Jason Sanchez - When They Come

Margie stood there, staring at Paulie’s corpse. Not even a minute ago he was talking and hanging on to his life. She found it ironic that it was another survivor, not one of those beasts, that claimed him.

Realizing where she was, she ran after Kara.

“I’ll get you all, y-you killed them. They were all I had, you dumb bitches.” The voice of the twisted survivor rang in both Margie and Kara’s ears.

They ran towards the direction of the noise they had heard earlier. The shattered glass would prove an obstacle for the crazed man.

The girls ran. The last two of a once medium-sized group, without direction through the mall, ran up a flight of stairs, seeing the broken glass.

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”, the man yelled.

The girls ran through the glass, Margie taking the lead. She ran to a dark figure, wearing a hat. She outstretched her arm towards him and he extended what looked like a gun at her direction.

Unable to choke out any words Margie left her hand in the air.

Kara looked behind them and saw the man standing at the end of the hallway. He struggled with something on his shoulder. He was in extreme pain. Kara saw blood pouring out of his shoulder and onto his clothes.

The man with the hat shot his gun and the crazed survivor shot his gun into the floor. He went down.

So did the freshly resurrected corpse of Paulie, with a chunk of the man’s shoulder in his mouth.

The man with the hat had shot the zombie.

Margie jumped onto him and they landed on the floor. Kara could not take her eyes off of the dead figures.

“Jay?!”

The present danger was all but over. Margie quickly got up and the man in the hat, pushed her down and held the gun at her.

“A-Are you one of them?”, he stammered.

Margie’s breath left her. She was scared.

He pulled back the hammer.

“ANSWER ME?!”, he yelled.

Kara ran over with a strip of metal from the floor, screaming loudly, she slammed the stranger in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.

He fell to the ground again near Margie.

“KARA!”, Margie yelled.

“He was going to kill you! I can’t lose anyone else, not like this”, Kara replied.

Another man ran out of the shop with a shotgun in his hand.

“Jason?! Shit!” He held the gun at the two girls.

“Who-Who did this?!”, he yelled.

“I-I’m sorry”, Margie said quietly.

He pointed the gun at her and motioned the girls to stand together. He went over to his friend and nudged him with his foot.

The man on the floor stirred a little.

“Get out of here! The both of you! Just…just go!”, he yelled.

Kara and Margie ran off.

“I’m sorry”, Margie said again.

He lowered the gun and the girls, more assured of their safety, ran off down the stairs.

“Where do we go now?”, Kara said.

“I don’t know. Just, out of here”, Margie replied.

Dave

Dave stood over Jason’s body, looking around to make sure any danger was gone. He walked over to the man’s body. He kicked the gun away.

The man looked up at him, breathing hard. His face was discolored and covered in veins.

He mumbled some fevered gibberish.

Dave was no expert, but he knew what would happen in a few minutes. He looked at the huge bite mark on his shoulder and knew that the man was infected.

The man looked up at Dave with pleading eyes.

“I-I’m not dead”, he managed to make out.

Dave looked down at him and pushed his head to the floor with the front of his shotgun.

“You’re not dead, but you deserve to be”, Dave quietly said.

He used every ounce of strength and looked at his vulnerable friend.

He looked out the window and pulled the trigger.

Bang

The deafening sound of the gun caused Jason to stir a little bit again.

Dave looked down and had to hold in the nausea he felt. The man’s head looked like a split watermelon, bits and pieces of him stained the walls, as well as Dave’s #1 grandpa shirt.

He sighed heavily and walked over the zombie that bit the man. He noticed it was motionless with a big hole in it’s head.

“Guess those video games paid off, Jay”, Dave muttered. Finding no need to waste another shell, he looked at his best friend lying on the floor.

“Come on, Jay, wake up. Please.” He knelt beside him. “Wake up. We can’t stay here too long.”

He began to sob quietly.

“Please, wake up. I-I can’t do this alone. Please, wake up.”

He knelt beside his friend, despite the shuffling noises that were closing in on them.

Over the Deep End

Matt cautiously approached the source of the noise, going slowly down the fire escape.

“I wonder if I could survive a fall from here”, he thought to himself. He briefly thought of jumping over and ending this madness. He turned his head and decided to keep going.

He heard a gentle tapping at a window below him. He had his weapon in tow, ready to strike at whatever it was.

When he arrived, he had found an emaciated young woman, trapped in what appeared to be a bathroom. There was a shower rod holding the door shut, and what looked like piles of feces scattered around. The shower curtain was bunched up in the tub, looking like a makeshift bed.

When she saw Matt, her eyes opened wide and she let out a loud and piercing scream. She began to bang on the window with her open palms. Matt looked at her, making sure there were no bite marks.

He held a finger to his lips, trying to get her to quiet down. Matt had spent so long trying to be as quiet as possible and this was the loudest source of noise he had heard in a while.

Her noise brought about the realization of Matt’s fear. He looked down and saw a few zombies responding to her noises. Also, Matt noticed the shower rod had fallen down in the bathroom.

Matt looked at her and tried to open the window, but nothing.

“I know I’m not this weak. Come on, Matty…”, he said to himself as he used every ounce of strength to open the window, but nothing.

Looking at the window again, he realized that it had been nailed shut. A hammer lay near the hysterical woman.

“THE HAMMER! USE THE HAMMER!”, Matt yelled. The noise hurt his vocal cords.

She was too hysterical to even consider using the tool.

The door behind her burst open and in came an older couple with pale skin and terrible open and festering wounds on their arms and face. They dragged themselves over to the woman.

“NO!! NO!!”, Matt yelled.

He began to punch at the glass. Feeling it crack gave him hope that he could save her.

It gave him the hope that he would no longer be alone.

The monsters descended on her as Matt was about to break the glass.

He watched them sink their teeth into her neck, blood pouring down her body, then out of her mouth. She began to choke on it and with her weak frame, unable to fight, she let herself fall to the ground.

Her hand stood at the glass briefly, Matt pressed his hand over the cracked glass where her hand was, until it dragged down to the floor.

“No…”, Matt said to himself. He began to weep quietly.

The window shattered, spraying glass everywhere, cutting Matt’s face and his hands and arms.

The second ghoul, not content with the skinny girl, shoved it’s arms through the weakened glass, tried to pull Matt inside.

Matt shut his eyes as hard as he can.

“NO! NO! NO!”, he yelled at it. He opened his mouth in pain as he felt his arm open and drip with blood.

He felt the slicing sensation burn into his mind and then into his arm. Blood poured all over the ghoul’s mouth as she tried to get his fingers into her hungry and barely toothed mouth.

Matt grew pale at the sight of all of his blood. His arm inside of the room, it was dripping all over the dead girl’s face, into her eyes and mouth. He pulled as hard as he could, but the pain was too much.