Twenty Eighth Entry: Special Delivery

December 18^th

A lot has happened since I've last written. Well, not a lot, but something big.

Remember how I said there was no way Kaur would let the whole blowing up his office thing go? Well, he didn't, he retaliated in a big way. On the tenth he came into Alex's office while Sharon and I were hanging out with Tara and Alex after another successful scavenging run (we raided a Sportsman's Paradise store for emergency food, ammo, guns, sleeping bags, etc; I got a sweet little hatchet with a holster that clips onto my belt, I like it better than the machete actually). He had Alexandre Rontreal, Holly Tanaka, and a couple of officers in black riot armor with him. The office was suddenly quite full.

He saw us all tense up immediately. Frankly I thought he had come to execute us all right there, but he hadn't. His officers didn't raise their guns, or even act in a threatening manner, “Relax gentlemen, ladies. I do not come here with any ill intent.”

“Then what brings you slumming down here? I thought you were happy using the conference room as your new office,” said Alex.

“I am not here to trade insults with you, Alex, “ explained Hashmir, and then after a pause, continued, “I come to seek your assistance.”

“This should be good,” Alex chuckled, “Do you want them to leave?”

Hashmir took a deep breath before continuing, either gathering his confidence, or, more likely, keeping himself from saying something he didn't want to say, “No, they can stay as this effects them as well. As you all know, we have been harassed by the gang calling themselves the “Hell's Postmen” for months now.”

“We're quite familiar with them,” spat Sharon, glaring at Kaur.

“And as you also know, they have start launching attacks on the very structure of Mallville. For the safety for all residents of Mallville, I cannot let this happen.”

I started to say something about why the Postmen would attack his office in the middle of the night, but then I noticed that Alexandre was trying to drill a hole in my head with his eyes, and thought better of it.

“With that in mind, I come to ask for your help and support in eliminating this threat to our future once and for all. It is bad enough we have to defend ourselves from the undead, we will not be threatened by other humans.”

“Unless you're going to tell me that one of your little black ops scavenging runs has netted you a jet and some missiles, I'm not sure what we're going to do about them. We don't even know where their base is.” replied Alex.

Hashmir looked over at Holly, and she stepped away from the rest of Kaur's entourage to approach the desk. She produced a clipboard from under her arm, took a folded piece of paper off of it, and proceeded to unfold it on the desk.

The paper was a map of Covenant with lots of things circled on it. My eyes were, of course, immediately drawn to the circle around where I knew Mallville to be, but I did not immediately see any significance to the other circles. I continued to keep my mouth shut, and see where all of this was going.

Holly pointed to a circle on the edge of town, Right next to the freeway, it was a full square block circle in bright red, “This is the Tyranno-Mart Plaza, It is a strip mall anchored by a Tyranno-Mart, obviously, and it is where the Hell's Postmen seem to be coordinating their efforts.”

Holly took a blank page off of her clipboard, and flipped it over on top of the map. It looked like a satellite photo of the shopping center, but it had to have been an old one, from before the end I mean, as it showed the strip mall in great detail, and that detail only revealed a smattering of cars in the parking lot.

The buildings of the shopping center formed a sort of squared U shape around the large parking lot. The parking lot was only open to the street from one side, and another strip of parking lot ran around the backside of the strip of buildings to allow for deliveries, employee parking, waste disposal, etc; this area was lined with youngish trees to create a barrier between the likely unattractive backs of the stores and the street.

“This is obviously an old picture, but it gives you an idea of what we are looking at explained Holly as she flipped over the next piece of paper on the the clipboard.

This picture was a printout of a digital photo showing the T-Mart plaza from what was probably the roof across the street. The open side of the parking lot had been fortified with two layers of chain link fence topped with barbed wire with maybe a ten foot gap between the outer and inner layer of fencing . On the sidewalk in front of the outer later of fence a row of cars was lined up along the outside of the fencing except for at the center where there was a large swinging gate blocking the driveway. I could tell it was the driveway even from the picture because there was a large sign with the names of the stores on it separating the incoming lane from the outgoing lane.

“This picture was taken a couple of days ago,” explained Molly, “As you can see, they have set up a barricade along the front of the shopping center, but I don't think that will pose much of a problem.”

“That fence may be enough to stop a few of the zeds, or even a small attack, but it will not hold back a dedicated assault.” added Rontreal.

“So are you suggesting that we set up a dedicated assault?”asked Tara.

