REWRITTEN 6/23/15

The First of Many Battles

"I'm going to leave this here," I decided, carefully nudging the shotgun with my toe. "Unless anyone else wants it?"

Minka and Onyx shook their heads. "I'm good." Minka patted her new machete.

"My mom can use it," Onyx said. "We would probably just end up shooting ourselves on accident if we kept it."

"Yeah, I'm not sure if I trust you with a gun," Minka added.

"Thank you for that vote of confidence," I replied sarcastically, but I knew they were right. A gun in untrained hands was more dangerous than a nuclear bomb, not to mention that the blast would draw every muncher in the area to our location.

I jumped down the step and jogged over to my bike as Onyx pulled open the garage to wheel her ride out. "Let's move out, troops!" I dramatically thrust my finger into the air.

Onyx threw a pebble at my head.

We made it back to my street without encountering any more munchers, though I kept my eyes peeled like grapes, just in case. The only hitch was, of course, created by me when I decided to see if I could stand on the seat of the bike and ride down a hill. I promptly fell off and killed myself.

Luckily, Minka was very good at bringing people back to life.

Red and blue lights danced frivolously over the snow-coated street, but the night still seemed relatively calm. My family stood in the crowd surrounding a fleet of police cars. A fat man stood atop the center vehicle, a bullhorn clenched in his pudgy fingers. I saw a long row of covered forms, looking like logs stacked and waiting to be cut, as I swung myself off the bike and let it clatter to the ground.

"Once again, I'd like to apologize for the atrocity you had to witness," the fat police officer bellowed into his crackling horn, sounding like he was wrapping up a long winded speech. "We were forced to use violence in defense of our lives and your lives, but I promise you that tonight's events were an anomaly."

Before I could stop it, a sharp burst of laughter leapt out of my mouth. I tried to clap a hand over it, but the laugh was already flying through the still air, and I only succeeded in hitting myself in the face. Beside me, Onyx rubbed her forehead in exasperation, and Minka groaned. The entire neighborhood turned as one to look at me, the police officer glaring down from his perch.

I peeled my hand away from my mouth. "Sorry. I'm sorry. That was really funny."

In the crowd, my parents looked mortified. My dad tensed to take a step forward, but my mom grabbed his arm and held him back.

"This is no laughing matter, little girl," the police officer growled.

"You're right, it's not," I said, stepping forward to stand in the empty street. "But you are. And your little speech was. And your delusions are the funniest thing of all."

I meandered forward, swinging my legs with my knees locked, thumbs stuck in my jean pockets. "Did you notice how they didn't fall when you shot them in the torso? Did you see the ones missing arms, missing legs? Did you see how it didn't bother them?"

I saw members of the crowd glance at each other, murmuring under their breath. The fat cop's face looked like a volcano, ready to pop. The lava throbbed through the veins in his neck, and the heat came off his skin in shimmering waves.

"Did you wonder why that was? Did you think that was strange?"

I was on a roll. I loved giving speeches…I may have been a bit of a drama queen.

"They're dead, you nimrods!" I paused, shrugging a little bit. "Well, technically, undead. They're zombies. You know, 'I want to eat your brains'." My voice crackled like dry husks under the sun, and I stuck my arms out, elbows locked, shuffling forward and groaning.

The fat cop spluttered, almost slipping off his perch like some dumb bird. He raised the blow horn to his mouth, but all that came out was a strangled hissing noise.

"Somehow, somewhere, someone got infected and now it's spreading. Spreading like the flu through a public school. And idiots like this," I flung an accusatory finger at the fat officer, "are the reason that this plague will probably take over the world!"

The livid man, fire exploding from every pore, hopped awkwardly down from his perch and came stalking forward, intent on shutting me up. Minka and Onyx tensed up, dropping their bikes to the ground, ready for a fight.

I started shouting. "You deserve the truth! You were attacked by zombies! They were dead, and they wanted to eat you! Had you been bit, you would have turned into one of them. The only way to defeat the undead is to destroy the brain!"

The police officer was only a few feet away, lumbering through the snow like a bear just waking up from hibernation. His hand hovered near his gun.

I gave the weapon a pointed look. "Cute. What? Do you feel threatened by the 'little girl'?"

"You need to step back," the officer ordered, using his manly, deep voice. "You don't know what you're talking about, and I don't want you inciting panic."

I wiggled my eyebrows and smirked just to run a rake over his nerves.

His hand actually fell to wrap around the grip of his pistol. Maybe I had pushed this fat man a little too far. A tendril of fear danced in my stomach. Getting shot in the head was not part of the plan.

A low moan filtered into my awareness, cutting off my dignified retreat. The dancing fear turned to a block of ice encased in lead. I lunged forward and wrapped my hand around the fat police man's arm, digging my fingers into his flabby flesh. I stuck my face in his and locked his eyes with mine. "Get. Everyone. Inside."

He tried to pull back, clawing at my fingers. "What?

