no bleeders ahead of me, and I sighed as I stood up, and pushed open the door, grabbing the gun that I had pulled out of the dead woman’s hands. There were about three people on the flight of stairs above me and five below me. I’d somehow managed to emerge into the middle of the group, and I groaned.

The gun in my hand jumped twice, and the two men who had seen me coming out dropped to the ground, not even realizing they’d been shot. The five men beneath those two were lifting their guns, and I tried to duck around cover, close the door maybe, but the Bleeders were coming, and I smiled wickedly.

I ducked out of their line of sight and waited for the Bleeders to come close to me, before I grabbed one by the throat, simultaneously kicking the other one backward into the rest of their group. The one in my hands snarled and thrashed, but it very quickly started feasting when I threw it through the doorway and onto the men who’d been shooting at me.

With that problem solved, I ducked out from under cover, slamming the door shut behind me. I only needed one Bleeder in this staircase, not an army of them. Somewhere above me I could hear the rest of the group shooting and shouting orders, along with Muramasa’s voice. I was too far to make out what he was saying, but that didn’t matter. He was still alive. That’s the important part.

The Bleeder behind had managed to ravage its way through the three people who had been on the staircase, probably not because of the bleeder itself but mostly because I threw it on top of them, and even dead people weigh quite a bit.

Fortunately for them, the group had managed to kill it eventually, but they weren’t my problem anymore. With this area of the staircase clear, I opened the door once again, flooding the lower group with Bleeders.

Since they lacked the cognitive ability to climb stairs, they were easy to direct to the group below us, and even if they fell, the odds of them suffering catastrophic brain damage were very low. Now with the people below me taken care of, I took the stairs two at a time, holding both of the guns, my gun fully loaded with eight bullets, the other with something like seven. I don’t know.

There wasn’t anyone on top of me, so I put one of the guns away and grabbed an arrow in one hand. And then I saw an old familiar face. She was young, early twenties. Her black hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she had the kinds of marks on her face that you get from scowling a lot.

“Dixon,” I grinned. “‘Sup?”

In response, she grabbed something from her thigh and threw it at me. I knew exactly where it was going to land, so I didn’t even bother dodging it. It hit me in the shoulder, punching through skin, and then clanging against bone before falling out.

I picked up the small knife and said, “Thanks for the present.”

Dixon in response grabbed a switchblade from her pocket and flipped it open. I put away my gun and arrow and held up Dixon’s throwing knife. She smirked. “That’s it? You might need a little something more than that.”

I didn’t respond, instead, I held the knife in between two of my fingers and flicked my wrist forward, watching sadly as the knife flew forward and hit Dixon in the center of her chest. She fell to the floor with an oomph, and I jumped up, and whispered sadly, “Sorry hon. I’m not playing this game anymore.”

Dixon coughed and looked me in the eye. “She better…” She took a deep rattling breath, and then whispered, “She better be worth it.” And then she breathed out, and I stood up, grabbing her switchblade as I did.

“She is,” I whispered. “She really is.” And then I picked up her body and laid it out in a place where it would be undamaged. Protected.