I GET SPATTERED IN GORE

"Focus!"

"Some freak nearly hit me with his car today, I'm a little too busy not focusing to focus!"

"Living dead!"

Bullets.

"Frank, Mikey, stop messing around, I might kill you by accident," I called across the empty parking lot. Well. Empty except for us, and the undead we'd been chasing.

"Gerard, it won't. freaking. die!" Frank shouted at me, accentuating the space between each word with a gunshot.

He and Mikey raced passed Toro, who was coming to help them. As they passed him, though, he stopped. And he stood in the center of the parking lot, gazing at the walking dead (technically it was running) as it charged towards him, arms reaching to grasp human flesh.

"It won't die?" he asked, still gazing at it as though it was some sort of scientific conundrum that could be solved if only he gazed at it long enough.

"Does it look dead to you?" Frank called back, having already put several hundred feet between himself and Toro.

Toro cocked his head. "Yes. But there must be a way to stop it – "

I reached his side then, blasting off three shots in rapid succession. I watched as each bullet found its mark in undead flesh. But he wouldn't stop. He wasn't bursting into all-consuming flames. "Are we using incendiaries?" I asked, feeling like I must have missed something.

"Yes," said Toro, still watching the walking dead. He stepped casually aside as it came near us. I was late; it grabbed my arm. My revolver went flying.

I was staring into the face of death, again. I wondered grimly if I would actually die this time.

Somehow I knew I wouldn't.

And again I was within inches of the face of death when it exploded under a hail of bullets. Why do people always find it necessary to blow the faces off of zombies when MY face is mere inches away?

I could see the facial bones of the walking dead now. That was not a sight I had ever been interested in seeing. But despite the bones of it's face being exposed to the elements, it was still gripping my arm. It occurred to me that it would probably still grip my arm even if we cut its arm off.

"Toro!" I spat between my teeth. "This thing won't give up!"

"How intriguing," he said, coming closer. I could see him from the corner of my eye, his gun casually at his side as he approached. If I survived, I would have words with this man about priorities. Life over experimentation kind of priorities.

Toro was unexpectedly very close beside me. He was grasping the arm of the walking dead, just as it was grasping mine. He raised his gun seriously to the beast's head. It didn't even notice him. "Hello," he said pointedly.

I wasn't thinking about maybe looking away until my face was once again being spattered with blood and gore as Toro pulled the trigger on his nine millimeter, the barrel of the gun pressed against the zombie's head.

Thick, dark blood and small bits of flesh dripped from Toro's Afro. The walking dead was reeling back, most of its face gone.

I took that moment and darted off to find my revolver. Frank and Mikey were running back toward us now. The walking dead was rising up off the pavement, its groans becoming steadily louder, as though there was some tiny part of his brain left that could register anger. He stood, and Frank and Mikey opened fire.

I grabbed my revolver from the ground and turned back to the walking dead. I saw Toro out of the corner of my eye, watching casually as bullets pounded into the undead creature before him. I don't know why, because I didn't think it would help, but I cocked my revolver and opened fire as well.

With my first shot, the walking dead exploded. Flames burst into existence, consuming the rotting flesh. He burned fast, was gone in seconds.

The night seemed eerily still in the absence of gunfire.

"Why…" Frank started to say.

"Wouldn't that thing die?" Mikey finished.

Simultaneously, we all converged on the smoking circle of pavement where the undead had been standing.

"What an intriguing specimen," Toro was saying as I drew closer. "It would have been nice if we could have captured him instead of destroying him…"

"Gee, you're covered in zombie," Frank informed me unnecessarily. He came closer, brushing blood and flesh from my face.

"Toro…" I muttered, glancing his way.

Toro shrugged apologetically. "A direct shot to the head was my best guess at a way to destroy it. The fact that your face was too close to my target..."

"Dude, we may have to walk home," Frank said seriously, grinning.

I spat blood onto the pavement.

Five minutes later we were sitting outside a gas station. Mikey was standing several yards off, spying on the clerk, while Frank and I sat closer to the door, waiting for Mikey to say the clerk wasn't watching so we could step in while hiding my bloody face.

"One guy inside," said Mikey, peering over a stack of soda cases that were about to be loaded into the convenience store. "The clerk looks bored, maybe once his one customer leaves, he'll move…"

Frank kicked his foot against the pavement. He was short, hyper, and impatient.

"Okay, wait, he's at the counter," Mikey said, leaning closer to the window. "He's buying stuff…holy crap, he's at the door…!" Mikey jumped away from the window, trying to look casual. I was suddenly hyper-aware that I needed some other way to continue to hide my face. And Frank…

Frank.

