"We're moving on foot. Follow me," said Levi looking over at Ricky, who nodded as his eyes darted around the alley. "Great, then let's go."

They clambered down the fire escape, ejecting flakes of ash into the air when they landed. Ricky flinched at the sound of nearby trash fluttering in the wind–caught on a jutting piece of wire from the fence in the alley.

The wind was strong today. Making the hems of Levi's clothes ruffle as he felt a shiver zap through his body. Its whistles lingered in his ears as Levi looked up and saw crumpled papers and packaging getting wafted down the alley.

He hated the wind. The sound always used to frighten him as a boy. He always tried to hide it, but whenever the wind screeched at night, his mother always let him stay up a little later. Although she never mentioned it, he always felt like she knew. She always seemed to know everything. But he supposed most mothers did. They were good like that.

The thought made his mood drop. He didn't know what had happened to his mother. Last he heard from her, she was out in Georgia, still living in his childhood home. But with everything going on, the phone lines dropped before he even had a chance to call her.

Shaking off his thoughts, Levi looked up at the alley buttoning the top button of his jacket before rubbing his hands. There were no infected insight. Besides a body that sat propped against the graffitied wall. Its position unchanged from when Levi ran through the day before.

They had a lot of ground to cover today. Roxbury was a good five miles away. Even if they moved at a good pace, it would still take them over an hour, and that was without the delays they might encounter.

If something went wrong, they could be out all day. And that thought didn't please Levi. They didn't know enough about what had happened in the last two days. The radio gave them some updates, but he treated them as rumours and took them with a pinch of salt.

All Levi knew for sure was that the military had a foothold in the city and was on the move clearing the infected. But beyond that, the state of Boston was anyone's guess.

"We'll stick to the main roads. If the military is on the move, they'll have to secure the roads. The highways, at least. Otherwise, evacuating people into the city will be impossible. If they aren't, we'll have to wing it." Levi said, making Ricky flinch when he spoke.

Levi narrowed his eyes at the man's jitteriness. Giving him a look to show he wasn't impressed, getting a sheepish grin from the man in return.

The two began to move. It was hard not to be tense while moving through the empty lanes and abandoned streets. With the damage and death all around, it was hard not to think of the creatures responsible, especially when they lingered in the scattered ruins.

Levi wasn't as bad after he'd gone out yesterday, but Ricky wasn't so immune. He'd gone quiet, his skin turning a shade paler. It was almost impossible to reconcile the differences between the city less than a week ago and what it had become now.

It felt like a husk of its former self. The only residents they could see now were the walking corpses that roved the streets. The sounds of their snarling and groans carried in the wind, forcing them to remain on their toes.

When they turned a street corner, though, they met with their first sign of human life—a barricade at the junction on the bottom of the street. Sandbags stacked around an encampment of soldiers with two armoured trucks nearby. Men manning the turrets which scanned the street.

Ricky went forward, but Levi pulled him back behind into cover. He tilted his head and looked at Levi with narrowed eyes, "Why'd you stop me." he asked.

Levi didn't speak and pointed towards the bodies lining the street, drawing Ricky's attention towards them. "Nothing good can come from approaching them like this. We'll circle back and avoid the checkpoints." Ricky opened his mouth to refute, but images of the military handling the riots surfaced in his mind, and any words stopped.

Avoiding the eyeline of the encampment, they backtracked and rounded into another street–one which they had avoided due to the number of infected. They had decided, unless impossible, to kill all infected in their path. So if needed, they could backtrack.

While Levi thought this was the right call, certain routes became untenable due to Ricky. He could handle a dozen or more easy on his own, but if they dragged Ricky into the mix, he wasn't confident of keeping him alive.

But compared to the alternative, the risk was acceptable in Levi's book. As long as Ricky stayed behind him and picked off stragglers, he might even be helpful.

The issue, though, was that the man looked like he didn't want to do this. He followed Levi with strained steps, his eyes darting at the infected, his grip on the bat so tight his hands were almost glowing red.

Levi wasn't sure if he was more of a danger than he was a help like this. Ricky could hold his own. That much was true. He'd seen it when they were escaping the station. But faced with over two dozen infected with only Levi as his companion, all his composure had faded away.

"Ricky, sort your shit out," Levi said with narrowed eyes as his finger brushed against the ornamental handle of his katana.

"I'm fine. I can do this." Ricky replied, his fist clenching and unclenching as he reasserted his grip on his bat.

