The Stryker careened around the corner and the men inside, packed so tightly that they could barely breathe, swayed back and forth into each other. It was an uncomfortable ride, but not a one of them would’ve preferred the alternative. The Gunny couldn’t really see much, locked as he was in the mass of men packed into the APC but he did spot some few details as it continued to roar away from the crowd of dead left behind.

The Stryker was heavily “modified”, meaning it was completely stripped down and any piece of equipment or electronics deemed unnecessary was removed. There were several portholes that had been roughly cut into the armored hull of the APC, with crude steel plates on hinges attached that could open up to the outside world and the bandanna woman who had saved their skins closed one such plate and latched it down and leaned a rather large riot shotgun against the hull and squeezed into the gunner’s seat where she used the LCD to scan around with the “ma deuce” on a servo at the top of the vehicle.

She saw the coast was clear for now, except for the occasional individual corpse that would wander out into the road at which point the driver would gun the engine and a distinct thump would be heard inside the vehicle, but other than that no other indication that a human form had just been turned into pulp by the 8 large wheels of the APC. She glanced back at the group of men packed into every available inch of the interior and then went back to watching the LCD.

“Spec 4 Lydia Smith, at your service! Call me Lids, we’re not big on rank these days.” she said as she continued to pan the servo around. The LT spoke up.

“Lieutenant Paul Volker, and I have to say.. Lids. That I’m damn glad you showed up when you did! I was seriously considering putting a bullet in my head.”

Lids smiled “Oh doncha think about that yet LT, we were out doing supply patrol in the city but as you can see we’ve come up pretty empty this time around. We were on our way back to base when we heard you guys open up.” The Stryker suddenly swerved and the men rocked back and forth into each other for a moment and another dull thump was heard on the hull of the Stryker.

“Sorry ‘bout that guys, Ned tends to get a bit crazy on the wheel.” She said loudly at the driver’s compartment. She got no response other than a gunning of the accelerator that kicked up their speed and another corpse slapped against the hull.

“Well Lids, we certainly appreciate the ride. What outfit you with?” questioned the LT.

“I was with the First Battalion of the 148th Infantry, but that was a long time ago. Today we’re just survivors like all the rest, if a bit more organized.” Lids said.

“So there are more of you?” The LT continued.

“Yup, about 280 of us. We’re based at the zoo.” She said glancing back at the LT occasionally.

“The Zoo?”

“Oh yeah, it’s the safest place around with heavy fencing and good security. That is also where the labs are.”

“Labs?”

Lids smiled “Yup, we have a scientific community of sorts, still doing active research.”

“I’m impressed.” The LT said with earnestness.

“Don’t be. We lead a pretty miserable existence to tell you the truth. Hand to mouth here in the city.” She said seriously and then picked up the mic to a CB that was haphazardly bolted to the wall of the Stryker.

“This is Lids. Got your ears on?”

“Sure do Lids! What’s up?” came a voice over the speaker.

“Coming in with… refugees.” She said with a wide smile on her face. “About a dozen”

“Roger on the reffs. I’ll get a clean team out on the gate to clear the way.”

“Roger and out” she said and she dropped the mic.

“So how come I have a platoon of the One Oh One in the middle of my city?” Lids asked the LT.

“Actually you have a squad of the One Oh One and another made up from a militia regiment, First Ohio.” The LT replied

“Ooooh… Militia boys eh? My uncle volunteered into one of those outfits, down near the ‘Nati.” She responded.

“Well, we’re all grateful to you for saving our asses.” the Gunny spoke up. Lids smiled back.

“No problem, Pops.”

She then returned to the LCD monitor as the Stryker roared north out of the heart of the city and towards the zoo. She swiveled the “ma deuce” back and forth. The LT stood over her shoulder and looked at what the display showed.

As they approached the Zoo the streets, which were virtually empty before, began to thicken with the odd clump or two of deaders moving around. The Stryker roaring by got their attention for a moment but then it was past and the dead continued on with the eternal parodies of their former lives. As they got near the gate however a large, thick knot of corpses could be seen piled up against the main gate of the zoo. A large sign that proclaimed COLUMBUS ZOO sat above an iron security gate, which swayed back and forth from the weight being pressed on it by the thick crowd of dead.

Suddenly the LT saw huge streams of flame roar out from the gate and move back and forth over the crowd and begin cooking and incinerating the dead in the immediate area of the gate sterilizing it long enough for the Stryker to rumble over the ashes and charred bodies and charge through the now open gate before it was closed instantly. Within a few minutes, fresh dead began moving towards the gate and collected against it, vainly reaching through the spaces in the iron and moaning in hunger and frustration.

The Stryker wound along several service roads and roared into a large vehicle garage and came to a stop. The hatch lowered and the men gratefully debarked into a large maintenance bay. The only other military vehicle within the structure was a vintage M-60 tank. The rest of the vehicles were a mix of pickups, golf carts and other vehicles marked with the logo of the zoo. The men looked around and thankful doesn’t even describe how they felt after the near death experience in the city.

“Wait here while I go find Dr. Humbacher.” Lids said as she walked out a door.

A hatch in the Stryker’s front opened and out climbed a man with a grey ponytail and wearing an ancient and faded Grateful Dead T-shirt and greasy jeans and he jumped down from the vehicle and went over to the loose standing group of men and up to the LT.

“Hey there fellas! Ned’s the name. Deadhead Ned. But you guys just call me Ned.” He said and put his hand out which the LT took.

“Paul Volker, This here is Gunny Raines” the LT said indicating to Raines at his side.

Deadhead Ned nodded and shook the Gunny’s hand as well. “I have to say guy, that wasn’t very smart getting into the Shootout at the OK corral in Downtown like that. We estimate there must be at least forty thousand dead in that area alone. If we hadn’t been in the vicinity?” the Gray haired hippy looking fellow said and then shrugged.

“Glad you guys came when you did.” said the Gunny and then turned as the door Lids had disappeared through opened and she came back in followed by a rotund little man with a bald head and wearing a pair of glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose and a white lab coat.

“This is Dr. Humbacher, formerly Professor of Biology at Ohio State University and head of our Board of Directors.” said Lids as they came up to the men, who except for the Gunny and the LT and Sgt Loomis had spread out and sat down on the floor of the garage, resting after the exertions of the day.

The little man came up to the LT and took his hand, he had a rather limp handshake, but the look in his eyes showed something sterner lay beneath, a kind of steel intellect. The Doctor repeated the process with the Gunny.

“Welcome to Columbus Gentlemen, I’m Dr. Humbacher. I can see right away you aren’t the typical starving skeletons we usually find hiding out in the city. Where’d you come from?”

The LT spoke up. “Well Doctor, I’m from the US Government, and I’m here to help.” This brought a quiet laughter to everyone in the room, except Dr. Humbacher who apparently didn’t get the joke.

“Well that is all well and good Lieutenant but wandering around the city aimlessly is statistically certain to get you killed. Why?”

“We’re looking for two girls, two very special girls.” The LT said

“The President’s Daughters you mean? Oh they are well taken care of and of no concern at the moment.“ Humbacher said with a dismissive wave and continued, “Your team can stay here and make themselves comfortable for now, we’re short of living space as you can imagine with over 250 people here. A meal will be served in about 2 and ½ hours. I’m afraid the portions are rather small, but we offer what we have.”

“We’re well provided for on personal rations Doctor, thank you. We’ll be fine on MRE’s for now, save your food.” Said the LT and the Doctor nodded.

“Well, if you and Gunny Raines was it? Would follow me, I’d like to show you something.” And with that he turned around and headed for the door to the bay. The LT and the Gunny looked at each other questioningly and then followed after the doctor.

They stepped through the door into a long corridor and then continued out a door marked EXIT where a golf cart sat patiently waiting. The Doctor beckoned the two men to get inside and then got behind the wheel where he started it up and proceeded to drive away from the maintenance garage. He then began explaining the setup of the zoo as they continued down the various footpaths through the park.

“Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, 700 acres in total area, although the Aquarium area is overrun and sealed off, so we only use about half that. There are 276 people here as of last count, 208 men, 47 women, the rest are children. You’ll notice if you look around, the distinct lack of animals in the areas. That is because they are dead, slaughtered for food. The carnivores were first to go.” He said with a smile. “Tiger is quite interesting actually.”

The Gunny and the LT smiled at the thought of living off of Lions and Tigers and Bears, but food was food and you took what you could get in times like these. The Golf Cart turned a sharp bend and came to a halt just before a large white structure. Red lettering on the Zoo themed sign on the door indicated RESEARCH AREA, EMPLOYEES ONLY.

They disembarked from the Golf Cart and the Doctor led the way as they went into the door and entered a spacious area with empty cages stacked up several high all around. The cages formed a series of corridors that the doctor led them through. The smell of animal still lingered throughout the empty building. They continued past the cages and entered into another door, this one marked PRIMATES.

“So what kind of research are you doing here Doc?” said the LT as he surveyed the room they had entered. There were more cages here, larger than the ones in the previous room, and these looked like they had been freshly inhabited. Signs with various names were on the cages like Tootsie, Sam and Beck.

“Looking for a cure of course or maybe a vaccination of some kind?” The Doctor said as he continued along to the end of the room where a large examination table was placed. The entire area was spotlessly sterile and smelled of bleach.

“These cages were once inhabited by every primate at the zoo. We kept them all alive in order to do experiments and see how Factor Z worked.” Humbacher said as they came to the table.

“Factor Z?” said the Gunny.

“That’s what I call it anyway, no one knows what it is exactly, could be viral. It could be some kind of mutation in our own genetic code too. We know it’s not bacteriological in nature but in all the experiments that I’m aware of before things got bad and since, we’ve never been able to successfully isolate any viral DNA from the blood of the dead or even recently infected. Experiments using every anti-viral known to man has failed to even slow down the onset of death and reanimation.” The doctor said with the kind of tone a teacher takes when giving a lecture, which he was in reality.

“Over time, we exposed every single primate to Factor Z. Just like humans, it killed them all within 48 hours, however unlike Humans, non-human primates apparently do not reanimate. All of them just died, except one.” said the Doctor over his glasses.

“What?” said the LT. “You say that non-human primates don’t reanimate but are killed by this Factor Z. However one actually survived? As in immune?”

“Precisely so Lieutenant, come with me.” And with that he turned and went through yet another door which led to a large balcony overlooking a rather spacious habitat area. It resembled a child’s play ground with a jungle gym and wooden platforms spread around the area. Sitting on its haunches staring back at the men, was a large Gorilla. He had black, course fur and a massive bare chest along with a prominent, whitish stripe of short fur on his back. He sat there, looking up at the men on the balcony and scratched at himself. He looked rather bored to the Gunny which was confirmed by a stiff yawn from the beast. Wickedly long and sharp canines glinted ivory in the sunlight. It had a monstrous and thick conical shaped head, with a pair of intelligent eyes that looked around the habitat with the boredom a prisoner in a prison cell might display.

“This is Kang. Kang is a 27 year old Male Silverback Lowland Gorilla from Uganda. He’s been living at the Zoo for almost 15 years now. He’s rather docile for a Silverback really, probably a result of separation from the rest of his group. He’s quite lonely, and I’m pretty much his only friend. He’s a playful fellow really, except when the dead get near him.”

“What happens then?” said the LT with keen interest.

“What do you think? He tears them apart limb by limb.” said the Doctor matter of factly and this brought a smile to the Gunny’s lips.

“He’s quite immune to Factor Z, though we haven’t been able to isolate any difference in his blood with any of the other gorillas in his group that Factor Z proved very fatal too. So we have no idea what makes him tick really.” said the Doctor with a bit of wistful curiosity. The men could see that he had a burning question mark in his head and Factor Z was a frustration because it stymied all of his years of biological expertise.

“However, there was just one problem that developed unexpectedly.” said the Doctor as he looked out over the habitat area.

“What was that?” said the Gunny.

“One of the people was bitten several months back and I decided to see if exposure to Kang’s blood might make a difference. Unfortunately, it did.” said the Doctor with not a little bit of regret.

The LT thought he knew where this was going and the color drained from his face. “Don’t tell me.” He said to the Doctor.

The Doctor merely confirmed with a nod of his head. “I ran an IV into the subject with Kang’s blood. The effects were completely unexpected. The poor woman, did I mention she was a she? Actually managed to survive the longest of anyone I had seen survive initial infection before onset of death. Four days, nearly twice as long as usual.”

“So it didn’t quite work, but?” said the Gunny

“When she revived, she had maintained much of the agility and strength she had when she was alive. She also possessed an extremely fine tuned predation instinct and obviously some kind of higher thinking.” The Doctor said in response.

“You made the hissers?” said the Gunny

“Correct. Completely unintentionally I assure you. I was just trying to save a poor woman’s life!” whined the Doctor

“So what happened after that?” said the LT

“I decided to study her. But after a couple weeks in confinement, she managed to get loose, kill two men and escape. Before long we began getting attacked by other dead exhibiting the same effects. I assume that being a more efficient hunter than the other dead; she probably managed to hunt out isolated survivors within the city, with the obvious effect of spreading her particular form of Factor Z.” the Doctor said, his voice hushed.

“Shit!” cussed the LT “So how many of these things do you think are out there?”

“There’s no way to tell.” said the Doctor. “It depends entirely on the density of survivors per square mile in the city. There could be on the order of several hundred at least.” The Doctor had obviously been doing the math before.

“Well damn Doc. You created a whole new species of deader, one meaner than the ones we already have to deal with. I understand you did it by accident, but damn Doc, bad accident!” said the Gunny as he turned in disgust from the balcony.

“Yeah Doc, really,” said the LT in agreement. “As soon as you found out what the hell she had become you should’ve shot her in the head right then and there. Why did you keep her around?”

“Professional curiosity.” said the Doc with quite some repentance.

“Well it might just have killed all the cats Doc. Damn.” replied the Gunny as he shook his head and walked through the door.

* * *

The trio piled back into the golf cart and didn’t have much to say to each other at first as the cart wound its way across the zoo grounds. Eventually the LT spoke up “Look Doc, this has all been real interesting but I was sent here for the girls. Where are they?”

“That’s where we are headed now. Over to the living quarters, they’ve been with us about two weeks now. They showed up one day in an upper level window in one of the buildings across the street from the main gate. Apparently the group they had been travelling with were ambushed and killed by several of these hissers as you call them.” The Doctor said with obvious distaste. It was apparent he didn’t like that epithet for them, accurate as it was. “We formed a clean team and they went out and got them back inside the zoo. They were extremely lucky to have survived.”

“These clean teams, are they the guys with the flamethrowers?” said the LT.

“Correct. We scavenged a few of them along with spare tanks from the Guard Armory downtown. We’re actually fortified quite well here. Heavy fencing that has been reinforced as necessary surrounds the entire grounds. The gates have been reinforced as well, as the dead like to congregate along those most of the time and when the sentries on duty deem the crowd has gotten too big, or if we need to open the gates, WHOOSH and it buys us anywhere from 5-7 minutes with a sterile gate.”

“Not to bad.” said the Gunny.

“Times are good right now with it being deep winter. Things can be very lively here in the summer when the dead are most active. We do get breaches once in the awhile, especially since the hissers became more numerous of late. In the last six weeks we’ve lost four men.” Humbacher continued as he came to the parking lot of a large warehouse. The parking lot had picnic tables with umbrellas scavenged from around the zoo scattered about and small groups of civilians sat or stood in various congregations around them. Some of the people looked up and waved as the Doc’s cart came zooming up.

“This is the living quarters. Most everyone lives here though we have a few brave souls who have staked out their own patches of territory throughout the zoo. Some of them are a bit off, but everyone is decent and works together to maintain what we have here. The biggest problem I have is dealing with tension between the men over the women in the zoo. But we have ways of dealing with that as well.” Humbacher said.

A dark haired and bearded man, wearing a pair of blue jeans and a windbreaker with COLUMBUS ZOO stenciled onto it came up to the cart. “Hey Doc, got some newbies for us?” he said.

“Not quite Karl, they’re military, sent to check up on our two VIPs.” Humbacher said in response.

“Oh?” Karl said and eyed the Gunny and the LT then nodded. “The girls are over in the house. I can take them from here Doc if you’re busy.”

“Good idea Karl,” the Doctor stated and then turned to the Gunny and the LT. “This is my Manager of Operations Karl Jones. He can take you to the girls and show you around some more. I have a meeting with my colleagues shortly, so I will leave you two with him.”

The Gunny and the LT nodded and climbed out of the cart and then with a high pitched hum the golf cart zoomed forward and the Doc was gone. The Gunny and the LT watched him go then turned to Karl who had blue eyes and dark hair and an equally dark beard. His smile was warm and he extended his hand to each one of them and they exchanged names.

Once the formalities were concluded, Karl led the LT and the Gunny towards the large warehouse that made up the main living area of the zoo. The men entered the door into a large, spacious, and nearly empty warehouse. Nearly empty except for the double tiered wire frame bunks that were lined up in neat ranks and files that spread through the entire interior. Some civilians were scattered about the dorm here and there. Some lay on their bunks asleep, others reading and some just whispering quietly to each other. It had the quiet atmosphere of a library at the moment.

Karl spoke up, “Most everyone is out right now on duty. We maintain strict schedules here, no slackers. Everyone has a job depending on their skill set or talents as we discover them even the children. We have many of the modern conveniences still. We have power generation because the zoo, being a zoo, installed solar panels for much of its electrical needs. You’ll notice them scattered about the roofs of the buildings and set up on various poles and other things throughout the zoo. Of course that means only electricity during the day but we do have backup generators and plenty of gasoline to make up for research or living demands with proper rationing policies. The Board of Directors, or “Brain Trust” as we call them, call the shots around here mostly, though thankfully they tend to be pretty liberal and aren’t trying to set up some kind of despotic regime around here like tends to happen in places like this. We’re pretty lucky actually.”

“I’m surprised. Usually when we penetrate an urban zone we find little scattered colonies of starving, feral people ready to kill on sight. That you guys have managed to create this Shangri la in the middle of a major metropolitan area is an achievement.” The LT said in complimentary tones.

They continued across the building, winding around bunks. The LT and Gunny looked at each small space as they passed by. Each bed was made and tidy, like in a military barracks. Each one had a plastic box of some sort to act as a footlocker that was pushed up underneath each bunk. Some personal items, trinkets and other things were visible on small tables of every sort and size that were scattered around the beds. Family pictures mostly.

“As you can see with so many people living in so small a space, conflict naturally develops. Most problems are easy to solve by separating the two parties for awhile but sometimes we have more serious incidents.”

“Define serious.” said the LT

“The occasional crimes that occur when people are pushed to an almost primeval form of existence, things like serious assaults, rape, even murder.” said Karl as they came to door leading into another area of the warehouse.

“What do you do then?” asked the LT

“Hold a trial of course. Three of the six Directors are chosen by random lot to act as a tribunal. One director is assigned by lot to become the accused persons advocate and one is chosen by lot to be the prosecutor for the community. The last remaining Director becomes a sort of court reporter and record keeper. A jury of six is chosen from the community according to random lot as well.” Karl walked through the door and they were in a separate corridor which led off to offices that now made up more private quarters.

“Not a bad way to dispense Justice.” said the Gunny.

“It works for us pretty well. Sentences can vary from extra sentry duty, assignment to latrine or other unpleasant work details and other stuff like that. For the most serious offenses we have exile, but no capital punishment here.” he then came to a wooden door and knocked.

“Exile into this city is pretty much a death sentence any way.” agreed the LT as the door opened and a young woman with long brown hair and eyes of the same color answered the door wearing an Ohio State sweater and a pair of jeans.

“Hi Karl! Whats up?” she asked while making a girlish grin.

“Hey Samantha, these guys came a long way to check on you and your sister.” Karl said

She looked over at the two men and looked them up and down and then frowned. “Our father sent you didn’t he? I told Kathy not to use that damn phone we found! Now she’s ruined everything!” and she slammed the door in the men’s face. The LT and Gunny stood there flabbergasted as she was heard stomping into the room and began yelling at her sister, her shrill screams piercing the wood of the door. The argument bloomed as her sister screamed back in response and the two girls were heard bickering as they once again returned to the door, then just before the door opened there was a distinct moment of silence before the door flew open and the two girls were standing there bright and sunny with smiles, as if the explosion of dual rage the men heard had never even occurred.

“Hi, I’m Kathy. My sister says Daddy sent you?” Kathy said, a pleasant smile on her face. She was blonde and blue eyed, with perfect lips though how genuine her smile was could be debated after the shouting match that had not ended but ten seconds ago.

“I’m Lieutenant Paul Volker and this is Gunny Raines. Yes, your father personally sent me here to check up on you and your sister and evacuate the two of you to Aspen ASAP.” The LT said matter of factly.

Samantha scowled in anger. “I don’t want to go back! You don’t know what kind of hell it will be with all this shit going on! We’ll be like prisoners, with some scummy goon guard wearing sunglasses and an ear bud who speaks into his sleeve. Always watching you to make sure your precious little ass doesn’t stub a toe. I’m not going back to that!” she said with resolute anger and firmness. Kathy, while not as vocal as her sister, seemed to be in at least partial agreement judging by the look on her face.

“Look madame, I understand that maybe you think you are safe here but you most certainly are not. At any time the security of this place could fail.” The LT said and this brought Karl’s ire up.

“Hey now, I’ll have you know that this place is impregnable.” Karl said with resolved certainty.

“Yeah sure buddy, whatever you say. I’ve seen entire army bases wiped clean off the Earth by hordes so large they stretch from one end of the horizon to the other like herds of buffalo. You don’t stand a chance here over the long run and with these hissers running around it’s the final countdown buddy. You need to plan to get the hell out of here.” The LT said loudly and silence prevailed for a moment.

“Sam, maybe they’re right, I mean at least we’ll be in Aspen with Mom and Dad. They haven’t heard from us but for a few minutes in almost two years sis. We have to go home sometime.” Kathy said, placing her hand on her sister’s shoulder. Her sister shrank from her strong woman act and deflated like a balloon and broke into sobs as she retreated to a couch in the room.

Kathy looked back at the men in the hall. “How are we supposed to get out of here? Walk?”

“Nope, caravan.” responded the Gunny and the LT nodded in agreement.

“You need to take us to the Brain Trust Karl, we need to talk to them.” said the LT.

* * *

A short while later the Gunny and the LT stood in front of a boardroom table that was laid out in front of them where the Brain Trust was holding their meeting. Doctor Humbacher sat at the head of the table. The other four men and one woman who made up the Brain Trust, each in various casual wear made their introduction.

After Dr. Humbacher, there came Dr. Sheila Wright, Professor of Sociology. Then there was Arthur Young, former city councilman of Columbus. Next to introduce himself was Keith Morris, Director of the Columbus Zoo. The other two men in the Brain Trust were brothers, Sam and John Wilson. They ostensibly represented the interests of the many Ohio State student survivors who inhabited the zoo grounds and as a result were younger and rougher looking than the decidedly older members of the Brain Trust. While it couldn’t be said this group of six formed an outright oligarchy, it was close enough.

“Look. I know that you people have been here for a long time and feel real secure in this gilded cage, but I am trying to explain to you that when the weather warms up in a couple weeks, you people are going to be in a world of hurt.” The LT pleaded to the council.

Dr. Wright spoke up, she was an older woman with grey streaks running through her hair, which was pulled back into a bun and she wore thin glasses that hung on the bridge of her long nose.

“We spend much time and effort keeping the people safe here Lieutenant, you really have some nerve just riding in here and making demands that we should just pack up and leave.” Several of the men around the table nodded in agreement. Dr. Humbacher was not among them.

“Lady, this isn’t some game I’m playing with you. I have the full authority of the President of the United States..” at which point she stood up and screamed shrilly at the Lieutenant, the force of which drove him back on his heels.

“THERE IS NO MORE UNITED STATES YOU ARMY PIG! IT’S GONE! YOU PEOPLE DESTROYED IT!” and her scream sort of hung in an echo for a moment around the room before she regained her composure and neutral expression once more. “We here on this Council no longer recognize the authority of the United States Government, and therefore the President.” She said matter of factly, as if that was the end of the matter and retook her seat. The Gunny and the LT were simply flabbergasted at the venomous vibe this shrew just hurled in their direction and they were caught silent for a moment.

Dr. Humbacher intervened, “These men came a long way and deserved to at least be heard. I thank them on behalf of the Council for bringing these matters to our attention and they will be given due consideration in the future. On to the matter of the girls…”

Dr. Wright interrupted. “The girls do not wish to go back. They are staying here.” Once again with the same tone as if that was all there was to the matter.

The LT lost his own temper then, though his voice was quiet and low, with a hint of threat. “Lady, I’m under direct orders from my Commander in Chief to return those girls to his custody and I fully intend to fulfill those orders or die in the process.” making it quite clear where he stood on the issue.

The shrew refused to back down. “No Lieutenant. As long as those girls remain here with us then those Pigs in Aspen will leave us alone to live as we see fit. We have no wish to return to the auspices of the corrupt Republican government that precipitated this crisis by trying to force the Earth into submission and therefore causing it to fight back with the zombie plague. We are building a new society here. One based on empathy and social justice and environmental sustainability, not the corrupt and capitalist ways of the ancien regime.”

The Gunny shook his head in amazement and then spoke up “Dr. Wright, no one gives a shit what you people do here. You want to stay here and feed yourselves to the dead of the city then that is your business, but we were sent here specifically to ensure these girls got back to their parents and your little oligarchic dystopia here is in no danger of collapse from that.”

Dr. Humbacher regained the floor “Please! Everyone stop! Mr. Raines there is no reason to insult this Council with insinuations of despotism. I assure you we care greatly about the lives of the people here and take all due consideration to our security and safety. As far as the girls are concerned there is some dispute as to whether they want to leave. We will adjourn until tomorrow morning where the girls can make their wishes known and we can further discuss security measures. Until then this meeting is finished.” and as he stood up the rest of the Brain Trust stood as well and proceeded to file out of the room without another glance or word at the Lieutenant and Gunny Raines.

A little while later, the Gunny, the Lieutenant and Sgt Loomis along with Lids, were standing off to one side in the vehicle bay examining the vehicles available in case they needed to bug out in a hurry with a large group of people in tow. There was Lids’ Stryker, half of a dozen pickup trucks, two shuttle buses and a tractor trailer rig. Then there was the M-60 tank, which stuck out like a sore thumb.

“What’s the deal with this antique?” said the LT as he looked up at Lids while she climbed up onto the turret of the armored beast.

“Some tank collector slash restorer guy donated it to the guard armory to put on display. The main gun is breech blocked and non-functional of course but this fifty mounted on the pedestal is functional enough and she drives like a dream. She’ll tear up anything that gets in her way.” Lids said with a huge grin as she slapped the metal of the tank in affection.

The LT nodded and considered how the tank could work into an escape plan. They needed to be able to drive through the city to the south side where the First Ohio truck and its guards would hopefully still be alive and waiting. Once there they would spirit the girls to the safety of Benny’s farm where the Lieutenant fully intended to get on the horn with National Command Authority and advise them of the situation with the hissers, and recommend Columbus be authorized for permanent sterilization, which was the official term for nuking a city.

“Do you have gas for all these vehicles Lids?” the Gunny inquired.

“Well, we have enough to top ‘em all off at least.” Lids responded. This brought a nod from the Gunny.

Loomis spoke up then, “Sir. This could work. We’ll put this bad boy in the lead, put the other trucks and the shuttle buses in the middle and have the Stryker follow up the rear to police up any stragglers or aid in case of an accident. We might be able to take as many as a hundred folks out of here.”

“Sarge I’m thinking the exact same thing. Lids, unless you want to stick around and become lunch for some deader, we could really use your help.” The LT said up at her.

She grinned at him wickedly and replied “Well LT, I’ve been kinda bored around here lately anyway. So I don’t think I’ll miss this place much. At least in Aspen I can ski!” She then jumped down from the tank. “I’ll go talk to as many people as I can, try to get a handle on how many may want to break out with us.” She then disappeared out the door leaving the men behind to consider the rest of the breakout plans.

* * *

Like all would be despots, no matter how petty. Dr. Wright had managed to consolidate under her control a network of like minded snitches and informants that made up a large part of her power base. Most of the Ohio State survivors were former students of hers, and often she would hold quiet meetings with the more influential members of the student body, indoctrinating them as the all important seed stock that would build the perfect future, securing their loyalty. It was her scheme that got the Wilson Brothers appointed to the Brain Trust, the idea being that they would be her rubber stamps on the Council and increase her power and influence, which it did.

She placed her lackeys in key positions of authority that guaranteed her tight control of the “variables”, by which she meant people not under her direct influence. She particularly despised the freer souls who had abandoned the communal living arrangement in the Living Quarters and staked out claims throughout the zoo. They tended to subsistence farm, and rarely had much to do with the day to day running of the community. These people would have to be brought into the fold eventually, or exiled in her opinion.

While Dr. Humbacher concerned himself primarily with his fool’s errand research into Factor Z, she had chosen upon herself the noble project of building the perfect socialist society. At first when the Apocalypse came, she was like all the others, almost as mindless with terror as the dead were with hunger. She had personally witnessed one of the gruesome final stands of Government authority at one of the barricades outside the Ohio State campus.

She had awoken to shouts and heavy activity beneath her window, and climbed out of her bed leaving the naked and snoring form of one of her male students behind and put on a thick robe. She then went to the window where the balcony that was attached to her apartment was. She opened the double paned glass doors and stepped out onto a scene of absolute chaos and terror. Gunfire was popping off all over the city, and explosions and fires were seen raging blocks away leaving the horizon awash in an orange glow, punctuated by the dark forms of the buildings that made up the Columbus skyline. The smell of death and cordite was on the wind and the stench of sulfur combined with rotten flesh made the bile rise in her throat. It all added a sense of urgency to the scene beneath her.

A mixed group of the military and police could be seen in the brightly colored strobe lights of police cars erecting barricades using whatever vehicles they could get the keys to. They piled the vehicles across the road, clear up to the walls of the buildings on each side of the street. Grim men in Kevlar helmets stacked sandbags onto the line of vehicles, forming a low parapet from which the men could fight. Off to the side, several men were assembling some kind of heavy weapon in a sandbagged pit. They shouted back and forth to each other and a radio in a nearby police cruiser squawked status reports, she could clearly hear them in the crisp, late evening air.

“This is Unit 7! Be advised I’ve got a huge crowd of IP’s heading up East 5th towards the Campus!” came over the air along with the screams of hundreds of terrified people that could be heard. In the background, faint but audible were the terrible wails of the hungry dead.

“Roger Unit 7, Unit 6 is enroute.”

“Unit 7 here, don’t bother! I’m falling back! There are thousands of them! They’re literally tearing people out of their cars and eating them on the street!” his voice was high pitched with terror and in the back ground distinct pops could be heard as armed individuals engaged targets. Their desperate calls to each other added to the auditory disaster unfolding.

“Negative on the fall back Unit 7. Unit 6 will instead reinforce.” the dispatcher responded.

“Unit 7, FUCK THAT, We’re outta here!” came the desperate voice on the other end.

“Unit 7? Unit 7? Please Respond.” This went on for several moments and then a large volume of gunfire erupted just off to the East, startling Wright for a moment then the speaker squawked again.

“This is Unit 6! We drove right into a huge pack of them! They’re everywhere!” The sound of gunfire could be heard in the background and the bloodcurdling moans and cries of the crowd of dead was evident over the speaker and one of the men in the unit was screaming over and over again “Back the fuck up! Back the fuck up! Oh shit!” The gunfire reached a hair-raising crescendo, echoing up the street and then went suddenly silent.

“Unit 6, this is dispatch. Unit 6, come in.” but instead a terrifying, inhuman moan pierced the airwaves and all the men working the barricade stopped in their tracks and stared at the cruiser a moment, the absolute fear etched onto each man’s face was perfectly visible in the bright blue and red strobe lights of the cruiser. There was a moment of silence before the speaker squawked to life.

“Unit 12 here, I’ve got eyes on Unit 6, he’s gone. They’re crawling all over him like ants. We’re falling back another block, there are thousands here. The poor civilians are being torn apart by these animals and we can’t do anything about it!” the rage and frustration felt by the sender came over loud and clear on the radio along with the chaos that could be heard on the air now. The very wind carried terrified screams of civilians to Dr. Wright’s unwilling ears.

“Unit 12, negative on the fall back, repeat, negative on the fall back we must hold them as long as possible until the barricades are ready at the campus.”

“That’s a big negative dispatch, we’re falling back another block to 4th. We’re almost cutoff already, Unit 12 out.”

An entire chorus of similar radio messages poured in, hammering the big picture deep in to Dr. Wright’s mind that the entire world she knew was coming to an end. Her hand rose to her mouth in terror when she realized that her apartment sat right at the corner of East 5th and High, just south of the Campus. That meant the dead were only a half dozen blocks or so away.

She immediately scrambled into her apartment screaming frantically at her former bed mate to get his ass up out of bed and get lost. She then began packing what clothes she could just as the first moans were heard outside her window and the shouts of “There they are! Open fire!” rang out before her world suddenly exploded into a barrage of gunfire so loud she screamed from the suddenness of it. Her companion yelped and screamed “See ya babe!” and ran out the door with just his pants on, barefoot and shirtless.

She frantically put on some jeans and a shirt and leaving everything behind but her purse, sprinted down the stairs and out into the streets. What she saw terrified her beyond all compare. Hundreds of dead were shambling mindlessly down 5th Street in a compact wall of flesh. The sound of all the gunfire and moans and screams detonated around her, the very air shook with the wall of sound that assaulted her hearing.

She saw the dead falling, but for every one that fell five more took its place and many of the ones that did fall managed to climb to their feet again and rejoined the mass. As it moved closer, even more dead began to fall and as they were mowed down yet still more came. Blood from the fresh dead collected in the gutters and ran in a thick sluice into the sewer. The dead piled up against the barricade like a wave, their mass so large that the entire barricade shifted. One cop suddenly slipped and screamed out in abject primal terror as he fell into the crowd of dead who then pounced on him and tore him apart with the efficiency of a chainsaw. The men standing on the cars and trucks that formed the barricade fired directly down into the crowd while a group of burly civilians in all manner of dress came running around the corner and towards the barricade. They were armed with every kind of tool for weapons. Machetes, crudely fashioned spears, pitchforks, butcher knives, baseball bats, handguns and every other form of weaponry imaginable was present in the hands of the crowd of men. Dr. Wright breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that the cavalry had come to save them all.

They ran forward and mounted the barricade with the military and police and wildly began hacking and slashing away at the dead beneath them on the barricades. Dead began falling into the crowd, their heads broken and smashed, however the bodies of the dead soon piled up higher and higher. The dead behind them were then able to clamber up the pile to the level of the sandbag parapet. The exhausted men on the top of the mass of vehicles and bodies soon began to succumb to weariness and it became obvious that they couldn’t hold much longer.

One heroic soldier, manning the large machine gun nest anchoring one end of the barricade held the trigger down and let a never ending stream of rounds into the crowd as it piled up against the barricade. The huge bullets tore through the crowd, blowing huge gaps that were soon filled by more dead. Then a huge knot of the crowd surged toward his position. He screamed out and held the trigger down, wiping out an enormous chunk of the horde but not enough. Their bodies began to pile up around his position before the barrel on his weapon overheated, warped and sagged and the weapon jammed up tight. The soldier rose from his now useless weapon and drew a Beretta and took several carefully aimed individual shots before the crowd was upon him. Just as the icy cold fingers of the dead wrapped themselves around his body he put the weapon in his mouth and fired.

Several of the men were snatched from the barricade and disappeared into the crowd of dead, their screams piercing and painful over the gunfire. It was just too much and the entire unit broke and began jumping off the barricades and running for their lives north towards the Campus, Dr. Wright running along with them. She looked back and the blood drained from her face as she saw the dead pouring over the barricade like a water fall.

That was almost two years before and since then she had triumphed over adversity in her mind and managed to not only survive, but also create a seedling for future generations to build around. A seedling that she lovingly cared for and tended to as she waited for the day when the dead would finally rot away and she could begin the process of rebuilding society the way it was supposed to be built. Where everyone would have a say in the production and distribution throughout the society and that say would be enacted and enforced through a larger, more powerful Brain Trust who could wield the power that would be necessary to grant them with both responsibility and justice.