“That is precisely what I am proposing,” stated Kaur, “With the combined forces of you scavengers, my security forces, and some of Michael's roof guards, we should be able to rout them.”

“And we should trust you because?” asked Sharon.

“Miss Sparks, I am aware that we have had our differences over the last few months, but I am willing to put those aside for the good of all Mallville, and I hope you would be willing to do the same,” explained Hashmir.

“ I want to know more of your plan before I commit any of my people to this,” said Alex, pointing to the gate in the digital picture of the barricade, “If that bottleneck is our only way in, our people will be slaughtered.”

“You would be right, if I planned on us going in through it,” explained Kaur, “however, my plan involves making them come out. If you would please, all of you, come back to my office, we can discuss this further.”

We all looked to Alex for direction. He nodded agreement, and we all went to Hashmir's office, where we found Mike, Adam Raven, and a number of other security officers already waiting.

The rest of the day was spent planning, and to his credit, Kaur actually listened to what Sharon, Tara, and I had to say. If everything went as planned, it would be a massacre of the Postmen with little risk to our own people. The only thing working against us, aside from potentially bad weather, was that it would be almost a full moon, so we would not necessarily have quite the amount of darkness we could want.

The plan was to launch our attack on the seventeenth, giving a week for preparation. We went on two separate runs during that week, not for food and supplies this time, but for more weapons and ammunition, as well as some specialty electronics for Adam's contribution, We grabbed a lot more stuff that we actually needed but since none of us really knew what exactly the parts did, we did not want to risk bringing him back the wrong stuff. Without Adam there was no way the plan could succeed.

On the night of the fifteenth, Tara and I were down playing Munchkin at Insert Coin when Chris asked a question, “You guys are in close with some of the people in the administration area; is there any truth to the rumors?”

Legitimately unsure of what rumors he was asking about, I asked “Which rumors?”

“That we're going to retaliate against the bikers for blowing up 'commander' Kaur's office?” he said the word 'commander' as if it were something gross that he had stepped in

I looked at Tara before speaking. I honestly had not wondered if this was meant to be a secret or not. If it was, it was clearly not being a very well kept one. However if there was a spy for the bikers inside the 'Ville, then knowing that we are coming would be disastrous for us.

“Well what have you heard?” Tara asked, presumably having the same thoughts I was, and wanting to know what was already common knowledge before potentially revealing anything new.

“Different things,” Chris replied, “I heard Kaur was planning an invasion of their camp.”

“I heard that found a gunship, and was going to shoot at them with missiles,” added Toni.

“Well I heard it was one of those mobile missile launcher things; the ones mounted on the backs of trucks,” said Molly.

“Someone told me it was going to be a suitcase nuke,” added Bryan.

I traded looks of astonishment with Tara, “Umm, I'm not sure how much we can tell you,” I said.

“See, I told you that they would be in on it!” said Chris triumphantly.

“So come on, tell us,” urged Molly, leaning in conspiratorially.

“There's not much to tell,” explained Tara, “Kaur has a plan to deal with the Postmen, and it doesn't involved nuclear weapons.”

“Or helicopters, as far as I've heard,” I chimed in.

“So are you guys involved with it?” asked Toni, “I've heard Kaur's trying to get together everyone with weapon experience, and I know you guys helped fight of the zombies on Halloween.”

“Yes,” said Tara, “We are involved, but I don't know how much we can really talk about. If the bikers really are responsible for blowing up Kaur's office, they may have people on the inside here feeding them information somehow.”

“You think it's one of us?” asked Bryan.

“I have my suspicions about your son,” I said, totally deadpan.

That got a laugh out of everyone. We ended up giving them vague un-detailed descriptions of the plan. We didn't lie to them, but we did not include any details, especially about our secret weapons.

I was completely unable to sleep the night before the plan was to be put into action. There was this sort of mix of fear and excitement. I was glad that Tara was going to be leading up my group, and that both of us would be in a relatively safe spot (at least until they brought out the rocket launchers). Sharon and the others would be a little more at risk if the bikers decided to try and charge us, so I was scared for them more than myself.

Even knowing that the rocket attack was possibly fabricated by Kaur, and the problems that the bikers were causing were also largely orchestrated by him, I still wanted to help destroy them. I wanted revenge for almost taking Sharon from me, for all of the people they killed, for daring to kill their fellow humans while the world was being overrun by the walking dead. I know, it's ironic that I wanted to kill them for killing people; no one ever said that vengeance was logical.

