All You Zombies

Greg broke into a dead run, making for the stairs. He stopped at the top and turned to look at his friends as they approached, their gaits steady and unwavering. Suddenly, he noticed little details, like the way their clothes seemed to be all untucked and stained, or the way that Bobbi's hair was all fucked up and she wasn't even trying to fix it. They weren't laughing. They weren't doing anything but walking towards him.

"Hey, Miguel!" Greg shouted. "I fucked your mom last night!" Nothing. Not a flicker of emotion. He didn't laugh, he didn't flip Greg off, he didn't tell Greg that he was thinking of his own mom. Greg ran down the stairs as fast as he could.

He headed for the electronics store. He could see a guard standing outside, staring at the TV, and he made for him with sudden desperate panic. The whole way there, he was trying to think of what to say that didn't sound crazy. 'Um, look, this is gonna sound stupid--' 'Say, there's some guys here acting kind of weird--' 'My friends have turned into zombies, you gotta help me--'

The guard looked over at him as he approached. "No running," he said mildly, one eye still on the baseball game.

Greg staggered to a halt and put his hands on his knees. "I..." He gasped for air, and held up a finger to the guard. Fuck, running away from zombies really took it out of you. He didn't know how the guys in movies did it. "I..."

The guard looked past him. "What the fuck is that?" he said in a tone of bewilderment mixed with irritation. "Hey, you kids!" he shouted, raising his voice. "What's going on here? Is this some kind of joke?"

The guard walked right past Greg, who turned to look. Sure enough, he saw...oh, fuck, six zombies, just now reaching the bottom of the stairs. The other one looked to be a mall employee, he could see their nametag even from here. "Look," the guard said, "I don't want to see any of this fucking 'flash mob' shit in my mall, okay? You guys just take this outside."

Miguel grabbed at him. "Oh, you just made a big fucking mistake, buddy," the guard said, shoving Miguel sprawling into the group. They fell over, but two more zombies reached out of the pile of bodies and grabbed the guard's legs.

Greg just watched the whole thing in a state of numb terror. It didn't feel real, somehow. He felt like he was just watching another horror movie, watching some dumbfuck who didn't know the rules get it in the shorts while the main character prepared to make a run for it while the zombies were occupied.

The guard tried to back away, shouting, "Hey, get the fuck off--" He overbalanced and landed hard on his ass, his sentence ending in a startled grunt. The pack of zombies began to crawl towards him, pinning him down with their bodies. "Hey! Hey, what the fuck, man! What the--" And then Greg couldn't see him anymore. The mass of zombies just covered his body, and Greg realized that he didn't even know the guy's name. Suddenly he felt guilty because the guy wasn't just some extra in a horror movie, he was a real person and Greg didn't even have the chance to get his name and now he was never going to find out.

Greg heard the guard moaning underneath the pile of bodies, and then the moans became shrieks and the shrieks seemed to last forever before they became whimpers and the whimpers became sighs and the sighs faded away into an eerie silence. The zombie pack slowly slid off of the guard, getting back to their feet. After a few moments, the guard stood up too. His arms reached out, stiffened like a sleepwalker's.

As one, they looked at Greg.

He took off running. He felt another surge of adrenalin. Not like the fun, exciting one he'd felt at the beginning of the game, but a desperate fear reaction, a crap-in-your-pants-and-piss-yourself terror that lent new urgency to his sprint as he made for the escalators. Time to get the fuck out of here, get to the fucking exits and figure out what the fuck was going on later. He didn't look back to see whether they were gaining on him. Only dumbfucks looked back, and Greg was not a dumbfuck. He was not going to fucking turn into a fucking zombie, he was going to get out of here. He took the escalator steps two at a time, heading for the southwest exit.

Four more zombies blocked it off. FUCK! Greg turned left, making for the food courts again. All he needed to do was get through the food courts, and he'd be back in the east wing of the mall. He could go right, hit the southeast exit if it wasn't blocked, and if it was, he'd just go left and get back into the loop. He was fucking smarter than the zombies, he wasn't going to panic, he wasn't going to do anything stupid, he was going to fucking survive this.

The food courts were eerily deserted, even moreso than they had been when they started this stupid game that wasn't a game anymore. He couldn't see a single person behind the counters, and he could smell food starting to burn all around him as the ovens went unattended. Fuck fuck fuck! Don't think about it, he told himself. Don't think about why this is happening, don't think about what's happened to the others, don't think about how Miguel was your best friend and you and him are never going to get the chance to watch the movie where the zombie fights the shark or do anything else together ever ever again, don't... Greg's vision blurred, and it took him a moment to realize he was crying.

