Captain Ishida was a long way from home, stranded in an alien city, fighting a battle that humanity might not win.

"Contact left!" Sergeant Himura whispered, though her words went far in a night full of silence. 

The 4 man JSDF squad were confronted by a wall of shambling, decaying flesh. Hundreds of the enemy were converging on them, but not purposefully. It seemed that even the dead had a hard time seeing at night. 

"Let's move," Captain Ishida responded. 

He led his men down a back alley, and they formed a defensive diamond around the one survivor they'd found since their retreat from Arlington. They'd shot their way out of the situation, downing scores of the dead, but now their ammo was running low - standing and fighting was now luxury. 

The back alley opened onto another road, bordering a river - if you could call it that. Straight away, in the bleak darkness, they could see the sea of shamblers descending on... a crashed car? Flash lights flickered around the toppled vehicle, and hurried voices accompanied their movements. Seemed Captain Ishida had found some more survivors, who unfortunately were blissfully unaware of just how close the building sea of dead men was to reaching them. 

He looked at Malik Thornton, the guy they'd happened upon as he fought the dead back from his motorbike. The thing had run out of gas, and Malik had been in the process of trying to syphon fuel for it from cars, when dead hands grasped from the darkness. If Captain Ishida had not been there, Malik would be one of [i]them[/i] by now.

"Watch our backs, Malik" the captain said with broken English. 

And then a bright light from the top of a multi-story carpark, just off to the squad's left, illuminated the crashed car briefly. Captain Ishida saw for a moment a handfull of survivors, who seemed to be gathering up their stuff to move. He also saw the true enormity of the horde. Four or five hundred stumbling, lifeless bodies had encircled the car, and were no more than teen feet away. 

The light from the carpark flashed again, and this time the survivors realised their peril. 

Guns went off in a thick spasm of panicked and uncoordinated fire. Ishida saw dozens of the dead drop, left and right, but others surged forwards - holding their arms up and groaning for the flesh they so justly deserved. It took the JSDF squad two seconds to decide a course of action. 

As one they raised their weapons, and unleashed a devastating volley of lead towards the mass of shamblers. The dead fell like wheat to a scythe, and the JSDF - followed by Malik - ran forwards into the breach they had created. They engaged the enemy at a few feet of range, in a heroic bid to get to the survivors. The gun fire intensified as they fought their way through, and reached the toppled car. 

The Captain looked around, saw the car park flash its light again, and made his decision. 

"To the carpark. You follow," Ishida said. 

The survivors complied. 

Gun fire reached its cresendo as Captain Ishida tried to lead the survivors through the eye of the storm, dropping shamblers left and right, and draining their precious ammunition in doing so. [b]He saw an Asian man with a green hat pulled down by the horde[/b]. Then he saw a little girl - perhaps just breaching her teens - caught by her hair, and dragged into a rifling mass of dead men. A man dressed in the kevlar of a S.W.A.T tried to intervene, screaming in rage in a vain bid to reach the girl. A woman, blazing with fury, tried to help - but it was futile. 

Captain Ishida turned back, unleashed another salvo of lead, and managed to grab both the man and the woman by the arms as the rest of his squad covered him. With great difficulty, he forcefully persuaded them that [b]the girl was dead[/b] and a lost cause.

They made it to the multi story carpark, clambering over a concrete wall to gain entrance. The dead were hot in pursuit, and they threw themselves at the wall, pouring over it like water.

"Up here!" yelled a thickly foreign voice. 

The survivors, all in various states of disarray, looked up at the ramp to the next level. A great big SUV had been parked across its width, and an African man stood behind it, beckoning them. 

"They'll find it hard getting over this. Come, come, quick!" he said, before turning and running up the ramp.