“Jesus fucking Christ! I told you idiots to hold it off for five seconds!” Shelby was beyond pissed.
“It’s not like you were helping.” Steven retorted icily.
“I didn’t realize beetles could eat us and kill the entire camp!” Shelby hissed, referring to Steven bent over his zombified pet pawing at bugs. “Anyone have a staff of some sort?”
“There’s a broom…” Wolfie offered.
“Throw it.” She raised an eyebrow but tossed it, barely missing Shelby’s toes. She caught it, barely looking, putting her foot down on the frayed fibers and swiftly twisted the peeling handle, snapping off the head from the body, and leaving a wicked twisted end for the zombies to bite. She kicked away the rest and ran at the intruders, shoving it right in one’s eye socket, blood dripping from it’s now limp body. She looked back at the rest of the inhabitants, raising an eyebrow. She was really bad about preferring gestures to words.
Bibazoo was the first to charge after, her boyfriend Daryl following swiftly behind, and the trickle only continued. Wolfie smashed one’s head in with a candy apple red heel. Wily grabbed Harry’s and Zayn’s wrists, dragging them in howling like a banshee. Kekei swelled and rose with a massive beat of his wings, sparking the gas in his maw and unleashing it at the distant corpses. Steven pushed a hoard of fighters aside, Gregory under his arm.
“Steven-?!”
“What the hell are you doing?!” Steven held up a hand to silence them, then pulled the kitten from his side and balled him up in his hands. Everyone looked over, bewildered, as he leaned back and launched the young cat into the midst of the whole fight.
“Steven, you ass!” Wolfie barked, taking her posh weapon after the furry cannonball.
“You’re a terrible pet owner. No you can’t have Kekei if I die.” Shelby pushed the beast she was fighting with off herself. Wily pulled the finishing move on the ones on the ground, crushing their skulls and splattering blood and brains all over her old converse.
The middle of the hoard began to implode, unanimated corpses falling onto the concrete and dying grass. The group froze, the zombies stopped pouring in through the hole in the barrier, and the commotion began to quiet and observe. A tiny, filthy kitten squeezed out from underneath a body.
“WHAT THE FU-”
“Secret weapon.” Steven said smugly, cradling Gregory to his chest. Shelby rolled her eyes and a good amount of people groaned about his idiocy.
“You really are stupid, you know that?” Wolfie grumbled, stomping after everyone else. Some were seeing to the dead, the camp hadn’t gone unscathed. And it was now apparent they weren’t safe any longer. Daryl began piling the corpses and Liam fetched gasoline. The camp was deathly quiet, and secretly frantic. They needed a leader, a secure one, not a rotational one. And everyone in the camp felt the could be that person, the one to lead the group to safety, like the world could ever heal itself.
It had all happened so fast. People dead and gone, or so far they might as well be lost forever. There was barely time to fathom the deconstruction of life as everyone knew and the essentials to life now. Some were quick to adapt, forgetting how to mourn the people who would never feel or think again, and just seeing everyone as desperate shadows of the creatures and being they used to be. Others sought to comfort the hollowed souls, some jus desired to craft the petty camp into a military regiment. But the perfect leader had to go all ways. Not one person in that camp could see reason in everyone’s thoughts, and that’s what they needed. It was all a heavy and unforgettable weight on everyone’s shoulders.
