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day.
                  I took my usual place on the front porch before sunrise, nursing a hangover with a hair of the dog remedy that wasn’t working.
                  My neighbors were up as well getting ready just in case. Explosions rocked the foundations of our homes like little earthquakes painting the morning in a haze of grimy smoke residue from fires unknown.
                  Behind it all, a sound like thunder, growing ever louder. A sound I could feel in the fillings of my teeth. A sound to wake the survival beast that lives within all of us and send him scurrying under the bed.
                  My street was about to meet the things that go bump in the night.
                  I was nervously smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of cherry flavored malt liquor. My sweaty palm clutching my gun as I waited to see the source of the avalanche of noise headed our way.
                  The glowing ember curled smoke into my eyes and made them water. I dimly remember my drink slipping from my grasp and landing on the wood with a plunk as the first wave of people maniacally charged across Rice Creek Road from the east.
                  The tidal wave of crazed humanity was so loud, it felt like they were screaming inside my head. I had never seen that many people so densely packed together, running as if they were one giant organism.
                  They chugged by like a giant human locomotive filling the road, the shoulders and the yards on both sides of the street. Then alarmingly, some began to peel off and run up our street. First a handful and then a bunch like a river that’s found a small tributary.
                  Some of my neighbors who weren’t already outside, appeared at their windows or on their porches, many of them holding deer rifles, handguns or brandishing some type of weapon.
                  The look on their faces is cemented in my memory. A stupid, mouth agape realization of one’s own impending doom.
                  For most of them, plans to defend our tiny community were instantly forgotten at the sight of the onrushing crowd. People dashed indoors, some even dropping their weapons in the process.
                  A few stalwart men and women foolishly hunkered down on their porches or front lawns while their loved ones screamed at them from inside their homes. One fellow, I think his name was Roland, walked slowly to the center of our street and waited with a big automatic rifle perched casually in his right arm. I sat glued to my chair nervously watching things unfold while my cigarette burned forgotten in my fingers.
                  Roland stood there gallantly as the horde drew closer. It was clear he thought they would see his gun, lose heart and turn back. Of course, he didn’t know he was no longer dealing with human beings.
                  The leader of the pack was a rail-thin young man. His pale stick legs pumped furiously as he made a beeline for Roland at a dead sprint. His mouth was open in a rictus snarl. When he closed within twenty five yards Roland raised his gun and let loose at his feet with three quick warning shots.
                  The boy never hesitated at the gunfire, if anything he seemed to sprint faster with the crowd swelling behind him.
                  At ten yards and closing fast, the boy took three rounds to the chest. He slowed briefly as if stunned, his pumpkin-pie haircut wavering in the wake of his own breeze but he charged on nevertheless.
                  After seeing that, Roland screamed and turned to flee but it was too late for him. The crowd behind the boy surged past and caught Roland just as he hit the steps of his house.
                  It was like a massive gang tackle in football but instead of unpiling at the whistle, these people just kept