Be Careful what you Wish For

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this”
“You don’t say...”
“Really not the time for sarcasm, Luce.”
Max and Lucy stood at the broken window in what used to be a English classroom. They were on the top floor of a now deserted High School and they were in trouble. For congregating far below were hundreds of reanimated corpses.
“I’m serious Max, what the hell are you planning on doing now?”
“What am I planning?! Why don’t you come up with an idea once and a while? It’s easy for you to judge—“
“Look I’m not the one obsessed with these things! That’d be you, so tell us genius what—“Her voice grew in intensity in an attempt to drown out his own continued argument.
“ENOUGH!” They both stopped, “Shut up…they can probably hear you…”
“Real bright plan, yelling to get us to stop yelli—“
“I said enough!” Aoife stood from where she’d been sitting, a desk in the far corner of the room. She’d taken one look out the window a few minutes before, whimpered and retreated to her darkened corner. She’d been spending the last few minutes wallowing in despair and she was going to be damned if her last moments on this Earth were going to be spent listening to those two bicker. She’d wasted enough of her life listening to them. “Please…let’s all just shut up for a second and think this over.”
“Yes, lets think about what an idiot Max is for saying we should stick around here in the first place…The High School, Max? Seriously?”
Aoife sighed and sat down again…it was no use, there was no helping it. She had to admit, Lucy had a point. Max was the one who saw this coming; he’d annoyed everyone, including her, with tales of zombies and what he’d do when Z-Day arrived.
Well, Z-Day was here and looking at Max now, staring back out the window at the swarming mass his hands shaking, his mouth hanging open in shock, it was pretty obvious he wasn’t as prepared as he thought he was.

***********

He was falling. His head spinning. He stared down at the undead crowd, so thick that the zombies were crawling over on another to get at the building. They hadn’t breached it yet, he could take comfort in that. Their makeshift barricade had held up. But it was only a matter of time now. They were trapped. Lucy was right, this was a stupid idea, and it was going to get them all killed.
Max felt enthralled by the rippling bodies below. The waves of zombies crawling all over each other, if he allowed himself to just watch them and not think about their teeth ripping into his flesh the effect was almost calming. They were crawling, biting, wriggling over the ground below and Max shut out everything else, focusing on the multi-coloured ocean. Soon even the wave dissolved.
*WHAP!* Max’s eyes shot open; he felt a burning pain in his face. This was it, they were here, it was all over, it had to be. He closed his eyes again, preferring not to witness the jagged teeth that would soon gnaw through his cheek.
*WHAP!* this time the pain was accompanied by a voice.
“No…no, no no no! Max, no, you are not getting out of this that easily! You can’t just faint and make the problem disappear!”
*WHAP* his eyes stung as they opened, for good this time. He saw his sister, kneeling next to him, looking pissed.
“If we have to deal with this then so do you…now stay conscious.” She hopped up and headed back toward the window, shooting him glares every now and then.
Suddenly Aoife was next to him, she held her hand out and he accepted it, pulling himself to his feet. He wobbled a bit, trying to regain his center of gravity, his head suddenly pounding.
“What happened?”
“You just fell, hit your head on a desk and everything…you okay? You don’t have a concussion do you?”
“I wouldn’t know…what would a concussion feel like?”
She shrugged. They heard a crash below them and Max recognized it as the sound of the zombies breaking down the barricade.
“Barricade the room!” He yelled, looking out the window, the zombie crowd thinned as they flooded into the building. “If we can keep them long enough we might be able to get out through the window to the roof” even as he said it Max knew they were screwed.
It was only a matter of time now.

*********

Max was a zombie fetishist. There was no other way to explain it.
He caught “Night of the Living Dead” on television one night when he was 8 and never looked back. A good 15 years later, it was not hard to pick him out from a crowd as a horror freak. 6’3, overweight and usually dressed in a black horror tee (or a leather jacket, when it got cold…which, considering his weight, didn’t happen often.) he was the guy that people worried would show up at work with an assault rifle, as if he knew how to use an assault rifle. To learn a skill such as that you had to have patience and resolve…you had to care, which Max certainly didn’t.
If it didn’t have to do with zombies, he just didn’t care. Well…that wasn’t completely true. Despite his clear character flaws he’d managed to get himself a girlfriend. A tiny woman named Aoife, she taught English at the local High School and she was the only thing in his life that came close to touching zombies. Neither of them knew exactly why they were together…he’d just asked her out one day (surprising even himself with his daring) and although they were both to lazy to see much of each other, they’d stuck together (although, much of their relationships longevity may have been due to their equal fears that the other was the best they could do, they were both to strange to find someone else)
When he entered his teenage years he found the perfect device to compliment his zombie addiction. The Internet. There he met others like him, and soon he spoke the names of his fellow users in every day conversations. WritersCramp (WC), Ginose, and GrievousOne (Grevs), amoung others, became his best friends. When he logged on, he shucked the name “Max” and became “Ash”.
Ginose was the leader. There was no disputing that fact. When the fit hit the shan he was the one they looked to. He formulated complex schemes for when Z-Day occurred,. He knew what was going to happen, and how they’d keep from becoming one of the millions of poor saps to be cannibalized.
Or, so they all thought.



