I Am Zombie Bait

Chapter 27

The nightmares had been getting worse. Between that and all the exhausting work I'd been doing for the death trap, I was tired, grumpy, and very likely to throw things. It had officially been ten days since the horde moved its undead, tightened up, grey skinned butt cheeks into the shopping complex. My time had been devoted entirely to the death trap at this point. I was honestly getting antsy. It felt like it was taking me too long to get this all together. Everyday it became statistically more likely that Bubba would show up on my doorstep. I may not have liked math, but I still knew that much.

The good news was that progress was speeding along. The main part, the X that crossed over the street, was done. I also had the holding lines in place. These had been a lot easier to do since I didn't have to go as far or as high. Plus I only needed two of them. Each one started at the buildings on either side of the orphanage. They ran over the street to the buildings across from them. From the air, it should look like a line standing straight up, an X, and then another line. I had the holding lines further back and a few floors down from the X was set. Believe it or not, that wasn't even the trickiest part. The trickiest part was the pulleys. The holding lines each needed to have a pulley fastened on them right in the center of the wire. Also, because I still hadn't figured out flying on my own, I had to have a length of wire already spooled through each pulley, long enough for me to reach from the ground and from inside the buildings where the holding line had been secured. I never imagined I'd be using so many pulleys in the zombie apocalypse. Oh well, live and learn.

Lastly, I needed to set the pendulum line and build and secure the lances. Oh, and build the pulley system so I could set off the trap from the comfort of the orphanages front lawn. There was no rest for the wicked, or me for that matter. Of course, before I could get started on those last few things, my plans got knocked off course. By a growl. I was standing in the middle of the street setting up some horse stands and doing my best to not fall asleep when Bagheera burst out of the orphanage gate, the Pride in toe. They stopped not far from me on the street and ripped out a loud one. I knew that panthers technically couldn't roar, but I bet the guy who wrote that hadn't heard these cats voices bouncing off the buildings along the street. The air practically shook with the sound. Now, this was not a typical reaction for the panthers. Even if a random zom happened to wander by the most they'd normally so was run out, snap a neck or two, and drag what was left back to my front lawn. I heard that cat owners had issues with mice on their doorsteps. Imagine having five giant felines in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Not a pretty sight, and definitely not a pretty smell.

Point is, this was weird. I couldn't even remember any of the panthers reacting this way since I'd known them. But I could come up with a very reasonable explanation, they detected a threat. For a panicked moment, I thought it might be Bubba, coming before I was ready for him. I realized it couldn't be the giant because nothing was shaking from giant footsteps. This left a few other possibilities, like the horde for example. But that probably wasn't it either. The horde was to my east, and the panthers were looking west. Also, none of my flare guns had gone off, so I scratched that off my list too. That really only left one thing. That was a lie, two things. Another horde, but there were no screams, no moans, which meant that was out too. Or people.

And sure enough, down the street I saw a group crawling its way out of Despairs Butthole. Wow, that was a fun sentence. What wasn't fun was recognizing my intruders. The Sussex group. And I wasn't talking about Eliza with a merry band of scavengers. No, this looked to be the whole cesspool. And there was Eliza, right at the front of them all. I probably should've been happy to see her, considering I'd decided to offer her a chance to stay here with me. But I wasn't exactly excited to see her leading a whole mob of people down my street.

They stopped when Eliza spotted me. And a number of them began panicking when they saw the panthers. A few even pulled guns. "Pull that trigger and it'll be the last mistake you make," I yelled out to the group, taking a step to the side so the people could see me standing behind the Pride. The group of idiots didn't seem convinced since no guns were lowered, but no one was shooting either, so that was a win. Well, maybe half of one.