8/5 p3

9:38pm continued

My heart skipped a beat. This was it. Last stand. Six on one, zero room to swing, no room to shoot. Several were already mangled, arrmless-- even one that had no head.

As I swung my bat, some small voice screamed out that this was all wrong. No head? That doesn’t make any sense. These things are monsters, but monsters with a certain logic. No brain means no moaner. Always has. So how on God’s green earth--

Bat met body, and rather than the solid, meaty impact I was used to, the moaner gave way with ease. Because, of course, it was no moaner. It was a damn mannican. A well dressed, dusty mannican.

I looked down at the destroyed remains of the plastic body stupidly. James had by then scooted into the cramped back room. “I always thought this fall’s styles were rather vain. But I never felt that strongly about them.”

I glared back at him. He returned the look, superior grin pasting his face.

“Har har. Get a move on.” Dave said, speaking into our momentary pause.

I pulled my bat from the tangled mess of plastic and turned to the window. Could see three. One had already taken an interest in our commotion. The other two, closer to our destination, had yet to turn around.

Without a pause, I shot my directions to Dave and Jim. “I’ll take Curious George. Dave, you’ve got the Ed on the left. Jim, the right.”

The goner who’d seen us had mades it to the window by then. The glass must have been tinted, because it wasn’t beating on the glass or speaking up yet. Must not have seen us at all yet.

For once, I would get a good jump on one.

I raised my bat high and took five charging steps to the window. The goner, formerly some Ralph Lauren sporting paper pusher, had within a foot of the window. Milky eyes stared into their own reflection, a senile sort of confusion marking it’s face.

My bat hit the glass, shattering the pane. The Ash cylinder never swayed, force and fury caving in the goner’s front skull with gorey fireworks.

I jumped out the glassy hole and stood next to the crumpled body, watching the far end of the street. Dave and James made quick work of the other two, blasting holes through heads and slicing directly through the neck.

Curious George had three friends I hadn’t seen, scant yards away. One had clearly been involved in some sort of wreck, giving an enormous, mutilated wound through the chest that cut through to the shreds of it’s lungs. It started up a moan, rattling and whooshing sickly.

Trying to get a jump on them, I took my bat to the first, breaking it’s arm and sending it stumbling back. Mr. Windy closed in with the third goner, both reaching for me with gnarled claws. I swept my bat past their arms and connected with the third goner’s shoulder. It spun away, thick brain unable to coordinate it’s legs.

That gave me time to turn to the first and crrush the first’s skull, twice dead. Which gave Mr. Windy a perfect chance to go for my back. First I knew of him his left arm had gripped my pack, vice-like, and pulled.

I stumbled back, totally off balance. Twisting out of the straps of my pack, I gave the grotesque goner a jab to the exposed ribs with my elbow. This gave me the chance I needed, and I sent my spiked stick around in a whirling hit to Windy’s exposed lungs.

The damn goner didn’t even flinch. I tried to pull my bat out, but the nails, so efficient for piercing thick bone, were fouled up inside the goner.

I panicked, know that no bat meant no defense, and no defense meant death.

When pulling didn’t give me what I wanted, I decided to try the opposite. I slammed the bat forward with all my weight, pushing the vivisected moaner onto the ground. Boans cracked and the rotting cartilage of the rib cage gave way, allowing me to extract my grisly prize. Even with massive beating he’d taken, Windy kept right on snapping, chipped teeth still going for my warm flesh.

It was at that moment, standing over a dead body still fighting for devouring rights, that I realized two very important things.

First, Dave and James had already made a break for the plant, and were a good twenty five yards from me by now. Second, the undead had surrounded me.

The next moments don’t make sense to me. I remember yelling- screaming, really- for them to stop, and swinging my bat again and again. Ash sending congealed blood flying, bones snapping like wet branches. It didn’t take long for me to start running, complete and outright terror shooting through my legs. I pushed through the growing mob of goners. Suddenly, I was at the door of the car dealership, and like a flash, I broke the large showroom windows and headed in.

I climbed up to the glass and steel stair way to the second floor, which overlooks the entire forty yard showroom. Stress and overuse made my arms shake, and with the last of my strength, I shattered the top step. Built with clever interconnecting steel cables, this shock fractured the entire top third of the stairs. When the dead poured into the room and tried to make it up the stairs, many more shattered, effectively saving me from the mob.

And that is where I sit, five hours later. The moans of the dead echo through this damned glass room, unending and hungry. I’m stuck in a room filled with over one hundred goners, that tantalizing carrot dangling just inches above their reaching hands.

And that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that the blood smearing this page isn’t the blood of Mr. Windy, or any other goner. It’s my blood. And it’s coming from a long gash down my right arm, a gash that was exposed to Mr. Windy’s congealed brain matter and the rotting blood of ten other goners besides.

I know it. I can feel it.

I’m infected.