"Did she get you?" Beverly gave Anastasia a wary look as the brunette nervously wiped the saliva off her hand and onto her skirt. "It looked like for a second--" She broke off, blushing as she tried to find a way to describe one woman grabbing another's hand and enthusiastically fellating her fingers that didn't make it sound like some kind of pornographic fantasy. The others watched, anxious but unwilling to take the awkward step of confronting Anastasia themselves when Beverly seemed content to do it for them. None of them had any real experience with this kind of situation outside of a few late-night Halloween horror marathons at the campus theater, and even they didn't convey the bizarre hilarity of the all-too serious situation.

Anastasia held up her hand. "Didn't break the skin," she said, giving everyone a good look at her chubby pink fingers. "I guess she was too used to trying not to let her teeth scrape whatever she was sucking." An explosive snort of amusement escaped her lips, and she clamped down on it hard before it threatened to erupt into helpless, hysterical laughter. The whole situation was just so utterly weird that she didn't know whether to laugh or cry or scream or go barricade herself in the science lab on the fourth floor and hide until a real grownup came along to come and solve everything. Even though she was eighteen and halfway across the country from her parents, Anastasia didn't feel like she counted just yet.

And that went double for the others. "We should put something in front of the doors," Noah said, looking behind them at the entrance to the science building where a small crowd of slender, busty women were already beginning to gather. "I know these girls don't seem strong, but--"

Nadine broke in. "Can we not call them girls?" she asked, a plaintive whine of anxiety making her nasal voice even more annoying than usual. "I know it sounds awful, but I don't want to have to think of them as human beings right now. Not if we might end up having to, um, fight them or something." The thought of five-foot-two Nadine Butterman throwing a punch almost made Anastasia snort with laughter again, but she could hear the high tittering giggles from the... the girls, or whatever they were going to decide to call them, outside. She didn't like the thought of finding anything too amusing at the moment, not with the situation so serious.

But at the same time, she couldn't help finding everyone's complete and total incompetence at least a little bit comical. "Okay, fine, the zombies don't seem strong. Happy?" Noah looked over at the maintenance worker who let them in, his cheeks reddening ever so slightly as he paused for a moment to read the man's nametag before addressing him. "Um, Luis, are these doors--"

Corinne interrupted. "They can't be zombies," she said, fixing Noah with a sullen glare made even more sullen by the dark eyeshadow she wore. "They're not dead. Zombies are animated corpses, and these fucking bimbos are alive. We saw Beverly knock one of them out with her skateboard, remember?" Of course it would be Corinne who got hung up on this particular detail. Anastasia's roommate never met a horror movie she didn't like, even when it was eleven o'clock at night and Anastasia just knew the screams that came from the bunk below her would give her nightmares even though they were diminished to a tinny murmur by Corinne's headphones. She was probably already slotting the very real crisis they were going through into a specific sub-genre for her podcast later.

Nadine crossed her arms. "I'm really not comfortable with calling anyone a bimbo," she said, pursing her lips as if the word was bitter on her tongue. "It's a misogynist term that degrades women, and--"

"And you just said they weren't women," Corinne needled, unable to resist taking the opportunity to deliver a cheap shot to her favorite frenemy no matter how dire the situation. "If they're not really people, then what does it matter if we call them bimbos? If the shoe fits, right, Bev?" She looked to her friend, but Bev didn't seem inclined to get involved in their argument at the moment. She was the only one of them who looked like she was taking the whole situation one hundred percent seriously, probably because she already had the broken half of her skateboard as a mute testimony to just how terrifying it could be to wind up in the middle of a pack of the extremely single-minded creatures waiting just outside.

"Look, it--it doesn't matter, okay?" Noah sputtered, his cheeks red with consternation and embarrassment. "Whatever we call them, the bombos--zimbies--zimbos--" He clamped his mouth shut, trying to get his wayward tongue back under control. Anastasia pursed her lips tightly, trying hard not to laugh as her brain randomly began spoonerizing the two words in every combination possible despite her very best efforts to get it to stop. Her shoulders shook silently, convulsing in desperate amusement that she knew was a displacement reaction to the crisis unfolding around her, but that didn't stop her from suddenly blurting the most spectacularly hilarious portmanteau out loud just as Noah was beginning to speak.

