barry santos was chewing a gum when the alarm sounded. he, along with a dozen other survivors, grabbed arms as they settled on their tried-and-tested positions in front of the theater doors.

only one of them had a gun. that meant twelve of them must rely on other kinds of weapons. barry had fashioned a bludgeoning stick from a set piece he found back stage. his friend and co-actor felix yuzon had a bow and a number of arrows on his person. they made one hell of a team.

the theater doors opened and the first thing to hit barry was the smell. it wasn’t this bad before. three days ago, when all of these started, there were no smell. that’s how they lost around a hundred people from the initial outbreak. they hadn’t known that there was a z-head in their midst until it was too late.

six of the now thirteen survivors were performers. barry and felix had been standing on stage when the z-heads started munching. truth be told, location saved the two of them from being killed. grace benavidez, their lead star, had been in her dressing room when the attacks began. she never made it out of her room alive.

but now, there was no mistaking which ones were z-heads, and which ones were actual zombies. zombies had no scent, the z-heads smelled like they just rose from the sewers.

as the first wave of z-heads ran towards them, barry swung his bludgeoning weapon with all his might. it made contact. felix had let loose a volley of arrows from behind him.

when this began, barry felt sorry about killing z-heads. after all, they were human too. but as time went on, and z-heads kept popping up and eating their fellow men—well, barry thought it would be more humane for them to permanently stop these individuals from harming other people, and themselves.

tonight though, barry felt that there’s something different about the z-heads.

“barry, i’m out of arrows.” barry turned to felix as two z-heads overpowered him and he crashed to the floor. one z-head took a bite out of felix’s arm. and that’s when barry saw what was bugging him: these z-heads had bite marks. none of the previous z-heads they encountered before had bite marks.

“fall back!” he shouted. five of them had already gone down like felix. that meant there were only seven of them left standing. seven was enough. barry shouted again, “fall back!”

but no one paid him any attention. not until their supposedly dead comrades started rising.

their latest wave of z-heads weren’t z-heads. at least, not anymore. these were real zombies. and none of them were prepared for the real things.

barry thought back to his scent theory. he made a mental note to bash the next z-head zombie that comes near him through the nose.

the next zombie he faced was his friend felix. barry sighed, swung and connected.