Recovery

I was awoken the next day by a loud groaning noise that appeared to be coming from the bottom gate of the centre near the old newspaper shop, I remember going there to pick up my monthly "Nuts!" magazine and now it was just a destroyed building from the looting and the owner was most probably dead or worse, one of the infected.

It wasn't until I started thinking of how things have changed that you really started to miss the people you never really got to know.

I sat near the gate looking at the undead faces of shop keepers, street cleaners, students, adults, parents and even police officers that were relentlessly attacking the gate, never tiring as if their brain was just stuck in limbo, trying to get inside.

It was upsetting knowing that at night we would have to go back to sleeping with one eye open since we lost the park.

I often blamed myself for what happened, if it weren't for my generosity in letting Dan's group stay we would have still had our home.

Josh placed his hand on my shoulder and sat down next to me, passing me a bread roll.

"Worried about Gabe are you man?" He asked, shifting his body, making himself comfortable on the rock hard floor.

"Something like that" I replied, slowly taking a bite into the bread. "It's just everyone we've lost, they've all died from decisions I had made... Maybe this group needs a leader, I don't think I'm cut out for the position and I am not going to be responsible for another death."

Josh took his hand off my shoulder, placed both hands on the floor and stood back on his feet.

"Gabe will be fine man, he's tough. Maybe he got side-tracked and had to spend the night somewhere else. Come join us, everybody is waiting for you at the back gate."

Josh picked up his bat, lifted it over his shoulder and began walking away to join the rest of the group. After a moment of gathering my thoughts together I decided to join him, stood up and walked over to join them.

To my surprise they were all sat down laughing and telling stories of who they were before the outbreak.

"Well, as you guys know I'm David's brother Danny. Before the infection I was just a college dropout taking on work placements from a small company in Merthyr Tydfil. I play the guitar as often as I can to improve my skills and I consider myself pretty talented at it too. God I miss sitting in my room, rocking out a guitar solo to a backing track of Sweet Child O' Mine. I thought everything was lost when this nightmare began; I had to stay behind late with my work placement when the evacuation began and that's when I bumped into Eric and his group. They agreed to help me find David so here I am. "

"What about you Eric?" Danny asked placing his arms behind his head and leaning against a wall.

"Well, I just got here from America with Paola and Keir. It seemed like a nice place to go on holiday, but I got placed here for work. Before the outbreak we had only just arrived, Paola was in University hoping to apply for one here in the UK, Keir was still in school, Taylor was a part of a task squad, canine division and then assigned to take control of the ground zero and me... I was working part-time as a mechanic for a garage near the hospital."

"Wait... Hope Street Hospital?" I asked leaning towards him slightly.

"Yes, the hospital reported on the news. The guy that attacked the reporter was..."

Eric went silent and lowered his head.

"I was in town it was a normal day, I went to watch the football game. When I came back I went to the store. The cashier started acting weird, grabbing my hand and wouldn't let go. I was unsure at the time what he was trying to do. I left in a hurry after paying for the snacks I went there to buy... That's when I almost hit this guy, walking across the road; I swerved the car smashing into an old phone booth down the road. Furiously Kendrick stepped out of the car and stabbed him he always had a very short fuse and always looked for any excuse to fight. The guy just kept coming towards him and... and... he just started fucking eating him alive." Eric explained with tears in his eyes. "I managed to get the attacker off of him and took Kendrick to the hospital, I was waiting outside when all of a sudden everything went fucking crazy. I heard screaming coming from the ward and ran to find Kendrick, eating a nurse. That's when I ran, leaving the building. All kinds of reporters started showing up, armed police and everything."

Eric picked up an old T-Shirt from the pile of clothes we had been using for warmth and wiped his eyes.

Holy shit, the whole situation was a lot more terrifying hearing it from someone who was actually there that saw it all.

"Well, that's enough storytelling for now guys, Eric take a break. Danny, Josh you come with me. We're going to look for Gabe" I instructed, placing my Glock back into my belt and taking a metal pole that was a part of a construction set for a children's slide.

We left through the back gate and placed Eric in charge of the camp. I asked him to close the gates if we weren't back by 11:30pm, though I wasn't sure how we would know that since none of us had watched and there was no way to charge our phones.

The infected on our side of the gate were cleared out to make a safe return path for Gabriel, so it would be pretty safe by now for us to leave through.

We got to the old Library building just next to the police station that was shut a few months ago to open a new branch on the other side of town, Eric's group had already stockpiled all the weapons from the building that they could scavenge,

We stopped to listen to any sound that could lead us to Gabriel. After all Tredegar was a big town, he could have been anywhere. The only lead we had at that moment was to retrace our steps, enter the park and search for him, hoping Dan would have left the area looking for us. We heard nothing from him all night, no gun shots to take out the grunts in the area, no screams, nothing.

Maybe Gabe found him and has taken him hostage... Of course Gabriel being alive would be the best case scenario.

"I'm bored" Josh said waving his bat back and forth.

"When are we going to kill some grunts?" He asked growing impatient.

His lust for killing these things was starting to bug me. He was changing and not for the better.

We left the Library and headed down towards the garage outside of the park. We decided to check it out; the place was bound to have better weapons than we have now. Drills, hammers, wrenches, screw drivers, the list goes on. It would have been stupid not to at least go and scavenge what we could whilst we were there already.

