REWRITTEN 4/25/16

Samik: Okay, now I'm convinced that Enia has been kidnapped and replaced by an alien. Guys. What do I do?

Enia (or the alien approximating as Enia): So we have reached Part Two of EZHF, and if you thought we did some crazy shit in the first part, just wait and see what we get into now. It's gonna be awesome! So please keep you hands and feet inside the car at all times and enjoy the ride!

Question and Answer

New humans trickled into the library in little groups over the course of Christmas Day, never in clumps any larger than five. Each and every one of them stood outside the Great Wall and stared up its uniform smoothness with slack jaws and wide eyes. I spent an hour wracking my brain for a suitable explanation for how we had managed to build such a massive structure in such a short time with so few resources, but nothing reasonable came to mind. I just had to hope the humans accepted it and moved on without asking to many questions.

The refugees carried backpacks full of medicinal supplies, and food, and objects with sentimental value, and many of them were practically staggering under the weight of all their weapons. Every inch of available skin was covered with dirt and grime, and I could take a look at one face and know what every other one looked like. Exhausted. Depressed. Scared. Hopeless.

We stood in the street outside the safety of the wall and checked every single person for bites or other suspicious wounds before allowing them to climb the hastily constructed rope ladder and enter the sanctuary. Thankfully, we didn't find any teeth marks. Arin waited just inside the library doors to take the wounded away and care for them.

"How did you…?" one man asked, pointing up at the wall.

"Very dangerously," I replied. "Now move along."

Brow furrowed, he climbed onto the rope ladder and hurried on his way.

I poked my fingers under my hate to scratch at my head. All the elves had agreed to wear something to cover our long, pointy ears. Somehow, Teemo had managed to find a penguin hat with two braids flopping down the sides and a pompom on top. I was pretty sure he had stolen it from Zeus. The entire group had made a pact not to use our powers. It was best to not freak the humans out any more than they already were.

Teemo, William, and David roamed the streets to keep the munchers from accosting the refugees, and Onyx and Minka left in the Subaru to attempt to find cots and bedding for our swelling population. That left Samik, Zeus, and I to try and coordinate the tide of humanity begging to be let up our wall. After a few hours of listening to people whine, Samik had to go and hide the guns from me. I really didn't like people.

Eventually, and without any casualties (amazingly), we got everyone settled in upstairs. The flow of the human river tapered off as the day grew dark, and a final count revealed that there were fifty-six humans clumped around the second floor of the library. The scattered members of EZHF returned, and we were left with the impending Question and Answer Session of Doom.

The humans had a lot of questions. A hell of a lot of questions. I listened carefully to their mutters, picking up on a lot of puzzlement and confusion. The main consensus was that we seemed way too young. No one believed that we could possibly be the real deal, that we could protect them.I heard quite a few whispers accusing us of being clinically insane. Though not technically true, an argument could have been made against several of us.

I let out a long whoosh of air, pinching the bridge of my nose, and looked around the loose circle of my friends. We were busy hiding behind a bookshelf, trying to figure out how we would deal with the sea of suspicious faces gathered around us. "Ready?" I asked, though we still didn't have a solid plan.

Onyx cracked her knuckles rapidly. "They're just humans. They ain't scary."

She had a point. What was the line, though? Kill the dead, fear the living? "Alright then," I said. "Arin, have fun being in charge."

"What?!" Arin demanded, her voice rising several octaves higher than its normal register. Teemo laughed quietly to himself.

"You and Teemo look the oldest," I explained. "And you look a hell of a lot more reliable than Teemo." Her husband offered a flashing, childish grin to compliment my statement. The penguin hat made him look ridiculous, and Zeus was staring at him suspiciously as if slowly piecing together the fact that he had stolen it from her. "I'm impatient and violent, and that's exactly what we don't need right now."

Arin huffed, rolling her eyes, and stuffed her arms across her chest, but she didn't decline the position as team leader. I grinned and leaned forward to give her a quick peck on the cheek. "Show us the way, o great leader."

She narrowed her eyes and hissed at me.

Arin took a deep breath and squared her shoulders before stepping out from behind the bookshelf. The rest of us fell into line behind her, and we fanned out in a shallow semicircle in front of the gathered group of humans, making sure Arin ended up in the middle.

