Bite

Smile

But the thing was still alive, looking at me, with a smile. Pedro whirled around the corner, and stopped, shellshocked.

"Is it safe to go in the bathroom?" Hailey asked, looking down at the creature, and then at me.

"Almost," I gasped, circling, getting between the thing and Hailey. The thing tried to follow me with his eyes, and when he could no longer see me, craned his neck slowly. When the neck could go no further, his head continued to twist, until with a crack—his own neck was breaking, hanging limply, swinging full-circle as if he tried to pay homage to seventies horror films. Head backwards, it looked at me, and I looked at it.

My heart rate was still at a dangerously fast rate.

Pedro gasped audibly in disgust, and took careful steps towards us. "Girls?" he asked, tentatively.

I looked over my shoulder, into the empty bathroom. "Go in, I got this," I said. Hailey slipped inside, closing the door shut behind her.

"It's fine," I said to Pedro.

"You shot it," he inferred.

"Right in the chest," I replied.

Pedro stepped closer. "Then what is it doing?"

I focused on the zombie thing, a slopping mess of brown blood and dripping skin. It looked at me with yellow eyes and a yellow smile.

Without giving the creature any warning, I kicked it as hard as I could in the face. Lucky for me, at kneeling, the creature's height was about as high as my foot could go, which wasn't much. The head snapped back with the pressure, and it tumbled backwards, crumbling fully to the ground without any fight to stay upward. It was like kicking a doll over. It lay there, motionless and crooked, eyes upwards, still smiling. It occurred to me that it was dying, and I needed to finish the job and get Hailey out of there, before it attracted anything else.