F*** Cancer, This One Did Us All In.

13

  For a moment, we were all silent.

  And then, well, then all hell broke loose.

  Amelia was the first one to react, she yelled with an almost high-pitched scream, "Eric, you son of a bi –" but she was interrupted by the sound of pounding against the door.

  Connor began to whisper angrily to himself, "Crap! Crap, crap, crap!"

  "Oh my god." Mfundo and I almost simultaneously breathed out as the door began to creak and cracks began to appear.

  "Well?" Eric demanded of me, looking at me angrily as if I caused this situation. "Are you just going to sit there with your mouth open or are you going to –"

  "Eric, you shut the hell up!" Amelia yelled at him. "Just, shut up!" She looked at me. "Theodore, Theodore, are you okay?" I couldn't really give her a straight answer, so even when I tried to nod my head just shook around like I was having a fit.

  "Theodore," Mfundo said and I looked at him. "Pick up the gun."

  The door didn't look like it could handle any more damage. I was surprised it hadn't already fallen off its hinges. But I didn't really feel like questioning it at that point, so I moved my body forward, despite a subtle aching in my joints and muscles and bones, and I wrapped my fingers around the gun. I picked it up and that feeling of security flooded through me, almost as if I could wade through the zombie-infested streets with nothing more than this gun and my friends.

  "Hey, kid," Connor said and I looked at him. "You said you're a good shot?"

  I nodded.

  "I honestly hope that's true. Because right now, there's no time for a strategy. We just grab something and we fight with it."

  After he said that, I turned around. I didn't look at my friends because I was looking at the door. I realised that my hands were trembling and I tried to keep them still. I took deep breaths but they didn't seem to work because every time the door shook, my hands would. I couldn't afford my shot to go off, I didn't even know how many bullets were in this gun and I didn't want to take the chance to check. I just had to trust that there was enough and my aim would be good enough. But, oh my god, I was so terrified. There was an undead, flesh-eating, cannibal on the other side of that door and I didn't want to fight it, I wanted to run away and hide under the couch and prayed it ate Eric first.

  But before I could do anything else, the door broke and the zombie came running through. If I'm being honest, he was actually pretty hot. (And not in a gay way [not that I have a problem with gays {gays are awesome!}])

  He was well-muscled, he had great legs and if the lower half of his face wasn't covered in blood and meat then I would have complimented that as well. I screamed along with everybody else and I pulled the trigger twice. The first shot missed its face and blew its ear off, but the second shot hit it right in the face and it keeled over and hit the couch.

  Wait, what?!

  Seriously? Was it that easy? Did I really defeat it that quickly? Did I really kill it in two shots? And, most importantly, did I really feel bad about it? I mean, the guy was already dead. It wasn't like I could make him deader. And I knew that. But, for some reason, looking at the lifeless body that I had stopped, my body started to feel queasy and the same feelings I felt when I had killed Mrs Hobkins were resurfacing and I felt like I was going to vomit and the gun was so close to falling from my hands and even though everybody was still silent from disbelief and awe I certainly did not feel that way and, oh my god, just breathe, Theodore, breathe, because there was so much noise in my head and I didn't want there to be noise in my head because my thoughts were just so scattered and now Mfundo was congratulating me but I just felt oh so very wrong and I looked at the dead(er) body and – did it's finger just move?