"Alright, we don't know how many of them are around here, so be quiet, watch your step and don't do anything stupid." I warned, walking into the shop.

The place was like a goldmine of melee weapons, the guns were too loud and ammunition was impossible to come by, it's about time we had an upgrade.

"SHIT!" Danny shouted, falling backwards from a cabinet he had climbed on.

There was a huge crash of metal hitting the floor; it was loud enough to make our ears ring. There was no way the grunts in the area didn't hear that, or worse, Dan.

"Josh, get the door, barricade it with whatever you can. Danny you take the shutters, close them and lock them down." I quickly shouted, rushing to one of the cars that were left behind.

I smashed the window, took the handbrake off and rolled it backwards to block the entrance to the garage.

I could hear the infected surrounding the gateway; there were hundreds more than I had expected.

After I was sure they couldn't get past the barricade, I walked through the reception of the building and sat down in the office.

After barricading the rest of the building, Josh and Danny joined me.

"What the fuck are we going to do now?" Danny asked in a nervous tone.

"I don't fucking know, you got us into this." Josh replied, holding the bat to his side.

Suddenly from back towards the town gunshots started firing, we could hear bodies dropping to the floor one by one outside the gate. That was it Dan had found us hadn't he? This was going to be the moment he picked us off. We were sitting ducks.

I ran out of the office back into the main workshop of the garage and peaked over the top of the car I had used to block the doorway.

"Hey guys, are you comfortable in there?!" Eric shouted, firing his crossbow towards me.

One of the grunts came out of nowhere to the left of me, grabbing my arm and pulling me towards it... Suddenly a bolt pierced its eye, splashing blood on my face.

The eyeball was still attached to the bolt, causing Danny to throw up on the floor.

"You guys make an awful lot of noise you know that right?" Eric laughed, ripping the bolt from the grunt's head.

He was shortly joined by Taylor and Keir, walking behind them. I was glad to see that she had recovered so quickly. They must have left the others behind to come find us, I was relieved.

They took out a large number of the infected in the area, they didn't have the ammo to take the rest so we decided to sneak out the back door and work our way around them.

Josh had this psychotic look on his face. I could tell he was enjoying this more than he should be.

We left the garage through the back door and jumped over a slightly damaged metal fence and followed the river back towards the motorway.

"We're going to take the school entrance to the park, this seemed the most secure when we took it." Josh instructed pointing towards the school.

It was a good idea, there weren't any infected left in that area. I had no idea how many of them were still left in the park though. However, entering near the school could get us killed if Dan was still there.

This was a huge risk, but one we had to take. We didn't want to be out there any longer than we had to be. Josh and Eric went ahead to make sure there weren't any infected nearby. It made sense to send the two strongest members we had to scout ahead.

We entered the park, bodies of our group, were left on the floor. From the looks of them they were stabbed in the head, Gabe must have shown some kindness in not letting them come back.

The first I thought we should search was the house we were staying in. This house was huge and had a lot of rooms that Gabriel could have hidden in for cover. We could also scavenge for weapons and food that may have been left behind during the escape.

The fields were covered in blood, guts, bits of flesh and body parts from the grunts that had attacked us but there was no sign of Gabriel anywhere. We checked inside, room to room but there was trace of him anywhere.

Suddenly a long screech came from one of the doors, it was Nicole.

Well... it used to be Nicole, now it's nothing by a skin vessel piloted by a demon.

She began walking slowly towards us.

Josh raised his weapon ready to swing at her head the moment she got near enough. I lowered his arm and stepped towards her.

"What are you doing David?" Josh asked, looking confused.

I took the Glock from my belt and placed it against her forehead, pushing it as hard as I could to hold her back.

"She was one of us, a member of the group. She deserves to be put down quickly." I said taking the safety off. "Goodbye Nicole, thank you for your service in our community."

I looked away as I pulled the trigger, spraying blood over me as she dropped to the floor.

It never felt good to kill one of our own, well anyone really and the worst part was. If we had captured Dan, I would have still shown him mercy, despite his actions costing us our home and even our friends.

We continued searching the park, there was no sign of Gabriel anywhere or anyone to be precise I wondered if we were wasting our time. There was absolutely no way he would have stuck around.

We continued searching the area as we were doubling back towards the camp we had set up in town.

We had even checked the old abandoned ice house on the way out, thinking he could have used it as a hiding spot as it was small, secure and only had one entrance. Unluckily for us, he wasn't there.

We headed back towards the camp, keeping an eye out for him every step of the way.

"We should scavenge some of these houses at some point." Keir suggested, looking around. "Some of them are bound to have some supplies in them since everybody kind of died"

"We didn't actually think of that, but now I look around. Many of these houses were untouched; the owners may not have even been home when this happened." I replied, looking left and right as we passed the houses.

I reached into Danny's backpack and unscrewed the hinges on the door. This was the best way to get inside without making a lot of noise from both prying the door open with the bar and the door smashing open.

Once the hinges were off the door we slowly moved the door to one side and proceeded inside cautiously.

"HELLO!" Keir shouted, stood with his weapon at the ready.

There was no response, just silence in the house.

"Well... This house is empty" Keir laughed. "If there was anyone or anything in here, it would have came out from the sound of the noise."

This gave me an idea for the next time we go around houses scavenging for supplies. If we got a lot of those alarm clocks with the bells, we could throw them into buildings to draw the grunts out.

