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"C’mon man… we have to get out of here right now!" I said… and it was true. They were coming. Those… things. I couldn’t smell them yet, but I could hear them. Could hear that irregular, drunken shuffling sound that only they make… and of course the moaning… always the moaning…

"But I can’t… can’t just leave her here. They’ll… well you know… they’ll e—" Chris choked on the words… looked at me imploringly…

"I know what they’ll do man! They’ll do what they always do… but I’m telling you if we don’t get the Hell out of here right fucking now they’re going to do the same thing to us, you dumb fu—" I barely managed to bite off the words when I realized what was coming out of my mouth. It took a concentrated physical effort to calm myself down… not surprising under the circumstances. Chris seemed not to notice… just gawked up at me with that blank look in his eyes…

"Listen…" I tried to sound comforting. Tried to sound like I actually cared… but the truth was I was just about ready to leave him there…. better him than me… Right? "I know you loved her man… I know you cared about her… but she’s gone now, and you’re just going to have to acc—" My not-so-sincere attempt to talk some sense into my friend was cut short by a loud crash of metal on linoleum a few meters down the hall from where we’d come. They had finally caught up to us… one of them, a girl, or what used to be a girl, was flailing about helplessly, entangled in the heavy metal book case she (it) had somehow toppled over on itself….

She was probably pretty hot before they got to her… It popped into my head before I could evaluate just how absurd (and grotesque) a thought it was. A high pitched giggle escaped me, despite myself… it sounded like the nervous laugh of a man in a straight jacket, trying to convince the men in the white coats that he was really quite sane.

My reverie was broken when the thing finally got itself free of the book case… a simple matter of tearing through the already-partially-shredded meat that had hung loosely from its shoulder and was now trapped beneath the weight of the metal… it sacrificed its arm (what’s an arm among friends… especially when there’s fresh meat to be had?), left it in a pool of dark, partially congealed blood, and struggled to its badly-mangled feet.

"Chris…" I stammered. Another one stumbled awkwardly around the corner, this one wore the garb of a maintenance man… a maintenance man with a crushed eye and the left half of his face peeled mostly off. It caught sight of me, its one good eye lolling wildly in its mangled skull, and immediately began to lurch toward me with its arms outstretched, like an infant taking its first steps. Its progress was temporarily impeded by the book case, over which it tripped and plummeted face first into the linoleum with a loud, wet slap.

"Chris, WE HAVE TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE RIGHT THIS FUCKING MIN—" Then she (it) was on me… clawing at me with her remaining appendage… clutching at my throat and trying with all of her undead might to take a bite out of my carotid artery… I barely held her back from my throat with my own, living arm, but she was gaining… her fetid maul getting ever closer to my life’s blood…

It raced wildly through my adrenaline-soaked mind as the thing closed in on its pulsing target. I was paralyzed… by what, I’m not sure… fear, exhaustion, loss of the will to live… probably a little bit of all of those things… and that god forsaken, rotten stench!

It was mewling softly.. a malignant little sound that gurgled up from the depths of its decomposing innards… very close, very close now… so this is it, I thought, I finally get to find out what it feels like to die…. to become one of them….

A sharp, explosive report next to my left ear jolted me out of the macabre trance I had fallen into… the back of the undead girl’s head, and most of the ruined contents of her skull were propelled outward to coat the hospital-blue wall behind her… she gave a final jolt and slid ever-so-slowly down, away from my throat and finally to the tiled floor, where she lay still.

"I think it’s time to go now… there’ll be plenty more where this one came from." Chris had an odd, almost apologetic look of resignation on his face as he slid the .357 we had stolen from one of those things that used to be a cop back into his belt. Apparently, he had shaken himself loose from the grief that had overcome him upon finding the remains of what used to be his girlfriend (at least, we recognized her clothes). They had taken her head… her head… At least she would be spared the unimaginable Hell of walking around as one of them.

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