Author's Notes:

Squish.

Thanks to Tired Old Man and Nova Quill for their edits and suggestions.

As chunks of concrete, bits of safety glass, and bullets flew around her in a discoordinated maelstrom of mayhem and destruction, Elle took aim and rapidly squeezed the trigger of her rifle. ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ went her gun and she watched as one of her attackers suddenly fell limp, their body falling away from their stone pillar cover, a hole above their nose in the small exposed portion between their helmet and suddenly appearing before blood oozed out onto the stairs below.

Her past-alternate-timeline-parents were yelling at her, that much she knew, but it was impossible to hear them over the cacophonous sounds of gunfire from her attackers and her own rifle. ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ Elle grimaced slightly as she watched the second person she tagged disappear behind their cover as a small spray of blood splattered from their neck. With possession in play, it seemed many shots that would be fatal to humans just earned her a slew of impolite swear words, mostly in regards to her gender.

Okay, so zombie rules… Elle thought to herself.

‘Bap! Bap! Bap!’

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

Elle felt the shots as soon as she heard them. A trio of bullets that tore into her center mass hurt like the dickens, and also probably temp-wrecked an organ or two. Her parents were now screaming as a shotgun blast from Ash peppered one of the pillars and possibly messed up a face as a possessed soldier rotated back behind their cover and managed to scream. “Ow! DICK!” loud enough that Elle could somehow make it out amongst the gunfire. The shooter across from that one suddenly lost an eye from a shot behind her, likely from Applejack’s rifle. They also collapsed to the ground.

Elle took quick aim at the shooter that hit her, another fully armed and armored combatant from the, notably less secret now, secret government base under Los Angeles’ civic center. ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ The assailant spasmed as three new holes appeared in their face mask and they fell to the ground, adding their blood to the pool atop the stairs that was slowly creating a macabre fountain.

Elle switched her attention to another potential target when a sudden, stabbing pain hit her right leg, then right thigh, then her abdomen again. This was followed by a hit to her left thigh then, whoops… there went her left lung followed by her right lung. As her body rapidly decided that being upright was not an option, Elle felt a brief pain in her forehead region.

And then nothing at all.

As Elle’s bullet-riddled body hit the sidewalk at the base of the Civic Center stairs, Pinkie let out a terrified and pained shriek, the pink-haired woman nearly bolting from behind the cover of the already shot to pieces black pick-up truck she, Dan, and Chris where huddled behind. Only, a forceful tug on her right arm kept her behind the relative safety of the car.

“Are you insane!?” Dan shouted.

“Dan! I’m not just sitting around anymore!” Pinkie declared. “Elle! She’s… she’s…” Pinkie’s eyes practically shot out water.

“She’d DEAD, Pinkie!” Dan declared, his eyes widening face turning red as the words left his mouth.

Pinkie had no response. What was there to say? Slowly, lowering herself, Pinkie collapsed onto her rear, placing her leather body-suit clad back against the truck’s rear tire, as she buried her face in her hands and let powerful sobs wrack her body.

Still sheltering behind the truck with Dan and Pinkie, Chris sat down the partially eaten burger in his hand, his eyes going distant as he stared out across the open green field opposite the building he and his friends were trying to assault.

Dan took a moment to look at Pinkie, his face turning so red that it somehow became iridescent with the color. He closed his eyes and let out a scream filled with rage and anguish.

Multiple ‘BOOMS’ suddenly sounded out over the noise of gunfire as chaotic spheres of red roughly the size of a man exploded into existence under row of bullet-riddled vehicles across the street and the ones on either side of the black pick-up truck Dan, Pinkie, and Chris used as cover and similarly damaged silver Prius Applejack and Ash where behind.

For a brief moment, everything went quiet, and then the crashing noise of vehicles falling into and down on the buildings stone archways filled the air as the possessed tactical team let-out frantic screams and curses as they were suddenly buried in a conveyalanche.

