We're All Doomed Chapter 2
"A little higher…..almost.." Cricket stretched his little arms as far as they could go as he stood on top of Tilly's shoulders, who was standing onto top of Chip's shoulders, who was sitting on Gloria's, all so they could reach the bird's nest near the top branch of the tree they were leaning against.
"We're sure these eggs won't have an baby chicks in them?" Tilly asked again as she nervously gripped the tree bark.
"Uh, yeah totally of course not." Cricket tried to reassure her, truthfully not really sure himself.
"Urgh, just hurry up and grab them already." Gloria grunted, shifting her legs ever so slightly for a more durable stance. "I don't know how much longer I can support this much weight."
"Well I hate to say it, but I'm still way too far away." Cricket replied.
Everyone groaned.
"We'd have the stupid eggs by now if we went with my idea." Chip complained with his arms crossed.
"For the last time you idiot we are not using Cricket as a battering ram to knock the nest down," Gloria panted as she continued to struggle supporting everyone. "We could damage the eggs."
"Hmm, perhaps we just need to make some adjustments Tilly reasoned. "Maybe If I just,"
Chip's eyes widened as Tilly began climbing onto his head. "Oh don't you dare weird gir-Hey, hey! My hair!-"
"Oh my it's like standing on a cloud." Tilly commented as she centered herself on Chip's head and stretched herself to her tallest possible height.
Cricket stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth in concentration as he made grabby hands for the nest. "There we go, just a little further and…." Cricket let out a victorious "Gotcha!" As he happily plucked the nest from the branch.
"Alright!" Cricket cheered in relief. Four beautiful eggs ripe for the taking! "Scrambled eggs for everyone!"
"Actually, I take mine over easy." Chip snarked, just to be contrarian.
Cricket couldn't care less though, "Thank goodness we finally got some grub to eat or I was seriously going to go cra-"
The country boy cut himself off when he suddenly heard the smallest little taps against the inside of the shells.
Uh oh.
Seconds later Cricket's worst fears were realized as a tiny fleet of baby birds hatched out of the eggs and proceeded to fly away in the opposite direction.
All except one, who just sat there and stared at him with its head tilted.
"Cricket? Everything alright up there?" Tilly asked. "It almost sounded like the gentle hark of a newborn baby bird."
Cricket's dumbfounded frown was so long it almost touched the forest floor.
'Blort.' Was his single thought before Gloria finally collapsed under everyone's shared weight and everyone went flying.
Everyone except the bird.
"Gloria c'mon hurry before Tilly gets back!" Cricket urged as he sat beside the tree stump they'd laid the baby bird on top of whilst they sent Tilly out to, 'find some garnish'.
The real reason of course was so there would be no one there to stop Gloria from, using her axe to uh, prepare there dinner.
"Yeah Cricket I know." Gloria shot back defensively. She sighed, readjusting her grip on the axe as she held it ominously above her shoulders.
Gloria kept muttering the same mantra of "We need to eat" to herself as she took a deep breath and looked back down at the bird.
The bird that, chose that moment to let an adorable little sneeze.
Gloria's eyes welled with almost tears. "I can't do it!" She wheezed, defeatedly letting the axe drop. "He sneezes just like Patrick." Gloria's pet parakeet.
Cricket sighed. He'd offer to do it himself, but his arms were just so tired from lugging around their glorified pumpkin zombie shield these past two days.
"Urgh, bleeding hearts." Chip snarked from his spot against a nearby tree.
Cricket rolled his eyes. Jerk.
Chip closed his eyes with a pompous sigh, shaking his head. "Never send a child and an artist to do a man's job, alright give me the axe."
Gloria rolled her eyes as she glared at him, still she handed him the axe, or more accurately dropped it into his lap without warning.
"Uh, a little help please?" Chip sarcastically asked once he recovered from all the wheezing. "Legs no workie remember?"
Gloria and Cricket shared a flat side eye before the artist grumpily lifted Chip by his underarms and positioned him by the tree stump.
"Honestly, I don't know what the big deal is." Chip smugly laughed as he held up the axe, cruelly staring down the baby bird with a merciless smirk. "It's just a dumb, helpless bird, that… couldn't figure out how to fly and now it's gonna die ..alone…..with absolutely no one there to protect him…"
Cricket frowned, sharing a mildly confused look with Gloria as they watched Chip's eyes suddenly start to soften, his lip even wobbling. "yep…all alone,….. cause his Dad just had to migrate and, leave his precious son for a moderately priced condo in Florida-Oh why Daddy why!?"