We checked the kitchen and found bags of crisps, loaves of bread, tinned food, tinned fruit, apples and snacks that were stored away in the cupboards. We had even found milk that had not yet gone out of date, squash and fizzy pop in the fridge.

This would be fine to last us for about a week, maybe two.

I decided to have the other group's search the houses over the next couple of days so we would have enough supplies to rebuild our community somewhere else and give us a fresh start away from the horrors we had faced, maybe even travel to Oxford and find my family.

Taylor dropped her back pack onto a table, unzipped it and started placing all the food she could fit inside. Once full she zipped it back up and hurled it over her back making a loud thump.

"Are you ok?" Keir asked, helping her adjust the bag.

"I'm fine" She smiled picking up her Glock and leaving the house to wait outside.

Once done with a full sweep of the house, we joined them outside and left back towards the camp. It was starting to get dark now as we were in winter and we wanted to be back whilst it was still light out.

"Where's Danny?" I asked looking around, trying to see if he was behind one of the back packs.

He was kind of short so it made sense that he could have been hidden by something taller than him.

"I'm over here and look what I found" He yelled as he came running out of the garden of the house on top of the hill carrying an axe.

"Fucking sweet!" Keir laughed patting him on the back, congratulating his find.

Taylor giggled to herself walking up the hill, followed by a scream as a hand grabbed her leg and pulled her to the ground from the drain near the pavement.

Dropping his bag, Danny took his axe and ran over to her aid.

"I was wondering when I would get to use this." He smiled, raising the axe in the air with both arms.

"GET THIS THING OFF ME!" She shouted shaking her leg rapidly.

I could see an approaching horde of infected walking towards us from the distance as they came around the corner of the street, attracted to the sound of her screams.

"STOP!" Eric shouted, grabbing Taylor under the arms and pulling her back giving Danny enough space between her leg and the arm. "Ok, get it"

Danny swung the axe down as hard as he could, tearing the flesh, breaking into the bone and severing the hand. The horde getting closer and closer every second,

Taylor leapt to her feet, retrieved her bag from the floor and hurried back to the camp with Danny, Eric, Josh and I quickly following behind.

We got back to the camp with the horde following very slowly behind us, closed the back gate and barricaded it shut whilst Eric placed his crossbow through the grates and began picking them off one by one.

Eventually he cleared the parking lot and re-opened the gate, taking guard once more to wait for Gabriel's return.

"January 12th 2014 – 12:00am

Today was bizarre; we left in an attempt to find Gabe in the park. Danny's stupidity got us all trapped inside the garage just outside of the bottom gates. We would have died there if Eric, Keir and Taylor hadn't come along to save us. I'm really worried about Josh, he seems to be enjoying this a lot more than he really should be, I'm worried that he will eventually want to take over the group.

I hope I am wrong, for both of our sakes.

On the positive side of things, Keir gave us a new plan when entering houses, so we're going to start gathering alarm clocks together to throw in ahead of us to lure the Grunts where they are thrown.

We found a lot of supplies that would last us until we find somewhere else to set up camp and restart our community once again. We're moving on soon to Ebbw Vale to start again; hopefully we'll be far away from any bandits and set up in a secure place away from all the Grunts.

I'll keep this journal updated, goodnight"

"David, wake up" Leah whispered, softly shaking my body.

I opened my eyes slowly and sat up. It was still early in the morning; the sun hadn't even started to come up.

"I heard gunshots when I was returning to bed after going to the toilet." She continued. "Do you think it could be Gabriel?"

"It's possible" I replied, standing up and putting my jacket on. "Let's go have a look"

I took Leah by the hand, picked up our weapons and signalled Eric that was still keeping guard to let us out.

This was the first time we have travelled anywhere in the night since it all began, it always seemed safer to do everything in the day, but if there was a chance that Gabriel was alive and those gunshots that Leah heard had actually came from him. It was worth going out and checking it out, if we were quiet.

On the bright side it wasn't pitch black darkness, the electricity was still running on most of the lamp-posts in the area, so we could still be careful and see if any of the grunts decide to come our way.

"Wait for me!" Tania shouted quietly, running towards us. "I'm coming too, you saved my life back at the school, it's the least I can do"

"Alright, but be careful. This is the first time we have ever travelled this way, we can't afford to be as reckless as we are in the day" I replied continuing towards the town.

"The shots sounded like they were coming from the Wetherspoons building just down the road from the clock." Leah stated, pointing her gun down the hill.

We continued toward the old restaurant Leah mentioned and saw a long line of infected bodies already taken out on the floor.

Leah kneeled down to check the point of entry the bullet entered the body to find the direction it had been fired from. She stood up after a few minutes and pointed to the inside of the building.

"Tania, knock the door we'll cover you." I whispered, taking my Glock from my side and pointing it towards the door.

"Hello?" Tania whispered through the letter box, knocking the door.

There was nothing but silence, it was possible that whoever was on the inside of the building was hiding or had even left by now.

Leah and I walked in first, not letting our guard down with Tania following behind with a combat knife she had borrowed from Keir.

"If anyone is in here and wants to come out now, you won't be harmed." I said, walking towards the bar. "We're just looking for a friend of ours."

Leah went ahead with Tania to check the farthest side of the restaurant as I went to check inside the kitchen. There were broken dishes, bloody footprints, old newspapers from the week before the infection took over, staff uniform covered in blood on the floor and in the store room there were two bodies with bullets in their heads sat side by side.