But now, the seedling was in danger of being uprooted and crushed by representatives of the corrupt and greedy ancien regime. In her mind, like all nascent socialist communities in history her creation was now in danger of being destroyed by capitalist greed before it could blossom and grow from a community into a society. Sarah Hollinger provided her with the key information. That bitch Lydia was going around spreading lies and fear about the safety of the zoo’s defenses and offering a way out. Worse, people actually were beginning to believe her, and some were starting to talk about leaving the community for the West. Sarah said Dr. Humbacher had been meeting with some of the people and might leave himself. The ingrates wanted to abandon her noble project and return to the ancien regime with all its environmentally unsustainable greed. She had to do something.

“Thank you Sarah, for bringing this information to my attention. Don’t worry the gates and fences are strong enough to hold back anything. Remember how I explained that certain forces of greed and evil still lurk in the world and would one day come and try and “reclaim” the land they stole and so never had rightful claim to in the first place? The land we are going to reserve for The People? That time has come, and we must act swiftly or lose it all.” Dr. Wright explained to the naïve young girl and then proceeded to outline her plans.

* * *

Dr. Humbacher sat at his desk in the Primate Research Area going over his notes and peering through a microscope at a culture of Kang’s blood. It was almost 2 am and he removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes with exhaustion. He heard the door to his office open and he turned around to discover Dr. Wright standing there.

“Sheila? What are you doing here?” he said in confusion.

“I want to discuss the future and security of our community Doctor. I understand you met with some of the people and that there is talk of leaving.” she said, the look in her eye was distant, hazy.

Dr. Humbacher sighed and responded. “Sheila, I indulged in your little social experiment because the concept was solid for a community such as this one to adopt and survive under the current circumstances. However, the concept is predicated upon the voluntary interactions of the people here. Many do not want to stay here anymore.”

Dr. Wright’s face took on a scowl. “That is a lie! They merely remember their old wasteful lives and naturally have some wish to return to them, like a homesick child who cries for its mother at summer camp. We’ve just never provided the right message for the people to latch onto! It’s obvious that mere survival isn’t good enough anymore. The people need a vision, then they will realize how important the work we are doing here is.” she said with the desperation of a fanatic.

“Sheila, the experiment is coming to an end one way or another. I intend to broach the subject at the Council meeting tomorrow morning and recommend that we leave and take as many people with us as possible. Once far from here, as I understand it, the Lieutenant is going to recommend to the President that the city be permanently sterilized with a nuclear weapon. I agree with that assessment. These new dead cannot be allowed to spread.” He stated emphatically and stared her down. The blood drained from her face and her mouth dropped. No! They wouldn’t dare destroy her city!? Everything she worked for, her society, the most important thing she’d ever done. Humbacher stood there with hands on his hips, waiting for response. A sneer crossed her face.

She responded by reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small .380 automatic and pointing it at Humbacher, who blanched when he saw it and his mouth dropped in shock.

“I cannot allow you to destroy the future. The beginning of a new age has dawned! The corrupt capitalists, and their shills like you have no place within it.” and she pulled the trigger. There was a loud POP then a bright flash illuminated the dim office. A splash of red appeared on Dr. Humbacher’s lab coat and he clutched at the site and then collapsed to the floor. As the smoke cleared she smiled a soft smile, then turned and walked out the door.

A few minutes later, Dr. Humbacher groaned and stirred. He began crawling towards the door from his office that led out into the Primate Habitat. He left a broad streak of blood on the tiled floor as he made his way the short distance. He was just able to push the door open and crawl out onto the grass of the habitat, where Kang sat on the other side, curiously watching him as Humbacher fell onto the grass face first and expired, his body laying halfway into the habitat.

Kang, the short silver hairs on his back rising at the smell of blood, became curious and alarmed that his only friend looked hurt. He got onto his knuckles and slowly lumbered his giant frame over to Humbacher’s prone body on all fours. He nudged the body gently as a pool of red spread out and soaked into the dirt. Kang’s intelligent eyes took in the scene and his animal senses told him that somehow the Doctor was dead. Kang lowered his head and made a kind of anguished groan while continuing to prod at the Doctor’s body, but eventually gave up.

Kang then noticed that the door was open, and a new scene was before him. Curious, he carefully stepped over Humbacher’s body, and entered into the office. He was tentative, maybe even fearful at first to see these surroundings. Eventually the fear shook off and he knuckle walked his way to the other exit. The one that Dr. Wright had left previously through, and pushed it open and entered into the zoo at large.

* * *

A man sat alone on a chair at the main gate, watching the undead corpses shake the gate back and forth with the weight of their combined mass. Reaching out and moaning in frustration that such a meal was just out of reach, the corpses at the gate like a wave rolled back and forth. This was the worst duty for him. He was always afraid he would see some loved one or friend he knew appear at the gate, wanting to eat him. So far such a horror hadn’t presented itself, but if it ever did he doubted he’d be able to sentry the gate again.

What he couldn’t see in the darkness, was a shadowy form quietly creep over the fence off to his right a few dozen yards. He did however hear it when it landed in the bushes on the near side. He looked over in the direction of the sound and his eyes squinted in the darkness. He then stood up from his chair and walked a few feet, listening while peering into the shadows. He heard a soft hiss, and then a dark form blasted out of the bushes and sprinted for him, screaming a feral growl. The gate sentry yelped in fear and then turned and ran for a small guard shack, the hisser rapidly closing the distance behind him. He ran into the shack and then slammed the door shut, turning the bolt on the door to seal the monster out. The hisser didn’t slow down and didn’t even bother with the door but made its own as it jumped into the pane of glass that made up the window of the guard shack and blasted through it, covering the now screaming sentry in glass.

The shack shimmied and shook violently as the feral screams of the hisser and its struggling victim belted out into the immediate area and in the struggle, a button was hit. The gate began to groan and squeak and then it rattled open, the mass of dead tumbling over each other. Their moans picked up in intensity, calling to those that surrounded the zoo. Several hissers nearby, hearing the excited moans of the other dead that indicated food was imminent, turned and started bounding their way in the direction of the now open gate as the dead began to slowly spread out around the zoo, hunting for victims.

** *

Gunny Raines and the LT were standing in front of a group of about 70 people who had come over the course of the evening to say they wished to leave the Zoo. He apprised them of the situation and explained to them that they only had enough room for so many, and women and children had priority over anyone else.

Almost all the mothers in the zoo had chosen to leave and brought their children with them. They were going to be loaded into the shuttle buses. One of the men living in the zoo, a former truck driver, was tapped to drive the truck which would contain other survivors and whatever supplies could be gathered.

The remaining men who had volunteered to go were going to load up in the backs of the pickup trucks and be armed with whatever hand weapons could be found. These plans and other discussions were being had when the door to the vehicle bay burst open and Dr. Wright appeared with about ten of her Ohio State kids carrying shotguns and hunting rifles. They ran in and quickly surrounded the Gunny and the LT and Sgt. Loomis. The rest of the LT and Raines’ men were unarmed and spread out and relaxing when the coup became reality. No one was near a weapon, so they placed their hands in the air.

Karl marched at Dr. Wright in anger, pointing his finger at her as he came closer. “Dr. Wright! What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” he said in indignant anger.

“Stopping a revolution.” she stated plainly and raised the .380 and shot Karl right between the eyes. The women and children in the place screamed and the crowd broke in terror and ran for the exits. They streamed out as Karl’s body fell backward to the cement of the vehicle bay, spreading crimson out onto the floor and after a moment only the shrew, her stooges and the visitors remained in the bay.

She approached the LT and spit in his face. “YOU PIGS! You almost ruined it all! You thought I would let you destroy my city? You knuckle dragging Neanderthals could never understand the noble work that is being done here! I thought that maybe that putz Humbacher would understand but he turned out to be a coward and shill just like you. I cannot have such swine fouling up my space!” she yelled at him. She then stepped back from the LT as the men were all lined up against the wall of the garage and her petty goon squad of brainwashed youth took their positions to become the first executioners of her new society.

Suddenly a heavy bolt was thrown back and the sound echoed throughout the garage and she turned her head to see Lids standing on top of the M-60 with the massive .50 cal on the pedestal pointed at her. She turned white and then spun around to face the woman on the machine gun.

“You!” Dr. Wright spat.

“Damn straight bitch!” cursed Lids and then the .50 spat flame. One round that blew Dr. Wright in half. The noise was absolutely deafening and it echoed for many seconds around the building. When the echo had died, Dr. Wright was nothing but two parts lying together in a pile in a massive pool of blood. Her goon squad of kids dropped their weapons without a word and ran out the side door.

“I wondered where the hell you wandered off to!” the LT shouted at Lids and she smiled. That was when they heard the first terrible screams outside the garage as a crowd of dead flowed out of the darkness to envelop the frightened people who were standing just outside the vehicle bay. The moans of the dead mixed with the blood curdling cries of the people told the entire story. It was time to leave. But first they had to find the First Daughters.

Several people were screaming terrible, primal howls as they were being consumed by spread out crowds of undead when the side door flew open and the crack of gunfire echoed throughout the zoo and deaders began to hit the pavement. The soldiers and militiamen burst from the door and began taking down the dead in expert fashion. Each one was a seasoned pro and they dispatched the dead so quickly and efficiently they cleared the immediate area in a few moments. The moans and cries of the dead and awful screams of people being pursued, caught and eaten alive were echoing all around them throughout the zoo.

One of Dr. Wrights goon kids sprinted by screaming in terror, a hisser hot on his tail. The LT lifted his rifle and took just enough lead and pulled the trigger, tossing the hisser off its feet as the bullet caught it in the skull and it hit the ground and slid to an abrupt stop, face down.

The Gunny reached out and clothes lined the kid as he tried to run by, stopping the kid in his tracks and dropping him to the ground. He then reached down and picked the dazed kid up off the ground and held him by the scruff of his jacket. He leaned in close and growled at the kid “Unless you want me to feed you to these things I would suggest you tell me where Dr. Wright put the girls.” The kid, already white with fear turned even paler and simply pointed in the direction of the living quarters. Raines released the kid and he immediately ran off into the darkness.

The Gunny and LT led the way as they quickly trotted the several hundred yards to the living area taking down a few dead that stumbled along the road aimlessly. When they arrived what greeted them was a scene so awful that none of the men could believe it. The entire parking area was covered in thick pools of blood. Clumps of dead were everywhere, growling at each other and pulling at the entrails of victims that lay scattered by the dozen around the lot some still alive and screaming, even struggling weakly as the knots of dead men and women consumed them. The creatures were slicked head to toe with fresh blood and seemed to delight in rolling and playing in the guts and gore of these unfortunate souls.

The men took action instantly and in another brutal and efficient operation cleared the parking lot of the dead with methodical timing. Cutting their way past them to the door of the living area, they knocked loudly at the locked door and called out for it to be opened. It was opened and the men all filed in quickly and the door shut and locked tight and the Gunny looked around and noticed there were 30 very frightened people standing around the door. Most of them were from the group of women and children that had escaped from the almost-execution. The two First Daughters were here as well. They were sitting off to one side clutching each other.

Gunny Raines spoke up to the crowd “Listen folks, shit’s hit the fan out there. This place is done for. Now, we’re going to make our way back to the vehicle garage with as many people as we can gather and get the hell out of here. I want everyone to form up in the middle of the ring the men will form and you listen to me. If I say run, run. If say stop, stop. If you follow directions, you might just make it out of here alive. The alternative…” and the Gunny just let the silence hang there before the frightened crowd nodded in agreement.

“Okay, what do you say we get out of here LT?” the Gunny said.

“Damn straight gunny! Okay men! Form up, defense ring formation, let’s get the civvies home!” and a loud hooah erupted from the men and they filed out the door and formed up in the lot. They then proceeded to move at a brisk walking pace across the lot and onto the road that led back to the maintenance garage.

They were halfway there when a couple hissers, trailed by a huge pack of regular dead came bounding up the roadway. The Gunny shouted for the men to form a skirmish line in front of the crowd. The people in the crowd whined in fear and some in the back began to back away as if to head back to the living quarters. The Gunny shouted for them to follow orders and stay where they were. The Gunny was terrified at losing control of this crowd that had grown to almost fifty people and if they panicked and ran like a herd of cattle, they would all be killed.

Suddenly, a 450 pound mass of screaming black and silver fur came roaring out of the bushes next the crowd. The women in the group screamed out in terror as Kang, smelling the dead, had come out in a rage. He flew past, running on his knuckles and hind legs, his mouth wide open presenting his fangs and screaming a primal roar none of the people had ever heard before. Kang stood up on two legs between the crowd of terrified civilians and the group of dead and beat against his chest wildly. It sounded like two wooden mallets being beat on a hollow log and it echoed across the zoo. The hissers felt absolutely no intimidation from this display of natural strength from their potential meal, and so they charged at Kang, hissing wildly. The first one leaped into the air and Kang caught it in a massive bear hug, enveloping the emaciated deader in his long and powerful arms and squeezed. The crack of bones was heard and then Kang, roaring like the primal beast he was reached down with those nasty canine teeth and took a huge chunk out of the neck of the hisser effectively decapitating it. He dropped its limp body to the ground as the other hisser raced within reach.

His massive, hairy arm shot out like a piston and snatched the hisser by the throat. It instantly stopped hissing as Kang, with the ease that one would squeeze a ball of cotton crushed the creature’s windpipe and snapped its neck. He then lifted it off its feet and grabbing one of its arms by the elbow screamed out and pulled. With a snap, crackle, pop and a tearing sound the arm came free from the hisser and Kang then pile drove the corpse into the ground in anger. The wet slap of its body sounding out as it was choke slammed into the pavement several times before being thrown carelessly to the side.

Kang ran forward on two legs, pounding on his chest and roaring before dropping to all fours and charging sideways at the pack of undead in front of him. Using his muscled bulk like a battering ram he rolled through the crowd of deaders with the ease of a bowling ball hitting a strike. Like pins the deaders were scattered through the air and on the ground. Then like a machine Kang went to work systematically dismembering the dead within reach. He reached down and grabbed one unfortunate deader by the ankle and lifted it up off the ground and then slapped its limp form against the pavement breaking its neck and then using it as a club to beat several other deaders, sweeping them aside into the bushes before dropping the now useless and misshapen body to the ground.

He spun around and around within the crowd of deaders, wild with screams and literally tore the crowd to pieces with his fangs and overwhelming strength so quickly that the Gunny was reminded of the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Toons. Body parts flew in all directions, heads, arms, torsos, legs. Like a blender Kang worked his way over the crowd, leaving nothing in his wake but a pile of twitching moaning torsos, and scattered arms and legs laying around. He then screamed, beat on his chest and fled into the darkness down the road on all fours to continue the hunt.

“There’s our chance! Move people!” The LT shouted and the crowd began moving as quickly as possible while still staying organized down the road. They heard Kang roar again in abject rage and in a moment came upon him as he finished off a hisser that had been foolish enough to charge him. He had it pinned on the ground and was jumping up and down on its head, smashing it like a watermelon and screaming with anger before continuing on down the road leaving a thin twitching body laying out in the road with a red, chunky streak being all that remained of its head. The people followed a trail of body parts left behind by the enraged Gorilla as it worked its way down the road, dismembering in seconds whatever dead happened to be within his sight.

They finally reached the vehicle garage and Kang continued running past and disappeared into the darkness where he was heard crashing through the underbrush howling out and the moans of the dead answered in response before thrashing and crashing within the bushes told the tale of what Kang was doing to the dead within the trees that surrounded the road. The crowd of people used the distraction of the wildly fighting Gorilla to make it to safety inside the vehicle bay.

Since the crowd of people was smaller than planned, it was decided that the best way would be load everyone up in the two shuttle buses and have them ride behind the M-60 as it plowed their way to freedom and safety far outside the city. The rest, all men, would ride on the outside of the tank and the Stryker and try to fend off the worst of the hissers and deaders.

The People, frightened to the point of simple herd instinct, were literally herded into the buses where they took a seat. Frightened children clutched their mothers in desperate fear and the poor women themselves were torn with terror. Lids and Deadhead Ned mounted up into the Stryker. The LT called out. “Thompson, Garcia.” And the two men ran forward and saluted the LT. “Thompson, you were Armor before you were Airborne, right?” Thompson answered with hooah.

“Okay, you two take the tank, Thompson on the wheel, Garcia on the gun, let’s get rolling.” And the men saluted quickly and ran to the M-60 and began climbing inside and starting it up. Engines roared to life and headlights came on. The huge corrugated garage doors were rocking and back and forth and the moans of dead on the other side could be heard. They were scratching and pounding on the metal doors. One of the men ran over to a button console on the wall and pushed the button and the doors began to slowly lift.

As the doors slowly rose, the legs of a mass of dead could be seen at first and then as the door rose higher their true mass became visible in the bright headlights. There were hundreds, and the dead for a moment seemed to be dazzled by all the headlights shining in their faces. They sort of stared, dumbstruck for a moment like deer on a dark country highway. Then the world exploded in a wall of gunfire and deaders suddenly disappeared in puffs of black mist. The tank rolled forward into the crowd, Garcia hanging halfway out of the commander’s hatch, blasting away with the .50 at everything around him and clearing a huge slick path through the crowd.

The buses pulled out next following slowly behind the tank as it crushed over everything in its path, rotated to the right and continued down the service road towards the main gate. The Stryker pulled out last, men clinging to the top of it, shooting off to the sides at the few dead that remained in the area. The Tank thundered along and turned towards the main gate. The gate was packed with a steady stream of dead flowing in from the street. The tank engine roared as Thompson hit the gas and the tank belched smoke and then tore into the crowd. The dead were caught beneath the treads of the tank and smashed to a sick pulp, the entire time Garcia is hooting and firing wildly with the .50 cal. The caravan turned left out of the gate and continued down the street, crushing over the packs of dead that happened to be in the way and disappeared into the darkness, leaving the dead behind to explore the zoo.

Several hours later the LT was on a battered HAM radio set with National Command Authority in Benny’s bunker like house. He identified himself with a special code, and was transferred directly to the Presidential Offices in Aspen.

“Please hold for the President, Lieutenant.” came back from the communications officer. After a moment a voice was heard.

“Lieutenant Volker?”

“Yes Mr. President.”

“I understand you have information to report?”

“Yes sir. You’re daughters are safe. We recovered them along with about fifty other survivors.”

“Thank God, and thank you as well Lieutenant. I understand you have some other information?”

The LT took the next few minutes to fill the President in on the situation. The man, sitting thousands of miles away in an office in Aspen, listened with grave attention as the LT discussed the hissers and the danger of their spreading.

“What is it exactly you recommend I do Lieutenant?” said the President, wanting to be sure he heard properly.

“I recommend that you authorize for Columbus to be immediately and permanently sterilized, sir.” The LT came back

The President nodded. “Well, color me skeptical Lieutenant, but you must understand my reluctance to detonate a thermonuclear weapon over an American city, even one infected by the dead.”

“Mr. President, There are people scattered across this entire State, entire country. Millions of them who are living in isolated communities that are still surviving. If these things spread, it’ll be even worse than the first time. This needs to happen Mr. President.” the LT said with deadpan seriousness.

“Very well Lieutenant, I’ll let you know my decision one way or another within 12 hours.” The President said.

“Yes Sir.”

The President hung up the phone and stared out at the idyllic, snow-capped peaks through the window to his office, then picked up the phone.

***

Kang sat on a thick limb of a large oak tree somewhere in the Zoo. His fur was caked in black slime from a night of tearing bodies apart. He was exhausted, bleeding, and dying. Though he was immune to Factor Z, his body was not immune to exhaustion and stress. His heart was giving out, and slowly winding to a stop. He had climbed into the tree to get away from the grasping hands of hundreds of undead which collected around the tree in which he sat. He was too exhausted now to even utter a growl. He just looked around at the massive crowd as it swayed back and forth beneath him, reaching up and calling for his primate flesh.

A sharp burning sensation ran through his chest, spreading through his arms. His breathing became slower and slower. Suddenly, a loud roar was heard overhead and he looked up as an F-111 shot right over him at full afterburner, before turning for the sky. It rose, higher and higher and higher and Kang’s eyes followed it as it zoomed into the clear blue sky. Then, a shiny object seemed to come free from the plane after which it turned onto its back and disappeared in the direction it had come.

Kang’s eyes slowly closed, his breathing stopped and then he went limp and tumbled from the branch, landing with a loud thud onto the mass of dead below, crushing many beneath his bulk. As the crowd surged in to finally pick the huge carcass clean, a blinding flash of white hot light rolled over the crowd vaporizing it, and everything around it for miles.

The End

I rationalize my serial theft from the quiet crypts of civilization by imagining myself as the inheritor of all those now dust. Perhaps not me, an old man, a relic, but Ferlita, at least. It is she who stands some chance of seeing our species coming back from the brink, she the one who may lead us back into the light.

The pattern of larceny, once begun, grows easier with repetition. The Kinneys, strange as we were, earned what we took, and were proud of standing on our own two feet. Aside from our trophies, we hated to borrow, rejected help, and bought only those things which we couldn’t gain by direct action. My primary action now is to think of things I can rob from the community chest and ways I can use those items to prosecute a war perhaps only myself and Ferlita have formally declared.

No matter. The extremity of the battles we face must take its toll, and even as we speak for those beyond the veil, we are ourselves diminished. We write small changes on the walls of this this quiet world, and quickly are used down to the nub. Useless soliloquies on my part change nothing, my efforts to make sense of things larger than myself always doomed to end with a series of question marks and frustrated doodles upon the page.

Ferlita comes to me as I sit in the midst of the yard sale pile of bits and pieces I’ve drawn together, looking at the thumb of my left hand, where I’ve lost the nail at last, and now simply have an ugly darkness of soft flesh. I can’t remember how long it’s been that way, or what happened in the first place.

“Have you got a plan, Mr. Kinney, or has your little rubber band snapped?”  She kicks a big plastic bag full of packing peanuts, twirling a road flare between her fingers.

“There’s a plan in the formative stages.”

“I used to have my homework in, like, the formative stages. Never seemed to get any credit for it.”

“You’re a wiseacre some times, kid. Not being Conan or somesuch, it takes an old man a few swings at the ball before he hits one solid.”

“So you’re just gathering up a whole lot of random junk and hoping something’ll come to you?”  She softens her words by shimmying up on the camp table next to me and leaning her head against my arm.

“No, I’ve got the basics down. I just need to ask you a few things before I’m sure.”

“Like what?”  I both admire and abhor the look in her brown eyes. She is what she must be, but I can’t excuse a world in which a little girl has to be so hard, so young.

“Can you ride a bike?”

She nods.

“Riding fast, with stops and starts, and for up to three or four miles?”

“I used to ride all day. No problem.”

“What about your arm?  Can you throw?” I ask her.

She gives me a disgusted look. “Like softball?

“Sure. Like that.”

“Si. Claro.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. One more thing. If I don’t…if I’m not around anymore, are you going to be able to lay low and survive?”

A sudden pain crosses her eyes, but she clamps down hard on it and it turns inward, into places I can’t see. “I don’t want it to be like that.”

“I don’t either, but I have to know that you’ll be able take care of yourself. I’ll teach you everything I can while we’re getting ready, but plans fail, things fall apart, and I need to know that you won’t…do anything hasty if I’m not around.”  I find that it’s hard to get the words out.

“I’ll be careful. I can hide. I can find food. I can go back to how it was if I have to. I don’t want…”  She turns away, putting her small fists against her face. Her breathing hitches, just once. The rest of it is controlled, silent. I can do nothing but put my hand against her spine and clench my teeth. There’s no one to curse, no easy target for my anger.

“Whatever happens,” she says, turned from me, “I don’t want to leave any of them—the smart ones—behind. The super muertos have to go down.”

*****

I haven’t ridden a bike for some embarrassing number of years. Still, there’s two rules I know, or perhaps just made up. One: you don’t ask your troops to do things you won’t do yourself. Pretty sure that’s some rough paraphrase of a real maxim. The second: you assess your enemy’s level of readiness, their response to someone encroaching on their territory. For me, that involves a bike ride.

The pain in my thighs and the aching in my old knees humanizes everything. Still, I’m alive to ache. The bike shorts I found to go along with the bike, a Cannondale with fat tires and more gears than I’ve ever seen, are constrictive, but given the cruel dimensions of the seat, it’s probably a good idea. Just because my wedding tackle’s old and likely without any rational usage, that doesn’t mean that the nerves have died down there.

Bicyling and .45s in a shoulder holster were not meant to converge, as concepts, I don’t think. I can’t find a comfortable posture or adjustment, and finally give in to the idea that the ridge of the magazine will sometimes clip me in the ribs. If I’m not careful, the hammer will get me on the back of the arm. Clumsy as my old body is, I’m often pretty sketchy on “careful”.

Cavendish Petrochemical Labs sits alongside a newly-paved road, the deep blackness and sweet tar smell still cooking up from the surface as the sun sits high in a sky devoid of clouds. There’s high chain-link all the way around the facility, which looks like it must be several acres in total. There’s a big parking lot behind a wheeled gate. The building’s blocky and steel sided. At least ten or twelve small exhaust stacks rise from the rear part of the structure.

Gate standing open and parking lot mostly filled with cars, I guess that a shift was in progress at the time the Flashover hit. This shift, for reasons I don’t pretend I can grasp, went muerto at an astronomically higher rate that the norm. That norm, guessed only through my own small calculations, was something like one or two percent. Not the Cavendish employees. It had to have been way higher. Maybe everyone.

I pedal slow, dawdling to see if there’s going to be any attempt to impede my progress. Or gnaw my shin bones, like the muertos do. My surmise that they use this place as their base camp is just that—a surmise. A groundless guess on my part. There could be…

Nope, I’m right after all. Five, six, shit, maybe ten super muertos explode from the cover of a barberry hedge and start sprinting to catch me.

I think about pulling my .45 and trying to fire over my shoulder, but just pulling one hand from the bars makes the bike veer dangerously. I feel the smooth track of the new pavement degenerate at the edge of the road, the sandy shoulder grasping at the fat tires and trying to pull the bars out of my remaining hand.

To hell with this. I put my other hand on the bars and get my course righted. I pedal for all I’m worth. The way the switchgear works is still a mystery to me, but I try for a higher gear.

“Balls,” I whisper. I’ve got a lower gear now, so that my legs flail around to nearly no purpose. I’m slowing down. I can hear the muertos’ feet slapping against the pavement. They’re closing in.

Heart straining close to redline, I push the switchgear the other way, and the chain hops up onto the big front sprocket. The sudden resistance shocks me up to the hip bone, the speed of my leg’s rotation quartering in an instant. I stand up off the seat like I’ve seen the Tour de France riders do and go for it.

My heart’s hitting so fast that half my vision’s filled with snowflakes and colored fire, but I don’t quit. A wild tendril of humor goes through my mind, imagining them finding me lying at the side of road, heart exploded like a doped horse’s, my flesh already cooling before they can lay a tooth upon it.

I don’t have enough breath to laugh, but I go on. It seems as if a gulf of a thousand years is breached before their footfalls fade away behind me, before I’m safe.

I pull to the side and, devoid of grace or care, fall against the weedy downslope, back flat against the ground, breathing like a bellows. It takes my heart the better part of a half hour to finally approximate its usual cadence.

“So. That’s dangerous,” I reflect, before crawling back to the bike and forcing my body, now in full revolt, to get back on. It takes me nearly two hours to get back to the Suburban, and by that time, one of my calves is in such a fierce cramp that tears are gathering in my eyes.

“How’d it go?” Ferlita asks.

I put my palms against the rear hatch of the Suburban and try to work the knots out of my legs. My clothes are soaked with sweat, my brain foggy and inert. “One problem with my plan, honey.”

“What’s that, Mr. Kinney?”  She hands me a bottle of water, perching on the rusty back bumper.

“It’s too risky. On a bike, anyway. Way too risky. It’s stupid.”

“Tell me what happened, huh?  I’ll decide if I can do it.”

“You’re, what?  Ten?”

“Eleven. I’m just little. And we’re partners. Tell me.”

I do. She grins.

“What?” I ask.

“We can use this. We can totally use this,” she tells me. After a minute, I’m smiling, too.

*****

Enthusiasm turns to trepidation as we churn closer to the actual risk. Bold plans look great on paper, sound great as they arc across the still, safe air of conception. Putting them into practice…that’s something else altogether.

I pace in front of the Suburban, suffering doubts, kicking at the insides of my ribcage with an angry heart. Was half a mile too far?  How fast can Ferlita pedal?  Will they chase her that far?  What if there are others, both before and behind her?

Too many questions. Too much time in which to ask them. I’ve checked my M-14 and its respective magazines of ammunition a dozen times. I’ve checked how my .45 sits in its holster an equal number of times. I’ve done everything but worry about having forgotten to turn off the burners on the gas range at home. If there was a sink nearby, I’d be washing my hands like those folks with mental problems, back when that sort of thing seemed like a bad problem to have.

Then I see her, bent down hard over the bars of her small frame ten-speed, trailing a half dozen running muertos. I can see her teeth, her face filled with an mean little grimace as she makes herself small, helping me get an angle for my shot.

The M-14′s butt plate hits my shoulder and I take aim. The peep sight fills with the snarling face of the lead muerto. Crazy, but they seem to grow more…evilly aware every time I see one. I time the bob and rush of his gait and squeeze the trigger. My shoulder is till tender from my adventures with the Weatherby, but I continue to fire for effect on the muertos.

After three fall and other is spun and deposited on the tarmac with his left arm foreshortened at the elbow, the others leap from the road surface and into the brushy forest.

“What I wouldn’t give…” I begin, but I won’t finish wishing for the simpleton muertos. I knew what we were facing when I came here. It’s them we’re concerned about.

I catch Ferlita’s bars to help her get to a stop, throwing her bike into the back of the Suburban. The action causes cramps to ripple across the small muscles of my torso and lock up one calf muscle. She leaps into the car as I load in the M-14, still trailing vapor from its open slide.

“Mr. Kinney!” Ferlita yells. There’s a sharp, panicked edge to her voice.

I fall backward into the back seat’s footwell, drawing the .45. One of the super muertos had been jogging through the woods, coming around for a flanking rush. He’s right on me. The sound of the Colt is like the end of the world inside the cabin of the truck, but it reduces the left side of the rushing zombie’s head to pink-red pulp. His momentum isn’t checked, and he hits the open aperture, thumping atop me in a bloody, reeking mass of dead flesh.

Something hits the other side of the Suburban. I can’t get up, but I start pushing the terminated flesh with my free hand. Ferlita chirps a curse and I feel her move violently enough to rock the Suburban. I look up, and I see two muertos hammering at the side of the vehicle.

Ferlita’s first shot blows out the passenger side window, and I see her hang her off hand out the ragged opening, pumping shots into the other muertos until the Beretta’s slide locks, barrel exposed and grinning empty.

They’re down. I can’t see them from my prone position. I struggle to extricate myself from the still zombie’s unwanted embrace and barely manage to climb into the driver’s seat. I fire the engine and we vacate the scene in a wash of half-burned gasoline and tire smoke. My leg cramp has grown worse, and I’m shaking all over like someone with a high fever, but all I can do is put my foot against the dead space on the firewall and grit my teeth.

“Shit. That was a piece of cake,” Ferlita says. She’s digging at her ears, trying to get the ringing to go away, I imagine.

I laugh. It sounds like the barking of a jackal coming up from a buried drainage pipe.

*****

We harnessed fire, and that made us as gods on the earth. I jockey a fifty gallon drum of gasoline and plastic packing peanuts onto the huge flatbed trailer, that last of twelve that I was able to fill from the nearby wells. Frankly, the last one I can wrestle onto the trailer. Ferlita hands me up a loop of poly rope a few hundred feet long. I throw a big bowline-on-a-bite around one drum and then pace around and around the whole group until I’m out of line. I hitch the rope hard, and know that it’ll stay, bumps or no. In amongst the fifties, I’ve got three ninety pound propane cylinders, each with an eight inch red dot of paint. Come twilight, Cavendish Petrochemicals is going to have a big problem. That’s my prediction.

I want to ask Ferlita if she’s sure, but she’d just glare at me. She’s said she can do it, and so she’ll do it. That’s her. We’ve got a little car that was still in running order at the dealership. One of those Toyotas that runs on batteries sometimes. It’s quiet, and she can put the seat close enough to reach the pedals. It should work. If it won’t, it’ll be too late for us to lament. We’ll be food for the muertos.

We both get into the Toyota, Ferlita driving. It’s midday, and we crawl past the chemical plant at walking pace, waiting. I flex my hands, hoping that I’ve got enough speed to get this done. They don’t jump when they jumped the first two times. Are they gone?

No. They’re just learning. When the muertos do jump, it’s really close, and they’re coming from every direction.

“Hit it!” I yell.

Ferlita does, and two muertos get a taste of the Toyota’s bumpers. She’s a little shaky behind the wheel, but her nerve always holds. She’s my girl. My partner. We make a little distance on them, maybe three hundred yards, and I tell her to get it stopped.

With the squealing of the Toyota’s thin tires, we’re to a stop. I do my best to leap out, and she pops the hatchback. I hoist the makings of our distraction fire out of the back, my bones and muscles protesting to high heaven. Ferlita is in the center of the road, her Beretta held at rest, red ear muffs on her head.

Four five-gallon jugs of diesel, four VW engine blocks made out of magnesium. One twenty foot length of hemp rope, already soaked with fuel and ready to burn.

I push the rope through the handle of each of the Jerry cans, then into the top of the last one. I stretch it out, all the way out to the edge of the road.

“They’re coming,” I hear. I fish for my lighter and spin the flint. Sparks, but no fire. Again. Same thing happens. I try for a harder spin, and the metal sides of the Zippo squirt out of my hand, tumbling down the embankment at the roadside.

I leap downward, my feet slipping, my ankle twinging. I tackle the spot where the lighter has landed, wondering if I’ll be able to get out.

The sound of gunfire rips open the roof of the day. I force myself up, crawling back to the end of the fuse. I spin the flint sparker one more time, and the flame comes up. I touch it to the fuse, and the bright fire of diesel dances up the fuse fast as you like.

“It’s lit!” I yell.

Ferlita falls back to the Toyota’s door, reloading and spraying a whole clip at the oncoming muertos to check their progress. More than a few already carry some of her lead.

In the moment that we pile into the car, the whole tinder behind us goes up, red-gold flame leaping thirty feet into the air, singing the back of the Toyota, and scaring the hell out of us. We are moving, though, moving out of the conflagration and into the clear air.

“How long will it burn?” Ferlita asks, hands tight on the wheel.

“If the magnesium goes up, quite a while. If not, maybe an hour. Can’t tell. This is the sort of stuff they used to put you in jail for.”

As the view of the fire fades, we can just make out a crowd of muertos forming. Smarter, they may be. The allure of the flames affects them nonetheless.

We circle back to the old Suburban, using an access road through town and sucking up much of the time that our fire might burn.

“This is it. This is the big show,” I say as I get myself ready for it, as I prep my aching body to make the surge into the truck again.

“It’s all or nothing,” Ferlita says back. She puts her arm around my waist and gives me a short squeeze.

I creak my way into the Suburban, now clean of all my important belongings, ready for its road of glory at last.

“Mr. Kinney?”  Ferlita’s standing by the Toyota, a Prius, she’s informed me. For a moment, I miss the wonderful names cars used to have. Imperial. Impala. Falcon. Those were names.

“What is it, sweetie?”

“I…” her face quirks.

“Me too. Me too.”  I pull out, the Suburban working hard to get the heavy trailer moving. She pulls in behind me. I don’t look back at her, for fear of what I’ll see, what I’ll feel.

The smoke from our distraction fire is still coming up in the distance. We roll to a stop at the open gate before Cavendish. Someone has been left to guard the fort, and they appear next to the Suburban. The window’s open, and I fire the big Ruger right into the muerto’s face. The flame front from the pistol soaks the thing’s head, the sudden hit of a high velocity shell cracking the skull like  a dropped pumpkin. It folds up, and I pop the door. Ferlita’s already out, already holding the M1 Carbine that I’ve recovered and made functional again. She levels the little rifle on the other two muertos and three reports end their career on the far side of dead.

I brace the dowel rod against the seat and the old engine roars. I reach up, dropping the transmission into gear and getting out of the way. The Suburban’s tires bark and scrabble at the tarmac, the rear end hopping under the strain, but it gets the heavy trailer moving, and it assumes its collision course with the chemical plant.

“Always was a great truck,” I whisper, as I walk back to the Prius. I get the big Weatherby out of the back as the mighty crash transpires behind me. As I look back, the Suburban is doors-deep in the front of the building, still straining and roaring to punch further, still in frantic, heroic action.

