I, Keveny - pt 11

It took about five minutes and a dozen or so zombies, but they finally brought her down. She still mooed until two others squeezed in and began chomping on her neck. The cow's gurgling cries made watching it die too much to bear. I looked away until the sounds of it gulping down its own blood ended.

 

Her tongue lolled out of her mouth as they sat down in a circle around her, chewing pieces they had stripped off. Others climbed over them to get their share. A female grabbed a fistful of tongue and yanked, but it snapped out of the zombie's hand. It reached again and got into a minor squabble with another zombie that wanted the same thing. I saw one in a business suit reach into the cow's belly and pull out what looked like a mass of blubber. If that was the cow's stomach he was going to be busy for a long while.

 

A shot cracked the air and the one holding the bag of guts fell over. I turned and saw business suit's head bursted open like overripe fruit, eyes fixed on something far, far away. There was a guy in a cowboy hat and jeans, holding a rifle. He fired again and the head of the one that had tried yanking out the cow's tongue snapped back. She kept her feet, but half her jaw was missing.

 

The zombies collectively growled.

 

Obviously, they responded to stimulus, but did they respond to attackers? I mean, why not just stay here and eat until the cow was finished off? But they gradually pulled away, headed in the direction of the man with the rifle.

 

I was nervous for some reason and looked for my body. There it was, scowling in the direction the other zombies were headed, but it hadn't moved. Strange. I looked back to the cow and wondered if animals could be infected. I thought I'd heard somewhere the virus only affected human beings, but that avian flu eventually infected people. Why couldn't it work the reverse?

 

As bad as this was going to get, it would be even worse if animals carried the infection. Dogs, cats, birds. No, if this was the start of the virus jumping to another species I had to stop it somehow. I had to do something—

 

Crunch.

 

I looked at my body again and saw it had stomped on the animal's neck, breaking it.

 

Problem solved?