nonionay | I, We, Them

I'm forcing myself to write in first person for a while (I say as I realize I write my LJ entries in first person all the time). I'm working on a short story/maybe novella that's also my first foray into bump-in-the-dark, old-fashioned horror. I'm about 1800 words in, and so far, this and an earlier first person experiment have already shown me a few things.

1) First person sets up an easy way to show a group-oriented mind, especially in relation to an outside group. Compare: "We beat them up when they crossed to our side of the street," to "The Sharks beat them up when the Jets crossed to their side of the street."

First, there's the annoying pronoun confusions. Whose side of the street? That's one of the current banes of my existence.
Second, you instantly get the feeling that the narrator identifies with his group. I could say, "Me and the Sharks beat them up..." and if I used that consistently, you'd get the impression that this guy feels like an outsider among his peers.

2) I'm really appreciating the stuff I've heard about horror regarding theme and structure. I'm not going for an original plot; this is people vs monsters in the middle of nowhere. And that's part of the reason I picked this story to write. I'm not going to worry if it's any good. (I realize I should probably find out something about how to hunt wolves, but I'm not going to bother yet. I have no problem BSing my way through this.)
Horror is about stripping people's defenses and seeing what happens. The interactions among each other are even more important than the monsters. I'm at the point where people start dying, and I can't simply say, first Person 1 died, and the protagonist was scared, then Person 2 died, and the protagonist was even more scared. I have to figure out what the loss of Person 1 as a person and not a redshirt, would do to the group.

That said, I now have to figure out who Person 1 is going to be...