Daniel jumped on to the roof of the Humvee and started shooting. He was yelling at us to get out of the car. “Run! Go!”

At first I was reluctant to leave the relative safety of the Humvee. But then I figured it was out of fuel, it was useless. And even though it was built like a tank and practically indestructible and zombie proof, we had to go. We just had to.

I opened my door and pulled Maria out with me. We started running. I had no idea where Jack or Kenji were. Daniel was still on the roof of the Humvee. He was still shooting. But a few seconds later he ran out of ammo. So he jumped down and ran after us.

As I looked back over my shoulder, I saw Daniel sprinting, trying to catch up with us. And beyond him I saw Jack. He had made it down the side of the garage. He was trying to climb up and over the fence of the car yard. The fence was a chain link style fence, maybe twenty feet high. Jack had made it about half way up when an infected woman wearing a blood soaked Burger King uniform grabbed his leg. He was kicking and trying to pull himself free and get higher up the fence, desperately trying to get away. Luckily, the infected woman only had one arm. The other one had been ripped off at the elbow and her head was bent back at an awkward angle, so she couldn’t really reach up and bite him.

Daniel caught up with us as he was reloading.

I pushed Maria into his arms. “Take her!” I said. Actually, it was more like I ordered him.

Next to me was an old tractor tire. It was worn down so it had barely any tread left. I picked it up with ease, thankful for the increased strength the NBC suit provided. I swung the tire around with two hands, spinning in a circle and then released it, launching it at the infected woman wearing the blood soaked Burger King uniform.

It hit her in the side, right in her ribcage. I heard a sickening crack as she fell to the ground. Jack continued to climb up and over the fence.

Once he was over and climbing back down the other side, I pointed out to the main road, back towards the golf course. “Meet us out there!”

He nodded his head and gave us the thumbs up. Surprisingly, he seemed pretty calm and collected despite his near death experience. It made me wonder how many close calls they’d had while I was back in LA, in the luxury of the penthouse suite. How long did a person have to live in constant danger before they became used to it?

Daniel grabbed my shoulder and started pulling me towards the road. “Come on! We gotta go!”

“Wait! Where is Kenji?” I asked.

I was running backwards, trying to spot him, trying to see where he was. Did he get out in time? Where was he?

And then I saw him.

He had somehow scrambled and climbed up one of the stacks of flattened cars. He was at the very top. He looked down and saw the infected trying to climb up after him. Then he looked across and saw Jack climbing down the fence on the other side of the garage. Jack had stopped half way down and was yelling out to Kenji, waving him forward.

Kenji jumped across from the stack of cars on to the garage, landing with a loud clang on the metal roof. He began running to the other side, each footstep louder then the next with his big heavy army boots.

For a split second I thought he was going to make it easily, that he and Jack would climb down the fence together and meet us out on the road.

But then that giant spider thing crawled to the entrance of the garage. It started to come towards us. It climbed over the Humvee, its legs completely wrapping around the vehicle. It was weird, the spider thing appeared to be made of car parts and scrap metal. Sort of like the other sculptures.

But then it paused. It stopped, turned. It was almost like it had heard Kenji running across the roof. And then with deceptive speed and power it reached up with one of its legs and punched through the roof, knocking Kenji off his feet, missing him by the slimmest of margins.

The spider thing then punched another one of its legs through the roof and pulled itself upwards, climbing up to the ceiling of the garage.

Kenji tried to get to his feet but the whole structure began to sway. He stumbled to his knees but then fell over on to his side and began sliding down the roof. He fell off, landing on his back with a thud on the dirt ground.

The garage continued to sway. The spider was climbing around, upside down on the ceiling. But it was too heavy. The roof collapsed, the walls, everything. The whole garage came crashing down. Dust and dirt billowed up into the sky. The spider was buried, at least for the moment.

I ran back for Kenji. I didn’t really think. I just acted. I jumped over the rubble and wreckage of the garage. I picked Kenji up, got him to his feet.

He was coughing, trying to catch his breath.

I put his arm around my neck and we ran back towards the road. But I looked up and froze.

A group of infected had survived the collapse of the garage, they were running after Daniel and Maria. Daniel was low on ammo, so they ran. They had to. Maria tried to come back for us, but Daniel grabbed her and pulled her along.

There was just too many infected running after them.

A split second later, Daniel and Maria disappeared around the corner of the fuel station.

Kenji and I had to find another way back out to the road.

“Climb over!” Jack shouted from the other side of the fence.

He was crouched down next to a building on the other side, hiding next to a bunch of garbage cans.

I looked at Kenji. He was in bad shape. “Can you climb?”

He nodded. I think he knew he didn’t have a choice.

We started climbing over the fence. And beneath the rubble of the garage, beneath the metal roof and walls, we could hear that spider thing trying to get to its feet.

I got to the top of the fence and helped Kenji over. Once we were on the other side, we sprinted back towards the road. Our plan was to get back to the safety of the golf course.

But as we ran out on to the middle of the road, we saw something that made us all stop dead in our tracks. To our left, about half a mile down the road, were thousands of infected. They were stumbling out from a hidden tunnel somewhere.

There’s no way we could run down there without being spotted. We turned to the right but again, about half a mile down the road, more and more infected were appearing out of a hidden tunnel. The whole thing reminded me of an ant’s nest. Like angry, angry ants, pouring out from an underground nest to attack and defend their home.

“What the hell? Where are they coming from?” I asked in disbelief.

Kenji was hunched over trying to catch his breath. When he saw the infected, he straightened up, wincing as he did. He shouldered his rifle but even as he readied himself to fire he knew there was no point. We had nowhere near enough ammunition.

Running.

Hiding.

Again, these were our only options.

Jack swore and ran his hands through his hair. “Oh no. Oh crap. I can’t believe I forgot! I didn’t even think...”

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“There’s a tunnel, an underground road way. The Eastern Distributor. It leads all the way from the city. The road is directly below us. Whole stretches of it are underground. We gotta go!”

We ran across the road. In the middle of the road was a raised median strip, a divider that separated the north bound and south bound lanes of traffic. The divider also served as sort of a sunroof for the tunnel below. And as we ran past it, we could see through the metal slates of the sunroof. Each slate was a few feet apart. Underneath the road, inside the tunnel, was a river of infected. They were all moving in one direction. They were all moving with one single purpose.

We kept going. Straight ahead, directly across the road from the fuel station, was the IKEA store. It was part of a huge, long rectangular shaped building. According to the massive billboard next to the building it was a ‘home maker’ super center. Next to the IKEA was a bedding store. The sign for the bedding store read; ‘Heavenly Beds. Sleep like the dead’. That was unnerving to say the least. At the far end of the rectangular building was a hardware store. The whole building was like a customer friendly warehouse.

It was our only option. We couldn’t go left, we couldn’t go right. And we certainly couldn’t turn around.

We ran to the entrance of the IKEA but it was locked.

Kenji shouldered his rifle and aimed it at the door. “Stand back,” he said. “And cover your eyes.”

“No, wait!” I shouted.

“What?”

“Save your bullets.”

He lowered his gun.

I stepped forward and kicked out with my right foot and the entire door broke off its hinges.

We made our way into the labyrinth that was the IKEA store.

Behind us, we could hear the screaming howl of thousands of infected. They were angry and hungry and relentless.