He watched Matt and Susan stand and walk to the house. Seconds later they were followed by another man, a soldier that Zack remembered from before...Mac. He drained a can of beer and said something to two younger people still sitting then turned to the house. He recognized the teenaged boy as David, but the dark haired young woman sitting next to him was a stranger. He watched Mac close the back sliding door of the house. Zack looked up to the third floor; there was no sign of the woman who had been on sentry duty. But he could hear the sound of crying from up there, at least two people.

He looked back to David and the girl. They were talking. Zack couldn't make out their words but he defiantly heard his own name spoken by the boy. Now the boy was crying and the girl was holding him. Zack could smell their tears; almost taste their salty tang in the air. The faintest grumbling of hunger pulled at his stomach but he pushed it away. A new scent had caught his nostrils. The girl, he could smell her sex as she became aroused, the pheromone enticing him...stirring him. Zack crawled a few feet forward, the fire in his blood coming alive at the scent of the woman's arousal. They were locked in a kiss. Zack crawled a few more steps closer. He was past the beach and onto the tall grass of the back lawn. Its thick scent wafted through his nostrils, heavy and pungent, but underneath it he could still smell the woman. During his metamorphosis his genitals had not disappeared, they had simply retracted into his abdomen and were covered by a shield of bone and muscle; but they were perfectly extractable, and fully functional. Vile, perverted visions of how he would ravage her body before he ate her brains swam through his mind as he crawled closer...closer.

David and the woman broke their embrace and walked toward the house. Zack curled his legs underneath him, preparing to pounce. His blood hammered in his ears, his erection painfully hard. His hunger had returned as a gaping hole in his stomach that couldn't be sated. The prey was over one hundred feet away and less than twenty feet from the house, but he knew he could overtake them. He flexed his muscles and began forward for the kill when he suddenly felt the dog's psychic presence touch his mind, zero in on him and lock on like radar.

Zack raised his head and peered around. He could sense the dog coming from the forest, less than one hundred yards away. He let out a low snarl and quickly slithered back into the water. He was one hundred feet out when the dog come running up to the waters edge, staring at him. Zack met its stare, noting the keen intelligence in the Black Labs eyes. For several long seconds they stared one another down, the mental electricity between them rising to a sizzling charge. It let out a loud bark, and a psychic blast of ferocity came with it. Zack easily deflected it with his own mind shield, but the point was made never the less. If given a chance, the dog would kill him. It would tear out his throat and his guts and his balls and his-- Movement from the third floor sentry post! Two figures: both of them carrying rifles. One of them activated a searchlight, the 6" wide beam lancing through the darkness as high into the sky as Zack could see. The beam swung across the water, arcing for his position. He quickly and quietly slipped beneath the water, sinking several feet down. As the powerful light played over the surface above, Zack felt his natural defensive instincts emerging, and his cautious apprehension was quickly replaced by deadly resolve. Visions of mating and feeding on the girl flashed through his mind again, followed by more rampant bloodshed as he ran through the house, slaughtering all of them before they knew what was co-- STOP!.

He closed his eyes and sank deeper, struggling to regain control of his raging temper. If only the growing hunger in his gut would cease its endless gnawing! The beam from the searchlight was still sweeping the waters surface above, and he could still sense the dog there at the waters edge.

Zack admitted defeat.

He turned and swam south, staying within twenty feet of the shore. After two hundred feet he surfaced for air, dove underwater again and swam another two hundred feet, swimming close enough to shore to stand up out of the water.

He was surprised to see a dozen zombies staggering north along the beach. As soon as he emerged from the water they turned and started to lumber towards him.

'BACK!'.

He held his hand palm out as he gave the mental command. The drones instantly turned away and continued along their former path.

Zack felt out with his senses. Besides these drones there were another fifty stumbling about deeper into the woods. And they were all moving north, towards Matt.

