Free Cutthroat Chicken by Elizabeth A. Reeves

suspected. No one had been eager to check out the area the fire had wiped out. Now, they had to walk out into the middle of it.
    One of the crew whimpered at the sight of the five curled up, burnt bodies that were all that was left of the competitors and those that had tried to put out the fire.
    Goldie Locke pulled herself up onto one of the counters that hadn’t been too badly damaged. She stood on tiptoe, under the hood that sucked the smoke away from the stovetops.
    She came out with a wrinkled nose. “I think we know how he started the fires now,” she said. “The hood just stinks of lighter fluid.” She hopped down from the counter. “I’m too short to reach anything,” she said. “Maybe one of you guys can see if there’s any way for us to get out of here?”
    The two tallest men took her place on the counter and soon the group was more focused on arguing about what was the best way to handle getting into the ducts than the fact that they were all in mortal danger.
    Goldie Locke bit her bottom lip. They were making a lot of noise. If they weren’t more careful, they were going to attract attention from Fred, which was the last thing any of them wanted.
    It worried her that there had been so much time between attacks. She knew better than to think that Fred was done with tormenting them.
    No, she had a hunch that he had something even worse in store for them.
    “Hurry,” she hissed. She craned her neck, wondering if she was hearing things, or if there really was something out there in the shadows, moving around.
    Something big.
    A sheet of metal, the grate over the mouth of the stove hood, fell down with a huge clang. The two workers let out a shout.
    “Shhh,” Goldie Locke warned.
    But it was too late.
    Goldie Locke knew that he was there, even before one of the men working on the hood let out a shout.
    They group turned as one.
     

Chapter Thirteen
     
    There, stepping out from behind the curtains, his shadow making a giant out of him, was Fred. He puffed himself up to his full height as his victims caught their first view of their assailant.
    “Damn,” Abe Braun whispered. “It really is a chicken!”
    “He’s a silkie rooster,” Goldie Locke whispered.
    He was smaller than anyone had expected, maybe not even a foot tall. Fluffy white feathers puffed up around him in a cloudlike halo. His whole body was one big poof, from his oddly-dark feet, all the way to the giant poof that was the top of his head. Each of his cheeks had another ball of fluff.
    His victims hadn’t expected him to be… cute.
    Only the angle of his head and the patchiness of parts of his coat gave away the fact that he was, indeed, a zombie.
    That, and the baleful evil stink-eye he was giving them. His eyes were terrifying. They sparkled with intelligence and malevolence. His eyes glowed with undead triumph.
    He knew that he was going to win.
    Fred raised up his scraggly wings and crowed.
    The group of humans flinched at the sound. The crowing had been tormenting them for the past hour. It made their bones feel like shards of ice.
    One more crow like that, and the whole group of them was going to go stark raving mad. They couldn’t take it anymore. They were on the breaking point.
    Abruptly, things got a lot worse.
    Out of the shadows came a pink army.
    A pink, naked army.
    Naked chickens were on parade.
    The desecrated chickens from the pantry were on the move. Their lack of brains did not seem to concern them in the least bit. They marched in file, three abreast, pumping their little drumsticks as they moved along. They marched in a military rhythm, featherless wings swinging to the same tempo.
    How should someone respond to a vision like that? A silkie rooster and an army of undead naked chickens?
    Bad comedy was truly terrifying.
    And this bad comedy was converging on them more quickly than could be expected from a chicken army.
    Thump. Slide. Thump. Thump. Slide.
    It was the sound that Goldie Locke had heard, coming from