It was that time again where I had to go meet the class bully. We took the same bus to school every morning so I couldn’t exactly avoid him. His name was Trevor. I saw him waiting there for me when I showed up. He picked on me and kept calling me, “Tiny Timmy.” I mean sure, it was true, I was not all that big but seriously,  just lay off for once? We waited an hour, and the bus never arrived. We were late. I decided to walk backwards a bit to see if I could find the bus but, to my unfortunate surprise, all I saw were fires and I heard people screaming all around me. I looked back at Trevor, the expression on his face was filled with sheer terror as he watched a friend of his be ripped apart down the street by what looked like a hoard of people. Gunshots, screams, then silence. That was eight years ago.
    “Lil’ Tim!” yells Trevor, “could use a bit of help with this one!”
I ran over and stab the monstrosity through the back of the head with the rusty rebar I had found, “You okay big guy?” I sigh with relief.
“Yeah, another close call.”
We head back to Trevor’s late Uncle’s beach house where we were currently staying for the time being before the hoard catches up with us. We barricade the door shut behind us. “What’s the loot today bud?” asked Trevor,  thirstily eying down a can of peaches in my backpack.
“That there, is mine” I say greedily, “Plus I saved you today didn’t I?”
“That’s not fair!” Trevor stood up quickly with enough thrust to get off the ground. He immediately fell to his knees and puked blood onto the smooth hardwood floor.
“You okay? What’s wrong?”
“I dunno, I think I gotta go to bed, rest my head.”
“Yeah good idea.”
I watch him limp over to a bed. I walk over to my side of the room and lay down and listen to Trevor cough for hours. It is about 2:30 in the morning and Trevor isn’t making a sound, but his eyes are wide open and he isn’t breathing, blood seeping slowly out his mouth. “Jesus man!” I yell and scoot against the wall as far away from him as I could possibly be, I reach and grab the gun I’d been secretly hiding out of my pack and point it at him. I notice a dark red stain on his abdomen, it’s a bite mark. I’d been around long enough to know that once you’re bit, you become infected, get very sick, and die. And when you die, well, you become the very monster that we were hiding from to begin with, a zombie.
I regain my footing and slowly make my way over to Trevor’s lifeless body. I hold the gun to his head because the only way to kill these monsters was to damage the brain. I’ll kill it before it wakes up, “You were my enemy, next my rival, then my best friend, and my brother.” I say choking on my own tears. “Goodbye ol’ pal.” I pull the trigger.