This is Kathy, her shift ended an hour ago, but Kathy’s butt wipe of a friend decided to call in sick and dump the graveyard shift on her. Kathy is now extremely grumpy and sad. She has had a terrible day. Someone managed to get the automatic checkout stuck on Spanish, the Red Box refused to take a man’s credit card, and a baby threw up on isle twelve. Kathy just wants to go home. But she can’t. Poor Kathy.

Kathy stood at her register, contemplating if she would make it home in time to watch The Jersey Shore. She figured she probably wouldn’t, so instead she decided to plan on going home and watching Judge Judy. Somehow watching people with even worse lives than hers be made fun of was highly amusing, especially at one in the morning, about the time Kathy would be getting back to her dinky little apartment.

Kathy smirked involuntarily, then felt disgusted as the man she was ringing out smiled back at her with a knowing wink. Sketch ball. Kathy quickly finished the transaction and threw the man’s groceries in his cart unceremoniously, Katy was pretty sure she heard at least half of his half a dozen eggs crack. The man was about to protest when Kathy quickly called, “Next!” and someone else started to load their food items onto the conveyor belt.

This went on for about another hour as slowly but surely the masses of hungry people filtered out of the store. Kathy was watching the clock, in a half hour she could leave. In twenty nine minuets she could leave... In fact, Kathy was about to start locking up. Their was no one in the store from what she could see... wait, spoke to soon. Just as Kathy had made a move to leave her register she spotted him, this old hobo wondering around the store. He was pushing a cart with nothing in it and stopped every four paces to examine items on the shelves. Kathy called out.

“Hey! We’re closing in like twenty minuets.”

The man looked up, vaguely aware that the comment was directed at him, and just kept on shopping, or rather a lack thereof. Kathy sighed, blowing a lock of hair from her forehead. She didn’t need this, not tonight. Last thing on her list of crap to deal with was calling the police to escort the creeper from the premises. She checked her watch again... twenty one more minuets. So close, but so far. She waited another half second before grabbing the microphone next to her. The terrible soft rock music playing across the store cut out as her fractured voice echoed across the whole store.

“Attention shoppers, the store will be closing in fifteen minuets. Please proceed to the checkout with your items.” She waited, the odd old man did not appear. Kathy sighed in relief, maybe he left out the back exit. That thought gave her a quick glimmer of hope. That glimmering thought was quickly mutilated as she saw the man come out from an isle near the deli. At least this time, Kathy could see that there were in fact items in his cart. Maybe he was about to check out? Yes! Here he came, walking with his little hobble over to her cash register, pushing the creaky cart along as slow as he possibly could.

Finally he reached the magazine rack, thankfully he didn’t stop to peruse them, he just started to load up his groceries on the conveyor belt. Kathy pushed the switch and they glided over to her. She half expected to see alcohol, which she was supposed to tell the man they did not sell past nine o’clock, but she probably would not brother to tell him that. What Kathy was not prepared to see rolling towards her were about a dozen or so cans of cheese whizz.

Now, there were questions Kathy would always regret asking, like “Where do babies come from?” and “Why isn’t Chewy moving, mommy?”. Those questions had emotionally scarred her for life. But the question she was about to ask this old man had the definite possibility of ending her life all together.

“Why are you buying all this cheese whizz?” The question just kind of came out, like burping in public, or explosive diarrhea. And like having explosive diarrhea in public, it was about to cause her quite a good deal of unnecessary trouble.

At first the hobo did not respond, just started at Kathy, like she was the insane one for working a double shift at FoodWorld for minimum wage and no benefits, and not he for buying a gross amount of fake cheese in a spray can.

“Well, you see m’dear,” he started to say in a think accent. “this here cheese kills!”

Kathy assumed, as most normal people would, that this old person was referring to the health dangers of ingesting this foodstuff. Kathy was in fact, bracing her self for a long lecture on trans fats and sodium intake and all the other things that were going to kill her someday, but not fast enough. This was all of course completely wrong, and Kathy quickly realised her mistake when the man kept on talking.

