Better off Undead

Chapter 48: Last Few Minutes

They followed the maze of hallways this way and that, until finally they ran out of places to run. With no other options, they took the door at the end of the corridor with hopes to find somewhere to hide.

This room already had several upturned tables, chairs, and desks, and Eli and Jay ran towards one, leaped up and over, and came down into a crouch on the far side.

"What are we gonna do?" demanded Jay between gasps for breath. "We can't keep running forever."

"No we can't," agreed someone.

Eli nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun away from Jay, facing the other direction for the first time, and discovered the others of their group were already hiding in the room.

"Christ!" he spat. "Like my nerves aren't on end enough."

"How the hell did we all end up here?" asked Jay.

"It just seems like all directions lead to this room," Aliyah said, shrugging.

"Anyone else get the uncomfortable feeling like we've been herded like cattle?" Mac asked.

They sat in uncomfortable silence at that thought.

"Eli," Amber said suddenly, her voice cutting like a dagger through the void, "how do we stop these... these..."

"Frankensteins," Eli finished for her.

"Rolling Stones," Jay corrected.

Amber's mouth hung open as she looked back and forth between the two young men. She had the feeling like she didn't even want to ask, but she couldn't stop herself from saying, "What?"

"Well, I said that these things are undead monsters sown together from other people and raised back to life by electricity. That obviously makes them Frankensteins."

"And I said that they're awful and they seem unstoppable, so they're like the Rolling Stones."

"Do you two ever stop?" Aliyah snapped harshly.

Eli and Jay exchanged glances and then looked back at her. "What?" they asked innocently, in perfect unison.

"How do you stop these things?" Amber demanded, hissing the words a bit louder than she had intended. She glanced at the door as though she expected the noise to have pulled in the creatures like a fishing line.

Eli frowned. "Well, I don't know. I mean, we can't even seem to agree on what they are..."

"Eli!" Amber snapped, glaring at him with a fire in her eyes.

Eli withered under that gaze. "Okay," he squeaked. "Fine. I... it's hard to say. I mean, Frankenstein's monster only appeared in one story, really. The original. And his creator never actually manages to stop him in the story. There's a bunch of other stories that use the character but they mostly amount to little more than fan fiction and they're so inconsistent..." he paused to swallow and shake his head.

"But you have a theory, right?" Amber demanded, impatient.

Eli sighed. "Yeah, I guess. I mean, the point of the original story is kind of not how much of a monster the creation is, but rather how human it is. It may be tough, super strong, and somewhat wild, but it is, in the end, basically human. It should die from anything that kills a human. My bet is that, as a general rule, anything that stops a zombie should stop one of these guys."

"So basically, if we destroy the brain, we stop these bastards."

"Yeah," Eli agreed.

"That's still not easy," Mac said. "We all saw what little effect your baseball bat had on the first one."