Something hits the door with a loud thump! and a throaty grahh! follows. More thumps. The undead are trying to get to you through the door, the walls, and the windows. The small place seems to shrink, the walls sinking in on you. It feels as though you're in a flimsy cardboard box and they're all around, thumping and groaning, dying to get a taste of your flesh.

"We have to make a break for it," Quinn announces, he's checking the clip in one of his handguns.

"Yeah, but how? They're everywhere," you say. Your voice is shaking, but you're trying to stay in control. It's taking a lot of effort. All the oxygen seems to be sucked out of the room, as if you're being sealed inside a giant plastic vacuumed storage bag. "We can't-we can't get out." The weight of your words make your breaths become shallow and rapid.

"Hey now, focus," Quinn says, drawing your attention by grabbing your shirt. "You can do this. Look, there may be a lot of them, but we're smarter. We'll figure a way, okay? Okay?" He waits for you to nod and agree before he lets go.

"You're right. We just gotta think," you say, lowering yourself into a leather cushioned chair meant for customers to sit and wait. "What draws their attention?"

"Scent and sound." Quinn is pacing the length of the shop. His heavy boots somehow making only the slightest thuds. Meanwhile, the things outside are still bumping and banging away.

"Right, so we need something noisy...can't really do smell-"

Quinn stops pacing, so you stop speaking immediately. "Yes, we can. We can do smell." He laughs as if he's just realized something he was surprised he hadn't figured out sooner. "All we need is. . . ."

He walks over to the wall behind the chair you're sitting in. It's an inside wall, so there are no undead outside it. Only another shop, but you can't remember what kind of shop it was. Quinn knocks on the wall, listening carefully as if someone will say "who is it?" or politely invite him in. He knocks again in another place.

"Yes!" he says.

"What?" you ask, completely lost.

"It's just drywall. We can bust through a space big enough to fit through."

"But they're everywhere. Even if we get over there-"

"Just stand back."

Quinn knocks a few gardening magazines off an side table and grabs it firmly by two of its legs. He slams it into the lower part of the wall hard. Paint and chalk-like wall crumbles fly everywhere. He does it again. One more time and the table breaks. He's almost through, so he start kicking it instead. You join in, kicking the wall, trying to drown out the growls and snarls of the undead outside.

Once you have a decent-sized hole in the lower wall, Quinn peeks through. "Okay. Follow me."

He starts crawling through. You look back to see the door shaking as the undead throw their arms and bodies against it. They're doing the same thing to the side of the building. It isn't as if they can comprehend what a door is, or that it even opens. When it does open, however, they'll all pile through it and blunder along in search of any living creature. All that beating must be taking a toll on that regular shop door. You pray that Quinn's idea will work as you follow him through the hole in the wall.

It's dark as you emerge through the other side. You realize how brightly lit the flower shop had been once you're sucked into the darkness of this room. The windows allow moonlight to seep in. After some adjusting, you're able to see that the place is an electronic store. It's untouched. Set up like nothing ever happened. Apparently, televisions, tablets, and video cameras are the last things on people's minds these days.

Quinn cuts his hand with a small pocket knife. It starts bleeding heavily. He lets the bright red drops hit the floor.

"What the-"

"Come on," he says, handing the knife to you. "Cut and move. Spread it everywhere. Make it stink to high heaven in here, they'll go crazy."

You feel a sting as the dagger slices through your hand, but you figure it's much better than what the undead would do if they caught you. That thought alone soothes the sting. You follow suit and start touching random things. In moments, the two of you have spread smears of blood through the store.

Quinn flicks on some televisions and then starts the players the store has for the display the picture qualities of their products. Some televisions are showing Frozen, and some are playing Zombieland. He turns the volume on the TVs wide open, so that you thought the sound would burst the speakers. The voices of Elsa and Tallahassee drown out the undead outside, but you know they're raising Cain out there. They'll get so worked up, they'll focus all attention on getting in here. It'll be a synch to escape from the next building now.

"Let's get out of here, fast," he says.

He leads the way back through the hole and blocks it off. Not a single undead is outside the windows or door now. Now that the weight of impending death isn't dangling over your head, you laugh out loud.

"That was genius!" you say. "Seriously. Surrounded with the smell of blood and the sound of live humans, those things might never leave that store."

"Don't count on it," Quinn says. "They might be busy for quite some time, but those DVDs will eventually stop playing and the blood will dry. We've got to move. Now."

"How?"

"The way we came in," he says and he goes to the shop door.

Even though all seems distracted, you're still nervous about slipping by the undead. Your hear starts drumming again as you follow Quinn out the door. The morbid mob of living dead is, as suspected, crowded around the electronic store. Over the snarls and growls, you can hear Let It Go blare from within, and it fades as you run away unnoticed.

You run up the block as quiet as you can possibly be, until Quinn speaks up.

"Duck in this pharmacy."

You veer into the doorway and shut the door securely once Quinn is also inside.

"We can find some gauze and peroxide for our hands in here," he explains.

"Right-whoa! What happened to the staircase?" On the side of the wall, where a staircase clearly used to be, there is only the broken remnants of one. Your voice becomes lower. "Does that mean someone is in here?"

"Someone certainly was. And I can only think of one person that has been trained to seek higher ground and wipe out stairs to eliminate paths for the undead..."

"Lawrence?"

Quinn nods. "That's right. He's been here, but he's not here now or he'd have heard us come in. He can't be far. Hurry, lets patch up."

The pharmacy has already been ransacked, but there is still gauze and peroxide. You pour the peroxide over your hand and watch it bubble a moment, then dry it off and wrap it with the gauze while Quinn does the same to his own.

"Wait here while I sneak around the perimeter," he says afterward.

"Will do," you say. You think about telling him to be careful, but that would be silly. He knows what he's facing. It's his job to be careful. However, after some time passes and Quinn hasn't returned, you start to rethink that.

You could be just waiting here to rot or be eaten. What happens when the undead drift away from the electronic store? Will they find you? Have they already found him? You mind races. You either need to leave this area now, or take your chances by continuing to wait for Quinn...

Leave - SKIP TO CHAPTER 50

Wait - SKIP TO CHAPTER 51