Wicked Hungry

“Yeah,” he says. “At least on the outer doorways. We’ll try to make a perimeter that they can’t get past.”

“Do it now, then,” I say. “And I’ll watch your back.”

But before I can follow him outside, my phone is buzzing again.

I look down. Another text message.

“THE GATEWAY IS ALMOST OPEN :)”

Outside, Jonathan scribbles faint symbols around the doors and windows of Enrique’s house in the dim light of the streetlights. We could use the flashlights that Andres gave us, I suppose. They would certainly light up everything well enough. But wouldn’t they attract the wrong kind of attention?

Next to Enrique’s garage, I catch sight of a tub of sidewalk chalk.

“Dude,” Jonathan hisses at me. “Keep an eye out.”

I glance back at the zombies. More of them are trying to get around the sigils.

“I found some sidewalk chalk,” I whisper to him.

“Great,” he says. “Make a bunch of stars and smiley faces.”

“Ha ha,” I say. “Is this any time for jokes? They’re crossing the street.”

“I’m serious. It’s a minor warding sigil. It’s all I can teach you in the time we have.”

The zombies have found a way across, it looks like. Half the group is shuffling down the street to where a lone shambler is crossing. The other half still waits across the street. Watching us.

“I don’t know what I’m more afraid of,” Jonathan whispers, as he scribbles furiously. “Those zombies, the vampires, Enrique’s parents seeing me out here, or...everything else.”

There’s a drawn-out howl from not that far away. It’s not human. It’s not a wolf. It’s a cat.

A familiar cat.

There’s another howl followed by what sounds like a scream. And laughter.

The hackles go up again on my neck. In fact, the hairs stand up on my entire body. Adrenaline pumps through my veins, my hands form fists, and my teeth clench. “Dude,” Jonathan says. “That’s what I get for saying I didn’t know.”

I can’t even nod. There’s another scream, farther away, and Jonathan whips his head around. “What’s going on? Where are they?”

Because the zombies are gone.

The scream comes again, and Jonathan looks back at me. “Man, you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“Just...fighting...the change,” I growl through clenched teeth, which seem to be growing longer and sharper second by second.

My phone buzzes then with a third message.

“HEY MURDERER, I HAVE YOUR CAT.”

Cold sweat forms on my forehead. I look down the street. It must be Zach, but where is he? Where are they all?

“Just a few more seconds, Stanley,” Jonathan says. “I’m almost done here.”

That’s when the lights go out with a big boom.

In the silence following it, in the full dark, I hear laughter.

“Oh no,” Jonathan says. “Not a power outage. Let me just do one more sigil.”