REWRITTEN 6/25/16

Liquid Nitrogen Fun

It wasn't long before I decided that I couldn't be around the humans any longer. Barely two days had passed since the incident with the munchers, clouds, and the departure of the werewolves, but they were already driving me up the walls and around the corner. Well, it may have been possible that I was driving them up the walls. Either way, somebody was going to end up with their head bitten off if I didn't get out of there.

To get out of the library, I planned a little field trip with the EZHF squad. It was a science lesson of sorts. We snuck out early in the morning so the humans wouldn't have a chance to bitch about it – I figured most of them would still be sleeping. We took the police car, and Onyx insisted on driving, so we spun through the downtown and arrived at the university campus in a matter of minutes.

We piled out of the car, pushing and shoving. We really needed to find an SUV or something; there just wasn't enough room for 7 people in a sedan sized car.

I craned my neck to look up at the sleek university science building. In the days before the disaster, the three-story building had been made of dark red bricks with long rows of windows on each level, most of which were shattered. One of them had half of a body hanging out of it, dripping blood down the wall. The doors had been blasted open by a tremendous amount of force, each side lying in the snow ten feet away.

"We might not even have to go hunting for any munchers," I said, grinning as I kicked the last door on the car shut. "There will probably be a bunch right here in the building."

As if on cue, a partially rotted muncher appeared at a third story window. It was an older woman – a professor, perhaps – and her glasses were still perched on her nose, though her silver hair was escaping from its severe bun bit by bit. She pounded on the glass, her mouth open in a silent moan of hunger.

Weapons drawn, we entered the deserted building in a random cluster formation. The hanging overhead lights were long gone, shattered or just plain dead, but the sunlight streaming through the broken doors and occasional window was enough to illuminate our way. The tiled floor was strewn with rubble, bits of concrete and broken decorations – smashed portraits of human anatomy or annotated photos of different germs.

The grey walls were splashed with long sprays of dried blood and dotted with bullet holes. I could see the guts of the building, the wires and the pipes, through the jagged, broken spots. Bodies, gnawed down to the bone or shot in the head, lay crumpled in heaps down the hall, flies droning around them. Most of the wore lab coats or pressed suits.

I crinkled my nose at the stench which seemed like it was trying to rip my esophagus out. "Hm. Pleasant."

"Why was this a good idea again?" Zeus wondered. Her round face looked green, as if she were about to throw up.

"Because liquid nitrogen is fun."

"Oh, right."

"Let's go!" Teemo yelled eagerly, his voice echoing down the shadowed hallway. He bounded forward through the rubble, sword swinging by his side only inches above the floor. He squinted at the white signs above each of the doors, searching for one marked 'laboratory'.

Each of us sighed just a little bit as we watched his loud, cavorting antics. "He's going to get us killed one day," Arin sighed.

"That or save all our asses," I contradicted.

We pushed deeper into the building, remembering to watch the dark corners for unwanted visitors as we searched for a helpful sign pointing towards a lab, any lab. Teemo played the part of our preppy tour guide, making up random names and strange, little stories for everything we passed.

Along the way, we picked up our own little entourage, made of three lurching, staggering munchers. The closest undead fiend had been a scientist of some sort, and she still wore her white lab coat, although admittedly, it had become more red than white over the weeks. Right behind her stumbled a janitor in a torn jumpsuit, missing an arm. Black blood still dripped from the jagged wound. The final muncher had been a young, unlucky intern. A pair of rectangular glasses perched drunkenly on his nose, knocked askew because he was missing half his face.

"Here," Minka announced. She pointed at a square, maroon sign that read 'Laboratories' in white letters. An arrow pointed down the hallway to the left. The wall around the sign was painted with dark, dried blood, nearly the same color maroon. I would've missed it completely if she hadn't pointed it out.

Minka took the lead as we went around the corner, and Teemo tumbled to the back in order to make rude faces at the munchers, enticing them along. Their fingers – the white bone tips poking out through the skin in some places – grasped at him, snapping closed within inches of his arms. Their jaws unhinged unnaturally, emitting their signature, eerie moan. Laughing, Teemo danced out of the way as the scientist took a swipe at him.

