Violent shaking jarred me from my sleep, and I looked up frantically to see my dad standing over me with his hand on my shoulder. "What?" I inquired groggily. "Time to get up". I looked over at the clock next to me. It was 9:00, meaning we had only gotten six hours of sleep. "You must be kidding..."

"Nope. Come on. Get your friends up too. We're having breakfast in my room, then we're going."

"What? How?"

"Just get your friends up." He left the room and shut the door behind him.

I got out of bed, threw on my red housecoat and looked down to the floor at my unconscious friends. Getting them up wasn't going to be easy, but it would be fun. First, I tried to do it nicely. "Alex." Nothing. "Hey Alex." Still nothing. "Alex!" I gave up on that. At least I had tried. I turned to rummage through my closet for something suitable, and found a cap gun. I walked over to the door and opened it, letting in the moans. Wake-up time.

"Shit guys get up get up they're in!" I dove behind the bed, landed on Xiran and started shooting randomly. "Fuck!" Alex shouted as he thrashed frantically in his sleeping bag and reached desperately for the rifle lying on the floor a few feet away from him. I burst out laughing as Xiran pushed me off of him. "You're a retard." It took Alex a few seconds to figure out that the zombies were in fact not upstairs, and that they were still in the writhing mass on the main floor. He giggled incoherently. "You bitch..."

"Well, I tried doing the nice way. Come on, breakfast."

They got into their clothes and followed me through the hallway, all of us staying a safe distance away from the railing. We walked into the master bedroom to see my sister lying on the bed next to the cat watching cartoons. My dad sitting was on the floor next to the electric fryer. On it were mini pizzas and fried eggs, the breakfast of champions. We sat down on the bed and dad looked up at us. "What do you guys want for breakfast?"

"Eggs", I replied.

"Eggs", Xiran answered.

"Pizza", Alex responded.

"Well too bad. You're all getting pizza."

Alex remembered the conversation they had had last night concerning his family, and he asked about it. "Justin", He whispered over to me. "What's your dad's name?"

"Paul", dad answered.

"Oh. Okay. Um... so what did my family say about going to your uncle's house?"

"They said they're fine with it."

"Really?"

"Yeah, they seemed pretty eager to get out of there. Your dad didn't like the way they were running things."

"Like what?"

"Well, there was no privacy and they weren't telling people anything. And they didn't think they were searching people well enough for injuries."

"So dad", I cut in. "How are we going to get over there?"

He paused for a bit. "It's not going to be pleasant."

After he had explained the plan and we were overwhelmed with nervous anticipation, we went into my room to get ready. The first thing to do would be to slightly upgrade the guns and do a bit more weapons training. I grabbed my paintball gun and took off its red dot scope. After mounting it on one of the .22s, I showed Alex how to use it to aim with both eyes open. With that, I would be amazed if he managed to miss. Xiran was going to be doing some sniper work, which he was thoroughly exited about. He spent most of the time pointing the scoped bolt-action into the backyard and aiming at various zombies. They had pretty much abandoned the front of our house and those who could not push their way through the destroyed glass and the other zombies were milling about in the backyard.

I began to put on my jeans, thought better of it, and donned my camouflage combat uniform, which I had for Cadets. On top of this I wore a web belt, with its compartments filled with bullets and shot shells. All of our pockets jingled with ammunition. For our escape, I was going to be the best armed because my dad needed to be able to move quickly. The holster on my belt carried the revolver. Slung over my back was one of the shotguns; I held the other. I had shot them before and knew how sharp the recoil was, but I would just have to deal with it for now. Sitting on the bed next to me, my friends raced each other to see who could load a .22 faster. This resulted in a lot of jams, but they got the hang of it soon enough. Then, my dad opened the door and informed us that it was time to go.

We opened the window, and the frigid wind rushed in past us. We climbed out and onto the roof. Outside, the world seemed empty. The neighbor, whose house was previously surrounded, was now vacant. The garage was open, so I assumed they had decided to plow through them to get through the mall. To our right, by the front door were three zombies standing by our previous barricade, doing nothing in particular. They hadn't noticed us yet, but they were to be the first problem.