The tension in the air was thick enough to drown in. It sought to ooze its way down my throat, into my ears, and up my nostrils, desperate to suffocate my brain. Some of the humans were afraid of the munchers. They couldn't keep their eyes from flicking to the windows repeatedly. Others were afraid of each other. They kept giving their neighbors sidelong looks, eyes dark and suspicious. A smaller number of the refugees were even scared of us. Those were the humans who locked their gazes on us and refused to look away.

Arin cleared her throat awkwardly, stepping forward so that she drew all the attention onto herself. "Uh…hi."

No one said hi back. I thought that was sort of rude, but Arin graciously moved past it, cracking her neck and wiping her hands on her pants. "Right, so, um, we're the people you heard on the roof last night–"

A man at the back interrupted her before she could get any further, rising up on his tiptoes so he could be seen. "How do you know that was you?" he shouted, voice rough.

"Because we're the only people with a bloody sound system on our roof," Arin replied, nerves and annoyance creaking through her words. We did not appear to be off to a good start.

"You're not the one who spoke last night," an older woman added. She had a pair of cracked spectacles on a chain around her neck and tangles in her hair.

Arin shot me a look, and I coughed into my hand. "She usually does the public speaking, but she has, uh, laryngitis right now."

More than half the refugees rolled their eyes and shifted around on their feet, sharing skeptical looks with their neighbors. Tough crowd. We were losing them quickly, and we had only just begun.

"Why did you do it?" a pimply teenager asked. He held a baseball bat clenched between his gloved hands.

"Why not?" Arin countered.

"It was stupid and dangerous."

Arin flicked one of her orange braids back behind her shoulder and gave him a withering stare. "So what? The whole world is dangerous, and it was the same way even before the zombies arrived. Before the apocalypse, no one ever let that danger get in the way of celebrating or doing something we love, so the nine of us thought, why should we let it stop us now? It also let us gather a large number of zombies to one place so that we could take them out."

I grinned. Damn, Arin was good. The more she talked, the more speed she picked up until she looked ready to steamroll any objectors. Some of the wary faces began to give way to calm, understanding masks, and I noticed that the thick tension had eased enough that I could breath again. I'd made the right decision in selecting Arin for the part. I didn't think I couldn't have been able to stay as calm as she was; I would have quickly gotten pissed and ended up knocking some people's heads together.

"But you're all so young," a creaky voice in the front pointed out. It sounded as if it had been tired even before the monsters had come out to play. An old woman sat in a wooden chair at the front of the crowd, and I half expected her to be clutching a purse. Instead, she held a gun trapped inside her twisted and veiny hands.

"Does that matter?" Arin asked. "We've all proven that we can take care of ourselves and each other. Age doesn't matter anymore. Skill does."

Satisfied by Arin's answer, the old woman settled back into her chair, her tight grip on her pistol loosening. The middle-aged man and woman next to her relaxed as well, as if they were family. I wondered if this old bat had been the one to get them through hell. She seemed tough enough.

"Why don't you have guns?" a girl off to the side asked. I recognized her from school, but she wouldn't know me. I tended to blend in, and I looked a lot different now that I was an elf. She had about five visible guns on her and probably another three that I couldn't see. Her black hair was pulled up into a no nonsense ponytail.

Arin shrugged, patting the hilt of her rapier where it hung at her hip. We had decided earlier to bear our weapons proudly and openly. "Don't need them. They're noisy, and, quite frankly, most of us are lousy shots. We don't have the time or the resources to train with them, but we're all very good with our chosen hand to hand weapons."

And we had magic, but we weren't going to tell them that.

The girl shrugged indifferently and fingered one of her guns. She thought the were more impressive. Obviously, she had never seen a real sword master in action.

"And swords are more fun," Arin added as an afterthought.

"Are you insane?" demanded a nervous-looking man. He stood in the middle of the crowd, his shoulders hunched slightly, a mad, trapped look in his eyes. His skin was tanned beneath the dirt, and I couldn't tell the original color of his close-cropped hair. Something in his stance and his eyes told me that he was going to be trouble.

