Day 1 7:35 pm

(pay no attention to the changing tenses and punctuation, and well pretty much everything regarding this tripe of a writing assignment)

Meredith laid her head back on the sticky vinyl bus seat. The dull throbbing rumble of the engine pulsing through her skull, massaging the troubles of the day out through her mouth as she sighed. Work and more work she thought, if only she could get home and shower in time to see Pancho. She flew against the seat in front of her, dropping ungraciously onto the filthy bus floor as the bus lurched suddenly in a violent deceleration. She scrambled to pick up her purse and scattered belongings, along with a dozen other complaining riders, as the bus groaned and shuddered to a halt. As she stood she felt glass crunch beneath her shoes, and then the complaining refocused into groans and cries of help. She stood shocked to see a minivan buried into the front of the SEPTA bus, blood and shattered steel twisted into Gigerish forms. She pushed open the side emergency door which fell onto the oil slicked asphalt with a crash. Without a backwards glance she carefully lowered herself to the ground, the steel door rocking and crunching safety glass under her weight. She looked down the street past the front of the bus and it's recent minivan addition and her shock turned quickly to stark terror. People were running in every direction. Distant screams and much closer gunshots shook her from her paralysis. The entire street was choked with cars. Cars upon cars piled up on each other, the occupants and pedestrians all wrestling and fighting in some ghastly urban gladiatorial match. She turned and ran up a side street and deep into a nearby development. A phone and a ride out of here is what I need she thought.

Passing house after house, whose lights were all dark she came up to a small bungalow style home with its two front bay windows invitingly lit, the lamps in the family room showing a pleasant enough environ. Apparently five other individuals thought the same thing as she joined a small group of people clustered on the front lawn.

"I really need to use the phone in there," a young man, she later learned his name was Jason, said. The others, in no particular order, introduced themselves as Matt, the Spouse of Proteinstar (a name she found rather odd), and another girl named Sarah. As she spoke briefly with them a warm arm came about her shoulders, she started and was shocked to see her own Pancho smiling at her. "How on earth did you find me here?" She said. "I work for LoJack, what kind of question is that." He responded with a wink. And with that they all made for the house.

The group headed for the front door, while Matt walked over to the parked Buick Lesabre to see if anything was in it's trunk. It was clear to all of them that this terrorist attack, which it had to be, froze all of societies niceties and allowed a sort of surviorist mentality. The Spouse of Proteinstar (hereby known as SP) Sarah and Meredith all searched the kitchen and family room for materials that might help their stay at the house. Meredith discovered a small shoulder bag full of live grenades, much to the shock of the group. Sarah and SP began boarding up the front bay windows with the family room endtables that they had smashed for the wood. Pancho found a baseball bat and started to walk down the hall to check out the rest of the house while Jason moved to the side door to check on Matt's progress out in the garage. Jason was just in time to her Matt shout "There are people in the backyard!! I mean a lot and they don't look right at all!" he headed up towards the open garage, hoping to find something to protect himself with or the keys that Buick.

Pancho heard a crash of glass and window frame as something solid fell through the bedroom window. Standing in the hallway swinging his bat menacingly he made sure Meredith saw his brave stand. Another shattering clatter was followed by a loud thud as another body fell into the computer room. He could make out the dim form of a shambling man lurching his way across the carpeted den.

Suddenly a filthy stinking man swung out of the gloom at Pancho from the bedroom. His body covered in gore, his mechanics overalls hanging on him in tatters. Pancho swung his bat like all those lessons from T-ball and the pulpy remains of the mechanics skull splattered the far end of the bedroom. The body shuddered and fell against the door jam, sliding down the wall in a oozing, fleshy heap. A second stinking body leapt out from the computer room, this one wearing only her bicycle shorts. A single blow to her head and she crashed into the old Pentium sitting in the corner, diskettes and Mountain Dew cans scattering across the floor.

