The Coming

          There was moaning outside his door.
          "Who... WHO's THERE?" he yelled, as he got up, and pulled a shirt on over his head, and slipped some jeans on. The moaning continued, and banging on his door started up. He took boxes out of his closet with his things in them, and stacked them against the door. "Damn, who the hell is moaning?" He pounded on the door. "Shut up already!" He looked outside his window in his room. Everything seemed normal outside. It was around 7:30 AM, as he glanced at his clock on top of his TV. The moaning continued. His cell phone rang, thus adding to the noise. He picked the phone up and answered it. "Hel-"
          "Brax! Is that you?" Brax could tell by the sound of the kid's voice, who he was.
          "Aidan! What the hell is going on?" Brax said.
          "If you can get to my house, we'll set up a fort and wait this out."
          "What? Wait what out?!" The phone had already hung up. The moaning and pounding on his door was getting louder every minute. Brax sighed. His phone rang again.
          "Aidan! What-"
          "You'll need a cleaving weapon, by the way. Or something blunt that you can bash heads with." He hung up again before Brax uttered a sound. Brax had some ideas on what the moaning was, but it could never happen. An arm burst through his bedroom door, though it stopped moving. Brax went to inspect the arm.
          "No..." black, already coagulating blood was seeping through a wound in the arm. "No way." Brax ran to his window, opened it, and punched out the screen. He fell out of his window onto the ground.
          "Fucking A, no way..." he repeated to himself as he fumbled with the lock on his shed. He had a couple shovels in his shed he could use as a weapon. He searched his pockets, then realized he left his shed key on the table. Inside the house. He thought of possibilities. He could just go in there and grab the key, and hope, that they don't get him. He thought that was a good idea, so he snuck around to his back door, and quietly opened it. He was thankful he had put on some oil, on the hinges of the door the day before, the thing was driving him nuts. He tiptoed to the table, picked up the keys very gently, and grasped them in his fist, so they wouldn't jingle. Then, he snuck back outside, and shut the door and locked it. He was never going back in there again. Brax ran to the shed, and fumbled with all the keys on the ring. He found the right one, and shoved it in and turned the lock. He looked directly to the left and saw a trenching shovel. He picked it up and swung it a few times.
          "This might prove useful." He took it, and shut the shed door. He couldn't carry a whole bunch of clattering shovels while walking to Aidan's house anyway. Too much work. He hopped up onto his porch to see the devastation that was supposedly being wreaked outside his yard. It was very quiet, he noticed, and that there were cars just sitting on the street. He immediately thought of driving his dad's car. Since there's no one moving on the road, it seemed like a good idea. He hopped down, opened the gate, closed the gate(because no one wants more of those things to get out), opened the driver's seat door, plopped himself in, placed the shovel beside him on the passenger seat, and shut the door. He put his seat belt on, and started the engine.
          "Come on, you stupid car, start! This isn't the time or place to be making a bunch of noise right now!" The car finally started after five tries at starting it up. He backed out of the driveway, and started down the road toward Aidan's house.
          A mile or two down the road, not one soul was to be found. Except for the soulless things in the cars. He weaved through the cars standing still as statues, and eventually made it to Aidan's house. Everything actually seemed quiet. He grabbed his shovel, got out, opened the gate to the walkway, stepped through, and shut the gate. With shovel in hand, he made toward his best friend's door.Before he could knock on the door, it opened.
          "Quickly, get in here!" He pulled Brax in, and shut the door.
          "Aidan, are these things... what I think they are?"
          Yeah. They are. Remember how in that one book, you said these beings had blackish brown "blood", and it being kind of chunky?"
          "Yeah. But I don't see how that relates to-"
          "Well..." He picked up a severed arm off of his chair that was facing his TV. Brax stumbled back a step.
          "It's not..."
          "Bleeding? Yeah, I know. I only took this off about 15 minutes ago. Touch it."
          "Touch it? Will I get... it?"
          "You know you only get it if you get bitten! Just touch it." Brax touched it.