Dan’s eyes suddenly flew open as confusion overtook anger on his face. “What just-Wha!” Dan felt a sudden tug on his left arm as Pinkie snatched his hand and pulled him out from behind the car, dragging him through the dust and powder kicked up from the smashed entryway to Elle’s fallen body.

“What the Hell just happened?!” Ash exclaimed as he looked across the cover towards Chris.

Still staring off into space, but now a spot even more distant than before, Chris took a deep inhale through his nose then let it out. “Elle got shot a bunch and Dan can apparently yell cars into flying at things…”

Applejack peered from behind Ash. “Uh… could he always do that?”

Chris shook his head. “No… this is new.” Chris put an arm over his mouth and stifled a cough as the white cloud of collapsed archway rolled in.

“Elle! Ellie!” Pinkie’s shrill cry came in as the not so distant sound of sirens filled the rest of the void left by the departure of gunfire.

Chris, Applejack, and Ash pushed forward coughing slightly as they waved the dissipating debris cloud from their faces.

Pinkie sat on the ground, cradling Elle’s limp body in her arms as Dan stood above the pair, staring with a face drained of color as his eyes seemingly searched for an answer to a question he wasn’t going to get a response to.

“Well… that’s unfortunate,” Ash said morosely, earning a quick glare from Applejack.

“YOU SHUT YOUR DUMB, STUPID, BUTT-CHINNED FACE, ASHLEY!” Dan snarled over the sound of Pinkie’s mournful sobbing.

Ash sighed. “Believe me, Dan… I have some experience here. Look… I know it’s the worst, but the Deadites don’t let up and if we’re not care—” Ash felt a not so gentle poke to his ribs and turned to see Applejack scowling at him.

“Hey, Ash,” Applejack said. “Not right now,” she added tersely.

Ash looked at Applejack then back towards Dan who looked like he was fighting past his sadness and back to the same rage-filled expression he had before vehicles rained from the sky.

“Alright then,” Ash said, “but we need to figure something out quick. We’re a woman short.” He pointed towards the civic center with his chainsaw arm. “That building is full of Deadites. And once the local authorities finish setting up a parameter, they’re probably not going to buy ‘things got a little out of hand on our trip to City Hall’.”

“Yeah…” Elle agreed. “That excuse would probably sound better if we made it inside before all the shooting.”

Slack-jawed faces all turned to Elle. Pinkie’s face let up. “Elle, you’re alive!”

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Ash yelled as he stomped up to the scene, leveling his double-barrel sawed-off shotgun at Elle. “She’s one of them now!”

Pinkie leaned forward and wrapped her body protectively over Elle as the pink-haired woman shot Ash an angry warning glare.

Dan simply stepped up to meet Ash before he could get right up to Elle and Pinkie, reaching out to grab the approaching man’s arms and forced both shotgun and the business end of Ash’s chainsaw out to the taller man’s sides. “What the HELL do you think you’re doing?!” Dan snarled.

Ash attempted to reclaim his appendages from Dan, but quickly determined he was somehow a ragdoll struggling against an immovable object in this situation. “It’s a trick, alright!” Ash insisted as Chris and Applejack rushed up to the scene. “There’s no way a normal human can survive that!” Ash exclaimed. “A Deadite could!”

“Oh! I’m not a Deadite!” Elle insisted. “And I’m not normal! But I’m perfectly fine!” Elle suddenly broke into a coughing fit before horking a bunch of bullets and blood into her right hand as Pinkie looked on with a mildly horrified expression. “I am at least 85 percent perfectly fine!” Elle insisted as she rotated her palm and let the bloody bullets fall to the sidewalk.

Dan took his eyes off Ash for a moment to stare at Elle in bewilderment. Ash looked downwards as a brief look of consideration flashed across his face as if debating if kicking Dan in a sensitive place would free him.

“Ah think you can let go of Ashley, now…” Applejack said as she wearily looked over Ash’s expression.