"More of them are coming," I replied, unable to believe he couldn't hear the moans lurching through the night on stilts. I shoved him away, disgusted, when his slow facial expression didn't change. I turned to Minka and Onyx. "We've got company."

"I hear it," Minka said. She pulled the machete from the sheath at her hip.

"Everyone get inside!" Onyx bellowed. "Before you done get eht!" She flapped her arms at the crowd as if shooing a flock of pigeons.

Someone screamed, high and piercing like rusty brakes.

The crowd erupted into pandemonium.

A river of curses roared through my brain, searing passages through my synapses.

"Everyone inside!" the fat officer bellowed into his blow horn, finally jumping on the bus. "Don't panic! Officers, to me!"

The blue uniformed men and women fought their way through the thrashing throng of people trying to force their way into a house – any house – until there was a clumpy, blue island standing in the middle of the street. I leapt atop the police car, searching for the start of the attack.

It was coming from the direction of the park.

The officers huddled up, drawing pistols and riot batons.

"Those batons ain't gonna do shit," I scoffed shortly, scorn coloring my words. "They don't have the crushing power, and they'll break after a few good whacks."

The chief glared at me as he struggled to heave his bulk up onto the car beside me. He definitely had a very, very large ego, but it was better a bruised ego than a broken head.

I stuck out my hand to help him up, but the officer wouldn't even look at it. There was that ego again, bubbling up like boiling up under the lid of a pot. I shrugged and let him make a fool of himself as he stuck his ass in the air trying to get onto the car.

"Guys, keep people from getting bit!" I yelled at my friends, hoping they could hear me over the screaming. I pulled the sharpened crowbar from the sheath on my back and prepared to jump down from the roof.

"If you use that," the officer puffed as he finally got to his feet, his hands resting heavily on his knees, "I'll have you arrested."

"Yeah, okay. Whatever." I jumped down to the street. There was no time to argue with him; the munchers were staggering down the streets, appearing from between the houses. It seemed like there were hundreds of them, but that was impossible given the short amount of time they'd had to reproduce.

My neighbors shrieked and tried to flee, only to find themselves blocked by the crush of others trying to do the same. The munchers lurched at their closest meals, surprisingly fast in that final moment of attack. Shrieking, the victims fell beneath the dead weight, blood flying into the air like ribbons. I saw a young woman fall with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Instantly, two munchers were on top of her. Her screams made the air shimmer.

"Watch where the hell you shoot those things!" I yelled at an officer as I ran by, anger riding my words. Things were bad enough without adding friendly fire to the mix.

I launched myself into the fray without thinking, without a plan, not knowing where my allies were. I had always wanted to try my hand at zombie killing – as sick and perverse as that sounded. I also had a burning urge to poke one with a stick or smash another over the head with a hammer.

I wound up like a batter and let the crowbar fly, aiming for the bald head of a zombie about to make a meal out of an old woman. Of all the midnight snacks to choose from, it went for the tough, stringy piece of meat. Some people just had no taste. The sharp edge of the metal crashed into the skull and cleaved the top half all the way off. Thick, black blood drippled through the air, drenching the snow and the lower half of the dead munch. It splattered across the old woman's back. She shrieked and ran for the nearest house. I lost track of her as I moved through into the crowd.

It was exhilarating to know that my theories – all the things I had read – worked in practice, but these were people that I knew. I had seen them on the streets days before when red blood still ran through their veins. And I was reducing them to mangled corpses.

To save the lives of others.

An old man came lurching towards me, white hair stained dull brown and tamped to his papery skull by a dark red coating. His face was mangled, one cheek flapping in the breeze, slapping against his crooked cheek, and his clothes were shredded as if he had walked through a hurricane of forks. Behind him was one of my brother's old friends, struggling to walk without tripping over his intestines. They almost looked like streamers falling from a balloon. I saw a man with only half a face. The other side was simply bone and brain. A muncher with only one leg face planted abruptly, making me snort with laughter, but it continued to flop forward like a desperate fish, eyes latched onto the ankle of a young man who was running in circles and screaming.

Then a tiny shape came tumbling out from between the uneven legs. It was the five year old who lived two doors down from Minka. His fine, blonde hair was spiked up into a blood red Mohawk, and one of his eyes dangled by a thread down his cheek, leaving smears of blood down his pale cheek, torn cheek. I could see his teeth through the hole. His bright red rain jacket was stained an even more vibrant red and ripped down one arm, revealing a limb that was white bone, covered in deep bite marks. His dark blue jeans were stained with dirt and blood. His superhero sneakers were still flashing on his dead feet.

I slashed a path through the crowd to reach him, the crowbar whipping through the air and skulls, my body spinning through the spaces between the corpses. The metal slammed into his soft skull and went out the other side without slowing. The left half of his face slid away from the rest and landed on the ground with a wet plop, quickly followed by the rest of his body.

Enia: Man, I am the worst at updating. Sorry. I keep getting distracted by Netflix and Xbox. My bad. I'll try to be better. Please leave a review!