They must have decided to die rather than to face the horrible pain of being bitten by the grunts.

"I found something!" Leah shouted from the toilets.

I ran over to her to see what she had found. It was a guy, covered in blood and holding a small hunting rifle.

We had no choice but to assume that this is where the gunshots came from, he must have ran out of ammo and took himself out with the last bullet or maybe he saw something that made him give up.

"HELP!" Tania screamed, coming from one of the booths up the stairs.

When we had got there we found one of the grunts pinning her down.

We quickly hurried over to it to try and pull it off but Tania was flailing in panic, it was hard to get a good grip.

I reached over and grabbed the shirt it was wearing, yanking it as hard as I could to get the grunt off her, pulling the decaying flesh from the body.

Leah picked up the knife that Tania had dropped and drove it through the grunts skull.

The grunt went limp in Leah's arms and fell to the floor.

"Are you alright? " I said, holding my hand out.

"I think so." she replied, taking my hand and pulling herself to her feet.

Leah handed her the knife back and left to collect bottles of water from behind the bar.

I returned to the body of the guy that shot himself and picked up his air rifle, knowing the chances of finding ammo for it was extremely unlikely.

After a sweep of the restaurant we left to head back to the camp, disappointed that we couldn't find Gabe once more.

When we had returned to the camp, Leah placed the bottled water with the rest of the supplies and followed me back to our tent whilst Tania returned to her sleeping area inside the old fashion store.

The next morning we decided to place everyone into groups, then go and gather supplies from every house that hasn't already been cleaned out. There were a few people I wanted to get to know a little better so I took Taylor, Keir, Paola, Leah and Tania with me and sent Eric, Amy, Josh, Sean , Danny, Brittany and Tom in the other group.

Josh's group was assigned to go and search the houses towards Atlee Way, which was a small street heading up to the Texaco garage and a training centre people used to go to for multiple skills lessons like carpentry, house painting and mechanics. My group were headed down to Stable Lane and searched the houses in the Granary where I used to live.

We had agreed to all meet up at 3:00pm and join our groups to search the houses leading to Sirhowy, which was a large street at the top of a steep hill near the outskirts of town.

We were going to cover as much ground as we could today so we can leave Tredegar as soon as possible, this would give us the opportunity to find new communities or groups to join our own.

Staying here had brought us nothing but trouble and eventually we were going to be pushed further out anyway, we might as well leave on our own terms.

"So Tania, we found you hiding in the school not long after this all began but before that I've never even seen you before. Are you not from around here?" I asked, walking down the road towards the Granary.

"Actually I'm not from around here." She replied, taking a sip out of a bottle of water. "Before shit hit the fan I was a student in a school in Hereford. My parents took me to Ebbw Vale to meet up with family members. After the broadcast started on the news with the reporter being attacked and then the second broadcast telling us where the evacuation points were, we left for Tredegar to go to the comprehensive school. As you saw the school fell pretty quickly my group and I got separated, so I locked myself in the art room cupboard when you came along... I'm just glad you did."

"Well, we're glad we found you too Tania" Paola smiled, patting Tania on the back.

"What about you Paola?" I asked as we were walking towards one of the houses.

"Me, well I was in University at first studying Science. My aspiration is to go into law as a forensic scientist. I'm originally from Puerto Rico but decided to move here to the United Kingdom to study in a University closer to my boyfriend's home. When this began I was in a small group that decided to head into Wales and stay in Merthyr Tydfil due to it being isolated and wouldn't be as many people running around. After my boyfriend died I left my group in the middle of the night and bumped into Danny. I agreed to help him find his brother in Tredegar. Shortly after we met Eric and he agreed to help us." She explained.

Finally we had arrived at the Granary; we had decided to search the houses one by one to avoid anyone going in alone. We started at the top of the street and decided to work our way down towards the entrance before leaving to meet up with the group.

The first house we decided to check was my own; this was the top house of the area after all, I wanted to go here to get some photo albums I still had of my family.

Keir went to check the shed and found a crowbar underneath a few of the old bicycles that had either had a puncture or were just forgotten and never used again.

He dragged the crowbar out and joined us at the back door.

Keir raised his arms and very quickly brought the crowbar crashing through the window.

It made a huge shattering noise followed by silence, if there were any grunts in the area they would have heard that and come. Although the silence was relieving it also brought an extremely eerie feeling, sending shivers down my spine.

We began to head inside the living room, moving very quietly across the laminated floor.

Taylor stayed outside the door to guard it from any grunts that may be in the area. We needed to make sure we had an escape route in case things got bad and this seemed like the best way to go about it.

We headed up the stairs to the kitchen, we were only here for food and if there's any it would be there. I opened the cupboard where we usually keep the tinned food to find 6 packets of instant noodles and a can of tinned peaches, tangerines and tomato soup.

There wasn't a whole lot more except some frozen food that had defrosted and rotted in the freezer as I had forgotten to go shopping the day before the infection began.

"Wait here, there's something I need to go and get" I instructed walking up the stairs.

I wanted to find some of the old photo albums that my mother had been keeping up in the attic.

I pulled a box across from the stairway, stood on top of it, lifted the lid off and climbed up into the attic. It was dark and quiet up here with a few boxes around me. I began throwing them down onto the floor just outside the attic and climbed down to check them.