I level the Weatherby on one of the big propane cylinders. The trailer didn’t flip, which was my biggest worry. I can still see a red dot. I think that I should say something prophetic, something clever, at least, but I can think of nothing. I press the trigger. The heat and pressure of the explosion is vast and profound at thirty yards, the flames leaping a hundred feet in the air, a series of smaller explosions blending together like the cycles of a massive engine.

Ferlita goes into the passenger seat, and I rack the driver’s seat back to the rear of the tracks. I drive the little car roughly, and it responds as best it can. I drive in the opposite direction of our distraction fire for about fifty yards, then stop.

We take up our positions on either side of the little car, her with the M1 Carbine and me with my M14. As the supermuertos stream down the road, we fire until our magazines are spent. Those we don’t kill, we maim. Those that we don’t maim, we force into cover and pin down.

In the Prius, we flee the scene before our victory becomes failure. Perhaps it is my imagination, but I could swear I see knife boy, tiny in the rearview, shaking a long blade in wordless rage. We have not destroyed them all, but we have struck a mighty blow. The living may be relics of a time now passed, no more than violent heirlooms, but we somehow contrive to remain. In all our noise and fury, in all the desperate plans and destructive stratagems, we are not yet gone from the brow of the earth.

Epilogue:

Hi. This is Ferlita Sanchez writing this now. I just wanna say that I’m not writing this alone. I have help. There’s someone. Well, I’m going to get to that in a minute. I want to tell you that, in the movies, back when there were movies, they would always stop where Mr. Kinney did. You stop after the good guys win. The music plays and everybody’s name rolls down the screen. You walk out and everything’s sweet. So. If you want it to be that way, you gotta (said it like that on purpose) stop now. I’m serious. The movie’s over. All of Mr. Kinney’s pretty words are done. It’s just my part of the story now, and I don’t have any pretty words. So stop now. Don’t read what I am writing. If you keep on going, I warned you. I told you about it.

*****

Mr. Kinney and me drove a little while after the mess at the plant. I don’t think we was even going in the right direction. We just drove. I wasn’t even that scared right then, but I got the shakes real bad. I didn’t want to, and I wasn’t all sad, but I started crying. I thought of all the cheesy Mexican pop songs they used to play at the beautician shop in Yuma. The guys had always done their women wrong, but they were begging them not to cry. It seemed like all the songs were like that. I imagined a really nice looking boy singing for me not to cry in Spanish, but it didn’t do any good. I kept on. Mr. Kinney just stared ahead and drove, his eyes somewhere far out there. I stopped crying, then got hungry, then got real tired and went to sleep. I don’t know when we finally got back to the bowling alley. Mr. Kinney carried me in, I guess.

A few days went by. We stayed pretty cooped up, since we thought that any of the muertos that were still out there might try something. I started to get real good at bowling. And making grilled cheese sandwiches. We didn’t talk much. It seemed like we’d won, and we didn’t trust it. Mr. Kinney said that he expected Knife Boy, the lead muerto, to come back at us all knuckles. He expected…reprisals…I think that was the word.

I couldn’t do much to make things different. I was having a tough time sleeping, and when I did, I was having a lot of dreams that made me feel like I’d never be able to breathe normal again. We were both all messed up. I started missing my Mom like anything, and my little cousin Raul, and my friend Sammi. All the people that were gone. The people that were just dust. When I was all alone, and it was just the tire spray bottle and the muertos, it was different. With Mr. Kinney, and what we’d done, and thinking about actually having some kind of life again, I was maybe wanting too much. I opened the doors, and all the bad stuff from the world going to hell came in, and I was not dealing.

The only thing that helped was reading. It took me out of it a little. I read these books about this guy who was like a blacksmith, and the stuff he would make was wicked powerful. But man, this dude had some bad luck. He was always getting himself into the shit. If he did one bad thing all year, this girl he was digging would be there, and she would leave him because of it. When I was worrying about these books, it went away a little. It wasn’t so bad.

When there was nothing decent to eat left at the bowling alley, we finally knew we were going to have to take our chances. Hanging around was just making it worse, anyhow. When you’re all messed up inside, you want to move. At least when you’re doing something, you can fool yourself a little. Hiding like a rat in a storm drain just lets you pick away at your own scabs.

We came out of the bowling alley like a SWAT team. We had every gun loaded, and we came out ready rock. My shoulder finally looked like it was supposed to again, and I was ready. Yeah, I got the shakes again thinking about it, but I went through the door, and we made it to the car. Nothing came out. We didn’t see anything.

It wasn’t until we got back to Mr. Kinney’s house that things got bad. He would have ways of making this part so you can see it happening, and have a lot to say about it. I just have to put what happened. Just doing that, and I’m having a hard time. You guys don’t know how long it’s taking me to write this stuff. It’s like you dig a hole in sand, and it just fills in, like you haven’t done anything but push the stuff around.

We got out of the car like we’d gotten to it. Cop show stuff, ready in case the muertos tried to jump us. Again, things looked clear. We got in, and maybe for the first time since blowing up the plant, we started to relax. I know that, somewhere inside my gut, I started to feel like everything was cool. That’s a feeling you need to get rid of, because it always lies.

It was after dark, hours later, and we were heating up beef stew out of cans. The propane that Mr. Kinney had piped in had just run out. The blue little tongues of fire went out, and he went to the back door. He turned to me and said he was just going to duck out and change it. I asked if he wanted me to cover him, but he said that we had to stop living scared at some point. He said it would just be a minute, because he had five cans hooked up to a common line, and he’d just have to turn a valve to get us working again.

And then he never came back. I heard him shout, then something big hit the side of the house hard enough that the pictures of the Kinney people fell to the floor, all the glass breaking up and coughing everywhere. I opened my mouth, and there was scream there inside, but I couldn’t get anything to come out. I reached, and the shotgun was there, because I promised myself that I wasn’t ever going to be more than three steps from the twenty gauge, ever. The back door burst in, and there was Knife Boy, and he had blood on him, and he was running full out at me, and I raised the shotgun and shot, and the booming sounds kept going until I couldn’t hear anything.

Mr. Kinney’s head wasn’t connected to his body anymore when I went to the door, pumping shells into the belly of the shotgun. I could see him looking at me, his eyes open and empty. I waited at the door for a long time, crying real hard, but straining to see, to make sure there weren’t any more. I dragged Knife Boy outside and shut the door. I found a hammer and nails, and I nailed the door shut. It’s still nailed shut now. It ain’t ever gonna open again. I went and climbed into Mr. Kinney’s bed. I lay there until morning. When I closed my eyes I saw him laughing. I saw him telling me some story about how you can switch crank shafts on an engine and make it bigger inside, somehow. Much as I didn’t want to, I saw him, dead and staring. Sleeping was pretty hard. Maybe it always will be now. I guess we’re closer to the dead when we sleep, and I’m not used to the company any more.

It took me all day to bury him, but Knife Boy burned easy when I poured a bunch of booze on him and lit him up. I took everything good and moved back into the bowling alley. I was alone there until Tiffany found me the next spring. It wasn’t until then that I came back to the house and found this story. Now it’s done, ready to be told.

Mr. Kinney taught me to shoot. He taught me to drive. He taught me how to run his big tape player. I guess maybe we taught each other about how to fight the muertos. He made me out to be something amazing, but I was just a kid. Things were tough, and I tried as hard as I could. It almost was enough.

I could have covered Mr. Kinney. The happy ending was right outside my reach, but I could have stretched for it. I didn’t. Mr. Kinney was a good man. I miss him more than anyone.

I don’t know how they hone in on their game. The workings of zombies are too esoteric for me, but I can tell you that within their cold husks, there are, indeed, workings. I bring the Suburban to a halt and pop my door. I reach back into the back seat and bring out the M14, inserting a magazine and ramming it home.

“Doors closed, hands over ears, kiddo,” I tell Ferlita. She puts her small palms over her ears and bites down. I slide the muffs over my own battered ears and sight down toward the hollow in front of my own ancestral house. There are twelve zombies milling about, but recently aroused from their aimless shambling by the sound of my truck’s exhaust.

I flick the safety forward and set myself. My aim isn’t the steadiest, but it will have to do. They’re no more than fifty yards away now, moving forward in their staggering jog. These aren’t the new ones, the ones from the chemical plant. Just average Muertos, as Ferlita calls them. I let go at the first one. I don’t see him drop, because I’m doubled over, tears squeezing out of my eyes.

The recoil of a 7.62 NATO round isn’t overwhelming. It’s a good bump, but not a big deal. Unless you’ve got some broken ribs, that is. In that case, every shot is going to be an act of will, because you know how that grating, knifing pain will shoot through you when you press the trigger.

“Get it together, Kinney. Get it together,” I whisper. I fire again, flinching and missing altogether. I have twenty rounds with which to do the job. Miss many more times, and it might not get done. They’re no more than thirty yards away now, time eking away like dust through my fingers.

I bear down, shooting through the smeared vision and the pain. The world fills with thunder and muzzle flash. Muertos go down, some thrashing, some finally still. The last one falls mere feet from me, its slow blood dripping down the Suburban’s aluminum wheel and pooling beneath the aggressive tire tread. I feel as if I’ve been shaken by the hand of some malevolent giant, as if I’m some angry kid’s doll, and all the world’s frustrations have been taken out on my frail stuffing and old fabric. It’s only the rifle’s butt that keeps me from falling flat, and that accomplishes only allowing me a semi-graceful slump to my knees.

I’m crying, weeping silently in a quiet world that’s filled up with pain and broken hopes. Ferlita stands near me. I see her bottle of whitewall cleaner dangle at the edge of my vision. She says nothing for a moment, then reaches down to my shoulder holster and pulls free my .45. I see her feet disappear. I look up through the vagueness of my pain and despair. She holds the pistol with both hands, just like you see in the shows. She puts a bead on one of the zombies that’s struggling forward without use of its lower half. Nothing happens. She finds the safety. The pistol roars. The Muerto stops. For good.

I have a sudden, perfect remembrance of my own daughter, firing my friend Steve’s target pistol for the first time. She was about Ferlita’s age. Her smile had been so vibrant. She’d kept her best target for weeks, touching the holes closest to the bull’s eye with her thin fingers. All my recent food threatens to come up. I can’t watch as Ferlita puts paid to another of the zombies.

When she returns, the slide is caught back, the rounds all expended. Her little hand is bleeding from slide bite, but she says nothing, only cradling it with her left and waiting. I take the gun and somehow get up. The single remaining zombie gets its ticket punched for good with the front bumper of the Suburban. Ferlita helps me get to the house and sink into a battered Lay-Z-Boy. In the bright afternoon, the world becomes speckled like a bird’s egg, and I nearly pass out.

“That was fine work out there, Ferlita.”

She sits on the couch opposite me. “Are you okay?”

“Ribs aren’t feeling so great, but I’ll manage. I should find something to wrap them with while we’re here. How’s your hand?”

She looks down at the blood speckles on her brown skin. “Stings. That gun’s like catching a fastball.”

“You play softball?”

She nods. “I did, when there were other kids. I liked playing baseball better.”

“What position?”

“First base. I’ve got a good arm.”

*****

By the next morning, I feel good enough to get the snow blade installed on the Suburban. Using it, I push the zombies off the road and into a ditch nearby. I can’t quite hoist a fifty pound bag of quick lime, so Ferlita carries the stuff out to the open grave in a few buckets I have hanging around.

If I felt better, I’d just douse ‘em with a 1:1 mixture of gasoline and diesel and set ‘em to burn, but my house is in a low place between folds of the land, and it would fill with corpse smoke pretty quick. If you’ve ever smelled burning remains, you know what I mean. The sharp smell of the hair, the taste that lingers at the back of your mouth until you can’t remember when it wasn’t there. Anyway, with the new, improved Muertos around, I’m concerned about anything that’ll raise a smoke trail that big. Quicklime will at least keep the smell down some.

Later, we’re sitting at the long dining room table, bowls of bean soup and rice before us. The last of the venison jerky is in there. It’s big times in the post-human world, with two people at the same table and reasonably safe. It can’t last, and we both know it.

“Did you have kids?” Ferlita asks.

I nod. “A daughter. She’d be twenty-eight this August.”

“I bet you were a good dad, too.”

That hits me in the heart. I have to put down the spoonful of beans and breathe for a moment to get the tears to stay in place.

“I don’t know. I did as well as I knew how.”

“Did she still talk to you?  Did she come over on days other than holidays?”

I nod. “A few times a week. Most times, to see her mom, but she’d drop by my work once a week or so, just to say hi.”

Ferlita’s eyes grew wise in her young face. “Then you were a good dad. Good compared to mine, anyway.”

I open my mouth, but decide that it isn’t smart to pick off scabs I don’t have to. If she has something to tell me, she’ll do it when she’s ready. “Maybe so,” is all I say.

“How are your ribs?” she asks, thankfully changing the subject. “You were pretty bruised up.”  She grins. “And furry…like Bigfoot.”  She’d helped me get them wrapped the night before, and though I would have spared her the sight of an old man’s bare torso, it’s hard to minister to your own ribs.

“Hey, thanks. Good to know the Kinneys are about on the level with a forest monkey.”

Ferlita laughs, a sound I hadn’t expected to ever hear again, that simple, unrestrained laugh of a child. It somehow turns the moment bittersweet, and I catch myself wishing for things that can’t be, miracles that have yet to occur.

I think we both know it when we’ve violated some unspoken rule of the apocalypse, and the dinner table grows quiet for the rest of the meal. Even the clatter of the dishes seems muted as we clear away the spread and clean up.

I think of the disapproval of all the female influences in my life as I spread out a stained and oil-spotted towel that evening. Ferlita sits by me as I take down, clean, and reassemble the firearms I used on my recent foray. I explain to her how each one functions, which springs work against what leverage, and other random facts that come to me. It occurs to me that I’ve always been a bit of a minstrel, always spinning tales and keeping up long strands of conversation. I come to know how much I’ve missed those words being audible, and received by another human ear. I realize that I’ve been standing at the verge of a pit so deep and black that, no matter how much of my thoughts and words I throw into it, I can never hear anything hit bottom.

“Your family brought all of these home from the wars?” she asks.

“All except this one,” I say, pointing to the Ruger. “It’s more of a hunting revolver than a war weapon.”

“Is the gun I want a…war weapon?”

“We’ll have to see, Ferlita. I’m not sure if you’re talking about a Glock, a Beretta, or a Sig-Sauer. They’re all featured heavily on the television, or they were, before. I imagine that they’ve all been used in military service somewhere, though it’s the Beretta that our troops have used for many years.”

“Will they jolt my hand as much as yours?”

I shake my head. “Not likely. Those guns, at least the standard police issues, are usually 9mm or .40 Smith and Wesson. The pistol you fired was a .45 ACP. The loads I use have a bit of pop to them.”

Ferlita gets a faraway look in her eyes. “When do we go?”

I gesture to the window. “When it’s light.”

“What about after that?”

“I show you how to shoot, and then we’ll see.”  I can somehow tell that she’ll be okay, that she’ll skip right over the flinching and closing her eyes. Little Ferlita has ice water in her veins.

“I think we’ll have to see if those zombies with the…” she makes a all-over gesture.

“Jumpsuits?”

She nods. “Jumpsuits. We have to see if there are more. We have to get ‘em.”

“That’ll be dangerous,” I tell her.

She sits back in her chair. “We can’t let them wander around. They’re too…”

“I know. Too bad to tame, too numerous to ignore.”

The guns are arrayed on the table, the magazines loaded, the smell of gun oil and powder solvent sweet in the air. We walk into the dim light of the single bulb that burns in the living room. Between the meal and my tortured ribs, I’m having a hard time breathing. The three beers have helped a little, but not enough. I slump into the recliner again, letting loose an involuntary grunt as my torso muscles flex.

Ferlita wanders from place to place, looking at books, family photos, magazines, and all the other junk that I’ve been too…paralyzed to move. “Do you have any music?”

“I do. Have you ever seen a reel-to-reel tape deck?”

*****

It feels strange to simply walk into Hennigan’s Arms and Equipment, but it’s that easy. It was open at the time of the Flashover, and stayed that way. The scent of long-rotten food, probably someone’s lunch, lingers in the air. I prop the steel-barred door open with a box of clay pigeons to let the place air out.

“Wow,” Ferlita whispers. “Look at all of them.”

Hennigan’s has a full supply of every sort of gun, from the smallest .22 Derringer to a .50 caliber sniper rifle. Hunting rifles and shotguns line the walls. Handguns of all sorts lay on the blue felt below hardened glass. Ammunition occupies a whole side of the store, the colorful boxes like afterimages of all the country boys’ birthdays now forgotten.

“Maybe I should have a shotgun, too,” Ferlita tells me, walking forward, easily slipping behind the counter and running her fingers along all the finished wood and blued steel.

“Let’s find you a pistol first, Honey.”

She turns back to me, her eyes narrowing. She blows air out her nose and smiles after a moment.

“Not into pet names?”

She shrugs. “They’re okay. I just…”

I see that I’ve tripped on a painful memory. They abound. No one is whole, no one’s soul anything other than an old road sign after it’s been peppered with birdshot and .22 fire. “I’m sorry.”

Ferlita looks directly at me. “You can call me ‘Honey,’ Mr. Kinney.”

I set my teeth, my heart filling up with things I’d thought to be all the way gone. “Then you’d better call me Randall. Old as I am, I still think of ‘Mr. Kinney’ as being my father.”

Ferlita reaches down, picking up a ring of keys that must unlock the cabinets. She tries a few, finally hitting on the right one, and reaches in, pulling free a Beretta 92. “Found one.”

“That’s sort of big for your hand, but we can give it a go.”

“A war weapon?”

“Indeed. A war weapon.”

By the time we’re done shoplifting from the abandoned gun store, we’ve both got pump action shotguns, and we’ve stripped the place of ammunition in the calibers we use. I lament that .30 carbine is so sparse now, but Hennigan’s has several thousand rounds of .308, .45, and 9mm. I come back in just before we leave and purloin another Beretta 92 and some random supplies I might need down the line. Cleaning solutions, patches, a .30 caliber bore snake. It seems that I’ve broken through my initial squeamishness about stealing from the dead. They are all heirlooms now, taken from the great land of graves where we once existed.

*****

There is a shutdown paper mill twenty miles up the road. I intend to use the huge interior space to muffle the gunfire while I teach Ferlita how to use her new weapon. It’s far from my house, and we’ll only be there for an hour or two, so drawing Muertos to us isn’t a big concern. If they do come, we’ll be very heavily armed and deployed in a defensible hard fortification. It seems safe enough, though safety is always half illusion and half hope.

Ferlita’s eyes are bright, her hands moving nervously on her lap as we drive the distance. High speeds are no longer wise, even when you imagine that you know the road well. Beyond the stopped or crashed cars that were remainders from the sudden violence of the Flashover, which immolated drivers in an instant and left the cars without a pilot, there are also natural hazards. Trees fall across the road. Wind blows debris into the roadway.

In the short months since the bustle of humanity was muted, the animals have grown bold and unmindful of our creations. It is not at all uncommon to see wild horses, packs of dogs, or any native animal hunching on the road. Bears, specifically, have become very successful. They are adept at breaking into cars and houses for food. Feral pets have also provided them with an easy source of nourishment. Even the Muertos (I’m growing more and more fond of Ferlita’s terminology) are a potential meal. Even a black bear has little to fear from the average zombie. Once they associate a human shape with being both food and enemy, however, that requires that you tread carefully.

The Suburban runs shy on gas, and I’m forced to look for a gas station. I know which marks denote premium gas, and I carry a rig that lets me pull gas straight from the underground tanks. It’s just a hand crank, so it takes time, but it’s quiet and robust. Ferlita and I take turns cranking the pump, gradually filling both the truck’s normal tanks and a few auxiliary tanks on the back. We wash up, filch all the good canned and packaged food, and get back on our way.

*****

I’ve always found abandoned buildings to be at once wonderful and frightening. I don’t believe the sensation of walking into all that silent space has ever changed, not from the time I was standing only up to my father’s knee.

The paper mill, Quinland Paper, has been empty for nearly fifteen years. It squats at a slow bend in a river I cannot name, tan paint going to rust, pipes and ducts without purpose, stacks beginning to fall in on themselves. There were those I talked to that, for each place of industry that shut its gates and ceased to produce something, would have a vital, palpable pain shoot through them. I find that, though I had never thought too much about such things when I was younger, I now understand. The silence of a place where hard goods had been made, where people had coaxed valuable products out of the resources of the earth—those silences are like lingering deaths, every one a precursor to this immense death I walk through, and I wonder if it is hell, and if I am Virgil, showing Ferlita the way through the deepening circles of gloom.

Ferlita, within the horrors of her own mind perhaps, or simply content to suffer the silence without reflection, takes my hand and leads me further in. The gear we’ll need fills a duffel bag, and though the wounds to my face and ribs still ache and twinge, I am not so crippled by them as I was a few days ago. I can carry the weight of guns and shells without pain sweat popping against my skin.

Behind two sets of heavy doors, within the sanctum of the paper mill, Ferlita gets her crude training with weapons. She is a rare person, not prone to flinching at the press of her trigger finger. She watches carefully and quickly grasps how her Beretta operates. She is soon able to hit objects under eight inches across with good frequency.

“How come people in the shows are always pulling the slide-thingy back?” she asks.

“Because actors like something to do with their hands, and sound effects guys like the noise of the action taking a bullet into battery. That, and it’s not uncommon for the Hollywood guy who’s cutting the sequence together to have no clue about how a gun works.”

She gives me a thoughtful look, then puts a loaded magazine in the grip of her pistol, releases the slide, and takes aim. An empty soda can we brought in skitters across the floor.

After the Beretta, teaching her how to use the Mossberg 20 gauge is fairly simple. The recoil rocks her little shoulder, but the trials of the apocalypse have forged her into stern stuff. She doesn’t complain. She doesn’t even comment.

“Are you confident?  Can you use these weapons under duress?”

She scrunches up her brows. “Does that mean, like, when things get scary?”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

Ferlita pushes her lips together, hands me her shotgun, and leans against one of the steel columns that holds up the roof. “I figure I can do whatever I have to.”

“I think…”

The titanic sound of the mill’s heavy door giving way comes through clear, even with our hearing protection on.

“Duress?” she asks.

I nod, too intent on loading shells into the shotgun to make a sound. We’ll be under duress in a moment. It’ll be all around us.

*****

The hard rain falls on both the wicked and the just. We are not spared our trials upon this dusty earth, nor are we given reprieve because of what has been done or left undone. The mute horror of the Flashover reaches long, cold, grasping fingers into every crevice. Nothing remains untouched, no deed untainted by what has gone before. In this new conception of the earth, we must fight with all that we have to prove that we have not become outmoded, simply quaint and short-lived reminders of a time gone by.

I push little Ferlita behind me. She has the clip to her Beretta in hand, doing her best to press the 9mm shells in. Her index finger is smashed pale at the end, her eyes bright. The zombies are coming, and I have a strong feeling that they aren’t the normal muertos, but the souped-up version from the chemical plant. Normal zombies are stopped by steel doors. Knife-boy and his pals probably aren’t.

Everything moves slow, time dilated. I drop a 12 gauge shell, and it seems to take an eternity to hit the deck. The first door is already down, and it still had its metal deadbolt. This inner door won’t hold for more than a moment when they get to it.

“Don’t rush. Take clear shots. Aim for the head. If they get too close, you bolt. There’s got to be a way down to the river from here. You leave me, do you hear?”

Ferlita looks into my face and shakes her head. “Not leaving.”

“Don’t be muley. I get to die for you, if the time comes.”

“Uh-uh. If it gets bad, we both run, or we both stay.”

I see that she won’t be moved. Fierce, dark pride shoots through me. She has, simply and without the aid of a special creed, encompassed the warrior’s oath. To stand by a comrade, come what may. All of this explodes outward into my soul over the course of a single moment. “Okay. There ain’t much running in these old legs, though.”

She pushes home the filled magazine, works the slide, and engages the safety, tucking the pistol into her waistband. In a smooth, quick motion, she scoops up her 20 gauge and begins to load from the box of buckshot at her feet. “I don’t want to run anymore.”  The look on her face is calm, her eyes intent, her small teeth biting her lower lip.

The second door explodes inward, pulling the hinges free and hitting the raised metal stairs hard enough to slide half way across the catwalk. A zombie shoots the gap and I take him with the Mossberg. His head caves and he tumbles to the foot of the stairs with the wet sound of a bag full of broken melons. Jumpsuit. It’s one of the souped-up zombies. Not death proof, though.

“Get any of them that get to the bottom of the stairs, or if I have to reload.”

“Bottom of the stairs,” she shouts back as I open up at the next to rush through the door. I get him in the midsection and knock him down, but he’s a super-muerto, and that doesn’t settle their hash. Two more come after and I lose track of the injured one. Ferlita’s shotgun roars beside me. Neither of us are taken down. I can’t spare the sideways glance, but I’m sure she took care of her end.

The shotgun is hitting on empty in a moment, four jumpsuit muertos down. “Cover the door!”

Ferlita pounds her last few rounds of 20 gauge at the door as another muerto comes in hard and fast. The first misses, the second shot blows his foot off. He’ll be ankle biting from here on. Her Mossberg is exhausted and I hear her start taking shots with the 9mm, one per second, like I told her. My old hands fumble with the magnum shells for the 12 gauge, but I get the tube filled again just as the Beretta falls quiet.

“I couldn’t get the last one,” Ferlita shouts, the ear protectors and the sustained thunder of gunfire making our hearing indistinct. I turn to her, and she motions with her chin.

I get the shotgun to shoulder and back on target. Two Muertos have the metal door and are using it like a big shield. They’re most of the way down the stairs now, and another two are shooting the gap with the diversion.

“Catch!”  I throw the big gauge at Ferlita and pull the .45, falling two steps back to get a better angle.

My heart thundering, I make myself hold steady. If there was ever an important shot, it’s now. I take aim on the moving feet and ankles that are the only things I can target. Squeeze the trigger, Randall. Squeeze it easy and hit what you aim at.

I take my own advice. The door topples, the jig is up, and I hammer at the clever super-muertos with the last five rounds of hollow point. It’s enough.

Ferlita puts the big gauge to work, tearing into the two runners as they hit the stairs. They tumble down to the pitted concrete, coming still no more than ten feet from me. The ankle biter on the catwalk rears up and she relieves his shoulders of the weight of his head. I have enough time to really see the carnage, and wish that I had looked away. Even a muerto, even in the heat of battle, there are things that you’d rather not see too well.

I put the spare magazine into the .45 and hold it at the low ready, waiting. A minute goes by, though it seems an eon of echoing and fear and galloping heartbeat. I give back several steps, clearing Ferlita’s position, watching her as she puts the 12 gauge down and starts loading the 20. She winces as she moves her right arm, tears standing in her eyes. The big gauge was too much recoil for her, but she did what she needed to. Suddenly, I start to really believe that the human race might survive.

“That was extraordinary valor under fire, Honey.”

She grits her teeth and says nothing.

“How much ammo do we have left?”

“Just five shots for my…”

“20 gauge,” I fill in.

“20 gauge, yeah. Five shots. Ten more for the Beretta, and, um, three for your shotgun.”

I blow out breath. “Well, I hope they’re not waiting for us out there, huh?”

“Maybe we can circle around and see.”

I wipe my brow. My brain seems to be reeling, useless. Of course we should try to circle around. Ferlita, at least, hasn’t gone into trauma shock.

“Let’s see if there’s a way out down here,” I tell her. We walk through the dimness of the old paper mill, relying on the high intensity flashlight that I lifted from the gun shop for light. The whole place seems haunted and claustrophobic, the light dancing like the reflections of demon images against the wall. If you ever had any inclination to being twitchy, a full-on zombie attack will bring those tendencies to the fore. Ferlita, blessed little girl she is, seems to have no such issues.

“Don’t fire the shotgun any more if you don’t have to. I want to take a look at that shoulder, see if you’ve really hurt it.”

She just nods, her eyes flat now, revealing nothing.

We exit the mill near the river, taking a rusted steel catwalk across a spillway and then disembarking from the abandoned hulk via a long stair made of yellow-painted diamond plate. The nearby environs is overgrown and rough, and we use that to our advantage, coming back around to the front without being seen.

The muertos are smart, and so I’m careful, waiting and watching for nearly an hour. They could be hiding. When we approach the Suburban, I’m ready for any kind of ambush or other skulduggery, but nothing transpires. Just our feet scrunching on the gravel, just the sun slowly falling out of the sky.

The sound of the door closing behind us, putting us safely in the car, is like a toggle switch. I begin to shake and sweat, feeling that I have to do everything from puke to urinate all at the same time. I just lean back and wait, wait for it to be done, and Ferlita slides over, holding my sweat-slick hand, looking up at me while I struggle to get it together.

After a while, I can breathe again. “Belt in, Honey. We’re going home.”

I key the ignition and the engine catches. It still burbles sweetly, the sound of a dream not quite slipped away. The night falls, and we drive through the emptiness of it, the deep, primordial dark pushing at the corners of the headlight sweep.

*****

It is a failing with me that sometimes, as the difficult events of life subside in my rear view mirrors, I become unable to look forward, but only stare at the fading remnants of what was, growing all the more diminutive as the miles stack. I run onward, but blind and hurt, consumed by the hungry mouths of yesterday’s sorrow.

I am a man of simple enough tastes, and a quality tequila, unadorned, has always been sufficient to the purpose of disinfecting these psychic wounds, the sting of the sharp brown liquid enough to finally awaken me to what I still possess, rather than clutching for things I’ve lost.

I remember parts and pieces. The careful cleaning of our weapons of war. The desultory meal of canned stew and dried apricots. The livid bruise on Ferlita’s shoulder, evidence of her bravery and the terrible cost the world forced her to pay for her life. I remember pouring her two fingers of the Cuervo 1800 to quell the pain and blunt the sharp shards of the day. I remember my own indulgence, too many fingers of fire to easily reckon. More than what was required to cauterize the wounds, just less than what it took to scorch the ground to molten glass.

Now, I struggle into the middle of the next day, grasping upward out of clinging verdigris and spider’s silk, entering the painful, confused wakefulness that is the price for a moment’s forgetting. Suffering, to paraphrase Neil Young, the bottle and the damage done.

Ferlita, her eyes too hollow, her face too knowing, looks up from a slim paperback that is already read to the halfway point. “Conan the Usurper”, a book I had to comb through yard sales and thrift stores for years to find. She’s brought in a chair, a tube of Pringle’s potato chips, and her 20 gauge, which leans against the wall within arm’s reach. Her shoes don’t quite make it to the floor, swinging slow as push rods on an oil derrick as she scans the pages.

“How do you like that book?” I ask, finding it difficult to address all the greater topics.

She nods. “This guy Conan’s a bad hombre. We could use him against the muertos.”

I sit up. My stomach quavers, making me hold still for a moment. “Can’t argue with you there. Any hero would do.”

“We’ll have to do, Mr. Kinney. It’s just us. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them—the book heroes.”

“Yeah?”

“This Conan guy woudn’t hide out and wait for something to happen. He’d go right to the heart of it, kick in the doors, and…”

I let go of my air, holding hard against my knees. Of course I have a clear idea what Conan would do. Or Kull, or Bran Mak Morn, or Tarzan of the Apes. “And let the gods decide,” I say, finishing her sentence.

“Right. Let the gods decide.”

I swing my feet out and stand, shaky on my feet for a moment. The floor seems frigid against my soles, all the age and minor injury weighing me down. “You’re saying we should go right at them, come what may?”

She puts the book aside and stands up, hard and straight against the pain I know she feels. She stands, and as soldiers do, delivers. “Whatever happens.”

“We both may die.”

“I know. I’d rather die doing something tough than live in hiding like a mouse.”

I shake my head, not speaking for a moment. Her hands are fists at her sides, her eyes throwing fire as she imagines that I’ll try to dissuade her from her chosen course. “So says the young Joan of Arc, and so do I heed.”

“What’s that mean?”  Her teeth are set, her jaw flexed.

“It means that I’m in, Honey. Right to the wall, I’m in.”

*****

There are no dry runs allowed. We’re duty bound to land a telling blow against the enemy now, even as we test our theories. We are few, but clever. The enemy’s numbers are vast, their resolve unwavering. If we’re to neutralize their greatest threat, the high-functioning muertos like knife boy and his friends, we have to develop advanced tactics. They’re evolving. So must we.

Ferlita had half the idea. I just filled in the destructive element and the tactical considerations. It took us two days to find the materials, then two more days with the arc welder and the chemistry book. It’s not elegant, not how Dr. Porsche would do it, but I have faith that it’ll work. We’ll test small, then we’ll go big.

In the center of the public square, three hundred yards from our position atop an old Rexall drug store, is a lowrider truck. The stereo’s on, playing a band called Godsmack, which was the loudest thing I could find without obsessive twiddling at the record store. The windows are cranked down, the doors wide open. The stereo in the lowerider was clearly designed to keep audiologists in business and to serve as a public nuisance. It’s doing so now.

On the hood, there’s a feral hog, two wild dogs, and a yearling buck deer, all victims of opportunity. They’re eviscerated, the one thing that Ferlita elected not to watch closely, and I suppose the wind is carrying a fine blood smell outward into occupied territory.

One last thing. The whole car is a bomb. Yes. That’s the cool part. We are now approaching our fight with the muertos by using bait scenarios and improvised explosive devices. Progress.

Back in the big before, I had a friend who was a bit of a nut. One of those guys you didn’t necessarily invite to a family dinner. I remember someone referring to him as a “wild eyed lunatic” after one of his little stunts, wherein he started a magnesium fire we had a hell of a time putting out before it caused a forest fire. This guy, whose name was Lamonte Brecht, would tell us all sorts of stories about his exploits. Lamonte’s exploits often involved shooting things, being seriously injured in automobile wrecks, and blowing stuff up. He had the scars to act as bona fides.

One of his favorite explosive chemicals was something called Tannerite. It’s basically ammonium nitrate and aluminum dust. There’s some other stuff in there, too. A little titanium and some zirconium, I think. Anyway, Lamonte loved to mix up some of this stuff, put it into a pop can, and shoot it with his rifle. While Tannerite’s mostly harmless, even fully mixed, an impact as dramatic as a high velocity shell will cause it to go, “boom.”  A half pound will throw a lot of dust up in the air and blow the hood off of a car. A coffee can full, I’m told, will burst a refrigerator into shrapnel.

I’m not one to go low ball. The cab of the lowrider has a hundred pound canister of Tannerite in the passenger seat. The bomb canister is surrounded with a secondary container that contains my hasty equivalent to “grape shot”. Short lengths of chain, nails, scrap rebar…anything I could find. There’s an eight inch target area painted red, the only place that isn’t packed with fragmentary material. The whole rig started life as a forty gallon chemical drum, and suffered the indignities of my poor welding until the current configuration was attained.

I have a pilfered Weatherby rifle chambered for .378 Weatherby Magnum, topped by a Leupold scope that can give up to 22x magnification. My sniper shooting isn’t what it was when I was thirty, but it’s not a difficult shot. The difficult part, as we’re now become aware, is waiting for the muertos to get to the party.

“The big umbrella was a good idea, huh?” Ferlita says, fishing for a compliment. It was her idea.

“We’d be sunburnt by now otherwise.”

“You would be, pale face,” she shoots back.

I hand her the binoculars and roll to my back. “Ouch.”  My body’s aching all ready, and it’s only been a few hours. I figured they’d come sooner. Soon as someone can figure out the thought process of the muertos, they should let me know. It’d save me a lot of time.

“There’s one,” she whispers. “Shit, it’s him.”

“Him?  Knife boy?”

I roll to the rifle, up on sand bags and trained on the target all ready. It’s knife boy, all right. The knives, though, have proliferated. He’s found a heavy weightlifting belt and put it around himself. He has knives of every imaginable sort tucked under the belt, and he’s now carrying what looks to be an actual Roman sword.

“Blow it. Blow him away, Mr. Kinney.”

I shake my head. “Not yet. I didn’t do that much work for one super muerto. That’s not good return on investment.”  For all that, though, the urge to just shoot knife boy’s head clean off is pretty strong. No good, though. I don’t know if that would queer the pitch for the others.

“But…it’s knife boy,” Ferlita urges.

“I know. Let’s get a few of his friends down there, then we’ll frag ‘em. Okay?”

She blows out air and keeps watching. Knife boy circles the truck, far more intent than even super muertos should be. I see that he’s changed clothes, and he’s wearing something on his head. It takes me a moment to figure out what it is, but I eventually see that it’s one of those little hats that bicyclists used to wear, before helmets became the preferred headgear. An odd green and white. I search my memory, thinking of that, thinking of the Bianchi ten speed I had back in the seventies. Knife boy circumnavigates the lowrider like a cop on a television show, bent slightly, on his toes, alert.

