Fifi here, I just want to say that drugs are bad, don't do them.

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Nicole set to work on the greatest pyre I've ever seen to date. She started by tearing open full cartons of cigarettes and dumping boxes of cigars and wrapping paper into the kindling pile. She dropped the cardboard boxes they came in right on top, flipped over the office table and somehow broke it into thirty nearly identical pieces. Even Doug was surprised and more than a little proud judging by the grin on his face.

Even though the cartons were torn asunder and not even close to as square as they had started, the stack was a perfect pyramid with a straight scaffolding of wood in the center. Then we all filled the scaffolding with sticks, cones and cubes of various incense, hookah bricks and (to Nicole's obvious sadness) Cannabis.

That's about when I noticed a flaw in our plan, "hey, um, how are we going to get through the smoke, and the fire?"

Nicole said something that I'm still trying to make sense of to this day, "the walls of this room are all brick, except where Doug just broke through, I think that used to be a doorway. Plus, this fire will burn quick and make a lot of smoke."

Doug, "I'm not sure why you know these things about the building Nicole and I don't think I want to know too much about your pyro ways, but tactically we'll need to be in the next room over so we can shut the security gate and you can shoot at the... at the elephant... with your bolts. So we have to go through the smoke."

Fifi, "and the hoard."

"Probably. With any luck their backs will be turned though."

From the supplies in the corner of the room they pulled an extra large unicorn sweater, a very articulate steampunk gas mask with large breathing drums, and an actual ninja mask. Fifi, Nicole and Jackie Doug wrapped their faces, respectively.

It took one flick of a lighter for the pyre next to the door to go up. The paper and cigarettes made a ring around the stack, then the flames took hold of the middle and wisps of red licked the door. Before either of us could stop him, Jackie leaped over the fire with his foot extended like a battering ram.

He pounded through the door and rolled to his feet on the other side in a cloud of smoke and a spray of embers against the ground.

A muffled voice behind me didn't miss a beat, "up you go Fifi."

Nicole's hands hooked my armpits and launched me screaming at Jackie. I landed so quickly and gently I'm still not sure if he caught me at all.

The room turned to silence.

We had to wait for the smoke to billow into the zombie bugs before we tried to move but some of them had caught wind of our presence (given the exploding door and the sudden arrival of two martial artists holding Bo staffs menacingly in front of a little girl they were tossing about).

Jackie twirled his Bo staff into the smoke to squish the incoming swarm. I would have thought he had an electric fly swatter with how easy it seemed for him.

Everything behind us slowly turned to embers as the world was replaced with darkness. For a moment I can see the figures before me with their white robes contrasting the world around.

Then Jackie vanished.

Nicole told me, "stay close," and started moving through the shop.

There was nothing to see for a few steps, but Nicole seemed to know where she was going. When she wasn't sure of her footing she made strange circular steps that kept her feet in front of her.

I bumped into a rack full of roaring gargoyle ash trays and statuettes. I saw their faces for only a moment, but those faces were all I saw for the next minute as we slowly ran out of air to breathe.

The next thing I saw was the squishy, hole-riddled nest against the bottom of the wall. Some bugs suffocated and fled weakly, others flew in angry patterns through the air until they succumbed to exhaustion.

On a glass countertop, a VolareX1 carrying bug crawled around inside a hookah pipe before becoming too weak to climb and falling to the pile of dead and dying bugs at the bottom.

Then, out of nowhere, I came face-to-face with an open mouthed jaguar.

"Pogo?"

As the smoke shifted I noticed it was the middle of a ceramic totem pole. A screeching eagle with a black king cobra resting on its shoulders, its face fanned out and ready for violence. A full sized bear cub was underneath holding the whole thing up on his back. I jumped and all of my muscles stiffened causing my unicorn sweater-mask to slide off.

The rest of the countertop came into view. A wide variety of ashtrays, Hookah pipes, necklaces, stun guns and nun-chucks littered the inside of the display case. Don't ask me why they sold that stuff at the smoke shop, but they did.

The world became somewhat tilty and I was seeing things in all kinds of color. All colors except the white of Nicole's robe.

I was alone aside from the line of confused undead shuffling around near the edge of the smoke. I heard the sound of shattered glass from deeper in the store so I followed the countertop away from the zombies.

I caught a glimpse of Nicole clipping pocket knives to her black belt. She slipped on a pair of brass knuckles and sent a massive hook into the smoke beside her. I think I might have been turned around because I remember wandering out into the mall lobby for a second, but the lack of air made me pass out.

When I came to I was being dragged into the toy store. Doug's big Karate stick comes down on the back of a zombie's head. It was more or less the wall that broke his staff, but it was the crumpled zombie that caused the final break.

Doug closed gate while still on the other side. He looked Nicole in the eyes as if he had last words to say but they didn't come to mind fast enough. He simply lifted his arm to show us that he'd been bitten before turning to face the hoard. I was too dazed and confused to tell him about the cure.

Jackie didn't throw a flurry of strikes, he was a flurry of strikes. His simple roundhouse kick knocked over one zombie and gave momentum to his low sweep kick with the back of his leg. He went from low to high in the same spin with a crescent kick that snapped a heart-spawns neck. Then he kept the spin going for another, before ending with a corkscrew flip that brought his foot down to a skull like it was an axe.

This last strike left him spread eagle on the ground but Jackie just rolled with the fall all of the way back to his feet. Then he started using his hands. He moved so fast that I couldn't describe it if I tried. All I can say is that I later counted twenty-five dead or immobile zombies and twelve heart-spawn.

"Fifi? Fifi!? Fuck!" Nicole looked deep into my eyes and I chuckled, "hehe, toys."

"Shit, Fifi, you're a little high, but you should be fine..." Her gaze was fixed on something behind me, "Fifi, don't panic, don't turn around, just slowly get behind me."

I turned around immediately and let out a joyous squeal at Pogo who had saved me from the smoke. He licked his paw one time and curled up with some bean bags in the corner.

"You know this tiger?"

"He's a jaguar and he's my spirit animal."

"Oh-kay, just stand here and shoot stuff, I'll clean up the toy store. Just don't shoot Doug? It'll wear off, I promise."

"Okay," but I was already gazing out at the crowd and Doug had a massive red X over him. The Zombie hoard was lit up like a video game with health bars and type descriptions; crawlers, normies, freshly turned, wasp filled, heart-spawn, and of course Benny the Elephant. Everything that couldn't be saved (heart-spawns and wasp-filled) had a massive target on its forehead. The rest of them had various cross-hairs on their kneecaps and arms.

One glance at the glowing HUD on my crossbow told me I had 93 bolts and a half clip on my hip. I lined up a shot across the mall, around Benny, onto the stage where Jess and Jim were getting rushed by the crowd. The bolt skimmed Jimmy's cheek and pinned a zombie by the skull into the wall of amplifiers behind it.

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