Chip dropped the axe as he proceeded to sob into his folded arms against the tree stump. "How could you abandon me like this!?"
Cricket blinked. "So much for man's job."
To make matters worse, at that moment Tilly finally got back, about to ask what in the sam hill was going on, only to get distracted by the cute bird. She was already deciding on names. Sunny ended up the being winner.
Meanwhile Gloria sighed defeatedly, palming her forehead with a tired groan.
"We're gonna starve."
Everyone went to bed hungry that night, well everyone except Gloria who was still wide awake as she sat clutching her legs to her chest inside the large hollow tree trunk they'd managed to stumble across.
Cricket and Tilly slept huddled under Gloria's purple sweater as a shared blanket. And Chip had somehow managed to dose off as he sat just outside, tied to the makeshift post Gloria had whittled with the axe, to keep the mutant pumpkins away.
The artist sighed as she wrung her hands against her white undershirt in distress. What were they gonna do? The most any of them had eaten in the past 48 hours was a handful of berries Tilly found that they still weren't sure were poison or not.
Not to mention they still couldn't get a signal on Chip's phone.
"And I thought running a business was the most stressful thing I'd have to do in my life." Gloria grouched, leaning her head against the inside the of the trunk. "If only we were still in Big City…"
If only…..if…only-
Gloria frowned as the gears in her head started to turn, accompanied by another pained hunger rumble of her stomach.
"No we couldn't," Gloria whispered to herself as she tapped her chin in thought. "It was completely overrun with pumpkins, before we left, there's no way we could get in and out of there alrigh-"
Gloria paused with a frown as Chip's sleep mumbling interrupted her. "No Daddy….I don't want the rutabaga…"
Gloria was about to roll her eyes when, realization sparked, and she hatched a plan.
"Hey are we there yet?"
"No Cricket. We are not." Gloria sighed in exasperation as they all walked along the abandoned roadside.
"I'm surprised we haven't come across any pumbies yet."
"Pumbies?" Gloria repeated with a raised brow.
"You know, pumpkin and zombie," Tilly casually explained. "I figured pumpkin zombies was getting to be a bit of a mouthful."
"Pumpies…you know it does roll off the tongue a bit easier." Chip admitted from his spot strapped to Gloria's shoulders and waist-She figured Cricket deserved a break. With his legs tied to stay in a fetal position the blonde almost resembled a backpack.
Gloria sighed, shaking her head. "Okay then…does everyone remember our prerogative?"
"Our pepperoni what now?" Cricket asked with a raised brow.
Gloria shook her head again. "Our goal, okay. We're going to?"
"Get essentials like food, water, and blankets, make a call on Chip's phone once we're near a strong signal, and get out as fast as we can." Tilly answered.
Gloria nodded. "And stay close alright? It's always when people split up in zombie movies that everything goes wrong."
"Yeah," Chip laughed, his hands on his hips. "Usually for the that one jerk character no one likes, good thing we don't have one of those."
Gloria pursed her lips. No one really had the energy to break it to him, but regardless the knowing look was shared all around.
They were getting close to Big City now, the silhouettes of its many different skyscrapers finally coming into view.
Gloria shot a worried look over her shoulder at Cricket and Tilly, more so Tilly.
"And, another thing." Gloria took a deep, closed eyed breath. "No trying to find or de-zombify anyone okay."
Tilly and Cricket's heads shot up, clearly wanting to argue with her, but Gloria cut them off before they could. "I mean it. I know it's hard, I'm worried about…" Gloria couldn't bring herself to say their names. "Them too, but we gotta focus on looking out for each other right now…okay?"
Cricket still looked geared up to argue, but Tilly stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. She nodded solemnly. "Okay.." She quietly replied.
Gloria nodded with another sigh. "Good."
Everything got very quiet after that, for about two minutes anyway before Chip decided to disrupt it with a scoff, just as they started to reach the city limit.
"Really though? How much damage could a couple of pumpkins to do Big City in just two days-"
Chip cut himself off as a loud, roaring sound shook the ground and a billboard came crashing down right next to them.
Gloria wanted to gulp as she turned to stare out at the chaos filled, yet strangely desolate city just up ahead of them. Everyone stared on in shock with her, even Chip who had to twist his head to see.
"…..You know what, I just remembered, I'm banned from Big City! And really who are we to break the law, so if you'll just leave me in the safety of that ditch over there-and we're walking, great, just great." Chip complained whilst Gloria ushered Cricket and Tilly close to her as they began their venture into the pumbified city. "I always wanted to die before 30!"