Getting in was a success now all they had to do was get rid of the pests inside. As soon as they entered, the smell of blood and rot assaulted their noses. It wasn't too strong yet, but it still made them gag uncomfortably. They slowly moved through the building making as little noise as possible. But over the loud ruckus and the scent of smell, the Zombies didn't pay much attention to what was happening behind them. Rhys was in the lead, then took one soft step after the other all the time keeping an eye of the group at the door.

As soon as they left the main hall and entered the office section, they were greeted by 5-6 Zombies, two were officers. Both of them had heavy wounds and a lot of bite marks on their exposed skin. The other one was a tall muscular man and a group of women and a child. They were behind transparent class doors, that's why even when the commotion happened in the front they were stuck. Seeing the Zombified child in the midst of the Zombies, the group felt weird. The silently observed this while they sneaked away. Throughout their way they saw similar rooms with zombies inside. But one of the Zombies had already spotted them and charged at them at feel speed, only to be stopped by the glass door. Being riled up by the first one, the rest of them also rushed at the door and started banging on the fragile glass.

This sudden change startled the few that were closest to the door and made them jump, hearing the noise a few of the Zombies from the front hall turned over and spotted the group as well.

"Shit! Noah shouted out as he saw them start moving their stiff limbs in their direction. "let's hurry'. They started rushing forward. On their way they faced a few Zombies who jumped at them out of the blue. The ones in the front was a Rhys and a woman. A gloved blood-soaked hand clawed down at the woman. Rhys quickly pushed the woman away. She lost her balance and fell onto the shelves on the side. Not having time to check if she was hurt or to apologise, Rhys stabbed a knife into the Zombies head. At the same time someone in the back slammed a steel pipe onto the other one throwing it away.

Josh quietly helped the woman back to her feet and ran while supporting her shoulder. By this time the rest of the Zombies in the front had noticed the humans who had sneaked in and ignored the food they couldn't have and chased after the ones they could. The group finally reached the cells and more trouble awaited them as kicked open the gate to that block. Out of the three cells inside, two of them were occupied and one of them actually had live humans in it. The other one was full of zombies they must have been some of the humans who locked themselves in like the other group but had turned either way. Who knows how long they had been inside those cages? It couldn't have been more than a week. They looked horrified, starved and exhausted. Rhys counted around 5 of them. The last cell door was wide open, and three Zombies wandered around the cell with the live humans.

Seeing the group that barged in kicking away that thin layer of protection that kept the outside Zombies away, they were more horrified rather than relieved. Their first thought was that the group of Zombies from the main hall had finally overcome the gate and came in. Many of them started crying in horror.

Rhys ignored them completely and charged at the Zombies wandering around the corridor. As soon as the last one hit the ground, the horde that was chasing them from behind caught up. Without hesitation, all of them rushed into the one empty cell and closed the barred door.

"Boss there is no key to lock the door." He cried as he was still holding the door closed with his bare hands. It was not ideal as the Zombies were getting closer. Rhys pushed him away and unbuckled his belt before tying the two bars together to keep the door form opening.

Right as he finished a gruesome face pushed itself at the bars and snapped its teeth at them. Everyone let out a breath in relief. Suddenly they heard a loud creak. One of the inhabitants of the other cell broke down as the Zombies surrounded their cell as well and started gnawing on the bars.

"This stupid people" Josh was annoyed "Shut the fuck up. Do you want to bring the entire town here?" He shouted in anger. His voice sounded high which shut the others up and only small whimpers could be heard.

"If you keep this up you will be the one bringing the town here" Rhys replied as he wiped the knife which had zombie goo and blood, clean. "Let's get down to business. Remember not to get anything on you" After hearing the instructions a few of them went forward and started stabbing at the bloody, torn faces that were trying to squeeze through the bars.

Meanwhile Rhys looked at the woman who was squatting in the corner with a dazed look in her eyes and asked "Anne, are you hurt?" She was the girl that he had pushed away from the Zombie attack before. She looked up at him startled and slowly nodded. Then she showed her hand to him. There was a long gash which was dripping blood. She looked scared at the possibility of being infected and her eyes unconsciously teared up.

Rhys slowly took a hold of the hand and examined the wound. He couldn't tell much from observing it. "Is it from the Zombie or is it from my push?"