So how much blood was on my face? Because it must have looked pretty bad, because as the door opened, Frank grabbed my face with both hands, pulled me closer, and kissed me.

Holy shit, Frank.

I was vaguely aware of the guy at the door shuffling hurriedly passed us, glancing back once as he crossed the parking lot. Mostly I was aware of the feel of Frank's lips slowly caressing mine, his lip ring, his tongue…

He gently pulled back. His hands had slid from my face to my shoulders. He gazed at me steadily, his eyes on mine.

Then he turned to the side and spat on the pavement.

"Gerard, you taste like zombie," he stated, smiling a little.

Behind him, Mikey spat noisily in disgust. "Dude, hands off my brother," he said.

"'Kay," said Frank, rising easily from the concrete sidewalk.

I was kind of stunned. Too stunned to stand up.

Frank grasped my hand and hauled me to my feet. "Nice distraction," he said to me. "There is no way that guy saw your bloody face." He was grinning gleefully. I suddenly found that funny.

"Guys, guys!" said Mikey suddenly, pointing towards the window. "He just stepped into the backroom, go, go!"

Frank and I broke our casual stance and raced for the door, pushing it open and rushing inside. I kept my face turned away from the counter in case the clerk looked around.

It's mind-blowingly hard to walk casually down an aisle full of candy after you've just frantically raced into a building, after being kissed by your best friend, after being nearly killed by one of the living dead. And when you're consciously aware of every second ticking by, because you know the bus you need to get on to make it back home will be leaving in like five minutes whether you're on it or not. And it's a long walk back to my house.

Frank pushed open the bathroom door and held it open for me. I stepped inside, and he stepped in behind me.

My face did look pretty bad.

"Terrible, isn't it?" Frank asked as I looked at my macabre reflection. "See, you did have some here too, it was like, a big piece of zombie flesh, and you had some down here, but I think I kissed it off."

I snorted, feeling another insane urge to laugh, and began to run water to wash off my face. Frank handed me paper towels, seeming quite pleased by this whole affair.

There was blood in my hair, bits and pieces of flesh; the blood was thick and dark, congealed. It clung to my skin and my hair. My shirt and jacket were spattered, but my shirt was black, so it didn't matter. I dried the blood off of my leather jacket.

"You're a walking biohazard, you know that?" Frank asked, sniggering to himself. Why exactly he thought this was funny…but wait, I still felt like laughing.

"Thanks, Frank. That's comforting." I pulled a bit of flesh from my hair and washed my face one final time. I looked okay. …All right, that's so far from the truth, I looked like I had stepped out of a war zone, but at least my face wasn't covered in gore, which showed loudly against my pale skin. "Okay, let's go," I said.

"We might have to run to catch the bus," Frank agreed.

I groaned. I hate running. I hate it.

We did have to run, but thankfully Toro was already waiting there, so the driver knew to stop. Toro hadn't needed to clean blood off of his face because he had cleverly protected said face with his arm. We climbed the narrow metal stairs onto the public transport, feeling absurdly melancholy after our wild hunt. We still had our guns with us. I was silently thankful that no one searched bus passengers yet.

Frankie and I sat next to each other; he gave me the window seat. I rested my head against the cool glass, thinking about what he'd said…walking biohazard.

But why had it been so difficult to kill the walking dead? Why? Sometimes, I have shot and gotten no result. But that's fine, you just keep shooting, and in three shots, the fire takes and he's destroyed. That's the most it's ever taken me to bring one down. Three shots.

How many shots had we spent on this one? Like, sixteen? Seventeen? More than twenty?

I was tempted to pull the bullets out of my revolver to make sure they were actually incendiaries. But they had to be…I never used normal bullets any more. The case I had left was in a drawer in my filthy bedroom, almost complete; the only ones missing were the ones I had used on the very first of the walking dead I've encountered.

City lights brushed past us in blurs of color and brightness. I felt Frank begin to lean against my shoulder, the crazy night catching up to him.

It was like his exhaustion was infectious; I put my arm around his shoulders and leaned my cheek against his hair. This, I thought, despite the walking dead that almost killed me and nearly refused to be destroyed itself, despite the gore that still covered me and made my hands itch, had been a good night.

"I am an arms dealer,

Fitting you with weapons in the form of words..."

Sorry for the Frerardyness. I couldn't help it :P

xoxo,

Rebel Rose