“That bastard’s getting smarter all the time.”

“I’m telling you, blow him to hell,” Ferlita tells me.

I take my eye away from the scope and look at her. She’s shaking all over now, sweat on her upper lip. She can’t hold the binoculars on target at this point. Not for a three hundred yard distance. Tears stand in her eyes.

“Shit. Shit. Okay.”  I put my eye cheek against the Weatherby’s stock and make the minor corrections in position that swing the field of vision of the rifle nearly twenty yards way out there. Where is he?  I don’t see him immediately, but I swing the scope around to take in a bigger zone. There he is. The Roman sword is bloody. Knife boy’s face wears a feral grin. He has the carcass of the deer slung over his shoulder, and he’s shagging ass away from the car. I try to get a bead on him, but he’s already under cover, already moving too fast to hold the cross hairs on him.

Hesitate and be lost. Here we are. We waited for the sheep and let the lion get away. I say a lot of things I shouldn’t say in front of Ferlita. She nods and says them back to me. No recriminations and I-told-you-so’s, at least. There’s no need.

“Didn’t work, sweetie,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Maybe we can still blow up some of the normal muertos. I don’t think they run in knife boy’s gang. They may still fall for it.”

“That’s gonna be some cold comfort.”

She shrugs. I shrug back.

“We’ll give it until nightfall.”

*****

I’ll say one thing for our little gambit. It was a hell of a boom. Our roost three hundred yards away was, in fact, about minimum safe distance from which to observe the lowrider’s supernova. That said, never has so much ordnance been used to lay low so few zombies. Three, to be exact.

But boy, were they ever terminated. I found a smoking boot, foot still in it, just slightly over a hundred yards away, standing up as if someone had been standing there and had otherwise been vaporized by some science fiction weapon.

The truck’s gas tank had been topped up as high as it would go, and I’d put another twenty gallons of diesel in the bed in Jerry cans. The fuel burned hot and high for better than an hour, the tires going up with all their sickening white smoke plumes, the black of oil smoke around the outside to round out the industrial disease we’d caused.

We continue to watch, upwind of the worst of it, as all the material and effort go upward into the dark sky. The fire’s now jumped to three of the nearby buildings. It’s unlikely to go further, but the wood of the old town hall, especially, is decorating the night sky with red plumes of fire, every window alight like the empty eye sockets of burning skulls in hell.

“What’d we learn?” I ask Ferlita.

“Plan wasn’t Conan enough. Just bait and shoot would be as good. Way easier to set up, too.”  She puts her eyes back against the binoculars. “Here’s something we didn’t know. They like fire.”

“Huh?”

“Muertos. They’re coming around for the cookout. Hard to see ‘em until they get close to the fire, but there’s a shitload of them down there.”

“Ferlita, I don’t want you picking up every rotten word in this old soldier’s vocabulary,” I chide, not even half-hearted.

She ignores me. I put my eye to the scope. We’re only about half as far away as we’d been at zero hour, and my scope settings require me to aim several inches low now. I don’t have the wherewithal to make the exact calculation in my head. If I see one, I’ll just have to wing it. Hold low and some reverse Kentucky Windage.

My old eyes rebel against the sting and flash of the fire, when intensified by the high power scope. I already have a headache from the blast of the bomb, the waiting, and the fumes of the fire down below. No one ever said that living on would be easy.

I see one, loitering with its dull eyes staring into the brightness of the flames. The pale gray of the muerto’s flesh is given life by the flames, an artificial rouge, but nothing can restore true sentience to their slack expression and imbecilic stance. No creative lighting has that level of magic in it, short of the golden bolt of the divine that wrings new life from mute clay. Nothing the hand of a simple fool like myself can create with bullets and bombs. I gesture for Ferlita to put her ear muffs on, sliding my own maximum suppression plugs in. They don’t fully ameliorate the noise of an ultra magnum rifle, but we take what we can get.

I take the shot, holding too low. The mighty .378 makes my poor sniping count the best it can, blowing a shot put sized void in the middle of the zombie’s chest. It goes down and doesn’t come up. With enough static shock, it seems that even zombies respond to a center-of-mass wound. I rack another round into the chamber, having to take my eye away from the scope to draw back the long stroke of the rifle’s bolt.

With the cartridge sent home again, I search for the next one, and the next, and the next. Come morning, I have but five of my .378s remaining, and my shoulder is as black and blue as Ferlita’s, but the muertos are laying thick and rank upon the ground. In the end, the solution is as simple as fire, though we come to it unawares and through long and foolish bouts of theory.

He peeled the grey slouch hat from his head and wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm, which did little more than smear the mud and grime that covered every inch of Mississip’s face. He sighed and pulled at the stuck leg. It started to give and then with a wet slurp the swamp let his leg go and he was free to continue on after the single file line of his two friends.

The other two were too wet, hot and miserable to respond with anything other than a grunt of assent as they concentrated on keeping their own feet from getting stuck.

“Listen here ya’ll,” , came the voice from the man in the front of the file, “I grew up in a place a lot like this, ya’ll got ta be careful. Don’t go wanderin’ off to the sides to much, you get yerself fallen into a quicksand hole, you’ll disappear faster an’ a Molly Cottontail with a regiment on her heels!”

The other men chuckled at this reference to the habit of hungry men on the march breaking ranks to chase down a spotted rabbit in a field nearby. A jolly game it was, and often ended in a meal. The line of three men continued along seemingly unaware of where their final destination was. The Yankee cavalry they had skirmished with and then subsequently retreated from earlier in the day were the least of their worries now. They were concerned more with waging a running battle against vicious flocks of large mosquitoes that dove in with an audible whiz very similar to that of a minee ball when it zips by. The nasty things hurt like hell when they got into you to, more akin to a wasp sting than a mosquito bite. The men were constantly swatting at them.

“Eh Cap’n,”, said Mississip as he caught up to the rear of the “march column”, “with all yer schoolin in that fancy Yankee school up noth, how’s come you managed to get us lost in this here swamp with nothin’ but our muskets and a few crumbs of hardtack? I’da rather fought them yanks toe to toe, whooped em, and ate on they rations.”

The mud covered man in the front of the group looked back towards Mississip and smiled. “Now Mississip, we all know how mean and ornery you can be when your belly gets to yelpin’. But even you could not have whooped that big Yank Sergeant. He looked meaner an’ a bull and was probably just as strong.”

Mississip just scowled, “Yeah, he prolly just as dumb as one too. I grew up herdin’ cattle. I’d have wore him out right quick had there not been so many of his friends around!”

The second man in line spoke up “Yeah right Mississip! That blue belly sarge would’a broke ya skull in two and feasted on yo brains, and then complained about how scanty the ration was!”

This brought a loud chuckle of amusement from the men, except Mississip. He opened his mouth to say something and then decided it better to conserve his energy for the walk. The trio trudged on through the bog.

A white mist, several inches thick, hung like a blanket over the muddy soil. Everything stank. The dirt, the trees, the men, everything had a dank smell of earthy decay. Like a freshly turned grave. The heat and humidity were oppressive, and the mosquitoes grew even more relentless as the sun began to sink towards the horizon.

The men came to the shore of a swampy lake. It stretched for hundreds of yards in front of them and around them. The Captain cursed quietly.

“Well boys, looks like we hit a dead end. Let’s have a sit for a spell whilst I think about our next course of action.”, Said the Captain.

“Shucks Cap’n. I vote we stay right heyah ‘till the Lord himself decide to end this war. I’m sick of fightin’ the Yanks.” Said Mississip as he found a somewhat dry patch of ground near the base of a moss covered willow.

“That’s why the Army ain’t a democracy. Can’t have hay brained corporals making the big decisions.” Said the Captain as he took a seat next to the same tree as Mississip had and removed his tattered boots and examined his mud covered and swollen feet.

“Cap’n , he’s right though. We ain’t ate a square meal in nearly two weeks. Livin’ off acorns and roots isn’t exactly my idea of gourmet fare.” Said Tom. He was the third man to sit down next to the trunk of the tree. As he was barefoot, he just set his rifle up against the trunk of the tree and examined his own mud encrusted feet. Calloused and toughened by a life nearly always barefoot, his feet and ankles none the less had been soft enough for several leeches to grab hold of. He pulled the slimy creatures from his skin and tossed them away.

“See if we can get a fire started. I bet I can find us a snake or two down there by the lake.”, the Captain stated confidently.

“Snake? Hell, I’ll eat anything at this moment Cap, even that Yank Sergeant!”, said Mississip as he gathered together a small pile of tinder with which to start a fire. The Captain grunted and disappeared through some bushes and was heard tramping through the underbrush near the lake and was gone. The men managed to gather together some dry wood and actually start a fire.

After a while the Captain was heard pushing his way through the muck and the underbrush and appeared carrying two ropy objects in his hand, each about 3 feet long. The black scales on the bodies of the snakes glistened in the firelight as the Captain used his knife to remove the heads of the animals and then tossed the bodies into the coals of the fire. Soon the smell of cooking meat was evident and the men’s mouths watered as the snakes fizzled and hissed while the meat within the tough scales cooked.

Eventually the scales of the snakes were black and charred, and the captain took his knife and stuck it into each of the charred snakes in turn and removed them from the coals. He then laid out one of the blackened and stiff snakes and cut it in half length wise. A steaming pile of entrails was released from the belly of the snake and after a minute of cutting the captain held a dozen strips of juicy and hot snake flesh which he handed to each of the men in equal portion. They devoured the meat within seconds, grunting primitively as the warm and succulent meat was swallowed and began to fill their empty bellies.

After the meal, they curled up together next to the fire and fell fast asleep as a black, misty night crept in from the surrounding landscape. The call of an alligator could be heard in the near distance and the constant chirp of crickets, the croaks of large frogs in the lake, and other calls of the multitude of swamp life could be heard in the nearby trees, and it wasn’t long before the men were snoring next to the fading red coals of their fire.

When Tom’s eyes flicked open, it took him several moments to remember where he was. Then, as the fog of sleep abated somewhat he lifted his head and looked around. His other two companions were fast asleep, and the fire had been reduced to a smoldering pile of red coals. A thick mist blanked out the rest of the view except he could see the shadowy forms of the large trees in the patch of woods they had taken temporary residence within.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up on end and a feeling of dread descended upon him and he couldn’t understand why he had the feeling for a few moments but then the thought hit him. It was too quiet. The chirps of the crickets, the calls of the bull frogs in the nearby underbrush were silent.

He then saw a shadowy figure hovering in the misty underbrush just outside the dim glow of the coals. The shape of the apparition was barely perceptible, just a glimpse of a shifting form in a momentary clearing of the mist, but he knew what he saw.

He reached over to where his rifle was and his heart sank into terror when he realized that it wasn’t there. His hand pawed for a moment desperately at the empty ground where he was sure he had laid his rifle.

He then reached out slowly and touched the man next to him, the Captain.

“Cap..” he whispered out. His eyes widening in terror as he saw a dozen dark shapes slowly and silently emerge from the shifting mists. Their features were completely hidden in the darkness, mere shadows gliding silently towards where they lay, and they had the three men completely surrounded.

“CAP!” Tom shouted out and as if that was the signal a half dozen of the shadows rushed forward. They were carrying thick wooden clubs, and as they pounced on the trio they proceeded to beat wildly down, knocking the soldiers senseless in a few rapid strokes. The last thing Tom remembered before the black numbness of unconsciousness took him was the sight of the glistening white teeth of a Negro man smiling down at him.

When Mississip awoke the first sensation he felt was pain. His face was badly swollen and he could feel a thin stream of blood running down his eyebrow and cheek. He had a terrible headache, and wanted to vomit. His left eye was swollen shut, and when he attempted to flicker it open, flashes of raw light and pain ran through his brain. He did manage however to peel his right eye open and the world around him slowly came into focus.

He was laid on his side inside a chicken wire cage, like an open air chicken coop. It was perhaps 4 feet tall and about 12 feet in width and length.  The chicken wire was attached with crude nails to the framework which consisted of rough hewn branches as thick as a man’s wrist. The entire thing wasn’t very strong, but neither did it have to be. Two men stood guard at all times watching them. The ground was covered in chicken dung, and it stank horribly. He managed to get himself up into a sitting position and slowly turned his stiff neck to take in other details.

His two companions lay beside him, still out for the count. He looked up through the top of the chicken coop at the sky above and the sun was just breaking the horizon. It was still cool, but within a few hours the heat would become stifling.

He coughed raggedly and tried to spit, but his mouth was dry. He smacked his lips and then using his good eye looked towards his captors. They were both Negroes, powerfully built. They both wore stained cotton shirts and a pair of knee length cotton breeches that were frayed at the hems. They were barefoot, and sat in a crouch looking back at Mississip silently.

“Hey.” Mississip croaked. His throat was so dry he could barely choke out the word. “Hey.” He managed to say louder. One of his guards perked his head up and looked at him.

“Water.” Was all Mississip could say.

The guard stood up to this full height and stepped over to the cage and cocked his head as if he didn’t understand what Mississip was saying.

Mississip swallowed a dry swallow and began to lose patience with the man. Was he an imbecile? “Water.” He said once more while staring up at his captor with his one good eye.

The man nodded and smiled as if he understood finally what it was Mississip wanted, and then he untied the hemp twine holding up his pants and promptly produced his manhood. Within a moment a long arc of yellow urine was reaching towards Mississip. He hollered out and attempted to scoot away from the stream in vain as it battered against him and ran down into the chicken shit stained soil. The two guards broke into hilarious laughter and then chattered in some strange language that Mississip didn’t understand as the now relieved guard took up his old position nearby.

Mississip muttered several choice slurs under his breath, and then he noticed the Captain stir. He scooted over to him and placed his hand on the Captain’s shoulder. “Cap?” he said. The Captain was beaten as badly as Mississip was. His eyes were swollen shut except for two tiny little slits and these slits managed to twitch a little and then the red eyeballs of the captain peeked through.  “Mississip? What the hell happened?”, the Captain groaned out.

“We got bushwhacked , that’s what happened.” Said Mississip as Tom also began to come around. Within a few minutes the three of them were sitting Indian style in the cage going over their situation and tending to each other’s wounds as best they could. The two guards never left the area and never took their eyes off the three men but occasionally muttered to each other in their peculiar language.

“What is that Cap? I ain’t heard nothing like it afore” whispered Tom. The Captain listened intently a moment. “Not shore myself Tom. My guess is some kind of Creole, like them Cajuns in that Lou’siana Regiment. Remember?

Tom shook his head. “I dunno, Cap. I just know they got on us good. We were stupid not to post a watch.”

“Well, what’s done, is done. Now we just gotta figure out why they took us in the first place.” pondered the Captain.

“Who knows what these darkies plan on doin to us Cap!?” piped in Mississip. “I’ve heard about these colonies, filled with murderous escaped slaves still practicin’ them old ways from when they was savages in Africa!  They prolly gonna butcher us alive and munch on our bones!” He said, the hint of real terror climbing in his voice.

“Hush Corporal, you’re too thin and stringy to make a good meal.” Said the Captain. Then suddenly a small tumult ensued out of the men’s sight behind the wood and thatch huts that surrounded the chicken coop in which they were imprisoned. The sound of a dog barking, and several excited voices became evident and then what sounded like a rattlesnake’s rattle.

The source of the noise became evident when a crowd of villagers emerged from the cluster of huts, at the head of which strode a large Negro man with a massive barrel chest and thick arms. He wore a head dress of bright red and white rooster feathers, and the curious rattling noise emanated from several bone necklaces and bracelets draped around his neck and wrists. His ears were pierced with bits of bone, and the Captain’s eyes widened in awe at the sheer power he had over the villagers. The only clothes he wore other than this raiment was pair of tattered denim pants and the villagers were always nearby ready to touch the hem of his filthy rags as if he were a savior. The Captain quickly realized that to these people, he probably was.

The Chief stepped forward and stared down at the three beaten and defeated men and smiled a huge smile, his teeth glistening in the morning sun. “Welcum to our humble veelaj white mons. It is not often that we are visited by such distinguished guests.” The irony in the Chief’s thick, accented tone was quite evident.  “I apologize fer dee..” he looked up and furrowed his brow for a moment, as if seeking the proper word, then smiled again and looked down at the Captain, “accomadaashuns.”

Mississip began to mutter a slur under his breath and the Captain put his hand out to silence the words in his throat.  “I’m Captain…” the Captain began but the Chief cut him off with a dismissive wave.

“Your name and rank meen nothing here white mon. I had a name and a rank once, in my homeland.” He lifted his arm to indicate towards the ragged huts that surrounded the cage. “It was very much like this in fact. I had a wife, and a child. I had a fathah and a mothah. Until some white mon much like you came to my veelaj. My fathah was chief den. The white mon offered gifts to my father to purchase some of the men in the veelaj and my fathah refused the white mon.  That night the white mon came back with other white mons and…” the Chief stopped and stared off into the distance, a flash of rage passed over what had been moments before a friendly and open countenance, then it disappeared and was replaced with the vicious smile.

“Here is water. It will be a hot day.” He said with quiet severity and opened a hatch on the top of the coop and tossed one of the men’s canteens in, shut the hatch, turned and walked away rattling, the troop of children and villagers following at his heels.

Mississip quickly grabbed up the canteen and opened the lid and began pouring the warm, but clean water down his throat. The liquid overflowed his mouth and spilled down his cheeks. After a few good chugs he sighed and handed the canteen off to the Captain who drained himself a good draught then Tom repeated the process. This used up about half of the canteen.  The Captain replaced the cap and told the other two he would ration the rest because they had no idea when or if they would receive anymore.

Tom reached into his shirt and withdrew a dirty cloth square. He unwrapped the square to reveal a small wafer of hardtack. A little bit larger than a communion wafer. He broke the cracker into three equal pieces and distributed them to the other two. Then each man chewed down the dry cracker and followed it with a measured swallow of water from the canteen. So was served breakfast.

The sun began to climb into the mid part of the sky and the temperature rapidly rose. The humidity was oppressive and the men sweltered in the direct sunlight of a deep Southern midsummers day.  The Captain would reckon an hour by the movement of the sun, and then distribute a small ration of water to each of them. By doing so, they managed to keep themselves hydrated throughout the terribly long hours of the day, but just barely.

As the sun just began to settle onto the horizon the Chief returned, again followed by an ever bowing and scraping entourage of dirty little children and village women. He marched confidently at the head of the column of villagers and stopped just before the cage. He signaled to some of the other men, stoutly built and armed with spears, except for three of them who were armed with the rifles that were taken from the soldiers as they had slept, they came forward and stood around the chicken coop.

“Deez men will take you to bathe. If you try to escape, they will keel you.” The Chief said matter of factly and then opened the side of the cage. The men crawled out and stood and stretched after the long hot day in the cage. They were surrounded by six men, two on the side of each prisoner, and escorted them down to the lake where they were allowed to bathe and were given fresh clean clothes, recently made, of cotton spun threads. Though rough and crude, the clothes were far better than the mud encrusted and chicken shit stained uniforms they were wearing, although the Captain wondered why they were being given new clothes when the villagers were obviously wearing little more than dirty rags themselves. After this they were marched back towards the village. As they came near, the sounds of drums could be heard beating a steady rhythm along with a curious, low chant.

They came upon the scene of a giant bonfire, burning high in the sky that lit the surrounding area in the rapidly growing dusk of the day. The villagers were dancing around the fire in time to the beat of the drums, which were hollowed out logs upon which the drummers used thick wooden mallets to beat out the time. The villagers danced around in unison, chanting, hooting, and stamping their bare feet into the dirt around the fire. Had the Captain not been a prisoner of these people, he would’ve been particularly fascinated by this display of religious fervor. Instead, he feared that these villagers wouldn’t be letting them view this ceremony with an aim to let them go back to civilization with tales of their exploits.

The men were placed within a rough circle laid out on the ground in white chalk. The drums beat louder and faster and the dance picked up in speed as the villagers began to twirl and twist and chant louder.  The Captain saw that the villagers had blank eyes, obviously completely oblivious to the outside world. Then suddenly the drums stopped, and the villagers all sank to the ground in prostration as the Chief came around the fire and walked up to what appeared to be some kind of altar, carved out of a stump. On the altar rested a single wooden cup of black, brackish fluid. The Chief lifted the cup high into the air and muttered some kind of benediction in his patois and then came towards the men.

He stepped in front of Tom, placed the cup to his lips and then suddenly spit the contents into Tom’s face. Tom flinched as the warm spray of chicken blood spattered onto him. The Chief then stepped over to Mississipp’ and began to repeat the process. Mississipp made an attempt to resist but a couple of the stout men of the village seized both his arms and held him fast while yanking back on his long disheveled hair, forcing him to face the Chief while he spit the blood onto him.

Finally the Chief came to the Captain and smiled a thin, wry smile at him before sipping the cup and then spitting the blood onto the Captain.

Then, he turned around and set the cup on the altar and looked towards the still prostrate villagers. “My People!” He boomed loudly. “My People! We have leeved for a long time here, sheltered in the hidden embrace of our swamp and its mist. Free from da white mons lash! The power to speak to the spirits of our ancestors is strong within the men of my family! I have talk to dem, and they revealed to me that they wish to meet our honored guests!” The villagers all nodded and whispered among themselves. Yes, yes they must meet the ancestors.

“Take them to the lake.” The Chief stated and the six guards returned and led the men back down to the lake where a primitive pier was built out onto the shallow water. Tied at the end of the pier was a small boat with two oars. The men were bid to climb inside and once sat down a couple guards and the chief stepped in. The Chief went to the bow of the boat while one of the men took up the oars and began rowing, guiding the small skiff across the blackened, mist covered lake. Soon, nothing could be seen at all but the mists in which they were cloaked. There was only the quiet hiss of the boat as it glided over the lake that could be heard and none of the soldiers had any idea how the man on the oars knew which way to go.

Within a few minutes however the boat ground up on a muddy beach, and the men were told to leave the boat. The soldiers did so and stood around looking at the mist shrouded tree line several tens of paces away from them. The Chief took a large conch shell from a bag at his side and placed it to his lips. He took a breath and blew a long, loud echoing note that reached over the swamp. He repeated the tone again, then a third time and then waited patiently.

Soon, a sound that was somewhat familiar, but wholly out of place came to the Captain’s ears. He was a veteran and had seen many battles. And invariably after a long day’s fight, when the night settled over the battlefield and the last shots of the skirmishers had fallen silent.  The moans and cries of the wounded and dying men laying in their ranks out on the field could be heard clearly in the cool night air. The Captain hated that sound, but these moans and cries were even worse. They had the sound, not of the pain of being wounded, but of damnation.

He then saw several shuffling forms appear in the mists of the tree line, and then the forms stepped out of the mists, stumbled really, and came into view. They were people, dressed in clothes just like the Captain and his men wore. But if the clothes of these people had once been new, now they were mere tattered rags.  Their features were not easy to see in the dark of the night but he could see they were both men and women, and even a child. They were Negroes that much was obvious, but their clothes were so tattered and torn that they provided no cover of modesty to their bodies.

The Chief quickly ordered the man on the oars to push off and within a few seconds the boat disappeared into the mists. The captain watched it go, and then looked back at the people that were now stumbling their way towards them, moaning and raising their arms towards the Captain, as if to embrace them.

“DO YOU SEE KAPITAN?” came a loud, disembodied call from the mists that taunted them. “THEY WELCUM YOU WITH OPEN ARMS!” followed by a long roll of low, deep laughter that faded off into the distance. The wind picked up, and the Captain caught the rotten odor of decomposing flesh. He knew then, that he was meeting “the ancestors.”

Mississipp’ looked around in terror as the dead came within view and their horror finally revealed itself in the pale light of the moon. Their bodies were badly decomposed, many were almost skeletons with just the thinnest of muscles and flesh held to bone. “What the hell are we gonna do Cap’n!” Mississipp’ said as the fear in his voice raised it to a higher pitch than usual. The Captain, still staring with abject horror as these creatures came steadily towards them, had only one word in response.

“Run.”

They ran alright, as fast as they could. They jogged down the muddy beach away from the “ancestors” that had grown in number to over a dozen, and then they turned onto a muddy animal path that led into a thick patch of mangrove trees. The mists enveloped them like a blanket, thick and white. It cut their view down to a mere few paces. They continued on, unsure where to go. They slowed down and began a steady trotting pace. The sounds of moans echoed around them out of the mists. The Ancestors were not only nearby, they were numerous in number. The Captain wasn’t sure exactly how many ancestors “lived” on this island of the damned, but he was sure it was a great many of them, and they were obviously on the trail of fresh meat.

The Captain looked about and strange wooden idols, stick figures and other carvings were strung about on the trees and branches of the path with twine.  The Captain simply could not believe that he was trapped in this nightmare. In school he had read the works of Poe, and even that tortured author’s twisted mind couldn’t come up with something like this.

They continued down the path, the mists all around them keeping them hidden, they hoped, from the hordes of howling damned that inhabited this awful island. He led the way, brushing through thick spider webs without sense of direction or time. Mississipp followed behind the Captain, barely able to see the back of the Captain’s sweat stained cotton shirt, despite the fact that the man was only a few feet in front him. Tom followed up the rear, he turned his head to look down the trail when suddenly something reached out and grabbed his ankle. He lost his footing and fell face down into the wet muck, then felt a terrible pain, unlike any he ever felt before, on the back of his calf as the flesh was torn away by rotten, but still capable teeth. He screamed out in horror and pain as he looked and saw that a legless torso of a man was clutching onto his leg, chewing at the chunk of flesh it had just ripped from him. Jagged strands of his own skin hung from the creature’s lips as it greedily munched on his very own flesh. He screamed even louder.

The Captain stopped and looked behind and saw Tom struggling with the creature. He looked around and quickly found a thick branch lying on the side of the path. He took it up and sprinted over to Tom and using all his strength swung it and connected with the creature’s head, the rotted branch instantly broke on the thing’s skull, the force knocking it off of Tom and onto the trail. It landed on its back, but then rolled over and started to drag itself forward towards the men again. Growling and grunting like some kind of wild animal. Tom was howling in agony as the blood streamed down his mangled calf soaking his cotton pants in black. His screams seemed to infuriate the moaning denizens hidden somewhere in the mists all around them. They picked up in intensity and volume and they could be heard, crashing and stumbling about in the thick underbrush of the swampy hell they had been cast into.

Mississipp quickly ran forward, a good sized stone in his grasp and yelling in rage he swung down on the rotted, legless corpse again and again. It grunted each time the heavy stone made contact with its skull. After a half dozen good swings, the thing’s head was a misshapen pulp. The half revealed skull stove in. The corpse ceased to move any further. He spit on it, panting with exertion.

Mississipp then looked up the trail and saw another corpse stumbling down the path towards them, its rotted eyes locked on his. It was hard to tell whether it had been man or woman. It was just a thin, emaciated skeleton with the added macabre spectacle that it chomped its teeth down repeatedly, black droolish liquid dripping down the rotten, half visible mandible of the pathetic soul. He whooped a rebel yell as loud as he could and charged it. He swung the gore encrusted stone with all his might into the side of the creature’s head and with a wet crack, its skull dented in and it collapsed to the ground. He then stood over top of it and brought the stone down a few more times for good measure. It too ceased to move.

By this time the Captain had managed to get Tom’s leg bandaged with a strip of cotton cloth torn from his pant leg, and he got him to his feet just as several more corpses came stumbling out of the bushes. Mississipp raised the stone again but the Captain shouted at him “No Corporal! We’ll be overrun here! We’ve got to keep moving!” then allowing Tom to lean on his shoulder, he began helping his wounded subordinate limp down the trail with Mississipp following behind. They managed to move just fast enough to outdistance the slow corpses, but the sounds of moans in the mist were on all sides of them and it was obvious that at some point they would exhaust themselves and then these damned souls would move in for the kill.

The Captain was beginning to grow desperate. Tom was grunting in pain through his teeth with every step, and the Captain could see that he wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace for much longer before they would have to turn and fight. Suddenly, as if by a miracle they broke out of the tree line into a large clearing, and as the mists shifted they revealed an ancient and half ruined plantation house sitting forlornly in the center of the swamp.  It was rotted and sagging, with long vines curling up massive columns, encrusting them in a thick, green leafy fur. But it looked strong enough to shelter them and maybe offer some protection from the raving, moaning dead steadily closing up the distance behind them.

The Captain whispered a prayer of thanks and shouted at Mississipp to hurry for the structure. They ran up onto the porch and the Captain went to push the door. It refused to budge. He looked back and the first skeletal corpses were just staggering out of the woods and making a beeline straight for the plantation house. The Captain snarled in rage and kicked the old door and it cracked. He kicked it again and the rotted wood of the doorjamb gave way and the door creaked open a little. Another kick got it open wide enough to squeeze through and the trio got inside.

Mississipp closed the door behind them and leaned against it. He heard the moaning dead slowly mount the steps of the porch and reach the door. Then he felt several hands pounding and scratching at it. He held it tight and yelled out for the Captain to grab something with which to barricade the door. The Captain set Tom down and then looked around and noticed a long board was hanging loose on the floor. He tore it up and then went over and jammed it at an angle against the door, sealing that particular entrance tight. Mississipp backed away from the door and while it shook and shimmied as the dead on the other side continued to pound and scratch at it, their awful moans echoing through each man, it looked like it would hold, for now.

“What in damnation are these things Cap’n? They look like corpses or something!” said Mississipp as he collapsed with exhaustion against a wall next to Tom, trying to tune out the ceaseless moans and pounding on the door.

“I don’t know Mississip, but we’re in a whole world of trouble that’s for shore.” Said the Captain as he went over to Tom and began to examine the wound on his leg. The Captain unwrapped the bandage to reveal a ragged, two inch wide tear in Tom’s calf. It was still bleeding profusely, and there was an odd stench of gangrene to the wound. Tom was looking pale, and it appeared he might be going into shock.

“Tom!? Tom!?” yelled the Captain and Tom’s eyes cleared and he came to his senses. “Yeah Cap,” Tom said between labored breaths of pain, “It hurts like hell. Worse than takin’ a ball.” he said. The Captain nodded and retied the blood soaked cotton to the wound. “I know son, just hold on while we figure out what to do.” replied the Captain.

The dead had apparently given up pounding at the door and instead could be heard moaning and shuffling about on the porch. The windows were all boarded up tight, and through the cracks in the planking they could see the dead out on the porch wander back and forth. More had arrived, they could be heard out in the clearing in front of the plantation house, though how many there were, was impossible to tell. The Captain looked around at his surroundings. They were in the main parlor. A large set of oak stairs, rotten with age ascended to a landing. There was no furniture visible, so it was obvious that whoever owned this house at one time had abandoned it and left it to the elements.

The Captain stood up. “Corporal, stay here with Tom, I’m going to take a look around and see if I can find us something to use for weapons. You managed to put two of them down, so apparently they aren’t as immortal as they appear.”

He then proceeded down a darkened and rotted corridor. Blank spaces on the dirt and grime encrusted walls showed where paintings had once hung, and cobwebs covered every corner and flat surface. The ancient wood beneath his feet creaked loudly with every step. He turned into a doorway and came upon a kitchen, a set of stone ovens sitting against a wall. A long table, blood stained and covered in feathers was present, and many shelves lined the walls where dry goods were once stored, but now all sat empty and unused.

He passed over and looked into the larder, and then smiled. Luck hadn’t failed him yet. Hanging on the wall on two hooks, was an old and rusty axe. He reached out and grabbed it up, it was heavy and strong. The wooden handle was stout and capable. He nodded and returned to the parlor where Tom was leaning up against the wall, mercifully unconscious. Mississipp was peering through a crack between two boards in a window. He looked back when he heard the Captain creaking back down the hallway with the axe in hand.

“What can you see Mississip?” said the Captain as he went back over to Tom and placed a hand on his forehead. He was ice cold, and his breathing quite shallow, coming in labored breaths. He undid the dressing over his leg and was horrified to see blackened, gangrenous flesh had begun to spread out from the wound. The odor was overpowering and he almost vomited. He covered the wound back up.

“Not a damn thing Cap’n, the fog is so thick, like soup. Occasionally I catch one movin’ around out there yonder but how many of them there are I haven’t a clue.” Mississip said and then turned away from the window. “How’s Tom?”

The Captain shook his head. “Not good. I’ve never seen anything like this. Who knows what kind of sickness those damn things carry. “

Mississip shivered and then turned back to looking out the window. The fog was thick and shifting. He could only see the porch itself, and the steps leading off of it disappearing into a thick white cloud. Occasionally a shadow would be seen in the shifting, swirling mists and then just as quickly disappeared. They were out there alright, hidden by the fog, patiently waiting.

Suddenly a loud thump was heard upstairs and the two men shot a look up towards the landing above thier heads. Mississip began to mutter a prayer under his breath, shivering with fright. The Captain lifted the axe. Another thump was soon heard, followed by a long scraping sound, like something being dragged along the rough hewn timber floors.

The Captain’s heart rate jumped, and the acid taste of fear was on his palette. He clutched the axe tight and then began to ascend the creaky stairs. As he came to the top of the landing, he heard it again a thump, followed by a long scraping sound. It was coming from a room at the end of the landing. The door to which was closed.

The Captain swallowed a lump in his throat, and then began slowly moving towards the door, the sounds behind it becoming more evident. Thump hisssss, thump hissssssss, thump hissss. He reached the door and placed his ear close to it, as the sound had suddenly died away. Then something on the other side of the door fell against it loudly, and a long low moan rolled out. The Captain, startled, jumped back from the door. The brass handle on the door began to turn and rattle, but apparently it was either locked or broken, because the handle just rattled but the door didn’t open. The Captain breathed a sigh of relief as another low moan emanated from behind the door. Then the sound came again. Thump, hissss. Thump, hiss, as whatever it was moved across the room.

“Cap’n!” came a call from downstairs.  “Come quick! Somethin’s wrong with Tom.” The Captain, satisfied that the thing was trapped inside the room for the time being, went back down the creaky steps over to where Tom, who was now awake, lay there shivering in a cold sweat.  The Captain went up to him and crouched down.  Tom looked up, his eyes were hazy and distant. “Cap?” he said weakly.

“I’m here Tom, wassa mattah?” said the Captain.

“Cap’n.. I can feel it. It’s eatin me up inside, I know it. Everything hurts..” suddenly he turned his head over and vomited black bile all over the floor. It reeked something awful and Mississip turned away, choking back his own reflex to vomit. Tom, once the spasm had passed, coughed raggedly and then turned back up to look at the Captain, the liquid running down his lips. “Cap’n.. don’t.. let me..die” he started to say before a wave of pain swept his body, then he relaxed and breathed deeply for a few moments. Tom faded off into unconsciousness again. The Captain felt his pulse, it was very weak and thready. It was obvious the man didn’t have long to live.

Mississip began pounding against the rotted wall in frustration, cursing wildly at the situation he found himself in. He raised such a ruckus that the thumping began even louder on the door upstairs, and the dead outside were heard stumbling their way on to the porch and began beating on the door again.

“DAMN YOU BASTARDS ALL TO HELL!”, Mississip yelled out at the dead on the porch. “I’ll KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU SONS OF BITCHES!”

“CORPORAL!” the Captain hollered out but Mississip kept raging out at the dead, who were pounding on the door so hard that it shook and looked like it was about to come off the hinges.

The Captain stood up and got into Mississip’s face. “CORPORAL! You WILL get yourself together THIS MOMENT! That is a DIRECT order!”

Military discipline reasserted itself, and Mississip sank to the floor next to Tom’s prone form, sobbing. After a few minutes, the pounding on the door subsided, though dozens of separate moans could be heard out on the porch and the lawn. The Captain closed his eyes and took a deep breath then spoke quietly, “Mississip, we have to hold our heads together son if we’re to get out of this.”

Suddenly Tom began to convulse violently, his entire body stiffened up like a board and his eyes opened to the ceiling and his teeth ground together. He began breathing extremely hard. The Captain and Mississip looked over in horror as the convulsions reached a climax, and then Tom’s entire body suddenly relaxed and released one long breath, then was silent.

The Captain went over and placed a finger on Tom’s neck. Nothing. “He’s gone.” He said with finality. Mississip shook with rage and anger, but managed to hold it together. The Captain closed Tom’s eyes and sighed. “Well, come on Mississip, let’s go upstairs and see what’s locked in that room up there.” Mississip nodded and hefted the gore encrusted stone in his hand, and the two men ascended the creaky, rotting stairs to the landing.