The girls screamed as Pancho leaned out of the hall with his face covered in a crimson hood of gore, his teeth gleaming in a frenzied smile. "Got two of them!" He shouted "Whatever they are!" Jason piped up from the side door, "Their zombies!" as a hideously mangled corpse shouldered its way into the door. Barehanded Jason grappled with it, trying to prevent it's ingress. Filthy nails tore deep furrows in his arms, blood welling up in their tracks. Blood stained teeth snapped at his neck as he tried valiantly to force it out of the house. Meredith ran to his aid wielding a baseball sized weapon of unfathomable power. Suddenly the zombie lashed out with horrendous power throwing Jason back into the family room. And with that it took several steps into the house, arms thrashing and teeth gnashing in a fury. More crashes in the bedroom and computer room announced the arrival of several more decaying fiends. Pancho's maniacal laughter and the sickening crunching of pulped skulls announcing the demise of those intruders.

Sarah tried to squeeze past Pancho and grab some equipment in the bedroom, even as a foul shambling form, half resembling a local TV anchor, turned his gaping maw towards her, his eyes white and glazed.

Jason threw himself at the zombie again. "Git out of here you lousy ArggghhhhaaaahhHHHHHH!!!!! His battle cry suddenly turning into a shriek of horror as he found it's teeth buried in his throat. Blood fountained out in a geyser of sanguine gore. He stumbled backward, flaps of tissue tearing away from his neck as the zombie snapped at him. Clutching the rapidly decreasing flow he fell hard against the coffee table, his eyes went dark and his last sensation was the soggy warm shag carpet against his cheek.

The woman continue to barricade the front windows and searching for weapons or anything that might help them. Meredith stood in shock as the decaying corpse turned it's dead gaze towards her, stepping back she hefted the green orb of destruction in her hand. He shock increased as the body of Jason picked itself of the sodden carpet, his throat a red ruin. "Aw Jason's one of them now!" She shouted. Pancho yelled from the bedroom for her to throw the grenade. She looked down at the bomb and quickly looked up at the two shambling forms trying to negotiated the glass coffee table. And with that she pulled the pin like in the movies.

SP was running into the family room with her newly found rifle when Meredith disappeared in a shower of gore and tissue filled chunks of denim and cotton weave. Half of her was instantly vaporized in the explosion as her grenade went off prematurely. The rest of her was blasted throughout the room, pelting zombie and human alike with her remains. A fine red mist descended from the ceiling, right between her tennis shoes, which SP noticed had moved an inch.

The family room was a wreck. Streaks of blood splattered on every surface, which after the explosion were shattered and smoldering. Pancho ran out of the bedroom and nothing but shock registered on his face. "You traitor! His traumatized mind made him shout." And with that he attacked the remaining zombies in the bedroom.

Maria took aim at Jason, and noticed out of the corner of her eye that the shattered ruin of Meridith's corpse was trying to crawl from out behind the TV where the largest portion had been thrown in the explosion. She takes aim and fires several rounds at the zombies, taking the one that had been Jason out. It's headless form falling in a heap. With a click she realized she was out of ammunition and heard matt shout from the garage that he had found some hollowpoints in a cigar box. With that she ran out the front door, shouting for him to meet her at the Buick. Pancho runs back into the den which has filled up with several moaning forms, his club of ash swinging.

One zombie falls with it's had a caved in ruin, but in his backswing a festering corpse latched onto his shoulder. The thick cotton of his rugby shirt shredding like tissue paper, his flesh torn from his shoulder like a KFC chicken leg. Blood spurts from his wound as he stumbles backwards from the assault. He bit his tongue in a rage as he swung at the fiend his wild swinging missing the grotesque thing completely. It;s mouth hanging agape it lunches at him and a sudden moment of absolute mind shattering horror rips his arm completely from his body, the dull thud of the bat falling against the desk echoing in his ears as those inhuman hands shatter his rib cage and disembowel him in a flash. Death was instant and he fell backwards into the bookcase he was desperately trying to search. His abdomen and chest a gaping hole, the room a charnel house. The keys to the Buick glinting on the second shelf.

