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Jaime winces at your suggestion. "You just want to go out there without a plan? That's crazy. We will be shot."

You stand and deepen your voice. "I'm tired of waiting around here and letting that sniper think we're afraid. We'll go out there and scope the area and figure things out when the idea comes to us."

"Alright, let's do it," Jaime says, determination on his face.

He pushes the front door open, and you walk back out onto the sidewalk. The bodies remain scattered in the street. Silence hangs in the air, but the tension is palpable. Jaime swings his gun around wildly, looking for the slightest sign of movement. You too scan the surroundings, but without a clear sense of which direction you should be looking in, you have a difficult task ahead of you.

"I'll watch back the way we came," Jaime says. "I think you should watch the buildings and then take a look down the way we were headed."

Then, you hear that dreadful series of sounds again. One. Two. Three. A metallic clang, a snap, and a booming echo.

Jaime jumps and you spin towards him. "Oh God!" Jaime shouts, checking himself for wounds despite appearing perfectly fine. "That flew right next to me. I could feel the wind on my ear." At this distance, without something to help you see better, you can't make anything out. Since you're looking for a human assailant, thermal goggles are your best option. You pull them over your eyes and scan the buildings. First you scan the far side. Cold dark blues dominate your vision, though a few of the corpses on the opposite sidewalk appear a dull green, as if they're still losing body heat.

Next, you scan the buildings on your side of the street. Scanning the area next to you with your thermal goggles, you don't see anything that stands out. Most everything is a dull dark blue. Then, a flash of orange catches your eye, in the window of a hunting shop. You could have sworn it was a humanoid figure, a hand even, and not a clawed one like the infected have. As soon as it pops into view, it's gone.

You take the goggles off.

Jaime ducks behind a trashcan, leaving you standing in the middle of the street. In that moment, standing in the open, out of cover, you…