When they arrived, whatever had been making the noise had ceased to move about for the time being. They moved closer the door ever so slowly, each step making a creak that ran up the spines of the two men. They moved to the door and the Captain placed his ear to the door a moment and then listened intently. No sound. He stepped back and hefted the axe, turned it to the flat of the blade and swung it into the door, while Mississip stood just behind him, the large rock gripped with white knuckles.

The rotten doorjamb splintered and the door flew open with a loud crash. Mississip looked into the room. Standing in front of them was the now deceased, but very much active body of what was once a white man. He was remarkably preserved, for a walking corpse. He was wearing a fine suit, now dry rotted and moth eaten, covered in dust. It was even carrying a cane, which it used to prop its stiff body up with. It turned towards the door as it blew open and its toothless mouth opened and a moan escaped and then it used the cane to step forward, thump, then drag its stiff, emaciated legs behind it, hissss. Thump, hisss. Mississip just stared in disbelief as it took another step closer, thump, hisss.

The Captain stared as well in shock. Then recovered himself and stepped into the room. He looked into the rotted eyes of the sad creature and another moan rolled from its cracked lips. The Captain lifted the axe and brought it down on the pathetic ghoul’s head, smashing it like papier mache. The body collapsed to the ground instantly in a puff of dust.

The Captain looked around the room. It was the master suite. It contained a huge, dry rotted bed. Armoires and dressers abounded, once of fine work, now dusty and worm eaten. At the foot of the bed was a large oak chest, with stout bands holding it closed, old locks holding them in place. A desk also came to the Captains notice, several long candles on it.

He went over and there was even a box of matches nearby, which he opened and used to light one of the oil lamps that hung on a wall sconce nearby. A small globe of warm light filled the room. The Captain then noticed in the light that several faded parchments were laid out on the desk. He leaned in closely and saw that it was a map of the island on which they sat. Other documents were visible as well peeking out from underneath the map, a ledger in a readable cursive detailed a bill of lading for sugar shipments to and from the plantation. Another one listed the purchase of several slaves, four males, two females with child.

The Captain viewed the map and saw that there was a small boathouse about a quarter of a mile away on the other side of a sugarcane field. He hoped that there would be a boat there. Mississip then directed his attention to the locked chest. It was large and strong, with black iron bands holding it fast and two large locks. The Captain went over to it and using the axe, broke first one, and then the other lock free. Then threw open the chest. It was mostly filled with rotten, moth ridden clothes. They were just mere dusty rags. However, sitting on top of the clothing, was a finely wrought oak case. On the case was etched in fine gold leaf print. James Purdey & Sons, London, England.

The Captain’s eyes went up at the sight and he reached down and picked up the heavy case and laid it on the floor at his feet. He flipped open the finely wrought latch and opened the case to reveal a shining pair of the finest made dueling pistols the Captain had ever laid eyes on. They were made of the finest finished woods, and the hammers, triggers, trigger guards and other emblematic metal work that could be practically done so, were of wrought silver. They sparkled in the low flame of the lamp. There were also the various implements necessary to load and clean them. There was a powder horn, a small box of percussion caps, and one half dozen smooth lead balls each in their own individual socket. Ideally weighted and cast for maximum accuracy. The Captain whistled in appreciation.

He lifted one of the pistols out with care and marveled at its weight. It was quite heavy, particularly at the barrel. He pulled out the powder horn and poured a measure of powder down the barrel. Then took a leaf of wadding paper and using the silver ramrod in the case tamped it down onto the powder. Having done that he removed one of the lead balls from the individual socket in which it sat. He marveled at how smooth the surface of the lead marble was. Not a flaw to be seen was visible. He placed the ball onto the mouth of the barrel and jammed it tight. He added the percussion cap, and then slowly let the hammer down and handed the weapon to Mississip. He repeated the process with the other pistol.

Mississip then noticed a strip of leather hanging on one of the bedposts. He walked over to it and quickly noticed it was a scabbard, and inside that scabbard sat a large bowie knife. He picked it up and hefted it. The blade had a thin layer of rust over it, but he had no doubt that it would do whatever was required on the creatures that surrounded the plantation in which they were currently trapped.

Suddenly there was a loud crash downstairs, and low moan echoed up the stairway. The two men looked at each other and the blood drained from their faces. The moved quickly out the door and to the top of the landing just in time to see Tom picking himself up off the floor after having stumbled about for a moment. He had apparently stood up and not quite having his balance fell headlong into the board holding the door tightly closed. The wood had fallen, and the door was now hanging ajar. The noise had attracted several of the dead on the porch and they saw several pairs of hands pushing against the rusted hinges, pushing the door open wider. Their moans instantly began attracting the attention of those nearby and they slowly turned and began stumbling towards the now open door.

Tom turned and looked up at his former friends on the stairway and moaned a pitiful cry, then began stiffly working towards the stairs. He had some trouble negotiating them at first but they were broad and low, and after a moment he was comfortably making them one slow step at a time. The outside dead filling in the space behind as they finally pushed the door open and began to file into the parlor. The Captain took his dueling pistol and cocked the hammer back. Then pointed it down at one of his most loyal and reliable men, “May God rest your soul, Tom..” he said and pulled the trigger. A gout of smoke issued from the front of the pistol and the top of Tom’s head disappeared in a spray of ochre mist and the ball continued on to bury itself with an audible thump into the chest of another corpse behind him . His body slumped to the stairs, blocking for a moment the dead as they stumbled over his body, but the mass soon began crawling over Tom and each other. They were desperate to get at the men at the top of the stairs.

The Captain and Mississip backed down the landing and into the bedroom where they closed the door and manhandled one of the massive armoires in front of the door. They heard the first dead mount the landing and their multiple moans were soon just on the other side of the door. Muffled behind the armoire, the noises of scratching and pounding of palms against the door could be heard and the armoire rattled but held fast.

The Captain took a moment to reload his pistol and then considered their options. He went to the window and looked out. The fog had eased off, and he could see farther in the weak moonlight. The dead were pretty spread out down there. If they were quick and careful, they might be able to make it. Sloping away from the window was the long roof of a porch. He eyed the planks suspiciously and wasn’t sure if the rotted wood could hold the weight of a man but they didn’t have any choice. This was their opportunity while the dead were distracted exploring the new surroundings of the plantation house.

The Captain used the axe to smash out the frame and the shards of glass that remained, allowing for them to exit out on to the roof of the porch. The Captain went first, feeling carefully with his bare feet upon each plank for a soft spot that might cause him to go crashing through to the porch below. Each step he took the boards would creak and sag. He continued down the roof. Mississip followed, he too was eyeing each plank suspiciously with each step, and sweat broke out on his brow as he was sure each board was the one that would crack under his weight.

Suddenly with a loud crack, the board under one of the Captain’s feet gave way and his leg plunged through up to his thigh. The sharp jagged pieces of the board scratched cruelly into his leg. The splinters of the roof fell down onto the heads of several dead that were standing underneath the Captain when a juicy, tasty, living foot suddenly broke through the roof above their heads. They raved for it and reached up with their hands, the way a group of children would reach for an apple on a branch. The Captain was lucky that his foot rested just out reach of the raving dead below. He felt the brush of their ice cold fingers on the flesh of his ankle and toes. Cold fingers explored the warmth of his skin and he silently screamed as his flesh crawled and his bladder let go.

Mississip made his way over and helped the Captain pull his leg out of the hole in the roof and the Captain sat there a moment, shivering in fear. He had wet himself, and the urine formed a dark streak down the Captains leg. Mississip knew better than to say anything about it. He was as much a veteran as the Captain, and had seen men shit and piss themselves empty while standing in ranks before brutal volleys of the enemy as their father or brother standing next to them disappeared in a cloud of red mist and gore, victims of war in the industrial age. He peered down the hole and shivered himself as he saw the rotted eyes of the dead looking up through the hole at him, moaning like crazy.

The Captain got his senses together after a moment and stood up. They then made their way slowly to the edge of the porch and peered down. It wasn’t very far maybe 8 feet and the ground was soft and muddy. They didn’t have any dead right below them but they did hear them on the porch stumbling around on the planks.

The Captain steeled his nerves and jumped, hitting the soft mud feet first and then curled up and rolled. He was jarred brutally, but made it clear and Mississip did the same. The dead on the porch turned and saw their meal sprinting away at top speed and began moaning and raving a warning to those in the surrounding area.

The Captain and Mississip plunged down a path into the mossy trees in the direction the map had indicated the boathouse was. The men huffed down the path, the moans of raving dead echoing once again through the misty forest night. The Captain was steadily eating up ground when a shadow suddenly passed in front of him and he collided with a corpse. They tumbled into the underbrush and its jaws chattered as it lunged out for him. He used the axe handle to bar across its neck, the awful smell of rot and death washing over his senses. He bit back bile as the hissing creature struggled desperately for his flesh just inches away.

Mississip ran up behind and grabbed a lock of the emaciated creature’s hair, which hung in odd patches on the skull. He pulled the head back and placed the bowie knife against the ghoul’s throat and began sawing back and forth with the blade. The decomposed flesh gave instantly under the rusty yet still usefully sharp blade and in a moment the skull of the mummified corpse came free. It stopped moving and went slack instantly, then tumbled into the bushes. Mississip tossed the head after it. The Captain stood up, “Thanks”, he then indicated the trail. Mississip nodded and took the lead as they jogged off into the mists.

They broke into a field of tall, now wild sugar cane. The thick stalks were taller than a man, and had overgrown the path that they were following, the path’s terminus clearly marked by a wall of cane. The Captain looked at Mississip’ and then peered behind him and saw about four skeletal corpses making their way up the path. The men’s eyes met once more and they nodded in unison and then, taking a deep breath, plunged into the thick cane.

The Captain and Mississip’ were blinded by the thick stalks of grassy cane and they used their arms to push their way through. The moans of several dead could be heard in various directions, indicating that there were a lot of dead in this field. Perhaps the last remains of the slaves who once worked these fields.

The Captain breathed heavily as he forced his way through the stalks with Mississip right behind him keeping an eye out behind them. A lone hawk, flying in the moonlight just above the field looked down, and its sharp eyes, trained for long distance surveying, spotted the shifting wake of the Captain and Mississip as they pushed through the cane in a roughly straight line. However, on all sides at various points in the field, other lines were were being made in the cane. They were made as the dead stumbled just as blindly as the men through the moonlit field in a steady pace towards the line in the cane drawn by the two terrified men, the hawk turned and moved quickly away, uninterested in the struggle below it.

Suddenly there was a loud SNAP, and Mississip hollered out in surprise and pain. He had stopped dead in his tracks. He started to holler out but the Captain was there in an instant, cupping his hand over Mississip’s mouth. Once Mississip had gotten the picture, he pointed down at his foot. The Captain looked down and was horrified to see a sizeable rodent trap, rusted with age and with sharp, wicked teeth had closed over Mississip’s foot. His heart sank and he crouched down and looked at it.

Rustling and moans were heard close by and the Captain didn’t have long to figure this out. He grabbed at the trap and attempted to pull apart the teeth. It was rusted and tight and wouldn’t budge. He cursed and tried again. The rustling and moans echoing through the cane were almost right top of them and still the trap couldn’t be released. Suddenly, a bony, skeletal hand reached out from the cane behind the Captain, the rest of the ghoul’s body hidden by the dark vegetation. “CAP!” Missisip yelled out and then raised his pistol over the Captain’s head and fired it point blank into the vegetation at what he thought head level would be. Whatever it was fell back into the cane, but in a moment, it was heard struggling to its feet.

Mississip tested his foot and realized he couldn’t move, and barely limp as each time he set his foot down, a crippling wave of pain would race up his leg and into his spine, flashing his brain with warning signals that his foot was damaged severely by the hinged rodent trap. Mississip tossed the fine pistol away with casual ease and brandished his knife and looked at the Captain.

“Go on Cap’n, get outta heyah” said Mississip as the moans of the corpses grew louder as more were heard crashing through the vegetation all around them. The Captain looked at Mississip, torn with guilt and fear. “Sir I said GIT!” and the Captain didn’t need any more prodding, he just nodded. He handed his loaded pistol to Mississip then turned and disappeared into the mist soaked sugarcane.

Just as the Captain broke out of the sugarcane he heard Mississip give a mighty rebel yell and the battle moans of many dead echoed in response. He heard a swirling and crashing inside the sugar cane and the exertion as Mississip fought as best he could with the creatures. As the Captain reached the head of a trail that reached off into the darkness of the tree line he heard Mississip’s hoots and hollers instantly become screams, and it wasn’t but seconds after that began the Captain heard the booming report of the dueling pistol echo through the night, and then just the raving moans of the dead as they tore into what was left of Mississip’s body.

The path he followed ended at a rotten wooden shack on the edge of the lake. The Captain scurried down the path towards the dark and forlorn structure. He reached it and stopped at the doorway to the boathouse, the door long since missing from the hinges and looked inside the shed. Tied to the floor of the shed, floating on the water of the lake was a simple canoe.

The man whooped with joy and entered into the shed and jumped into the canoe. He then untied the hemp twine holding the canoe to the boathouse and then picking up an oar he began paddling for his life away from the hellish island. The echoing calls of the moaning damned craving for his flesh fading rapidly into the thick mists behind him.

The End

“You stand right there for a minute, you son of a bitch. You just abide there and I’ll do what ought to be done.”

My old eyes don’t line up a peep sight like they used to. Something about vision when you pass those sweet years of youth by…it just ain’t happy with settling down to giving you equal perception all through the range. I’m breaking down, but as I steady the M14 over the roof of an abandoned and rusting Hyundai, I can still feel the shot. I take a breath and let half of it out. I squeeze, real gentle.

The rifle, the same one that took my oldest brother through Pre-Tet Vietnam, bucks against my shoulder. The zombie drops. I wait, and the waiting is hardest. The hard sweat after the first volley, as you try to anticipate the true nature of the battle. Will it be one shambler? Two? A dozen? A hundred? Thank all the heavens, but I’ve never seen them in hundreds, but I’ve heard. The dim radio signal that comes up from Philly says that, down in the cities, it can happen. I look back up to the top of the long hill, at the rugged service road that’s only one step up from graded dirt. It’s the better part of half a mile. If they come at me hard enough, it’s my ass. I know that. I’m not spry like I used to be. There’ll be no half-mile sprints coming out of these old legs. Maybe a hundred yards. Once.

Another zombie appears from behind the bank building. I take a hasty shot and remove a chunk of shoulder, spinning the thing around. It’s just a teenager, a girl that was probably playing on the chess club before all of this. The second shot explodes her brain case and puts her down for good. I find myself hoping that there’s no pain afterward, that there’s no memory, that whatever made a person what she was isn’t there anymore after the eyes go blank and the hunger takes over. I hope like hell that the zombies are no more aware and sentient after the Flashover than the dust of everyone else, the ones who didn’t make it.

Not that prayers and hoping accomplish much. Not half as much as a bullet, placed well. It’s a quiet world now, and every report of a gun makes it a bit more so. It’s only out of the dead quiet when the last zombie sags to earth that we might rebound. It’s too much to imagine that any of us, the ones who saw the bright tent of humanity fall all around us, will see that day, but it’s not the tasks you finish, it’s the tasks you attack with all the energy you can muster—those are the ones that count.

The town, New Brocklane, disgorges its walking dead all morning. Seventeen of them, in all, and my few poor shots see the M14 hitting on its final shell by the time the culling is done.

Another day’s grim work, another magazine run empty in the cause of bringing the mindless reign of the zombies to a close. For me, another day closer to the time when I’ll have hunted my last, when the power to kill the dead will pass beyond me.

In the waning hours of the day, when the sun fades behind the trees and the strength of old men starts to wane, I find myself driving the roads, clogged now only with the abandoned wrecks of those who met their ash-bound end at the wheel. The mutter of my truck’s exhaust and the groan of its tires are the only song now, the whispered dirge for a world suddenly drained of all that is vital, all that looks and speaks and reckons the impact of all it might do. I know I am not alone, though I am in slim company. For all that knowledge does, I may as well be. The weight of all those who have passed presses against me, the ache of all those I loved as painful as broken teeth. I try to keep every voice, every face distinct and unmarred in my mind, but all that has come before grows hazy with the end of each barren day. I can only go home once more, and immerse myself in all that remains. What roots I have left must suffice to hold me against the great winds that are blowing.

Part One:

My people have always gone to war, and they have always returned intact.  As far back as memory can stretch, it has been thus.  A war would arise, the Kinney men would go out to see that elephant, and we would return, bearing the arms that saw us through the conflict.  This goes back to sabers and long knives.  In the basement of our home, we have these heirlooms, these dusty military jackets and tools of war.

My father told me that his own grandfather once met Geronimo in the Arizona territory.  The story goes that Geronimo squinted at my forebear for some time, finally uttering a grave proclamation and passing on.  When Barrett Kinney, the man in question, asked what the Great Chief had said, they told him this: “The One Who Yawns says that your family line has the Power, and that they will never die in battle.  He says that, like him, you have the blood of the Magic People who dwell forever below the earth.”

I have no illusions that the story is true, and can lay no claim to magic powers.  The closest to magic I have ever been is knowing the love of a good woman and seeing the wonders of nature’s bounty.  Still, evidence suggests that there may be something to the old tale.  No Kinney man I’ve ever heard of has been killed or maimed in wartime.  Closest anyone has come to harm was Maxwell “Weller” Kinney in the Great War, who broke his arm falling off a horse while on leave and wine-addled.

Though no papers have been signed and no declaration read, recent events have, by their very nature, ushered in a time of war.  The momentary fire in the sky differs little from the Pearl Harbor attack in this respect.  Only the scale and nature of the conflict has changed.  As my forefathers did, I aim to take part in this fight.  Like them, I wish only to honor my family and return home intact.  We have never sought out acclaim or hero’s honors.  We are simply duty-bound to do our small part.

The Kinney folk have lived in Upstate New York since the seventeenth century, and we have our share of traditions.  One of those, to an outsider, might be considered a sort of inborn hoarding instinct.  Kinneys don’t throw things away, they fix them.  They don’t get rid of things they can’t store, they build new places to house their collections.  We Kinneys are souvenir keepers.  If we do something, we need a reminder, a touchstone that keeps those events alive in our minds.  In the venue of wars, we tend to spirit away whatever the government lends out to us during the fracas.  As my grandfather often said, “if I have it in hand, I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t mine!”

That inherited attitude has seen us accumulate a variety of weapons over the years, enough to fill my basement, as I became the arbiter of so many old things.  The younger generation, had they survived the Flashover, would certainly have had recourse to their own purloined M9s, M-16s, and M4 carbines.  They, like my wife Jessica and our daughter Marlena, have no more need of such things.  They are gone into the air, and I hope that Jessie’s fervent belief in a better, sweeter life beyond this one has been borne out.  I believe, as I suppose my father did also, that if there is a heaven, it is probably barren of men who have amounted to a fiddler’s fart.  I think that, to prosper and do all that must be done on this world, we lose our grasp on anything that might assure the next one.

Be that as it may, heaven is not my primary concern now, and it has never been.  I am busy with the work of the day.  If society is to re-establish itself, we will have to overcome this zombie problem.  To put it plainly, the Eastern Seaboard is lousy with the walking dead.  While my role in the military was wholly non-combatant, running a motor pool at Nellis AFB near Las Vegas, I still went through the same training regimen, and consider myself a soldier.  An old soldier, admittedly, on the far side of fifty, but those present must wage the war.

As a boy, my first experience with a firearm was with my uncle Clyde’s M1 carbine.  He’d brought it back from Korea, and had many good things to say about it.  In point of fact, it was the later M2 version, which could be fired in fully automatic fashion.  I was not instructed on how to make this happen until much later.  At twelve years old, however, I first put the butt stock of the small rifle to my shoulder and pressed the trigger.  I ventilated many a tin can with that rifle.  I gasp to imagine what the ammunition I blasted through would cost to purchase today.  It was an era, then, when surplus .30 carbine rounds were numerous and cheap.  Since the machine of commerce is broken, everything is now, ahem, cheap, if not numerous.

I only bring this up because I’m carrying that same little carbine through the woods on the outskirts of town, watching closely for any sign of the walking dead.  Everything is close-quarters here, and a light rifle is all that is required.  A backup pistol is also wise.  Though in fine condition, the old M1 carbine could fail, just like any tool.  I carry a Ruger Blackhawk that can fire the same ammunition as my rifle.  A Ruger single action revolver is perhaps the most reliable thing that employs moving parts, so I have good confidence that, upon pulling the trigger, the hammer will fall, a loud noise will ensue, and a hole will appear at the point of aim.  Kinneys don’t purchase firearms, but this one was given to me in return for doing a valve job on an old friend’s Chevelle.  My great granddad could quibble that work for reward counts as “paying”, but that’s a family argument amongst voices who have all gone quiet now, all except me.

While the faculties of your average zombie are not wickedly keen, they seem to be able to hear and see with some accuracy.  Certainly well enough to be deadly to a regular human they can approach.  It is possible that they have some sense of smell, but I have no proof either way on that theory.  I operate on the assumption that they can sniff you out, especially should you have a bleeding wound.  So far as they can be said to make sense, an olfactory sense would be reasonable to imagine.

It’s hearing that I have found to be their most troublesome sense.  The noise of gunfire carries, sometimes for miles.  In most cases, it’s possible to make good your escape from an area before the zombie population can muster to your position, but a single man always has some chance of getting injured, trapped, or running short of ammunition.  We plan and equip ourselves as well as we can, we make preparations for all the likely eventualities, but in the end, fate plays a part.

For myself, I try to never wander more than an hour’s walk from my primary vehicle.  In addition, I locate any nearby places where, should things become grim, I could take shelter or make some sort of stand.  If I’m feeling particularly concerned, I will leave my government-issue Colt .45 Auto and a few magazines of ammunition at one of my fall-back positions.  Today, I’ve got a shoulder rig hanging from a sapling several hundred yards back, along with twenty two rounds of hollow point ammunition.  If that’s not enough to settle the argument, clearly running would have been a better option.

The animals hereabouts are skittish, going quiet or bolting when they hear me.  I’m not after them, not yet, and certainly not here.  There’s plenty of actual wilderness in which to hunt–wilderness that should be clean of zombies.  They seem to draw into groups and move toward civilization.  This could be because no animal would be fool enough to get snared and gnawed upon.  The same cannot be said for the average person, though the delicate flowers and half-wits have long since been culled from the remaining herd.

I see something small, probably a raccoon or a skunk, possibly a cat gone feral, scoot through the brush and seek shelter.  Mostly the movement of the low growth.  I follow my carbine on the slight downhill, picking my steps carefully, moving at a pace that won’t raise much noise or let me miss something.  The younger, more macho guys, I think, do themselves a disservice by running red-assed into things when they should have walked.  Being an old badger myself, I have these biases.

Just as I can see the faint outline of a house downslope, I hear the loose, clumsy footfalls that I’ve come to dream of, hear the weird, toneless grunt of the unliving enemy.  A small shriek, high up there in pitch, clipped at the end, rises from the same place, and the sound of it freezes my blood.  I try to engage that red-assed running, but I’m rooted to the spot, listening, hands numb on the rifle.

Another zombie noise, this time the noise I’ve heard them make after a center-mass shot or some other injury not quite grave enough to bring them down.  Footfalls come uphill at me, fast and light.  I remember my carbine, training it on the upcoming noise.  My finger shakes on the trigger, my eye tracking movement through the peep sight.  I raise my head away from the rifle.  All my body hair has come up in gooseflesh.  I find a target, centering the sight on it, letting the sight picture rise up toward the head shot that is the most effective.  Such a small one…

“You aren’t a zombie, are you, Mister?”

She’s eight, maybe nine.  Her little striped blouse is torn and filthy, her pink shoes coming apart at the seams, only her heart-embroidered jeans holding together through the strain.  A dark skinned child, though not so dark as the grime would indicate, little nose, big eyes, raven hair.  Her accent isn’t local.  She’s alive.  Really alive, and for a moment, I think I’ll start to cry.  I’d imagined that I’d die before I saw another wholesome child, another live reminder that we were once a vital species.  I pull the rifle down off my shoulder and point it to the side and down.  My heart booms with the shock of it.  I nearly took the shot, by God.  Within a half-pound of feeling the trigger break away and let one go.  It’s as close as I’ve ever come to a sin that could allow for no repentance.  As close as I ever hope to come.

“Mister?”

It’s hard to bring words up.  I haven’t spoken to anyone in a while, no one other than my own imaginary ride-along, my self-supplied Sancho as I run uselessly at my many windmills.  “I’m…not a zombie,” I finally manage.

She looks at me, absent emotion, drawn, holding a spray bottle in one hand.  “I got one of ‘em, but there’s two more down there.  They’ll come up this way pretty soon.”

It takes me a minute to get her meaning.  I remember my rifle just as two zombies appear near the side of the old garage, no more than twenty yards downhill.  I slide my ear protectors up from my neck and on.  “Plug your ears,” I whisper.  The zombies catch sight of us and come in a shambling run.

I take a knee and pop one with the first shot.  A part of his skull goes upward and he tumbles a few steps up the slope, going still.  The second one I hit in the high chest, then the shoulder, and finally catch him in the side of the head after the first two knock the forward momentum to a halt.  He slumps, then slides most of the way back where he’d come.

The girl takes her hands away from her ears.  She walks over to them, dispassionately kicking the nearer one in the knee to be sure that he doesn’t move.  She gives me a little nod, then gestures with her chin to the property below.  There’s still zombified bellowing down there.  She says something that I can’t catch because of the ear protection.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Better take care of the other one.  She’ll get on her feet again if we don’t.”

“Stay behind me, then, and keep your fingers in your ears.”

Down below, there’s a female zombie thrashing and clawing at its face, which is torn to bits, the flesh smoking and bubbling as if it were hit with strong acid.  I come within about ten yards and use one shell to finish the creature off.  In the silence after the shot, I push my ear protection back around my neck.

“Any more?”

The girl shrugs.  “Could be.”

“I’m Randall Kinney,” I tell her.

“Ferlita Sanchez.”

“Where do you hail from, Ferlita?”

“Yuma.  Arizona.”

“You’re a ways from your home, it seems. How’d you manage to come so far?”

“Doesn’t matter now.  It’s just a place. Full of nothing, just like everywhere else.”

Up close, I see that she may be upwards of ten, but just petite.  I have a pang of sadness for the world she’ll grow up in, so desolate. To imagine a world where a young girl, alone, would have to come to grips with zombies, is chilling. I try not to consider it, though it is every bit the truth. Truths are often the most horrifying things to consider.

I furrow my brow, thinking about what I’ve just seen, the burned face and agonized crawling of a zombie.  “Ferlita, what’d you do to this’n here?”

She proudly hoists her spray bottle.  It’s a whitewall tire cleaner.  “Good stuff.  Like pepper spray, or water on a witch.”

“How’d you hit on that idea?”  I’m thunderstruck at the notion, myself.  Chemical testing hadn’t ever crossed my mind.

Ferlita shrugs.  “Just tried it.  Started with WD-40, which blinds ‘em for a minute, but not long enough.  Lysol confuses ‘em for a while.  They bump into stuff and walk around in circles.  Fine for getting away, but it doesn’t really hurt ‘em.  This stuff, though…I hope I can find more.”

I’ve seen the brand before, and I’m sure that it’s at every car care place you could find.  I tell her so.  By then, there are signs of more zombies coming to see what all the gunfire was all about, so I take her back upcountry.

“Have you met anyone else?” she asks as I’m shrugging into the shoulder rig for the .45 and stopping to survey the forest for danger signs.  “Like–how many people do you think there are left that aren’t los muertos hambrientos.”

“Not sure I catch your meaning, Ferlita. My Spanish is pretty rusty.”

“The hungry dead, is what I mean. They seem like all you see now. Everyone’s gone, huh?”

I dust my hands on my jeans. “Not everyone. I met a couple Canucks going south right after the Flashover.  They said they were headed to Florida, but I think they romanticized the place from the television.  Florida was plenty weird before all this went down.  Can’t imagine it’d be any different now.  Still, they wouldn’t be talked out of it.  They had this notion that smoking marijuana had saved them from the Flashover, and that pretty much tells me they weren’t of any kind of sound mind.”

She looks at me for a minute.  “What’s a Canuck?”

“A Canadian.  That’s what we call ‘em sometimes. Probably not very nice.”

“Going south isn’t the worst idea.”

“I’ll give you that, Ferlita.  Still, this is the place I know well.  I think I’ll stick around.”  I offer my hand.  “You’re welcome to ride this storm out with me.”

She takes my hand.  Her small hand grips hard, her fingers chilly to the touch.  “I hope you’re not a weirdo.”

I laugh a little.  “No worse than most, I suspect.  My faults don’t include doing anything inappropriate to young ladies.  That’s not to say I’m not a little rough around the edges.”

“You know how to kill…them.  If you don’t hurt me, that’s enough.”

I step in front of her.  My heart is beating slow and hard.  “Did someone hurt you like that in the past?”

She gives me a defiant look, then drops her eyes and steps back, saying nothing.

“I wouldn’t do that.  I promise.  While I’m around, no one’ll so much as raise a hand to you.”

Without looking up, she nods and moves past me.  It takes me a minute to get moving again.  I find that, in my advancing age, a moment gets away from me here and there, when I forget my body and retreat to my mind.  The world’s not made for that sort of forgetfulness anymore.  With a little mental kick up the backside, I catch up with Ferlita.

She looks like she’s been living lean.  There’s more hollowness in her cheeks and more dark beneath her eyes than there ever should be.  Not with anyone, especially not with a young one.  With the dead upright and walking around, a lot of things that shouldn’t be have come to be commonplace.

I dig in my pocket, locating a candy bar.  I hold it out to her.  She takes it, eating slowly and without comment.  The way the sleeve of her rainbow-colored blouse is all ripped and frayed seems to call out with all the agony of a world gone wrong.

“Not far now,” I tell her, if only to have something to say, and in saying something, distract my attention from each eloquent revelation of the broken world.

She follows as I follow the cut marks on the saplings, letting them lead me back to the road.

****

Ferlita hears them first.  Young ears.  Ears that haven’t suffered the indignities of gunfire, bench grinders, and loud music.  She looks back at me and points down the rough-cut edge where they leveled the land to lay in a road.  The brush makes the two-lane indistinct and ghostly, but that’s where the Suburban is parked.  If I strain, I can just here their shuffling feet.

I take a knee next to Ferlita.  “How many, you figure?” I whisper.

“Five, six.  Not sure.”  Nothing shows on her face, but her whole body is shivering.  No shame in it.  They give me the full-body shivers sometimes, too.  I guess that the moment when they stop doing that is the moment you really have to watch for.

“Normal folks or zombies?”

“Muertos. Zombies.”

I figured as much.  Finding a whole band of normal people isn’t something you’ll see much these days.  The zombies have ways of finding each other, though, and seem to prefer the chance to buddy up.  I don’t know why, and I don’t relish the idea of it.  Means that there’s some sort of instinct going on.  Either they’re not quite as dim as we thought, or there’s something…something like what once was still firing in their chilly brains.  Either way, it’s something I can’t know, something I shouldn’t.

“Have you got plenty of your Zombie-Off?”

She swishes the bottle of tire cleaner around.  It sounds like there’s at least half.

“That should be enough,” I tell her.  “You stick here, and I’m going to see if I can do away with them, so we can take the truck and get out of here.  We’ll want to get a good meal into you, get you a bath, and put you in some fresh clothes.”

Ferlita gives me a flat, hard look.

“I didn’t mean anything by it.  Your duds have just about given up, and if you don’t mind me saying, the dust of the road’s sitting fair thick on you at this point.”

“Okay.”  She nudges me forward. “Be careful.”

I find a point about forty yards down from the Suburban before I dig in and start sliding down the rocky verge of the road.  My foot catches, and I go down in a heap, tumbling twice before I get my feet back under me.  I’m bleeding from the nose and teeth from where the carbine smacked against my face on the wild ride down, and I shake myself to get the tweety birds and spiral stars out.

I’ve seen zombies loiter around.  They stagger around in loose ellipses, sort of orbiting some point of interest.  They don’t look any more alert, or any less so.  They don’t feature much in the way of expression one way or another.

These…are different.  I can tell that in the first moment.  It’s in their movements, in the suddenness and surety of them.  Not quite the dexterity of the living, but certainly leaps and bounds above any of the zombies I’ve locked horns with thus far.

That, and they’re in uniform.  Brown jumpsuits, loose fitting, but with a logo I can’t quite read.  Like workers at a big factory.  Or maybe a chemical plant.  There’s little time before they begin jogging toward me, covering the ground faster than I’m prepared for.

I shoulder the carbine and press the trigger.  Nothing.  Something in the tumble I just took jammed up the works.  I shrug out of the sling and throw the rifle down, bringing the .45 out of my shoulder holster.  I pull the trigger, and nothing happens.  The zombies, now spread out wide and hemming me in, are really running.

I remember the slide lock safety, flicking it down and finally letting loose.  The big Colt bucks in my hand until it’s empty, leaving three of five creatures down, two for good.  I damn myself for bad shooting, but things are happening far too quickly.  I jam the .45 back into its holster and begin to pull free the Ruger, but the lead zombie is upon me, smashing me to the gravel with all the stupid force of a linebacker.  The creature’s fists are pummeling me before I know which way is up.  I feel blood burst from a cut over my eye, feel a tooth break off at the gumline, feel my ribs straining under the smashing assault.

Somehow, I manage to throw the thing off and get my hand on the Ruger.  The first shot blows two of his fingers off, but the second hits him in the shoulder, deadening the whole arm.  He tries to leap on me, but I fend him off with the leg that I can still feel.  One more shot finally pips the ace, hitting him, smashing through the cheekbone and everything behind it.  My ear protection has been dislodged, and so the gunfire has blasted my ears into a fog, but that’s so far down the list of complaints that I don’t have time for it.  I get on my feet somehow, and the last of the zombies veers away from me as I point the gun.

I get a deep, empty feeling as I look into his eyes.  There’s something in there.  Something extra. Something more than simple hunger.  Malevolence.  I cock the hammer and take a shot at him, but he jukes and runs a crooked line into the forest at the other side of the road, beating what is perhaps the first retreat for their side in the ongoing conflict. He retreats. Understands the danger of the gun and retreats.

I teeter on my feet for a moment, perplexed.  The zombie I’d wounded is back on its pins, dragging one leg but coming closer nonetheless.  The shaking in my system is so strong that holding the gun steady is fierce work, but two more shots finally end the encounter.  I stand over one of them.  The jumpsuit says Cavendish Petrochemical Labs.  I remember vaguely that they have a plant somewhere west of here.  A plant that employed almost a hundred workers, if the news stories spoke true. I calculate odds in a rough way. From all I know about the survival rate after the Flashover, it seems wildly unlikely that five guys from the same spot would zombie up and form a gang. Seems like something to be concerned with, when I have enough energy to be concerned.

I limp to the Suburban and numbly pull myself in.  My stomach heaves, my head aching with a vengeance, and all the pain that had momentarily been covered by adrenalin now washes over me.  “Shit.  Shit.  Shit,” I whisper.  Ferlita climbs into the passenger side.  I stop my cursing.

“You all right, Mr. Kinney?”

“No, Ma’am, I don’t believe I am.”  I put my head back and close my eyes for a minute.  Before I open them, I feel Ferlita’s small hand wiping blood off my face.

“I watched them.  They were different.”

I fish a bicuspid out of my cheek and set it on the dash. I reach back and get a gallon of water out of the back, pouring some onto a shop towel. I wipe up the remainder of the blood and hold the rag against my cut brow.

“Different? Yeah, I’d say they were. Somethin’ happened with them that left some of the lights on. They’re…” I blow out some air. “They’re a whole different ballgame.”

*****

“Mr. Kinney?”

It’s a quiet voice.  I smile thinking about it.  Like I’m a teacher in some small schoolhouse in the country.  Maybe I’m teaching colloquial English in some distant land.  Lord knows, my English can, at times, be quite colloquial.

“Mr. Kinney!”  The voice is now loud and close.  I feel myself shaken.  “You gotta wake up, Mister.  They came back!”

My eyes flutter.  It’s dark.  I’m still behind the wheel of the Suburban.  I’ve been passed out for a long time.  There are two of the new, improved zombies, grossly feasting on their fallen buddies.  One of them has a big knife.  Tool use.  One of the hallmarks of intelligence.  Swell.  They’re eying us, but seem happy enough to do their thing on the ground.  The one with the knife was the one who high-tailed it earlier.  He steps to one of the other ones, who’s not having very good luck eating his dead buddy’s arm.  Knife boy pushes his pal aside and hacks the arm off at the elbow with a few hard swipes.  Cooperation.  It gets better and better.

