Free Z-Burbia 7: Sisters of the Apocalypse by Jake Bible

barricade blocking the front entrances and take the stairs to the second floor. The stairs ain't much better than everywhere else. A lot of bloodstains. And a Z.
    "Got it," I say and stab it through the head with one of my blades. It was a woman before it died. Old woman, maybe. A grandma. I don't remember my grandma.
    The second floor is all offices, kinda like the first floor. We sweep, we clear, we move on. The courthouse is starting to get boring. Good thing there's the third floor.
    The second Steph steps through the stairwell door and into the third floor, she drops. Not because she's been hit with anything, but because she sees the axe coming at her head. She rolls herself across the hallway and comes up firing. The kid with the axe screams then falls face first onto the stained tile. Half his face is gone from Steph's shots.
    "On me!" Steph yells as she takes a knee and spins in the direction the kid came from.
    We hurry into the hallway and take up positions, making sure every single direction is covered. No other kids come for us, but we stay still. We wait and we listen. Froggy Girl starts to say something, but I smack her on the back of the head and she shuts up.
    "I don't think there are more here," Audrey whispers after at least twenty minutes go by. "We'd know. My gut says they're gone."
    "This one was a distraction," Steph says, nodding at the dead kid. "So where are the others?"
    There's a clang and a shout. Then screams. All coming from outside.
    Steph kicks in a door and we hurry to a window in time to see a kid get buried under a pile of Zs down on the street. They start ripping him apart, yanking out guts and tearing off his arms and legs. He lives through all of it until his throat gets shredded by two Z mouths.
    "The roof," Steph says. "That one fell from the roof."
    We don't need orders and we don't need directions. We hit the stairs and sprint up to the roof. The sun is starting to go down by the time we get to the edge and see a cable stretching from the courthouse building to a different building across the street. The cable is just above a window and looking out of the window is one of the deaf kids.
    She points up at us and claps her hands together, letting the blind kids know where we are. Then she's gone. Lost in the shadows of the building.
    "Shit!" Steph shouts. A bunch of Zs below moan and groan up at her. "Oh, fuck off!"
    "We have to go," Froggy Girl says. "Those Zs. Those are Doyle Zs. They sent them here. The Doyles followed us."
    "Great," Audrey says as she scans the street for signs of living humans. "We know what that means."
    "They have the tunnel cut off," Marcie says. "They're going to try to drive us out into the street."
    "We can take those Zs," I say after a quick undead head count. "Not a problem."
    "Then we better get to it," Steph says. "Time to bug out."
    "You mean we're leaving?" Antoinette asks as we sprint to the stairwell door. "Getting the Humvees and going?"
    "What about the kids?" Audrey asks.
    "Fuck the kids for now," Steph says. "We don't have time to play games with crazies named Doyle. We get the Humvees, get out of town, and wait. Maybe the kids will leave soon and we can catch them out in the open instead of playing hide and seek in this shitass town."
    She yanks open the stairwell door and we all hear the shot as it hits her.
    Steph falls back, a large hole in her forehead, blood flying everywhere.
    We scream. As one, we sisters scream.
    Then we hit the stairs and open fire.

 
    Chapter Seven
     
    With a sister dead behind us, you'd think we'd go all crazy and shit, but we don't. We hit those stairs and do what we do best: kill some shitfucking assholes. This is how sisters deal with death. We make more of it.
    The Doyles have no idea what hits them.
    It's like surgery. That's what John always says. Surgeons don't just hack away at a body, they have to target the exact spot for the first cut then be thinking ten steps ahead to the next cut and the next. Your mind