Family.

{Sci-fi horror minis, part II!}
Teenagers of mixed sex in close company was a poor recipe for life.
Harrowed, hungry, bitter, deranged teenagers of mixed sex in a small, tightly-knit group of apocalyptic survivors was a perfect recipe for disaster. In normal high-school cliques, drama is rampant. In these disillusioned, disturbed groups, it was a necessity for life.
He saves her, she falls for him. She dies beneath the undead’s gnawing jaws, he screams bloody murder and does something stupid. Another she saves him, and the cycle starts again.
People are always dying, people are always being found, but there’s never enough people to go around, or any sane ones, for that matter. Wren was fully aware of this.
She and her twin brother, Jericho, had been members of a wandering survivor clan for two years, and she had finally lost everything but her closest sibling. She lived and breathed the drama, the thrill, the psychotic beauty of living for today, and even the stupidity of their predicament.
The clan was constantly divided.
There were always the ownership feuds over girls, boys, food, clothing, the right weapons, the best books, even the grotesque mementos of victory over the zombie hoards. People got angry, hit, clawed, threw things, but at the end of the day, they were all members of the same wacked-out, loving survivor family.
And then, of course, there was the old-fashioned hatred.
Everyone hated Jay.
Jay was blond, skinny, lanky, and appeared to be in a passionate romance with cowardice. At the beginning of his introduction to the Survivor’s clan, his constant screaming, running, and sobs were dismissed as normal newbie behavior. He’d just seen his entire high-school gutted, reanimated, made bloodthirsty, and mowed down by his newfound companions- the best thing for everyone would be for him to stick to the back of the group, be given charge of a low-caliber firearm, and be protected. When this behavior did not change after months, and, eventually, a year, of duty, people began to notice, and eventually, the hatred set in.
It was subtle, at first. Simple teasing, maybe a dismembered zombie jaw in his sleeping bag, nothing too very serious, until Vex came aboard.
Vex was over six feet tall, with a wirey hair, a wirey build, and a meanstreak several states wide. He liked to bludgeon, liked the feeling of cold infected blood on his face, and decorated his person with a necklace fashioned from teeth ripped from his more notable kills. He was abrasive, psychotic, and absolutely irresistible. Unfortunately, he had a fascination with Jay’s cowardice, and decided one very clear day that it was his personal duty to plunge dear Jay’s life even further into the bowels of Hades. He unloaded Jay’s pistols as the lesser teen slept, sent him on errands that would deliver him into the hands of hundreds of starving undead, and once even tripped him whilst the group fled from a particularly ravenous pack. However, these offenses were nowhere near as the one Vex had only very recently laid against Jay. Only the night before, as they drew close to the dim glow of the corpse-fire (and Wren drew close to Vex), the cruel boy shared a piece of ‘knowledge’ gleaned from years of skull-crushing experience. Apparently, he said, if you kissed an infected directly on the mouth when pinned without hope of rescue, it would shock the poor sucker enough to give you the opportunity for escape. Jay was skeptical, but remained silent. Everyone seemed to have accepted it as fact, anyway.
The next firefight occured within hours. The sun rose, the survivors awoke, and the screams and grunts began to seep over from across the abandoned train tracks. It was only a matter of time before the infected hoard began to swarm, and when Jay attempted to back away, screaming he found little option for escape. Within a matter of minutes, a ragged female zombie had noticed and pounced.
As Jay fell beneath the crushing weight of the female infected, he didn’t even have the breath to scream. Her elongated canines snapped inches from his face, and the crude scrap of twisted metal that he held longways against her ribcage kept her from burying them in his jugular. The survivor clan gawked, but no one tried too hard to fight their way over to the fallen boy; after all, everyone hated him.
As the girl drew closer, all Jay could think of was Vex’s well-researched advice. She recoiled for a final, closer strike, temporarily drawing her lips back over her fangs, and he decided on the desperate maneuver. Summoning all his strength, he shot upwards, pushing the bar up and forward, and locked lips with the monster.
It worked.
The girl was stunned, and fell backwards just enough for Jay to grab his pistol, jam it against the side of her head, and scream as he unloaded three rounds into her skull. Cranial pudding, as Jericho called it.
The remaining survivors had by then dispatched their opponents, and as Jay drew himself to his feet, brushing the splattered grey matter from his clothes, they gawked once again.
“What?” He asked, shakily.
“I can’t believe that worked.” Vex stammered, pointing with his shotgun at the corpse. “God, the last man who tried that lost most of his face.”
Jay sighed, and holstered his pistol. “I’m just lucky, I guess.”
The survivors gradually broke out in stunned applause.
And so began Jay’s days as a member of the family.