Seven Devils

The heavily-muscled guy looked her up and down. "Are you the leader?" he asked.

She cleared her abnormally dry throat, thinking. She was trying not to stare at the beautiful man. "Yes, I'm Blaze," she finally choked out, speaking fast.

He raised an eyebrow. "Yes, well, come with me and I'll get your payment. I'm Matt and this is Zacky." He gestured at the green-eyed man behind him.

Blaze suddenly realized she had seen them before. "I saw you guys in concert with my boyfriend before the virus hit," she stated nervously.

Matt looked back at her and smiled. "Always nice to meet a fan." He chuckled.

Zacky nodded in agreement, smirking lightly.

Blaze, finally regaining her voice, asked "What does our payment look like?"

Matt produced a sheet of paper with writing scrawled across it. "This is what we could spare," he informed her.

She took the paper from him and looked it over. It really wasn't much, but it would do. She knew how hard it was to get guns and ammo these days, which was the very reason she preferred her machete or knife.

She smiled at Zacky, trying not to make it obvious that she found him attractive. "It'll be enough. Thank you. Do you have much activity out here?"

Matt smiled slightly. "Not really. I don't want to jinx it, though."

As they approached the building where the weapons were stored, Blaze spotted three others standing around, waiting. It was the rest of the band, she realized.

"This is Brian, Johnny and Jimmy." As Matt spoke, each man nodded as his name was said.

"Are you and your team staying here tonight?" Brian wanted to know.

"I think so," Blaze said. "We didn't really sleep last night," she added, feeling a yawn coming on.

No one asked why and she didn't tell. It was one of the unspoken laws of the new world: Don't ask too many questions. Don't give too much away.

"I'll have my team load up the equipment," she said with a sad little smile. She started to walk away and Matt fell into step just behind her. She felt a little ping of sadness when Zacky didn't follow.

Looking over at Matt, she noticed the scar across his face for the first time. She decided that it made him look more handsome, manly even.

"I'll take you over to the chow house." He chuckled. "Your team is probably already there."

With a small nod, Blaze let him lead the way to a building that might once have been a police station. It had been painted over in warm colors in an attempt to make the building look more inviting. It didn't really work, though. If anything, it was the opposite--it looked like a building of secrets, Blaze decided.

After reuniting with her team, they ate. Whatever was given to them was freeze-dried, but she didn't ask what it was. When they finished, the whole team opted to go to the bunk house. They were so exhausted from the last couple of days and wanted nothing more than to sleep for a few hours, uninterrupted.

It was about 3 in the morning when the sirens went off.

Blaze jumped off her bunk to see what was going on and immediately ran into none other than Zacky. Yelling over the sirens she called, "What the fuck is going on?"

With a slightly panicked look, he yelled "There are new zombies all around the perimeter!"

Blaze felt bile rising in her throat. New zombies. If they were all new, that could only mean one thing: some poor town had been taken over for their supplies and whoever did it didn't want to deal with the town. Instead, the people doing the taking over had let hundreds of zombies into the town to change its citizens. Using already corralled zombies was easy. Simply put a live person into the back of a semi and the zombies walked right in. Then all you had to do was put some guts all over the walls and the zombies would attack until they got in. They would kill every remaining survivor, if there were any.

Zacky snapped his fingers in front of her face, looking rather annoyed. "Get your team up!" he shouted.

Blaze ran back into the bunk house, yelling for everyone to get their asses up. As they all ran back outside, she filled them in. Just as she reached the supply vehicles, she heard a loud bang and pain shot through her side. She lifted her eyes and couldn't believe what she was seeing.