Battalion B, Squad 24 trudged back into the Zone after a long day of slaughter on a breezy, pleasantly cool Syracuse September day.
“Good job out there today, Guys,” Billy said, looking down at his gore-coated shoes.
“What’re you gonna do now?” asked Greg.
“I dunno. Tom, you still have that bottle under your cot?”
Tom shook his head, “No man… a bunch of 15-year-olds stole it from me, but they looked like they had some fun with it.”
“Damn…” responded the other two men of the squad in unison.
Greg looked into the eyes of his fiancée, the woman he had proposed to just two years ago. When he awoke that morning he never would have guessed that he’d be in this situation. Luckily, without electricity, the convenience store’s doors wouldn’t open and somehow the glass on both the windows and door remained intact.
“Come on Greg!” shouted Billy. “We have to go regroup with the others. You pissed. Now let’s go and get away from the damned window!”
“Just give me a second, Bill,” Greg meekly replied.
“Dude,” Billy said as he grabbed Greg’s collar and pulled him within inches of his face. “You’re lucky that I haven’t bashed that fugging store open and spilled the black rot that is her brain all over the magazine rack.”