The horde continue to grow in the backyard, the hastily erected barricades in the bedrooms collapsing under the mindless bulk of the dead. SP hefting her hatchet and Matt with his newly reloaded rifle the mentally prepared themselves to reenter the house of horrors, where moments earlier they had heard pancho's last moments and it nearly unmanned them.

Meanwhile Sarah in a rush forces a zombie back and splits it's rotting head like a melon in the bedroom. She rushes out only to be trapped in the hallway by the shambling corpse of Jason and Pancho who lurches out of the computer room. The stench of entrails and gristle nearly drives her mad as she faces these two one time acquaintances, both now only desiring to peel back her skull and feast on her brain. She forces Jason back with a savage blow and seeing her escape runs into the family room after the staggering zombie. But with a savageness that she never expected from this stumbling form he grabs a hold of her thigh. A violent twist and horrific mound of tissue and jean is ripped from her thigh bone. She can't even cry as she falls into the smoking remains of the family room. Right into the waiting, and blasted form of Meridith whose fleshless visage is the last thing she sees. SP is running through the front door as three zombies descend on Sarah, her sceaming quickly becoming a low gurgle as organs and shattered ribs torn from her chest. SP freezes in the doorway as Sarah then regains her feet, her torso a ruin. SP attacks the remains of Sarah with her hatchet and finds the teeth of her friend sinking deep into her face. She stumbles back and grasping hands pull her into the waiting mob. Matt halts his entrance into the house as he sees the ghastly sight in the family room. Several zombies all resembling in some terrible way the 5 people he had met that evening trying to escape the nightmare that burst into the bar he was drinking his sorrows away at. If only he could drink this away. Firing a few rounds into the growing mob he has the satisfaction of dropping a few of the lurching forms. Until a dreadful click echoes from the chamber, he's out of rounds. He darts into the kitchen, dodging and weaving through the slow gore covered dead.

Throwing open cupboards and closets he finds a chainsaw tucked under the kitchen sink of all places. Rushing out he barrels through the first zombie, saw severing it in a flash. Two, three, four zombies go down before they can even turn their decaying gaze on him. Then the lights go out. Floundering in the dark, the last thing he needed was a power outage. But what would you expect, this horrorshow must be happening all over the city. Stumbling out of the house he finds a handlamp in the garage and makes his way back.

He has a flash of insight, he has searched everywhere for these keys except the computer room. He darts into the backyard, zombies are pouring through breaches in the 6 foot wooden fence, he can see a dozen zombies tumbling into the neighbors pool. Charging into the computer room through the window, two zombies turn slowly towards him. With a flash and a roar the nearest zombie is flung into the corners of the room, limbs and torso sheared to bits. Matt steps confidently towards the last pitiful corpse. When his chainsaw jams on a chunk of bone. He backs up trying to clear the jam and the zombie lunches at him. Arms and teeth snapping and thrashing at him. He blocks and fends with the unresponsive saw, his confidence melting as the zombie backs him into the wall. Zombies start pressing into the window, nails and fingers starting to catch in his hair. "Agh, if only I had cut this mop!" He panics. The chainsaw roared to life in time to sink itself into the zombies chest, bone and flesh splattering him and the room. Yet it's arms seize both of his and with a strength unimaginable, both his arms are ripped from his torso. The chainsaw falls, still thrashing the chest and now abdomen of the zombie, but with little effect except managling it's already horrific form. Matt stumbled against the wall, his twitching gaze taking in the maddening image of his limbless torso. He turns to escape the clutches of the fiend but catches his foot on the still whirling saw. With a flash of red his foot is flung into the corner and he falls flat on his side. Lying on the remains of at least 4 bodies his mind thankfully breaks down and he finds it's not unlike having to much to drink and passing out in the alley.