"Zombimbos!" she cried out, followed by a peal of helpless laughter that made everyone else give her a hard stare, and not the usual kind of stares Anastasia got when she was being socially awkward in a group of people who didn't get her weird sense of humor. "I'm fine," she muttered, her chuckles rapidly subsiding in the face of their anxious glares. "Didn't break the skin, remember?" She could feel her cheeks prickling in a hot crimson blush.

Bev's teeth worried at her lower lip. "We don't know what causes this... this, um... zombimbification," she reluctantly murmured, clearly uncomfortable with the implied accusation but unwilling to simply let the potential threat remain unaddressed with so much at stake. "Remember Hollie? One second she seemed fine, and the next she was, um, busting out of her shirt. We have to keep an eye on everyone. Any one of us could be the next to turn."

Noah rolled his entire head in exasperation. "And we have to barricade the doors!" he added, his masculinity clearly a little bit threatened by the way Beverly was taking charge of the situation. "I'm sorry, um, Luis," he added, and Anastasia felt a moment of intense liberal guilt as she noticed that the maintenance worker was only a few years older than the rest of them. She wondered if Luis was a student like them, only without wealthy parents to smooth his path through higher education, or if he was one of the many people stuck on the outside looking in at all the privileged white kids getting a degree while he was forced to clean up after them.

Anastasia blinked, realizing she'd gotten so caught up in contemplating her own privilege that she almost missed Luis's response. "The doors should hold," he said, a light accent coloring his speech that Anastasia was embarrassed to admit she couldn't place. "There's a lot of dangerous chemicals in this building, they don't want some stupid kids stealing them for a prank and getting themselves killed." He looked down at the floor, his light brown skin darkening a little with embarrassment. "Um. No offense."

Nadine awkwardly reached out to pat him on the shoulder, but stopped just short of making physical contact. "None taken," she mumbled, clearly as out of her depth as the rest of them in dealing with sudden class consciousness on top of everything else happening to them that evening. "I still feel like we should maybe find somewhere to hide, just in case. Can we get into one of the rooms on the top floor, maybe lock ourselves in there?"

Luis shrugged. "Sure, I've got keys. Just don't ask me to get you into the chemical supplies, only the professors have access to those rooms." He turned and headed for the elevators, and the others trailed along behind him indecisively. It was clear that none of them thought much of their impromptu plan, but they also didn't have any better ideas.

Noah darted ahead to press the call button, and Bev gave a nervous glance over at Corinne as they waited for the elevator to arrive. "Anything about this on social media?" she asked, fidgeting impatiently and looking back down the hall as if she expected to hear the loud crash of the door slamming inward at any second. "I lost my phone when those things attacked, but I figure if it's happening on more than just this one campus someone's bound to be talking about it."

Corinne looked down at the floor sheepishly. "Um, I, uh, I got a little behind on my phone bill," she muttered, avoiding Nadine's suddenly interested gaze. "It's just until the weekend, okay? Once I go home and talk to Mom and Dad--" She broke off as it hit her--and all the rest of them--that they had no idea whether any of them would make it to the weekend, and what kind of state they'd be in when they did. Noah and Luis might be safe--emphasis on 'might'--but the rest of them remembered all too well what happened when Hollie changed. The sudden rush of chestnut hair lightening to golden brown as it flowed down her shoulders, the rapid shift in her irises from hazel to a bright, shining blue... and of course the giggles. They all giggled so much. Whatever was happening to the women who changed, it sure didn't seem to hurt any.

Bev looked over at Nadine, but before she could say anything the frizzy brunette sniffed in disdain. "I gave up social media three weeks ago," she said, sounding as if she'd been waiting the entire time for someone to mention it so she could tell them all about her big news. "It's really nothing more than a umbleumbleumble, umbleumbleumble umbleumbleumble of the human brain designed to addict us to constant outrage and doomscrolling. It doesn't really raise consciousness at all, we just think it does because we've developed a umbleumbleumble umbleumbleumble." Stacy felt a little guilty tuning out Nadine's yammering, but she'd gotten to know Bev's roommate well enough to know that she wasn't really missing much. Nadine was one of those girls who always wanted to let people know she was the smartest one in the room, and Stacy kind of enjoyed ignoring her like that.

