Annabeth was running, her legs were burning as she sped across the field that seemed to go on forever; her brothers Bobby and Mathew were being pulled along by her, her father Fredrick was a few steps behind. The group that she was in was of a dozen, and they had been going across America from San Francisco for a long time, perhaps a year after the world fell apart. Which was a surprise to her because as far as she could tell they were headed toward New York and she had been alive longer than she expected anyone could, she fought as hard as anybody possibly could to keep her family and herself alive. However Annabeth was reaching her limit, being an 18 year old in a world overrun by zombies, and being in charge of keeping people alive was taxing.

Annabeth looked behind her and she saw what they were running from, it was a horde of at least 50 walkers that were making their way towards her group, they had just left their last hideout because food was running short. Being the smarty pants that she was decided to make a last haul to New York, hopefully there would be food in the city, after all a place with so much population had to be fed, but now that they were probably all dead there should be food left over. Annabeth kept on running her eyes searching for a place to lose the horde chasing them, cars, a building, a miracle, anything, but what her eyes met was something that shattered her heart.

"No! No! No! No! No!" Annabeth shouted out, in front of them was another horde of zombies, identical to the ones behind them, they looked like raggedy, dishelved, stumbling messes that symbolized death. And now they were coming in from both sides, Annabeth began praying, praying for a miracle, but in this world that was dominated by the dead, what she was hoping for was impossible.

Or so she thought, she began to hear something, something resembling an aircraft, Annabeth's eyes turned to the sky and she saw what was making that noise, it was a plane, it looked like an airplane and helicopter hybrid, the body looked normal but on its sides were two rotors facing forward propelling it towards it's destination, it was flying across the sky and passing Annabeth's group and Annabeth realized they were going to die.

….

Percy Jackson was sitting idly on the back opening of the Osprey, his eyes scanning across the terrain below him, he had his assault rifle slung over his shoulder and his handgun attached to his leg, knife on the other, behind him were his men, 20 in all looking the same as him, they had on black military fatigues, black military boots and gloves, black ammo vests and assortments of weapons that they were carrying, all looking tired from the mission they had just accomplished. Percy and his men had gone on a retrieval mission to a now former U.S. Government bunker that held emergency food supplies. Now all that food was in the cargo hold of the Osprey that had taken them quite a while to drag onto the aircraft. They needed a lot of food to feed the population that they had and was growing, they now numbered in at least the thousands.

Their refuge, their now center of civilization or what Percy hoped it would be as it continued to progress and expand was once a military base, abandoned. Once Percy found it he had a vision, of a place for refugee for anything left of humanity, and so he renamed it Olympus. He began everything by himself, at first he began to rescue people by himself, and so he had rescued his friends, and his friends helped him rescue people, those people rescued other people, and those people began a civilization in the middle of an apocalypse. Now they were a growing population that held the principles of honor and selflessness. And who would Percy be, how would he be a worthy leader to Olympus, a leader people looked up to if he did not help out those that he saw in need, and that was how he came to a decision that he would soon make.

Percy was looking on below when he saw them, two hordes converging on what seemed like a smaller group, and he knew that they were humans, how he could tell that they were not walkers was because they had stopped, if there was one thing that he had ever noticed about walkers were that they never stopped walking, stopped moving in search of their next meal. Percy couldn't let those people die, before he had built Olympus he had known how it was to feel helpless, to look in all directions and see nothing but death.

Percy put the microphone from his headset towards his mouth and spoke to the pilot "Mike, that field that we just passed, take us back and put us down, everybody else get ready, I want two firing lines, we have about a dozen or so people that are about to get on here, I want them all checked for signs of infection, bites and scratches, everything understand. Mike don't put us down on Olympus until I give the all clear understand."

"Roger that Percy," Came the pilots reply. The Osprey began to turn around and changed to hover over the field that the people were in. It began sending dust clouds into the air and blanketed the area with the deafening noise of its rotors rotations, but luckily all that attention that they were attracting making the walkers focus on them would be compensated for by the time saved with the group running towards them. Once the aircraft touched down the men inside swarmed out and took their positions, ten men kneeling in the front and ten standing behind them, rifles trained at the group in front of them.

Percy was at the side and shouted out towards the group, "GET DOWN!" and so the group dropped to their stomachs and kissed the ground. At that moment the horde that had been following them and the ones that were somewhat faster and at the heels of the group came into view. Then the firing lines opened fire, loud noises and muzzle flashes erupted to create a wall that shredded apart the first row of walkers, and when those fell so did the second row, and the third row.

Soon they were out of ammo and Percy shouted out another command as his men reloaded, "START RUNNING!" The group wasted no time and began to run toward the Osprey because their lives depended on it, they ran passed the men that had saved them into the back of the tilt rotor craft and the men with guns dressed in black followed them in, guns now pointed at those they had saved.

"Everybody put your hands up and don't move, we will inspect you one at a time for signs of infection, if you have been bitten or scratched by an infected, tell me now or if I find out you have, I will have you thrown off of my aircraft. Understand." When nobody came forward Percy hoped that he wouldn't have to make good on his threat so he moved on to the next step of getting home, "Alright then, whoever is the leader of this group step forward, we will inspect you first and put your people at ease."

With that a blonde girl, teenage looking, probably the same age as Percy stepped forward, she had startling stormy grey eyes that locked with Percy's sea green ones, hers held no fear or doubt, she had an atmosphere of defiance, confidence and leadership. And Percy paused for a bit taking in her beauty.

"What are you going to stare all day or check me," the girl questioned rather boldly, talking to someone with attitude while that person seemed to be in command of 20 men holding guns at them.

"Oh right." Percy regained his composure and motioned her forward.

That was when Percy met Annabeth.