“What the fuck is going on?!” Jim yells as I stumble behind the counter and sneeze six times in a row.
“It’s the fucking zombie virus! Son of a bitch, I told you this day was coming! No one believed me and you all laughed. Well, who the fuck is laughing now?! If I go first, you kill me before I eat ANYONE’S face off, do you hear me?” I scream at Jim.
A hand clamps around my ankle, and I scream like a girl and jump up onto the counter. I look down and see Carter staring up at me with a scared look on his face.
“I don’t want to eat people either! Don’t let me eat people! They say it tastes like chicken but I don’t believe them. PEOPLE TASTE LIKE PEOPLE NOT CHICKEN!”
I nod my head, too busy coughing and wiping the tears out of my eyes to do much else. I glance behind me to check on the three women and see them crawling on all fours to get to the front door.
“NOOOOOOO! YOU CAN’T LEAVE! THE ZOMBIES!” I scream.
They can’t go outside. The streets are probably overrun with creepy bloody people chewing on arms and toes.
The women scream at the top of their lungs and are half crawling, half running as they try to get up off of the floor. They are coughing and crying and screaming and shoving displays and each other out of their way to get to the door. They don’t listen to my shouts of warning at all, and before I know it, they are out the door and lost to the zombies.
“It’s so sad. They were so pretty. Now we won’t even be able to recognize them the next time we see them,” Jim says sadly as I continue to cough.
“I need to call Jenny and tell her I love her,” I say between sneezes as I reach for the phone on the counter.
I dial our home number and she answers on the first ring but she sounds funny.
“Mmmmmm, mmmmfffuh”
Oh my god, has she been turned already?!
“NOOOOO! Jenny! Baby! Did they get to you already? Are you already a zombie? Oh my God!” I scream into the phone.
“What? Jenny’s a zombie?” Jim asks from behind me before dissolving into another coughing fit. “Shit! I need to call Liz.”
I hear a cough on the other end of the phone and I know that if Jenny isn’t a zombie yet, she will be soon.
“Fight the virus, baby, FIGHT IT!” I scream.
“Drew? What the hell are you talking about? I was taking a nap. What time is it?” she asks.
“IT’S ZOMBIE TIME! Lock the doors, baby. Don’t let them eat your face!” I tell her.
“MY FACE IS BURNING!” Carter yells from the floor as he scratches his cheeks.
“We need an antidote! What the fuck is an antidote for zombies?” I yell to Jim.
“What the hell does your Aunt Dottie have to do with zombies?” Jenny asks through the phone line. “Did you eat pot cookies again? You know what those do to you.”
A flash of blue and red lights catches my attention, and I turn around and look out the front window.
“It’s the cops. They’ve come to save us,” I say.
“Or they’re really zombie cops and they’ve come to eat our legs,” Jim adds.
~
“Yes, officer. I’ll make sure they are never left unsupervised again,” Liz tells the cop as he gets in his cruiser and then takes off.
Jim, Carter, and I are all sitting on the curb outside of the store with wet towels pressed to our eyes and bottles of water clutched in our hands.
Even though we can’t see right now, we can tell that Liz is looking at each one of us like she wants to murder us.
“What in the fucking hell were you guys thinking?” she asks.
I can hear her shoes tapping on the concrete right in front of us, and I close my legs to protect my nuts, just in case.
“You three morons thought you would spray mace in the porn room because it was a closed room. And yet somehow, during the planning of this stellar idea, you failed to remember this little thing called a VENTILATION SYSTEM. And you know, since it’s winter and all, the heat is on, pushing air and MACE from the fucking VENTILATION SYSTEM out into the entire store,” Liz explains angrily.
I remove the wet towel from my eyes and chance a look at her.
“Yeah, we didn’t really think that part through,” I admit.
“Oh gee, you think? Those three women went running down the street screaming about crazy men and flesh eating zombies that had taken over my store. And Jenny called me in a panic, freaking out because someone knocked on her door, and she thought zombies were going to break into the house to eat your kids. She threw a blender, the toaster, and a lamp at the door before I could convince her that it was my mother dropping off a present for Billy,” Liz tells me.
“Which lamp? It wasn’t my Ohio State one, was it?” I ask in horror.
“That is so not the fucking point, Drew!”
I look over at Carter and Jim and realize they are much smarter than I am. They are both sitting with their heads down, not making eye contact.
“You three are in time-out! No playing together for the rest of the week!” Liz yells before stomping past us and into the store.
“Yes ma’am,” we all mumble.