All hell had begun to break loose back at the camp just as the three arrived.

The scene was a mess- hordes and hordes of the zombies had seized the rest of the gang's campsite, and everyone was trying desperately to ward them off.

Lily had picked up her hatchet, which she used to brutally dismember the horrendous creatures surrounding her. She yanked it from the head of one as it tumbled to the ground, before diving straight into attack of another, planting her hatchet in the zombie's back and lunging on it from behind.

"Holy crap!" Ted exclaimed, but he was so focused on what his friends were doing that he had not paid attention to his closest surroundings.

"Watch out!" Cindy screamed at him, just as a very large zombie was about to sink its teeth into Ted's neck. Ted spun around, attempting to fight it off, but it tightly gripped his wrist and snarled in his face, its breath a cloying odor of rotten flesh and week old crap, as could be expected.

"Can you help me out?" Ted cried, frantically trying to push the monster off of him.

Tracy began to savagely beat it with her folded umbrella, but this one seemed particularly resilient and could not be pried off of his body. Using her classic attack technique, she plunged the tip of her weapon deep into its back, and as the creature let out an angry bellow of pain, Tracy yanked the umbrella out, releasing a spray of blood and knocking the zombie forward.

Cringing in disgust, she wiped the blood from her hands onto her blouse. Now was not the time to be fainthearted.

The fighting slowed just long enough that Marshall spotted Ted. "Ted! What are you doing here?" he exclaimed.

"I'm here to help you guys out, now's not the time to talk about it!" Ted yelled back as he kicked another zombie off of him.

"Oh, now you come to the rescue!" Barney remarked, poking his head out of his tent. "Seriously, Ted?"

"We had to kill a guy that was stalling us, don't judge!" Cindy retorted to Barney, whacking a zombie with her shovel.

"Look, I'm sorry I decided that we should split up!" Ted yelled. "I realize that that was a terrible mistake, but I'm here now! And if I don't make it out alive, I just want you to know…that Darren was kind of the cause of all of this!"

"What?!" Lily gasped as she planted her hatchet into another zombie's back. "So that's why he was so oddly nice!"

"I knew it!" Marshall said. "No one with hair that perfect is trustworthy!"

With a loud bang, two zombies toppled over dead, revealing Robin, who was standing behind them. "Two with one bullet! Yess!" she cheered.

Robin, at this point, was quite a site to behold. Her hair was messy, falling in loose brown locks over her forehead, which was visibly decorated with many scars, bruises, and smudges of dirt and blood. Her tank top, once white, was now thoroughly drenched in blood and flecks of zombie innards, and it clung to her body, hugging her form.

"Oh, hey Ted!" she greeted him casually, dismembering the zombie behind her with the large knife she gripped in her other hand. "Glad you made it.'

It was at that moment that, suddenly, Barney stepped in. An impish look of classic deviousness lit up his face, but it was one that veiled a deeper look of anger and determination within. The fog cleared in his path as he came forward, mouth turned up in an artful half-smile.

He clenched his fists to strengthen his arms, especially the injured one, sending a rush of blood through his veins that powered him. Rolling his head to stretch the muscles in his neck, he looked forward in anticipation.

"Daddy's home, you undead freakshow!" he roared, then ran straight into the mob of readily awaiting zombies.

The others would have stopped him to insure his safety, but he was purely unstoppable. Be it the forces of the undead pumping through his body and heightening both his courage and aggression, or just a random surge of enhanced testosterone he had never found in himself before, he was like a hurricane, tearing the zombies apart with only his bare hands and even biting a few of them.

Robin, Lily, Marshall, and Ted watched in shock, mouths wide at this new form of Barney that just seemed so…un-Barney-like.

When the dust finally cleared, Barney was standing in the middle of it all. He tightly gripped a hammer in his hand- a weapon he had picked up off the ground- as he stood still, chest heaving in and out as his body struggled to gather its breath.

Nonchalantly, he slowly turned back to the rest of the gang. "So, what do you guys think?"

Ted was absolutely stunned. "Whoa," he said. "Just…whoa."

Barney choked out a spurt of blood that he could not be sure came from inside of him, due to an injury, or rather from one of the zombies he'd bitten- a sore mistake, now that he thought of it. "I guess that whole half-zombie deal wasn't just a myth, huh?" he said.

"Guess not," Lily responded flatly.

"And you guys said I was 'out of the question'," he continued, air quoting, smiling cockily. "Barney Stinson, my friends, is never simply 'out of the question.'" He proudly adjusted his torn, bloodied tie, and winked, the scar now formed above his right eye paining him greatly as he did so. "I saved all of your lives back there, b-t-dub. You all should thank me, honestly."

James, who had been previously occupied killing the zombies in another area, approached Barney, bow lowered, and patted his brother on the shoulder. "Nice work, Barney," he said. "Us Stinsons have that fighting spirit, don't we?"

"Indeed we do," Barney answered proudly.

Suddenly, a crackling sound behind them made them all do a quick turn. James raised his bow and Robin her gun, and Marshall attempted to hide behind Lily.

Out walked another zombie, closing in on them quickly. By one glance, Ted could immediately tell who it had once been.

"Darren!" he growled out under his breath.

To their surprise, zombie Darren was quickly impaled from behind by something pointy, which penetrated through his back and exited through his stomach, causing him to fall face forward, dead on the ground.

Tracy had killed him. "I hated that guy when he was alive," she told the rest of them.

There was a slight awkward silence for several minutes as the crows began circling overhead, anticipating their generous feast below as they cawed loudly in excitement.

"Hey guys, what did I miss?" Yet another person previously left unaccounted for joined up with the gang- Patrice. She was holding the scrawny, mangy dog, Dagger, in her arms as she ran out to them.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU HELP US FIGHT, PATRICE?!" Robin, naturally, screamed at her.

"Oh, sorry Robin, Dagger ran away and I had to go find him!" Patrice apologized, still clutching the canine in her arms. "Wow," she said as she realized the gory mess around her. "You guys really had a fight, didn't you?"

"Yes we had a fight, there was like 83 thousand zombies!" Barney cried.

"Barney, chill," James said, stepping in and gently nudging his brother aside. "Patrice, you really could have helped us, but thanks anyway for retrieving Dagger."

James scooped up the dog from the shorter woman's arms and placed him on the ground. "Dagger- stay," he commanded, and Dagger did so.

"So," Ted spoke up, clapping his hands together. "Our camp's destroyed. Where to now?"

No one said anything for a few minutes until Barney interjected. "You know what? I think I know a place. Come on." He led the others off in the direction of MacLaren's as they conversed with each other, making small chat and also bragging about their zombie kills.