The

Walking

Dead

What do you call them?

We all walked into the bar quietly, when we stepped in a few people turned to look before looking away uninterested. We found a table, pulled up three chairs and sat down; I grabbed an extra chair and put my feet up on the seat. It had been months since the disease hit and the world fell apart; now what had been California was like the old west, lawless, dangerous, and unpredictable. After we had been sitting for awhile a girl walked in with a M4 and a backpack "who knows where I can find Lee Davis?" she asked loudly "that'd be me." the bartender said.

The girl walked past us, as she did I saw six or seven scalps tied to her backpack, I knew instantly she was a bounty hunter, here to collect a bounty or a reward. My friends and I watched uneasily as she approached the bartender, she then reached back and tied the scalps from her pack without looking and set them on the bar "I'd like my reward now." she said. The bartender casually grabbed a box of ammo and handed it to her along with some food "I was promised 5.56×45mm bullets, these are .22 rounds." She said "all I got." The bartender said "you don't get it, you promised me 5.56 ammo, not .22, so you'll find some or I'll blow your brains out." She said "what, with a gun you ain't got bullets to spare for?" the man said.

"No, with this." the girl said drawing an old revolver and putting it to the bartender's forehead. "5.56, now." she demanded "okay, it's in back, I'll go get it." The bartender said weakly "oh, I thought you were out? Were you lying to me?" she asked sarcastically keeping the gun on the man's forehead "calm down!" a boy with brown hair, blue eyes and a tomahawk on his belt said "this weasel tried to cheat me out of ammo he owes me!" the girl yelled "yeah, and pointing the gun at his head isn't gonna help you much." The boy said "get her the ammo you owe her now." he ordered grabbing the girl's hand and moving it away from the bartender's face.

The bartender quickly ran and grabbed the ammo for the girl "that wasn't too bad was it Lee?" she asked "n-n-no ma'm." Lee stuttered "that's enough, take your reward and go." The boy said "or do you need me to guide you out?" he asked putting his left hand on his hawk "I think I out gun you." The girl said pulling back the hammer on her revolver "I've already got a gun trained on your head so it doesn't matter." He said flicking the safety off on a silenced pistol in his right hand held low and angled up.

"Okay, you win." she said releasing her revolver's hammer slowly and putting it in its holster, She then walked out and closed the door. We all sat in silence for a few more seconds "well, shake your fucking heads your eyes must be stuck!" the boy yelled before slowly walking to a seat by the door by a native American guy and a girl with dirty blond hair sitting in one chair, an Asian guy and another girl sitting in two other chairs, and two people in hooded jackets leaning against a wall.

Everyone began to go back to talking and drinking after a moment's thought. After about ten minutes the four people at the table next to us were talking about the dead. "so this one time I was trapped in a tool shed by some rot-walkers and I only had a broken rake, and a pocket knife-" he started "wait, you call em' rot-walkers?" Hanna asked from our table "what do you call em' huh?" the man asked "ghouls." I replied. "Well, both your names for them are damn stupid sounding, I myself call them chompers." The man across from him at his table said "and you said what we called them was stupid? Seriously?" I asked.

At this point someone walking into the bar heard us talking and sat down, entering the conversation. "So, what'd you call them?" Heath asked the newcomer "I call them cadavers." He replied "makes sense." I commented. "So, what's the most you've seen at one time?" one person asked "I've seen about a hundred once." A man said "seen easily three times that." A woman said "the most I've seen is a thousand, at least. Probably more." I said "bullcrap!" one man yelled standing up.

"I escaped L.A. myself, I saw easily a group that big, that city fell hard." I said "damn, had family down there, guess it's too late to worry now." the woman said "I knew a guy who escaped Oakland, got bit three weeks back though. Good man didn't deserve to die like that." One man said. Suddenly we all heard a siren and rushed outside.

I looked and saw the town wall being breeched by ghouls "grab your guns and take the creepers out!" the brown haired boy yelled drawing his pistol and quickly popping five ghouls in the head. He and his friends formed a loose circle and went to work.

My friends and I raised our weapons and took cover behind a dumpster. I fired my rifle and exploded the head of a ghoul a hundred yards away. Everyone able in the town began shooting ghouls, but it wasn't enough, there must've been hundreds of them, all zeroed in on this town. the boy and his group all pulled a melee weapon out and began pushing through the horde "you kids crazy?" someone yelled before the kids had exited the walls and ran for the woods outside town.

"They got the right idea, town's lost, abandon ship!" Heath yelled killing a ghoul with the butt of his shotgun. We all began to flee the town; some people got swarmed over, eaten alive. A few people like us got past the walls and ran for the wooded hills.

Once safe for the moment I looked back at the town, it was completely swarmed, covered in the dead. We'd all forgotten that they were still a threat; the ghouls were still an ever-present danger to us. We'd need to remember that, from now on we needed to remember the havoc, the chaos the ghouls could cause, all with a bite. They would haunt us forever.