14.

Tracy has fun with a lovely baseball bat.

Crack.

 

Less than a second after Tracy had grabbed the bat, throwing it over her shoulder like she was staring down a Big League pitcher, the hole widened considerably, enough for a head to poke through.  The eyes looked red and blind, and the hair was plastered to their skull by a helmet of blood.  Tracy didn't even want to think of what her own hair must look like, and anyway, now really wasn't the time.

 

She swung, crossing the distance between her and the door in the leading step and smashing hard into the zombie's head.  Whatever other changes the body had been forced through, the skull was still as smashable as a human's, and Tracy was more alive and full of energy than she'd been in her entire life.  Blood poured from the zombie's head, soaking its hair further and running down the half-ruined door frame, but it writhed still, like it really was impossible to kill.

 

Tracy let loose two more swings before just that one stopped struggling, and lay still, still with its head stuck through the hole in the door, hindering the others' destructive tendencies.  It felt like its dead, hateful eyes were staring at her.

 

"Lucas, Sammi," she spoke, and her voice sounded like she hadn't used it in years, like she'd inhaled the essence of the zombie as it left its body, and now it was a part of her and she was a part of it.  "Look for something, anything, I'll hold them off."

 

They roused themselves slowly, like still-hybernating bears, lethargically swinging to their feet and shaking their heads like immobility alone could change them too.  Again, remembering, Tracy swiped the back of her hand across her face and nose, but she was still fine.  Her face was caked in dried blood, but at least it meant she was still alive and sane for now.  Maybe if she'd lasted this long, she was in the clear forever.

 

Tracy had never been an optimist.

 

She saw another zombie attempting to squeeze its upper body through the door, and smacked away at it with the baseball bat until it too fell limp.  "Lucas, help me!" she said, her voice peaking with exhaustion and panic.

 

Crack! Crack! Crack!

 

Tracy was desensitized.  She could hardly believe she was killing people that she may have known, one by one, by smashing their brains out with a stolen baseball bat.  But at least she was still alive.

 

And she wasn't going down without a fight.

 

"Tracy, there's nothing here!" Sammi shrieked (it really was hard to hear someone above the noise of smashing wood and unearthly cries of rage), just as a white hand smashed another whole in the door.  A well-placed swing and a crack later, and the white arm to which it belonged was bent at an unnatural angle, trapped and unable to be removed.

 

"Keep looking!" Tracy yelled back, turning around stupidly to see what Lucas was doing.  Halfway through, an arm that had edged through the biggest hole, still grasping blindly, snactched her wrist.  Its fingers were cold and clammy and smelled like rot and a cloying sweetness.  Tracy, with difficulty due to the fact that the arm was trying to tug her out of the room, transferred the baseball bat to her other hand and swung away, coming down accidentally on the place where their hands met.

 

The zombie's arm fell away, but so did Tracy, crumpling to the ground and clutching her wrist.  She didn't usually swear, but hey, she was going to die.

 

"Lucas," she said after a very lengthy exclamation, "Kill them!"

 

She felt the baseball bat being tugged from her uninjured hand's grasp, and fell back against the wall, feeling like a corpse herself.  Her eyes were resolving to vague shadows and blurs, and the world was whirling.

 

But Lucas did what she asked, for a very long time, until finally the hall was quiet.  Or maybe that was just her; she was fading into the shadows, her eyelids dragging shut, and nobody was going to stop her.