It was the game. This is how we played.

 You wanna be a warrior bitch? Well we’re stuck in this together, we have to  hunt as a team, we have to fuck as a team, we have to go down like a team. It seemed like a whack job to me but no one was ranking too high on the sanity charts in this fucking warehouse. If you got bit you were taken back and whoever your team was had to deal with you, take responsibility for you.

 Sara got bit, she was heaving and sweating, putting on the battle gear, muttering ‘cunts’ under her breath. ‘Fuck you Sara,’ I said. I didn’t want to die on her bitch ass account, because she couldn’t figure out how to keep biters off of her. Yeah she could move fast but she got in tight spots all the time. She was weak, and we all knew it was only a matter of time before this was going to happen.

We were holed up in a warehouse . . . yeah, it was fucking stocked warehouse, food, water, tools, clothes, and lingerie. Cons, the self-proclaimed leader of our band of refugees, thought it only fair for the women to put on the skimpiest lingerie and the highest heels when battling a lost team member. In his mind we were gladiators, should be able to fight with the most unfair advantages, and with the most skin exposed for possible flesh wounds. Because, to Cons, we fucked up, our team fucked up and Sara was turning into a flesh ripper because of our fucking negligence, so death better be breathing down our goddamn necks.

Tory hit me with one of her heels between the shoulder blades, ‘You were on Sara watch, Ella, now we’re all in this shit.’ I snarled at her and recoiled. I knew it was my fault and as Sara started drooling blood and foaming at the mouth I knew I might be fucked. No one had my back. They were gonna fucking throw me at her. I slid on assless pink hot pants and a matching pink leather bra strap. My heels were well beyond 6 inches of clear plastic, picked out by my caring team members, you know the kind preferred by strippers and straight up hookers. Sara was wearing something equally garish with peach zombie nipples poking out from her now crooked electric blue bra top. The other girls dressed accordingly in thongs and babydoll nighties with stilettos strapped firmly on. They were back up. I was the team leader, I was going in, hand to hand. I had to snap her fucking neck.

‘Alright bitches’ Cons said from one of the warehouse platforms. ‘We lost my baby girl Sara today and you can bet one of you puntas is gonna put her down like a family dog, or get what you deserve and die trying.’ He paused with a glaring eye at me, but I just flicked my red hair. It really wasn’t my fault he was banging the cum slut who couldn’t go for a simple weapons run without getting her goddamn arm bit by a stray. Fuck. I’d survived in a convenient store alone with a dull hatchet longer than she’d stayed alive with us.

Now she was frothing and now she was ready to go. As if she knew I was the target, that little cunt charged right at me, my ‘team’ didn’t even have to guide her in my direction. She bowled me over with her snapping dead breath rotting right in my face. Pressing my forearm against her throat I kept her at bay, but she was getting stronger the longer she was dead, the less her muscles reacted to human feelings. I managed to wedge my enormous plastic heel in her pubic bone and kick her off, back into the cement warehouse wall. The girls whooped, Cons grimaced. He really wanted Sara to rip my scalp open. But I had her now, disorientated against the wall. I made my move and lunged ready to go for the final spinal snap. Right as I reached in and twisted Sara’s spindly neck that’s when I felt it, the incisors raking against my arm. Breaking skin. Biting, hard. Sara fell at my feet. No one said a word. It was still and quiet, then a click as Tory took the safety off her gun.

‘No,’ Cons said. ‘Let me.’

By Emily Smith-Miller