Here Comes the Boom

Rena sighed, blowing curls out of her porcelain face. Tucking a tuft of bright red hair behind her ear, her green eyes flickered from underneath her specs. It had been a long day of work at the guitar shoppe, filled with screaming preteens who thought they could play and their parents who supported that ridiculous idea. Rena was glad to be tucked away behind her glasses, walking back to her apartment.

It was another hot, lazy summer evening. It was one of those wonderfully warm days where the sun didn't go down until early after eight in the evening, the birds calling and cicadas crying. Though Rena wasn't one for warm weather, she sucked in the crisp air and smiled a little.

Passing shops and vendors along the way, she eyed how frantic people on the other side of the street seemed. Women clamored around the electronics store window, watching with ghastly faces. Children were huffing, some were screaming. Men were holding onto their wives and children, pulling them forcefully home.

Rena stepped behind the mass of bodies, making out what the reporter said. She eyed a familiar office. That was the office her friend from high school's dad worked in! She remembered sitting in there her senior year, getting a bit of a lecture from the girl's dad for skipping too much. The girl's name... Vixxie! She hadn't seen her around town since graduation.

Shaking off the nostalgia, she watched with awe and something akin to horror as the announcer began to speak.

"We've just received word that the patients being quarantined here have somehow managed to escape, causing worry of a virus pandemic. The patients exhibit symptoms including but not limited to: slowness, drooling, vomiting blood, rotting skin, putrid smell, and worse yet, a taste for human flesh.

If you see anyone who is showing any of these symptoms, please stay very far away, it has been tested that anyone bitten by these people will develop the disease as well. What- oh, goodness, we just received news that all workers at the accident site have in fact been infected..."

Rena felt like she was going to be sick. She took deep breaths, realizing why people were frantic. The living undead. Zombies. Sulphur, Texas had been overtaken by some kind of sick, distorted virus that turned the living into shells of themselves. After the gears turned for a moment, Rena turned quickly on her heel and ran in the direction of Vixxie's childhood home. Even if she had moved, her family would still be there and she could warn them.

Shouts followed her, making her cringe as she ran. Stopping dead in her tracks, she spotted the couple of escaped slow-moving people... no, things. They weren't people any more. Both of them had sickly green skin, rotting in some places and bloated grotesquely in others. Hair had fallen right out of their skulls, leaving patches of bare, sickly skin. The smell... My God, the smell was indescribable, something between rotting meat, a dead corpse that had been decaying in the sun, and sulphur.

The adrenaline coursing through her system made it impossible for her to look away and vomit like she wanted to. Eyeing a fallen piece of lead pipe with a jagged, broken edge on the ground, she lunged for it. Grabbing it, she laid it across her hands and took a brief second to think. There wasn't a choice, was there? If she let them pass, there would surely be children caught in the crossfire.

Rena cried out softly, the lead pipe heavy and real in her hands. Jogging towards the undead parasites, she spotted Vixxie's father. She didn't have the heart. What if they found a cure? Was there some way to detain them? If only she had read more on this!

There was no choice. Rearing back and raising the pipe above her head, she brought it down on the faster one's head. The crack was sickening, clotted blood and fluid from the brain flying. Slivers of broken bone flew in the air, a grotesque reminder of the reality of the situation. Rearing back again, she shoved the steel straight through its skull, the zombie eliciting a slow, quiet roar that sent shivers up her spine before falling to the ground. The corpse twitched idly.

Rena held his head down with a combat boot, pulling the pipe out of the corpse's skull. The weight of the pipe in her hands was so real, but she felt like it was all a dream. It seemed too cliche science-fiction to be real.

The once unstained piece of coiled lead was now stained bright red, bits of brain matter falling from the jagged edge. The pavement below was stained with clotted blood and fluid from his grey matter, wet and glossy in the almost darkness of the late summer evening. It was a scene she had seen in her favourite zombie flicks all too many times.

Rena back away slowly, Vixxie's father out of sight. The blood was on her clothes... the smell made her double over and vomit on the sidewalk. She heaved until there was nothing in her stomach to chuck up. Looking up and wiping the sick off of her chin, she took heaving breaths.

The zombie apocolypse had started, and Rena Acacia White was caught in the middle of it with blood on her hands. Rena was left a trembling mess, her glasses askew and red curls messy and tangled. Standing slowly with the lead pipe still in her hand, she began towards Vixxie's house, the pipe dragging on the ground and clicking with every step.

From the forest, the cicadas ceased to cry.