What Ever Happened to Muffins?

You Can Depend on Me

"I'll do it. Let me go get the knife too." Claire says. With long striding stomps, she twirls the tire iron in her hand.

Derek turns his head away. Not wanting to watch Claire kill the old woman.

He walks over to the dividing wall and looks down at the building's entrance.

Georgina crunches on her dentures while clumsily reaching out to grab Claire when she approaches her. The old woman's gnawed arm extends out with its forearm bones directly pointing at her, as if trying to grab her with an invisible hand.

Claire stares at the dangling and torn flesh hanging from it. A few droplets of blood spray in the air, splattering on her shirt and face. She grimaces with disgust. The old woman smells of a combination of rotting blood and moth balls.

Roaring with rage, Claire cracks Georgina's cheekbone with a powerful swing that sends the old woman tumbling back. When she tries to reach out again, Claire stabs her in the neck and smashes her forehead, leaving a large dent.

Georgina falls to the floor with a loud thump and shattering shoulder blades. Thrashing awkwardly and attempting to stand up, the old woman's dentures slide out of her mouth with a pool of saliva and blood trailing behind it. Claire kneels down beside her, holding the tire iron above her head, but the old woman grabs her arm and bites her hand. Slobbering and gumming her fingers desperately, Georgina growls and groans.

"Eww, gross!" Claire jerks her hand back and uses the tire iron as a hammer to drive the knife deeper into Georgina's neck.

The old woman groans and begins gurgling. Her head hits the concrete each time the iron crashes onto the knife's wooden handle, until a cracking wet sound causes her to release an inhuman whimper before laying still.

As Claire removes the knife from the old woman's neck, she jumps back. Startled by a loud two tone buzzing sound coming from Derek's phone.

Sarah cranes her neck while laying on the floor.

"$%*%!" He quickly reads a message on the screen:

Emergency Alert

A nationwide nine-one-one outage has been reported. If you're in need of assistance, please go to your local fire, police or ambulance station.

The blaring sound plays a second time while he fumbles with trying to remove the phone's battery.

"You don't think they heard that?" He looks at Sarah and Claire.

Sarah stares in fear.

Their tense silence is broken by the sound of a woman screaming echoing from within the building.

"Someone's being attacked inside." Claire says.  She nervously looks around. "Maybe they didn't hear your phone. I mean, they'd have to be nearby. Maybe they're all ganging up on whoever screamed just now? Or maybe the sound diverted them away from us."

Everyone remains frozen. Sarah sighs deeply and lays back on the ground. Wincing when her back touches the hard surface.

"Are you badly injured?" Claire asks.

"I'll be ok, just need to rest a bit." Sarah says while staring at the sky.

"How about you?" She looks at Derek.

"I'm just hoping my parents are ok. Maybe we should go to one of the stations? Like the message says. I'm thinking maybe you guys can stay there and I can go get my parents? There's gotta be a shelter where we can group up with people. A safe place with food and hopefully people with guns." He says as he looks down.