"Hurry up," I said to him when we reached the entrance to the first lab, and, still grinning, he skipped through the door so I could slam it in the munchers' faces. Immediately, the undead began to bang on the small circular window, pounding desperately on the doorframe.

I leapt to the side as Onyx and Samik shoved a giant, wooden desk in front of the entrance, jamming it right up against the wall. When I turned around, Zeus had already begun to root through the cabinets, and Minka was peering inside the huge refrigerator. She staggered away from the dead machine, nearly falling under the weight of a large, silver canister. She smirked triumphantly. "I found the liquid nitrogen!"

Grinning, I hurried over to to help her heave it up onto one of the three lab tables that stood in a row across the room. Zeus popped up from under one of the cabinets a moment later, a heap of large hammers in her arms. "Got the hammers!"

"Pretty," I cooed, laughing. Zeus spilled them onto the table by the canister.

My friends pressed in excitedly, fighting for the position closest to the canister. I slapped the can of liquid nitrogen, the chill seeping into my hand all the way to my bones. "I figure we hook this up to a hose and point it at the door, then let the munchers in, so we can blast them."

Teemo's eyes gleamed with a near feral light. "Let's do it!"

I hunted around for a hose, kicking junk out of my way, and found one attached to a round, yellow vacuum just like the one my father used in his wood shop. I detached it with a couple of sharp yanks, coating my hands in dust, and quickly returned to the others. The door was beginning to rattle against the desk, and a wayward, grey fist shattered the window, spilling the glass across the floor.

Arin fingered the cone-shaped spout on the canister thoughtfully. "What if we just place this really close to the door and release the valve when they enter? The opening is small enough, and there's probably enough pressure in the canister to make the liquid nitrogen spray out."

I stared at her for a moment and then dropped the hose that I'd worked so hard for. "That is a much better idea."

She grinned. "That's because it was mine."

I groaned at the age-old, incredibly horrible joke, everyone chorusing in agreement around me. Arin assumed a hurt look, folding her arms and looking away from all of us. Teemo sauntered over and wrapped his arms around her waist, laying his chin on her shoulder. He whispered something in her ear that forced a laugh out of her.

I smiled, thinking that they were literally the cutest couple ever.

"Get a room," Samik coughed into his hand, grinning.

Without even looking, Teemo reached behind him, snagged a hammer from the table, and flung it at Samik's head. Eyes widening, Samik ducked, and the hammer hit the wall with a loud clang, exciting the munchers in the hallway. An arm waved hungrily through the shattered window, tearing itself to shreds on the shards of glass.

"Come on," Onyx interrupted impatiently, stamping her feet. "Let's do this thang!"

"Since when are you Southern?" I asked her, eyebrow raised. This time, I was the one who got a hammer flung at their head.

We gathered at the back of the table, leaning all our weight against it so we could shove it across the floor. The legs made a horrendous grating sound as they scraped across the cement, worse than nails down a chalkboard. I winced and ground my teeth a little tighter with each abrasive squawk. Teemo lunged away as soon as we had the table in place, clutching his head. "I think it broke my ears!"

"I don't think you can break your ears," Samik corrected, scratching at his head. "Your eardrums, maybe. Or your ears can bleed. But I don't think you can break them."

Teemo glared at him sourly. "Don't me throw another hammer at you."

Arin set up the canister so it pointed right at the door as Minka and Onyx worked together to create a barricaded corral around the table and the door, making it so the munchers wouldn't have anywhere to go to escape the hissing liquid nitrogen.

I placed my hands on the chest blocking the door and shoved it across the room. Minka quickly closed up the barricade behind me. The door bounced violently in its frame. I hopped back into the corral and grabbed the knob as Onyx readied the lever on the canister. We exchanged nods.

I yanked down on the handle and pulled the door open, flinging myself up and out of the corral. The munchers fell into the room just as Onyx turned the lever as hard as she could. A white, misty spray erupted from the spout, and the temperature around us dropped instantly. The munchers staggered into the deadly mist without a care, and the effect was instantaneous.

