“PHAT!” Charlotte yelled. “PHAT, what do I do?”

Worryingly, the robot still wasn’t answering and the growls were getting closer.

“I-I’m sorry! Really! I won’t talk bad about the Makers ever again! Ju-just please, tell me what to do!”

Her head was empty. No annoyingly cheerful voice giving her advice; no warnings, no nothing. She nearly broke down into tears right then and there.

Charlotte rubbed at her stinging eyes, cursing her terrible luck. “First the robot goes dark and now there are even more zombies…And I’m still not cured.”

Miraculously, she still had control over the anima barrier in her arm. Now she just needed to keep it up during the fight.

Her stomach curled at the thought of fighting even more of these freaky creatures. Her right arm would be entirely useless, leaving her with an unwieldy bat she couldn’t lift and her wits.

Her wits. Right. She still had her brain, right? At least something was going her way for once.

Focus, Charlotte. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. What was she gonna do? What could she do? The zombies were too fast for her to put up a proper fight. She’d struggled against even one of them and, by the sound of the growls, there were multiple.

She’d had luck on her side when she fought her first zombie and even then it cost her the use of her right arm. She didn’t fancy losing her left one to the monsters.

Her mind raced as she tried to come up with a decent solution to her problem, all the while trying to gauge how long she had until they came for her. Some small part of her brain wondered how she was thinking coherently through the pain and panic she most certainly should’ve been going through, but she silenced it with a new plan.

She would need to ambush them! The zombie had got the drop on her when it burst through the door; she wasn’t expecting such a sudden assault. She wasn’t sure if zombies could get surprised as humans could, but it was worth a shot, right?

Charlotte bent down and hooked her arm around the handle of the bat. She dragged it over toward the open doorway, noting how the metal spikes carved light gouges into the cabin floor. She didn’t know how useful that information would be for later, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep it in mind.

She stooped down a bit more to get more leverage and hefted the bat back on her shoulder. With it properly secured, Charlotte took her place a step behind the wooden door hanging loosely on its hinges and stuck her foot out as far as it could go without her toppling over.

The plan was simple. A zombie would run into the cabin and trip over her foot; when it fell to the ground, she would drop her bat on its head, killing it instantly. The first zombie had fallen fairly easily so there was no reason to suspect it wouldn’t happen again.

Zombies weren’t known for their intelligence, right? Right, of course, they weren’t. She reassured herself that the plan was going to work, shifting the bat ever so slightly to make it rest more comfortably. The heavy thing was digging into her shoulder painfully, but there was nothing she could do until she killed the oncoming creatures.

Speaking of which, where were they? The growls were close; one should’ve run in already. Had she been mistaken? Was the zombie she killed the only one she had to worry about?

It made sense that she might’ve been hearing things. Feeling exhausted, apprehensive, and in a lot of pain, there was a good chance there was nothing out there.

She sighed with relief, shrugging the bat off of her shoulder. “God, I can’t believe I went through all that just for-”

A pale hand burst through the fragile door, missing her face by half a centimeter. She screamed and lurched backward, narrowly avoiding the grasping hand once more.

Before she could retreat further into the cabin, a second-hand tore through the door with unnatural strength and seized her injured arm. She cried out as it brutally jerked her forward, slamming her head into the wood.

Dazed, she felt the grasp of her anima loosen just a bit before she managed to regain control. She nearly lost it again when the claws of the first hand sank into her left shoulder, digging through the fatty tissue beneath the skin and nearly touching the bone.

Through her agonizing pain, Charlotte had just enough brainpower to realize that she needed to get out of this situation before she lost another arm. She planted her feet and yanked her arm out of the zombie’s grip. She wasn’t even thinking when she grabbed the creature’s wrist and, with a surge of anima, pulled its hand from her shoulder, only gasping sharply as she extracted its claws from within her arm.

The zombie tried to pull its arm back but Charlotte refused to let it slip from her grasp. She twisted its wrist sharply, hearing a satisfying crack as the bone snapped. The creature on the other side of the door barely grunted as it continued its efforts in retrieving its arm, going so far as to try to claw at her again with its free one.

Charlotte sidestepped the attack, still clutching her hostage arm tightly. She tripped over the bat left forgotten on the floor and fell, taking the rotting limb with her to the ground.

Staring at the torn arm in her clutches, Charlotte thought with horrid amusement, Now I’ve got something I can hit it with.

As she struggled to her feet, the zombie stepped around the door, identical to her first zombie besides its missing limb. An unholy screech sounded from its mouth as it lunged toward her. On instinct, she swung the arm in her hands at its forehead. She swung too early and just managed to clip its jaw.

