Apologies for the late update. I've been pretty sick for the past week and its been distracting me a lot. However, I did manage to get this together, so I hope you all enjoy this latest installment.

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Blood of the Damned
Part 4

"Are you ready?" Lila asked; her hand on the door.

Joey nodded in response, and the door was flung open. A zombie stumbled inside, and before it even lunged for the two living human's Joe's wrench connected solidly with the creature's skull. As the undead creature collapsed to the ground Lila stepped outside, swinging her lead pipe at another of the infected.

"Through the alleys, they won't see us... hopefully," Joey called out above the noise of chaos that had claimed the city.

Screams and gunshots still echoed between the buildings. The undead have not taken over completely just yet. Joey knew that they both still had a chance if the living were still trying to desperately fend off these avatars of death.

Lila followed Joey through the alleys, moving around dumpsters and bags of garbage, keeping an eye behind them for any zombies that might decide to come up from behind.

A scream from above caught Joey' attention, his gaze sweeping up the walls of the buildings around him.

Someone was falling from the roof, a zombie desperately grabbing for him as they plummeted towards the concrete.

"Watch out!" Joey yelled, getting Lila to dive out of the way.

The zombie's head hit a fire escape ladder, and it slumped down to collapse on the edge of a dumpster, its neck broken. The man who had jumped collided without pause into the ground. Blood spurted from his body and the sound of crunching bones filled the air.

"Oh God," Lila said, moving closer to the man, while looking over at the zombie to ensure it was actually dead.

Joey knelt beside the stranger. The man's arms were snapped, the bones of the forearms piercing through the skin, the fingers of the left hand utterly mangled. A piece of bone jutted from his left leg, and his right foot was pointed in the wrong direction.

Joey forced himself to look away from the mess.

"H-help m-me," the man gasped weakly as blood flowed from between his lips.

Joey stood up and started walking down the alley. He couldn't do anything, he knew that. The man was as good as dead.

He heard bones snapping, and turned around to see Lila crouched over the man, his head grasped gently in her hands. She had just snapped his neck.

"We couldn't just leave him like that," she explained, standing up and fetching her lead pipe.

"No... you're right," Joey responded, though he tried to push the scene of what just happened from his mind.

The whir of a helicopter passing overhead caught both their attentions. Looking up once more they saw the military aircraft speeding over the city. Out of nowhere, a bright object with a tail of smoke soured towards the helicopter, crashing into its tail with an explosion.

"What the fuck was that?" Joey asked, looking up as the helicopter spun out of control, its tail missing. It drifted out past the city and into the wilderness.

"I don't know... but we have to watch our backs for humans now," Lila replied with a frown.

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The sound of metal breaking and folding over on itself filled Haley's ears. Her head turned towards to the north, where a forest had been pushed back by the sprawl of the city. Smoke drifted into the night sky, and the vampire warrior frowned.

Beneath the pale moonlight she ran across farmland, rushing through fields of slaughtered cattle and stumbling zombies. She wasted no attention on them, they were nothing at the moment.

As she moved through the foliage of the forest, somehow moving like a ghost, feet making hardly a sound as they pushed off fallen logs and rocks. Each step avoided the twigs and fallen leaves that were scattered across the ground.

Gunshots echoed between the oaks and maples of the forest. Slow and steady; the shooter was a professional and still calm. However, that wouldn't help against a horde.

Haley emerged into a clearing made by a crashed helicopter. Broken trees lay across the ground, some fallen over the twisted frame of the military chopper. Smoke poured out of the cockpit though there was no visual fire. A single soldier was sitting next to the aircraft, one hand holding an M4 carbine, whilst the other pulled a tourniquet tight around his leg.

A few zombies were stumbling out of the forest towards him, and he carefully took aim using either his arm or a nearby branch to steady his weapon.

As soon as Haley appeared, he fired a shot, the bullet tearing through her chest. Blood spurted from the wound and she instinctively ducked, biting her lower lip in pain.

"Hold your fucking fire, I'm not one of them," Haley yelled out to the soldier.

"Jesus. Are ya hurt badly?" he shouted back, firing another shot at a zombie, the bullet tearing into its brain.

Haley looked down at her chest, the bullet having missed the leather jacket, but putting a hole clean through her undershirt and into the top of her breast. She sighed as the bullet was pushed out of her body.

"No," she said. He must not have seen the blood spurt.

She didn't bother watching the muscles knit themselves back together, or the veins spread like spiderwebs back into place, or the skin stretch back over what would have been a mortal wound.

"Good," he shouted back, as Haley approached once more.

"Any more weapons in that chopper?" she asked as she knelt beside the soldier, pushing his hand away to tighten his tourniquet herself.

Something had cut his calf open pretty deep. The tourniquet would have helped but it still needed proper bandaging.

"Yeah, two M4s in the back, and everyone in there had a pistol," the soldier informed her.

"Cover me then," Haley said, climbing into the shattered helicopter.

She heard the soldier swear and start shooting at more of the undead that stumbled towards them from the darkness of the forest. She had to be quick, this place was still very close to the city, and the crash was like a flare to everything on the island, living or not.

She grabbed two pistols with their holsters and some extra magazines. She pulled the one M4 that hadn't been mangled by the crash from the cold and bloodless fingers of a decapitated soldier. The head was no where to be found, and his blood covered his entire body.

Haley ignored it, using her shirt to wipe it off the carbine before pulling magazines from the dead man's tactical vest. She didn't say any words to the dead men sprawled across the deck of the aircraft, but grabbed a first aid kit that had slid beneath one of the seats.

"We need to get out of here now," she told the soldier, quickly pulling some bandages from the kit. She glanced at the nametag emblazoned on his chest, reading Jaskiewicz in the digital camouflage writing.

"Yeah... well its going to be impossible for me to move through this shit," Jaskiewicz said, wincing as Haley tightened bandages over the gash on his calf, his blood running over her pale hands.

"I'm aware. I'll carry you," she said, finishing her impromptu first aid, before slapping a magazine in her stolen M4 and cocking the action.

"No offense... but look at you. You don't look like you could carry me alone, much less with all this gear on," Jaskiewicz told her bluntly.

Haley turned slightly and shot a zombie through the head. The back of its skull broke open and its brains sprayed across the foliage behind it. Without any more words she slipped an arm underneath the soldier's body, and hefted him over her shoulder.

"Holy fuck!" he shouted out, but Haley was already moving. She wasn't entire sure where though.

Somewhere better than here.

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