The munchers' movements stiffened bit by bit as their muscles turned to ice. Their flesh crackled as if it had been fed into a fire, and patches of ice began to form across the skin. The moans cut out as if a switch had been flipped, and then, all at once, the munchers froze completely, trapped with their limbs outstretched, stuck mid-step, their jaws glued forever open.

"It worked!" I cheered, pumping my fist in the air.

A pause the length of a breath passed, and then my friends lunged at the hammers, fighting for control and not afraid to hurt each other to get one. Zeus snagged a wooden handle and leapt away as quickly as she could, clutching the tool protectively to her chest. Onyx and Minka worked as a tag team, the redhead shoving Teemo away as her friend stole a second hammer. The final winner turned out to be Arin, though she had to kick Samik in the shin in order to claim her prize. I snorted in amusement.

The hammer bearers stepped into a line and turned ceremoniously to face the frozen munchers. Teemo called out a beat, and the three of them marched forward with high knees, leaping the corral smoothly. The hammers rose into the air simultaneously, and they paused for dramatic effect at the top of the arc.

"Ban nuh nuh nuh!" I sang in an off-key voice.

The hammers crashed down onto the hard, unmoving skulls. With a tremendous shattering noise, the munchers splintered, spewing rocks of sparkling flesh and shards of blood red crystals. From the crowns of their heads, cracks shot down their bodies in uneven lines, darting down nearly to the munchers' feet. We gathered round, breath held in anticipation.

Finally, the weight of all that ice became too much for the fractured bodies to bear, and the munchers shattered entirely, the broken pieces cascading to the floor and spilling out in every direction.

"Fucking awesome!" Onyx cheered.

"Ah man," I groaned. "I wish we'd had a camera to record that."

Everyone in the room swore violently. Those of us who had lived in the Human Realm initially patted our pockets, searching. Onyx pulled her phone out of her jeans. "Ah ha!" She held the on button down and waited, but the screen remained dark. The phone was dead, probably had been for a long time. "Goddamnit" she grumbled, flinging the useless machine to the ground. The screen cracked instantly.

"Oh well," Minka sighed, shrugging. "At least we saw it."

"The humans probably wouldn't approve anyways," Zeus added. She rolled her eyes, hands propped on her hips. "They'd probably accuse us of being childish, or risking our lives, or doing something stupid like wasting battery life or whatever."

"True that," I sighed. "Come on, let's go find some more munchers! I call being bait; you guys wait here."

I raced out of the lab, scooping up a large metal tray and a rod as thick as my wrist on the way, and someone slammed the door shut behind me. I ran down the hallway and banged the two noisemakers together as hard as I could. The harsh clanging sound echoed all around me, in front and behind, bouncing off the walls and seeming to double in volume.

"Here, muncher-muncher-muncher!" I called like one might call a cat or a dog. "I've got some tasty din-dins for you!"

I spun around a corner, then a second one, creating enough noise to wake the dead. Heh. Wake the dead. I cracked myself up sometimes.

Something thudded urgently against a door to my left, and I skidded to a halt, nearly tumbling to the ground as my feet slipped in a wet patch of some kind of unidentifiable, black goop. I shuddered and nearly retched at the stench coming off it. I placed my ear against the door and listened carefully. Desperate scratching, clacking, and smacking noises drifted through the wood, and shadows danced through the crack under the door. A grin split my face. Found one.

I took a step back, gathering both the tray and rod in one hand, and kicked the door in. It flew open right away and banged against the wall, sending the muncher staggering back. I breathed a sigh of relief. It would've been really embarrassing if that hadn't worked on the first try.

The muncher stumbled towards me, lurching and tripping over a badly broken ankle. I skipped out of the way as it fell into the hallway, smacking face-first into the wall across from the door. I banged on the metal tray to grab its attention. Its head spun around, and its dead, grey eyes locked onto my face. I waggled my eyebrows at it and began to back up as it staggered towards me.