There were old papers, certificates, drawings that I had done as a child and old photo albums that I had originally been looking for.

I picked them up and started flicking through the pictures. It was nice to see how things used to be before this started and preserve the good memories to ensure I would not let this bad world change the person I was. I hoped the infection had not reached England yet and if it did that they managed to control it.

"DAVID!" Keir shouted from the bottom of the stairs. "It's Taylor... She's gone."

"What the fuck do you mean she's gone?" I panicked, jumping down from the attic and running down the stairs into the living room. "She was just outside the door."

"Paola and Tania went to find her, we heard a noise come from outside and by the time we got down the stairs to check what it was she was gone." Leah said, zipping up her backpack.

I had a horrible feeling that this could have been Dan's work. I didn't want to imagine what he would do to any member of our group if he had captured them. There was only one place we could check for her that he might have taken her and that would be the school. I was not fond of the idea of going back to that place. Especially after what happened the last time, we could have died. However now that I think of it, we're now living in a world where we risk our lives just by going outside our gates.

It's hard to face the sudden realization that eventually we're all going to end up dead here, the only thing we get to decide is what we do with our lives leading up to it.

Taylor was one of our own now, it was our duty to go and find her. I wouldn't even think about leaving her behind if there was a possibility that she may still be alive.

I could hear voices in the distance, but it didn't sound like they belonged to Paola, Tania or even Taylor for that matter.

"What the fuck are we doing? If their group finds them like this and us with them, we're going to be dead meat. Who knows how many people they have?" One of the voices spoke loudly in the distance.

"We're not going to kill them; we just need to have something to hold against them. If they're good people then hopefully we can explain this situation and join them." The other replied.

I took my Glock out, turned the safety off and started walking towards them whilst holding the gun up.

I signalled Keir and Leah to take the other side so we could surround them and take them by surprise.

"I don't like this Michael" One of the voices whispered as we were getting closer.

"Drop your weapons" I said quietly, walking out to the school gates.

Keir and Leah came out through the other side surrounding them. I could see Taylor's body unconscious on the floor with Paola and Tania's bodies tied to a post.

"Not so fast man." One of the voices that was earlier referred to as Michael said, putting the gun to Taylor's head.

"Stop it Michael!" the other guy said lowering his gun and placing it on the floor.

I walked closer, put my hand on Michaels's gun and pointed it down.

"Now, I'm a forgiving person. I won't ask why you took members of my group hostage but it wasn't a very clever idea." I said, signalling Keir and Leah to raise their guns.

"Now, explain yourselves."

"Look man, we're sorry. My names Jack this is Michael, it was his idea to take the girl standing outside hostage until the group showed up to collect her. We didn't know two more members where going to come find us, we didn't plan on taking those hostage. Michael suggested we have hostages to give us an advantage just in case you guys were bandits" Jack explained.

I signalled Leah and Keir to lower their weapons once more.

"We have a camp of about 13 people including us at the top of the mountain near the town. You're welcome to join us but you answer to me. We have food, supplies everything you need. We're moving on shortly so if you're not there by 12pm tomorrow, we're leaving without you. "I said, holding my hands out.

Leah and Keir walked up to them, took their guns and placed them in my hands.

"You will get these back, as soon as you arrive at our camp. In the meantime you can use these to take out grunts." I commanded, handing Jack a bat and Michael the Crowbar.

"Good luck!" Keir shouted, untying Paola and Tania then picking up Taylor and walking away.

"Oh and if you get someone pointing a crossbow in your face, tell him David sent you." I added walking away placing their guns in my bag and holstering my own back into my belt.

We finished our sweep of the houses, took what supplies we had left back to the camp and left to meet up with Josh's group near the church down Queen's street.

When we got there Josh's group had not arrived just yet, we were early so we thought nothing about it.

At 3pm there was still no sign of Josh's group anywhere, maybe they got held up and were going to be late so we decided to wait longer for them to arrive.

About an hour later Josh's group finally got there carrying bags full of supplies each.

"You did a good job then huh?" I laughed, standing up, taking Leah's hand and continuing down the road with our group.

"You have no idea, it looks like most people didn't think to take what food and water they could when they fled from their houses." Josh replied.

We stopped at the garage to scavenge for all the food that hadn't reached its expiration date.

We had also found some petrol cans behind the garage which we filled up in the event we would need fuel; we got plenty of it from a few pumps that weren't drained due to people fleeing from the infection. Mass panic gave them a total disregard for the law, so one of the first things to go was the fuel.

We continued up the road, the plan was to turn back when the supplies started overloading us.

We wanted to get whatever supplies we could manage before leaving to Ebbw Vale tomorrow morning.

"David, over here." Leah said in a quiet tone, pointing across the road.

There were a small horde of grunts walking towards us.

"Finally, I was getting bored." Josh said, looking excited and running over to them.

"He's been reckless this whole trip." Eric said running over to join him.

Josh swung his bat at the first one hard enough to knock its head clean off the shoulders and crushing it against the wall, causing splashes blood and brain to spill everywhere.

Eric took them out the more humane way, shooting them through the head with his crossbow and stabbing the others with a knife he had in the event his arrows ran out with no possible way of retrieval in time.

Tom used his assault rifle to take the rest out, hitting most in the eye and in the forehead.

Once we were clear we noticed a horde of the infected walking slowly towards us.

We decided to turn back so we wouldn't get over crowded and would be able to get back safely and more importantly alive.

