What’s Happening?!

John Erokan awoke suddenly, his bed sheets soaked in sweat. He was almost disgusted with the dream he had just had. It had seemed too real.

Looking around his room he saw a gloomy yet somehow delightful light outside through his window. Maybe he was weird, but to him cloudy days seemed to be happier to him. Although his ideas may be different from most people he stuck with them, it had always been his “motto”.

John also noticed it had just recently snowed a little bit, for there was a fresh coat of white powder outside. It was perfect. He loved snowy, gloomy days. The cold and the gloom were a wonderful combination for going on a run. He figured that he had not gone on a run in a while and it would be good for him to start the day off with a good run.

Walking over to his dresser, he began to reach for one of the drawers when he had a sudden ache in his left arm. It seemed very strange, he rubbed his arm and it felt sore but he could not think of what he could have done to make it feel as such. Ignoring it he continued to get dressed, sliding on a pair of sweat pants and a light jacket.

He opened the front door of his house and felt the cool air outside. John took a deep breath inhaling the fresh, crisp air. It was refreshing and made him feel somehow calm.

The streets were clear of any snow and suspected the salt had taken care of anything that had been on it. He started his run at a light jog. To him this was the perfect day for a jog. It was not too cold and the grass and houses were covered in a small layer of the white powder and made for a beautiful scenery that he could enjoy.

John turned down a street breathing in the wonderful and chilly air. He was glad that he had gone for a run it had been way too long.

John slowed, as an abrupt pain in his left arm started again. He felt it again and it seemed even more sore than it had earlier.

However, it went away as quickly as it had started and John kept running. As he looked ahead, he noticed something odd about a patch of snow a ways away. He squinted to see if it was what he thought. There was a patch of snow on the side of the road up ahead that had been stained red.

He blinked and looked again but it had disappeared. He was just seeing things, but it had seemed strangely real to him.

John slowed when he neared the spot where he thought he had seen the blood. When he neared it he thought he heard a gunshot and the pain in his arm started up again, only this time the pain was excruciating. He stopped running and grabbed his arm only to see that there was blood where his hand grabbed!

He looked at the patch where he thought he had seen the blood and to his surprise there it was, the he thought he had seen was his own!

John turned his head to see an obviously disturbed man holding a pistol at his side. His eyes were wide his lips spread apart to show his teeth in a huge insane grin. John didn’t know what to think when he saw the figure but he knew his arm hurt extremely bad.

The man began to raise the pistol slowly, apparently planning to aim it at John and finish him off. John would not allow any such thing. He was not ready in any way to accept death.

John decided to make a run for it, and he bolted away towards a house to his left just as he heard another crack from the pistol. Luckily, the man had missed and John ran around to the side of the house and leaned against the corner of the wall. John looked down at his arm. Blood was slowly oozing down his arm. He reached up to touch the wound with is other hand but as he did so he saw the crazy man turn the corner.

John quickly ducked as the man fired again and missed. John ran at the man hunched over and tackled him in center mass. John slammed the man into the ground using all the force he could. He was pissed and wanted to know why this man was trying to kill him.

“What is wrong with you?!” John yelled at the man punching him in the face.

The man didn’t respond and tried to aim the pistol at John again. John hastily grabbed the barrel of the pistol with one hand and the handle with the other. He then forced the pistol to the side so that the barrel was facing away from them. In a quick motion, using the pistol as a lever he twisted the handle up towards him.

John felt nauseous as he heard the man’s trigger finger snap. He knew that it was going to happen but frankly, John had not been expecting it.

The man was screaming and writhing in pain. Ignoring this John easily pulled the gun from the man’s grasp. John turned the pistol and aimed it at the man’s face.

“Why are you trying to kill me?!”

John could feel anger and rage building up inside of him when the man gave no reply. Punching the man again, John removed the magazine from the pistol and shoving it into his pocket. He then pulled the slide back and tossed the extra bullet out of the chamber.

John threw the empty gun to the side so that he would not be mistaken for the bad guy when the police arrived. He was sure that the whole neighborhood had heard the gunshots and probably already called the police.

John forced the man over onto his stomach, pulled the man’s arm up behind his back, and held it with his knee so that the man would not get away. John looked around. He was next to a car in someone’s driveway.