“Mr. Kinney?”

“I’m up, I’m up.”  I fish my keys out and put them in the ignition.  I get the old Suburban running and flip the lights on.  The look in Knife Boy’s eyes as he regards us gives me the screaming willies.  I shift into reverse and start easing back, hoping I’ll have enough time to jump out and scoop up the carbine I dropped earlier.

Knife Boy starts running at me, face anything but blank, something like a zombie, but made more terrible with a spark of sentience.  I accelerate, spin the wheel, and do a lousy but effective one-eighty.  I punch it and we leave the scene behind.  I carry more speed than is wise, and a few times only just navigate around abandoned cars and fallen trees in the road.

Ferlita and I are silent.  What we saw doesn’t bear discussion.  Besides, my head throbs, my face is swollen, my mouth’s filled with the taste of blood.  I imagine that I may well have a few broken ribs on top of all of it.

I don’t go back to my house.  Not during the day, and not in the shape I’m in.  Certainly, not with a non-combatant in tow.  We pull into the mostly abandoned parking lot at the side of Farelli Lanes, and I kill the engine.

“Why are we at a bowling alley?” Ferlita asks.

“Cinderblock walls, metal doors, and because old man Farelli put in a diesel generator for reasons unknown.  I only know about it because I tuned it up once for a month of free play.”

Ferlita seems to take that in stride, and we walk to the door.  I’ve reloaded the Ruger and the Colt by now, and I have my hand on the Ruger’s grip as we walk to the side entrance.

We walk into the blackness beyond the door, like the dark of a shut coffin lid above you.  I bend, nearly toppling to the deck as one of my knees tricks out, but managing to scoop up the electric light.  I flick it on, and it pushes the cave blackness back some.  I have a powerful flash nearby, and I fire that up, too, handing the lamp to Ferlita.

“Wait here.  I’ll kick over the genny and we’ll have some lights.”

I walk down the apron at the side of the furthest lane, then through a skinny door and into the machinery behind the lanes.  Every time, the place’s big, mechanical presence spooks me out.  It’s the best, safest fort nearby, though, a defensible position where even the burliest of zombies couldn’t burst in.

I take a minute to consider the new ones, the ones from the chemical plant, and I shake my head.  It’s a little too easy to imagine Knife Boy hoisting a sledge and having at the door until it caves in.  It’s way too easy, but I don’t want to think that way.  I need to patch up, to rest, and to see if I can’t survive this mess for another few days.  If not for my own pride and the family tradition, at least for little Ferlita, who deserves a whole lot better than this.

I move beyond the pin-placers, past the mechanical store room, and through the old staff room, where an old fridge, a cheap microwave, and a cigarette-burned table suffice for comfort.  In the furthest corner room, the generator sits like a giant cast iron toad in the dimness.  I prime it, flip the switch that opens the circuit with the starter battery, and wait for the glow plugs to warm.  When the light on the switch panel turns from yellow to green, I punch the button and the old creature comes to life.

The generator charges a series of 1kw capacitors that I installed a few years back to take momentary power draws, then pushes power out into the building’s circuits.  The sparse lights I left on flicker, then come on clearly.  I switch on the intake fan that draws oxygen from the outside, then close the door.  From outside, the sound is nothing more than a gentle grumble. It’s not cold enough to worry about smoke rising right now.

For the first time, I wonder about the exhaust noise, and if the nearby zombies might be drawn the the chuffing noise of the genny.  If they’re your run-of-the-mill zombies, there’s not much harm in that.  The building’s secure.  If it’s Knife Boy and his pals…still, they are miles away, and if they can track me by some unlikely means I can’t imagine, that’ll have to be that. Can’t worry about things you can’t change. The topic of how “super” these super zombies are will have to be tabled for the moment.

I go back and clean up in the staff room for a moment, then meet Ferlita.  She’s sitting behind lane seven, just about in the middle of the building, thinking thoughts known only to brave little girls in the post-human epoch.  I flip on a few more lights and switch on the griddle behind the snack bar.  I’ve found a bread maker machine that I can work tolerably well, and the processed cheese slices in the small fridge seem more or less impervious to spoilage.

I brush a bit of the buttery substance they keep around for the pop corn machine on the bread, and they make a decent grilled sandwich.  There’s chili in good quantities, and I supplement our sandwiches with that.  Ferlita digs in and eats until her plate is clean.  I’m afraid to give her more, lest it weigh too heavily on her belly.

The soda fountain works, and she has her fill of root beer mixed with orange, which she claims is her favorite.  Sounds terrible to me, but I remember my favorite thing as a kid was peanut butter and mustard sandwiches.

I dig out one of the remaining Miller beers and drink it warm.  My face is swollen, the new gap in my teeth raw, and it requires a tear-wringing effort to move around with my bruised ribs.  Still, we have survived, and it’s enough. You stick around for while, your version of “enough” becomes pretty undemanding.

I turn on the lanes and let Ferlita bowl for a while.  In the back, I go through the lockers.  Tanya Salinger’s locker contains clothes that will be close enough in size to let Ferlita change.  I smell them.  They’ve been worn once, and Tanya seemed to like her perfume strong and thick, but they’ll do for the moment.  The shower off the staff room will do, and there’s a clean towel.  We can seek out better duds for her soon enough.

Ferlita’s eyes are red-rimmed as she finishes cleaning up, and I barely manage a cursory scrub before my body starts to refuse commands.  She takes the sofa in the staff room, and I drag a raggedy old cot just beyond the door.  It’s the middle of the afternoon the next day before we’re up and at ‘em.

*****

“You’re not going to leave me here!” Ferlita turns her small shoulders to me and rolls a ball down the lanes. It strikes the pins with all the force of her conviction, scoring a strike.

“It’s that, or take you into danger such as I wouldn’t be happy to show you, hon.” I slump into one of the fiberglass seats because standing over any length of time hurts too much. I’m somewhere between “treated and released” and “kept overnight for observation”, and there’s no hospital to be had, no painkillers nearby. Just a beat-up old man and a kid. Against not just the run-of-the-mill zombies, but bad hombres who have some level of consciousness.

I sit there, just for a moment, or perhaps for several frames of Ferlita bowling, and think about what could make zombies. Why did they exist? Was there a purpose to them, or was it a galactic mistake, just a byproduct of some other, equally arcane process. If I knew how they worked, I might have a prayer of understanding what could create these new creatures, perhaps not accurately called zombies at all. Wasn’t it part and parcel of zombie-hood that you had no mind, no rationale, no reason? If so, what could I term these new horrors? Ghouls? Revenants? There were creatures of some kind in those books about Hobbits, but I’d long since forgotten what they were called.

I put it aside. I have to. “Well, if you’re going to risk yourself going around with this crazy old man, I suppose we’ll have to get you more of that tire cleaner.”

Even now, she’s got the bottle sitting within a few steps. She’s a survivor, a good kid. I’m lucky to have found her. She makes me remember all the reasons we have to go on, why we have to win. A highly motivated man can do things he has no business doing. That’s what I count on. That’s one of the few things in our favor.

“Will I get a gun?” she asks, holding up a bowling ball between us, giving me a shrewd look.

“If I’m satisfied that you can be safe and hit what you aim at, yes. We’ll need all the shooters we can find, and if you’re willing to go out and risk all, I won’t send you out there without the best protection I can give you.”

“I want a gun like the people use on TV. Like the cops use.”

“I don’t have one of those, sweetie. I’ve only got what our family brought home from war, our family heirlooms.”

“There’s got to be some hanging around. At the police station, or in a gun shop. No one’s going to care if we take something now, will they?” She smiles, turns, and throws another ball down the lanes. It’s a tough split this time. She’ll be lucky to pick up the spare.

I sigh. “I suppose you’re right. No reason to hold you to the same foolish articles of faith we Kinneys labor under.” No reason at all.

“Good. Where are we going?”

“To my house first, and then I suppose we’ll go around to the gun shop and see if we can find you a proper firearm.”

—–

Patrick M. Tracy was born in Maine, but has lived in the Southwest for many years. He works fixing computers in the bowels of a library, but in his off times enjoys strength training, archery, and playing the bass guitar. He has published both fiction and poetry in a variety of markets. His most recent projects can be seen by visiting www.pmtracy.com.

“Dad! Dad. I…”

“Andrew, we’re leaving. Get in the van.”

“But what about mom?”

“We’ll see her again. I left a note. She’ll know we’re over at your Grandmother’s house. Now grab your bag and get in the van.”

“But, Dad, I…”

“You did what you had to do son,” he gives me a hug. “Thank you for that. But we have to move. Now.”

No duh! I was deadly! Boba Fett on Coruscant couldn’t have pulled off the shot I did. And with my dinky little .22. What would it have looked like if I shot that guy in the head with the carbine? That would have been awesome! Go ahead Dad, you’ve gone back into “War Machine” mode, but even you know I did good back there.

I look back once at the first man I’ve ever killed.

An old lady has run out into the street and is crouched over the body. Bending over it- a zombie? Is she gonna eat him?

No. She’s lifting him. Holding him to her chest.

She’s crying.

It’s Perry, the lady who lives with Mr Turing. No, not lives. Lived. What will she do now? I don’t like her much. She yelled at me when I cut across her lawn on my bike.

She’s crying.

“Dad, we can’t leave them behind.” I follow Dad back into the house. Suddenly I want to run, to hide. To crawl away somewhere.

Dad doesn’t even look at me as he talks. He checks the radio, turns some dials and listens to it. It doesn’t make any noise. He puts it in his knapsack. Now he’s grabbing a few last packages. “We can’t take them with us.”

“They?”

“His girlfriend. His kids. They might want revenge. We can’t trust them. Now grab your bag and get in the van.”

“But dad-”

“Get in the damned van!”

He yells at me. That bellow he has when he’s really angry. It’s like a wall of noise.

I grab my bag, the one he had me make up two days ago with my clothes and stuff. As we jump into the van to go who knows where, I pull out my journal. In bumpy

handwriting, I scrawl ‘I shot a man today’.

It’s hard to stay steady as dad weaves the van around wreckage and debris. The tires are screaming. I have to blink away tears. Why am I crying? I’m not hurt. I’m not the one lying in the street. I stare at the letters. They stare back at me. Accusing.

I scratch out ‘shot’ and write in ‘killed’.

###

JOURNAL-

It’s been three days since this started. Three days since I came downstairs, wondering why Dad was calling for me. Wondering why his voice sounded funny. When I got down to the living room, I started wondering why he was watching a horror movie. He likes war movies, all the stuff on the military channel or the science channel. He hates horror movies. The special effects on this one are totally awesome but I don’t recognize it. I try to figure out how I never heard of this movie before.

It took me a couple of minutes to realize it wasn’t a movie. Dad went all quiet after he told me I wasn’t going to school. We watched the news together for what seemed like forever. I never watched the news.

I’ve never seen him scared before. I noticed it, even when he started barking out orders, sending me down to the basement to get nails, hammers, plywood. Even while he started loading up the guns. He loaded up every magazine of every gun, then had them all lying on the sofa, except the pistol in his holster. That was kind of cool.

He had me bringing out more nails as he nailed boards over the outside of the windows. That was when he shot the first screamer. He didn’t act like the guys in the movies. He looked scared when he shot the screamer. Scared when he reloaded. Scared when the bodies got back up again.

I don’t like him looking scared.

That was when he went into War Machine mode. No goofy jokes, no long boring stories. Always watching. Quiet. You can tell he’s thinking. Each time he looks at me, I can tell he’s thinking. I feel like he’s checking me out. Seeing if I measure up. If he talks, it’s a command or a lesson. All “remember this…” or “Get me that..”

Where’s Mom? She should be home by now. Dad said she was coming back from work. I wish she was here now, even if it was to yell at Dad for pounding all those nails into the house and the mess he was making.

She should be home by now.

Once all the windows on the first floor were boarded up, we loaded the van with stuff. Canned food from that big pile Mom and Dad keep in the basement. Candles, camping gear, all sorts of wierd stuff Mom and Dad keep. The first lesson in War Machine mode. “If you want a snack, get it out of the refrigerator or the freezer. Do not eat any of the canned stuff.”

###

DAY ONE

“Why?”

“We’ll probably lose power in the next couple of days. When that goes, all the refrigerated food will start to go bad. We want to eat it before that happens. Save the canned food for when the power is gone.”

“Like, I can eat all the ice cream I want?”

That breaks his War Machine mode for a second. He smiles. It’s stupid how good that makes me feel. “All the ice cream you can eat, son. Just like with tonsils.”

I fix myself a big bowl of ice cream as he locks up the house. We’re going over to Grandmas’ house to drop this stuff off. Somehow, I just really need ice cream. It’s like my head is stuffed with cotton and i can only think of one thing at a time. It’s kind of hot. I just concentrate on the ice cream, even when we are driving over. The streets seem funny. Like, I don’t know, like people are driving bad. Dad yells a couple of times. He has the guns beside him. He gave me the .22 because I’ve fired it. Nothing happens.

We drop off the stuff at Grandmas’. Grandma is really quiet but she hugs me really tight when we get there. Before we leave, Uncle Dale and Aunt Carol show up with their kids. Uncle Dale is in that old civil war uniform he wears to reenactments. He has four or five of those old time muskets and pistols. He and Aunt Carol are both carrying them. So is Cassandra, their oldest. She’s only a couple years older than me. Plus Uncle Dale has a shotgun, a modern one, not like the old muskets. Carol thinks I should stay with them. I can tell Dad is thinking about it. I think about Dad being out there all alone, like he was in the street when that guy ran at him. But what if one got behind him? Who’d see it?

“Dad, I’m coming with you. Someone needs to watch your back. I can do it. Uncle Dale is nice, but he thinks I’m a kid. I’m not a kid anymore. I can shoot those things.”

Dad looks at me and shakes his head. I can tell he’s not happy. But when he speaks, his voice is funny. “I saw kids younger then him in Iraq. Kids with AK47′s. I don’t like it, but he can fight. We need him to fight.”

Whoa. It would be so cool to have an AK47.

We’re driving back. I’m in the back of the van. I notice the streets are a lot emptier now. I see one guy running when two people jump on him. One is a kid.

I look away.

Dad yells. A second later we hit something, something big. The whole van rocks. I hear glass breaking.

A bloody face is shoving in through the broken window! Teeth so sharp! Screaming, my ears hurt, hands reaching for me, blood so much blood! Daddy! Bloody hands grabbing me, pulling me towards those teeth! TEETH! DADDY!

THUNDER.

I’m deaf! Oh crap I’m deaf! Flash in front of my eyes, deaf and blind, being thrown around. Dad’s driving like he’s crazy.

Has he gone crazy?

It’s like there’s an afterimage in my head of Dad shoving his pistol into the eye of that guy who came through the window. Flash. Thunder.

Wet.

I’m wet.

Red blood. On my hands, my pants.

I stink. I think I peed myself. I can’t tell dad that. I’ll have to change so dad doesn’t know I peed myself.

###

JOURNAL- Why didn’t I shoot that guy? I was so scared. I forgot all about my gun. It’s like I’m looking at myself. Grading myself. Great Andrew, just great. You screamed like a baby and yelled for Daddy. Then you wet yourself.

My head feels hot now. Do I have a fever? Sometimes when I think about how stupid I was, I wish I was dead. But I don’t want to die. Not if that is what dying is like now.

###

FIRST NIGHT

Dark. So dark. Dad has nailed blankets over the windows in his office, up here in the attic. He says we can’t let any light out. He’s working on his computer. Checking out stuff on the internet. More zombie stuff.

My skin hurts. I showered for an hour after we got back, scrubbing all the blood off me. I saw myself in the mirror before I went into the shower. My face was spattered with blood, like the time Danny Coogan and I were supposed to be painting and got into a paint fight. Blood soaked through my clothes too. Like it did with Danny Coogan.

He isn’t answering his email or texts. None of my friends are.

So dark.

There’s a thump. A bloody body sliding in through the window. Dad didn’t notice. It’s the guy he shot today. Half his head is still missing. He looks like Megatron from the third transformers movie, after his skull was blown away. Things are crawling in his skull.

I can’t move. I can’t speak. My legs won’t move. The zombie smiles with half his face. The half he still has. He leaps at Dad. He tears his head off. There’s a bloody stump where my dad’s neck was. I can scream finally, I jump, I have to grab the head, put it on, screaming, thrashing the zombie is on me crushing me. Covering my mouth…

It’s dad.

Dad’s alive. His head is back on.

He’s got his hand over my mouth.

He speaks quietly. “Shhhhhh. It’s okay sport. I’m here. It was just a nightmare. We’re okay. It’s all okay..”

There’s no zombie. There’s no zombie. Dad is okay.

“Say your prayers to Jesus son. Keep the nightmares away.”

Dad dozes off himself later. I go onto the internet then, looking for any of my friends. It’s dawn before I can sleep again.

###

SECOND NIGHT

The screams wake me up.

They sound like they’re right outside the house. Dad takes the pistols. He hands me the carbine. Finally!

It feels so solid. So heavy. This is a real gun, not like the little .22. I feel better just gripping it. Even the screamers outside don’t seem as scary.

We crawl out on the balcony. A bunch of screamers are throwing themselves against the house across the street. Bloodlust, just like in the video games. But the guys in the video games don’t have a carbine. Then I hear a baby crying. I whisper, like Dad’s been telling me to. “Dad! We have to do something. We can shoot them!”

“Son, if we start shooting, they’ll swarm us. They attack noise.”

That baby is still crying. Why won’t Dad do something? He’s got the pistols. We can shoot so many bullets! “Dad!”

He’s silent.

He’s testing me. What will I do? He’s been in War Machine mode all day, ever since he started sniping those shamblers in the street. He’s testing me, like a Jedi testing a Padawan.

“Dad!”

Nothing. The baby is crying. Is he testing my courage? Or my compassion? I have to decide. I have to. Our lives? The baby?

I aim and pull the trigger as fast as I can.

He starts shooting too, both his pistols, the world dissolves in muzzle flashes. My ears are ringing from the guns firing so loud. I keep firing into them.

I’m jerking at the trigger but my gun won’t fire!

“Get inside!” He’s ducking inside the house, scrambling.

The Screamers look at me, their eyes shining in the moonlight. They all see me! Why aren’t they dead! I know I killed some of them!

They scream.

I scramble inside as I see them rush the house. I’ve killed us. We’re going to die. Dad wasn’t testing us, he was trying to keep us alive, we’re going to die, I killed us-

Dad yanks me through the window.

He’s reloading his pistols, reloading his magazines. He barks at me. “Put in a fresh clip. You’re empty!”

He’s so angry. Because I’ve killed us. I was stupid. I was stupid pulling on the trigger of an empty rifle. I eject the old clip, slowly remembering what he’s been trying to teach me for the last two days. Real smart Andrew. He’s only had you do it a hundred times already. Then you forget.

I’m choking as i speak. It’s hard to see. I wipe my eyes. “I’m sorry Dad. I just, I heard that baby and..”

Choking. I won’t cry. I won’t cry. I was stupid. I won’t cry.

He hugs me. Crushes me to him. His voice sounds funny. He doesn’t sound mad. He sounds like he’s about to cry too. “I love you, Son.”

For just a second, it’s all okay.

We go downstairs to die. I won’t forget to reload. The door is shaking. They have to come through the door.

Dad’s looking at me funny. Wondering if I’ll freeze up again. I won’t. I aim, the second magazine in my hand.. Ready. Shoot them in the head. We can’t run. They’ll just chase us down.

Screaming. Howling. They sound so hungry. I’m shaking. I don’t want to die.

The door slams open an inch. Bloody fingers shove through the gap. They’re shoving back the barricade.

Where’s that light coming from? Someone’s honking a horn. Are they crazy?

It sounds like a demolition derby out there!

The fingers are gone. The howling is different now, farther away. Nothing is slamming against the door. Tires screaming like in a movie, out in the streets, more screaming, from farther away, someone is honking their horn so loud.

The noise fades.

Dad motions me to stay in place. He goes forward slowly. Looks through the cracks in broken windows. He waves me forward and whispers. “Cover me.”

I can see the street from the door now, as dad goes out. He’s holding my baseball bat. There are bodies all over the street. Screamers that we shot. We did kill some of them. They’ll come back as shamblers if we let them. Dad stands over one, raises the bat.

The second time he hits, it’s a wet sound.

Then he goes to the next.

I look away. I remember to keep watching with my rifle. Anything to keep from looking at what he’s doing.

One of the bodies is moving. “Dad!” I remember to whisper. Then I point. He nods. He even smiles. He stands over the body. It’s a kid, my age. Starting to move. Starting to moan.

The bat glistens in the moonlight as he slams it down on the kid’s skull.

A wet sound.

I hope he leaves that bat outside.

###

JOURNAL-The end of the world sucks.

I wish I had school tomorrow. I wish the dumbest, most boring TV show ever was on TV right now and I had to go to a boring day at school and eat whatever the cafeteria served and sit in my classroom. I wish Dad would tell me to take out the trash and clean my room.

I couldn’t stop asking myself what happened to that baby?

Dad finished busting heads out in the street and came back inside and washed himself off. He’s got a pile of bloody clothes in the basement now in a trash bag. He smelled like bleach. He re-stacked the barricade and then barricaded the stairs and we went to sleep on the second floor of the house.

He went to sleep. I couldn’t.

I wanted to. I was so bored. But the nightmares…

Where is Mom? She should be home by now! Unless she’s…

Where is she?

I wish she’d show up right now and yell at me for leaving dirty dishes on the floor of the living room or something.

Dad wouldn’t go and check on the house where that baby was crying. He looked at it for the longest time. He looked at it like it scared him. It was so quiet. Then he came back. “They must have been in that car. We bought them time to escape. Don’t worry about it.”

That’s what he said. I knew he really believed it. He doesn’t trust me. Not after I almost got us killed.

I had to find out.

I knew what I had to do.

I took the carbine and slipped out of the house. I went out the back door and crossed the street. It was getting light in the east. Dad calls it “false dawn”. I knew I had to hurry.

It stinks more every day. Toilets overflowing. Rotting bodies. Woodsmoke was coming from somewhere. I moved quietly. I was like a ninja. Watching. Listening. Dad says that at night, you see with your ears. I didn’t hear anything.

I went around the houses, between the two houses on the driveway. I was really silent. I kept thinking that this is where the monsters always jump the guys in the movies.

The door at the back of the house was hanging open. Something was shining on the ground.

They were bones. Stripped white. Something wet, fleshy.

I almost died when I saw a bloody head staring at me, mouth snapping. It was a woman. The screamers had torn up everything below her things.

Torn up everything below her breasts. They were still there. Below them were bone and flesh and blood. She stared at me. She tried to bite me. Her breasts were covered with blood.

I almost missed the other thing. It was pink and moving. A baby.

One of it’s arms were missing.

It was still moving.

I so wanted to scream. To run away. To bash my head until I couldn’t remember seeing those things. I still want to. I’m afraid to sleep now because I’ll see them in my dreams.

I didn’t scream. I was shaking so bad. I could see it in my head. They tried to run out the back. Screamers were waiting for them. They tore them apart. All except the baby. They must have run off after that car.

The baby was trying to crawl towards me. The mouth was open.

I slammed my rifle butt down on it’s skull. It stopped moving.

That was when I threw up.

If one had come up then, I’d have died. I was ralphing up everything, two days worth of food I think. I felt like I was turning inside out.

I still have a bitter acid taste in my throat. The last of the throwup. I rinsed my mouth but it’s still there. I wish I could rinse my head. Rinse the memory away.

The baby stopped moving. But I wasn’t done.          I went to the dead mom. She was looking at me. Her breasts were swaying as she tried to bite me. I couldn’t stop looking at them. Then I heard her teeth click as she tried to bite me.

I slammed the rifle butt down on her face. Again and again. Till she stopped moving.

I snuck back into the house and barricaded the back door again. Then I washed off the rifle butt with bleach. I rinsed my mouth, then my hands. I scrubbed them till they were raw.

Dad was still asleep when I got back into the room. He’s sleeping on the floor. I’m on the bed. He woke up when I got into bed. I’m hiding under the covers when he asks “Hey sport, you want breakfast?”

I kept seeing crushed skulls. Seeing the eyes looking off in different directions. Will I look that way when I’m dead? The thought of food almost makes me sick again. I told him I wasn’t hungry.

DAY THREE

I put down my notebook and steady myself.

Dad stacked all the food and stuff in boxes in the back of the van, on the sides and in the back. I’m on a box in the center. It’s like a fort. I’m looking back. Dad says I’m the tail gunner, that I have to shoot anything that comes at us from the sides or back. Both rifles are with me. He made me wear one of his old army camo shirts with the big pockets. All the loaded magazines for the carbine are in the left bottom pocket. When they’re empty, I’m supposed to put them in the right bottom pocket. He’s in the front. He has all the pistols so he can fire one handed.

I brace myself as we move. I have the rifle ready to shoot. Most of the side windows are already broken out. We taped plastic over them to keep rain out but Dad said I should shoot right through them. Through the back window too if I have to.

Dad is cursing a lot. We slow down. I smell wood smoke. It’s like a campfire.

I turn to look.

Houses are burning. Lots of houses. They’re so close together, old houses made out of old wood. No fire department. “Dad, did the zombies set them on fire?”

“No.” He’s annoyed. Not really mad. “Some damned idiot had a cookfire inside their house and set the place on fire. They built these houses so close together, the fire will jump from house to house. These old houses will burn like matchwood. We’ll have to go around. Okay, look back son. Watch your areas.”

I turn to look. “What a bunch of damned idiots.”

“Son, I don’t like you to…Never mind.”

He doesn’t want me to say damned idiots? He said it. Why can’t I? It’s so unfair.

We jerk to a stop going down a street. “Oh shit.”

I’ll bet he’d get mad if I said that too.

We’re stuck in an alley. We start to back up.

I see three shamblers come out from behind a dumpster.

“Dad! Shamblers, at, uh, six o’clock!”

I remembered! I remembered what he told me. I aim, even as we roll backwards. “Shoot ‘em son! Shoot now!”

I aim. I shoot. The first one goes down. Then the second one. That takes two bullets. We hit the third one! Yeah! He goes flying, just like in the movies! The van jumps and bounces as we roll over another! I keep shooting, more of them are coming at us. My shots are going wild as the van whips around. It sounds like the tires are slipping on something. I hear tires scream, like in the movies.

WHAM!

Why aren’t we moving? I keep shooting. My magazine is empty. The engine is making a funny sound. The van is shaking. I shove the empty magazine in the right pocket. Reload and keep shooting. We’re in the middle of the street. Zombies are coming out of everywhere. Dad’s saying terrible words now, cursing like the guys in the movies he doesn’t know I watch. We rock one last time, then he yells and shuts off the engine. He’s shooting now but they’re coming in from all sides. I keep shooting.

It suddenly reminds me of the last parts of the video games where they just come in from everywhere and there are too many to shoot.

I load a third magazine. They’re almost close enough to touch the van. I unstrap and crouch behind my walls of canned beans and beef stew and jars of peanut butter. I keep shooting. One bullet to each now.

Someone else is shooting. They’re shooting fast. Not like a machine gun but close. A different kind of rifle sound too. More zombies are falling.

A ladies’ voice. “Get out of the van! Come this way. I’ll cover you!”

“Get out Andrew. You heard the lady!”

“But dad, our food, our stuff-”

I find out a second reason why he made me wear his old army shirt. He grabs me by the collar and throws me out over the hood of the van like I’m a toy. This shirt is like a harness for me. He holds me by my neck so I drop feet first, then smacks the back of my head. “Run!”

I run. I can hear him behind me, glass crunching under my feet. I see the lady.

She’s standing in the middle of the street. She’s old. Not old like grandma, but old like mom and dad old. She’s dressed funny too, like she was going to church or something. Fancy clothes. Except for the rifle. It’s an M16. I recognize it from Dad’s army shows. She’s holding it up on her shoulder, firing.

Dad and I stand beside her. We’re a little circle now, all firing outwards. It sounds like a war movie. In a few minutes, we’ve shot every zombie in sight. We have the street to ourselves.

She’s reloading her rifle. She smiles at me. She has a nice smile, but there’s something wrong with it. There’s something wrong with all of us right now though, so it doesn’t bother me. “Hello young man. You and your father can go to my shop over there.”

She points to a little shop building. A sandwich shop. “The door is unlocked. There’s food and supplies inside.”

“Let’s go, son.” Dad slaps me on the shoulder. My neck is sore. We get to the door of the sandwich shop. I’m about to jump out of my skin. Dad stops me and looks back. The lady is still standing in the street. “Ma’am! You don’t need to stay out there to cover us. I’ll cover you now.”

“Just go on in. There’s fuel in the generator for a week. I have….something to do.”

Why is she just standing there? She looks like she’s waiting for the zombies to come.

“Ma’am! The door’s locked!” Dad rattles the door. Funny, I thought he opened it for a second. “I need you to unlock it!”

“I unlocked it. Go on in!”

“Sorry Ma’am, it must have re-latched! Do you have a key?”

I don’t know why I whisper when I say “Dad, just kick the door in!”

“Shhh!”

She slings her rifle like a soldier and walks towards us, digging around in her purse. It’s fancy, with pearls and stuff. Dad steps aside. She tries to unlock the door and it just opens as she grabs the knob. She frowns at dad.

He shrugs. He’s such a doof sometimes. “Sorry Ma’am, it much have been stuck. We better get inside. If some screamers come, they’ll see us in here and that’s all she wrote.”

Just then I hear a howl, like the screamers make. It can’t be more than a block away.

She looks at Dad like the screamer is his fault. Then we all go inside the shop and lock the door.

It’s nice. Not like a McDonalds, but nice with lots of old time stuff and little tables. Mom would love this place. Girly stuff like teapots and lacey napkins all over the place.

The biggest table has a body on it, covered by tablecloths.

Dad sees it and has both pistols aimed at it as soon as he sees it. The woman speaks. “Please stop pointing your guns at my husband. I already had to…had to…”

She looks like she’s about to cry. Dad puts away his pistols, blushing. “I’m sorry. It’s just been, you know, crazy. I’m sorry about your husband.”

“We thought we were pretty well set up for this.” She touches where the face is. Specks of blood are leaking through the tablecloth. “We had the emergency generator. My guns, the food, everything. Even each other. But we heard a noise last night and Truman had to go investigate. He had his pistol. But he forgot to take it off safe. A typical stupid boot mistake. One of them had broken in. By the time we killed the thing, it had bitten him twice. He fought the infection for hours. He was always so stubborn. When he turned this morning, I killed him.”

I give her a hug. She’s tall, almost as tall as dad. She wears a lot of perfume. She hugs me back. “Thank you sweety.”

“I’m Andrew. Andrew Simmons.”

She steps back and shakes my hand. “Pleased to meet you Andrew. I’m Jacqueline Bell.”

It’s weird. It’s like we’re all pretending this is some formal meeting or something. Dad shakes her hand and introduces himself. “You saved our lives. Thank you. That was some nice shooting out there.”

She smiles. Her voice sounds a little different. “It’s been a while. I’m glad I haven’t lost my touch. I was Airborne Rangers for eight years. Jumped into Grenada and Panama.”

“Wow. I didn’t know they let women in the Rangers back then.”

She laughs at that. I wonder what’s so funny. But she looks sad suddenly. “I left to marry Truman. He was the only man I ever knew who accepted who I was. And now he’s gone.”

She smiles, but it’s a sad smile. Then she gets all brisk and professional, like a teacher on the first day of school. She starts shoving bullets into the magazines she emptied helping us. “I’m going to go out and put a few marks in the scoreboard in his name. See how many of those things I can get. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. There’s plenty of food. We fixed the broken window where that shambler came through. There won’t be any more.”

“Wait!” Dad’s voice suddenly sounds calm. Too calm. Calm voices sound wrong now. “Ma’am, we’re grateful for the help. But I need to get my son to his grandmother’s house. It’s forted up and hopefully his mother is there by now. My van has a broken axle, we have to cross half the city and I would really appreciate your help getting my son to his grandmothers. I can’t make you help us. We have no claim on you. But we could really use your help.”

She looks at me. There’s an odd expression on her face. She’s quiet for a couple of minutes. When she talks, her voice is very quiet. “We always hoped we’d be able to adopt, but there were always so many forms and so many people we had to talk to…How old are you, Andrew?”

“I’ll be 13 in march.”

She sighs. “I’ll help you. But when we get him to his grandmother’s, I’m done.”

“Deal. You wouldn’t happen to know where we could boost some transport, would you? It’s a long walk.”

“Truman worked at a pharmacy about two blocks away. He had the keys and they had a delivery van.”

JOURNAL

Getting to the pharmacy seemed to take forever. We couldn’t start until Jacqueline had picked out new shoes. She said we might have to run and have you ever tried to run in heels? Whatever that meant. But she’d been wearing high heels when we first met her and she was shooting zombies. Girls are strange.

We shot a few zombies getting over there but not many. The pharmacy wasn’t a drug store. I’d thought about drug stores I knew with comics and game cards in them. I figured if we could take their van, I could get some serious “World of Warfare” cards. You know, it wouldn’t be like stealing if this is the end of the world. This drug store, though, had small windows and no comics or magazines. No candy section either.

Dad went to check out the van. Jacqueline said we should stock up on medicine and she began going through the bins in the pharmacy. She seemed to know them really well. I guess because her husband had worked there. She was checking a book when Dad came back. She’d given me a couple of cloth grocery bags, the type they say are green, full of bottles of pills. I could tell right away he wasn’t happy.

“An addict?” He said it that way, quietly. Like he didn’t believe. Then he asked Jacqueline why she was grabbing those drugs. He spoke real quiet at first.

She kept sorting. She said she we would need antibiotics, that the zombie plague wasn’t the only problem we’d face. Dad didn’t believe her at first.

DAY THREE-AFTERNOON

“The antibiotics are in these bins over here. What are you going through those bins for?”

“It’s personal.”

Dad stepped forward and grabbed her wrists. I look away. Where was a zombie attack when you really need one?

“Jackie, are you on drugs? I’ve seen what they do to people in the field. You don’t need this” He looks at one of the bottles. “Premarin? Estradiol? Estrogen? What the hell?”

Dad sends me to check out the van and put the bags of pills in it. He says to wait for them. I ran to the van. It’s just too much. I know there’s going to be a big fight. Except both of them are real quiet when they finally come in. Dad’s face looks really funny, like he was bonked between the eyes with a rubber mallet or something. Jacqueline is almost smiling. She looks kind of relieved. Both of them are carrying bags with big bottles of pills in them.

Jacqueline yells “I call Shotgun” even though she’sa holding a rifle.

Dad has me open the back door of the van and cover him while he opens the garage door to let the van out. Then he jumps in the van. Just as a screamer comes around the corner.

I shoot it three times with the carbine. It goes down. I jump in the van. Dad guns the engine. I feel the bumps as we drive over it.

I can’t see much in the back of the van. There’s a bunch of medical stuff there too, but no seats. I have to brace myself as dad drives. I still bang my head when dad stops suddenly. He and Jacqueline jump out as he calls “Hop out Andrew! Be ready to shoot!”

I was just getting used to the darkness in the van. The daylight is blinding. It takes me a minute to see we are parked by our broken minivan. Dad threw open both the side doors and started chucking the boxes of supplies out of our van and into this van. “Want me to help, Dad?”

“Cover your flank, Andrew.” Jaqueline spoke. “Don’t look back. Think of us as in the middle of a circle. You watch your half of the circle, I’ll watch mine and your dad can concentrate on getting those supplies.”

GreatI. Now she was going into War Machine mode too. Still, it made sense. I scanned with my rifle, like some kind of security bot from Star Wars, even imagining myself as a robot- until I saw a shambler come around the corner and look at me. It was a boy, younger than me. The front of his shirt was covered with blood. A little girl came after him. Her clothes were bloody too. They began walking towards me. They didn’t say anything. Their faces had no expression. So slowly. I almost wished they were running.

“Two of them over here! Do I shoot?”

Dad is sweating a lot. He’s kind of fat now. Not skinny like he was when he came back from the Air Force. I never thought about that before. He was just Dad. He drops another crate of food in our new van. “Take ‘em Andy.”

Okay I tell myself, aim. He’s not watching. He knows you can do this. He’s doing his job and trusting me to do mine. This must be like it was to be one of his buddies in Afghanistan. Aim. Squeeze.