"Could you imagine, after all this work and survival against the grunts if one of us died by tripping on a sausage and cracking our skulls open. That's what would take us out." Josh laughed.

"Well, you can slip on a sausage... but you can't trip on one." Tom replied, laughing with him.

Tom's reply caused the whole group to laugh; mainly it was because of Tom's peculiar English accent.

Finally we had gotten back to the camp and found Jack waiting outside the gates, exhausted.

"He's with me." I said, instructing Eric to go and let him in.

"Jack, where's Michael?" I asked, sitting down near a fire that Amy had started for us.

"Michael's dead man." He said, with an expressionless face.

"We were down by the school gathering supplies, something we could give you guys to earn our keep you know?... Anyway when we were there, Michael handed me a box of supplies he had found in the school's cafeteria. I took the box outside and returned to help him with getting the rest. That's when I heard a gunshot, I quickly ran inside to see what happened and found Michael, dead on the floor... He was shot, in the head. I don't know where it came from but it was fast and whoever did it has disappeared." He continued, his eyes starting to water as he slid the box of supplies over to us. "He would have still been alive if you let us keep our guns."

"You know we couldn't do that, who's to say you wouldn't have shot us in the back as we left." Josh replied angrily, shoving Jack to the floor.

"It was Dan" I replied lowering my head. "He must have thought you were one of us. We've looked everywhere but we can't find him. He has a sniper rifle that he had stolen from Taylor. We are not entirely sure as there is no evidence of this yet, but we think he may have killed one of the three leaders of this place Gabriel, he ran back into the park to distract the horde so everyone could get out safely. We haven't heard from him since but he said he would meet us here."

"Damn you guys have had it rough" Jack replied, climbing to his feet helping Eric open the box. "I'm sorry I just can't believe he's gone, he was a good person."

Leah walked over to me, and hugged me.

"Don't worry babe, things will work out" She smiled, followed by a peck on the lips.

Eric locked the gate for the first time since we returned here. There was no doubt about it anymore, the group had lost hope for Gabriel and he has been presumed dead.

"Amy, you've been quiet today. Tell us your story" I said, throwing some old t-shirts onto the fire as we were running out of wood.

"Well, my name is Amy... obviously. I was a member of the armed response unit stationed in the school. Before the armed response unit I was in the army for 3 years and then on leave I decided to join the police academy and placed into the armed response unit. I had two younger brothers and a little sister to look after since my mother died from cancer and my father died during the infection. I lost them when things went south inside the school and people started eating each other. They died trying to escape. Now I'm here with this group and thanks to Josh I couldn't be happier, he makes this world not seem so bad. "She explained, hugging Josh.

"Not something I would say about Josh" Sean laughed.

"What about you Sean?" I asked, he was a member of Dan's group and has been rather quiet since he joined us.

"Well, before all this began I was a survivalist type, I had everything ready for something like this, although I was expecting a war with people invading but an infection making people eat each other is close enough. I met Dan's group on my own supply run, he offered me a place to stay, food, water and safety as long as I followed him and it made sense at the time to do just that. I had no idea he was going to turn into the asshole he was. I'm sorry once more for the pain he has caused to your group." He said, suddenly going quiet.

"Our group..." I said, putting my hand on his shoulder.

"You're one of us now pal." Keir smiled, handing him a bottle of water.

"I guess I am." Sean smiled.

Suddenly everything went quiet, followed by a loud creaking sound; I stood up and ran around to the gate to find out what it was.

To my horror I saw a huge horde of infected pushing against the gate; the gate was beginning to give way under the strain.

"Grab everything you can and head through the café to the underground car park!" I shouted pointing to the café door.

As the group ran Eric and I stayed back to pick off as many of the infected as we could but it was no use, when one fell another took it's place, we didn't have the ammo to take on all of them.

We ran to join the group, gathering all the supplies we could carry and headed towards the café door, I made sure everybody got down there before me, throwing them the bags.

Once all group members were through the doors and I was certain they were safe I decided to join them, sprinting into the café and heading towards the back door.

Suddenly an infected smashes through the front window and chases me to the door; this was a race for my life. I sprinted as hard as I could, determined to reach the door and lock the infected on the other side. I drew my Glock from the holster as I was sprinting and fired three times, hitting the infected in the chest.

Just before reaching the back door the infected pounced in front of me, blocking the door. I could see it was open so I panicked and attempted to make a run for it anyway, I began firing at the infected constantly hitting it in the chest, arms and legs as I was getting closer to the door. Of course this wasn't even doing enough to even tickle it but it was hard to focus my aim and sprint at the same time.

Once I had gotten close to the door, I dropped to my knees onto a puddle of spilt kitchen oil and slid between the infected's legs, placed the gun to the bottom of its chin and pulled the trigger blowing it's brains over the ceiling, covering myself in blood and dropping it to the floor.

I could hear the gate crashing outside as they were charging in... we were out of time, out of luck and if we didn't get a miracle soon, we were going to die down there.

I barricaded the door the best I could but I knew it was only a matter of time before they got through.

"Well look who's decided to join us" Josh laughed walking over to me. "Hey Dai, how many bullets do you have left? We could use the ammo."

I took the clip out of my gun to find out that I had somehow managed to empty the whole thing on the infected upstairs.

"I'm out." I said, placing the clip back into my gun.