He looked down at his arm again and saw that the slow oozing blood had reached his finger tips and was dripping onto the snow and staining it bright red. It was a through and though but he needed an ambulance bad. This all seemed too familiar to him and it scared him that he felt like he had done all of this before.

John had never been shot before but for some reason it did not hurt as much as he thought it might. He somehow doubted anyone had called for an ambulance so he began to reach for his phone to call 9-1-1 but he was distracted as the door to the house he was next to opened.

John could not see who it was from his position behind the car but before he could even call out the man underneath of him did first.

“Hey, guys I’m over here! Help!”

The man began to squirm, trying to get free of John’s grasp. John could not allow this so he grabbed the man’s arm and pushed it up even farther until he felt and heard a loud pop as the man’s arm was dislocated at the shoulder.

John had not meant to do this but it nearly sickened him at the fact that he had did not bother him. He had never purposely hurt anyone before and whenever he had accidentally hurt someone he felt sick. Nevertheless, he could not help the strange feeling of déjà vu.

Ignoring the loud screams of the man he was on top of, John saw a large man walk around the side of the car. The man was holding a pistol and John seemed to instinctly know what he was going to do.

Standing quickly John swung his foot at the man’s gun and kicked it from his hand. John threw himself at the man knocking him into the garage door with a bang as the hollow metal doors rang at the impact.

John pushed himself away from the man and as the man stepped towards him, John kicked at the man’s knee with all of his weight. The man’s knee bent backwards and John heard the loud snap of bone.

The man fell to the ground screaming in pain holding his now broken knee.

“God! What is wrong with me?!” John thought to himself

He had never once hurt anyone but he could not seem to control himself when these men attacked him and it scared him.

John looked over to the first man. He had passed out from the pain. John then looked at the man he had just immobilized. The man ignored John completely and seemed to be fully focused on his wrecked knee.

Walking over to where he had kicked the man’s gun he bent over slowly and picked it up. Same as before, he removed the magazine and extra bullet then stuck the magazine into his pocket.

He touched his wounded arm and winced at the pain it brought. What was happening? It was all to weird.

John reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and typed in the numbers 9-1-1. Just before he pressed the SEND button, he saw the neighborhood cop pull up in his cruiser.

“Thank God!” John said falling onto his knees and putting his phone away.

The officer quickly got out of his car, “Excuse me sir is everything alright?”

John almost laughed, “no sir… I’ve been shot.”

Without answering the officer grabbed his radio and called for an ambulance.

There was a sudden burst of gunfire from another shooter, and the police officer quickly ducked down taking cover behind his bullet proof cruiser. John suddenly got very angry, he was tired of these people and he wanted to put an end to their annoyances.

Getting up slowly as to not feel as light headed, John peered around the car there was a large van. Walking around the car John took refuge against the side of the van. He then again peered around the back of the van and saw another man taking pot shots at the cop.

When the police officer saw John he ceased fire. He was not allowed to fire upon civilians. The man took the opportunity to fire off a few more rounds at the police officer. When he did, John ran up behind then man, using one arm to put him in a head lock and the other arm to grab his firing hand and twist it back and away from the cop.

The police officer quickly ran up to them, aimed his weapon at the man, and yelled, "Drop your weapon!"

The man reluctantly dropped his weapon and stopped struggling. The police officer kicked the weapon further away from him.

“Here, you get to cuff him. You deserve it,” the officer joked, unclipping the handcuffs from his belt and handing them to John.

“Sweet…” John said sarcastically

John cuffed the man and threw him to the ground face first.

“There are two others unconscious over there,” John said motioning to the other side of the car.

“Goodness! Have you done this before?”

John clenched his jaw then shook his head, “No…”

“What do are you?” the officer asked.

“A college student... I’m studying for a game art major.”

The officer shook his head in disbelief and then directed his attention to the man on the ground in front of them, “Are there any more of you in the house?”

The man nodded.

“How many?”

“Just one,” the man said with a huff.

The officer looked at John and then the blood oozing from his arm, “You. Sit down and don’t move. Wait here for the back up and the ambulance.”

John nodded and sat down leaning against the side of the garage. The police officer then walked up to the front door of the house pistol at the ready.

John leaned his head against the wall. He felt dizzy and tired and wanted nothing but to go back to bed.

He suddenly heard a yell and then a couple of gunshots. John’s eyes shot open and saw a man burst through the door and heading towards the cruiser, which had been left on.

