Brant craned his neck, twisting his head left and right, while hoisting himself up onto the windowsill to get a good luck down at the alley. From the angle his eyes could see, their didn't appear to be any freaks milling about in the alleyway. He let himself back down, and stooped to grab the pack; slinging it over his shoulder. He tucked the pistol into a side pouch on the bag for easy access, and jammed a loaded magazine in with it, zipping the pouch closed so as to not lose anything while running. He put his hands underneath the lip of the glass pane, and pushed it up. A slight breeze and fresh cool air was sucked in from the alleyway. The normal noises of the city in Little Haiti were gone, some birds could heard chirping, crickets and other bugs could be heard making their noises. But the sound of people, and cars on the nearby thoroughfare were absent. It made Brant shudder, and reminded him of what was out there for him, and what was in here, albeit locked up stairs.

**************************

When he'd first heard it on the news, that all around the world the sick were dying and then rising, he'd figured he'd skip work that day. He'd left his one bedroom apartment and made his way across the street and into the neighbourhood where his mother lived, at his childhood home. Letting himself in, it seemed no one was home. He took it upon himself to start gathering supplies, he'd wanted to take his mother and get out of the city. At that time in his mind, the goal was to travel north towards New York and meet his sister (whom he was estranged from). It seemed like the end of the world was going to bring about one big happy family reunion for the Harlow family, minus his brother who was in a Florida Correctional Facility for the past 17 years on charges of murder in the first degree. He'd gotten his mothers pistol, and a sledgehammer from the basement. He raided the pantry gathering up cans of non-perishables and stuffing them into bags. He looked around frantically for the keys to his mothers old beater, but it wasn't anywhere to be found. He waited there on that first day, watching the TV, sipping some cans of soda he found in the fridge. The hours from the early morning rolled on coming close to noon and his mother still hadn't appeared. The TV was telling him that things were only getting worse as the outbreak spread. The city was getting quarantined, the army was being called in, things were going from terribly bad to much worse. 

At that moment there was thud coming from the upstairs bedroom, right above the living room. Brant had gone up, opening the door to the bedroom, his mother was face down on the floor. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark. Brant assumed she was just hopped on pills and booze as was her usual routine. He approached her only to find the situation much worse. Trying to roll her over, she awoke, which startled him, she made strange sounds,and her face and lips were pale shade of blue. Her mouth opened with a roar and she pulled herself up to try to bite him. Brant now knew his mother was infected, had died, and turned. She was like the shambling monsters on the TV. He pushed her back, her corpse tried to rise from the floor and give chase. But she was slow. He got out of the room, closed the door, and pushed a towel cupboard in front of the door. It seemed to hold, and had for the past month and a half. Brant in all that time couldn't bring himself to end her suffering, but he couldn't bring himself to leave. 

*********************

Brant fiddled with the window screen. He was trying to pop it out the frame, but the rusty old thing wouldn't budge, so he grabbed the sledge from its resting place on the ground by his side, and smashed it through the netting, creating a hole for himself. He hopped back up onto the windowsill, crouching his body so he could squeeze through and pushed himself out into the alley. The drop wasn't very far, about 8 feet in height, and he managed to land on his feet, but lost his balance and toppled over onto the rough cement alley. 

He let out a coarse exclamation of "Fuck" in pain. His left leg had landed in a puddle of dirty old water, and his pants were soaked. Luckily he hadn't managed to cause any serious damage, bruises and scrapes perhaps. Placing the head of the sledge onto the cement, and using it as a kind of cane, he stood up. In front of him was the closed wooden gate leading out onto the front of the lot, and to the road. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the rest of the dirty alleyway, two old garbage cans, and the backyard, and the fences that separated all the small lots. Nothing to be alarmed about.

Brant walked up to the wooden gate, and gave the wrought iron latch a tug, pushing the door open with his other free hand. He immediately regretted that decision. Standing just a few feet from the door, was his neighbour who was now a shambling corpse. His hideous disfigured, rotted face right there, his pale eyes staring back at Brant. Almost immediately the monster started moving forward and making groans and grunts, attracting the rest of the monstrosities that were milling about in the road. 

Brant let out another coarse exclamation of his displeasure at the current situation, and slammed the wooden gate closed. His neighbour turned monster, threw itself at the gate, thrashing about ratting the gate. Brant turned and took off running the other way, letting out a number of exclamations of various kinds indicating his displeasure. He figured by now there was a pileup at the gate, and perhaps it would give, perhaps not, but Brant wasn't going to be around to find out. He hopped the short wire fence separating the neighbours on the other side from him, and made his way out onto the small road in the neighbourhood. Looking up and down the street, there were no signs of the shamblers. Perhaps making it to his destination would be easier. He figured he'd move west, out of the city towards the suburbs, there was an old asylum there, that his construction company had been doing work on (though Brant himself had never actually worked on the site). He figured a large old hospital, with few to no people in it, in a small neighbourhood, far removed from the densely populated city centre would be a good place to hole up, and wait for this to all blow over. 

It took three and a bit hours of so of sneaking through the neighbourhoods to make it out to the more deserted suburb where the hospital was. The building was the the end of a long roadway, dividing itself from the rest of the neighbourhood. The gate at the road was blocked by a low stone fence, topped with iron bars and stone crenelations. The rest of the perimeter was surrounded by a nearly twice as tall chain link fence, topped with barbed wire. He could see the top of the old stone building, and some remnants of scaffolding around it. Brant was standing behind a bush on the side of the road, surveying the place, he figured he could get inside the fence by hopping in between the crenelations, and then pulling himself up onto one, from there it was just a matter of getting himself over the spear tipped decorations. What was once meant to keep patients in, was now making it hard for him to get inside, although this meant it was going to definitely keep the shamblers at bay. 

Brant's indecisiveness was cut short, as the grunts and moans of one of the walking corpses was heard coming from behind him. He looked around at the thing, before taking off running down the long drive towards the hospital gate. He let out a few more curse words, as he tried to climb over the stone wall, as the creature kept coming down the road, closer, and closer.