Another scent caught his nose, a rustle in the darkness grabbing his ears, a swish in the shadow alerting his eyes. There was a man out there, moving among the zombies. For a moment Zack thought it might be a superzombie but he would have sensed its psychic vacuum. He reached out for a gentle mind scan but surprisingly his mind was blocked with white noise. He probed harder but the static resistance increased in intensity, annoying more than paining him. He cut the scan and sniffed the air again to make sure he had identified the scent properly... Yes, it was definitely a man. His hunger suddenly flared, and he found himself licking his lips. Crouching low to the ground, Zack moved into the forest, becoming one with the darkness...

Chapter 42.

Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Rainbow Lake, UT 12:03 AM.

Matt came awake to the sound of gunfire and for a moment he just lay there, staring into the darkness, thinking it was all a dream. Then he heard a gunshot... And another... And another...Susan was already sitting up in bed beside him. He glanced at the clock. Just past midnight. He'd been asleep less than two hours. Another gunshot. He could also hear a dog barking furiously.

"Deja vu..." Matt muttered aloud, pulling on his pants and grabbing his gun. Susan chuckled from the other side of the bed. Just as they finished dressing they heard screaming coming from inside the house! Moments later there came a pounding on the bedroom door.

"MATT! SUSAN! ZOMBIES IN THE PERIMETER!" It was Mac. "ZOMBIES IN THE PERIMETER!"

"WE'RE COMING!" Susan hollered back. Matt opened the door and ran down the hall. They had taken a bedroom on the first floor, near the master bedroom. He came out of the hall into the foyer. A wide, carpeted stairwell leading upstairs was straight ahead, the kitchen and sliding doors to the deck on his left, the main living room to his right. Mac stood in the open sliding glass doorway, his M-16 shouldered. He began firing into the back yard as Matt and Susan came up behind him. Matt looked over Mac's shoulder onto the deck. Someone had turned on the back deck lights, and under the bright halogen glare Matt could see zombies pouring out of the forest to the south of the house. Mac dropped three of them in quick succession before looking back at Matt and Susan.

"How did they find us?" he asked Matt with a bitter smile.

How indeed? Matt looked out the door again; the nearest zombie was just forty feet away. He started to step out onto the deck when he saw a flash from somewhere in the forest and before he could register what saw he heard the bullet whiz past his head. It smashed into the back wall of the kitchen. He saw another flash just as he registered what the first one was. Another bullet zipped by, this one sounding closer than the last.

"Take cover!" He managed to blurt and pushed Susan away from the door as he fell to the floor for cover.

Another bullet shot through the open door into the kitchen. It chewed into the bar, sending a spray of wood splinters across the kitchen. Matt quickly crawled to Susan. Still holding his ground, Mac returned fire, his face set into a grim sneer. Between shots Matt could hear the dog barking.

"Into the garage." Matt said. They crawled across the kitchen and opened the garage access door on the back wall. The garage was dark and quiet and smelled of motor oil and WD-40. "There's a tool room in the back with a door and window that looks onto the deck."

They entered the tool room and looked out the window. There were at least thirty zombies lying dead on the lawn but more of them were still stumbling out of the forest. Matt looked to the left, searching for Mac, but he was no longer visible in the sliding patio door.

Susan slid the window open and stuck the barrel of her weapon out, sighting on a zombie. She closed one eye, and squeezed the trigger, watching the zombies head come apart like a melon. A smile spread across her face and she targeted another.

Matt moved to the back door and opened it up, stepping far enough back so to be unseen by anyone in the forest. But right now he didn't need worry about anyone in the forest because there was a pair of deadfucks standing right outside the door!

Matt let out a small yelp of surprise and raised his weapon. The two zombies looked at him and raised their arms in excitement; one of them even appeared to be smiling. Matt snapped off a quick shot that caught the lead zombie in the throat, sending it stumbling back onto its ass. The second zombie took one step into the garage before Matt put a 5.56 MM shell right through its forehead. It fell back, arms spread wide as the first zombie slowly climbed to its feet, oblivious to the gaping bullet hole where its throat used to be. Matt quickly put a bullet through the side of its head, blowing off the better part of its skull and dropping it to the ground. Matt stepped over the corpses to the doorway, took aim and killed another. And another.

