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.

Chapter 4

Elise couldn't work in silence, she had to have music blasting out of her speakers at the highest decibel possible. She didn't hear the banging at her door until there was a moment of silence as the track changed. She tried to remember if she had ordered a package or was expecting anyone, but nothing came to mind. And anyway, this wasn't the normal kind of knocking, this was frantic pounding at her door.

She turned her music off, looking at the clock and realizing it was after 6p.m. Milo was still by the windows, pacing anxiously back and forth. The banging wouldn't stop and she got up to look through the peephole. It was a woman in her 40s, someone she had seen a few times in the halls. She looked terrified and feeling obliged to be neighbourly and help out, Elise opened the door.

The woman practically fell on top of her, but Elise moved aside at the last moment as she splashed into Elise's apartment, turning and screeching to close the door. Elise did so, feeling panicked as he looked around for her cell phone. The woman had blood on her hands and face.

"Are you hurt?" Elise saw her phone on the coffee table and went to grab it.

"He's dead!"

Elise froze, turning around slowly as the woman curled up on her floor and started bawling her eyes out.

"Who's dead?" Elise asked slowly.

"They got my husband! He's dead! He melted! HE MELTED!!!"

Elise didn't know what to say, and the woman keep ranting.

"He brought it home! He thought it was cute! I told him to call animal control! THEN IT BIT HIM!!!"

"Brought what home?"

The woman hadn't heard her, she just kept on screaming. "He started changing!!! He melted and... and... another one of those things crawled out of him!!!"

"What thing???" Milo had started hissing at the window again and Elise grabbed her phone to dial 911.

"A giraffe," the woman sobbed, sounding defeated.

"A... giraffe..." Elise paused. Was this a joke? She almost wanted to laugh, but the woman looked serious.

"So... a giraffe crawled out of your husband?" Elise sat down on her couch, trying to think of the scientific possibility of something like that. There was none.

The woman was starting to look sick, her face becoming more and more pale with every tear she shed.

"They came after me... so I ran here."

"That blood on you..."

"They bit me too," she buried her face into her hands and cried.

"Okay," she decided to let someone else figure this one out. There was clearly nothing she could do to help this insane woman. "I'm going to call for help."

911 was busy.

"Sorry, did you really say a giraffe?" Elise looked back at the woman, but something was wrong. She seemed to be... melting. There was really no better way to describe it. Her flesh looked gelatinous and clear and it was all just melting into a puddle on the floor. Milo looked on, cocking his head slightly.

Elise didn't have enough swear words in her vocabulary to describe the fear she felt, but she gave it her best shot as she started screaming.

Then, its head emerged. It was, as far as she could tell, a perfectly formed tiny giraffe. It was a little smaller than Milo, like a lap dog. It was a lap giraffe. A lap giraffe had just crawled out of the gelatinous ooze that used to be her neighbour. It looked at her, its tiny beady eyes glaring at her, then it charged.

Elise was too shocked to move. It reached her, opening its jaws to bite into her exposed ankles, Milo sprang, grabbing it in his own jaws, snapping its long neck instantly. The giraffe wailed as Milo shook it furiously. Then it went still and Milo looked displeased, clearly not liking the taste as it started to hack.

She almost vomited then, but there were noises outside. She went to her window, pulling her drapes apart - and there were dozens more miniature giraffes on her window sill, screeching at her and baring their teeth. Elise shut the curtains, but it was too late. They had seen her and were banging on the glass, a second later one of the windows shattered and the giraffes started pouring in.

With her phone in hand she grabbed Milo and ran out of her apartment. Her phone was ringing, it had been for some time, but she was anxious to get out of there and didn't check it. She opened the doors of her apartment and stopped. The street was littered with human corpse, each one surrounded by tiny giraffes suckling at their flesh.

She saw a car with an open door, the key in the ignition. She ran into it, slamming the door and throwing Milo in the back. She sat there for a moment shaking. The giraffes had noticed her. Slowly turning their necks to stare. She stepped down on the gas pedal as hard as she could, running over a few of them as she drove away. Her phone rang again and she answered.

"What?" She shouted, swerving to miss abandoned cars on the road.

"Elise! Are you still at home?"

"Fuck no, those things got in!"

"Those things? Is it zombies? I told you this day would come!"

"Not zombies! Giraffes!"

There was a pause. "I don't think I have anything in my apocalypse kit for giraffes."

Her phone beeped at her, and Elise realized it was dying. She hadn't thought to bring her charger.

"Doesn't matter," Meagan continued. "I'm coming to get you!"

"Don't go to my apartment! They're everywhere! I left! I'm in a car!"

"Where are you?"

"I don't know!" She hadn't been paying attention to the direction she was driving in, all she knew was that there were less giraffes now. She started feeling less panicked.

"Tell me the street-"

The phone beeped a final time.

"Meagan? Meagan?!?" She looked at her phone, dead. She would have to find a store and get a charger. Suddenly the car jerked and she looked up at the windscreen just in time for a cyclist to crash into it. The glass cracked and she hit the brakes, Milo hissed in the back as the car spun.

Then, there was silence.