Dan turned back to Ash and glared at him. “Do you promise to leave Elle alone?”

“This has to be a trick!” Ash insisted. “These Deadites play games like this all the time! I’m kinda amazed your girlfriend hasn’t had her throat torn out.”

“I’m fine, really!” Elle insisted. “I just needed to get hurt enough so Dad would let loose! My healing factor took care of the rest!”

A series of “What?”s made there way through the rest of the group, starting with Pinkie and snaking through the other four individuals present.

Elle giggled. “Yeah, it’d take a lot more than a buncha stupid bullets to take me out! Haha! Man though… the looks on your faces when— Ack!” Elle’s head hit the pavement with a heavy ‘Smack!’ as Pinkie unceremoniously let go of her. “Owchies!” Elle exclaimed as she sat up and rubbed the back of her head.

Pinkie turned and wordlessly reached into her hair as she walked away. She pulled her pink crowbar from the tangled mass of curls atop her head and walked right up to the damaged pick-up truck where she let out a series of incomprehensible snarls and began to smash what was left of the front in.

Dan released Ash and turned towards Elle, helping her back to her feet. “Wait, so you had a healing factor this whole time and you didn’t feel that was worth mentioning?!”

Elle gave Dan a wry grin. “I may have been holding onto that information until a moment sufficiently mind-blowing came about… this seemed as good as any.”

Dan made a small snort as he mirrored Elle’s grin. “I’ll say. You really had Pinkie and me going there!”

“GROWL!”

‘Smash!’

“SNARL!”

‘Bash!’

“ROAR!” Pinkie shouted as she stood on the roof of the pickup truck and bashed about the already quite shattered windows.

Dan’s smile faltered slightly and he turned his head sideways as he tossed a glance up at Pinkie. “You really ticked off Pinkie though.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her this mad since she figured out that Grape-nuts contained neither grapes nor nuts.”

Elle snickered. “Oh, mom does this every time I recover from being shot, or exploded, or completely dismembered from an unfortunate Zamboni incident… She’ll be fine.”

“SOUNDS OF REAL ANGER!” Pinkie shouted as more rhythmic sounds of her pounding the pick-up truck rang out.

Ash just shook his head and turned to Chris. “Is this normal for you guys?”

Chris frowned heavily. “I don’t think we have a normal, but I’m even more lost than usual if that answers your question.”

Ash grunted in displeasure. “It doesn’t, pal.”

Chris just shrugged. “I really don’t know what to tell you…”

“Hey!” a raspy male voice suddenly called out from the top of the stairs. Everyone looked over to see the exposed head, right arm and torso of one of the soldiers level a rifle in their direction, their legs and other arm pinned or perhaps completely smashed by the rubble. “Payback, ass-hol—”

‘RATATATATATATATA!’

Bullets peppered the possessed would-be projectile perpetrator in the chest and arm. He silently slumped, his head and rifle falling back towards the ground.

Applejack rolled her eyes. “Do they always give away their presence with a one-liner before doing anything?”

Sighing, Ash began to march up the sets of stairs leading to the car and concrete rubble base. “Always, and without exception.”

Applejack shook her head. “Not the brightest bulbs, are they?”

Pinkie sighed and hopped off the top of the truck, gracefully landing next to it. “Not a countryism, but I guess I’ll take it…”

“Well, the Deadites sure like to play dumb!” Ash shouted back as he continued marching up the stairs as he kept his eyes on the body up top.

The soldier's head suddenly jerked back up and he raised his gun once more. “HAH! Payback is a bit… Oh…”

‘BLAM!’

Ash placed his shotgun in its shoulder holster as a mostly red-and-pink mush-filled helmet clattered down the stairs. He smirked to himself. “But they have a few tricks up their sleeve.”

Elle giggled. “Zombie rules, right?”

Ash quickly stepped on the wrist of the hand that had been holding the gun as it tried to reach and reclaim the assault rifle. “Sorry, but ‘no’, sweetheart!” Ash replied.

