Enia: Haha, I've finally figured out how old fictional Enia is supposed to be in this story! When I started, I was thirteen writing about a fifteen-year-old character (turning sixteen in this chapter). Current nineteen-year-old me feels like she should make fictional Enia older. I won't though. I'll stick to the story's timeline.
REWRITTEN 6/3/16
Happy Birthday, Enia!
Two days after the fiasco at the school, I awoke blurrily to the smell of frying bacon. It permeated the air, masking the scent of unwashed bodies and fear that we had all grown so used to. My nose twitched, and my eyes cracked open one after another, the movement occurring without the direct permission of my brain.
The office was a dark grey, barely lit by the light filtering through the blankets I'd taped across the windows. My hand flopped to the side to prod Samik awake, but it found the spot in the bed beside me cold and empty. My brain snapped awake, my eyes popping the rest of the way open in an instant. Samik was gone, where was Samik – the sizzle of panic ran down my spine, but then then crackle of bacon fat reached full recognition. I relaxed and slumped back against my pillow. He was just making breakfast. He hadn't been eaten by anything.
I snuggled back down beneath my warm mound of blankets. Maybe he would bring me breakfast in bed. I really didn't want to climb out into the cold, open air of the library. My bed was so cozy, and I was so comfy, and I could almost believe that the entire shit-faced world didn't exist.
Something crashed violently in the library outside my door. I felt the floor shake beneath me and heard the pens rattle in their cups on the desk above my head. I huffed, grinding my teeth together as I rolled my eyes. Figures. I clambered upright on creaking knees, blanket wrapped around my shoulders like a cloak, and stalked towards the door, yanking it open in one swift movement. "OI!" I bellowed.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" The chorus of shouts delivered a nasty electric shock to my sleep addled mind, and my body found itself ready to fight before my brain had finished registering the meaning of the words.
"Holyshitfuckdamn!" I yelled eloquently, reeling back. "What?"
"Oh damn, she's forgotten her birthday," said Teemo's voice. I squinted through the bright lights and the overabundance of stimulation until I found his tall form standing a few feet away and grinning broadly. "Does this means we can keep the presents we got her?"
"No," Samik answered, and Arin smacked Teemo on the arm.
The light finally filtered down to a level that I could see through, and I regained control of my facilities. I rubbed at my head as the last digits of code were typed into the tiny computer, and the green light came on. My friends stood in a half-ring around me, all of them smiling and most of them laughing at my confusion.
"It's my birthday, isn't it," I muttered, half to myself. A grin split my face suddenly. "Huh. Weird. Hey guys, guess what. I can legally drive!"
"You mean you couldn't before?" Trouble demanded. "Just how old are you?"
"Who needs a license to drive after the end of the world?" Onyx retorted. Trouble fell silent. No one bothered to answer his second question.
I stepped the rest of the way out of the office and shut the door behind me. The bacon smell grew more pronounced, accompanied by the lilting tones of cinnamon and chocolate. I sniffed happily as my stomach grumbled. "What's for breakfast?"
"Bacon, cinnamon French toast, and hot chocolate," Samik answered. Damn, he knew how to spoil a girl.
A smile split my face, and I clapped my hands together eagerly. "Yay!"
Breakfast was delicious. Every slice of bread or meat was cooked to perfection, as always, and there was an astounding amount of it piled on the Customer Service desk. EZHF sat in a large circle on top of a cluster of tables that we'd shoved together, plates balanced haphazardly on our knees. The humans took their food and moved away into their distinctive groups, leaving a wide berth around us.
They didn't like us; I could tell. I was perceptive that way. Sometimes. Well, my gay-dar was great, but my people reading skills generally left something to be desired. Maybe they didn't like the way we were always laughing and joking in what they called "this terrible time". Maybe it made them uncomfortable that nothing seemed to faze us, and we did everything with ease. Maybe their subconscious minds sensed what their waking thoughts did not; that we were infinitely different than them and that they should be scared of us.
When we were done scarfing down all the food that would fit in our stomachs, we placed the paper plates in a large pile to be burned at a later date. Then Teemo snatched up my hand with his syrupy fingers and started to drag me towards the stairs. "Come on! IT's time to open your presents!"
"Yay, presents!" I cheered and allowed him to pull me along, dropping the blanket to the ground.
The group paraded outside and over the wall to the playground. Sitting atop the tallest plastic roof were two bulky, brightly wrapped packages, the wind playing with the folds of the paper where it hadn't been taped down properly.
I scrambled up the ladders and flipped over the railings in a manner that would've terrified the humans had they been watching. In no time, I was sitting cross-legged beside the packages on top of the play structure's pyramidal roof, my clothes catching on the ridges in the plastic and holding me in place.
I pulled the smaller of the two presents into my lap. Actually, smaller was a relative term. It was about as long as my leg, thick and boxy at one end and narrowing down into a long stick at the other. It was heavy and felt dense beneath my probing fingers. The wrapping job was shoddy, done with three different kinds of paper and what seemed to be almost an entire roll of duct tape.
When I glanced up, my friends were standing below and grinning at me with upturned faces. I smiled back at them and began to unceremoniously rip the paper away, tossing it into the air behind me.