Without thinking about it, John picked up the gun next to him and sighted the man’s legs as he neared the cruiser. John pulled the trigger and he felt the gun kick back. The man then fell hard to the ground screaming.

John struggled slightly but stood up dropping the gun. He ran inside to see the officer lying against a blood-covered wall. At first, he thought the officer might be dead but he was proven wrong when the officer inhaled heavily and coughed.

John tried to run over to the officer quickly but ended up stumbling hastily. He knelt over the officer and saw that he had been shot in the right side of his chest and was bleeding badly. John placed his hands over the wound to try to stop the bleeding but the thick, hot blood just oozed through his already blood stained hands.

“Stay with me!” John said slapping the officers cheek in order to keep him from blacking out, “You can’t just die…”

There were three loud gunshots each painful impact as they tore through his chest. He looked down to see masses of blood pouring from the holes now in his chest, and he saw his blood that had just splattered all over the officer.

John began to fall over backwards and everything seemed muffled and extremely white. Before he even hit the ground his vision was nothing but a bright, white blur.

John awoke suddenly. His room was dully lit by the gloomy brightness outside, he loved gloomy cold days. He looked out the window and saw that it must have snowed over night. The perfect day to go for a run.

He sat up but there was a sudden pain in his chest, which went away as quickly as it had come.

“That was weird,” John said aloud.

Forgetting about it, he got up and got dressed to go for a run, sliding on a pair of sweat pants and a light jacket.

He left the house to enjoy the fresh, crisp air of the nice and cool morning it was beautiful outside.

John turned down a street and continued at a brisk jog. He then felt déjà vu. When was that last time he had gone running? Was it yesterday? Or was it so long ago he couldn’t remember?

The feeling bothered him but he kept on running … until he saw what looked liked blood on a patch of snow up looked ahead.

He stopped and rubbed his eyes. He looked again but it was gone.

“What’s happening?!” John question himself.

He continued running again but his arm began to ache and suddenly he heard it.

The gunshot. He felt the pain in his arm only it did not hurt all too bad, more like he had just fallen off his bike. He looked down to see his blood oozing from his arm and splattered on the snow.

John turned around slowly to see a man with crazy eyes and a wild smile… He had definitely done this before.

Roderick (2)

I guess I should say that before I was at the state park I had been at my home, having been well hidden for the four days in which the outbreak had already been occurring. I’d received a nasty wound on the very first day before I’d even known that I should have been hiding.

After the four days passed I left, wandering in search of hope. My first thoughts turned towards the wilderness, perhaps there’d be fewer spooks out that way. I met some people along the way from whom I learned that there weren’t just zombies, and that everyone was pretty sure that the zombies were being created by vampires, and I learned what exactly a cannibal is in those terms. I guess maybe you don’t know; a cannibal became the term to describe someone who was bitten by a spook, but hadn’t been fully turned. Just enough so they retained their humanity but still craved flesh. I’m not sure if a cannibal actually needs it. I think it’s more like Wendigo syndrome. I read about that on the internet, I think. It was a proneness to eating flesh, or resorting to cannibalism in survival situations much earlier than other rational people.

Ok, so from the park, I came across the truck, and I quickly decided I would give civilization one last shot, even if it might take a shot at me. That asshole kicked me out of his truck, I ran into the ranger station to avoid the spooks, and here I am.

So I listened to the sounds of someone running, and the spooks slow shuffling away toward it. The sound of running trailed off, and with it the spooks’ shuffling grew quieter and quieter. Knowing that they would likely be outpaced by this savior, and knowing that spooks returned to where they last found food, I decided to make a break for it.

I knew that the road that the truck had been parked on would lead to a highway, and given every zombie scenario I’d ever encountered there were plenty of cars parked on the sides of highways. I figured I’d give it a shot.

While the zombies shambled away I tried to run as quietly as possible, which I discovered can be a very difficult thing to do. One of them caught on, and not wanting to make a scene, I smashed it in the head with my crowbar, peeling back the skull in a very professional manner.

This violent event, which occurred upon the very spot the truck had driven through just moments prior, took me a great deal longer than I intended. I was very distracted by this fresh kill. I left it eventually, but not before seeing the first of the spooks returning to the ranger’s station. I cursed my luck, considered using my pistol to gun a few of them down, and decided upon sprinting in a not so quiet manner.