So the seventeenth arrived, and nature, if not God himself, was on our side. It was cold and little brrezy, but more importantly, it was cloudy and dry. Big clouds meant no moon, which meant that we would be in darkness attacking a lit target (even if they did not have lights or a fire going for us to see by, they would soon.

Kaur and Sigler did not come with us, instead they would be monitoring us over radio. Kaur had gotten a hold of a number of secured walkie talkies, I'm not sure how exactly it works, but essentially all someone without one of these walkies could hear would be electronic static. I know one was given to Tara, who was my group leader, and one was given to Rontreal, who was leading up the group that Sharon, Maria, and Gerry were in.

Favor stayed with us as we mobilized, we did not run across any of the bikers on our trip out there. I hoped that this meant that they did not know we were coming. We parked three blocks away from the shopping center so they would not hear the noise from the engines, and we all took our positions.

To help us blend into the night, we were all wearing black clothes. Some of us had night vision goggles (I was not one of them, I only had a scoped Remington, and as much ammunition as I could stuff in my satchel ) to help guide us through the darkened streets. It was very cold, probably in the thirties, and we did not run into any zeds; hopefully they've all frozen to death... re-death.

Radio silence was being maintained. If they did not know we were coming, we did not want any random radio noise, even if it was only different static, to give us away. No words would be spoken until the attack commenced; we were to wait for the signal to begin.

Gerry and a couple of others got the job of picking the back doors of a row of storefronts across the street from the shopping center. Even from the alley behind those stores, I could hear the thrumming of the Postmen's generators, and see hints of light in the sky. They were going to be a perfect target.

Rontreal's groups took positions inside the stores while Tara led us up to the roof. The stores were one long continuous structure, much like the buildings in the strip mall, so we were able to spread out along the edge of the roof. Adam, though not a part of our group, was with us. He had his own walkie talkie, but no rifle. His weapon was something much more special, and given the Postmen's past attacks, something almost poetic.

The bikers had quite a setup. The parking lot was filled with tents, and big construction lights illuminating the whole thing. At the center of the lot was a little drive through coffee hut called “Caffeine Nation”, and around that were rows of motorcycles; it was like a freaking bullseye.

Parked off to one side in front of a “Speed Feet Shoes” were three trucks like the one the bikers who ambushed at the Hotel Majestic tried to put us into; the ones with the giant cages on the back. Two of them were empty, but one looked to be full of people. Looking through my rifle's scope, I could see that they were not people, but zeds. I had been right, they were using the trucks to gather zeds. I already knew what they had been collecting those for, and I guess they must have been planning another attack of the same type. I would estimate that there were probably about thirty zeds in that cage.

I could see the flickering lights of candles faintly through the windows of some of the stores, obviously not everyone was living in tents. There were a larger number of people milling around that I would have expected to see. They were all bundled up in heavy coats and hats, so I could not tell you how many were men and how may were women, but I know there were some in the mix.

It seemed like we had been waiting forever out there on that cold rooftop, and every second seemed like it would be the one where the bikers would somehow realize that they had been surrounded by a hundred armed men and women determined to make sure that no one left that shopping center on their feet.

The noise from the generators was so loud up there that I didn't even hear the secret weapon being moved into position. It was the dome light in the truck's cab that got my attention as the person who moved it into position hopped down from the passenger side.

“Have you ever done something like this before?” I asked Adam, and he extended the antenna on the large controller that had been sitting on the roof in front of where he crouched for the last few minutes.

“Control a full size vehicle? No, but it was easy enough back in the garage, and I'm only going a couple of blocks.”

Two beeps came from the walkie talkie on the ground at his knees; the signal to begin.

“What if they shoot at it?” I asked.

“They'd have to be crazy. Hopefully by the time they even realize it's coming, it'll be too late for it to make any difference.”

Hy heart was in my throat, and my dinner was trying to join it. This was really it, I was about to help kill probably a couple hundred living people in a world where the living were an endangered species, but it was to save a few thousand. I'll hate myself for this, but I feel it's worth it to kill two hundred to save five thousand; to save the people I know, and care about, and love. I would do this for them, and for those who died at the end of the Postmen's guns trying to give all of us a chance at survival.

