ShowerKrogan

  “I’m so sorry!” Sadie said and tried to scramble to her feet, only to trip and fall onto me again.

  “Oof,” I groaned when her knee nded on my stomach. I was thankful she didn’t knock the air out of me.

  The zombies didn’t dey rushing at their fallen meal. But as they closed in, the wedding dress zombie girl cut in front of them and pretended to trip. She fell into the group and brought the first line of zombies to the ground. Several other zombies tried to run over the grounded zombies and went tumbling to the ground too. She looked around at the downed zombies and fshed me a thumbs-up and a smile.

  “I understand nothing,” I said and stared. A zombie helping us escape other zombies? Times were already strange, but this was next-level. “Um. Thank you! If you find your way to that facility over that direction, I’ll give you some… raw meat?”

  The zombie girl's eyes lit up as if I had promised her the wedding cake she probably never got.

  Becca: Oh your God, Grayson. You can’t just go around offering women your raw meat.

  Grayson: It’s fine because she’s already dead.

  Becca: No! Bad Grayson! That makes it worse!

  Sadie crawled off me, and I jumped up on my feet. I pulled her up by her waist, then grabbed her arm and started running without looking back. I slowed my pace enough not to drag her to the ground, but pulled her fast enough that we were pulling away from the group of zombies getting up to chase after us.

  “Becca, we’re making a break for it! How far is he?” I asked and kept my eyes locked down the street, looking for the help that was supposed to be coming.

  Becca: I believe he got distracted. The geese had wandered too close to the facility, and he went to engage.

  “You know what? He did the right thing. Prepare our finest meal for him,” I said.

  Becca: Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on that. I have… incentivized him to abandon the geese battle and proceed to aid you, so he will be there soon.

  “Who is Becca?” Sadie asked me while huffing. She looked as if she were on the brink of total colpse. It had been an emotionally and physically draining day for her, just from the small chunk of time I had seen. I wouldn’t bme her for being worn out.

  “You’ll see soon. I need to carry a minated card that expins everything,” I said. A screech tore my eyes away from the street and up to the sky above the surrounding buildings to search for the falcon. In doing so, I noticed a soft green light dissipate and zombies rushing out from the darkness between buildings and coming right at us from our blind side. Something I wouldn’t have seen until it was too te if it hadn’t been for that falcon, again. I think that bird was becoming my best friend.

  Three of the closest decayed charged at us. I released Sadie and jumped at the closest one and plunged my gss shard into its head. I stabbed a little too hard, and the gss shard sunk so deep that my fingers went into the zombie brain, and fluids gushed out onto my hand, soaking me and the gss shard. I couldn’t get a solid grip on the gss to pull it out.

  I gave up and instead shoved the limp body of the zombie into one of the decayed behind it. They both hit the ground, and the third zombie tried to rush past me to get to Sadie. I went after it and caught up with ease. I shoulder-checked it and it fell face-first onto the road. What skin remained on its face and neck was smeared on the ground when it came to a stop. Sadie gave it a hard stomp in the back of the head to ensure it stayed down.

  “I’m going to vomit,” Sadie said while looking back and forth between the zombie and the brains and blood dripping off my hands. She covered her mouth and dry-heaved.

  “No time for weak stomachs. Go!” I pushed her forward and tried not to ugh at the disgusting handprint I left on her back. Whoops.

  More green lights followed by zombies emerging from the shadows between the buildings. It felt like the faster we ran, the more zombies appeared in front of us.

  “Becca, what the fuck is the point of these drones if an army of zombies can gather here without us knowing?!” I screamed as a small group of zombies cut us off. I could hear the soft thudding on the street of the zombies running at us from behind. Zombies were coming at us from every direction. We were completely surrounded.

  Becca: It is something we need to research. However, per your instructions, and I quote, “Those drones better do everything they can to find Mal, Mal’s father, or Sam. I don’t care if an army of zombies sneaks in and ends up surrounding me on a rescue mission of a new waifu. Just find them!”

  Grayson: I don’t think that was my EXACT quote.

  Becca: Would you like me to py the actual recording of you saying that?

  Grayson: Shut up, weeb.

  Becca: What?!

  Sadie held up her machete like a baseball bat. I had an inkling she had never swung that thing in her life. It was still better than nothing, which was what I had! Stupid broken armor! As a decayed approached, she cut through its face, removing the top of its head which plopped to the ground. She swung that weapon with an aggression I had to admire. Alright so baseball swinging a machete worked for her. Respect. Sadie might be a badass.

  An arrow came bolting from a nearby rooftop, and one zombie blocking our way forward had its brain spttered onto the road. The falcon's screech sounded as the zombie fell to the ground dead. Can a falcon learn how to shoot a bow?

  I heard a thwip, and another arrow plummeted into another zombie. The impact made a glorious thwack and plop as it bsted through the skull into the mushy undead brain. The dead undead fell face-first onto the ground. Only one left- oh, it also got arrow’d in the head. This falcon was good!

  I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked at the tops of nearby buildings to see where the arrows were coming from. I spotted a giant of a human figure shrouded in shadow that stepped back out of sight once the path forward was cleared.

  “I guess someone else was helping us, not just the bird,” I said, and couldn’t hide my disappointment.

  “Wait. You thought a bird was doing that?” Sadie asked and gave me a side-eye that suggested she had just about had enough of my antics.

  Becca: Please think before you speak. I beg of you. When people learn that I am in your head, your moronic ramblings will reflect poorly on me! Your verbal output, while humorous, is a cause for concern.

  Grayson: Ha! You do think I’m funny! I knew it!

  I pointed in the air where the falcon had been. “That bird has saved me several times now. It wouldn’t surprise me if it could kill zombies with arrows. Birds are smart!”

