Bang

• Patricia Bycroft
• Short Story
• 2005

A man struggles to pull himself off the ground. He is running for his life. Those that follow show no mercy, and wish only to tear his entrails out through the ripped flesh that was once a human body. He raises his pistol and shoots one of the zombies. Bang. It falls to the ground, once alive, once undead, and now dead.

He doesn’t know it, but the man he just shot was once an important man, a businessman that owned half the dog food enterprise in the state. But that doesn’t matter now, because past lives don’t matter when your undead instincts are screaming for flesh.

He, too, was once normal; an insurance salesman, though it may seem that that is why they are trying to kill him. He had a wife, a son, a dog, and a white picket fence. But that is all gone now.. He fires again. Another zombie falls, almost right next to the previous kill. They are dead to the touch, not that he is touching them. Their cold lifeless bodies have no signs of recent blood; they do not bleed, they only die.

He is all but surrounded, and is beginning to cry, he does want to die, but he doesn’t. He wants to be with his wife, his son. But he doesn’t want pain. Bang. Another zombie falls. Bang. Another. He’s killed five so far, and he knows there are only twelve bullets in the magazine. Bang. Another one down. Six bullets left. Six billion zombies to kill. Bang. One tries to take a bite out of his exposed arm. Bang. Three more are coming in from the left. Bang. Bang. Bang. He listened in school, he knew his times tables, as an intelligent, degree carrying man, he knew that he only had one bullet left. The question now was whether to be a coward, and use that bullet to take his own life, or to go out fighting. He knew what he would do. His hand was shaking slightly as the gun moved gradually towards his temple. The cold metal of the gun pressed against his sweat drenched skin. Bang.