The truck started slowing creeping down the street, driving on the wrong side, not that there would be any traffic to worry about. As Adam quickly got used to the controls, the shining red and white propane tanker truck gained speed. When it was crossing the intersection that would place it in front of Tyranno-Mart Plaza I could hear it's engine now over the sound of the generators.

Some of the bikers must have heard it too, as some of them started to move closer to the fence to see the source of the noise, but it was too late then. There was no way they could stop Adam from getting to truck close enough to be effective. I could clearly make out the big white block letter printed on the red stripe running the length of the truck's gas filled tank, they read “HOMEHEARTH PROPANE”. I could also see the four large bundles of duct tape on the top of the truck.

“Shit!” cursed Adam, “I'm going too fast!”

I would estimate that he was only going about thirty to forty miles an hour, but tanker trucks, even the little three thousand gallon ones, aren't meant to corner like that. Adam over-steered trying to make the turn,, probably from a combination of panic, speed, and the lack of any real tactile feedback from his control box.

There was a metallic crunch and the squeal of tires as the front passenger side of the propane truck clipped the front of an old brown station wagon that was parked next to the driveway. Speed and weight were on the side of the truck, and the station wagon was shoved sideways into the chain link fence.

The front of the truck connected with the swinging gate with a rattling clang, driving the gate backwards into the stucco surfaced Tyranno-Mart Plaza sign. The gate bent where it met with the sign before the truck hit the sign itself.

Thank God for crappy craftsmanship! The shopping center sign practically disintegrated on contact with the front of the propane truck, which rumbled over the remains of its base, across the outgoing lane, and through a large green military style tent as Adam fought to get it back under control.

Two more tents were flattened under Adam's wheels as he steered to truck to the right, trying to center it on the Caffeine Nation hut at the middle of the shopping center. One or two people did start shooting at the truck now, and I don't know if their bullets weren't hitting the tank, or just weren't able to pierce it, but it did not cause a puncture, not that it would have mattered at this point.

The truck tore through the rows of motorcycles in front of the coffee booth, slowing as the crunching metal tore through its tires and the underside of the vehicle. The loss of momentum was not enough to stop it though, that happened when the front of the truck struck the small house that had once served coffee to people in too much of a rush to get out of their cars. The truck was halted by Caffeine Nation, but not before knocking the little house off of its foundation, and into a row of bikes parked behind it.

The small amount of gunfire at the truck stopped, and, aside from the noise of the generator, all was quiet for a moment as the truck's engine faltered and then died..

“Wait for it,” said Adam under his breath, “Wait for it.”

The Hell's Postmen started to move in towards the truck, slowly, cautiously. They clearly wanted to see who was responsible for this, but they smelled a trap, and rightly so. People were coming out of the buildings, and there were a lot more of them than I would have expected.

I felt a twinge of guilt at all of the lives I was about to take part in ending, but then remembered that the Hell's Postmen have on no less than two occasions tried to kill me, and remembered that there was simply not room on Earth for us and them. It's cold, I know, but if you have ever had to choose between the people you love, and the people who want to hurt those people you should understand my feelings.

“Now!” hissed Adam, pressing the buttons on his remote that would activate, as an old TV host used to say, the irreversible thermite reaction. After pressing the button, he grabbed up his walkie talking and said “Take cover!” into it.

In a matter of seconds the two bundles of duct tape on the back half of the propane tanker started smoking, and then starting spewing bright orange sparks, as if a volcano were erupting on top the truck. The front two bundles failed to ignite, but they had made four such bundles for just that reason.

The word to take cover was sent from person to person along the roof line, but pretty much everyone did exactly what I did, and kept watching. I know if Tara saw me doing that, she would likely hit me, but she was farther down the roof.

The stupid bikers moved closer to see what was causing the sparks. The smarter ones turned to run. In the end it made no difference. As the thermite burnt through the layers of the propane tank, the liquid propane started to vent in a geyser of flame shooting a good twenty feet into the air.

Then it happened. It was as if someone had stopped time, removed the truck, and replaced it with the sun. I involuntarily turned my head, threw my left arm up to shield my eyes from the flash, and was nearly knocked on my ass by the shock wave; I think if I had been standing, I would have been knocked over for sure. The building I was on shook.

I could hear the glass in the windows downstairs shattering. I worried breifly for my friends that were down there, but it turns out that at least one person had realized that this would happen. Everyone had found something to hide behnd, so no one was hurt by the glass.