I had been a runner before this, one of those people you saw running along the sidewalks in the early morning with gym shorts and a headband, and so I knew I could outpace the spooks as well as my savior had. It would be taking a risk, of course. I wished that I hadn’t taken so much time with the spook I killed, so that I could have simply returned to the safety of the ranger’s station.

But now I found myself jogging as I’d always done before, knowing that the spooks would potentially tire of me, perhaps returning to the ranger’s station, believing that there was someone else inside. I was a wishful thinker at that moment.

I jogged a ways along this path; I would like to say for twenty minutes, until I reached the highway. But, as my luck would have it, there were no abandoned cars. I stopped to catch my breath for a moment, knowing that I might see spooks before long.

It was still the dead of night, except now the moon was peeking from the clouds. This enabled a brilliant line of sight into the park, and I knew it would be an unusually handy early-warning system.

From my knowledge of the highway I rested upon, it’d be a few miles more before I reached any semi-habitable place. So I knew I could probably make it to safety before daylight. I took a couple of extra minutes to stretch and waited to see if any spooks shambled out upon the trunks and bushes.

Instead, I heard the running once more. It was up the highway a ways, and at first I could not see her. But she came closer and I could see that it was another survivor. At first I wondered if she would attack me; if she was a cannibal, she would likely pretend to be my friend and then attack me when I let my guard down, but if she were a vampire she wouldn’t have to.

But then again, I knew an easy way to test whether one she was. The pistol I’d retrieved from the ranger’s station was still tucked into the belt that held up my jeans at the waist. One bullet would reveal everything I’d need to know.

While my hand strayed there, it eventually settled on the crowbar. “Hello!” I called, as it was obvious she had already seen me.

She slowed to a walk, and put a finger up to her mouth in a “shush” kind of way. I waited for her to get closer, and she finally said, “What do you think you’re doing? Are you suicidal?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “The trying to steal the truck or the hiding in the ranger’s station?”

“What?” She asked. “No, yelling at me like that.”

“Ah,” I said. “Ok.”

“What about trying to steal a truck?” She said.

“Well, I didn’t try to steal it. It was empty and covered in blood when I first saw it, so I thought it was up for grabs. Then the owner decided he wasn’t dead and took it back,” I said.

“Do you have a safe place to stay for the day?” She asked.

“Not really,” I said. “I’d hoped to get a truck and head for the safe zone.”

“You really are suicidal aren’t you? You know they’re shooting people right? Anyone who tries to break quarantine.”

“I did not know,” I said. “Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Uh,” she said. “Survive?”

“That’s shitty,” I said. I wanted to scream, I think, except I didn’t, and instead just clenched my teeth and balled my fists. It hadn’t ever really impressed upon me until then that all hope was lost, there was no chance of salvation.

“At least until the military carpet bombs everything. I think that’s their plan.”

I wanted to grab my gun and shoot her then; she was so relaxed about this, so relaxed about being the bearer of bad news. I even wondered if she enjoyed it.

“Come on, we’ll screw and drink,” she said finally.

All of my negative emotions resolved, I grinned.

“Maybe in reverse order,” she added. She kissed me on the lips in a very apocalyptic kind of way, and it lasted for ten or so seconds; long enough to get me excited for liberation in a carnal sense. Afterwards, she said, “Come on.” And began to walk down the highway. I followed after staring for a second, delighted in my luck. I pondered upon the strange feeling I had, something about the way she kissed was foreign. Perhaps she was not American. I wondered if they kissed significantly different in different countries.

It’s hard to say how much time passed while we moved along the highway. We walked in silence, only once passing an abandoned car with smashed windows and a ripped out radio. I found a few dollars in a purse in the backseat, and she claimed ownership to a bottle of liquor in the trunk. I wondered about her age, and how much she’d consumed in the past. My first tastes of alcohol had been at age seven though, at my stepfather’s house. Maybe she was like me, and was naturally attuned to such substances.

After passing the abandoned car, we walked along the highway for some more hours, and as the sun began to brighten the horizon in a really warm orange kind of way, she suddenly turned and bounded over a guardrail to step into the forest. I followed after a moment’s hesitation. I wondered where we were then, as I’d known of no town near that part of the highway.