The car was on the driveway in front of us, and in front of the garage whose roof we were standing on. The angle of the roof made it much too high for any of us to jump down there, so dad would have to jump off the roof directly where those three zombies were standing. He would then drive it over so that we could hop on the roof of the car, throw the backpack containing our supplies as well as the cat carrier into it, and drive away.

The only problem was that the sound of shooting those three zombies was going to not only bring the zombies from all around the neighborhood, but most dangerously, from the backyard. I peeked around the corner of the house to see them standing there, some walking in tight circles, others doing nothing at all. They grew less dense as they got closer to the garage. Luckily, none were in sight of the car.

Wordlessly, we got to our positions. I tried my best to keep a clear head; the cold was only part of the reason I was shaking. Xiran sat perched at the front of the garage, directly above the car. His rifle was trained on a zombie in the distance, and he held it surprisingly steadily. Alex and I sat on the left side of the garage roof, a shotgun resting on my knee and a .22 on his. It was our job to distract them from my dad on the other side of the garage, as well as to shoot anything that followed the car. My dad sat on the other side of the garage, just above the zombies by the front door. They had noticed him, and were now trying desperately to reach him.

For a moment, all was silent save for the wind. And then it started. My dad shouted "Go!" from across the roof and three shots rang out in quick succession. Immediately the zombies from the backyard started shambling eagerly towards us. My dad passed over the .22 to me and I laid it down next to us. They came constantly, paying attention only to us. More and more of them came, and we started yelling anything we could think of. "Come and get us! Up here! Aaaah! Zombie zombie zombie! Strobe-light gremlin Norwegian!" I was running out of things to say, and Alex just screamed. Then all of us, the zombies included, heard the car door slam shut and the engine start.

They started moving towards the car, which had now driven around to the other side of the house. "Shit!" I yelled. "They're going! Shoot!" Alex and I both pointed our guns at them, and began firing. My first shot took off the head of a nearby zombie and sent it to the ground. Alex was shooting well with the red dot sight. Each of his shots hit cleanly in the back of the head, sending little spurts of blood out the other side before they collapsed. More of them began to ignore us and started around the garage. I fired constantly. I was aiming down so that the hard plastic of the butt-plate was resting partially in my armpit. The recoil was horrible. Every shot I took sent pain shooting through my body and expanded the bruise. And they just kept on coming.

Alex and I ran out of ammo at about the same time, and grabbed the guns behind us. They just kept on going; it was too much. Eventually, a few were able to turn the corner. "Xiran!" I yelled frantically. "Shoot down!" He looked over at me confused, and looked down to see two zombies directly below him. He flipped his rifle downwards and fired four shots to get the two of them. It was impossible to aim at that close range with the scope. My dad called for Sam to come, and she got out the window nervously. He climbed up onto the roof of the car and helped her down. "Justin! Come on!"

"Just a second!"

I fired what was left in the shotgun quickly, wincing and taking the pain. I turned and grabbed the other shotgun, and Alex followed directly after me. Xiran emptied his magazine at the others we had allowed to get past, grabbed the backpack and cat carrier with his free hand and passed it down to dad, who chucked them in the back seat. Hobbes was howling in his plastic box. Xiran jumped onto the roof of the car and into the garden, and we followed suit. We piled into the backseat and shut the doors, shoving the backpack and the cat to the ground so that there was barely enough space for us to fit. Sam was already buckled into the passenger seat in front of us. Through the window I could see my dad jump from the roof of the car, directly in front of a zombie rounding the corner of the garage, less than two meters away. He opened the car door with one hand and frantically attempted to unbutton his holster with his other, pulling it out just in time. Right before the thing could get a grasp on him, he stepped back, kicked it into the wall and shot off the bottom of its head.

He jumped into the car and tried to shut the door, only to find that another one was grabbing onto it. He slammed the door on its fingers and nearly crushed them, but it still held on. He put one of his feet on the door and kicked it open, trying to propel it away, but that only left the door open for it. What saved our lives was dad's well-placed shot directly between its eyes, destroying its head. He slammed the door shut and shoved his foot on the gas. The car took out the legs of one directly in front of us and it was plowed down with a sickening crunch, and the side mirror clipped another one in the stomach. Blood sprayed onto the window, I started reloading the weaponry, and we sped off into the distance.