She is what she is...dead

She was a zombie and a zombie, she was. She recalls ringing in her ears as truck hit the back of her bike and the front metal grill smashed into the back of her skull. She recalls the lights fading through the muffled gasps and screams of people around her for an ambulance. She even recalls the sense of cold as her heart stopped beating. What she does not recall is ever wanting to eat brains.

That was the stereotype from movies and horror novels. Undead beings roaming the streets without a thought in their heads only sensing the living and seeking the next meal hidden within their skulls like the crab shacks she used to go to while visiting family on the east coast. Now she only sees heat patterns in people and the shocked crowd backing away as she stands between the paramedics crouched and falling backwards as they had just pronounced her dead on the scene. She could see them clearly as she had to lift her head to see any direction other than straight down. Her neck muscles seemed to be failing her post-crash and she had to place a hand on each temple to direct her line of sight. It would be difficult to get back on her bike and ride home this way, but she had to get home. The remodelers were installing the granite counter top in the new kitchen today and she would rather die than miss that. She figured she could grab a handful of hair and ride home that way, but she was not about to mess up the 45 minutes of blow-drying from the morning.

As the masses parted, she could see the police coming forward tentatively with guns drawn. They were not sure what to make of this situation. It was not within the realm of standard police procedure, but coming back from the dead could be considered a time for "proceed with caution" and that's what they were doing now.

Becka reached down for her bike and stopped. Lying at her feet were both bicycle wheels stacked on top of each other. Each was still attached to the frame bent in half from the truck's front bumper crushing it as the bike turned sideways and the back wheel had caught on the pavement. With a shrug of her shoulders, she began to walk home directly in the path of the police officers aiming at her.

Through what seemed like miles of water, she heard a muffled voice screaming to her. It was the officer in front of her and he was shaking. One more step forward was greeted with a fiery flash and kick in the chest that knocked her over. The bullet had sailed through her chest and out the other side into the crowd hitting a man standing in the doorway of a shop nearby. He dropped instantly to the ground. Both bodies lay still for a moment as the crowd remained silent before both began to stagger to their feet.