We walked through thick brush and branch before reaching a manor set into a hill overlooking a creek. We approached by way of the creek, I should add, climbing up a ladder to the porch on the back of the structure, where she unlocked a sliding door that led into a grand foyer.

When she shut the cardboard-covered glass door behind us, she said, “Home sweet home.”

“Were you rich?” I blurted.

“A little. It was my mother mostly.” She said.

“Ah,” I said. “How old are you?”

“That’s an odd question to ask,” she said. “And you wouldn’t believe the answer if I told you.”

“Ok,” I said, “Twenty three?” I ventured.

“You flatter me with such conservative estimates,” she said, smiling. She flipped a light switch and I got my first good look at her face; distinctly Arabic, in the exotic kind of way. Her eyes were what caught me the most; the deepest verdant shade of green I’d seen with flecks of gold around the iris. It made me think of a comment my step-father had said once, about how Arabic women always had the prettiest eyes because in the countries they came from that would be the only part of their face not obscured by a burka, and therefore the men would prefer the girls with the “prettiest” eyes.

And I left it at that. She led me to the kitchen, and I took a seat at the end of the dining table closest to the front door. She set the liquor on the table and walked off; we’d soundlessly agreed upon a meal, I thought.

While I waited, I ended up standing up and taking a walk around the kitchen. I decided to look for a glass. The first cabinet I opened contained bowls, and the second was an arrangement of glasses, short and tall. I selected a shorter one and walked back to the liquor my patron had grabbed. I poured myself a shot and downed it, savoring the fiery burst of flavor coursing over my tongue. A minute passed, and I took another.

Roderick (1)

I shone my flashlight over the truck and called out, “Hello?” into its empty windows. There was blood on the outside of the door, which made me assume that whoever the driver had been had been pulled out.

No reply.

I grabbed my crowbar and crawled into the driver’s seat. I jimmied open the panel beneath the steering wheel and connected what wires need to be connected in order to hotwire a car. It was my second time ever doing it, so I moved carefully to not trigger the alarm. Once it agreed to work for me, I turned on the radio and listened.

I flipped up and down the spectrum, past radio stations outside of the quarantine, and finally fell upon one that was a recorded broadcast by the government.

Between the static I got a few words.

[…nearest police station…evacuation…]

I took it to mean that we had to escape to a police station. I turned put the car into drive and awkwardly drove off onto the road. I’d never driven a truck before.

I was thinking about an escape. All I’d ever known was running the past few days, running and killing. My crowbar had done more than simply helped me break into cars and hotwire them.

It was while driving past the park ranger’s station that I heard the transistor in the backseat spark to life. I stopped, set it to park, and crawled back to have a look-see. I saw its bright green lettering flashing, something about some station it’d “found”. All I could hear was someone frantically trying to say something, but it was too quiet to make out any words. I fumbled around the knobs and buttons and came across the volume control.

[please help me please oh god] It sounded like a teenage girl, although I wasn’t sure.

I found a microphone, and quickly spoke once I found the button that’d allow it to receive audio. “Hello? Where are you? Maybe I can help?”

[hello?] she said cautiously.

“Hey, where are you?” I asked.

[who is this?] she asked, suddenly sounding skeptical and calm.

“I’m a policeman. My name is Roderick,” I said. It was a small lie. I’d never had any interest in police work, but I considered myself to be a fine individual.

[Roderick you said? how did you find this]

“Back of a pickup truck, why?”

[my father is the only one who knows this frequency], she said, [is he alright?]

“I didn’t see him,” I said, honestly, “I just found the truck and I needed a ride… So…”

There was a moment of silence on the other end. [he told me he was going to find supplies], she said. [please give him his truck back]

“I can help you though,” I said. “I mean there are reasons why he wouldn’t be with his truck. And I saw an awful lot of zombies back there. I don’t think he’s doing so hot right now.” There was silence from the other side, “Listen, I’m trying to get to the police station in ‘Clark. If you’re on the way there I can break you out. I mean, are you surrounded or what?” I considered going back though, even though I’d said I wouldn’t.

[kinda…] she began coughing.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

[yeah. I'm surrounded.]

Wary suddenly, I made a mental note that I would drive past wherever she was. I wouldn’t waste time on someone that might be showing signs of infection. “So… where are you?”

I didn’t hear her response, if there was one, because I heard a shout and turned my head towards the source, to look straight into the barrel of an over-large revolver. “Get out of my truck, mister.” He spoke with a thick southern drawl.