Max was suffering from withdrawal. It had been 2 days since he’d spoken to his friends. 2 days since he’d been anywhere near a computer.
Dropping his briefcase (a term of endearment he bestowed on the shoddy backpack he took to work each day) by the door he sprinted up the stairs to his computer desk. Comfortably surrounded by empty cans of soda and chips, he popped the tab on a new drink and sighed after the first fizzy sip. He sank into his chair (he’d splurged on a upgrade the year before, a comfortable leather contraption with cup holders, very cushiony) and logged in again. He smiled, feeling like an alcoholic indulging in the first beer of the day…that wasn’t a bad idea actually, he remembered a few bottles in the refrigerator…
Deciding getting up and going to the fridge sounded like too much exertion (he made a mental note to think about getting a mini fridge for his desk) he focused on the computer screen.
Something was definitely up.
The site was buzzing. Hundreds of people were online…usually it was just WC, Grevs, Ginose and him. Probably a movie release or something (even as he thought it he knew he was wrong, he’d know if there was a new zombie movie, he’d have seen it) he went to private chat and found his friends. Good, they were all online.

[i]WritersCramp: Rabies my @$$
GreviousOne: U rly think its the Zed?
WritersCramp: Wat else?
WritersCramp: Course no 1s figured it out yet, but it’s gotta be
GreviousOne: Thats crazy tho! C’mon!
Ginose: Where’ve you been the last 5 years Grevs? Are you one of us or not? So what if it is the Zed? We’ve seen this coming. We’ve got the plan for a reason, and we’re sticking to it.
GreviousOne: Wat about Ash?
AshJW: I’m here
WritersCramp: Ash!
GreviousOne: Where teh hell have u been?
AshJW: sry, busy!
Ginose: doesn’t matter, Ash, you hear what’s been going on?
AshJW: What?
Ginose: The mysterious “Rabies” strand, people being attacked and eaten by their seemingly dead family members? Zombies, man![/i]

No way…
Max stared a second before logging off, typing in “Rabies” on Google and receiving dozens of news articles at the top of the page. Clicking the first link, it only took a few seconds scan to figure it. It was Z-Day alright.
He thought about those beers in his fridge again…The church was too far away and getting suddenly religious seemed to pale in comparison to getting buzzed.
Then he remembered his sister. She worked at a hospital (he’d spent many a Thanksgiving listening to his parents compare the two of them) and when zombies attacked that was the worst place you wanted to be. After a few seconds of chastising himself for thinking of alcohol before family he grabbed his coat, his keys, his “briefcase” and ran out of the house.

************

He was an idiot.
Max was about 10 feet outside his front door. Staring into the face of David, his next door neighbour.
“Hey…er…Hi Dave.” He jerked a thumb towards his front door “Want a beer?”
“Nguugh” his jaw worked around, making a loud slurping sound fill the air
“No? Well…I’m actually on my way out so--”
“NNGHGHGG!!!” his one good arm reached out to Max and he started forward. It was lucky that Max’s body chose to act of it’s own volition, because his brain was still working on something else. He turned and ran. It wasn’t his proudest moment, but it’s what happened. Closing the door on Dave’s groping fingers he was unable to shut it, but got the chain working and kept Dave at bay for a bit while he looked for a weapon.
“Stupid Max, you’re so stupid!” how did he forget a weapon in the first place? He needed something and he needed something quick. His eyes lit up and he wrenched open the closet under the stairs, nestled in the back corner surrounded by cobwebs were a rather expensive set of golf clubs. A gift from his father, more out of hope that his son would make something, anything out of himself, than out of a delusion that Max would actually use them.
He grabbed biggest club just as a crack sounded from the direction of the door, he turned. The chain hung down the doorframe with a piece of splintered wood still attached. Dave was heading into the house. Max lifted the club, closed his eyes and swung. He hit air. He let out a soft scream and opened his eyes, Dave was almost upon him. He took a few hurried steps back, and with eyes wide open swung the club again. It made contact. Dave stumbled a bit and this small sign of weakness raised Max’s morale considerably. He continued to hit Dave over the head with the club until he finally stopped twitching.
Dave was dead…deader…whatever.
Now to save his sister!
He rushed towards the broken door and was just fumbling with his car keys as a green convertible pulled into the driveway and screeched to a stop.
“MAX!” his sister might as well have fallen out of the car, she was shaking terribly. “Max! What the --! They were bodies Max! They were dead, and then-- they were--what’s going on” She was incredibly pale, too pale, and covered in blood.
“Luce, calm down. Listen carefully, please. This is really important… Are you bit?”
It was interesting to watch as the womans face went from white to red, her face transformed seamlessly from terror to confusion;
“What? Bit?” all the way to anger, “Oh, no…no no no Max!” She began walking towards the house, gaining control of herself as she went “Not zombies again?! Not this time Ma--” She screamed “DAVE!” She knelt by their neighbour and began shaking him, “Is he dead? What--”
“LUCY!” He pulled her up, none to gently, by the arm “WERE YOU BITTEN!”
“NO!” her voice raised to match his in volume, just like when they were kids…always a competition. “What is going on here Max?!?! Did you kill him!?”
“Yes”
“MAX!” She back up, her expression disgusted…he couldn’t tell if it was with him or the mashed up body staining his carpet.
“He was a zombie”
“Oh, don’t even star--”
No! You don’t even start! Tell me about your day Luce?” she opened her mouth but nothing came out…
“Aw, c’mon Luce… really, I’m interested! Anything interesting happen at work today? Any bodies reanimate maybe?”
“Now there’s a perfectly--”
“Reasonable explanation? Something scientific and logical about walking corpses?! They’re zombies! You know it and I know it, so why don’t you quit arguing and help me!?” the look on her face told him all he needed to know.
“C’mon…” he headed to door again. She followed.
“Where are we going?”
“To get Aoife…she’s at the school.”