Jason Sanchez - When They Come

“We need to get to that mall, and fast. That truck might circle back and we could be next”, Margie said. She began to walk faster towards the mall now. It wasn’t too far anymore.

“What do you guys think happened to Tommy?”, Kara said sadly.

“Why should you care? You wanted Margie here to kill him!”, Paulie yelled back.

“It was for his own good! He was gonna die anyway! It doesn’t matter!”, Kara defended herself.

“But, still, it’s not right. He could have had a chance. You don’t know with these things!”, Paulie said back with tears in his eyes.

“I should have killed him”, Margie quietly said.

“I should have shot him right in the head”, Margie said louder

Paulie and Kara got quiet. They were both stunned.

“I could have put him out of his suffering and been done with it. God would have forgiven me. I was showing mercy to him! He had lost his father and I could have made it so that he joined him sooner, but now he’s probably just like one of those things! He’s doomed to walk the earth for…”, Margie began to rant, Kara cut her off.

“Y-You did the right thing. If it wasn’t for that distraction, we would all have a bunch of those things on our tails right now. We would not have been able to get this far”, Kara said back with sympathy in her voice.

“Tommy, Tommy was nuts already. He probably wouldn’t have done much good. Maybe even done more harm than anything else if we left him. I think Kara’s right. You did the right thing, Margie”, Paulie said back without any anger in his voice.

Margie nodded. “Then how come it doesn’t feel right?”, she whispered to herself.

“YIP YIP YIP YIIIIP”, echoed through the group. They all became paralyzed with fear.

“I GOT SOME MORE HERE, JEB!”, a deep southern accent yelled.

The blue truck sped towards the group quickly, kicking up dust behind it. The group ran as fast as they could towards the mall. It wasn’t too far now.

“Th-The noise. Won’t it attract those things?”, Kara forced out.

“Yeah, it will, we need to get to the mall, and fast!”, Tommy yelled.

Crack

Crack

“YIIIIP YIP YIP! YOU BETTER RUN, YOU SUM BITCHES!” Those words echoed as hard as the gunshots to the group.

One whizzed by Kara’s head as she dropped to the ground.

“KARA!”, Margie yelled. She stopped to pick her up.

“Come on! HURRY!”, Paulie yelled. He slowed his run to a jog so the girls could catch up to him.

Kara grabbed his hand. The crack of the gunshots rang through their minds and seemed to echo for an eternity.

Margie ran past Paulie and Kara and hid part of her body behind a tree.

“Margie, what are you doing? We need to get to that mall right now, it’s our only chance!”, Paulie yelled.

Margie ignored him and uttered a short prayer. She drew her gun and held it out with both hands.

“Lord, let my aim hold true. Protect us in our hour of need.”

She carefully lined her shot, growing more and more anxious by the second at how close the truck was getting. Margie saw the man in the passenger seat pointing his rifle at the biggest target.

He was aiming at Paulie and Kara.

With the driver in her sights, she fired, but she heard two shots.

The truck swerved around before flipping over several times, rolling a few dozen feet.

Paulie fell to the ground, screaming in agony.

The rifleman in the passenger seat managed to hit his mark.

Paulie was shot in the leg. Kara was able to catch him before he hit the ground. She carried most of his weight as they continued to limp past Margie, who was still stunned at what she had done.

Kara was right though. Many of the ghouls that were freshly killed and, ironically enough, some of the victims of the men in the truck were beginning to come to and descend on the wreckage.

Margie kept her gun on the wreckage. “Come on! We need to move!”, she yelled to Kara and Paulie. He began to get alarmed at the amount of blood he was losing; he was having a hard enough time holding in the pain.

Margie stood behind as Kara, with Paulie putting much of his weight on her, hobbled by as fast as they could. With her arms getting tired from aiming at the doors of the wrecked vehicle, she began to see a shambling hoard of the undead descend on the doors. Margie heard the screams of those trapped inside as they were torn apart. She ran away, feeling like the zombies were doing a good enough job disposing of the twisted living.

Margie succeeded in hearing the gunshots ripping through the flesh of the zombies, but failed to see one that made it out of the vehicle and ran off ,leaving his friends behind.

“Get inside, GET INSIDE!” Kara yelled to Paulie. The mall’s doors were still open. Throwing all caution to the wind, Paulie ran through the doors, not even looking at his surroundings. Taking his actions as a sort of sign of safety, the girls followed in with him.

Suddenly, the group heard the noise of glass being shattered, it sounded like a store window and something heavy falling to the ground. They heard glass being cleared and two male voices talking in the distance.

“Let’s stay away from them. Who knows if they are friends of those guys outside”, Paulie whispered while grabbing at his leg.

“I don’t know. The voices didn’t sound hostile”, Margie replied.

“Guys, we need to find something for Paulie’s leg. It just doesn’t look good”, Kara said. “We should go to Bulls-Eye. They would definitely have something for him there.”

“Alright, let’s find a directory and head over to Bulls-Eye. Maybe we’ll find something useful and maybe some change of clothes, too.”

Kara ran over to a flickering directory.

“Look, there are different stores here. There’s a gun shop around here, too! Let’s go!”, Kara panted while she spoke.

Paulie was getting pale. His injury was worse than the group had thought.

“Is there anywhere we can get some sort of first aid for Paulie? He looks real bad”, Margie said.

“Guys, don’t worry. It’s nothing. Just go find something to arm yourselves with. This place..”

He paused to breathe.

“This place, just gives me the creeps.”

Paulie coughed up blood.

“Paulie…”, Margie said.

“There’s no time. We need to find something that’ll help us”, Kara desperately said.

The group heard heavy breathing and dragging feet behind them. Margie turned her gun at where the noise came from, but nothing.

The group, with Kara carrying Paulie, proceeded into the mall.

While they scampered into the mall, looking into the shops, all destroyed and emptied out, Margie began to imagine the scene where crowds of people were running around, trampling others, breaking windows and taking everything, even if it wasn’t useful to them. She shook her head trying to clear her mind in the thought. Only when she slipped in a small pool of blood was when she was knocked right back into the thought, only she was living in it’s aftermath.

The noise they had heard before grew louder and louder and was followed by low mumbling.

“Margie, did you see anyone get out of the car?”, Kara asked with obvious fear in her voice.

“No, I saw a bunch of those things going into it, but that was…”

Crack

A gun shot rang into the air and Paulie got much heavier.

The air around them grew quiet and time froze.

Paulie fell off of Kara and hit the floor hard.

Margie turned back just in time to see the lone survivor of the wreck aiming his rifle at the group. She stopped breathing when she realized that he had hit his mark.

Paulie was dead.

“RUN!!”, Kara yelled and immediately dashed in a random direction.