It was just like a little duckling following its momma duck. I just needed, maybe, two or three more.

We reached a junction in the hallway, and I turned to the right, making beeping noises and not really paying attention to where I was going. A nausea-inducing, rotting stench filled my nose just before I smacked into something solid, squishy, and cold. My blood turned to ice as if I'd been doused in liquid nitrogen myself. A pair of heavy arms wrapped around my chest. Shit.

"Motherfucker," I snarled as I threw myself forwards and down, curling my body so we flipped right over. I was on top when we hit the ground, and my elbow punched through the muncher's stomach. I kept moving, no time to stop or think, pushing against the arms holding mine and flipping backwards over my head, the sound of teeth snapping in my ear.

The force and speed of my roll along with my pushing arms broke the muncher's hold on me. I continued to somersault away, the muncher fluids wet and gross on my back. My leather jacket protected me from the worst of it, but it still seeped down my collar and under the bottom hem. I ran into a wooden cabinet with a jarring thud.

My vision cleared, and an upside down muncher wavered into focus, lurching right towards me with its mouth open and its arms reaching. I twisted to the side, the tray I was holding popping up to smack the corpse in the face. Teeth flew, clattering to the ground. It staggered back, and I jumped up, control in my hands once again.

The off-balance muncher ran into the other one, which had just regained its feet, and they both tripped over each other. I rolled my eyes and waited patiently. Well, not really. I didn't do patiently. I banged on the metal tray repeatedly to get their attention, but it was several minutes before the munchers finally disentangled themselves and zeroed in on me again.

This time, I used my common sense and faced forward as I jogged. I didn't feel like repeating my head over heels zombie experience. Before long, I was back in the hallway that led to our chosen lab. Samik stood outside the door, watching for me. "Hey," he called in greeting. I twisted around to check on my entourage as I waved at him. "What's on your back?"

"Muncher juice," I answered, pouting slightly. "We had a bit of a tussle."

"You clean?"

"No, I'm not clean!" I snapped before I really thought about his words. Samik stiffened, blood draining from his wide-eyed face. "Oh, you mean clean of bites. Then yeah, I'm fine."

He heaved a sigh of relief.

"You guys all set up?"

"Yup. Come on in."

We ducked through the door and vaulted over the tables to safety, landing side by side. My shirt and jacket were beginning to stick to the skin of my back, the sensation incredibly uncomfortable. Ten seconds later, the two munchers lurched into the room, and Arin released the liquid nitrogen, starting the freezing process all over again, and we were left with icy-white statues. "Don't blink," I said to Zeus, and she laughed.

"Give me a hammer," I continued, holding out my hand. "I have a bone to pick with one of these bitches."

Onyx dropped her hammer into my waiting palm. The impact made my skin sting and tingle. I made a beeline for the muncher that had sneak-attacked me. (…If a muncher was able attack you, there was something seriously wrong with you). I tossed the hand tool into the air where it flipped head over handle and caught it again. Then I smashed it into the muncher's stiff cheek with all my strength.

The metal head of the hammer cleaved the muncher's face in two. Jagged chunks flew everywhere, and I cackled evilly. Teemo leapt forward and set to pulverizing the second muncher. Within seconds, there were only shards left over. Then we all danced on the pieces.

Enia Silverson's Checklist of Fun Things to do During the Apocalypse

1. Poke a zombie with a stick – check

2. Kill a zombie with liquid nitrogen – check

3. To Be Decided…

Enia: So, if I actually had a sensible plot, we would've met a person who would be integral to the story while we were hunting around the university. But I don't have a plot beyond some broad, overarching ideas. More fun that way.

I asked my chemistry teacher if this idea was actually plausible. He said yes, it would work. He also gave me a weird look. Hooray, I'm not just pulling stuff out of my ass! I would've done this chapter anyways, if he'd said it wouldn't work.

Samik: She may have taken a few liberties with the time necessary.

Enia: It's called authorial liberty.

Samik: Read authorial laziness.

Enia: Shh. And now…read…

Samik: And…

Enia: Review!