"Well, looks like we're dead then" Keir said, walking over to us.

The rest of the group looked like they were already in panic mode, it seemed that nobody had any ammo at all and there was a horde blocking our only way in or out of this place. Not to mention that they were going to be breaking in any time now.

We sat down in a circle, passed around a bottle of water each and tried to devise a plan that could get us out of there.

"We could just take each other out." Tom suggested. "Of course that would mean someone would have to stay behind and get ripped to shreds though."

"Not an option." Eric said standing up. "I refuse to die this way and neither of you want to either, if we're going to die down here then that's fine, but let's not go out like cowards. We are survivors and that's what we will do... survive, if these undead bastards want to take us out and be successful about it. Let's make it damn hard for them to do so. Keir, go smash the window of every car you can, take the hand brake off and roll it over here, Taylor, Amy, Tom and Sean you go help them. David, Josh and Jack you come with me to ready the weapons. Leah, Brittany, Paola and Tania you're going to find a way to keep those doors closed until all the cars are in position. The plan is to kill them as they get to the cars; we don't have much time so fall out." Eric ordered, desperately trying to think of a strategy.

It was a great plan, one I would have never thought of on my own. This was one of the many advantages to surviving with a group. The sound of windows smashing filled the car park, Keir and the others weren't wasting any time.

I sprinted over to the bag of weapons and took out the sharpest weapons we had and some duct-tape. I grabbed the metal pole previously used as a weapon and taped Taylor's combat knife to the end of it, I made sure it was taped down tight enough to work as a makeshift spear.

Josh decided to modify his metal baseball bat by taping kitchen knives around the top of it, Eric took a nail gun and modified it to work like a make-shift nail machine gun and Jack kept his crowbar and took his position behind the cars as the others were finishing up.

Leah, Tania, Brittany and Paola had been stacking old planks of wood from the scaffolding towards the door making it harder for the infected to push their way through.

Sooner or later they were going to break it down but they did buy us the time we needed.

Once everybody was finished they joined us behind the cars, sat down, ate our last meal which took about half our food supplies and waited nervously for the doors to open and the infected to pour on through.

"Thanks for letting me be a part of this community" Paola started to cry, afraid of this being the end for her.

"We're your family now; we're not just a community of people. We care about each other, we protect each other and we fight for each other. You're going to be fine, we all are you will see. We have been through tougher situations than this; if we stick together we're going to make it." Taylor replied with tears in her eyes, standing up and facing the doorway.

The doorway was about to give way, the planks of wood placed there to hold the door were slowly beginning to split. As everyone finished their goodbyes they stood, bravely facing the door and readying their weapons.

"This is it guys" Brittany said in a nervous tone.

There was a moment of silence; all that could be heard were the groans of the infected and the snapping of the wood.

Suddenly the wood breaks, the door smashes open with a mighty bang against the wall. The infected started pouring in like water out of a burst pipe, rushing towards us.

As they piled across the cars everybody started taking them out one by one, I began digging my makeshift spear into their skulls. I never got used to the feeling of driving a knife through a skull or how disgusting it looked, but by the way things were turning out. I don't think I ever would. Eric started shooting them with his nail machine gun which appeared to be working perfectly with the fact he had a ton of ammo from the nails we were using for construction purposes.

"Come to me you fucking pin cushions." Eric shouted, shooting them in the head with nails.

Infected bodies were falling left, right and centre but they didn't seem to be losing numbers as more kept joining them.

A few of them have even started climbing over the cars, which made me wonder just how long they were going to hold out. Leah ran over to assist me as my side of the room was starting to get over crowded.

"I can manage this Taylor, go help Amy." Tania shouted, sending Taylor over to Amy.

Brittany, seemed like she was struggling but we couldn't spare any people to go over or our entire defence would break down and would have been for nothing.

"THIS ISN'T WORKING" Josh shouted, hitting the grunts as they are climbing over the wall of cars. "We need to move back1"

"We can hold it!" Eric replied, firing countless nailed into the horde of undead corpses.

"HELP!" Brittany screamed as one of the infected pounced on her from the caged ceiling.

"They can fucking climb now?!" Jack yelled running over to help Brittany.

Jack drove his crowbar through the infected's head and pulled it off her but it was too late, her body was lifeless with blood squirting out from her neck.

"BRITT!" Tania screamed, running over to her.

The infected suddenly stood back onto its feet, yanked the crowbar out of its head and impaled Tania as she approached.

Tania looked down at the bar that was now oozing with blood from her chest and began coughing up blood. Suddenly she dropped to the floor, slides off the crossbar onto the floor next to Brittany's lifeless body.

Jack was frozen with fear as the infected turned to him and began walking slowly towards him still carrying the crowbar that is now dripping in Tania's blood.

"Stay back." Jack cried, backing away towards the group.

"They're thinning out!" Eric shouted, his nail gunning beginning to run out of ammo.

"There are still too many though" I replied, checking behind to see what was taking Tania so long to get back.

That was when I saw her lifeless body covered in blood lying next to Brittany. I turned my head in horror to see Jack scrambling back towards the group.

"We've got a problem here, I'm out of ammo and this bastard is still standing." Josh shouts, dropping a rifle he had picked up from the supplies.

"Take this." I shouted, throwing him my Glock.

Josh catches the Glock, points it at the infected's head and pulls the trigger. *Click* *Click*

"Empty... Fuck!" Josh shouted backing up as the infected lifted up the crowbar to swing for him.

