The scream made every one of us jump and turn around. I expected to see Conor and Sophie right behind me, Sophie all red faced with embarrassment from making such a loud noise over something silly. But I didn't. They were a good few feet down the road and from what I could see there was three of them.

"Stay!" I ordered the rest of the group as I jogged back towards them. I literally just said I wasn't backtracking for anyone yet here I was going against my word. I couldn't leave them though, I just wanted to make sure they were okay. The closer I got the worse the sounds got so I picked up my pace. Within a second, Sophie was lying on the floor, another person towering over her. I readied my metal pole once more as I ran towards them.

"Hey!" I shouted to attract their attention. Conor and Sophie glanced over and as soon as they caught my eye looked thankful. Conor was pushing the other person away, but they would stumbled back two steps and begin again. I noted the bloody shirt and chunk out of their arm as soon as I got within reach. "Move her away!" I shouted urgently at Conor. How difficult is it to swing your weapon at a zombie or know just them to the floor to move Sophie away?

"I can't!" Conor shouted. Hundreds of swear words ran through my mind that I could have shouted at him but I thought silence would go down better. I swung my pole hard from left to right as I got within touching distance and the end of it connected with this persons face. They stumbled backwards and fell into a hedge.

"Quickly, get up and get over there!" I ordered, fed up of having to babysit my friends. I loved them and all, but this was not the time for any cowardice. I grabbed Sophie by the arms and yanked her up, pushing both of them in the direction of the group.

"But-" Conor began but I shooed him away. I needed to concentrate right now. The person crawled back out of the hedge and that's when I saw it. The tribal tattoo that ran down their right arm. One that looked awfully familiar. The messy brown hair was now blood splattered as was their face from my weapon. But I still recognised him. It was Kieran, Conor's neighbour and friend. I'd met him a few times over our time being friends and he was a pretty cool guy. He was always the hyper, excited one that lightened the mood. He wasn't doing that now.

"Shit." I breathed out. This was he first person I was going to have to kill that I actually knew. I gulped down the lump in my throats and blinked away some tears that were trying to form. I needed to do this quickly.

"Are you alright?" I jumped out of my skin at the sound of another voice but as I looked round, Liam was stood beside me with a concerned look on his face.

"I know this guy." I said simply.

"Damn. I'm sorry." He replied. "Did you want me to... you know?" He nodded towards Kieran who was getting closer to us, his bloodstained mouth still dripping fresh blood from something he must have eaten. SomeONE.

"Please." I said again. I took a step back and watched as Liam swung his metal pole straight across the guys head. He fell to the floor and Liam began the part I dreaded. He bashed and bashed at the guys head until you heard metal clashing with the road. The job was done. "Thank you." I muttered, unsure as to what to say. It was hardly something any of us wanted to do but we had to survive.

"That's alright." He shrugged. "Really I came over here to talk to you. He quickly turned to Harry and the group and waved them to go on ahead of him. They all began walking as we slowly began to catch up. He obviously wanted to talk to me in private, which for some reason made me really nervous.

"Yeah?" I gulped.

"I don't know how to say it..." he stammered awkwardly. This was the first time I'd ever seen Liam struggle with words. I thought back to the first time we'd actually spoken about my uniform and how confident and cocky he was then. "The others think Conor is a liability." He said quickly. "They wanted me to tell you cos apparently we've got the closest relationship out of all my mates." I stopped still for a second, trying to digest what he just said. I picked up my pace again quickly though as I remembered what we were out here for.

"Okay?" I said, unsure of an appropriate answer to being told one of your friends sucks.

"He hardly ever actually fights those things, he's constantly putting us in more danger and injuring us!" He said, his fingerless gloved hand pointed at his javelin wound. "I wouldn't mind but even just then he stood there." He pointed back to where Kieran's dead body lay.

"Hey, that's not fair. It was his friend." I was quick to come back and defend him.

"Okay I get that but when you have one live friend being attacked by one of those you should be trying to save them right?" Liam put his hand on my shoulder and sighed. "Look, I know he's your friend but I also know you believe what I'm saying. You only defended him once which just proves to me that you know I'm right." I let out a heavy sigh and rubbed my face.

"Yeah he's not doing so great right now but what can I do? Kick him out and leave him to defend himself?"
I was stuck, more stuck than ever before. This was one of those situations you couldn't prepare for and I didn't know how useful my friends would be in it.

"All I'm saying, as a warning, is if he fucks up again, we won't have any fear of kicking his ass and leaving him somewhere." Liam's tone changed dramatically. No more was he being soft and nice to me. He meant this bit. If Conor screwed up once more they'd abandon him.

"I-I" I stuttered but I couldn't think of the right thing to say. Was he really that useless or was it all about some stupid alpha male thing? After all Zayn's first questions were 'are there any girls? Any of them hot?'

"It's nothing against you, seriously. You've been a huge help since the start. You warned us first and tried to protect Susan." I let out a small 'hmph' as he mentioned her name. "Louis is temperamental, he's taking it out on you cos it's easier than admitting to himself that she's gone or that he couldn't have saved her."

"He nearly got me killed." I stated. "Pretending his knife was blunt?" I reminded him just in case. "When none of you stuck up for me and said I hadn't got bitten?" Liam ruffled his hair in the awkward silence that followed. "Right, so remember the minute you're thinking of kicking Conor from the team, Louis is next."