"Maybe." That was all Arin had to say on the matter. It probably wasn't the best answer she could have given.

Trouble wasn't done. He pushed his way forward and broke free of the crowd, turning to face them. "Why are we listening to these buffoons?" he yelled, slamming a pointing finger out behind him. I rolled my eyes. There was always one paranoid nut-job. "They're dangerous and insane, and they're more likely to get us all killed than keep us alive."

"Well, obviously our methods have worked so far," Teemo interrupted before Trouble could get any further. The tall elf's eyes flashed with good-naturedly, but there was something sharp and dark beneath the charm.

"You don't have to stay here," Zeus pointed out. After our run in with the ruffians outside, she had changed into an ugly Christmas sweater covered in bells and pine trees and a pair of black leggings. "You can leave any time."

"It's not like we're forcing you to be here," Onyx added.

"You chose to come here," I said helpfully, forgetting about my supposed illness.

Trouble whipped his head around to stare at me. "I thought you had laryngitis."

I conveniently chose that moment to cough violently into my hand.

"These people are crazy, and I bet they're going to feed us to the zombies!" Trouble continued, his voice rising in volume, his eyes wide and crazy. He had gone completely off his rocker, and I was worried he was going to break out into violence.

The nine members of EZHF rolled their eyes and let out a collective groan. "You're a bloody idiot," David informed Trouble.

"I don't like you," William agreed, bunching his shoulders threateningly. He was a good half a foot taller than the other man. "You should leave."

Trouble gaped at him like he couldn't believe that William would suggest that he, Trouble, go out and fend for himself in the big, bad, hungry world. Heaven forbid he ever had to pull his own weight. He was probably one of those people who survived through the good grace of others.

"What about food?" A woman in the front row decided to step in and change the subject before the situation got out of hand and William or David ripped Trouble's head clean off.

Arin looked at the refugee gratefully and gave her a simple nod. "That's a good point. We've got whatever supplies you all have brought, if you're willing to share, and right across the way is a pretty large grocery store. We're going to use up all the perishable foods first, and then there are plenty of nonperishables to last us a long time. Samik here," she clapped her arm around my boyfriend's shoulders and gave him a shake. "is a positively amazing cook."

Samik turned a little red as everyone who'd tasted his cooking murmured their agreement. He looked down at his feet in embarrassment, but there was a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. I looped my arm through his and gave it a squeeze.

"And water?"

"We live in Iowa in the middle of the freaking winter," I snapped, yanking my gaze away from Samik's face to glare into the crowd. I honestly couldn't believe how thick some of the humans were.

The man looked suitably cowed. Trouble opened his mouth like he was going to say something about my supposed sickness, so I coughed into my free hand, glaring at him fiercely until he looked away.

"Where do we sleep?" the practical woman in the front row continued.

Arin shrugged noncommittally. "Wherever you want. We'll take the spots that aren't filled." Thankfully, the library was fairly large, and we wouldn't have to be packed in like sardines or sleep on top of the bookshelves.

The humans began to nod as they looked around at each other, realizing that we actually had a sound and workable plan. We were giving them shelter, food, water, and protection, and that seemed to make everyone happy. Except for Trouble, that was, but he seemed like the kind of person who just couldn't be pleased. "Well, I think–" he began.

"Stuff it," Teemo interrupted, looking murderous. All the good humor was gone from his eyes, leaving their oceanic blue depths as dark as glaciers. "If you don't like it, you can leave."

Trouble muttered one last comment under his breath before falling silent, but he didn't make any move to leave. Arin let out a faint sigh of relief. No one but the nine of us seemed to realize how close that had come to violence. "I'm glad that's settled then. We'll leave you to it. We're planning on sending out a patrol tomorrow to find any others who need help. Good night. See you in the morning for a pancake breakfast."

And so ended the Question and Answer Session of Doom.

Samik: Do I really have to make pancakes for sixty people?

Enia (or the alien approximating as Enia): Yes.

Samik: That's a lot of pancakes.

Enia (or the alien approximating as Enia): So?

Samik: It'll use up all the pancake mix in the store.

Enia (or the alien approximating as Enia): So?

Samik: …

Enia (or the alien approximating as Enia): Love you!