"You better hope you can. Or else the only thing your girlfriend will receive when I arrive is your corpse torn limb from limb... This isn't a game." Levi intoned, his eyes burning into Ricky as he slipped his blade from its sheath and grasped it between his hands.

He didn't reply but if he still hadn't sorted himself out, then whatever happened was on him. Levi had warned him already.

If the supernatural feats weren't enough to convince Levi that the infected were dead, the stench was. They were downwind from them, and the smell almost made Levi gag. The smell wasn't noticeable in the police station, but now that a bit of time had passed, they had begun to smell as bad as they looked.

It was a suffocating rotted smell. Not the kind of odour one would often encounter, but when they did, they would recognise it, almost on an instinctual level. It was the smell of death, the smell of decay.

Their appearance had begun to change. Their humanesque appearance remained, but they would no longer get confused with a normal human being. They had started to take on a more corpse-like visage.

Their skin becoming more sunken and dried. The grime and dirt of the city burrowing into the crevices of their skin like termites. It wasn't noticeable to a large degree, but it became more apparent when the more recent turned were near. They had a paler and more pristine appearance, one of deathly illness.

But the ones who had turned earliest had begun to show the signs of wear. Their white skin tones replaced with more earthy browns and yellows. However, their eyes still had the same distinctive clouded red bloodshot eyes. But even they had begun to fade, their sclera taking on a more yellowish tone.

Levi took a breath as he watched them snarl and groan into the empty air. Dragging their feet that made jarring, scraping noises that were a pain to the ear. He knew once the first fell, the others would soon be upon him. The quicker he thinned the numbers, the easier it would be, more so for Ricky than him. But he'd prefer it if he didn't have to tell everyone Ricky had died when he returned.

He flexed his muscles before his eyes drifted towards the closest target, and he flashed into motion. The first infected only noticed him when it was too late, and Levi's katana was inches from its neck.

Levi didn't wait for it to fall and, using the momentum of his swing, instantly changed direction, bolting towards another. Able to behead one more before he heard the inevitable sound of the agitated growls.

When he looked up, he saw the dozens of hostile eyes looking towards him, and a smile bloomed on his face. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his body. There was something about fights. Real fights. Fights where your life was on the line that thrilled him.

Maybe it was the struggle. To overcome and prevail over your opponent. After all, if you conquered your enemies in battle, wouldn't your sword become sharper for it?

But Levi didn't care for the reason. He never felt so clearheaded as he did when he put his life on the line. A sort of euphoric clarity he could only experience when the feeling of death breathed down his neck.

His surroundings became slow, the infected's movement becoming predictable—their jerky movements easily foreseen as he moved at them like the snap of a released bowstring.

Gone was the safe calculated movements of the day prior. Instead, he always seemed to be a hair's breadth away from the clasping hands which threatened to grab his clothes.

His body reacted almost on instinct. Moving with an unnatural grace as he ducked under diving hands, threading through the veritable maze of dirty hands and bloody jaws. His body contorting into impossible angles as his katana swung like the reaper's scythe.

It hunted forth guided by his masterful ministrations, causing the infected to fall to the floor. Making such a gruesome task look so artful, his blade moving with all the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.

Ricky was all but ready to jump in when he saw Levi lurch forward but stopped still when he saw Levi flow through the infected untouched. To his eyes, he was witnessing the impossible, the supernatural. His mind failing to comprehend how Levi was still unharmed within the swarm that surrounded him.

His performance was incredible. He knew he could never do something like that. They would have got him. But Levi. Levi moved around untouched.

Though his heart almost stopped every time, it looked like they would finally grasp and drag him down to a gory death. But the final touch always eluded them—his flesh tantalisingly beyond their reach.

He moved with an incredible mastery over his body that Ricky could hardly believe what he was seeing. How could anybody move like that? He moved with such clarity, almost like he could see everything—each movement aiding the next as he moved with machine-like precision.

Levi only stopped when none of the infected no longer stood. He stood still, looking down at the bodies. Like a merciless war god, his blade glinting red and clothes stained with blood.

Turning around, he stared at Ricky, whose gaze held more caution after watching the display. "I think you should get some new clothes," Ricky said with a strained smile. Making Levi look down at his blood-covered body and chuckle.

"You might be right." Levi said, "I'm sure none of the stores will mind if I grabbed something. It Doesn't look like there's many paying customers these days." his comment getting a laugh from Ricky, whose tension eased.

"You got that right," he said, jogging up behind Levi, following him down the now notably infected clear street.