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2
Tom looked at Dan, slapped his elbow to get his attention, and began
yelling instructions of some kind. But the roar of a descending helicopter prevented Dan from hearing what his
neighbor had to say.
Tom stepped closer until he was screaming in Dan's ear. "We've got to get the hell out of here! Freakin' zombies
are all over the place! And when you kill one, smaller ones form out of its remains! There's a helicopter out back!
Let's move!"
They ran full speed out the back door. Dan had his origami tucked under his arm. And his brain felt as if it was
doing flip-flops when he got outside and glanced around his yard. He saw hundreds of zombies with bluish-black
decaying skin and blood-drenched clothes lumbering toward them from every direction. Tom slammed the handle of
his Glock against a chin of one of the zombies as they made their way to the helicopter. Dan screamed, "What
the hell is going on!" as the brutish horror of the situation struck him.
They climbed inside the waiting helicopter. Dan's face was flushed crimson with pure dread. An army sergeant in
full uniform took a cigarette out of his mouth, leaned over toward Dan, and yelled, "It's only a matter of
time before the whole town is engulfed by these ghouls. Didn't you hear our warning broadcasts?"
"No," Dan yelled. "I had no idea this was happening."
"Well, are you hurt?" the sergeant blared over the rumbling helicopter blades.
"No," Dan lied. He was worried about what the sergeant would do if he knew the truth. He covered the
wound on his shoulder. "The zombie in my house didn't touch me."
"Good," The sergeant stared down at the numb robotlike entities stalking vacantly and drooling over the
ground below.
Dan looked down with the sergeant and recognized one of his neighbors, Mrs. Johnson, now a zombie herself, crawling
around on the ground. She was apparently looking for her wig that had fallen off, which the zombies around her
were trampling.
"What were you doing in there that you didn't notice the emergency taking place out here?" the sergeant
asked.
"I was making a piece of origami."
"Origami?" The sergeant looked at Dan like he was from Neptune. Then he noticed the blood stain on Dan's
shoulder. His eyes flushed and his jaw dropped and vibrated with terror. "You've been bitten! You asshole!
Are you crazy? Don't you want anyone to survive on this planet? Time to go meet the zombies, you origami-folding
pansy!"
The sergeant shoved Dan out of the helicopter. Dan howled a mind-twisting scream all the way down.
Tom lurched forward. "What the hell?! Did you just shove him out?"
"Had to," said the sergeant. "He'd been bitten by a zombie."
The sergeant peered out at the flesh-crazed ghouls creeping over the landscape like sleepy ants. He watched as
they found Dan's smashed body, tripped over it, then began ripping and gorging on his flesh. Dan lay perfectly
still on his back below. Slowly dying and totally in shock from the barrage of zombies.
The sergeant smirked. He stuck a fresh cigarette in his mouth. "Gotta go find some people worth savin' around
here."
And the helicopter flew off into the horizon as flocks and swirls of the undead flooded the ground below.
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