“Y’see, their a’commin!” He shouted, waving his arms dramatically. Kathy cocked an eyebrow unimpressed and continued to rhythmically scan the cans of cheese. “The Creatures of the Night!” At this point he was off into a full blown frenzy, stomping and waving and making strange gurgling noises. Kathy tried her best to ignore him and just finish scanning the items, there were only a few cans left, she could make it.

Kathy was officially off shift as of five minuets ago, and she was fighting the urge to just throw down the bottle of cheese whizz and walk away. Freddie was on the next shift, he could deal with this man. But, as usual, Freddie wasn’t here yet- Freddie was never here. In fact, the only reason Freddie hadn’t been fired yet was that his mom was the manger. So, Kathy couldn’t storm out yet, she had to finish this last purchase and then she could go home and binge on ice cream.

Kathy’s heart sank as she heard the man keep talking.

“They eat you brain, y’see!”

“Cash or credit!” Kathy shouted, interrupting the man’s rant. The man proceeded to stare blankly at her, almost as if he was insulted that she would ever actually ask him to pay for his zombie fighting weapons. After a three minuet staring contest, Mr. Zombie Killer forked over the money. Kathy noted it was all in crumpled singles and at least three dollars worth of quarters.

With a slam, Kathy closed the cash draw, gave the man his change and receipt and rolled all the cans into one bag, which she thrust in his face. Kathy could see he was about to talk more, and reacted by turning the light off on her lane and stalking away towards the staff room. Kathy would swear she heard him say something to her as she walked away, but she didn’t catch what exactly he had said, and at the moment she really didn’t care.

Kathy was punching out, just as Freddie arrived.

“You’re late,” she snapped at him as she stuffed her FoodWorld shirt into her purse. He made a face at her but didn’t say anything back, Kathy had the sneaking suspicion he had a crush on her. Kathy very much wanted to stamp that hope out of him, physically.

She turned and left without looking back, she didn’t stop her determined power walk until she had reached the parking lot and was well away from the doors. She stopped to sigh and take a breath. It had been a long day, she deserved like a coffee or something. She’s go find a place that was still open and pick something up for herself. Like she said, she deserved it.

Kathy wandered the parking lot confused for a moment, not entirely sure where she had parked her car. She finally found it, the giant dent in the back bumped was hard to miss, not to mention the disgusting regurgitated red wine color of the chipped paint.

Kathy popped the trunk, threw in her various personal belongings and affects, closed the trunk and walked back to the front of the car where she was going to open the driver side door, sit down and drive home. This latter part of her plan was foiled when she walked around the car and saw a man leaning against. Upon seeing this, Kathy had the perfectly normal human reaction. She screamed unintelligibly and began hitting him in the face. The man then also proceeded to scream, but something slightly more intelligible along the lines of, “Oh my God my face! You hit me in the face God damn it!” Before Kathy knew what was going on, she found herself covered in cheese whizz.

Quickly getting over her fear and now being completely possessed by rage, Kathy was about to start beating the living daylight out of the cheese whizz wielding hobo. But not soon enough, before Kathy could land her first blow something screeched from near by. The hobo grabbed Kathy and threw her to the ground, for the next thirty second all Kathy knew was that her elbow was smarting and fake cheese was raining down on her. Also, she was partially aware that a creature from the under world was on top of her car. Kathy risked sitting up on her good elbow to get a glimpse of the action, she quickly wished she had just continued to feign unconsciousness. From her worm’s eye prospective, Kathy could see a deformed creature that was only just recognizable as humanoid, on top of her car, and a few paces away was her hobo friend loading cans of cheese whizz into custom designed guns. The first thought in Kathy’s mind was if her insurance would pay for the damages to her car, her second thought was when she remembered she didn’t have car insurance. Her final thought was to scream again.

