No Need To Panic

9: The Newbie

"Well damn," I said, standing up. "And I thought today might actually be normal." Five pairs of feet crunched gravel as everyone came over to where I stood.

"Should we evacuate?" Eve asked worriedly. She bit her lip, and it was silent for a few minutes as we watched them shuffle towards the building. "I mean, they're going to know we're here. They'll smell us or hear us or see us. We should leave."

"Even if they find out we're here, they won't find us. They can't get through the emergency door, it's dead bolted. And they can't open the doors to our rooms."

"With as many of them as there are, they definitely can break that door. And they can break the hotel room doors, too," Max said, scratching behind his neck. I ran both of my hands over my head and squatted down, watching them as their pale, pupil-less eyes wandered over the streets. They seemed more aware than usual, more active. They usually didn't use their inhuman speed unless chasing something living, usually they shuffled. But they were walking as fast a normal person would now, and that worried me.

"Max, hand me a gun," I said suddenly. He looked startled, but complied, placing it in my open palm. It felt heavy and unfamiliar in my hand. Only my small shotgun felt normal in my hand, and this was alien to me. But he had already unlocked the safety, all I had to do was squeeze the trigger.

I lifted the gun, my muscles straining against its weight, and aimed it the building to the hordes' left. My finger pulled back, and a millisecond later the glass shattered. A few Pulseless dropped as glass pierced their hearts, but the majority of them began to run towards the building eagerly. I moved the gun and shot the building on their right, and half of them split off and headed towards it. There were a few stragglers that couldn't decide which one to head towards, and stood in the middle, uncertain. Before they could make a decision I shot the building behind them, and the whole horde moved backwards towards it.

"She's drawing them away," Emma realized. Max lifted a different gun and shot the building behind the one I shot. They ran towards it eagerly. I put the borrowed gun down and let Max take over. Once the majority of them made it to that building, the one behind it received a bullet through its window.

But there was one Pulseless that did not move. It stood there, staring at us with a look of awe. Wait, Pulseless had no emotion. Blake lifted her aim to shoot it, but I put my hand on the arrow and lowered her arm. The Pulseless was holding its hands up in surrender.

"We have an issue," Twitch said. "One of them is becoming smart." I leaned over the edge and looked at him in confusion. But, no, he wasn't Pulseless at all. The pale color of his skin wasn't right. And his eyes weren't white and without a pupil. He was human.

"Don't shoot! Please don't shoot!" he yelled up at us. We were a few stories above him, so it was hard to hear, but I managed to decipher.

"Oh my god," I whispered. "He's human. He alive."

I clambered up after Blake, and fell to my knees in shock. In front of us was a black rock the size of my house, and green smoke fell from it like water. It crawled over the ground and inched towards us. I ignored it and started turning around in a circle. All around, the trees were broken and smashed. Green smoke writhed over them eagerly, but it didn't seem to be doing any harm. The sky was covered in black clouds, and only small rays of sunlight filtered through.

The rock--no, the meteor--oozed smoke, and I felt heat radiating from it. Our cellar was about a mile into the forest from the convenience store, which was twenty miles from our homes. The city was thirty miles away. There would be no people here. But that was okay, because the world was fine. There was no reason that I should be worried. They were all at home, peacefully waiting for the news to say that they could come out and enjoy the world.