Chapter 5: Karate Kicks & Chaos

We hadn’t gone five steps down the alley before chaos decided to RSVP.

A pack of half-dead, fully aggressive cafeteria staff—still the weirdest “zombies” I’d ever seen—clomped toward us like they were late for a meeting they didn’t care about.

I raised the bat instinctively.

But then… Maddy stepped forward.

“You’ve never seen this side of me,” she said, her voice low, serious… and ridiculously dramatic, like she’d watched one too many martial arts movies in the 2000s.

I blinked. “What side of you?”

“The side that literally kicks ass,” she said.

Then she immediately did a spinning jump kick off a dumpster. I swear to God, it looked like the kind of move someone saves for TikTok transitions—slow-motion hair flip included. One zombie went flying, landed in a trash can with a “clunk” that was somehow satisfying.

I stared. “Maddy… did you just… karate?”

“Shh. It’s called karate, Lexi,” she said, landing in a perfect crouch like she’d just completed a full origami routine of her body.

“Uh… okay. Cool,” I said, trying to keep up. I swung the bat at the next one. Missed. Hit a trash can instead. The trash can tipped over and spilled a dozen moldy donuts.

Maddy rolled her eyes. “Let me handle the aesthetics, main character. You… be dramatic.”

“Dramatic is literally my cardio!” I shouted, flailing the bat like I was summoning lightning.

She pivoted, backflip, roundhouse, BOOM—a zombie went flying into a dumpster behind me. I swear it landed like a beanbag.

“This is insane,” I said. “Also, hilarious.”

She grinned. “Thank you. I’ve been practicing on my cat. Mr. Whiskers is very judgmental.”

Next thing I knew, she was hopping onto a lamppost like it was a stage. “Watch this, Lexi. Watch.”

A group of zombies charged. She did a cartwheel into a flying sidekick that somehow sent two of them spinning into each other like bowling pins. One landed with its face in a puddle.

I doubled over laughing. “This is… physically impossible! Also, I’m crying!”

“You’re supposed to fight, Lexi!” she shouted mid-spin. She then executed a move I can only describe as karate meets jazz hands meets confused pigeon. Somehow three zombies just… fell over.

“HOW?!” I yelled. “HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?!”

“Focus on the drama, not the logistics,” she said, doing a perfect split and spinning her hands in a tornado motion.

A zombie lunged at her. She calmly sidestepped, grabbed it by the scruff of its uniform, and flung it over her shoulder like it weighed nothing. Then she twirled, bowing elegantly.

I was laughing so hard I almost dropped the bat. “You’re literally a human meme!”

She smirked. “Thank you. I’ve been training for years in the secret dojo of Suburban Middle School Parking Lots.”

I wiped tears from my eyes. “I need video evidence of this. The world needs to see the legend of Maddy ‘Karate God’ Turner.”

“Lexi, focus!” she said, backflipping onto a trash can and landing in a heroic pose. “You literally just yelled at a moldy donut!”

I swung the bat anyway. Accidentally hit a zombie into another zombie. They tumbled like a domino chain reaction. A trash can lid clanged like a cymbal. Somehow it looked intentional.

Maddy did a double spin kick and screamed, “HI-YA!” in perfect unison with the theme of my earbuds, which had miraculously powered back on. Neon Night, for some reason, had never sounded more epic.

We were unstoppable.

By the time the last zombie hit the ground, panting and suspiciously limp, Maddy was on a dumpster doing a victory pose. Her hair was messy, but she looked like an action figure ad gone terrifyingly right.

I leaned against a wall, chest hurting from laughing and running. “I… I can’t. I literally can’t. That was… insane. You are… a cartoon.”

“Lexi,” she said solemnly, “don’t ruin the moment. This is art. Pure chaos art.”

I laughed until my stomach hurt. She was right. It was art. Art that involved gore-lite zombies, flying dumpsters, and a soundtrack that made the apocalypse feel like a Broadway musical.

Then she jumped down, landed softly, and whispered, “Okay. We go canal.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, canal. But also… we need TikTok. The world deserves this.”

“Focus, Lexi,” she said. “Before I karate kick you into a different dimension.”

And that, my friends, is how we ran toward the canal—laughing like absolute maniacs, dodging zombies, and questioning all of our life choices.

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