It was over in less than a minute.

As quickly as it had begun, the flood of zombies from the woods stopped.

Matt nodded to Susan and slowly stepped out the door onto the back patio deck. She moved to the door to cover him. He looked to his left and saw Mac step out of the cement stairwell at the north end of the deck. Matt kept his gun trained on the forest.

"I saw a sniper." Jennifer called from the third floor balcony. "I took a couple of shots but I don't know if I got him or not."

"Maybe it was a superzombie?" David said from the second floor balcony. Samantha and Scott stood beside him.

"Maybe it was Zack?" Mac said.

"I haven't seen the flash of his gun since I fired at him. Hopefully I nailed the son of a bitch right between the eyes." Jennifer said.

"If it's a superzombie it won't matter." Susan said.

"You'd figure a superzombie would attack." Mac said. "It knows it's fairly indestructible and it could easily charge the house and engage us."

"They're not that stupid." Matt said. "Unless they got plenty of zombies to back them up they don't like to get too close." Matt scanned the forest. The dog ran up to the tree line and began to bark, jumping and running back and forth.

"There's something still out there." Rick said from the third floor.

"Can you see anything?" Matt asked.

"I can't see shit."

Suddenly a loud, high-pitched scream sounded from the forest, shattering the silence. The scream continued higher and higher, rising in pitch until it stopped abruptly.

"That sounded like a man! No human could have survived in those woods with that many zombies about!" Susan said incredibly.

The dog continued to run back and forth at the tree line, barking and snarling.

"Look there!" Rick hollered and pointing the flashlight into the tree's twenty yards out from the house. Something flew out of the forest and plopped heavily to the ground. Large, and dark, it rolled across the lawn several yards before coming to rest near the edge of the cement deck. Zeke, the black lab was on it in an instant, sniffing and growling.

"What is it?" several voices asked at once. Rick played the beam of light across the lawn, trying to get a good look around the dog.

"ZEKE!" Scotty called. "GET AWAY FROM THERE!" The dog instantly scampered away, turning back to the forest and took up barking again. Rick focused the beam of light onto the dark, bowling ball size object.

It was a human head!

It was lying on its side, right cheek down. The face was constricted in a mask of pain, the mouth pulled back into a ragged scream. Its glazed eyes reflected the beam of the flashlight. Luckily for all that the ragged, bloody stump of the neck was facing away.

"We should all get back inside." Mac said. "There may be a superzombie out there right now watching us." Nobody objected to that.

Matt quickly stepped back into the tool room and closed the door. He and Susan hurried back through the garage and into the kitchen. Mac was already there. Rick came in from the hallway stairwell. A few moments later David and Samantha walked in. Matt noticed they were holding hands. He smiled. Good for David.

"Mom is with the kids." David said.

"Scott and Jennifer are keeping watch upstairs." Rick said.

"I'll keep watch here." Mac said, taking a position by the sliding glass doors.

Matt wanted to tell him that if a superzombie still was out there he was standing in a perfect line of sight, but figured that Mac already knew that and kept quiet. Perhaps he was trying to tempt the bastard into shooting? The dog ran up to the door and lay down, tail wagging.

"How could a man have been out there among all those zombies?" Susan asked.

"Maybe he was up in a tree." David said.

"What the hell was he doing out there?" Rick asked.

"Maybe it was our neighbors from down the way?" David said. "Maybe they were waiting for nightfall to come check us out?"

"You got an answer for everything, don't you kid?" Rick said with annoyance.

"Maybe I do." David shot back. Rick made to retort but Matt cut in.

"David might be on to something." Matt said. "Whoever lives over there appeared hostile. They saw us fly over here then a little while later they saw the chopper leave, come back and leave again." Matt continued. "They probably sent someone over to see if we were still here."

"Makes sense..." Mac said.

"But what about the zombies?" Samantha asked.

