Battle of Ash

Chapter 3

"Thank God." She breathed, "Thank fucking God."

"Christ." Colton wheezed as he rolled off her, catching his breath, "You shot them."

"I had to." Ash snapped back, "They were going to infect you."

"That wasn't our mission. It wasn't our mission, Ash! You didn't have the authority to make that call!"

"I have to keep you alive. You don't understand I-"

"Shh." He stopped her, a large hand held in the air between them, fingers splayed.

Quiet; stop now. His body said. Ash took him in quickly while they waited. No obvious cuts or wounds which meant he was safe.

"Alright," his voice was quieter now, more calm, "thank you."

He patted her shoulder and her heart calmed.

-Edited To-

They had been deployed for seven months and two weeks now. This had been their last mission before being sent back home to defend the front lines against this 'biological warfare', as the government had put it. Colton was a big man, square and strong. His nose was a little large and he had a bit of a lisp, but Ash had soon found herself falling for him. He was brave and courageous, easily one of the toughest men in her squad. Plus he had the brightest blue eyes; they positively glowed against his dark lashes and skin.

They were allowed leave to visit home during Christmas. Ash was introduced then to his lovely wife and baby daughter. It had crushed her. At the same time, seeing him with them- how loving and sweet he was, made her pine all the more. It was New Year's Eve when she vowed to keep him alive at all costs... not just for his family but for her.

Then they were sent to Brazil to investigate the sudden lack of communication from the small CDC station in which six scientists had been investigating the research of a new virus. When they got there everything was chaos. So many people had fallen ill in such a short amount of time that nothing was running the way it should; schools were empty or taken over as sick rooms for those who had caught the far more aggressive strain of the virus. Banks were closed, businesses looted; the city had fallen into nothing but riots and gangs and chaos. The electric grid was off the system, satellites had been rendered useless due to dust build-up and grime. More people were sick than healthy, and the healthy were in such a state of desperate panic they were falling to an almost primal state of survival.

The information in the scientists discoveries were supposed to hold answers that the US Government and UN didn't have and due to the sudden failure in communication with the scientists they sent in the Army. Five squads had been dispatched to retrieve the information. They had been given survival bags complete with some heavy duty air filtration systems and the commands to not shoot anyone.

It had taken them a week to travel to the destination. When they got there they just found three half dead people trying to bite them from behind a quarantine containment unit covered in gore. Tattered bones littered the floor and bounced around as the creatures snarled and rammed into the wall as hard as they could. Another creature, later to be discovered as a woman, was found slouched against a wall in a unit opposite from the infected; some sort of something had consumed her body. There had been nothing left to suggest she had once been human except for the supplies they could make out through the haze and the picture she had taped to the wall. A heavy fog of spores coated the room she was sealed away in.

Since then the situation had only deteriorated. The infected had become far more violent; actively seeking out those who were uninfected and chasing them down with the sole purpose of infecting them. They weren't like the ambling zombies in the movies and video games. They could access basic motor skills. The fresher infected could climb and leap like any normal person, which made being chased exceptionally terrifying.