"I am not sure" Anne answered. "When Josh pulled me up My leg was painful, and I had this cut on the hand." Rhys looked down at her leg and didn't find anything bleeding.

"Don't panic. The wound could be nothing." Anne slowly nodded her head at this but was still unconvinced. While they were conversing, the bodies kept piling up outside the cell. Seeing that the people in the other cell were just sitting there motionless, Josh lost his temper again. "Don't you have anything in your hands that you can use?"

An Asian man heard his question and responded "Y-yes we have a pocketknife."

"Then what the fuck are you doing still on your asses. Are you retarded or do you have any problem with your hands? Start stabbing those things. Aim for the heads. If you don't have hands, then pass the knife to someone who has" that was quite blunt and a bit rude. A few of them next to Josh, rolled their eyes but kept quiet as he had spoken exactly what they were thinking. Until now, if the group had been unresponsive, they could understand. But having watched what they were doing, they should have been at least a little inspired and try to fight for their lives.

Hearing the scolding, someone finally started acting. Although the pace was slower and they missed the target several times, the number of Zombies slowly started reducing. As there were only 6 or something left. Three people came from outside and stabbed and smashed at the Zombies from behind.

Ash's team, seeing that the majority of the Zombies had walked after the group inside, abandoned their post and jumped in through the window as well. They quickly disposed of the few that were still standing around the door and slowly went after the group of Zombies moving in the direction of the cells. They observed for a while and then when the numbers were a bit lower, started helping out from the other end. Soon all of them came out of the cell and stood around in a pile of corpses. Ash noticed the group in the other cell, and they were also unlocking the door to get out.

As soon as they were out, they came over to greet them. Josh gave them the stingy eye and didn't even say hi and walked away to make sure that the floor was indeed empty. The group consists of 3 women and two men. Two of them were of Chinese descent while one woman was Indian, and the two left were two English teenagers who looked to be brother and sister. All of them looked like indoor people. No one looked like they lifted any weights or hit the gym their entire life, a lot like Ash.

As soon as they started rambling how they had thought they were done for and they would never see the outside wold again, Rhys walked away as well. A few in the group humoured them by listening for a bit before rushing them outside. Rhys walked towards Ash who was crouching next to a few corpses and examining the bite marks and stab wounds.

"Why did you guys come in? We had it covered here." He also looked at the Zombie corpse that Ash was examining and wondered what so fascinating about it was.

Ash looked up surprised at the familiar voice and saw Rhys standing over him looking at him curiously. "That was the plan from the beginning was it not? To come help you when the numbers had gone down." Rhys opened his mouth to argue when he added "Also it was getting a bit dangerous outside." Rhys understood at ones and fell into thought.

"How many?"

"Hmm... Around 6/7 I think." Ash said as he unhooked a gun from an officer and handed it to Rhys. He took it and observed it before stuffing it into the waistband of his jeans.

They fell into a small silence and seeing that Rhys had nothing more to say Ash turned back to another Zombie and looked at its skin.

"What are you looking for?" Rhys asked curious. Blue eyes snapped back towards him and Rhys was surprised for a moment at the depth of those orbs.

"look at this one." He pointed to a blonde-haired girl. She was very beautiful if you ignored the blood on her chin and fingers, she could be considered as a top-notch beauty with beautiful curves. there was a deep stab wound on the side of her head and a few bullet holes on her body.

'Is this the type of girl he liked' Rhys wondered and offhandedly commented "She is pretty" Hearing this Ash glared at him with disbelief. 'He won't even leave the deceased alone?' Ash's opinion of Rhys fell down a notch. 'Typical men'

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"That's not what I meant" Ash sighed.

Feeling a bit embarrassed, Rhys crouched down next to him and asked, "If not then what?" his eyes observed the body ones more and his eyes hardened slightly. By then a few of the others noticed the two figures crouching in the side and walked over to see what was going on. The newcomers were among them.

"There is no bite wound or scratches."

Rhys nodded having already noticed this as well "all the wounds on her are either bullet wounds or stab wounds." He pointed to the stab on the head. "this must be the wound that someone did to kill it." she was one of the few Zombie corpses already dead when they entered the station.

Ash agreed with him. Both of them looked at each other and a foreboding thought popped into their heads. "there are only two possibilities" and both of them were frightening. One was that she conducted the virus through some unknown means. The other was that virus was sleeping in her and once she died from the gun shots, she turned.