Down it goes. It’s always a surprise when the gun actually kicks. It takes two shots to drop the little girl. I have to wipe the tears from my eyes after the first time I shoot her. Why am I crying? It’s just a zombie. In a torn pink nightie.

Jacqueline is firing. One shot, then two. No hurry. She’s so cool, like she was a soldier herself. “Ted, we’re drawing attention. Try to hurry, okay?”

A door slams. “Got it. Everybody in. Andy, you left behind the Ruger. Don’t do that again, okay?”

“Okay Dad.” He tosses me the Ruger. I sling it. The magazines for it are in my upper pockets. I’d forgotten about them.

I jump back into the van. There aren’t any windows except in the back doors. Huddled in the darkness, I’m glad there are no windows. Nothing I can see here.

It’s funny though. As the doors shut and we begin to move, I actually get a good feeling. It’s like we’re on a team or something, the three of us. If only Mom was here. Then it would be complete.

Jacqueline looks back. It’s hard to make out her face from the darkness, the way the sun outlines her. “Good work back there, Andrew. You are one strak little man.”

I don’t know what “strak” means, but the way she says it, it sounds good.

I’m so tired. I almost panic when we hit someone with the van again. Something goes thump against the back of the van when we stop. “Andy, shoot through the back of the van. Now!”

“How many shots?”

“Give it a full clip! Shoot!”

I shoot at where the thump sound came from. The bullets go right through the metal of the van. They just leave dinky little holes. All the holes are dark. Then suddenly, light is coming through them. We’re moving faster.

We stop a couple more times. Just for a minute or two while Dad and Jacqueline shoot stuff. I get ready but they tell me to stay put. When I try looking out the bullet holes I made, I can’t see anything. That’s starting to bug me.

JOURNAL

The last time we stopped, Dad and Jacquelinedidn’t do anything. Dad shut off the engine. We all just sat there for a second. I was getting this horrible feeling that something was wrong when Dad turned to face me. When he said “We’re here. We can get out.” I ran out of the van really fast. We were back at Grandmas.

It seems so quiet now. A big highway runs by a block away and grandma always complained about the noise. I guess it wasn’t there when Grandpa built the house. But there’s no highway noise now. It suddenly seems so quiet, under the old shady trees. The house always seemed old and clunky before, so big. Built out of those funny old bricks. Dad told me once that Grandpa built it himself. The tall chain link fence around the yard alway seemed ugly before. Now it seems so nice, so safe. It’s heaven.

My cousins came out with Uncle Dale. I thought they’d be happier to see us but they were all sad. Uncle Dale and Dad hugged each other after a moment. Uncle Dale isn’t wearing his civil war uniform any more. He’s carrying one of the old rifles though, with a bayonet fixed on it. It doesn’t look silly anymore. My cousins didn’t say anything as we all grabbed the boxes and took them inside. Once we were inside, Cassandra whispered, like it was some secret, that Grandma died while we were gone. It was a stroke, not a zombie bite. Cass said Dad and Uncle Dale are trying to decide how to get rid of the body.

Cass asks me who the old lady is. I told her she wasn’t an old lady, that she’d saved our lives and she has a real army rifle. Cass and I got into an argument then because I was mad she called Jacqueline an old lady and she yelled that at least we’d been outside and not stuck in this house surrounded by zombies. Then she asked me where Mom was and was Jacqueline going to take her place. I almost hit her then and we got into a real bad fight. Dad and Uncle Dale grabbed us both. They were really mad at us.

They’ve taken out all the old board games. Dad was teaching me a game called Risk back at the house. I guess we’ll learn all these, since the power is gone. It’s like we’ve gone to a whole new world.

DAY 3- EVENING

“Andrew, you and your Dad can go in and pay your respects to mom. Your grandmother, I mean.”

We go into Grandma’s room. There are pictures of her and Grandpa on the walls. Some when they were younger. Grandma is so still.

Dad looks a lot like Grandpa used to.

I feel sudden fear. What if her eyes open up. What if she opens her mouth? What if she starts moving?

Someone is whimpering.

It’s me.

Dad walks right up to her. Dad! She’s dead! What if she-

“Come here, son.”

He touches her cheek. Then I see a piece of metal in her ear, with some blood around it. It’s the head of a nail. A really big, long nail. But to be there, they’d have had to pounded it into her….

“I’m sorry son.” Dad puts Grandma’s hair back in place, covering it. “It was the only way they could keep her body from becoming one of them.”

Then I can touch her. She’s cold. I can’t cry. “It’s not her, is it dad? It’s just the shell. Like when Grandpa died. Just the empty shell left behind.”

“That’s right.”

I’m glad she’s not here anymore. She was so afraid the last time I saw her, when we dropped off the supplies.

We leave the room.

Jacqueline has given her M16 to Cassandra. She hands her the bag of magazines too. She still has a pistol, an old time army pistol, but won’t she need the rifle still?

She walks into the back yard. I remember there’s a gate in the fence there. Looking through the fence, I can see a couple of dead bodies lying outside.

Dad tells me to go inside. He runs to catch up with her.They’re both silent until I leave. Once I’m in the house, I run to the bathroom. I can hear them through the window from there.

“You promised. You seemed to understand back in the store. Don’t get in my way.”

“Yes Jacqueline, I promised. But we still need you. We need everyone who can help now.”

Her voice sounds funny. Like she’s trying not to cry. HIt sounds a little deeper too. “You have Andrew. From what you told me of your wife, you probably still have your wife too. She’s a lucky woman to have you. I didn’t fit in the world very well before this all happened. I fit in even less now. Truman was all I had. I want to be with him.”

“I don’t think you want to die. Someone who expected to die wouldn’t have grabbed all those meds back at the pharmacy.”

“Reflex. I was running on reflex.”

“I don’t think you want to die, Jacqueline. I think you’re still looking for a reason to live.”

“Go back to your son, Ted. He needs you. Your wife will need you too. I’m done. Please, have enough respect for me to let me decide.”

I can’t see, but I can hear Dad leave. No! Dad, stop her! I run out the back door of the house. She’s standing at the gate, getting ready to open it. She’s checking her pistol.

I run to her and hug her. Her perfume is really strong now. She was looking kind of ragged when we came in but now I can see she’s put on new makeup. “Don’t go Jacqueline!”

She hugs me back. She even laughs. “Don’t go, Shane!”

“Huh?” I step back. I’ve heard this once before, on the Venture Brothers, but it didn’t make sense. “Who’s Shane?”

“It’s a great movie. Before your time, Andrew. Did your dad send you out?”

“No, I swear. He’ll probably beat my butt for doing this. But I don’t want you to go.”

“You have your dad and your mom, Andrew. You don’t need me.”

I look out at the nearby houses. Yards are bigger here. A couple of houses have burned down. I don’t see any zombies nearby but I can hear gunshots in the distance.

I hear a screamer in the distance.

It’s like this everywhere now.

“Jacqueline, you and dad protected me to get me over here, right? You kept me in the van. Dad kept me in the back, even when I was doing dumb stuff.”

“Yes. That’s what a dad does. Andrew, please, start calling me Mrs. Bell.”

“Okay, Mrs Bell. But you and dad and my mom, you’re all good with guns. What about parents who aren’t? Or who don’t have guns? They’ll still protect their kids, even if it means they die. Right? Parents do that too.”

“Any parents who are worth a damn.”

“Mrs. Bell, there are going to be a lot of kids whose parents weren’t like my mom and dad. A lot of kids who don’t have parents anymore. They’ll need someone to take care of them. Didn’t you say you and your husband wanted to adopt but you couldn’t? Those people who kept you from adopting, they aren’t around anymore. But the kids will be.”

Jacqueline- Mrs Bell- looked at me. She gave a sad smile. “You’re a very smart little boy, aren’t you Andrew?”

“I’m not a little boy. I’m 12.”

She smiles. Really smiles this time. “Of course.”

People are talking at the front of the house. Up by the gate. Loud voices. Something’s going on. I take my carbine off safety and run towards it. Dad’s up there. My cousins. I have to…

I turn and look back. Jacqueline has put her pistol away. She’s sitting down on a chair inside the gate. She shakes her head. “Go up there and see Andrew. But I don’t think you’ll need your gun. Take your time. I’ll be here when you get back.”

I run. Something’s going on. I round the corner of the house. The first thing I see is a dark little girl. She looks at me but doesn’t say anything. I don’t know her. Then I see my Dad and Uncle Dale and Cassandra and..

I’m running forward.

I throw my arms around Her.

Now I’m crying. Like a dumb little kid. Her arms around me, holding me. So safe. So warm.

Mom.

###

“Look, they have a real elephant!”

“Daddy, can I play the balloon game? Please?”

“Kettle corn. I love kettle corn.”

Excitement filled the air, as families lined up for The Blaster, pulled puffy wads of cotton candy from communal bags, or sprayed the mouths of metallic clowns with water from squirt guns, trying to fill their balloons to bursting before anyone else.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry, for a chance to Whack-A-Zombie,” the carnie huckster called to the passersby. “Line up, for the chance to whack one of these fearsome, hungry, undead creatures.  Will your shot be the killing blow?”

Twenty-five bucks for three whacks. That’s how it started — a carnival game. Who wouldn’t pay for three chances to hit a real live, or rather, undead zombie? It was an instant hit for the Danling Traveling Carnival. From Tallahassee Florida to Portland Maine, paying customers, willing to shell out hard-earned money for a chance to whack a zombie, lined up in droves.

***

“Can I whack the zombie? Johnny’s parents let him,” Greg asked, practically jumping up and down like a first grader. Red, and yellow lights reflected off of his head making a kaleidoscope of his blond hair.

“Sure Son,” Greg’s Dad responded, holding a half-empty plastic cup of beer.

“No way, you are only fourteen. Besides, that game is disgusting,” his Mom said.

“But Dad said I could…”

“Oh let him have fun for a change. You’re always nagging the boy.”

“No, I won’t have it! My son is not going to whack a zombie. For once, I wish you would support me.”

And that was that. With no further discussion necessary, Greg’s Dad finished his beer and Greg moped off to find his friends.

***

“No you may not whack the zombie,” Dillon’s Mom said, tussling his red hair. When Dillon’s Mom said no, there was no point in asking a second time.

“What can I do then?”

“I tell you what, I’ll give you twenty dollars and you can play the shooting game. Use the rest for rides.”

“Really? Thanks Mom!”

Dillon ran off into the lights and commotion. Finding Greg and some other friends, he headed straight to the shooting game.

Thirteen minutes and fifteen dollars later, they walked away with square paper targets in lieu of prizes. Each target had the remnants of a red star with some part of it shot out.

“Look, that’s Johnny,” one of the boys said, pointing to the Whack-A-Zombie line.

Johnny stood in line, holding Julie’s hands.

“He gets to do everything. My mom won’t let me do it,” Dillon said.

“Mine either,” Greg, the shortest of the group, added.

“Hey twerps! Guess mommy won’t let you play the big boy games, huh?” Johnny called out. Seeing Greg look his way, he kissed Julie on the lips.

Dillon grabbed Greg’s shoulder and said, “She’d go out with you if you talked to her face instead of always looking down.”

“Yeah, stop checking out her butt you perv,” one of the boys added and they all laughed.

“Let’s go on the Roundup.”

“Yeah, let’s go!”

***

“Dillon? Are you asleep yet?”

“Not anymore.”

“I’m glad your parents let me stay over tonight. Mine are fighting again.” Greg pulled off a thick, green comforter and sat up. “It’s all they ever do now, since Dad lost his job.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure they’ll be all right,” Dillon said, rolling over to face the other boy. His room had two twin beds, side by side, under the window. Light from the hallway spilled in, revealing various trophies, toys, and clothing in a faint, colorless haze.

“I really wanted to whack one of those zombies.”

“Yeah, me too, but at least we got to play the gun game. That was the first time my parents let me.”

“I know, but, it’s just… The carnival is only here once a year. Maybe they won’t have zombies next year. My dad says they’ll be outlawed soon.”

“Hey, maybe we should sneak into the carnival tonight and try it,” Dillon said, chuckling.

“Maybe we should.”

“Naw, I wasn’t serious.”

“I am. We may never get a chance after tonight.”

“I know, but, it’s all the way across town,” Dillon said, pulling the covers to his chin. “Plus, I’m tired.”

Greg stood up and pulled hard on Dillon’s blanket, revealing a skinny, white chest and gray boxers. “Get up, we should do this. It’ll be fun.”

“It would be fun… Okay, let’s do it!”

The boys stuffed pillows under their blankets, forming roughly human shapes. As a finishing touch, Dillon added a copper-colored stuffed owl to his doppelganger, leaving its head just above the blanket.

With the room safe from prying parents, the boys climbed out the window, onto the porch roof, and jumped down into the front yard. Only Rufus, the neighbor’s bloodhound, noticed them, and he was too lazy to bark.

The boys rode their bikes to the park and ditched them in a clump of trees just outside the basketball court.

When open, the carnival lit up the night with games and rides.  Laughter carried through the air. But now, with all the lights out, it looked broken and destitute. It was as if Greg’s home life had settled over the festive grounds and destroyed any lingering joy.

Dillon surveyed the scene, passing his eyes back and forth several times, and walked along the outskirts of the carnival toward the zombie cage. Snoring came from some of the campers, as did the sounds of drinking and late night cavorting.

“Do you hear that?” Greg asked. “I think they’re doin’ it in there.”

Both boys stopped to listen. Few things took precedence over zombie bashing, and catching people “doin’ it” was most definitely one of them.

“Grab that crate.”

Dillon picked up a rough wooden crate and set it down beneath the window of the silver Airstream camper. Climbing up, he peaked in to see a fat middle-aged man on top of a muscular woman.  Her huge biceps and gigantic legs wrapped around him. They moved and grunted like a couple of animals and sweat glistened off the man’s hairy back.

Whispering to his friend, “gross,” Dillon climbed down.

“Let me see,” Greg said, climbing on the crate. “That is gross. I think I’d rather see the zombies doin’ it.”

“Maybe they are; let’s go see.”

The boys walked away from the terrible window and moved from shadow to shadow toward the zombie cage.

“What if we get caught,” Dillon asked.

“Are you kidding? They’re all sleeping or drunk. We can get in, take a few whacks, then run to our bikes. No one will catch us.”

“Okay, but I’m not so sure about this.”

“Follow me. There’s the bat from the whack-a-zombie booth.”

The boys jogged toward the bat, stopping at each obstacle along the way to hide. They could have been playing hide and seek or executing a black-ops covert operation.

With bat in hand, they headed to the zombie cage. It held four smaller cages, each covered with a tarp.

Gingerly stepping toward the cage, Greg said, “I’ve never seen one of them before. Have you?” His normally dark face shone white in the moonlight.

“No, only fakes on Youtube.”

“The main cage is padlocked, but I think we can break the latch.”

Greg used the handle of the bat to pry a metal tab loose, allowing him to force the latch open enough for them to climb through.

Groaning, like a gagged man, sounded from the zombies as they heard the small commotion. A hand, gray and rotting with loose flesh, reached through the tarp of the nearest cage.

Both boys froze in place, holding their breaths, until the moaning quieted down.

“Do you think anyone heard?” Dillon asked.

“If they did, we’d have been caught by now.” Greg responded like he was talking to a small child. “Help me pull the tarp off.”

The boys pulled the tarp, inch by inch, revealing the zombie. It wore an orange, blood-splattered jumpsuit and its head was bashed and beaten. Some places bulged while others had small craters where a particularly solid hit from a bat had landed. Only three fingers remained on its right hand

The zombie reached toward the boys, groaning louder than before. They jumped back, slamming into the outer cage, just out of reach of the groping arm.

“What do we do now?” Dillon asked, barely above a whisper.

“We hit it,” Greg said, raising the bat.

The first strike ripped cloth, flesh, and rotting muscle from its arm, but the zombie didn’t seem to notice. It just kept reaching and groaning.

Greg swung again, this time hitting the hand, drawing blood, but otherwise doing little damage.

“Let me try,” Dillon said, taking the bat from his friend.

All the force he could muster merely thudded against the putrid upper arm.

“This sucks, we can’t get a good shot at it this way,” Greg said. “We have to let it out, or it’s not going to be any fun.”

“Are you crazy? We can’t let it out.”

“Hey, what’s going on out there?” A voice called from one of the trailers.

“Oh crap, run!” Greg said in a harsh whisper.

Dillon dropped the bat and turned toward the gate before hearing Greg scream. The zombie had caught him by the hair and was pressing its face into the opening between two bars. It’s mouth chomped in mid-air as if it were already feasting.

Picking the bat up, Dillon swung with all his might. The impact made a sickening crack against the zombie’s arm, but it did not let go.

“Get it off me!” Greg said, his voice a childish whimper.

Two more swings broke the zombie’s arm, and with a tearing sound, the third separated its hand. Finally free, Greg followed his friend through the broken gate of the main cage.

“You kids wait right there!” The voice was not far behind, but the boys didn’t stop.

“If I catch you here again, I’m going to beat the shit out of you! I never forget a face! You hear me?”

Reaching their bikes, the boys hopped on and pedaled as fast as their legs would go. They rode a mile before either boy spoke.

“There’s something in my hair,” Greg said, voice shaking.

“What is that?” Dillon asked between ragged breaths. “Pull under the light.”

Still grasping Greg’s hair, a rotting hand leaked blood and pus onto the back of his shirt.

“Get it off!” Greg gagged.

Dillon picked up a stick and gingerly pushed on the hand.  It clenched Greg’s hair, pulling a small clump with it as it fell to the ground.

“Man, let’s get out of here,” Dillon said.

***

Exactly fifty-two weeks passed since that night. Dillon and Greg laughed about it often. At a mature fifteen years of age, they were too sophisticated to be afraid anymore.

The carnival was back and Whack-A-Zombie no longer existed. In its place was The Apocalypse. No more smacking immobile zombies with a cheap bat. Now, you wore a protective suit and fought the zombie horde. For fourty-five bucks, you fought six zombies in a fenced in corral. Knocking an arm off won you a small zombie stuffed animal. Killing one got you the grand prize, a chance to run the zombie gauntlet, and of course, chickening out after you already paid got you humiliated in front of the crowd.

“Remember last year?” Greg asked. He had grown three inches, and was no longer the shortest in his group.

“That was the best. You almost cried when that hand stuck on you.”

“My parents still won’t let me do the zombie game.”

“Mine either,” Dillon said, shaking his head.

“Hey Greg,” Julie called out from the ticket line.

“Oh, hi Julie,” Greg responded, blushing.

John, now the all around king crap at school, put his arm around her slender waist, and making sure everyone could hear, asked, “Why are you talking to these losers?  Come on, I’m doing the zombie game.”

“Let’s go watch, maybe he’ll get eaten,” Dillon said.

***

The line at the Apocalypse stretched beyond the fried dough cart and around the ticket booth. There must have been a hundred people waiting for a chance to bash skulls.  An even larger group crowded the game’s fence, cheering on the contestants.  Shouts of yeah, get em, this is gross, and did you see that head fly, mixed with the carnie music in a macabre song.

“This is so cool,” Dillon said, pressed up against the protective barrier around the game. “I think John’s next.”

John stood first in line. He wore a black protective suit that looked like something a high tech cop would wear in a futuristic movie. It had armor around the chest and a helmet that connected the suit at the neck. Not an inch of skin was exposed. He watched the game while waiting his turn.

The contestant swung his bat in spastic arcs from every possible angle. He scored hits on the zombies, but no kills, and no heavy damage shots. No prize for him.

The announcer called out to the crowd, “Well ladies and gentlemen, next up we have John.”

“All right, pick up your bat.”

John picked up the bat and turned to face the zombies.  He jumped back a bit when one of them reached through the gate.

“John, when you’re ready, hit the lever to let the fearsome zombies in.”

John didn’t move. The announcer gave him a little push.

“Any time you’re ready kid.”

He didn’t move, didn’t move his legs, didn’t move his bat; he just stood there. The crowd called for him to go in, but he didn’t.

Greg looked at Dillon with a grin, “Big bad John’s too scared to go in. What a wuss.”

“What a baby,” Greg called out. “You’re all talk man.”

John’s head slumped down as his shoulders jerked up in short spastic movements.

His crying only emboldened Greg. “Is the baby crying? Do you need your mommy?”

The crowd responded to the taunt with jeering laughter.

“Screw you Greg! If you’re so tough, you come in here.”

“I will. At least I won’t chicken out like you.”

At that, the crowd cheered, raising their arms, spilling beer, soda and popcorn.

The announcer beamed at the commotion and picked up his microphone. “Well folks, it looks like John is going home but now we have….”

Looking at Greg he covered the microphone and asked, “what’s your name kid?”

“It’s Greg.”

“Greg… I remember you. You played last year.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh, I never forget a face. You whacked a zombie last year.”

Uncovering his microphone, the announcer called to the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, we now have Greg. Will he survive the Apocalypse?”

Loud cheering, hooting, and cat calls covered Greg in ego raising, prudence devouring confidence. He raised his hands, hopped up and down, and the crowd went wild.

Greg suited up, the announcer personally buckling his helmet. As he picked up the bat, Greg noticed for the first time how light it was. It must have been hollowed out.

“Bring on the zombies!” the announcer called, and Greg pulled the lever, opening six cages.

The first zombie, a fleshy man in construction worker’s clothing, ambled toward Greg. The boy stepped up and swung in a sideways ark. The bat landed with a wet thud against the zombie’s head, knocking it to the ground. Two more zombies stumbled from their cages, and for the first time, Greg noticed they were not chained.

“What the…” he said as one of them fell into him. Jumping back, he swung upwards, pushing its hands away. Three more zombies joined the horde, none with chains.

Undeterred, Greg swung like Babe Ruth. The bat in his hands shattered bone, ripped cartilage and tore muscle. One more zombie fell before a gray arm, oozing blood and slime, gripped his shoulder. Greg tried to jump back but hit the fence.

“Why aren’t they chained?”

“They’re supposed to be pulled back!”

“Someone help him!”

He heard shrieking in the crowd, but no one tried to help. Another arm grabbed his waist, and as Greg screamed, mouths bit at the Kevlar fabric covering his body.

“Help! Someone help!” he yelled.

A pile of rotting appendages groped and punched at him, as the zombies tried to pull his protective clothing off. And when the handlers came to pull them off, Greg’s helmet had come loose, exposing the flesh of his neck.

Screaming, Greg ripped the helmet off and threw it into the crowd, knocking the beer out of a large blond man’s hand. Cheers erupted and Greg jumped on the barrier like a professional wrestler, raising his arms in triumph. He had survived the Apocalypse.

***

Later that night, the boys met up with a group of teens behind Hal’s junkyard.

“I can’t believe they’re letting us in here,” Dillon said to Greg as they walked near a small fire the others were sitting around.  Several of them had 12 ounce Budweiser cans in their hands.

“Hey Greg,” one of the boys called out, throwing a can. “Have a beer.”

“Hi Greg,” Julie said. “That was cool what you did at the carnival.”

John was there, sitting under a tree, two empties by his feet.

Except for John, the whole crowd listened to Greg recount his version of The Apocalypse, until, one by one, they walked away.

Stumbling toward Dillon, Greg spoke with a slurred voice. “Hey Dillon, I’m gonna kiss Julie.”

“You and she both seem drunk enough.”

“Drunk? I didn’t even finish the first beer.” He pronounced first beer like firsbir.

“Sure, whatever,” Dillon said, noticing a scratch on the right side of Greg’s neck. It was swollen and pink in the middle, but surrounded by a large patch of gray.

“I’m gonna to kiss her right now.”

Greg stumbled away, almost falling into the fire, and grabbed Julie.  He looked at her head, attention drawn for the first time above her neck, rather than below.

Those monsters roaming and moaning around the base of the lighthouse, they seemed to have gotten to everyone. Billy, the redneck kid who used to punch Jimmy on the school bus. Jimmy was sure Billy was down there, wearing a Metallica t-shirt that was threadbare even before Billy became a decaying disease machine. Zombification hadn’t changed Billy much.

Mr. Olson, Jimmy’s math teacher, was down there, too, in all of his five foot two glory, his beige corduroy jacket with the leather elbow patches hanging loosely from his emaciated frame. Over the past five days, Jimmy had seen the clerk from the hardware store, the laundry attendant, the mayor, and several dozen of his classmates.

They found their way thirty yards down the rock-lined wharf, sometimes stumbling off into the bay. The lighthouse was smaller than most, about thirty-five feet tall. From Jimmy’s perch, he could see the faces clearly. They would lift their heads in his direction, not necessarily looking at him, but definitely sensing he was there, their cheeks twitching, lips curling. If they still had lips.

Jimmy had mixed feelings about the apocalypse, if that’s what this was. He was indifferent to most of the people in this town. Others had tortured him for the fifteen years of his life. School was hell. Most kids were mean, the teachers didn’t care, and the parents were worse. He didn’t necessarily mind seeing their whole world destroyed.

Plus he’d always loved zombie movies and books. He liked loud rock music and gory fun, a bit too loud and a bit too gory for his classmates, who thought he was just plain weird if not crazy. Now watching all of those zombie films may actually come in handy. He just hoped they got the “rules” right.

Then again, all of those assholes made things like video games and batteries and Sonic burgers. Those were going to be hard to replace. And he still needed to learn how to drive a car, but he supposed he wouldn’t be much of a danger on the road right now to anyone but himself. There was also the smell. It had gotten progressively worse over the past five days, mixing with the fish smell from the bay that surrounded him. He thought maybe there were zombie fish out there, but he couldn’t be sure.

The worst part was not knowing about Rebecca. They had both just started the ninth grade last month. They were in band together, had a few classes together. They had exchanged a few words in the hallway. She’d borrowed a pen from him once. Then he helped her when her locker was stuck. It wasn’t much, but he’d hoped she would remember the gestures and begin to recognize he was there in her world somewhere.

He had never gotten the nerve to put more than a sentence or two together in her presence. He was never quite smooth enough, never had enough friends to give him a push. So he sat in his room after school and wrote songs with her name in them. Cool, heavy stuff that required several stomp boxes to make his guitar howl, no mushy stuff. Jimmy hoped she was still alive and hiding somewhere.

If she were still in town, there wasn’t much hope. Jimmy could see a throng of walking corpses on the few streets between the lighthouse and the businesses on Beverly Avenue. He was lucky there was a metal rod on the inside of the door that made it impossible to open from the outside. Or at least that’s what he hoped. There were only a few stragglers in the immediate area, and none of them had made a serious attempt to get in yet.

Jimmy watched as dead Jenny Panero and dead Paul Rice found the metal door and started pounding and moaning. Jimmy ducked back inside and lay still and quiet. He could feel a slight vibration through the steel floor and hear their wailing, like they were begging for something their parents wouldn’t give them. To calm himself, Jimmy imagined the words they might be saying.

“But mom, I totally need the car to go to the mall,” said Jenny. “None of my earrings fit anymore. I need to make my dead rotting ears look all pretty. And I’m out of whore glitter.”

“Whore glitter,” Paul moaned.

Jimmy smiled a bit. He was much easier on Paul than the stuck up junior Jenny. He had kind of liked Paul. Paul had been a chess dork and a member of the Advanced Students Club. They never spoke much, but Paul had never looked down on Jimmy, either. Not the way that, say, Jenny looked down on Paul. He thought Paul may even have had a crush on Jenny when they were both still alive. Jimmy smiled at the thought that they could be together now.

For now, Jenny and Paul were alone at the door. No one else seemed to want to join them, and Jimmy was pretty sure the bar would hold. Sometimes it seemed the zombies were attracted to Jimmy’s guitar playing, even though it was an unamplified electric, an old Fender Jaguar knockoff Jimmy had bought with half a summer’s earnings two years before. Jimmy did have a tiny practice amp, the kind you would clip to your belt. But he never used it. He only had a couple of back-up 9 volt batteries, and he had no idea when he might run across any more.

Jimmy had read all of the zombie guides and seen all the movies. He’d always criticized the characters for not being prepared or making stupid mistakes. He never really thought he’d have to run from a crowd of brain-eaters, though, and when they came, he only had time to throw some food and a couple of things into his backpack and grab his guitar bag.

His stepfather Gil had ridiculed him for even having that much prepared. It was just Gil and Jimmy. His mother had died a few years before, and Jimmy never knew his biological father.

There had been reports on TV about riots breaking out on the outskirts of town, and that the violence was spreading. But in the footage, the rioters were moving way too slow. It was obvious to Jimmy. Zombies! How could the news teams be missing it?

The idea had excited him, and he had thrown a couple of bags of pretzels, four sandwiches, and a six pack of soda into his school backpack, along with his smart phone, iPod, and a notebook. It felt more like he were packing for a couple of days camping in the backyard than the apocalypse.

Some sort of political protest over taxes or something seemed a more realistic explanation for the news than zombies, but Jimmy couldn’t deny the images on TV. In any case, people were swarming in the street just one town over, and Jimmy thought he and his stepdad might have to leave in a hurry.

“Those fuckers get anywhere near my house, they’ll catch a beating,” Gil had said, nursing beer in his ratty old Barcalounger. “We’ll just lock the doors and get the shotgun from the basement.”

“But what if they’re zombies?” Jimmy had asked. He’d immediately wished he could have it back.

“Dumb ass,” Gil said. “Your mother turned you into a little pussy nerd. Get your head out of your ass.”

Jimmy had felt stupid and mad. He stopped getting ready to leave, but went around the house checking all of the locks anyway, Gil rolling his eyes at him whenever Jimmy passed by him watching the TV.

When he went to check the back door in the kitchen, he heard glass break at the front door, and then Gil, “Goddamit, you kids get the hell way from my house.”

Jimmy’s breath stopped and his eyes got wide. He forced himself to breathe as he walked to the doorway between the kitchen and living room. There was an arm sticking through one of the squares in the front door where the glass had been knocked out, reaching blindly for something. Gil grabbed it and was pulling at it with his foot on the door for leverage.

“Yeah!” Gil shouted. “Fucker! This what you want? You want to come in here? Huh? This what you want, big man!”

That’s when the arm came off, sending Gil sprawling back on his ass. The remaining nub kept wriggling. “What the fuck?” Gil said.

Jimmy laughed out loud. That made Gil even angrier. “What are you laughing at, pussy?” Gil said. “Get the shotgun from the basement.”

Jimmy did as he was told. He ran to the workbench where Gil kept the shotgun, grabbed it, and then grabbed a box of shells, accidentally grasping it by the bottom and spilling all but a couple of shells onto the floor. He ran upstairs with the gun and just a few shells in a box.

Gil grabbed the shotgun from Jimmy’s hand and scowled at the box for just a moment before returning his attention to the door.

“All of you jagoffs better move on right now,” Gil said. “I’ve got a shotgun, and I’ll use it.”

The nub kept wriggling. The pounding at the door continued, now accompanied by a low wail.

“Fine!” Gil yelled. “Fair warning. Eat it, ya shits.”

Gil fired at the door, managing to blast a hole where the lock and knob used to be. Panic hit Gil, and for a split second, there was silence. Then the door bust open and a pack of zombies fell into Gil, nearly burying him.

Jimmy ran to his room, grabbed his backpack and guitar case, and ran out of the back door, leaving Gil screaming for help.

Jimmy had run to his high school first, ducking between houses whenever he saw a horde gathering on a street or stumbling after another victim. There were a lot of people running, and Jimmy saw some of them run from one group of attackers straight into another, where they were converged upon. There were too many for Jimmy to see through the crowd, but he could tell what happened by the screams and gurgling sounds.

There had been a dance at George S. Kaufman Memorial High School that night, and the place was already overrun by the time Jimmy got there. Girls in summer dresses, boys in neatly pressed jeans and button-down shirts, a few in approximate punkwear. There were a few parents, too, who had come quickly in an apparent rescue attempt, missing a shoe or carrying some household weapon like a knife or a baseball bat.

Jimmy had heard the commotion from up the road, but hadn’t seen what was going on until he crested the hill where his school was and then taken cover crouching behind a small fence in a yard across the street. He laughed out loud to see a school bully eviscerated by what looked like a bunch of math geeks, all of whom had probably been wallflowers an hour ago. It was clear anyone still living wasn’t making an effective stand there.

Jimmy made a quick scan for Rebecca, trying to identify anyone with blonde hair that might fit her petite frame. He could not positively identify anyone and finally had to clear out.

The lighthouse had been the next safest place Jimmy could think of to go. It was stone with a metal door, and he could see anything coming from the length of a couple of football fields. If he could find a fishing pole, he thought he may even be able to fish over the railing.

He ran the couple of miles from the school to the wharf. It was deserted. The only boat left was the Brotherhood, a replica of an old trading ship with three tall masts and a bunch of complicated looking ropes and sails. People must have fled the zombies in others.

The lock on the lighthouse had been shot out, but the iron bar and slot was still there to secure the door. Anything useful that might have been inside had been looted. No food or supplies – not that there would have been much to begin with.

That had been five days ago. Jimmy had felt safe, but knew his time there was short. He finished a bag of pretzels, and forced the last few warm, syrupy sips of soda down his throat. That was the last of the food, and he had one more can of soda left, if he could stand to drink it. If he had been smarter, if he had really believed in zombies, he would have packed more food and brought water.

Jenny and Paul had stopped banging after a half an hour, apparently distracted by something else. Jimmy got up quietly and crept outside to the railing. Jenny and Paul were leaning over the water at the end of the wharf toward a seagull lazing in the sun several yards out. Their arms were flailing straight out in front of them. Jimmy looked around and found a fist-sized rock. He closed one eye, took aim, and fired a perfect shot at the back of Jenny’s head, knocking her face first into the drink.

Jenny stood up again, the water up to her chest, and started walking toward the gull. It flew off when Jenny got a few feet away, but Jenny kept walking until her head disappeared. Paul stopped reaching and stood on the bank, staring.

The splashing drew a clutch of zombies to the bank, where they piled up behind Paul. Jimmy recognized at least half of them as his former classmates. They pushed into a crowd until they finally started falling over, Paul first, then a lunch lady, the mayor, and then several members of the football team still in their uniforms and helmets. Jimmy felt sorry for them. Must have been hard to eat flesh through a facemask.

Wherever Jenny had gone to, most of her fellow flesh-eaters followed, marching off the bank and into the water. That left only a few of them between Jimmy and the landed end of the wharf. He might have a few minutes to escape. If only he could think of a place to escape to. He started to pull his things into his backpack and zip up his soft guitar case.

Halfway between the lighthouse and the shoreline was the Brotherhood. Worst-case scenario, he could run in there. The plank was out, but from the railing of the lighthouse, Jimmy couldn’t see anyone on the deck. There were a few dozen flesh eaters scattered around the wharf and beyond, those who hadn’t seemed to notice the little undead water ballet that had just unfolded. They just sort of shuffled in place, looking a bit dazed.

Jimmy could feel his calves twitch. He hadn’t been able to move much for five days, and his muscles seemed to be pushing him to lunge, to run anywhere, to stop waiting, even if it meant being out there with his undead former neighbors. He needed to move or he’d cramp.

A quick glance over the railing, no one at the door. First few were ten yards away, a few more after that, more on the main stretch of land at the end of the wharf. If he made it to the street, he could find a car. He had only just started driving, but he supposed it didn’t really matter if he hit anything, or anyone.

From there, what? He couldn’t guess, but it was better than starving in the lighthouse.

Jimmy slowly made his way down the spiral staircase, careful to avoid clanging too loudly on the metal steps, to where the door was bolted shut. He listened with his ear to the door, heard the gentle lapping of the water, a seagull complaining, a little bit of moaning. He carefully lifted the bolt, watching his hand to make sure it was doing exactly what he wanted it to do. He leaned the bolt against the wall. The door creaked open, painfully slow, Jimmy staying out of sight and behind the door until he could make his run for it.

Jimmy closed his eyes for a second, clenched every muscle in his body, and then sprang around the metal door and ran immediately into Ivan Turk, the football team’s star douchebag/linebacker. Ivan was knocked back a bit, but Jimmy fell back on his ass with a thud as a jolt shot through his tailbone and up his spine.

Ivan looked down at Jimmy, eyes widened by the heavy flesh pulling away from his eye sockets. Ivan leaned forward and fell on a stunned Jimmy, and they were nearly face to face, Ivan’s facemask getting in the way. Ivan stretched his jaw toward Jimmy, his forehead pressed against the front edge of his helmet.