The zombie collided roughly with her middle, shouldering her into the wall. Its head sprang upward, jaws open wide as it reached for her neck. Her injured arm snapped up to block its mouth from her neck, knowing it would be better to worsen this one than to sacrifice her one okay arm.

She gritted her teeth as its fangs ripped her old wounds open further. Burning saliva made its way into her blood and the invading infection in her arm swelled in size. She ignored it and the claws digging into her sides, shredding her uniform and cutting into her love handles.

Tensing her arm, she pushed the zombie away from her body. It bit down harder as if it was trying to bite through her limb but she ignored the pain in favor of grabbing her improvised weapon with her non-injured arm.

The zombie reached up to claw at it but she smacked the top of its head with its own arm. That was almost enough for her to free her captured arm so she hit it harder, managing to put a slight dent in its skull. Again, the fleshy makeshift weapon once again came down upon the zombie’s skull as she pulled her forearm from its mouth. It released her and fell to the ground, twitching slightly. She raised her leg and stomped on its head.

A rush of anima into her core notified her of the zombie’s death but she couldn’t let herself relax now. She’d made that mistake once already. She took a cautious step forward and kicked at the wooden door. Her light assault on it wasn’t enough to break through the wood, thankfully, and it swung closed or, at least, as close as it could be hanging on two hinges.

Charlotte studied the bruised and battered zombie arm she’d used to bash its brains out. It was already falling apart after she’d killed the thing but it had taken a pretty good beating. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be worth much if she came to blows with another zombie, which she expected to happen very soon.

Okay, she thought, dropping the useless arm. What did we learn? One, zombies are capable of basic intelligence, like stopping their growling when they got close and shoving their hands through the door, Two, if I hit its head hard enough, it goes into some kinda comatose state. Future attacks should involve aiming for the top of the head or at least in that general area, I guess. Three, even though I’ve been scratched by its claws, the only infection site is coming from my arm, so it’s reasonable to assume their saliva spreads the parasite. And, I guess, it has to get in my bloodstream?

She absent-mindedly wiped some spittle that had landed on her face, flicking it off of her stubby fingers with disgust. Yeah, it didn’t burn like before. Mental note to make sure all cuts are completely covered up. Speaking of cuts, my body is a complete mess right now…which I’m surprisingly calm about. What am I in some sort of post-battle super calm state or something?

She shook her head. Focus, Charlotte! I need to do a body check. My head kind of hurts from hitting it on the door, but I feel relatively okay, so I don’t think I’ve got a concussion. My right arm is useless except for keeping zombies away from my face and its claws cut pretty deep into my left arm.

She tested lifting her arm up, wincing as the movement stretched the cuts in her arm. It’s okay, for now, but I’m definitely going to need something to cover that up. I can’t have another possible infection site. What can I use, though?

She considered tearing off pieces of her uniform, as it hadn’t been that helpful in protecting her. Noting the shallow cuts in her sides, she made another mental note that she would need to cover them up as well.

Going into battle buck naked didn’t seem like a good idea, so she scrapped that. But she still had her bathrobe, right? If she could find something to tear up the fabric, she could use it as a temporary bandage for her wounds.

Stepping over the zombie corpse, she waddled over to her ratty neon pink bathrobe. Picking it up with one hand, Charlotte tried to figure out how she could tear it apart. She couldn’t rip it; not with one hand. She didn’t have a knife she could use to tear it, either. Something sharp…The zombie claws!

She retrieved her discarded arm weapon, carefully sat down, and placed it in-between her thick thighs. Clenching the limb tightly between her legs, she precariously tried to dislodge the claw attached to the forefinger. It resisted her efforts to pull it out so she resorted to other means.

Thinking back toward the earlier fight, she remembered how she’d subconsciously used her anima to pull the zombie’s arm off of her and even twist it as she did; she was certain that was what allowed her to rip it out of its socket as well.

That subconscious use of anima has brought forth a tidal wave of energy that strengthened her, no doubt that’s how she hit the zombie’s head so hard, too. If she could actively use her anima in such a way without such inefficient waste, she could receive that same strength.

She tapped into her core, sensing the warm anima inside. Taking it under control, she tried to mimic the same thing she did before. Except she didn’t really know what she did. The anima had just come up and then she was stronger.

Perhaps her subconscious had given the anima an order? Ugh. Figuring this out would be a lot easier if PHAT were here.

Howls from outside the cabin disrupted her frustrated deliberations. Just how many zombies was she going to face before she got a break?