• He clambers on.
    Ratta tap tap tap tap tap tap tap taptaptaptapta-
    His slight jog quells to a stop, and Bran stares about, his heavy cargo boots resting upon the slate stone floor softly.
    He was in an abandoned school, the effects of nuclear holocaust apparent.
    Dust rode high in the upper ceiling, the stone walkways of the forgotten halls screaming for life..
    Barely any were eroded from children’s feet that had once bounded down them, so new they had been. Only the marks from Bran's loathing and cumbersome shoes were to be seen, garish in the empty tomb.
    That, and the fresh, wet tracks ahead of Bran.
    A sighing giggle of dead breath, and Bran slowly crouched to a side wall, his cirrus clouted blue pupils dilating.
    It was dark.
    Not dark enough.
    A silhouette of a small, crouched figure could be settled upon in the distance, the open, dripping roof above allowing dim light in. The sky was streaked gray, a steady rain shattering the silence now, drifting upon the open chasm above. A flutter of streaking water, and the figure seemed to jitter, upturning its once full, bright face.
    Another soft moan of discord, and Bran slowly moved forward, his feet moving robotically, one foot in front of the other, his risqué revolver held waist level.
    A crippling laugh, or chitter, began to rise from the strange crouched being, a smaller silhouette beginning to crawl from a further junction of the hall.
    A foul, curdled smell rose into his flared, pale nostrils, and he stopped moving, watching the two figures, one seeming to seizure in strange, bandy laughter, the other beginning to slump forward.
    It became clear now.
    The crawling being was a little girl, her muddied and blood smattered hair coating her decrepit face. She was missing her lower jaw, a vile stench of vomit rising from her exposed, nude body..
    She had lost her supple legs, her venison of organs trailing in the creaking dust, beginning to slip from her open torso as they stuck to the dry ground, tearing and gnashing.
    Her fingers gripped at the hard flat surface, her dirty fingers beginning to break, her nails flipping off.
    The crouched figure turned toward her, and his own, crippled face was revealed.
    A small boy, about the age of mere six.
    He had no eyes, congruent slime and gel running from his open sockets.
    He screeched, suddenly and violently leaping at the sound of another form, his own nude form flinging from the shattering silence.
    The noise of the undead eating it’s own was clouded over by the washing rain, Bran simply watching in chide horror.
    Boom.
    The boy flopped to the ground, his skull riddled with one stopping blow from the massive hand cannon.
    He flustered a single jitter, then stopped moving, his gray, coagulated flesh drizzled with dirt.
    The rain washed on, and Bran walked onward.

    He reloaded the spent bullet slowly, his dirt grimed hands working shortly, slowly. His thin lips moved, words seeming to form as he spoke a prayer over himself, silent.
    God didn’t need words to understand he needed help.
    He only had six bullets left now, and he hoped to his very saint that his dead squadron didn’t start walking until he was long gone.
    He hoped.
    Hope was a lost cause most of the time now.
    He began to jog once more, knowing the exit from the school would be simple, the base only a few clicks from the empty silo of a hell he was in…