But there were no people ahead of him, and more importantly, no zombies. He was halfway through the food court now, not a zombie in sight. They must all be behind him, and that meant it was a race. He could do that, he could outrun them and outthink them and--

That was when he saw them, standing up and climbing over the counters of every single fast food stand, boiling out from behind the cash registers like wasps out of a nest. They poured out in front of him, all around him as they blocked off the exit and formed a wall of flesh that cut off his escape. He skidded to a stop, turned, but they were behind him, too. They surrounded him, getting ever closer.

It wasn't fair, he'd followed the rules! He'd done everything right! "Goddammit," he shouted as they closed in, "it's not fair!"

Then the pack dragged him down.

*****

Bunny sighed heavily. "I thought we were gonna do something fun," she whined at Kathleen. "This is even more boring than the food court!"

Leon hopped up onto a washing machine and took a seat. "Gotta admit, the Bunny's right again. Jeez, twice in one day. We should mark that down on the calendar." Bunny stuck her tongue out at him, but he ignored her. "This is powerfully lame, Kath."

Kathleen shrugged irritably. "Hey, we're surviving, aren't we?" She'd made straight for one of the big anchor stores in the northwest corner of the mall as soon as the game had started. Lots of aisles, lots of places to hide and plenty of freedom to move...and since they took up both floors, she figured she could always go up and out the other exit if they found her.

But nobody had found her, and now she was having to play babysitter to the two people with the shortest attention spans in the whole group. "Besides, nobody said you had to tag along with me," she continued. "Why did you tag along, anyway?"

Bunny shrugged. "I figured you knew what you were doing, and I didn't want to be a zombie. It sounded really boring."

Leon smiled mirthlessly. "And I know you're not supposed to split up when you're in a horror movie," he said. "Besides, I figured if they started chasing us, I could always just trip the Bunny and let them get her instead."

"Oh, ha-ha," Bunny said. "Very funny, I don't think."

"Yes," Kathleen said before she could stop herself. "We know you don't think."

Bunny made a pouting face. "Why you always got to be mean?" she said in exaggerated baby-talk.

Kathleen thought that was a question that answered itself, but before she could say so, Leon half-whispered, "What the fuck...?" And when Kathleen turned to look at what Leon was seeing, the sight pushed away any thoughts of what she was going to say to Bunny.

A horde of people was flooding into the store, all of them with their arms outstretched and their eyes blank and vacant. There were too many to count, but Kathleen figured it had to be at least a hundred. It looked like every single person in the mall, all gathered in one spot. She noticed her friends leading the pack, but she saw mall employees, security guards, janitors, nuns and suburban dads all marching into the store. The employees who'd been giving Kathleen and her friends nasty stares for the last few hours suddenly started panicking, trying to get out from behind their counters and failing as the zombies dragged them down.

"Oh, cool!" Bunny said. "They got everyone in the mall to play!" Eagerly, she started to run away from the zombies, a smile plastered on her face. Kathleen didn't know what the fuck was going on, but she didn't think it was that simple. But her hindbrain definitely didn't like it, so she followed Bunny's example and ran for it.

Leon was right alongside them. "What the fuck?" he shouted, his face red with anger and fear. "What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck?"

Kathleen just shook her head a little in response. "I don't know! Make for the exits!" She sped up, quickly passing Bunny. The advantages of being flat-chested, she thought. Bunny bounced too much to really build up a good head of speed.

"We can't leave, that's cheating!" Bunny said. Fucking hell, would anyone really notice the difference if she became a zombie? She'd be less chatty, but would that actually be a bad thing?

They sprinted through the sporting goods section, and Leon stopped to grab a golf club as they ran past. "I dunno what's going on," he said, "but nobody fucks with me."

Kathleen looked behind her, saw the zombies pouring into the aisle behind them, and put on a burst of speed. She didn't bother grabbing anything. If it came to a fight, having a weapon wasn't going to make much difference against a hundred zombies. If they were really zombies, which they couldn't really be, because this wasn't a horror movie, it was the real world. And people didn't just become zombies in the real world, especially not just for no reason. It didn't happen, it couldn't happen, so it wasn't happening. This was just a reality show or something. She was just being punked by her friends.

She looked behind her again. And she saw Leon trip Bunny.