"Some of them probably lived here on the lake before..." Matt paused uncomfortably. "Or they wandered up from town. The guy was already in the tree checking us out or the zombies came along and he climbed up in the tree."

"So it probably was a superzombie that killed him." Mac said. "It may have been leading the other deadfucks to us and spotted the guy up in the tree."

"For all we know the poor bastard killed more of them out there in the woods." Rick said.

"Maybe it was Zack that got him." Susan suggested.

"I hope not. If that was Zack we saw this morning I hope he fled far away from here." Matt said.

"I guess I should contact Jenkins and let him know what happened." Rick said.

"He's got his own problems down in Park City." Mac said without turning away from the back doors. "We have everything under control."

Matt thought he detected a bit of hostility towards Jenkins in Mac's tone, but said nothing. Jenkins was an asshole.

"Tomorrow morning we can round those bodies up and burn them down by the water."

"I'll keep watch down here." Mac said. "I'm up for the night and the dog will sound the alarm if anything tries to sneak up on us. The rest of you should try to get some sleep."

Without much fuss everybody drifted back to there rooms. Rick returned to the Third floor balcony where his wife stood watch. Alone in the kitchen with only the dog, Zeke for company, Mac pulled a can of coffee from the cupboard and set about making a fresh pot...

Chapter 43.

Tuesday June 26, 2001 Park City, UT 8:14 AM.

Jenkins face involuntarily cringed as he peered through the thick Plexiglas window of the quarantine chamber and beheld the...Thing inside.

The thing Ron had become.

The skin was mottled black and green, more fungus than flesh, peppered with boils and blisters that oozed a bloody, viscous liquid. And if one looked close, they could see it still retained a vague, humanoid appearance. The blasted head was a swollen, corpulent bulb of putrid flesh. The eyes, nose, mouth were gone, replaced by a sprouting bunch of thin, slime-covered tentacles a foot long that wriggled in the air. The arms and legs were reed thin and spread wide, the fingers and toes elongated and spread across the floor of the room like pulsating, rotten vines. The entire torso was bloated at least five times its normal size, the flesh stretched balloon tight like a massive overripe fruit until it began to crack in some places, oozing bloody infection into an expanding pool beneath the things body.

"And you are sure Ron is dead?" Jenkins heard the disgust in his own voice.

"Quite sure Colonel Jenkins." Answered the Mad Doctor. That was Jenkins name for the hyperactive, anal-retentive doctor he'd been dealing with since first coming to Park City two days ago. Looking at him, Jenkins realized how much this bastard actually fit the part. He was tall but thin as a rail with long dark hair, wire-rimmed glasses over wide, intense eyes that were constantly probing, analyzing. He wore a white lab coat, brown slacks and black shoes.

"What has he become?" Jenkins turned back to the horror in the specimen room.

"Our tests indicate that it is a malignant strain of the Alpha virus, mutating...evolving...-"

"We've heard all of this before Doctor Cooper." General Parker interrupted. He stood beside Jenkins, peering into the room, his fleshy face a sour mask of distaste. "What is it?"

The doctor was silent for several moments before answering. "We do not know."

"You've got to at least have a few ideas." Jenkins said. The military command running Park City might be inept fools but this doctor seemed pretty smart, mad as a hatter, but still smart. The doctor didn't answer Jenkins question. He just looked into the specimen chamber with an intense, fascinated stare.

"Dr. Cooper?" General Parker asked sharply.

"Yes...some theories." The doctor didn't take his eyes off the creature as he spoke.

"DR. COOPER!" The General snapped. The doctor jumped at the Generals bark, cringing away, his large eyes growing even larger.

"General? I assur-"

"SHUT UP!" The General barked back. The doctor cowered away, shivering in fear. The Generals angry mask melted back to his flat monotone. "You will give Colonel Jenkins and me your undivided attention. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir." The doctor replied meekly.

"Good. Now I believe Colonel Jenkins had a question for you?" The General turned to Jenkins, indicating that he should speak.

"You've got to have some idea as to what that thing in there is."