Dan growled in disapproval.

Ash recovered the assault rifle as the hand, now constrained by his boot, flailed about uselessly. Ash took a moment to dig his heel into the fingers and rotate it, making a sickly crunch sound as he about-faced back to the group and began walking down the stairs. “Deadites need to be dismembered if you don’t want them to keep coming back for seconds, thirds, and possibly up to twelfths or really how many numbers it takes.”

Pinkie looked at her crowbar and frowned. “No fair!”

Ash rolled his eyes as he returned to the group. “Broken bones and a smashed face certainly don’t do them any favors though.” Ash glanced behind him. “Speaking of not doing any favors, how are we supposed to get in? Captain Carscade here blocked off the main entrance!”

“You’re just jealous because you can’t throw cars at things!” Dan snapped.

“Plus it was a conveyalanche,” Pinkie insisted, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I mean… it was spelled out and everything!”

Elle frowned. “I guess we can try going around to a different entrance.”

Applejack spoke up. “Where we get to be shot at again?” she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Great…”

“Well those sirens aren’t letting up,” Ash pointed out. He shook his head. “SWAT team is probably getting snipers ready to shoot each one of us in the cabasa and piece this together later…”

Pinkie's face suddenly contorted in annoyance. "It's pronounced 'cabeza'!"

Ash shot Pinkie a quick glare. "We're maybe going to die and you're hounding me about pronunciation?"

"Yes!" Pinkie replied. "There's always time to pronounce words right!" She turned towards Dan. "Right, Dan?"

"Yeah, sure..." Dan said. "Now quiet. I'm trying to think."

Chris frowned. “I don’t want to have my cabeza shot! Plus, we still need to get in there and save Elise!”

“I’m aware of this!” Dan warbled out irritably.

Pinkie gasped. “Okay… What if we disguise ourselves as Pizza delivery men and women?!”

Applejack chuckled. “Nice to see that some things never change about any Pinkie.”

Elle rolled her steel-blue eye. “Mom. There’s so much wrong with that plan, I don’t even know where to begin. Look… I can draw their fire… get shot a bunch of times… and Dad can like… throw a bus or something.”

“Then we’d have two smashed entrances!” Ash pointed out.

Dan began to grit his teeth.

“Uh… Okay, you guys get in the bus and then I get shot a buncha times and Dad throws it! Then you step out of the bus that has been thrown through the wall!”

Ash’s face tightened. “To quote you from five seconds ago, there’s so much wrong with that plan, I don’t even know where to begin.”

Pinkie let out a frustrated, high pitched whine. “Can we PLEASE come up with a plan that doesn’t involve you getting shot?!” she shrilled.

Chris spoke up. “Also, being in a bus that ’s being thrown through a concrete wall sounds kinda… fatalish… I mean… buses usually only have about one seatbelt.”

“I call driver seat on the death bus!” Applejack exclaimed. She frowned heavily. “No, wait… this plan is still horrible.”

“Can everyone just be quiet and let me think?!” Dan snarled.

“Right, right…” Elle replied. “I forgot I’m the only mostly invincible one here…” she said as she contemplatively rubbed her chin. “Wait, so what if I’m the only one in the bus? I can get shot, dad gets mad, bus goes through the wall, and I’m inside!” Elle clapped her hands together once dramatically. “BOOM, flawless!”

Ash’s face tightened. “Just going to power past that one and remind everyone about the sirens! And Snipers! Also, the potential end of the world! Tick-tock people!”

“Shut uuuup…” Dan growled.

“Look,” Pinkie said, “If we built this large, wooden badger—”

Dan’s eyes clamped shut. “WOULD EVERYONE SHUT THEIR YAPS SO I CAN FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET US INSIDE?!”

A brief flash of red energy appeared around everyone, disappearing as soon as it had sprung into being. The sidewalk was suddenly empty, a collection of fresh blood-splattered bullets the only sign anyone had been there moments before.