Rhys turned to the people who were in the cell before and looked at them hard. "How did this girl turn?" he asked the group.

The hesitated for a moment and the Indian woman answered, her name was Kiran I believe, "She was the first one to turn, Fiona. We were all checked before we were allowed into the station. This place wasn't even meant for long. The officers were going to transport us out of the city but then all the mess happened before they could do anything"

"Yes. She had no wounds when she entered. That's why we were taken off guard. She turned too suddenly and injured over a dozen people. everyone First tried to subdue her that should be the gun wounds on her. One of the officers subdued her but by then a lot of us were already injured by her. We locked them in the office rooms, a lot of them were for shooting them on the spot or throwing them out of the building. But there were children in the injured group as well so locking them up sounded like a better option at that time." The Chinese man, Li Wei, continued on.

"The problem should have been taken care then. So how did this happen?" Josh asked with a glare.

The officer was the one who replied to that. "A mother of a child cried and begged for her child to be released, that she would take her kid and try her luck outside. Of course, we didn't agree. So, during the night she sneaked in and opened the doors. But some of them with weaker immune systems had already turned including her child. She was bit and killed by her own child. Then the group of Zombies were ones again set loose. This time there was no stopping it so those of us who were quick witted quickly locked ourselves inside the cells." She paused and watched the children take long sips from the water that they were offered "of course it was not the smartest choice. We had no food and water. The ones in the third cell tried to go get some after a few days and got attacked. The ones in the second cell tried to stab those zombies like you did but during the process their arms were grabbed and bitten. So, we didn't try to attempt anything else"

"So that's how she turned" Ash said quietly with a finger rubbing his temple in thought bringing back their initial topic of conversation. "Since she was neither bitten nor scratched, then is the virus airborne?" If so, that would mean every one of them was infected. But even after several days of quarantine, nothing has happened to them. So that was an unlikely situation.

"Don't think so" Rhys answered. It seemed like both of them were thinking on the same wavelength.

"Did you check under her cloths?" Josh asked seriously

"yeah! she could have been hiding her wounds" Noah agreed. This was more acceptable than an unknown method of spread.

Although he had already checked her respectfully, Ash decided to be thorough and started stripping her without hesitation. He didn't think much about it since he had seen Erva always naked next to him, so a woman's bare skin was just that, Skin. Nothing to be embarrassed or shy about. Seeing his unchanging expression as cloth after cloth came off, the people watching it became embarrassed in his stead.

Finally, when she was naked and cold on the floor, Ash started examining her body ones more. Everyone else stepped up closer to have a better look.

The body was indeed very beautiful with nice curves for her chest and hips. Ash was unaffected and focused only on the wounds. There were four bullet wounds, on her chest, stomach, arm and back respectively. Then there was the stab wound to the head. It was a messy stab as a portion of the flesh was torn out along with the assault weapon. There were Also several bruises on the body. The blue-black contrasting heavily from the paleness of the skin. She must have hit or run into a lot of things after her change. After flipping her back and forth, they couldn't find any other wounds other than the ones that they discovered. So now it was confirmed that the girl didn't die of an external wound.

"What do you guys think caused this?" Ash asked the group. No one really had an answer.

"What about her relatives, where they like that?" Josh asked the new group.

"From what I know, she was alone when she joined the group in the police station. She did mention that her parents had turned during the early days of the apocalypse and she had been on the run with her boyfriend." The teenage girl, Angelica, was the one who said this. She had her younger brother tucked safely behind her as if protecting him from predators The others didn't know much about her. Angelic had gotten along with Fiona as they were closer in age than the rest of them. Everyone looked at her expectantly and this made the girl startled and went quiet right away.

"Did she say where her boyfriend was?" Ash coaxed her softly seeing that she was scared of the group of large men and women who looked fierce with their weapons out.

"She said that he was scratched by a Zombie while they were escaping. So, she had been hiding and taking care of him for a few days until he started showing signs of turning so it was under his instruction that she left him behind and came looking for help. She was crying for several days while she was here" As soon as she stopped something clicked in Ash's mind.

"We will See if there is anyone else similar to her" Noah said and the group started looking around at ones. While they were at it, they picked up all the guns they could find. But in the end, there no one else like it. Everyone else had some kind of injury on them.