A gleaming, silver and black chainsaw fell into my lap, crushing my knees to the plastic beneath me. I squealed with delight and clapped my hands together. "Goody, goody gumdrops!" Without wasting another second, I tore into the second present, eager to know what wonders it contained.
A flamethrower. It was a fucking flamethrower. An ecstatic shriek erupted from my mouth, and I immediately pressed the on button, laughing as a thirty-foot long jet of fire burst from out of the tube. "Let's go play!"
After standing up, I secured the flamethrower pack to my back and slid the tube into its holster, then I grabbed the chainsaw and jumped down from the play set, landing when my knees bent. I cackled evilly at the blue sky and ran off, leaving the others to follow in my wake.
There were legions of dead munchers littering the streets (we should really clean those up, I thought to myself), but none of them were up and walking around. We'd killed pretty much all of the undead in the vicinity, and the rest were too far away to hear all the ruckus we were making as we dashed about the city.
I paused briefly to shoot the flamethrower up at the sky, bellowing, "Dinner time!" before starting to run again. My birthday presents were heavy and unwieldy, bumping painfully against my shoulders and back, but the adrenaline had kicked in minutes before and I barely noticed. I was too pumped up. I wanted to charbroil some undead bastards and fuck some others up with my chainsaw.
Suddenly, a pack of three munchers appeared on the road before me, turning around a corner up ahead. I stopped in the center of the street, the toes of my boots inches away from a pool of frozen blood.
The ugly fuckers noticed me immediately and picked up their pace as best they could, dropping their jaws to emit their low moan and raising their arms, their straggly line seeming to bunch together a little. The muncher in front didn't have a nose, and its eye had been slashed out of its head to flap in the breeze like a segmented grape. Behind it was a completely armless walking corpse with the gnawed remains of a dark hand tangled in its tattered shirt. It swayed and bumped against the distended stomach when the muncher walked.
The final muncher was surprisingly normal looking. Its blonde hair, despite being splattered with blood, still fell across its white forehead in sweeping lines. The rest of its young, feminine face was unmarred but for a smear of blood around the mouth. It still had all of its limbs, and its clothes were intact and almost clean. The only visible wound was a livid bite on its forearm.
It looked almost human.
I decided to kill it first; I didn't like the way its eyes looked dead.
I revved the chainsaw. It came to life instantly, and the metallic teeth began to whir up and down the blade. I pushed Noseless to the side with a booted foot, and it ran right into No Arms. They tumbled over in a tangled heap, leaving only Mr. Perfect for me to contend with.
I pointed the chainsaw at its face. The muncher snarled at me, lips curling up to reveal red teeth. I swung the power tool at its head in a long, glittering arc. The sunlight disintegrated around the weapon, the shards jutting out all across the street. Black blood, bones, and curled bits of grey brain matter flew, following the arcs of the displaced light. I stepped back to avoid the spray of gore, my face calm and collected. The corpse collapsed to the ground, white shirt soiled, the top half of its head gone.
Noseless lunged up from the ground to swipe at me with a dirty paw. I let the chainsaw swoop down and chopped off both its reaching hands. Noseless's blood drenched No Arms' face, and the two munchers growled. Noseless began to crawl towards me, leaving trails of red across the dirt snow.
I took a couple of big steps back, turning the chainsaw off before I set it on the ground. Without the mechanic whir, the city street seemed numb and dead. I pulled the flamethrower tube from its holster and turned it over in my hands, contemplating its shape. I pointed the business end at the munchers and flipped the switch to warm the machine up. Their moans were loud and annoying, repetitive like a bad drummer who didn't know when to stop. I pulled the trigger on the flamethrower.
The munchers caught fire instantly and began to crackle. The stark stench of burning flesh filled the air, and bits of their already destroyed bodies flecked off to dot the ground below. Their flesh bubbled; their eyes melted from their sockets. And yet, they still continued to stagger towards me, wind-up soldiers stomping across a table towards a child's watching face.
I regarded them quietly, stepping back whenever they drew to close. Slowly, the munchers lost mobility and crumpled to the concrete, their tin soldier strings cut. Their muscles baked away to nothing, and the fire slowly died down, leaving behind two charred and smoking skeletons. Behind me, someone whooped joyously. "Epic!" Teemo's voice broke the air.
This was the part where I turned around, grinning, and said something witty as I agreed with him. I'd stand with my hips cocked and the flamethrower nozzle propped on my shoulder, my teeth practically glittering. Everyone would laugh and beg for a turn with the shiny power tools. Still grinning, I'd hand them over. We'd play until the sun began to die and then head back to the library.
But I couldn't. For some reason, I couldn't find a suitable reply. I simply stood there, staring at the bodies. The things I'd destroyed. Something found wrong, but I couldn't place a finger on what.
The flamethrower slipped through my fingers, and I allowed it and the fuel back to clatter to the ground, probably denting the metal. "Enia?" Samik asked. I could hear the concern in his voice, and it grated on my nerves.
"Something's wrong," I murmured as if trapped in a dream. Then I took off running.
Enia: I'd like to thank Theultimate, Theminecrafter, and Legendarymaster4 for their reviews. It means a lot to me that you like this story, random as it is.
Please read and review.