Chapter 8

As Elise ran down Tansley Avenue with Milo by her side she briefly tried to figure out how she had gotten herself into a situation where she was being chased through the suburbs by hundreds of lap giraffes. She realized it was because the alarm in her office had gone haywire, otherwise she still would have been downtown when the outbreak reached its zenith - and when she thought about why the alarm went haywire she remembered the construction workers holding the frayed wires.

Had the giraffes eaten through the wires? She almost felt like there was something important in that knowledge but she was too focused on running away and not nearly paranoid enough to figure it out.

She was running out of road to run down and the giraffes were only gaining on her. She realized she'd have to stand and fight and wait for Meagan to get there, and as she stopped and turned around she took one look at the orange horde before her and knew this was the end. Still, she raised her golf club and swung at the first giraffe to attack.

The next one, as though it had learned from the mistake of the first giraffe, leaped up at Elise. Their jumping was formidable, but Milo could jump just as high and he intercepted the giraffe midair, talking it back to the ground in a death roll as Elise started swinging wildly at the giraffes.

Too soon the golf club gave in. She missed a giraffe, hitting the pavement and it bent into nearly a 90 degree angle. In a last effort to hold the giraffes at bay she threw the club into the mass, but the giraffes only gracefully leapt over it.

In another second she would have been dead, but suddenly a car tore through the giraffes and came to a stop in front of Elise. A petite blonde was behind the wheel and Elise almost burst into tears as she recognized the driver as Meagan. She opened the back door and dove in, Milo finishing one last kill and jumping after her. Elise slammed the door and Meagan smiled back at her.

"Now who's crazy for keeping a GOOD bag?"

"Now is not the time for I told you so's!"

"Fine, so long as we're clear that I told you so!"

Elise crawled into the front seat. "Are you gonna drive away, or what?"

Meagan looked at the dashboard with a frown on her face. "Hm..."

"What?" Elise felt worried.

"I sped here. All the way here. I barely slowed down to take corners."

"So what?"

"Speeding's not so good on the gas mileage."

"Oh my god... Are we out of gas???"

The giraffes were starting to jump on the car, stomping on the windshield with their miniature hoofs.

"There's the jerrycan in the trunk. We just have to fold down the back seat, grab it..." We both turned to look out the window.

There was no way one of us could go out there to refill the gas tank without being eaten alive.

"This isn't a problem," Meagan was muttering to herself, going over the list of all her supplies in her head. There had to be something they could use to distract the giraffes long enough to fill the gas tank-

Suddenly a giraffe wailed in pain as a large wooden bolt ripped through its stomach and threw it off the car. Meagan instantly recognized it as a bolt from a crossbow, though from the looks of it a medieval style crossbow.

"Look!" Meagan pointed towards the direction the shot had come from. A man was standing in an alley, loading another bolt as the giraffes turned their attention to him and began jumping off the car to go after him.

He made some hand gestures to them that Elise didn't understand, but Meagan thought might mean: "I'll be right back."

They could only stare on in silence as the man turned to run and all the giraffes disappeared after him.

"Now!" Meagan hissed and they both crawled into the back of the car and folded down the back seats to get at Meagan's things. It was packed full of supplies and bags and boxes and before they could get a hold of the jerrycan the door to the car suddenly opened and a tall dark haired man stuck his head in.

Meagan's eyes seemed to light up, but before she could say anything he held a finger up to his mouth. Meagan nodded and handed a particularly heavy bag to Elise, grabbed one herself and the two girls and one feline followed the man across the street. He took them around an apartment building to a back door that he carefully opened, keeping his a look out for giraffes.

When they were finally inside, the door safely shut and locked, Meagan started smiling.

"Steve," she finally whispered.