Rhys could see that everyone was getting nervous about the things they didn't know. From their perspective, any one of them could already be infected and a possible threat. This was throwing the morality of the team into chaos. "Let's forget about this for now. We will think about this again when we get back at the camp. Let's pack everything up and be on our way. We don't have daylight to waste if we are to check out the last location."

Soon after everyone packed up the guns and spare ammo form the shelves and carried them to the Jeeps. The killed the Zombies that had gathered outside without much effort on their way. Although the other issue was still weighing down on everyone's mind, they decided to think happy thoughts for now and be vigilant on the road. After 50 minutes on the road, they stopped at the boarders of the new town and found a place to crash for the night. They picked a farm with not a house in sight for miles in both directions, and settled in. The animals on the farm were mostly raised without much restraining so they were still wandering around freely in the large fields. It ensured that they didn't die off without their farmers around.

Soon after they settled in Josh went out to catch some of the chickens for their dinner and two others joined him. Some others went out in search for firewood while others started picking spots for sleeping and Rhys was deciding on the watch duty. Seeing everyone busy, Ash went over to Anne who was sitting there as if she had lost her soul. She was tied to a pole inside the farmhouse for good measures in case she turned while they slept.

"Hey" he softly said so as to not startle her. She glanced at him and gave him a halfhearted smile. "I heard you got hurt. Do you want me to dress the wound?"

Seeing his good intentions Anne responded "Its better if you don't approach casually. Especially now that there is a question on how the virus is being transmitted. I could be infected, and I don't want to give it to you as well."

He sat down next to her and sighed. "Indeed, it seems like everyone is a bit on edge." He said as he saw a few of the others throw him worried glances since he was sitting so close to Anne. "I am really good at noticing Zombie inflicted wounds and normal wounds. I can help you see if you are in fact infected." Ash persuaded after a short pause. Of course, he had no such skills. But he could heal wounds and by the wound heal rate he could determine if it was infected or not. Furthermore, he had a feeling he should see if he could heal the virus. If so, he would be an invaluable asset to the people.

Anne hesitated for a bit and then stretched out her hand for him to take a look. Ash softly pressed on the edges of the wound and injected a tiny bit of his healing power onto the cut. Due to the cells trying to regenerate and rekindle, Anne hissed out in pain. She shot Ash a glance wondering if he was indeed trying to help her or try to torture her. Although she wanted to curse at him, seeing the serious look on his face she decided to stay quiet.

As he had guessed, the wound was indeed infected she must have been scratched before she was pushed. His eyebrows came together in a frown.

"What is it?" Anne asked seeing the change.

"Shhh" he pressed bit more of his power into the wound. These were scratch wounds that he could heal with a wave of his hand before but right at that moment it was more stubborn than the most difficult surgery. He could feel cold sweat start to form on his forehead and his energy was being drained ceaselessly. Finally, the wound started to respond to his excessive input of energy. But instead of healing up like it was supposed to, it started bleeding.

Seeing the scratch on her hand start to bleed profoundly, Anne was shocked. She wanted to push him away so that he wouldn't make things worse but feeling her intentions Ash said, "Don't worry this will help the wound heal." Although she wasn't convinced, she started feeling like something had lifter from her chest. Her body started feeling lighter. So, something he was doing must be right. After a moment the blood flow slowed down and Ash took out some bandages and started wrapping the wound up messily.

"You are alright now. It's not infected so you will be fine." Anne chuckled when he finished and patted him heavily on the back before saying "Thank you doctor" Although she didn't trust his words, she was willing to humour him. She needed to be kept in quarantine for 3-5 days before anything could be decided. She started thinking about the options that they had for infected people at the camp. Either wait and see or be disposed of at a remote location.

Ash just smiled slightly before he excused himself to go and take some rest. As soon as his head hit the mattress he passed out. He was completely drained both physically and mentally. all the running today during the day along with the constant alertness and stress mixed with fear was on one end of the scale and then right now healing Anne was another huge strain on him. Just to take out a tiny amount of the virus from a recently infected person made him collapse to this extend. He didn't want to know what would happen to him if he tried to cure a more later stage infection. Even after exerting all that energy he wasn't able to destroy the virus, but to flush it out. In the end he didn't have any strength to close up the wound either. But now that he thought about it, maybe it's for the best. It was just a gut feeling but maybe it would be better if no one knew of his ability.

Unknown of him, a pair of dark eyes were watching him from afar throughout his interaction with Anne and it followed him until he collapsed on the mattress.