When I could see again, the biker's camp was gone; in its place was a small piece of Hell transported to the Earth's surface. Pieces of flaming wreckage were raining down around us. I heard people on the roof crying out as stray bits of hot metal hit them, but it was no one near me, and no voices I knew. I kept my eyes fixed on the scene before me.

The truck was gone, the bikes were gone, Caffeine Nation was gone, and in their place was a shallow flaming crater. The tents that had not been incinerated in the explosion were collapsed and burning from having flaming shrapnel shot through them. The construction lights were down, and I could no longer hear the generators that had been running them, but it did not matter, there was more than enough light to see down there by now.

The fronts of all of the stores were destroyed, and some of them were on fire. People were starting to stagger out of them, and I heard shots starting to ring out as people trying to escape out the stores' back doors and emergency exits were being picked off by the sniper stationed on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. I could see the wounded and dazed wandering around the burning remains of their camp, but held my fire for the moment.

At the front of the shopping center, a combination of the force of the blast, and the flying shrapnel had toppled to two layers of chain link fencing outwards and onto the cars that had made up the first layer of defense. Some of the cars were on fire, or at least had flaming wreckage laying on them.

Movement at the back right hand corner of the shopping center got my attention. A store I went to one time (I was trying to find a “Blood +” shirt as a gift for Sharon, and Dark Frolic in Mallville didn't have any since the show was not currently airing on television) called “Tickle My Emo” (Ugh!) had a group of people practically pouring out of the gaping hole where the cage truck full of zeds had been blown back into it.

They were not people though, I realized, they were zeds. The bikers must have been keeping the ones they'd captured in there. It was a logical place really, much of the inside of the store was decorated in a sort of caged cell theme, so it probably did'nt take much to turn it into a real cage. I realize now that some of the zeds were from the back of the truck, but I have to think that a blast as strong as that along with the shrapnel it carried had to have killed most of the ones who caught the full brunt of it.

Around me and below me, people started firing at the remaining bikers as they staggered out of the damaged buildings, but it wasn't until some of the surviving Postmen started firing back that I started shooting too. Through my scope my targets looked close, but felt disconnected to my reality. I aimed at a figure dressed in all black, he was firing in my general direction with a handgun even though from where he was in front of T-Mart there was really no chance of even hitting one of us by accident.

My first shot missed him completely, but my second took him in the gut. He staggered to his left before falling to the ground. I don't know if he was still conscious let alone aware of how close he was to the small cemetary of zeds that had escaped from their prison in Tickle My Emo, but I kind of hope he wasn't. I don't know if it was the smell of fresh blood, or the warmth from all of the fires, or maybe they were just really hungry, but these zeds seemed to be revitalized. The fell on the man, and, I can only assume as they blocked my view, tore him to shreds and devoured him.

I decided to not shoot at the zeds for now, enemy of my enemy and all that. They would be easy enough to finish off at the end as long as they didn't try to rush our people downstairs. I looked for more human targets.

The next one I found was what I assume was a woman (she had long blonde hair, but I don't really know that that means much). . She was kneeling over a body, seemingly checking for a pulse. My bullet found her throat, and she went down clutching the gushing wound.

More people were emerging from the buildings now, how many could possibly be in them? These ones were armed, and firing back, but either because they couldn't really see us dues to the smoke and the darkness we were shrouded in, or because we were beyond the effective range of their weapons, it seemed like they were not having much luck.

On the other hand, we were picking them off about as fast as they came out of hiding. The fires were making them very easy to see, and their panic or anger and what we had done was making most of them not even try to take cover. It also helped that the zeds were swarming; there were two or three dozen of them, and the bikers had to split their attention between us and them.

I didn't see the flash, but there was an explosion about a hundred feet or so to my left. I heard yelling, and pained screaming. It wasn't until Adam started yelling in my ear that I knew what happened.

“A rocket launcher,” Adam yelled, “He's got a fucking rocket launcher!”

“Where,” I yelled sweeping the scene in front of me looking for a person toting an RPG launcher, “Where is he?”

“He just ducked back into the T-Mart. Front center door!”

The front of the T-Mart was a mess, the walls were pockmarked from the wreckage of the truck and bikes being propelled into it, and something burning had landed on the roof of the building, and a fire was spreading up there. I focused on the gaping whole that used to be a row of automatic glass doors, and I could see the remains of the rocket's smoke trail; I had not noticed it at first because of all of the other smoke over the scene. After a few seconds a person stepped out from the right side of the doorway, and was aiming again.

