An icy cold chill wafted through the entire Zoo and swept some leaves across the ground. It was a full moon that night but large gloomy clouds blocked the view, covering up most of the night sky in its eerie gray color. The atmosphere around the Central Park Zoo was unusually cold that night, leaving most animals with unintentional nightmares. A haunting presence lurked over the Zoo with malevolent watchful eyes as it watched four penguins' particularly.
Amber, Flora, Sara and Madison were walking through the Zoo at night to prove some unnecessary beliefs. In all honesty, only two of them wanted to really be there. The others, not so much.
"Why are we doing this again?" Sara whimpered to Flora. She was extremely terrified from the creepy surroundings. The night looked rather scary to her but the other three female penguins were perfectly fine with it. They were used to it since Antarctica was usually covered in darkness but Sara never got accustomed to it.
Flora looked at Sara but continued waddling with her team. "Because I want to make some observations and now was a good time as any," she answered, being vague purposely to avoid arguments. Unfortunately, it was inevitable.
"That and Flora and I have a bet and I'm telling you for the last time that zombies are real!" Amber shouted the last of her words in the intellects face. The penguins stopped walking, and Amber and Flora were soon in another argument.
Flora glared and met Amber's scowl. "That preposterous! They don't exist, it's only a dumb myth created by people to scare their kids at night." The female second in charge placed her flippers on her hips with Amber following in suit.
"You know they're real!" Amber argued. "Madison, Sara what do you think?"
Amber and Flora snapped their gazes to the two penguins, who were hoping they wouldn't be dragged into the argument. Unfortunately, they didn't always get what they wanted. This has been the fourth time this week that they brought Sara, and Madison into their arguments and it was getting irritating.
Sara hesitated before speaking. "Well… I don't really think they're real. At least I'm hoping they aren't…" She looked around with wide eyes, as if a monster was going to jump out and attack her. She was unsure to say the least and fidgeted where she stood. "Can we please go? I'm getting a bad vibe…" This comment went unnoticed when the two superior birds brought their attention to the mute penguin of the flock.
Madison smiled wickedly and nodded her head. She thought they were real alright.
"See? They agree with me." The silver commanding officer gave Flora a triumphant smile.
The flower loving penguin frowned and scoffed. "Technically, Sara didn't say she believed in them, so it doesn't count!"
As those two penguins continued to argue, with Sara watching worriedly, Madison had her attention on something else. She was watching a shadow that was on the Zoovenier shop's roof intently. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as the shadows eyes landed on her. It had creepy glowing red eyes that burned deep into her soul.
The feeling was odd and a blood pumping sensation. The creature's eyes sent a chill to her bones and some kind of signal to her brain. It was something that she had never experienced before, like something was rushing to her brain.
Madison stared through dilated pupils at the creature, as it practically hypnotized her with its gaze. She felt herself taking a couple of steps forward, but she was shook for her hypnotized state when Amber slapped the back of her head. In the process, her hat was knocked off of her head. She growled at her leader and bent down to grab her cap.
"What the heck were you staring at?" Amber questioned and then tipped her head back a bit so she could see the other girls at the corner of her eye. "You looked like a zombie." Another reference, just to push Flora's buttons. And it worked.
"Zombies don't exist," Flora grumbled, clearly aggravated.
Madison put her baseball cap backwards on her head and pointed at the Zoovenier shop's roof and grunted. This only received confused looks and raised brows from her female companions.
"Um…Madison? What are you pointing at, exactly?" Sara asked. "It's just the shop."
Madison gave them her own confused look and looked back at the roof. The shadow was no longer there, much to her chagrin. She grunted out her confusion with curiosity seizing her firmly, as it often did. She slid her way to the shop and started going up the building to investigate.
"Madison, stop!" Amber ordered.
It was all in vain but that didn't stop the three penguins from following their psychotic friend. They slid to the shop also and bounced against walls for momentum to reach the top. When they hopped onto the roof they found Madison about to poke some strange green goop.
"Don't touch that!" the penguins shouted, and tackled her away from the green mess.
Madison let out a startled shout but pushed her friends off of her. She crossed her flippers over her chest as she sat up.
"You don't just touch random green slop!" Amber scolded with a pointed flipper.
The mute penguin partially ignored her and continued to stare at the green goop that was only a few feet away from her. She grew faintly disturbed and thankful that they had stopped her from touching it, as it had started to bubble a bit.
Sara grimaced at the sight and hid behind Amber for possible protection. The slightly taller bird squeezed her shoulder a bit and offered words of comfort.
"Amazing," Flora whispered, gaining their attention. She stared at the mess and inched closer to it.
Amber eyed the scene with suspicion. "Flora…" she drawled out warily.
The second in charge rolled her eyes. "Don't worry; I'm just going to take a sample." Flora took out a random test tube and scalpel from who-knows-where.
Amber sighed to herself. "Is this really necessary?"