  The conversation regarding my mental state had to wait. The path forward was open, but behind us and on both sides the zombies were shuffling closer and closer.

  “Okay, enough tomfoolery,” I said and gave Sadie a small shove. “We have a small path forward. Fly, you fool!”

  I stayed behind Sadie with my hand on the small of her back, guiding her forward and forcing her to keep up the speed. We hopped over the zombies the mystery archer had taken out for us and continued down the road. Unfortunately, the zombies kept bleeding out into the street from between the buildings.

  “Why are there so many?!” Sadie wheezed and made a cut move that would make Emmitt Smith blush. The decayed that tried to wrap her up grabbed nothing but air and face-pnted in the street, then stayed down with its hands over its face. That was pretty embarrassing, even for a zombie.

  “Well, sex ed in the South wasn’t the greatest,” I answered.

  I took a moment to gnce behind us and… yikes. That was the zombie apocalypse equivalent of ‘don’t look down’. The street was filled with zombies stumbling and shuffling their way after us. Sure, they ran like someone who had never run before, but the ever-growing size of the zombie horde was so innumerable that they became a continually rising tide of undead surging along the street behind us.

  We needed to take a detour until we somehow escaped this horde. I didn’t want to bring a group of this size straight back to the facility; the defenses would probably hold, but it would have made everyday life a lot more challenging.

  Sadie was boring with her breathing and was slowing down. That was all it took for the zombies to start to gain ground on us.

  “I know you must be beyond the point of exhaustion after today,” I said to her, and put stronger pressure on her back. “But any slower and they’ll catch us!”“I. Am. Trying,” she said and tried to match the breathing with her pace. “Legs are jelly. Lungs hurt. Getting dizzy.”

  I tried to physically urge her faster, and the front of my foot caught the back of her heel and sent her tumbling to the ground. I bounced on one foot to, barely, avoid falling over. I went to pull her up when a zombie smacked into me at full zombie speed.

  We rolled along the street, and I gained control and pinned it to the ground. It ccked its decayed jaws at me, and the revolting smell of the dead inundated my nostrils.

  “I forget just how horrendous y’all smell,” I said. I pushed its head to the side and jumped to my feet, then brought my heel down on its temple. It took a few kicks, but the zombie went still. The smell lingered, and my foot was soaked in blood. “Ugh, I’m going to need a new armor suit; that won’t come out easily.”

  “No!” Sadie shrieked, still on the ground. A zombie had caught her too, and the machete cttered onto the street, leaving her defenseless. She stuck out her hands to shove the zombie and create space between them, but the zombie was too strong and now her hand was close to its face.

  The zombie cmped down on the outside of her left hand, just below the pinkie.

  No! I refused to fail again!

  I sprinted over to Sadie and I grabbed the machete off the ground, brought it over my head, and then straight down onto her wrist, severing her hand. She cried out and dropped into the fetal position; she brought her bleeding stump of an arm into her stomach while screaming with tears drenching her face. I whipped around and sshed at the zombie. The sharp machete's edge cut deep into its skull, and I jerked it out of its head as the zombie stiffened, then fell over dead with Sadie’s hand still in its mouth.

  Becca: This could be a good opportunity to carefully observe another healthy human going through the zombification process.

  “No. Not yet, not like this. I won’t let her down too. At this point she could bleed out if I don’t inject her. I can’t keep failing!” I dropped to my knees next to Sadie and pulled her arm toward me. “At some point, something has to go right!”

  She tried to tug it out of my grip and cried harder when she couldn’t.

  “I’m trying to help you! We don’t know how quickly this spreads yet. Cutting off the hand might have been enough, but we can’t chance it. Plus, we need to stop the bleeding.” I pulled out the jet injector and double-checked that the vial still contained the yellow liquid. Still good to go. Ignoring the blood pouring from her wrist, I pinned her arm against my chest and put the jet injector into the bend of her arm.

  “Quick warning, you’re going to feel really weird after this. You might end up with a high fever and some funky-ass dreams for a few hours. But, in my professional opinion, it’s better than being a zombie.”

  I clicked the top of the jet injector, and the yellow liquid disappeared into her arm. Her cries decrescendoed to a soft whimper, and her body rexed. A few seconds ter, she went entirely limp. I caught her head before it smacked against the road. Her breathing was steady, and the blood slowed to a trickle from her wrist.

  Once I had a moment to mentally recover from the excitement of Sadie’s bite, I realized it was quite loud. Snarls, growls, hissing, feet dragging along the ground—there were zombies all around me. I had promised myself I wouldn’t go anywhere without my hand cannons, now here I was surrounded with no weapon at all. I felt a deep, burning regret that I had left them behind.

  Grayson: Becca, I might have made a mistake.

  I watched as the decayed closed in around me, leaving no space between their bodies for an exit. I was encased in a zombie hackie sack circle. “Sadie is out, but I need to carry her and I am totally surrounded.”

  Becca: Grayson, you foolish man! You had better figure something out! Dying for some random woman is unacceptable. I refuse to allow it!

  “By all means, force me to safety then!” I said and picked up Sadie. Her bag on her back made carrying her awkward, but it would be more difficult to pry it off her at this juncture. My eyes skipped from zombie to zombie, looking for a weak link or a small opening. I shouldn’t have taken so long to give her the serum. I should have cut off her hand, injected her, and booked it the hell out of here.

  Grayson: For what it’s worth… I am sorry, Becca.

  Becca: Grayson! Stop it! Figure out something!

  A zombie wearing worn overalls, a red shirt riddled with holes, and a hideous and torn-up hat grew tired of the dramatic telepathic conversation and pounced at me, jaws already dripping wet in anticipation of ripping into my flesh. What a shit way to die.

  Good thing this wasn’t the end for me yet. Because he had finally arrived.