So they really did have rocket launchers! Where the hell did they get rocket launchers from? Maybe Hashmir was telling the truth after all.

I fired my rifle, but only hit him in the arm. It wasn't enough to stop him form firing, but it did throw his shot off. The rocket fired off to my right and low; it hit a large white van that had been in front of the outer layer of fence, and was now merely propping up a section of fallen fencing. The rocket must have hit it low because the blast was enough to send the van a short ways up into the air. The van landed on its driver side with a crunch, and proceeded to burn brightly.

Having thought that I had wounded the rocketeer there sufficiently to keep him from trying that again, I was somewhat unprepared when he, or someone else, they all look pretty much the same through a scope, stepped out and fired again. I wasn't the only one to shoot at Rocketman this time, and he fell in a hail of bullets, but not before the rocket was away.

The rocket spiraled through the air, and into the building I was kneeling on. The explosion happened a dozen feet to my right, and it tore a hole in the roof. The building beneath me bucked, and the force from the blast knocked Adam into me, and both of us went sprawling on the rooftop. Pieces of the building rained down o us, and I felt a sharp sting the left side of my face, on my forehead and in my eye.

I let go of my rifle as I lay on the roof, and it dropped a couple of inches onto the tar paper surface. My hands shot to my face to figure out what happened, my first thought was that something had hit me in the eye. My hands came away covered in blood.

“Shit!” I yelled, “My eye!”

Adam scrambled up on hands and knees to look. I could see that a small chunk of his right ear was missing, and the side of his neck was painted with his blood; in the firelight it looked darker than it should.

“It's just blood,” he yelled at me over the sound of gunfire. He pulled a dark colored bandanna out of his jeans pocket and wiped the blood from my face, “ You've got a big cut on your forehead, the blood just ran into your eye, that's all.”

I forced my left eye open, and found that I could in fact see, it was blurry and it hurt, but I could see. I flipped open my satchel, and pulled out a small mesh bag containing a thin blue towel. This is why you should always know where your towel is (and people used to laugh at me for carrying that thing with me). I rolled the towel up, and tied it around my head where I thought the cut to be. It at least stopped the blood from pouring in my eye, and I returned to the edge of the roof.

In the maybe minute that I was away from the wall, the issue of people inside the T-Mart with the rocket launcher was had gone a long way towards being resolved. The zeds that escaped from Tickle My Emo were being attracted by whatever it is that actually attracts zeds, and about a dozen of them had swarmed the door, their forces bolstered by the fact that some of the dead bikers were already getting back up to attack their former comrades.

I wonder if there's a reason some people rise faster than others?

A flash of light from inside the T-Mart was accompanied by a shower of debris out of the remains of the store's entrance. Less than a second later a booming reached my ears. I think that one of the bikers may have panicked and forgot that you can only fire a rocket launcher inside a building in video games.

There's not much else to tell about the actual attack. A couple of minutes after the last rocket, Tara came checking for wounded. She was in her icy business mode, and only stopped long enough to make sure I wasn't badly injured before checking for other casualties on the roof. In all we lost six people, two on the roof, and four down in the actual buildings.

The attack lasted for another thirty minutes, but most of that was me just sitting there while watching for movement, and killing the dead bikers as they turned and rose from the dead. Eventually Rontreal led a group of security officers in their black riot armor into the burning camp to clear out any remaining bikers or undead in the stores..

I felt both exhausted and wired as we made our way back to where all the cars were parked for the trip back to the 'Ville. We did encounter a few zeds on our way to the cars, and even more of them on the way back home. The noise from the explosion, or maybe the smell of burning flesh must have attracted them. As quiet as the world is now, the sound could probably be heard from the other side of the city, and as for the smell, well we all smelled like smoke, so it's hard to guess how far that went. If there are still a large amount of active zeds out there, T-Mart Plaza has probably become their new hangout.

Part of me still can't help feeling a little guilty about what we did, but that same part knows that if the situation was reversed that they would not have hesitated to slaughter each and every one of us to get what they wanted. Another part of me also wonders if we were played by Kaur or not. I guess that in the end, it doesn't really matter, since any group willing to work with him to kill innocent survivors doesn't really deserve my pity.

I can only hope that maybe this means that Alex and Hashmir will be turning over a new leaf. Maybe this will allow them to put aside their bullshit and work together. Maybe Mallville can continue to succeed after all. Time will tell, I guess.