Kathleen felt overwhelmed with shock as Bunny tumbled ass over appetite on the linoleum tile. She was stunned that Leon would actually do that, that he wasn't just kidding like they all teased Bunny because she was kind of annoying. And she was even more stunned that she found herself skidding to a stop and going back, because Bunny was kind of annoying but Kathleen was absolutely most stunned of all to find that deep down, she felt sorry for the stupid bimbo and didn't want to see her get turned into a zombie, especially not because someone she'd trusted had fucked her over royally.

"Ow!" Bunny shrieked. The sound seemed to come out as a moan to Kathleen; everything seemed to be in slow motion. "No fair, time out!" The zombies descended towards her, and Kathleen could tell there was no way she was going to be able to close the distance before they got to Bunny, let alone drag the girl to her feet and get her away from the advancing wall of grasping, blank-eyed flesh.

"I said time out," Bunny shouted as they closed in on her. "I hurt my ankle!" Kathleen stopped again, turned back the way she'd come as the zombies began to dive onto Bunny. "Hey, stop, this isn't funny anymore, I...I...aiiiiiiii..." And then Kathleen couldn't see her anymore at all, just hear her scream and moan and grunt and whimper as the zombies did whatever they did to her. She didn't sound like it hurt, though. She sounded like she was in a porno movie. Kathleen hoped it didn't hurt, but she didn't want to find out.

She caught up with Leon pretty quick, despite his shitty trick. He was down at the other end of the aisle, where the zombies had outflanked them. "Come on, motherfuckers!" he was shouting as he swung the golf club wildly. "Come fucking on!" They didn't dodge out of the way, or even slow their advances. Lashonda was right in the front of the pack, and Kathleen let out a tiny moan of sympathetic revulsion as the golf club caught her right in the face.

The club smashed straight through her mouth, sending splinters of teeth and bone and droplets of blood scattering through the air as it absolutely shattered her jaw. But Lashonda's eyes didn't even register the pain. She just pressed forward, grabbing Leon's arms while he was still caught up in the motion of the backswing and grabbing him and pushing him down to the ground, and Kathleen watched as Lashonda leaned in and pressed her bloody, pulpy mess of a mouth to his in an obscene parody of a kiss.

That was when she started screaming. Even as she started climbing the shelves, trying desperately to get up above the horde of zombies that was closing in on her from both sides, she heard her own voice, screaming hysterically, "Stop it! Stop it stop it stop it! It's not real, you can't do this, it's just a game, it's just a fucking game and I made it up and it doesn't make sense, stop it stop it stop it! You have to stop because I made it up, people don't just become zombies just because I say, 'Last one to the escalator's a zombie!' It doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense, oh fucking God, oh God, oh God, I'm so sorry! Wake up, wake up, oh fucking please fucking WAKE UP!!!!!!"

She wasn't even sure if she was talking to the zombies or just praying it was a dream, but it didn't matter because it didn't happen. She got up on top of the shelves and saw them below her, filling up the aisle she was in and the aisle next to that. They reached up for her, but she was just a little too high for them to grab and they couldn't climb because their arms wouldn't bend.

She inched along the shelves, desperate not to fall. Silently, she cursed her parents to a thousand hells for taking away her cell phone (but not cursing them to this, not ever to becoming blank-eyed zombies, oh god, mom, dad, please don't ever turn into this...) Carefully, she made her way to the end of the aisle. The exit beckoned, just out of reach beyond a dozen or so zombies.

Kathleen stood up. The zombie horde looked up at her, their creator. "I didn't know," she whispered, her voice too hoarse to shout. "I swear, it was just a game, I..." Her brain reeled in blank incomprehension, the kind of utter terror that only comes from finding a place where the universe defies any kind of reason. "I'm sorry," she whispered through the tears. And then she jumped.

And just like she'd hoped, the pile of zombies broke her fall. She scrambled to her feet, desperately kicking and shoving and counting on her non-zombie reflexes to keep her moving past the last few surprised and confused zombies. One of them grabbed her hoodie and she shrugged out of it, not caring about anything now except getting past those last few zombies and getting to the doors, and getting...

Outside! She was outside! Kathleen ran as hard as she could through the empty parking ramp, just looking for people, a car, any way out of this nightmare. She sprinted down to the corner, to the intersection...

She saw the pile-up, the mangled mess of cars blocking the street. She saw the victim, still trying to walk on a broken leg, arms outstretched. She saw the people, some of them already being borne down under the weight of two or three zombies.

"Shit," she whispered. "One of them must have gotten out."

THE END