You're on your own, kid. (You always have been.)

"Scared" isn't a good word for what June's experiencing right now.

"Petrified", and "terrified"- those were fitting. Maybe something else, if she could get her brain to think straight. It seems like moments ago, the bus was dropping her off at school. Everything was completely normal. The only thing she had expected to come out of the day was maybe a new headline. Not..this.

Her day was following the same routine it always did: Wake up, do morning activities (making her bed, brushing her teeth, etc.), eat breakfast, and leave the house at 7:00 AM, sharp. She can hear her dad's words in her head, something about 'never being too careful.' He had followed it up with a laugh, and man, she would do anything to hear that again. Especially now, when she has to be dreaming, because there's no way her eyes are seeing this right.

People- her classmates - are running around frantically, trampling over one another with tears pricking at their eyes. There's the sound of horrified screams going through the air, and she can't help but cover her ears. But as if that wasn't enough, there's also something else.

Bellowing growls, drawled-out moans, and ear-piercing screeches. Sounds that weren't possible, couldn't be possible, for a human to make. June knows this. And her eyes are seeing the sources of these sounds, but she doesn't believe that it's true.

What the hell?

Everyone knows the classic horror trope of zombies. Slow, dumb, and the like. Green, rotting- undead. But they were just fiction. Something you could look at and go "Wow, 'real good thing we'll never have to deal with that ."

But now, that's exactly what was happening. Ironic, huh?

The first thing June notices is their behavior. They were slow, just like the movies- until their eyes locked onto a human. Then, they were freakishly fast. She blinks, and suddenly it has someone on the ground, devouring their neck into nothing. She blinks again because surely, this is all a dream. A nightmare.

Out of nowhere, someone comes and knocks her down to the ground, probably trying to get away from something. Her senses fill with the metallic taste and scent of blood, and she realizes her nose is bleeding. And really, she wants to lie down and shut her eyes so hard that it hurts until she wakes up.

Get up , she thinks. You can't- you have to -

Her mind can't make up the sentence, but her instincts are enough to get herself off the ground and back onto her feet. Now, very clearly, she can see that everything's gone to complete shit. Monsters, actual monsters , grab handfuls of people off the streets and shove them into their mouths. They're bigger than anything she's seen, with all sorts of spikes and eyes and other horrid things attached to their burly bodies. Zombies gnaw and bite at the last remaining people, who cry out for help hopelessly. A nauseating pit forms in her stomach, and she's sure she's going to throw up her breakfast. With all this, it doesn't occur to her that she's a sitting duck. That is, until, someone cries out at her: "June! Behind you!"

Once again do her instincts act before her mind. She dodges what turns out to be a zombie, which would've made her its next meal if whoever yelled at her hadn't given her the warning. It flops onto the floor and begins trying to grab at her ankles, so she kicks at its head with a scream. It lets go, but its mouth just barely misses her foot. Her brain is starting to catch up with her body, and she looks around for someplace to go. She can't stay out here, not if she wants to meet what will certainly be her death. The sky continues to swirl green and purple as what looks like portals drop mutated horrors into the world. It's all so surreal, so insane, she can barely wrap her head around what's happening.