          "It's still... warm."
          "And warm, severed limbs should still be dripping with blood after 15 minutes, should they not?"
          "Yeah, they should be, I believe, though I'm no forensic scientist."
          "Exactly. And what is here? The gooey black stuff."
          "So... that means that they're really..."
          "Yeah. Zombies." Aidan said, but he was not quaking with fear like Brax was. Brax felt like every beat of his heart sent a drop of sweat out from everywhere on him.
          "We... I know! Well, you know the two zombie books I have right?"
          "I doubt those will be of any help to us. Come on, let's board up the windows. We'll play some stuff later."
          "Al... alright." Brax was still quaking with fear, he could barely walk. They got to work though. First they started on the front door. they stood in front of it, pondering what they needed.
         "Alright, so we need a way to have the door boarded, but have it so we can open it."
         "Ooh, I know! We could put one of those boards that slides up and down?" Brax said.
         "Genius!" Aidan said. So they set to work. They dismantled Aidan's dresser, got nails out of his back room, and set to work building it. A hour or two later, they were done.
         "So... what about the windows?" Brax asked.
         "Uhm... well we have leftovers from the dresser, we'll put some on the windows then we can grab the lumber from the backyard."
         "Sounds good." They used the rest of their nails they had boarding up the kitchen window, and the big window in Aidan's living room.
         "I doubt they will be able to fit in any other windows." Aidan sighed, and sat down.
         "Wait! What about your sister's window? Even we can fit through that." Brax exclaimed.
         "Yes... I suppose you are right. We have to find more nails though... I'll get the lumber from outside." Aidan said. He opened his front door, stepped outside, and shut the door. Brax left the piece of wood that was supposed to block the door up, because he figured he would come back in the same way. Brax set off looking for nails in the back room. A few minutes later, Brax had found nails like the ones they had used before. He took the nails back into the living room and then waited for Aidan. Aidan came hustle-bustle through the front door with tons of wood. He quickly shut the door behind him, though quietly, and put the wood down.
         "Okay," Aidan said. "you found nails?" Brax picked them up and shook them, and put them back down. He got up. "Alright, then let's get to work!" They brought some wood into his sister's room, and boarded the window up good. It was on the side of the house, but you never know what could come in through there. So within a few hours everything else was boarded and sealed up tight. As they both sat on the couch, Brax had an idea.
          "Let's watch some TV, huh?" Brax flipped on the TV, but kept the volume low. As he flipped through the channels, there were only "Please stand by" on every channel. "So... where's... everyone? Usually your house is hustle-bustle this time of day."
          "You really want to know? Alright. Well... let's just say they're out back."
         "You... killed them then?" he asked. Brax was no longer quivering with fear, but he was still a bit shaky.
          "Well, you don't hear it from the backyard?" Brax listened intently to the silence, and heard nothing. He tried harder, and cupped his ears with his hands, but still nothing. Aidan sighed. "Follow me." Aidan got up, and Brax followed. Aidan said, "Put your ear to the door." Brax put his ear to the door, and gasped.
          "They're in the back yard? You know a zombie's moan calls to other zombies that there are near, right?" Aidan seemed like he stopped breathing for a moment. They both stood there looking at each other, but Aidan had a horrified look on his face.
          "You don't think... there are more outside already, do you?" he asked, warily.
          "I doubt it, considering everyone was probably in a car or something when the wave or whatever it was that made people these... things, hit." They walked back to the living room, when they heard the chains rattling outside. Both of them said nothing. After a few moments, they both heard a knock at the door.
          "Can zombies knock?" Brax asked.
          "Um... I... don't know. Maybe it was a zombie's head." The knock came again, louder this time. They both sat in their chairs, their knuckles white with fear, while gripping the arms of the chairs. Finally, Brax worked up the courage to shout.
          "Who's there?!" There was no apparent moaning from the door, but he could definitely hear Aidan's family out back, groaning around and hitting his fence and tripping over things, regular zombie stuff, now that he knew they were there. The pounding came louder on the door this time. Brax gripped at his courage.