Josh continued backing up and bumped into Jack, causing the both of them to be knocked onto the floor.

We couldn't do anything to assist them as they were still coming in too heavy to turn away, if we did we would have been over run and everything we had fought to defend would be lost.

The infected brings down the crowbar down towards Josh as its chest suddenly explodes, splashing Josh with a wave on blood.

I heard the gunfire and quickly turned my head to see where it had came from only to see Gabriel stood in the doorway with his SMG and carrying a Katana.

"Hey guys! I'm home!" Gabe shouted as he got to the bottom of the stairs.

"Wow, I leave you alone for a few days and you get yourselves into deep shit. What would you guys do without me?" He laughed, sliding over a car and joining us to take out the crowd.

They were getting thinner now so we could afford to climb over our defences and take them out one by one.

Needless to say we would have died if Gabriel hadn't come to our rescue, the infected would have gotten me and then the others, Eric couldn't have came to my aid otherwise they would have gotten through the defences and the others were busy fighting off their posts.

I wish he would have gotten here sooner though, as thankful as I was that we were still alive. Tania and Brittany had fallen fighting for us. I want to be able to give them a proper funeral, so that each group member can pay their respects.

The group finished clearing the infected until there were none left; the car park was full of both infected bodies and two of our own members.

"David." Leah said, walking over to me with tears in her eyes and points over to where Britt was laying.

Brittany's body started to move and eventually she stood on her feet and began walking towards us.

"Let me do this" Eric said, moving away from the cars.

He walked over to his crossbow that he had laid on the floor so that he wouldn't have lost his arrows during the fight, walked over to Brittany and held it up to her head.

"I'm sorry you died, I wish there was something we could have done for you." He said sadly, as everyone from the group gathered around.

"I didn't know you, but you fought valiantly for the protection of this group, I thank you for that." Gabriel said, lowering his head in respect.

Eric pulled the trigger, firing an arrow into her head.

"She can keep the arrow." He said, lowering his crossbow and walking over to Tania.

"She wasn't bitten" I said, looking over at her body on the floor.

"She was bitten a few hours ago, David." Eric said, looking down at her. "I didn't say anything because I thought maybe she would be ok."

"How could she have been bitten?" I thought to myself.

Then it occurred to me, when she came with us to the restaurant and was attacked. She began acting strange like she was hiding something; I didn't question it at first because in this world everyone is entitled to their secrets. I just wish she wouldn't have hid it from us, but now come

to think of it I wouldn't know what I would do if she did tell us.

"I watched her die, the infected impaled her with my crossbar. Ran it straight through her chest." Jack replied, picking the crossbar up from the floor.

"They're smart enough to do that?" I asked, having not seen any of them show that level of attention before.

But then what did I really know about them? What did anybody know about the any of them?

Eric knelt down, kissed Brittany on the forehead, aimed the crossbow at Tania as her body began twitching and pulled the trigger.

Leah, Taylor and Paola were crying in the corner of the car park whilst the others were cleaning out what remains of the infected bodies.

"Eric, Josh and Gabriel, will you guys help me bury them please?" I asked, lifting Brittany's lifeless body.

Gabriel placed his Katana and SMG with the rest of the supplies and joined me with Eric to take their bodies to the field outside to bury them.

Danny brought us a shovel that he had found near the skip next to the pub and handed it to us.

Once done digging we each paid our respects before putting them in their graves and burying them.

We dug two washing poles to stretch over their graves and a piece of old tarp and painted the words. "Here lies Brittany and Tania, two of the bravest members of our group that fought valiantly for our survival. We wouldn't have made it through this if it wasn't for them; we have left a few supplies near these graves that survivors are welcome to take. We ask that you leave flowers here if you can to pay your respects; they have more than earned it."

We gathered what supplies we had left and placed them in the back of Eric's pickup truck that he had parked at the back of the police station.

"We're getting out of here." I said, lifting Leah onto the back of the truck and climbing in next to her.

Eric took one of the petrol cans we had filled up from the gas station and filled his truck up, got inside and began driving away.

This was the second time we had lost somewhere that we thought was safe both taken from us by different threats; I hoped there was somewhere out there that was away from all this and I hoped we'd find it soon.

I looked out over the valleys and mountains as we drove past, watching the grunts walking around aimlessly, wondering if things will ever go back to the way they once were.

"January 14 – 2014 –12:46am

Today was a sad day for us all. It started out well, we were finding plenty of supplies on our run, met up with more survivors one of which joined our group and the other didn't make it. Our camp got over run once more... can you believe it?!

We got forced down into the underground car park where we fought what felt like a war to keep our community alive. A war at which we won but at a terrible price.

We lost Tania and Brittany that had died valiantly protecting what we had been fighting for so dearly, they will be greatly missed.

After losing our camp we have now decided to move on from Tredegar and head to Ebbw Vale, hopefully there is more for us there than there was here. Besides the town there is bigger and the new college that was built there is isolated and if the electric is still working the doors work on automated locks so people can sleep safely in the night.

Though this may not be a haven like we thought the park and the centre was, it is a chance for survival and I'll take that any day.

At least moving away will move us further from Dan as we have yet to find him, I hope that the next group that meets him takes him out without hesitation as I would not be able to do. After all he has done, I would have still forgiven him.

More from me in the morning

Goodnight.