"Yes." Flora spared her leader a glance. "Yes it is." She scraped the goop carefully off the ground and slid the foreign element into the test tube. The substance was like Jell-O and jiggled in the glass casing. "No harm in keeping a scalpel, right?" Upon the looks Flora received, she sighed and threw it across the across the area. "Fine…"
"MY CAR!"
The outburst went unnoticed and they continued to look at the green slop as Flora swirled it around in the test tube.
"Where did those even come from?" the youngest penguin asked, referring to the scalpel and test tube.
Flora pondered this for a moment. "You'd be surprised, actually." She shrugged with a sheepish grin. "Don't ask question you don't want the answer too. Besides Madison does it with her tape recorder all the time."
Just as she said that, Madison pulled out her prized tape recorder and pressed play for one of her favorite tracks.
"We're going to light it up, like its dynamite!"
"Turn that off!" Amber ordered. Madison reluctantly stopped it and stared at the ground sadly. The leader sighed and rolled her eyes. "You can listen to it later…" she said reluctantly. Madison brightened up instantly and did a little dance on the spot.
Sara smiled. "She's always happy when there's music."
"Yes, it's a bit addictive and contagious," Flora chuckled. "We can save the pointless bet later," she said and sent Amber a look. "I want to examine this stuff as soon as possible."
"Alright then, let's go back to HQ," Amber ordered with a smirk. She poked Flora's stomach as she said, "Once you're done, we can prove that I'm right and you're wrong."
Flora rolled her eyes. "I'm never wrong." The looks she got made her sigh in annoance. "Ok, I'm almost never wrong. Zombies, or monsters of any kind, don't exist, simple as that. It goes against science, math and mother nature!"
"Well, monsters do have their own rules." Amber smirked with amusement and high-fived Madison.
"Can we please go back to our habitat," Sara pleaded. "The night is starting to freak me out." She was still getting the bad vibe but she kept that to herself.
Amber scowled at Sara's fear but reluctantly decided it was best to leave as soon as possible. "Alright, fine. Move out!" she ordered.
The female penguins' jumped off the building and quickly slid back to their habitat. When they flipped over the fence, they managed to land on the concrete island while keeping their balance. Flora gripped her test tube tightly but carefully, praying it wouldn't break. Amber slid the fishbowl aside, ushered her team into the headquarters and jumped in after them.
"We're back!" Sara announced happily.
The guys turned their gazes from the flickering television to the girls.
"Ello Sara!" Private greeted cheerfully, although his eyes showed how terrified he was. It must have been the movie they were watching. "What are you doing back so soon?"
Sara didn't seem to know how to really answer that but she still responded with, "Flora wanted to examine this...weird thing."
Flora seemed to grow impatient. "And we're going into the lab," she said with little to no subtlety. She quickly dashed into the lab and left the door open a bit, a welcome invitation to the rest of the penguins to join her.
"Why is she?" Kowalski raised a brow at the remaining females.
"Flora found something, and I guess she wants to check it out," Amber answered with a shrug. "I think that was her 'subtle' way of telling me to follow." With that said, she went into the lab after the excited female scientist. Sara and Madison exchanged a glance, shrugged, and then went into the lab as well.
The guys also exchanged glances and shrugged. They then turned back to their T.V and continued to watch a horror movie marathon. The whole time Private was huddled up in a ball and fearfully watching the screen. The gore on the television was splattering everywhere with blood and crunched or discarded bones being thrown from mutilated bodies.
Private gasped when a man's head was cut off. He covered his eyes and whimpered out, "Oh dear..." He ducked away and started quivering underneath a pillow.
Skipper threw some popcorn into his beak, then noting Private was cowering on the floor. He scowled at the young cadet. "Aw, c'mon Private! You're going to miss the best part!"
Someone's head was thrown into spinning blades, sending blood everywhere. Private fainted.
Meanwhile, in the lab...
"What's so interesting about this anyway?" Amber inquired to Flora with a raised brow.
Flora looked at Amber as if she just committed a murder. "This could be a breakthrough in science discovery! How is it not interesting?"
The silver commander looked at the green goop for a second before looking back at her second in charge. "It's just a green pile of crud."
Flora rolled her eyes at Amber's choice of words. It was then that she noticed Madison playing with a Bunsen burner. "Don't touch that!" She rushed to Madison and took the burner away. "This is a delicate piece of equipment, and I don't need anything broken in here. I don't want Kowalski to get upset about it either."
Madison crossed her flippers over her chest bitterly and rudely blew a raspberry in her face. Flora scowled and they glared at each other until Sara piped up.
"Um, Flora?" she whimpered. Flora looked over and saw the green goop bubbling violently in the tube. The young bird was taking steps back and was warily pointing at the green substance. "Is this supposed to happen?"
"No, so…EVERYONE TAKE COVER!" Flora shouted.
But just before they could, the green substance sprayed and splattered everywhere and landed all over the female penguins bodies. The force it emitted was strong enough to send them flying and crashing into the walls. The penguins moaned at the sudden pain.
They were oblivious to the substance sinking into their flesh, disappearing completely into them. Their veins lit up green for a second before they fell unconscious.