I Am Zombie Bait

Chapter 26

I twisted the thing that's supposed to help you focus the binoculars. I said supposed to because no matter what I did the view turned out fuzzy. I could still see all of the colorful blobs, but I didn't want to just see blobs. I had to make sure my hunch was right. As I struggled with my binoculars, Bagheera let out a huff before nudging me with his head. He had that look in his eyes that said he wanted to play.

"Not now! I'm trying to see how much our lives are in danger here," I hissed at him. The panther huffed again before flopping to the ground. I rolled my eyes and went back to adjusting. It only took a few more twists before the image finally cleared. I held in my cry of joy as I began scanning the shopping center. I could see about everything from my spot on the roof. It hadn't really been hard to break into a nearby building and make my way up the floors. I had to take care of the zoms up here, of course, because there was still that weird thing about zombies being on roofs, but still, not hard. Oh man, that sounded like I was bragging. And when one brags, one tempts fate. So uh... no, it was like, really hard and stuff. Super difficult, yeah, wasn't even sure I was gonna make it there for a minute. So... no karmic backlash? Please? I was probably just making it worse.

Focusing again, I turned my attention to the buildings around the shopping center. When I first got there, I hadn't seen a single zom from the horde that graced my street the day before. That might suggest that they had simply moved on. But I trusted that thought as far as I could throw it, and you can't throw thoughts. Wait... did I use that phrase right? Whatever. The binoculars were suddenly knocked out of my hands as Bagheera pawed at them. "Bagheera! I was using those!" I cried out, keeping my voice low. I looked down to grab the binoculars but couldn't see them. "Okay, where'd they go?" I asked.

Bagheera leaned over the buildings edge to look below. I leaned out next to him. It hadn't snowed in a few weeks, so there were now patches of random street all over the place. Like were my binoculars landed. Or, what used to be my binoculars. I glared at Bagheera as he still gave me that playful look, his tail twitching back and forth. "You are on my list, buddy," I growled at him. His only response was to purr and rub his head against the finger I was pointing at him. Next I probably would have let out a sigh, gave in, and scratched behind his ears, because, I mean, he was cute. But there was a crash. We both looked across the parking lots separating our building from the complex to the department store that the Pride previously occupied. The crash was followed by screams. A lot of screams. Not just from the department store either. They came from the hardware store and a few others nearby. I saw a few groups of zoms run out of some of those stores and look around wildly. The screams quickly died down and the zoms became placid once again.

"Well fudge, they are here," I grumbled. Given how many screams there were, I'd say the whole horde set up shop here. This was going to make getting any extra supplies difficult. Lucky for me, I was prepared. Not to deal with the zoms. No freaking way I was getting close to that shopping center. No, I had already taken all the supplies I needed for my death trap back to the orphanage. And was my yard in a state because of it. Good thing I didn't have neighbors. Still, there was more pressure now. If I screwed something up, I wouldn't be able to get extra supplies like I'd been able to before. Which meant I had to not only finish this death trap quickly, but without screwing anything up. No pressure.

As odd as it sounded, that zombie horde looked pretty comfy in it's new accommodations. Which was great for me. Because I didn't have nearly enough nightmare fuel to keep me up at night. Nope, not at all. I tried brainstorming for a minute and had a few ideas running around my head for what I could do about the horde. Best of all, none of them were helpful. The top contenders were collapsing the buildings on the zoms or simply setting them on fire. Sadly, I had no way to collapse the buildings and I was pretty sure burning zoms still ran after you. Only they were a hot fiery mess that nauseously reminded you of fried chicken as it chased you down snow covered streets. And sure, the zom would probably die after awhile because it's hard to run as your flesh is being burnt off, but I wasn't dealing with one zom. I was dealing with hundreds of them. That was not a chase scene I wanted to be a part of. How would I even go about lighting them all on fire? Either way, those plans were a no go. So it was on to plan... uh... whatever letter I was on. An early alarm system.