         "I'll get it." he said, shakily. He walked over to the door and opened it. There was no one there except for a box. It was pretty big.
         "Is that a... box?" Aidan asked.
         "No, it's a mango. Yeah it's a box, help me with it. This thing is heavy!" Aidan came over and helped him with the box. They hauled it inside and shut the door quickly. They couldn't take any chances. They opened the box which was about 4 feet tall, and around 4 feet wide.
         "Holy..." Brax exhaled.
         "These could last us awhile."
         "Yeah they could." It was a cache of guns. About 5-10 guns were visible in the top of the box. Brax had stopped trying to shake it awhile ago, and picked up one of the guns in the box. He hefted it around in his hands.
         "Be careful not to shoot it off... find the safety!"
         "I'm looking, I'm looking! Ah." He found the safety switch on the gun, and flipped it. He put the gun down back into the box, where the mold was for it.
         "Well, I figure we should put this somewhere quickly-" Aidan got cut off by Brax.
         "Dude, we've gotta get up on the roof and snipe some zombies!" Aidan paused, then a gleeful smile ran over his face, but then disappeared.
         "Uhm... I doubt there's a sniper, much less two, in this box." The gleam in Brax's eye faded.
         "Well... let's take everything out, carefully, and see what the fuck is in the box eh?" Brax said. Aidan heartily agreed, and they took out many guns, more than they had thought was in there. It turned out the box was actually divided into layers. As they sifted through, the top layer was pistols and submachine guns (mostly of the uzi kind), and below that was probably the meat of the box, assault rifles. Below those were submachine guns that were too big to fit on the upper level, and below those, shotguns. Aidan hefted one out of the box, looking happily at it, then put it back onto the ground. The level after that was, actually, one sniper. A Walther WA2000.
         "Ho-ly crap. These things can shoot a target from 1000 yards, at least, away. " Aidan said. Brax thought he looked like he was going to drool all over the thing, so he said to give it to him. He moved it from hand to hand.
         "Doesn't look like much. Looks kinda weak to me." Aidan stared at him in disbelief. "What?"
         "We're going to the roof."
         "Wait! There's still one more level..." He lifted the separator, and there was accessories for all of the guns. Scopes, silencers, and more magazines, actually, many magazines. They took all of it out carefully, even though it looked like it was standard military stuff and could take a beating.
         "Alright then, grab a scope and gun and... yeah, a silencer, and follow me." Aidan said, happily. Brax grabbed an assault rifle, an AK-103. Luckily for him, it already had a scope on it, and he grabbed a silencer and put it on. He grabbed a strap for the gun out of the box, attached it, then ran to catch up with Aidan, who was exiting the house.
         "Y'know, I wonder why we weren't affected by the shockwave or... whatever it was that affected... pretty much everyone. I figure the people, or person, whoever it was that dropped off the guns was, or were, still human."
         "Leave it to the government man..."Aidan said.
          Hah! The government? The government probably did this just to 'test' how it would work on humans! And, lo and behold, it does!"
          "Still doesn't mean they didn't do it. They could have."
          "Yeah well..." Brax trailed off. "We probably won't find out anyway." Aidan got a ladder and propped it against the house.
         "Alright, here's what we're gonna do. You head up there, I'm going to get a couple lawn chairs-"
         "You sure the roof can handle that?" Brax asked, warily. "I don't wanna fall through the roof."
         "Yep. I'll go get the lawn chairs. Head on up." Brax went up the ladder. He hated heights, though Aidan's house was small, so he could easily tumble off the roof and live. But he wasn't that clumsy. He head Aidan rummaging around inside the house, most likely with both chairs. He held the AK-103 up to shoulder level, and peeked through the scope. A few zombies wandering around at the top of the street... he aimed and shot. Miss. He shot again. Miss. Again. Miss. Finally he took a deep breath, aimed, and got the zombie through the eye. It toppled over, dead. He did a small victory dance while Aidan was coming up with both lawn chairs.