October 16, 2:38 A.M.

It was a long night. I stayed for hours, listening for any sign that there might be a zombie breaking in. There wasn't any, but sometimes, I was startled by the screech of a zombie from a couple of blocks away.

I didn't exactly fall asleep, but I did doze off for a couple of minutes. You know, the point of where you almost drift of to dreaming, but then you snap back to reality. I tried to get up and shake off the numbness. Then I realized what brought me back from my doze. I heard some kind of rustling sound. Something was moving in the store. I could feel the vibrations in the floor.

"Hey guys," I called out. "We got company."

I flipped on the light switches and Diane, Kevin, and Champ bolted straight up. I grabbed my mallet, Kevin grabbed his mop handle, and Diane grapped a kitchen knife from the drawer. We checked the store. After the second search, my friends each gave me a dirty look. Even Champ look disgusted.

"David, just why the hell did you wake us up for again?" Kevin snapped.

I was puzzled. "I swear I heard something."

Diane was the only one who had the closest expression of a concerned look. "Are you sure? Maybe one of us needs to stand guard. You know, Champ is an excellent guard dog."

I looked at Champ, who just wagged his tail. I looked back at Diane. "No offense, but I prefer if one of us standing guard was human so we could understand what we were hearing instead of barking at every sound."

Kevin grimaced. "And you are doing...what?

"Look! I heard something, all right?" I yelled. "And if you can't believe that, you both could just-"

THUMP!!

All of us jumped at the same time. I looked over my shoulder. The sound came from behind the counter.

"Did any of us check behind there?" I asked. They both shook their heads.

I swallowed and inched my way forward toward the counter with Kevin behind me and Diane behind him. My heart was a jackhammer. When I got behind the counter, the body of the store clerk was still there. He didn't seem to have moved from the spot from where Kevin and I found him. I went on the left side of the body and Kevin on the right. Diane stayed behind the counter. I kicked the body and it didn't move.

I looked at Kevin. "Well, maybe I do need to ge-AAARRGGGHHH!"

The clerk lunged forward and grabbed my leg. Adrenaline pumped into my body as I kicked the clerk has hard as I could. I heard his arm snap from the impact and it went limp. But then the clerk reached over with his other arm and grabbed again. I kicked again and Kevin whacked with the handle, but the zombie would not let go.

I heard another snap and Kevin's mop handle broke off. While still fighting with the zombie, I saw Kevin look at the handle like it was an answer to a math question. Then, he let out a loud yell and plunged the handle into the zombie's head, the handle entered the eyeball and into the brain. I heard a wet, squish and the zombie stopped moving. Pieces of the brain were coming out of the eyeball.

Diane gasped and walked away with her hand over her mouth. I also found myself wanting to throw up.

Kevin, however, looked at the zombie and said, "bite me."

I looked at him. "How can you do that and not feel any remorse?"

Diane recovered enough to say, "Yeah, I mean that man was alive."

"He was not alive. He was dead before I killed him," he said quietly, avoiding our gaze. " I mean look at him. His throat is torn out."

"Whether he was dead or not, that was a human being," I pointed out.

He suddenly whirled around and pushed me. I flipped over the countertop and landed on the floor next to the doors. The breath was knocked out of me and pain wracked up my side. I got up as Kevin went around the counter and pushed me against the glass doors. Diane stood back, horrified.

"Listen David. Everyone is dead. Get that through your skull," he explained .

"Guys...," Diane whispered.

"Even though these things are dead, they're up walking around, wanting your blood."

"Hey guys..." Diane repeated.

"They have already killed everyone you loved. You're not just going to stand by and let them kill others, are you?"

"Now's not the time to..."

David ignored her. "You need to get tough and stop acting like a pansy. These things will not hesitate to kill you or-"
"Hey!" Diane yelled.

"What?" Kevin snapped.

Diane had a pale look on her face. She didn't say anything; she just pointed behind us.
I was still pinned by Kevin so I couldn't see. But Kevin looked over my shoulder. His face went was as pale as Diane's. He let me go and backed away from me. I spun around.

There were about a dozen zombies outside of the store, just staring at us. I looked out the window and there half a dozen more, surrounding us. When I moved away, the all charged staight into the door. Luckily the doors and window held. However, the glass begun to crack. We backed up.

"Those doors are not going to hold. Was there a back door?" I asked Diane.

"Yeah. But how are we going to your car?"

"My car? What about yours?"

She looked guilty. "Out of gas. Why do you think I'm at a gas station?"

Kevin groaned. "Look. We need to get out of here before we're roadkill." He started pacing. Kevin was always the best a figuring solutions for problems. "Alright. I run out the back door, go around the front, and distract them. You two, get to David's car and get it started."

Diane yelled, " Are you crazy? You'll be killed."

Kevin just laughed. "Nah, I am a basketball player. No one in the league has been able to catch me."

I nodded. "It's all we have. We'll give you three minutes."

"Okay." He walked to the back. "Wish me luck."

I heard the back door slowly open, then close. We waited for a couple of minutes. I tried not to think about what would happen if he did get caught. But he was right. Nobody could catch him on the court.

Then we heard him yell, "Come on! Why don't you take a bite out my ass!" All the zombies turned and ran to the west side of the store.

"Let's go," I said and unwrapped the the bungee cord from the door handles.

After a sweep glance around the parking lot, we ran out to my car. I got behind the wheel and Diane opened the passenger door. Champ came in first, then she did. I got my keys out of my pocket and started the engine. But as I pulled the car around, the low fuel light went on.

"Dammit!"

Diane looked around. "What?"

"We're out of gas, too!"

"What?" she asked horrified. "How could you be so stupid?"

"Just shut up!" I yelled. Listen, you need to go inside the station and turn the hose on. There is a electric pad that turns on the hoses."

"How will I know which one?"

I looked over my shoulder. "Four."

She hesitated at first. "Alright. Champ, stay."

Diane go out of the car, running towards the counter. I pulled the car next to pump four and got out, putting the nuzzle hose into the gas can. I saw Diane through the window. She stepped over the clerk and went to the gas board. I didn't see anything at first, but then the numbers on the gas pump went to zero. I sighed and gave a thumb-ups to Diane. She hurried the back outside and got back into the car.

The numbers slowly ticked by. It seemed forever for the tank to fill up. I had three quarters of a tank when I saw Kevin running from down the block with the zombies on his tail. When he saw me pumping gas into the car, he opened his mouth and said something I couldn't hear, but I thought I heard the words 'shit' and 'brains'. In spite of the situation, I smiled.

"Let's go," I yelled. I dropped the nuzzle. It it the ground with a clang and continued to pump gas out.

I got back into the driver's seat and started the engine. Kevin caught up and jumped throught the open window in the backseat.

"Drive, you moron!" he yelled.

"Watch this," I told everybody. I stepped on the gas, pulled on the emergency brake handle and pulled a 180 in the parking lot. The same trick I did in my street yesterday. We drove out of the parking lot and was home free. The zombies, however, continued the pursue us.

But before we got out of the lot, Kevin reached forward and pulled the cigarrete lighter from the dashboard. He threw it out the window. After a momen, I saw the lighter ignite the gas from the nozzle in my rearview. The zombies reached the pump as the fire traveled into the gas lines. As we pulled onto the road, a tremendous explosion rocked the area. I felt the car vibrate from the shockwave. Pieces of metal and dead flew around us.

As Kevin looked back, I heard him say, "burn baby burn."