Just as Bev looked over at Stacy, the elevator chimed. "Come on, let's just get up to the fourth floor," she sighed, trying hard not to sound annoyed. "Once we umbleumbleumble ourselves in the umbleumbleumble lab, we can figure out who has a working phone." She held the door, beckoning the others in, but Stacy didn't notice right away. She was trying to figure out why some of her friend's words came out all... funny.

Not 'ha ha' funny, although Stacy had to admit there was something a little bit silly about the way they came out in a weird warble like the grown-ups on 'Peanuts'. It was more like... like a weird funny. Like Stacy knew she knew the words that went in those fuzzy spots in Bev's speech, but every time she tried to think about them it just felt too much like work. Maybe her brain was just tired from the stress of dealing with all the zombimbos outside? That had to be it. She was worried and scared and she couldn't... couldn't, um, con, con, concen... she couldn't think straight. Because she was afraid and it was making her head all foggy.

Except... except she didn't feel worried. She felt carefree, almost happy even. Being with her cool, pretty friends and the two sexy men who were waiting inside the levelator, it was so cozy and comfy and safe that Stacee couldn't see herself getting worried about any thing. All that stress and tension she'd been holding in just minutes ago seemed to be melting like fluffy pink cotton candy, leaving her so relaxed that all she wanted to do was find somewhere nice and warm and play with her--

"Umbleumbleumble? You coming or what?" Bevvie gave her a worried look. Stacey nodded, trying to look like she was really listening to every word, and got into the lelelator. Once she was inside, Bevvie pushed the button for the top floor--Stacee tried to count them all, but her head started swimming and she gave up after three--and the doors closed, leaving the zombimbos behind.

Zombimbos. Stacee still couldn't get over how funny that word she'd come up with really was. In fact, the more it echoed inside her head, the sillier it sounded. Stacee slumped forward against the front corner of the jellylater car, her eyes slipping shut as she repeated the silly nonsense word in her mind until it started to sound just like the umbleumbles of the people around her. Zombimbo, zombimbo, zombimbo, zombimbo. It was such a dumb, cheerful word that Stacee could feel a laugh welling up in her throat despite her best efforts to hold it back.

The others kept talking, making boring plans to break into the supply room and steal a whole bunch of stuff and make a, a bomb or a poison or something to get rid of the zombimbos... zombimbos, zombimbos, zombimbos... but Stacee had already tuned it all out. As far as she was concerned, it was just a bunch of dull umbleumbles that was getting in the way of the happy silly feeling that just kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger inside her head with every passing second. Happy and silly and... and horny? Yes, Stacee realized. Really horny. Her fingers drifted down between her legs, giving her cunny a sneaky rub while every one else was having a big fight about the best way to get rid of the zombimbos.

But not Stacee. She was starting to think all those silly giggly girls outside had the right idea. They all sounded happy, and they were having fun, and that one zombimbo gave Stacee's finger such a sexy suck with her big, plump, cocksucking lips... Stacy felt a trickle of drool spilling down her chin to land on her chest. She let her tongue slide out of her mouth, exploring the soft contours of a pair of lips that didn't feel like they could close all the way anymore. Lips just like the pretty girl outside. Stacee bet she'd be able to suck just as good with them if she tried.

The drool became a steady stream, soaking into the thin fabric of Stacee's t-shirt and spreading wider and wider and--no. Wait. It wasn't just the stain that was spreading, the whole t-shirt was getting bigger. Stacee felt a sense of pressure growing as her tits began to expand, straining seams and bending the clasps of her bra as they swelled from perky B-cups to huge double Ds. She turned her body away from the others a little more, knowing they'd maybe get worried if they saw her like this, but then she felt her hair starting to flow down her shoulders and she knew there was no point in hiding it.

Because she was a zombimbo after all. Even though it was just drool and not a bite, even though it never broke the skin, Stacee was a zombimbo just like the girls outside and that was just such a silly word that she started laughing and couldn't stop. Zombimbo, zombimbo, zombimbo, zom-- "Oh, shit, Stace!" Bevvie screamed, but it was the only thing she managed to say before the creature that was once Anastasia embraced her in a warm, wet, lustful kiss that sent the two of them tumbling into the others in a sprawl of helplessly entangled bodies.

Things got a little intense after that, but Stacee was too busy making out with the others to care.

THE END