He had a thick mustache perched over trembling lips. His chin quivered too, and it was then I realized that he had never fired the revolver at a living thing before. Or at least, I felt certain he hadn’t. “Listen, buddy, we can coexist right here. I figured the owner of this truck was long dead. Given the smashed windows and blood, ya know. You can have it back,” I said. With that, I slowly grabbed the door handle and gripped the crowbar with my other hand. “We can team right the fuck up.”

“No sir,” he said. He backed up far enough that I wouldn’t be able to smash in his head with the crowbar.

When I opened the door I tossed my crowbar at his feet and then held both hands up. He lowered his gun slightly, although if he pulled the trigger he’d still probably have gotten me in the chest or legs. I stepped aside slowly, “Why not?” I asked. “Your impression of me right now is that I’m a desperate survivor. Hell, I’m desperate enough to believe that you aren’t some cannibal or vampire. What harm could I—”

“Do I look like a vam’per to you?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I said. When he raised his gun again I held by hands out and said, “Just kidding. Chill.”

“No, you’re not jokin’. I’m not gonna kill you though,” he said. “Walk over to the station there. And maybe I won’t injure you.”

“Yes sir,” I said, now feeling quite agitated. He was going to leave me out here. And the zombies were probably going to be closing in at any second. As I stepped back, I said, “You’re the worst sort of asshole, you know that? I’m going to die and you’re going to go on living. I was going to save your daughter, but you’ve wasted enough time here to last two lifetimes. She’s probably succumbed to her infection.”

“How did you know that?” He said. When I grinned (I was so surprised I was right) he pointed the gun at the ground and fired, wasting a perfectly good bullet, “How did you know that?” He repeated.

“I could hear it in her voice, when she hesitated. She sounded a bit hysterically paranoid.” I made great efforts to pronounce every syllable in hysterically paranoid. I figured it would make me sound more intelligent.

“You some kind of doctor?” He asked.

“Yes,” I said without hesitation.

“Do you know a cure?” He asked, his aim wavering.

“We both know there’s no cure,” I said, not wanting to promise something there was no chance of delivering.

“Then get over to that station,” he said, his aim steadying. “And keep your hands in the air until I’m gone.”

I’d really been hoping that I could lie my way into a ride. I was no doctor, but if I could make him believe it, I could get him to let his guard down, smash his head in while he wasn’t looking, and take the truck. “Yes sir,” I said again. I turned and walked away, keeping my hands up. I practically jogged over to it, with the headlights placing the shadow against the wall. I set my hands against their shaded copies and waited. I heard the truck peel away, and the headlights passed.

I was left in the pitch dark of the night. Back to where I started. No ride, a crowbar, and a grenade. My shirt was starting to smell seriously shitty and I was not feeling ready to spend the rest of the night living in terror.

I heard a groan drift down the wind. “Fuck.”

I walked around to the side of the ranger station and found the front door. It was locked, but the crowbar was quite handy in smashing the window, giving me ample opportunity to reach my hand in and flip the lock to its friendliest position. I stepped in and closed it behind me. I saw a bookshelf and quickly flipped it down, and pushed it in front of the door. I walked to the receptionist desk and crawled behind it. I sat down and hoped that the zombies would move on if they couldn’t see me. Yet I could hear them getting closer.

By the number of their growls, moans, and shuffling feet, I knew they were numerous. Too many for my crowbar. I felt the grenade in my pocket, and wondered how it’d feel to pull the pin and wait for it to go off. I’d place it right beside my heart, I thought. I might not even feel a thing.

I could hear them outside the window now, and decided it was too early to give up. I turned around and searched through the shelves in the receptionist’s desk. Papers, pencils, pens, and other things that were completely useless.

Until I reached under the chair and felt the pistol taped there. I ripped it off and by its weight I figured it had a few bullets left in it. If nothing else, it might help me make an escape. I didn’t consider myself to be a marksman by any stretch of the imagination, but if there weren’t a proper swarm of them I knew I wouldn’t need to do much aiming. Just walk up to them until they were about arm’s length away, and then it’d be near impossible to miss.

I stood up, and looked at them. All I could see was their outlines, but they weren’t swaying, or attempting to break in. I wondered if something else had gotten their attention.

I heard the sound of someone running.