Meghan: Zombielicious

“Saaaaaraaaaah!!!” I called loudly at her apartment door, leaning against the security gate.
“She has a doorbell, you know.” Jasmine depressed the little button, causing a bell to ring somewhere inside.
“I prefer this method.” I gathered my lungs for another call, but before I could the apartment door opened releasing Sarah and her boyfriend Casey.
We were going to the movies. It was kind of an everyday thing, but the whole group plus sig ots (significant others) was showing up for this one, so tension levels were high. Sarah pushed open the gate and we walked to pile into my car. I eyed Sarah’s pale and sweating face.
“Sarah, are you okay?” Maybe it was just nerves? But it wasn’t that stressful of a situation…
“I’m fine,” She said, fanning strands of hair away from her face, “We were making aspirin in my chem class and I tried some this morning, I just feel a little sick.”
I blew out my cheeks and flipped through radio channels as I drove. Meh, it was probably nothing.

We got to the theatre where we met up with Doug, Abe, and Molly. Jasmine and I kissed Doug (to the confused looks of those around us). Sarah was eyeing the snack bar in a visciouse manner, so the rest of us left her and Casey to buy food while we got seats. The show had already started, so we filed quietly into a front row; neck craning sucked, but at least we could sit together. After a few minutes Sarah and Casey slipped in next to us. Sarah passed me a gummy worm and I licked the sugar that came with off my fingers. She and Jasmine leaned their heads on my shoulders and I leaned back happily to watch the movie. Sometime during the first gun fight, Sarah’s breath buzzed in my ear and I froze involuntarily at the sensation.
“You smell good.” She said as her nose barely traced the skin of my neck.
“Thank you?”
“I mean, really good, like…” She caught my wide eyed stare and pulled back with an embarrassed squeal, “I’m so sorry! I’m just so hungry.”
I laughed quietly, “It’s okay, eat candy please, not me.”
I turned my attention back to the movie and tried to understand what twists of the plot I hadn’t been paying attention to. I had just absorbed enough of the plot to realize the plot sucked when I heard sucking noises next to me. Really? I know the movie is bad but must we make out like rabid teenagers? I answered myself easily; yes, yes we should. I traced my fingers along Jasmine’s leg and kissed her cheek. Grinning, she turned to face me but as she turned her face froze and she made strangled, horrified noises. I stopped what I was doing and frowned at her, only to follow her gaze over my shoulder to Sarah. The bottom half of her face was painted in something dark that dripped down her neck and chest. Her hands shone darkly with the same stuff, but what was far more horrifying was Casey writhing in her lap. His lips and nose were gone, and from the strangled noises that he was making I’d say that the stumpy root protruding from his mouth wasn’t a whole tongue. His eyes rolled wildly in his head and his hands groped for something. In his pain he tore at Sarah’s hair and clothes but she didn’t seem to notice, she just bowed her head to the frantic pulse thumping in his throat.
“FUCK! HOLYFUCKINGSHIT—“ The stream of curses flew unbidden from my mouth as I scrambled over the seats in front of me faster than I’ve ever scrambled before. Yes, I should have been quieter, but I’d like to see you remain quiet in that situation. Jasmine scrambled right after me (possibly a few steps ahead) while Doug, Abe, and Molly, who had been sheltered from the sight by our bodies and the loud action noises of the movie, gaped. Sarah turned from her meal and focused white fogged eyes on them. It was the gut wrenching moan escaping her lips that caused Doug and Abe to spring into action, dragging Molly over the chairs with them. However they were too late to escape Sarah’s lunge and she fastened onto Molly’s ankle. Abe screamed in rage as Sarah shook his girlfriend’s ankle in her mouth like a puppy with a bone. He grabbed Sarah by the neck and tore her from Molly’s leg, hissing as she tore into his arm with her nails and gnawed on his knuckles. He heaved her away from him, into the crowd of fleeing movie-goers. Ignoring his bleeding fingers he knelt over Molly’s leg.
“Is she what I think she is?” He asked Doug quietly.
Doug looked into his eyes with horror. Abe clasped his hand and thumped his back, grinning.
“Well, it’s been fun.” He knelt by Molly again and kissed her forehead while she ground her teeth against the pain. Then he slid his fingers gently around her jaw and snapped her neck. He lay her down on the cold floor then turned to the crowds of bystanders that Sarah was savaging while we looked on in horror.
“Abe--!”
“Might as well go out with a bang.” He murmured quietly. And before we could stop him he was launching himself over the seats towards the violence.
“LEAVE!!” he called across the room as he seized the arms of a huge black man with half his face missing.
We hesitated; spellbound in the horror of the moment, but then another rattling gasp choked out from where we had been sitting as Casey clawed his way over the seats. Now we wanted to run. But as all my muscles screamed at me to flee licked my lips and stared at the strap of my purse hanging over my chair. I needed my car keys. Without stopping to think about it I tore towards the seats, feeling the relief of the purse in my hand and no jaws closing on my body parts. I slung it over my shoulder as I ran towards the glowing exit sign and the door that Doug held open for me. The door had just swung shut behind us when a gunshot tore through the late night air. We spun to see two cops pointing their quivering weapons at us. We tried to slowly edge away from the door we had just come through, but they were having none of it.
“Where you involved in the riot?” one of them asked.
We really needed to get out of here. Soon.
“No.” Doug said curtly, in his I-am-talking-to-authority voice.
Me, I just needed to get out of there, cops with guns were nothing compared to an army of the walking undead. My eyes rolled wildly in my head and I edged further from the door.
“Stop moving.” I was ordered. It was finally too much tension for me to take and tears flooded down my cheeks. Normally my body’s reaction to emotionally tense situations was beyond irritating, but now I would use anything I had.
“They’re in there!” I sobbed, waving at the exit door, “They have guns, knives, bombs, help us!” Maybe the bombs were a bit much, but one of the cops edged towards the door while the other kept his gun on us. We waited for the angry moans that inevitably came from the room followed by the policeman’s subsequent cursing and gun firing to make a break for it. But as we tore across the parking lot bullets ripped the air around us, as the panicked cop shot at the wrong people. Doug went down with a groan and blood dripping down his leg. I started to turn back but he rolled between rows of cars and yelled at me to bring the car back.
“Where’s the car, where’s the car…” I murmured hysterically under my breathe as I eyed the massive parking lot.
“You lost the car!?” Jasmine screamed at me as we ran.
“I did not lose it, I parked somewhere in this row!” I screamed back, “Or maybe that one. No, it’s that one!” I beeped open my long lost vehicle and we both jumped inside. Miraculously I didn’t hit any other vehicles as I peeled out of the parking space and zoomed towards Doug. Jasmine helped drag him into the backseat just as the undead movie watchers began making their way out of the theatre and into the streets. Jasmine wiped a hand across her forehead, streaking Doug’s blood across her face.
“The bullet’s too deep; it’ll probably have to come off.”
I clenched my jaw as I turned onto the freeway;
we were alive, but barely.



-Meghan