If you are still unsure as to what exactly was on top of Kathy’s car, it was in fact a zombie. If you are unsure what exactly a zombie looks like, let me enlighten you. This particular zombie was that odd shade of green that somehow managed to be almost purple. If you know anything about color theory you should be aware that purple and green make a blueish brown when mixed together, so a purple green color is technically impossible to make, and the only logical explanation for the zombie’s color is that it was slightly phosphorescent. So, depending on the light, it either appeared purple or green, sometimes both. Much like a pigeon. Unlike a pigeon, this zombie was large and flesh eating. It’s head was extended forwards, somewhat like a horse's, but with large impractical teeth. The longest teeth coming in around a foot and a half long. From these teeth dripped poisonous saliva like a Komodo dragon. The rest of it’s body was scaly in patches but most of it was decaying flesh that fell off occasionally. In general the zombie gave off the appearance of being slimy and rotting, which it was.

Kathy could only sit on the ground and watch the epic battle. She continued to scream occasionally, but once the initial shock had worn off, Kathy became aware of how stupid she seemed, and shut up.

The zombie made the first move, it leaped off Kathy’s car in one fluid motion, leaving behind it a trail of radio active goop. One of it’s mutilated hands grew claws that looked surprisingly sharp and remarkably like they had been made from bone. It flailed half way through its arc, desperately raking the air as it attempted to land on its intended victim. The hobo’s reaction wasn’t very fast, he was busy examining his ear wax before he noticed his oncoming death in the form of a decaying zombie thing. The hobo clicked off what may have been a safety and pulled back on something else, none of this really seemed to do anything other than make it look more like a shot gun. When he finally got around to pulling the trigger, an anti-climatic gush of cheese flowed from the nozzle. It only went about two feet before it lost its momentum, but by then the zombie was almost on top of him so two feet was actually over kill.

Now for completely unexplained reasons, that shall forever remain unexplained, this cheese crippled the zombie. Smoke rose from its body where the cheese whizz had made contact. It screeched and writhed in an over dramatic way most people have only ever seen in “Wizard Of Oz”, except the wicked witch is a zombie and the water is cheese whizz. Other than that it was totally the same though. If you looked closely you could even see the flying monkeys in the background, but that is a different story for another time, not now.

The hobo triumphantly stepped on the zombies head, as the skull cracked apart even more rotting flesh was splattered along the ground. Kathy was now in complete shock and could only stare dumbfounded at the gruesome scene before her. Her jaw fell slightly lower as she watched the hobo take out a large hunting knife and tear open the zombie’s stomach, or possibly large intestine, Kathy had never been very good at anatomy. From it, he scooped out some dark brownish stuff which he proceeded to place in a small jar and pocket happily.

“I knew this here was the one that eated me brains!” At which point the hobo turned around and started to walk away. Kathy tottered to her feet and raised her hand in protest, about to shout at him not to just leave her there. But before Kathy could utter a sound about a half dozen more zombies appeared from the shadows and devoured the hobo, jar of brains and all.

Kathy lowered her hand and walked away, back to the doors of FoodWorld. She walked in and past the displays of candy and magazines with this glazed far away look in her eyes, like she was stoned or something. She sat down hard on the bench by the can deposit machine, only looking up when Freddie walked over to her.

“Thought you left,” he said with this glimmer of hope in his voice. Had she come back for him?

“I tried...” said Kathy disjointedly, “but... I couldn’t.”

Freddie was almost ecstatic.

“Kathy...”

“Freddie...?”

They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, Freddie trying to subtly lean closer to her face. He was oblivious to the cheese whizz and zombie guts all over her. Subtle things like that often went unnoticed by Freddie.

“I love you, Kathy.” He whispered, going in for the kiss.

“I- wait what?” Kathy snapped to at that moment and was about to sucker punch Freddie in the jaw, but never got the chance to, about some twenty odd zombies broke through the automatic doors and began ravaging the store.

That was the last anyone ever heard of Lucy. She never made it home to watch Judge Judy, which is a pity since it was a really good episode.