Contributor: SpaceBrown

There are others out there like me. Others that aren't infected, I mean. I've come across them before – teamed up with some before. Anyone's company is better than no company. They've all been unique – brave and battle-hardened no doubt, but they hadn't lost their human touch.

There was Peyton first. I found him only a few weeks into this ordeal. He was very independent, but reluctant to let a strategic advantage go without trying. He was a calculated killer, more obsessed with killing them off than surviving. It was a strained relationship but he's the one that helped me to see the monsters for what they are. I still think he had a little too much fun watching their guts spill ad he slashed them with his machete though...

After him was Slade. He was a piece of work. Slade was an intimidating figure. He was head and shoulders above me, built like a semi-truck. He cut an intimidating figure, but he was really a nice guy. He had been a Rugby star and worked loading product at the docks where he grew up. He had moved to my neck of the woods just a few short years before the outbreak. He was cheerful enough – except for when he fought monsters. You see, they took his wife and infant child. When he fought, it was scary to watch. He wielded a pistol in one hand and a stout axe in the other. He was a blade-swinging, bullet-firing tornado of wrath and vengeance.

Joan was probably the nicest one I've ever spent time with. She was tall and fairly athletic. She had been a sculptor and enjoyed running – just not for her life. She was immune like me, and I helped equip her with a pretty solid 9-iron. She had been trying to find a safe place for the past few months with her boyfriend, but he had fallen prey to the monsters when they were ambushed in an abandoned apartment complex. She hadn't been a great fighter, but it's amazing what you'll learn with the right motivation.

Stanton was the third one I met. He was short and stocky. He was immune like me, a bachelor just trying to make it through whatever was going on without dying. He wasn't around long.

There have been a few others. They were all stalwart warriors, but they're all gone now.

Peyton actually just up and left me. I woke up one morning and he was gone. No note, not a trace of him or any of our food or water. I know he was immune, and the monsters wouldn't have taken our supplies, so I can only figure that I was no longer a strategic advantage to him.

Turns out that Slade wasn't immune to the disease. That may have been why he fought with such...enthusiasm. He was a just a little too reckless. We were backed against a wall in an abandoned warehouse. It was me with my trusty tire iron, and Slade with his axe and pistol. The horde was enormous – and we'd already tired ourselves out. We'd probably taken down thirty monsters, but there must have been hundreds. As we stood there panting, watching the oncoming mass, Slade told me to run. There was a chain hanging down from the roof – about ten feet to my right, and an exit on the second story. He'd cover for me with the last few shots he had left, and then he'd climb up after me. The good thing about the monsters is while they're tough to kill – they're slow and they don't carry weapons. So I ran. As I climbed the chain I heard shots ring out but as I reached the top and looked back at Slade, I saw him hacking wildly with his axe. I shouted at him to climb, but by the time he grabbed the chain, there were too many. The snatched his leg and three of them sank their teeth into his dark, calloused hamstring. He shook them off and finished climbing. I inspected his wounds and used disinfectant before bandaging them up. We leaped from the second story into a dumpster below. From there we took off. We thought we had lived to fight another day. During the middle of the night however, I heard something. I woke up to find one of the monsters only three feet away. Slade had succumbed. I ended up splitting his head with his own axe.

Losing Joan was hard for me. Most relationships formed between survivors are strained at best. Joan and I hit it off though. We were like best friends. If things hadn't been the way they were, we might have enjoyed lunch at a little shop on the corner I knew on Thursdays. She didn't leave, and since she was immune she didn't succumb to the disease. She died. We had been hiking through the wide-open hill tops late one evening, looking for a strategic place to make camp. We were ambushed by a pack of ten or twelve monsters. They went straight for Joan. She whipped out her golf club but they came too suddenly and were too close. By the time I beat them off of her, she had already been torn up pretty badly. Now she's at the top of the hill, her ashes in a shallow pit filled with stones and mud. It had been a while since I cried over something. I cried for her.

Stanton and I only kept each other company for three days. We met up, shared what little supplies we had with each other, felt a little safer at night with someone watching our back, and then split up with a wave and wishing the other good luck. This is the fate of most survivors I've met. We've all been through too much pain. Instead of becoming emotionally invested in the lives of each other we're just pawns in each other's games. We no longer make alliances, just watch out for each other for two or three days.

Then we're alone again.