"This is some grim shite we've gotten ourselves into."

Hopefully that was soft enough. Little Sophia shouldn't hear that sorta language.

Oh, aye, this was some grim shite indeed. Not a bloody month and the place was already turnin' into a wreck. These...bastards, or what have you, makin' the city their bleedin' paradise. Hell on Earth, more likely. There I was, fixing up some fella's car, when all of a sudden Matty bursts through my shop door, blood streamin' out of his shoulder, cursin' 'n swearin' like a sailor. I only managed to get him off the floor and onto a chair, and all the while he's blabberin' about some weird thing that's been makin' the rounds around the city, and he got bit by something that just wasn't human no more. I called an ambulance, sure, aye, but it didn't even make it here before he collapsed. The blood was streamin' out of his shoulder like a fountain, his face'd gone pale and I swore he bloody died on me, but when the ambulance finally arrived and carted him off, a paramedic told me he was alright, barely there, but alright. They left in a godawful hurry, and I was left to clean up the bloodstains on my floor.

Looking back on it, I think he must've been one of the reasons why this whole shitestorm went down. Why this gobshite at my feet eventually ate a bullet, or several. Why Jason died. Why Terry died.

Why everyone was dropping like flies.

But why was he here, in this sodding, godawful place?

And, more importantly, was this place safe?

The footsteps and moaning that came from me right answered that question for me. First thing that caught my eye was how young the first of those...things was. The poor sod was barely of age, must've been preparing for some class or other when the infections were just starting. I can't imagine the hell he must've gone through before he went, screaming and wailing and begging for his mommy or daddy or whoever. Maybe even God. Who knows, maybe God was dead and couldn't hear our pleas. Whatever the case, the boy wasn't a boy no more, he was...a sodding monster, that's what he was now. The same with the other two sods behind him. Disgusting, filthy things. Made me sick. Sick to me stomach.

Whatever. They all had to fockin' die. Again.

I readied my bat and backed off a few steps. No sense in charging right in and gettin' meself killed. That's stupid, and in the world right now, I couldn't afford to be stupid.

"Fellas? We have a problem."

What was I saying? These fellas had all been through the same hell at the airport. Saw innocents being gunned down, exterminated like vermin in the sewers. Saw men, women, even children, with bullets through them. It was difficult enough to find transport, harder still for me to get the bloody thing working while, all around me, the god damn Holocaust was reenacting itself. So I drove this motley band of sods out of hell, then not a week later we were here, having braved all sorts of depraved shite that no sane man should face. Here we were. The chosen few? Maybe. I cleared my thoughts while raising my bat, eyeing over which of the three lucky gobshites should be re-dead first. Then me brain decided that maybe we weren't having any fun today, so I proffered another tidbit of absolute wisdom to add on to my earlier epiphany.

"A wee problem."

With the first sod already nearing our group, I took a few steps forward, wound up and swung like me life depended on it, which it did. The poor boy's head splattered apart and spread itself all over the floor. Another one put back in the ground.

What a waste of life. Jesus-bleedin'-Christ.

I backpedaled a few steps and tapped my bat on the floor. Wasn't that what these American baseball players did when they were playin'? No way for me to find out now though, probably half the national teams already dead, or worse. Had to concentrate. Otherwise I could end up like the poor sod I just laid out.