Jimmy screamed and grabbed a fistful of jersey and pushed off Ivan’s floundering dead weight. Jimmy rolled over and jumped up, his feet tangling up in Ivan as he started toward town. He was bouncing off of bodies – where did they come from? The wharf had become crowded in a matter of minutes.  He made it almost as far as the Brotherhood when he saw he wasn’t going to make it much further. His first thought was to run to the ship.

That’s when he heard a woman’s scream. The space around him was filling rapidly with bodies, and as he turned to the Brotherhood, he saw the end of plank disappear onto the ship. A flash of a pink t-shirt and swinging long blond hair, and then it… she was gone onto the deck. Quickly. Quickly enough to still be alive.

Jimmy stopped. “Rebecca?” he yelled.

He got no answer, and became aware of cold hands on his neck. He broke free and ran back toward the lighthouse. Jimmy pushed past his fifth grade math teacher, a state trooper, two cheerleaders, and a couple he didn’t recognize in what had once been fancier clothes before the blood and rot soaked them. Must have been from the west side of town, Jimmy thought. He never got that way much.

The throng made a horrible noise, a throaty growl like they were all trying to form words and couldn’t quite get it together. A chorus of chain-smokers learning their first words in a new language.

He could feel hands everywhere, on his legs, slapping at his head, pushing him in the back. The crowd closed around him, insistent but weak. He easily broke the grasp of one just to feel another clamp onto him. He leaned forward, toppling everything in front of him as he ran, whirling his arms crazily to push and punch them away, swimming. He had to pull his guitar case away from them as he felt the lighthouse at his back before he could see it.

He hadn’t thought he’d be coming back, so he hadn’t closed the door. But it was that or shallow water teeming with floating and bobbing undead.

Jimmy pushed his way back into the lighthouse and grabbed the bolt, swinging it hard for any soft heads that might be lurking. He cleared the door and shut it, pushing his back into it and swinging the bolt back and forth in front of him to keep the three zombies left inside at bay.

To secure the door, he’d need to put the bolt back down into the slots on the floor and the door. But the three zombies hovered just out of range, as if contemplating the waving metal a couple of feet in front of them. Jimmy faintly heard himself yell, but it sounded to him like something drowning, muted by water. He told himself to stop, stop, stop, stop. Think. Stop. Figure this shit out.

Jimmy made one wide swing with the bolt then turned and slammed it into the door and the plate on the ground, barely getting it set before running back up the stairs to the top of the lighthouse. One of the corpses found its way and started to try to climb the stairs. Jimmy stepped onto the walk and stood to one side of the door, breathing hard.

It was a few minutes before the corpse made its way up the steps, tripping and crawling and rising again. Jimmy recognized the faded pants and snap-button cowboy shirt from his friend Larry’s wardrobe. Larry himself was harder to recognize. His face was a plate of dancing maggots, not much left to identify anyone.

Larry used to play bass with Jimmy sometimes. They had planned to start a band. They had talked about driving out to the next town to find clubs and try to pass for 18, as soon as the both had their learner’s permits. Jimmy’s heart sank to see him. If there were anyone he had hoped would have escaped, it was Larry. Outside of Rebecca, of course.

Now, Larry had to go.

Larry bumped into the glass wall inside the lighthouse for a minute before a lucky lunge led him out onto the walk. His mouth was still working, his teeth clicking together as he gnashed blindly. Jimmy ran around the walk and came up behind Larry on the other side, throwing his shoulder into Larry. He didn’t want to have to deal with the side with the mouth.

Jimmy managed to pick Larry up by his belt and clumsily lift and roll him over the railing. Larry landed on several zombies with a crack of weak bones, and his body was passed over their heads for several feet before falling in pieces into the horde.

“Sorry, Lar,” Jimmy said, looking over the railing. “Hope you enjoyed your last crowd dive.”

Larry’s departure left two downstairs, inside the lighthouse with Jimmy. They were trying to get up to the walk to feed. Jimmy could hear their skulls clank against the metal as they bumped into the handrail. Finding that first step would be a matter of trial and error. They weren’t quite as smart as Larry.

Jimmy’s mind flashed on a blur of pink, and he suddenly remembered Rebecca. He could see most of the deck of the Brotherhood from the railing of the lighthouse. His eyes moved quickly around the open space. Nothing. Could he have imagined it? The undead were falling over themselves, pushing toward the boat in the shallow water just offshore. They were after something.

The late afternoon skies were beginning to grey. Soon Jimmy wouldn’t be able to see much past the lighthouse at all. The moaning increased from down the spiral staircase. It almost sounded frustrated. Jimmy could barely see down the stairwell to the windowless room below, where the two zombies were attempting to find their way to a feeding. He had no real weapon to take them out. Nothing he could do from the top of the stairs except wait until they found their way up and push them over like Larry. There wouldn’t be much sleep for Jimmy tonight.

It had taken a while for Jimmy’s eyes to adjust to dark, but the crescent moon helped. The safest place to sit was outside, around the railing, opposite of the door to the outside. Jimmy had thought about shutting that door and getting some sleep, but if he woke up and the two maggotheads had found their way up, he’d be stuck outside with those things in the control room. He sat fingering the fretboard of his guitar, idly running through the songs he had written for Rebecca.

It had gotten difficult, for a while, to distinguish the sounds of the two zombies downstairs from the ones gathered around outside the lighthouse. They seemed to cycle – one started moaning, the rest started, until it became a dull, slow motion riot. Then they would calm down for a while. It was almost worse when they were quiet. What were they doing? It was unlikely they were working on a plan, but Jimmy got the feeling nonetheless that they were waiting for something, like they could swarm him whenever they wanted, piling on top of each other until they formed an inhuman pyramid and crawled right up over the railing.

Now it was quiet again. No crickets. It was too cold for flies or mosquitoes. Maybe an occasional bird beat its wings or squawked overhead. They seemed to be the only living creatures not affected by all of this. Jimmy thought of the dead wandering in the water, if the fish stayed away or just swam around the things. Did they recognize what these things were? That they were even a threat? Or were they just so much rotting fauna?

Feeling restless, Jimmy stood up and tried to survey the area around the lighthouse. The moonlight glinted off the rippling water on three sides of him. Ahead of him, in the direction of the wharf, was an ambiguous moving mass, mimicking the rippling of the water. Jimmy was exhausted but wired. He picked up his guitar and picked at it with his fingers, humming a tune that had wandered into his head intermittently over the past few days. He searched his pocket for a pick, and started to play it a little louder, and sing a little louder.

The crowd murmured in response, a low rumble. Jimmy was caught up in concentration, working on the song. He plugged the guitar into his practice amp and turned it up. He started singing full throated. The crowd got louder and raised their arms at their possible food source. Jimmy was struck by the scene, pale hands reflecting in the moonlight. It thrilled him.

Jimmy stopped for a moment. He couldn’t see too far out, which was frustrating. Inspiration hit. He went back into the lighthouse control room and started flicking switches. A light came on over the controls. He randomly pressed buttons and flipped switches until the main light came on and started rotating.

The light panned the crowd, flashing over faces with jaws dropped open, like they were trying to scream. Arms stretched upwards. Swaying. Jimmy began to play. He was in heaven.

He played the song he wrote for Rebecca, singing her name. The louder he sang, the louder the zombies moaned. The louder they moaned, the more it felt to Jimmy like the concert of his dreams. He pictured himself at the Milborn, the big local club. Then he pictured himself at the arena downtown. Then a stadium. A world tour, everywhere singing for his Rebecca. Everywhere playing for his heard of swaying, moaning fans.

That’s when he saw it again, something moving on the Brotherhood. Another flash of pink. And the blond hair. It was a girl standing on the deck, looking his way. Then it went dark again as the light swiveled away. It had to be her. He wondered if she could hear what he was playing.

He kept playing to his adoring crowd, his gaze focused squarely on the Brotherhood. He sang louder and turned his practice amp up as far as it would go, hoping the sound would travel. The light panned around excruciatingly slowly, the Brotherhood still in shadows. He could make out a form again on the deck. It was her size. He couldn’t be sure. But who else could it be?

It was everything he had ever hoped for. No more bullies. No more high school. Just Jimmy and his guitar, playing for his girl, standing room only.

He was screaming the song now, screaming her name, watching the shadows and waiting for the light to come around again. All of them were cheering for him. The math teacher who once called him stupid. The cool girls who giggled at him next to the jocks who made dumb jokes and then cheated off of him during tests. Maybe even Gil, somewhere in the dark.

Jimmy watched the slice of light pan over the glinting water, then the bow of the Brotherhood, the deck, and then, there she was. It was Rebecca. She was jumping up and down watching him play for her, gesticulating wildly, pointing at him.

That’s right, baby, he thought. I’m number one! Maybe by default, but still.

Rebecca was pointing with both fingers and yelling. An unusual gesture of appreciation. Jimmy stopped singing and squinted, leaning forward. A pile of cold flesh fell on him from behind. A hand grabbed his ankle, and he could feel teeth trying to break through the denim of his pant leg.

Jimmy screamed and kicked, pushing one corpse away only to find another one directly behind him. He had forgotten the two maggot farms at the foot of the stairs, and they had both found their way up to the walk. Jimmy got his hands on the chest of the standing zombie and kept his chomping, clicking mouth at bay. He felt teeth break on his jeans at his calf.

The moaning was louder, but Jimmy heard it faintly. “Jimmy! Jimmy!”

She knew his name.

The standing zombie pawed at him and his guitar, catching his fingers in the strings. The top two strings busted as they sliced through the rotting flesh. Jimmy didn’t have extras. It was going to be tough to play Rebecca’s song without the high end. Even tougher with a zombie brain, if he didn’t start concentrating on the two rotters he was tangled in.

Jimmy struggled to pull his right leg back, to shake the one on the ground, and wound up pulling both of them back with him. He kept moving, but the zombies kept their grip. The smell started to make Jimmy dizzy. He yelled as loud as he could, but it didn’t faze them.

The full weight of the standing zombie was starting to push on Jimmy. He wrenched himself violently to the left and heard his guitar neck clack on the railing. He pulled hard to the right and started to pull the upright one around, turning 180 degrees. He was now pushing one zombie back and pulling one forward with his leg. Jimmy kept his legs moving enough to avoid getting bit, but felt sharp nubs of teeth nipping.

If the zombie in front of him could breathe, Jimmy would have drowned the noxious fumes as its mouth neared his face. Jimmy brought the neck of his guitar up between them and tried to smack the zombie’s face with it, but there wasn’t enough room for it to have an impact. Teeth broke around stretching strings.

The zombie behind him had gotten up to its knees and was pawing at Jimmy. Jimmy reached one hand behind him to push it away and felt teeth graze the web of skin between his thumb and index finger. He panicked. Had it broken the skin? He wasn’t sure.

Jimmy turned enough to see Rebecca on the Brotherhood screaming for Jimmy, who might be the last man alive. Jimmy laughed painfully through his exertion at the thought that he might finally have his chance. She noticed him now.

“Rebecca!” he shouted. “Stay calm! I’ll save you!”

Then the zombie behind him was up, and Jimmy was thrashing violently to avoid the teeth, the fingernails, the bones poking through the rotting flesh of their hands. He banged his fist on the skull of the one in front of him, finding it soft but resilient, like punching a watermelon. His fist broke through and he felt jagged bones scrape his flesh as his hand plunged into grey matter. He screamed and tried to pull it out, forgetting to unball the fist.

He felt teeth on the back of his head, dragging across his scalp. Complete panic set in as he turned between the two and pushed his back against the railing. He finally freed his fist and one zombie crumpled to the ground. He hopped over the body and ran almost the full way around the railing until he was on the other side of the zombie still walking.

The light was still panning around, and he saw Rebecca again. She was all he could focus on. He did not see the crowd between them, which had increased in number during his struggle to the point where they were at maximum density. The zombies pushed against each other, sensing the last two bits of living flesh for miles around.

The zombie on the walk turned to him, but Jimmy didn’t see him, either. He kept his eyes trained on Rebecca, even though he couldn’t quite see her. He climbed up on the railing and yelled again, to let her know he was there, to let himself know he was still there.

Then he jumped.

Any sound was drowned out in Jimmy’s head by the blood pumping through his heart, up through the gashes on his hand and head. His muscles began to stiffen. He felt hands below him tearing at him, but he didn’t care. He pushed and kicked his way atop the crowd, working his way toward Brotherhood. As the light swooped around again, he could see Rebecca over the side of the ship, staring in shock.

“I’m coming, Rebecca,” he yelled, but the voice was unfamiliar.

Closer and closer he came, looking at the sea of undead piled right up to the edge of the Brotherhood. His vision faded into black and white. The crowd below him seemed to lose interest in getting a piece of him, and he stepped on heads and tried to plant his hands to crawl across them.

And then he was there. His hands were on the railing of the Brotherhood. The light came around again, and Jimmy saw Rebecca backing up quickly but unable to look away from him.

The last thing his brain registered before his heart stopped was her scream. And he smiled.

—–

Nick A. Zaino III is a journalist and musician who recently began writing fiction. His work on comedy and music has been published in the Boston Globe, Playboy, Blurt, and other publications. For the record, he prefers slow zombies.

I remember the last mission, killing that fanatic to save the king of a small Arab nation vital for our operations in the Middle East, just not every detail now.

Knowing his mind was sometimes wiped of certain data once a mission had ended, Sergeant Henry Lee ‘Hank’ Peterson formerly of the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division remained relaxed, having little choice inside an electronically-monitored casket leaning at its 45-degree angle against one wall. Known to Army and CIA operatives by the code name Agent Romero since 1969, the single successful subject of the Vietnam War-era Project: Gravedigger, Peterson had been another KIA from South Vietnam’s infamous Iron Triangle during a battle months after 1968’s Tet Offensive.

With the 3rd Brigade, I earned my stripes and commendations after only nine months in the field, avoiding booze, drugs and whores, keeping my nose clean as a 19-year-old far from home.

Peterson still remembered the exact date he died at the hands of a young Vietcong rebel whose AK-47 round got through the gap in his loose flak vest and the heart beneath, just as the GI fired one grenade from his M-16’s launcher tube that blew the teenage enemy to bits seconds later – May 28, 1968.

The next thing I knew was waking up at a lab near Bethesda, Maryland months later.

Peterson felt latex-gloved hands examining his corpse’s preserved condition as it thawed, two men chatting about his reactivation.

“So, they think this stiff might solve what’s happened from spreading any further?”

“I guess,” the other man’s voice huffed, “don’t know, Roy, just doing what the orders say. At least we know he won’t bite us, not like others treated with that alien stuff.”

“Yeah,” ‘Roy’ replied, “or ones on the news now or in those old horror movies. I still don’t like it, Charlie. This dude is giving me the creeps just seeing him.”

“Look,” ‘Charlie’ disconnected electrodes from the corpse’s naked trunk, genitals and legs, “he’s not like things killing folks we’ve heard spreading from major cities. Just finish this survey and let the docs start testing him.”

Oh God, I miss home, Peterson’s still-active consciousness occasionally registered nostalgic thoughts about the life he had once lived on a family farm outside Great Bend in Barton County Kansas, but how long has it been?

The special agent then felt those men working controls in that capsule around his body, when he concentrated on severing the computer link. Peterson then released his brain from that built-in hard drive regulating the pod, figuring out over the years how to sever an electronic tether and opened glowing, once sky-blue eyes to face two Army technicians in lab coats and khaki utility uniforms surprised by the staring corpse.

“Oh crap,” the dark-haired balding Sergeant Charlie Porter dropped pen and clipboard checklist, stepping back from Peterson and retrieving them, “he’s not supposed to even do that until the review is over. Should we call Dr. Farnsworth?”

“I’ll check the connections again,” Specialist Roy Jensen had his hands on an interface keypad to Peterson’s right in that chamber, before the shrugging curly blonde man concluded, “maybe it’s just an autonomic response – or some equipment glitch.”

The clean-shaven brown-haired former banker’s son realized this was his best chance to return home from where he had been locked away. The reanimated man tore his wrists free of Velcro fabric restraints, grabbed both men before him and smashed their skulls together with enhanced strength. Pulling both legs free of restraints, Peterson stumbled onto hands and knees, muscles soon remembering how to walk after years in storage.

“I – thin—ach, um,” shaking the head and clearing a throat that had made no sounds for some time, Peterson slowly rose to his feet, disoriented as he looked around this large room having no windows, with a row of hooded lights hanging off the darkened ceiling illuminating two rows of similar thick white cylindrical tubes like one he had just exited. He checked the technicians and found they had died from his sudden, swift attack lying together face-down.

I never intended that. If this is the usual top secret facility, I’ll need to be smart about escaping here.

Peterson stuffed the corpses inside other containers and restrained each limb by the Velcro straps, after taking their ID badges, money from the wallets and Sergeant Porter’s lab coat for temporary covering using the other man’s coat for wiping up their blood. He found ID badges opened doors to these rooms with electronic lock boxes when sliding a card’s magnetic strip through, having minor familiarity with that technology. Hearing thumping sounds from inside tubes where he left those dead men, the freed corpse crept through low-lit hallways of a windowless interior and its antiseptic white or gray walls, floor and ceiling tiles, reading signs for directions until he found the nearest changing room with individual locker rows.

First, I’ll need a disguise to escape undetected before I ever see Kansas again.

Forcing a few locker doors open with heightened strength from the Project: Gravedigger serum that had replaced his blood long ago, Henry discarded morality for survival, recalling old assassin programming occasionally through partially retained memories from 65 CIA-sponsored missions. He rifled through personal items of soldiers here until finding a set of civilian clothes and Class-A Army uniform (belonging to First Lieutenant Marcus Krebs) that fit closely enough. This officer also had orders for three days of ‘Holiday R&R’ starting in six hours. Peterson donned the dress uniform, overcoat and Special Forces beret, after packing other items in a khaki duffle bag, adding Ray-Ban sunglasses after noticing his shining irises and glowing pupils inside one bathroom mirror.

Well, it’s about time I got promoted and commissioned after being stuck her so long.

Peterson was overcome with brief dizziness and held onto a sink as suppressed or partially-erased memories from overseas missions in 1969 to 1975 rushed through his brain. Shaking off that odd sensation, ‘Lieutenant Krebs’ shouldered the duffle bag holding civilian clothes and all cash he had taken from lockers or off those technicians, before leaving when two enlisted men entered while saluting him. Returning that salute and never arousing their suspicions, the Lieutenant hanged a spare badge from the man’s locker on that uniform below the jacket’s upper left side campaign ribbon row and a last name tag.

“Be careful out there, Sir,” one of two guards at the ground floor’s main exit advised him, when he passed through their checkpoint minutes later, “latest reports say the plague is out of control around Bakersfield.”

“And there’s been an emergency in the main lab downstairs,” the other guard’s brown skin contrasting to the first’s fairer complexion, “but you have a good leave, Sir.”

“I’ve seen more death than you can imagine, Son,” Peterson had finally regained his voice to a gravel-like strained level after exercising jaw muscles and vocal chords on the elevator ride from downstairs, “but I’ll keep alert just the same. Carry on.”

He was out the main gate to this isolated desert military facility hearing more alarms behind him, driving off in Krebs’ white Ford Ranger after having found spare keys in the locker and the officer’s parking spot on this base.

Well, signing out a Humvee might’ve been suspicious. It’s a shame about Jeeps being replaced. I’ll ditch this later and find lower profile transportation home.

The man encountered sparse traffic on State Route 58 (the Bakersfield-Barstow Highway), smoke columns rising in his rear-view mirror back at the Lindbergh Special Projects Army Base or possibly neighboring Edwards Air Force Base. His destination on the orders read Bakersfield, but he continued through Barstow, California onto Interstate 15 northeast.

So, I’m in California, same place as last I remember in ’75. I’ve got quite a trip before seeing Kansas again.

Peterson viewed time indications from one hanging paper calendar and a few electronic bank clocks. This was apparently Tuesday, July 2nd, 1996.

Boy, I put in my own twenty years as Rip Van Winkle.

#

Hank Peterson bought a Greyhound bus ticket near Las Vegas, Nevada, after abandoning the Ranger and changing into civvies in one bathroom, but kept sunglasses on examining the familiar face in a mirror. The Army maintained his deceased body well enough, suntanned skin looking only slightly greenish in spots easily concealed under makeup, damages by bullets and holes they left all repaired from cosmetic surgery or the Gravedigger serum’s slow regenerative properties. After some 20 years inside the machine, Hank had tapped into a few classified files on the special project spawning one undead CIA assassin.

Apparently none of the other subjects responded positively to the serum made from reverse-engineered UFO technology. Those men went berserk and attacked Army personnel. Bitten victims soon acted just as homicidal and everyone infected, aside from yours truly, was liquidated. The brass never did figure out why I was their one success.

Replacing the glasses after glancing at those eyes when no one else was around, Peterson pulled on that leather sheepskin-lined bomber-style jacket over the white shirt, above blue jeans and white sneakers. He exited the bathroom with his duffle bag to board the east-bound bus that would take I-15 toward Utah. Everywhere there were police with semi-automatic and automatic rifles, more than he had seen in rural California, large newer signs warning civilians that certain aspects of martial law were in effect during this national emergency. He never asked too many questions to avoid drawing attention toward self.

I just want to get home with this Lieutenant’s ID, as I’ll tell anyone asking my business.

Hank Peterson sat next to a young man about his age when he originally died in Vietnam, the youth with a long ‘mullet’ style haircut dyed bright red, dressed in that black T-shirt with Che Guevara’s face stenciled in red, puffy camouflage pants and Doc Martin brown boots. The zombie had two other complete outfits from Krebs’ possessions for his cross-country trip, but admired this 1990s youth’s aggressive appearance.

“So, are you in the service too?” Hank resisted using the word ‘son’ at the end of that question, realizing his body also retained its youthful appearance from 1968.

“Nah, numb nuts,” this brown-eyed frowning man indicated sitting to Peterson’s left at the window on their side of the aisle, “I’m into concert promotion, but had to split LA after the crazy shit going on there. Stinking corpses from Compton, Watts and East LA are taking over. I’m lying low east of the Rockies for a while, somewhere safer.”

Peterson glimpsed a young short-haired brunette woman in her knitted tank top and cutoff denim shorts seated right on the aisle one row ahead using a device (laptop computer) watching almost real-time news feeds on the ‘Zombie Crisis in America.’ Most major cities in North America were battlegrounds for riot police and special military units against an ever-growing force of walking dead. Some non-mainstream sources were quoted as saying black helicopters and top-secret military operations had caused it all. The government avoided placing blame for this epidemic’s origin, providing public information about defending against undead loved ones and the serious dangers of infection if bitten or scratched.

Would these folks freak out knowing I’m something similar to those … what was that name – zombies.

Passing through some guarded toll booths or exits along I- 15 out of Vegas and after switching to Interstate 70 around Cove Fork, Utah for a trip east concluding at Baltimore, Maryland, Peterson could see America crumbling at the margins, the bus’ passengers glimpsing soldiers and law enforcement shooting any walking corpses on sight but always at a safe distance from this vehicle’s route for the most part.

After I get off in Kansas, it’s a long dangerous walk to Great Bend. I’d better hitchhike or rent a car after the ride is no longer headed my way.

Departing the bus when it was stopped by traffic west of the I-70/I-135 intersection, Hank wandered down the north-south oriented Interstate 135, despite the driver’s protestations he could not disembark before scheduled stops at Kansas City, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Columbus. No one picked up hitchhikers in this paranoid climate he discovered, but his reanimated legs got used to marching again. That night approaching a McDonalds in McPherson, Kansas before starting west on US-56 for Great Bend, Hank saw a Golden Arches employee attack one customer in the parking lot beside her blue Ford Taurus.  Breaking up that assault with fists and duffle bag, the ex-soldier was puzzled when the gangly young dark-haired man in his brown uniform and baseball-style cap paused and stared straight at him.

“I don’t think the lady’s interested,” Peterson glanced at the victim slumped against her opened driver’s side door, the bleeding carotid artery torn at the neck where she was bitten, “back off, Dude.”

The pale young man with blood on his face and uniform then turned and stumbled toward that restaurant as if going to work. Hank helped the shocked dying woman from her car to lean against some parking lot shrubbery.

“Thank – thank you,” she gasped as those green eyes stared into his sunglasses-covered ones and he stroked her disheveled brown hair while noting the lime-green tailored jacket and skirt with cream-colored blouse covered by blood, “but I need – need a doctor or an ambulance. Please, call 911.”

I know enough about battle wounds to see she’s in shock and needs emergency surgery. Sorry, Ma’am.

Hank sat next to her, pondering why the zombie, whom he now heard causing screams inside the restaurant, had relented from attacking him, before the dying woman stop breathing and fell over. Peterson stood and retrieved his duffle bag, finding she had placed her keys into the ignition but not managed to start that Taurus. Seconds later, Peterson looked over and saw the other dead body begin moving on its own before ignoring him and the car to wander off searching for something.

Just like that guy, she’s not interested in me. Do they sense I’m different than other people?

Throwing that duffle bag onto the passenger’s seat and climbing behind the wheel, Peterson soon remembered automatic transmission driving, as with that manual transmission Ranger. Heading onto US-56 west, Hank realized he had not been hungry for food at that restaurant earlier, or the human flesh and brains radio commentators claim zombies preferred (from a late-night AM station conspiracy theory show). He drove below the speed limit, grateful this Ford’s owner had more than half a tank of gas left in it, as there were fewer outward signs here of emergency conditions prevailing near major roads and small cities unlike Peterson’s earlier experiences.

Wait a second, Hank now realized one pitfall to his plans for returning home, how do I explain this to Ma and Pa or Tina when they see me again? And what about Becky, does she still live there? Did she ever marry someone?

Regaining inner calm after brief trepidation, Hank realized he needed to check a few things first, soon recalling the family had plots at Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery and presuming his empty casket would have been sent there for burial. Waiting until the cemetery opened after dawn, Peterson stopped at the section called Tranquil Meadow, but only found two markers there for parents George and Naomi.

Just a damn minute, despite knowing twenty-eight years had passed since he was last home, Hank sank to his knees before the markers, reading father George had died in 1983 and Naomi just last December before this crisis started, where’s my marker? Don’t tell me that empty box was sent off to Arlington.

Returning to Great Bend, he inquired at the city’s cemetery office about “old friend” Sergeant Peterson’s 1968 burial and learned to some relief it had been at Veterans Memorial Park. The man looked up his own phony resting spot where a white cross confirmed Sergeant Henry Lee Peterson had been killed in action on May 28, 1968 at age 19.

What happened to Tina or Becky?

Departing where his body officially rested, Hank looked in a local telephone directory but found no address or number for either kid sister Tina Peterson or former girlfriend Rebecca Travers in the Great Bend area (later realizing both might have different married names by now).

“So, am I all alone?”

Leaning against the steering wheel while parked along 10th Street beside a public pay phone, Hank had two last places left to inspect before abandoning his quest.

#

No, it’s too late.

Hank Peterson stood beside the blue Taurus facing that two-story farmhouse where he grew up, removing sunglasses and facing north to behold its peeling white-painted wood and black-painted shutters beneath a gray tile roof, two oak trees at either side of the gravel driveway leading to a barn northeast of the main home. To the left of one oak tree stood some realty company’s billboard-size sign declaring the property had already been sold in April.

This was my last link to the past. I escaped for nothing.

Hank strolled around the property the rest of that morning, wandering empty fields where corn or soybeans once grew, his father George a part-time farmer and full-time vice-president at American State Bank & Trust in town. Mother Naomi ran the farm full-time as her husband was the banker paying their bills, Hank recalled. The barn was empty of livestock, of course, and even any junk, so he tried the front door after ascending five wooden steps onto that front porch past the hanging swing stirred by a slight western breeze. Finding the entrance unlocked, Peterson walked in, announcing to no one: “Hey, I’m finally home.”

Unable to cry since being reanimated, Hank sighed at the empty living room devoid of furnishings and containing only ten cardboard storage boxes filled with old papers or keepsakes near the kitchen’s doorway. He inspected the entire first and second floors and storm cellar, finding only empty space, including his former upstairs corner bedroom looking down on the west fields.

Maybe it’s just as well Ma died too, he shook his head in replacing those sunglasses from the shirt’s pocket, poor lady might’ve died of fright seeing her boy back from the dead.

Returning to the dust-covered hardwood floor living room, he began going through boxes for clues to what happened with his sister or other acquaintances. Having stopped by the Travers farmhouse a half-mile further west earlier, Hank met the family named Reese living there. Becky’s parents both had apparently also died since he was last home.

The new owners didn’t know what had happened to her, all paranoid about this crisis.

Peterson dug through books, photos and papers as memories returned seeing stored treasures his mother must have kept only for a sister to leave behind and throw out. He flipped through the 1967 yearbook for Great Bend High School, stopping at a rare color photo of the all-state baseball team with Hank as their shortstop. Inside a family album, he found his Great Bend High Senior Prom photo with Rebecca Lynn Travers, the tall brown-haired banker’s son looking handsome in an April 1967 rented blue tuxedo. At his left stood Becky, the apple-cheeked strawberry-blonde farmer’s daughter wearing her strapless peach gown. They were the Midwestern All-American couple before Hank got drafted and headed to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

I hadn’t even graduated yet when my notice arrived in early May. Becky said she’d wait for me at college.

Hank could no longer remember if the young woman’s major would be home economics, political science or something else. He planned on seeking a business degree to please George since professional baseball scouts never saw his high school games. Hank had also felt the duty to serve, his World War II veteran father encouraging that sentiment, and never sought a student deferment from the Vietnam War’s adventure.

I showed a talent for leadership and ambushes and got two stripes within six months in country, before getting killed nine months into my tour as the short-timer.

Digging through boxes for other papers or memorabilia, Hank never heard one vehicle pull onto the drive and park behind his borrowed Ford, barely noticing footsteps across that porch until the front door’s handle turned announcing a visitor.

Shoot, someone’s here. How do I explain this?

Unable to find cover in the empty room while sitting among those boxes, Hank was surprised to see an almost-familiar face step inside. It was his now 44-year-old sister Tina in the red blazer jacket, long blue dress, red pumps and her once dark-blonde hair now ash-tinted with golden highlights styled into a bun. Peterson’s combat reflexes took over in leaping from his seated position, when she gasped with widened blue-green eyes at discovering an unexpected intruder soon grabbing and forcing her onto the floor.

“NO, don’t touch me – AIEE-MMPH!”

The 6’ 2” 190-pound zombie restrained that 5’ 6” 124-pound woman as she knocked his glasses away before he clamped a left hand over her mouth.

I mustn’t hurt her.

“Tina,” he reassured the squirming, frightened lady, “it’s me, Hank! I finally made it home from the war, Sis. Promise me you won’t scream and I’ll let you up.”

The bulging eyes studied those facial features preserved by the serum and occasional cosmetic surgery as she was shocked at his cold flesh against her face. Nodding, Tina sat up allowing him to help her stand, the lady lost for words at an unexpected reunion.

“Oh, my God, it – it is you, Hank. But you look almost the same as when,” she retrieved a photo of Corporal Peterson sent home Christmas 1967 from one box to compare faces, “no, it’s not possible. I saw your sealed casket. The Army said you’d been killed.”

“I was, or at least that’s what this shows,” he unbuttoned the white shirt’s front to reveal traces of a chest-level bullet entry hole left of the sternum’s center, “when my company swept an Iron Triangle village. This young VC about your age then got me before I blew him to bits with a grenade.”

Tina saw other small scars from injuries Hank had endured as the CIA’s lone undead assassin, almost crying before allowing this only brother to hold her after he reclosed that shirt.

“This is incredible. We lived for years believing you were buried in the Veteran cemetery. Pa never recovered from losing you right up to his heart attack. Ma mourned you more quietly and died of cancer.” She broke free of his touch to stare at the man before passing out. “But – how – how did you…?”

Hank caught Tina and gently stretched her across the floor, feeling a pulse but uncertain if she suffered medical conditions accounting for that fainting. He peered outside the door to see (presumably) her red Ford Bronco parked behind his borrowed blue Taurus.

No purse on her – maybe she’s got medicine out there in one. I’d better check before I call an ambulance.

Inspecting her vehicle, he soon found one water bottle and the black handbag, bringing both inside when discovering his sister rising off the floor to face him. Accepting the plastic bottle, she took a few sips before speaking.

“Sorry, Hank, it’s probably low blood sugar. I skipped breakfast with Alvin and just stopped to collect the last of Ma’s stuff and thought that Ford was the developer’s. There’ll be a new mall built here next year, assuming all this craziness doesn’t crash the entire commercial real estate market.”

“Imagine my shock at finding out I was the walking dead,” Hank half-joked as Tina’s comments explained that sign in their yard, “waking up back in 1969. But there’s so much we need to catch up on, Sis, I barely know where to start.”

#

The reunited siblings carried boxes out to Tina’s Ford, filling each other in on their lives (hers as a living human) since 1968 and abandoning that Taurus. The woman soon acted as though this was perfectly normal, even though her brother’s return had coincided with the recent undead epidemic spreading further across America.

“After high school, I dropped out of nursing school,” Tina Meyers was still processing the fact her brother had been a CIA assassin until the 1975 Senator Frank Church Committee hearings curtailed covert assassinations, “married Alvin after he’d got back from ’Nam with health problems due to that Agent Orange defoliant. We had two boys, Arthur in ’74 and Wallace in ’76, or Artie and Wally as they liked to be called. Artie’s in the Corps posted with the Moroccan US embassy’s guard detail and Wally still attending Texas A. & M.”

Getting her realtor’s license by 1978, Tina had become the primary breadwinner, while Hank still found it hard to believe skinny Alvin Meyers had become a Marine after his teenage years being picked on by jocks. As they drove through Great Bend, he told her about Project: Gravedigger reviving his body with some crashed UFO’s technology, and that seven-year career as Agent Romero (named in honor of a zombie horror movie director). He proved impervious to small arms fire and made a perfect assassin for any difficult-to-reach target.

“I was being considered for a mission against Castro before twenty years in storage, but think they reactivated me because of this zombie plague. I escaped and made it here instead. The Army must’ve thought my condition could solve the plague problem somehow.”

Tina had stopped to close her realty office in town before heading toward a split-level home five miles east of Great Bend on US-56 where Alvin awaited his wife’s returning that afternoon with take-out dinner.

“Hank, what are your plans now? I mean you could crash at our place in the boys’ old bedroom once I’ve explained this all to Alvin, but we can’t let the neighbors know you’re a…”

“Zombie is the word,” Hank then added something else he had heard on a talk radio program earlier, “or the US Census Bureau might classify me an undead-American. I’m probably considered technically AWOL by the Army too.”

“This isn’t funny, Brother dear.”

Pondering Tina’s earlier question as they left the downtown portion of Great Bend, Hank later knew there was one thing left he still wanted in this world.

“I need to see her.”

“Who else could you possibly-? Oh no, you can’t. She had a hard life after your death. Becky almost quit college in her grief. The poor lady switched to nursing, one hard subject I found out, got her degree, married some jerk doctor who cheated before and after their two kids were born, and left her for his moonlighting stripper receptionist.”

“Tina, she was one of the few things keeping me going while in country with Easy Company,” Hank reminded her, “if you’d ever read any of my letters home.”

I would’ve entered the University of Kansas that fall on the G.I. Bill after finishing my tour.

“Hank,” Tina reached out and took his left hand, despite still being disturbed by its cool temperature, “if my seeing you was a shock today, as if the last twenty-eight years never happened, what’ll it be like for her? Can she accept it?”

“Tina,” Hank caressed her manicured red-painted nails in his hands until she pulled away, “if you know where Becky is, give me directions and I’ll walk there. You won’t have to be mixed up in this any further.”

Giggling briefly, Hank recalling the teenager he had known years ago. Pausing once for sighing between sentences, Tina offered: “We’re kin, so I’m already involved. I’ll drive you there.”

The realtor took the next eastbound lane exit and parked in a restaurant’s lot before using her silver cellular phone from the large black purse between them on the floor.

“I need to call Alvin and tell him I’ll be late getting home. Becky lives in Topeka.  She’d kept in touch with Ma for years, especially after her parents died while driving back from a visit there three years ago.”

#

The drive to Topeka took a few hours and Hank paid for the gasoline with the last $50 he took at that California Army base. They found the highways (US-56 and US-77) adequate for getting from Great Bend to their final destination and saw few hints of the spreading zombie trouble. Toll highway Interstate 335 had more check points and warning signs along its northeast route, seeming worse the closer Tina’s red Bronco came to Topeka. Hank pulled out his Lieutenant Krebs Army ID and an official sounding manner whenever needing to dissuade scrutiny from Kansas state patrolmen and local or county cops along their drive, managing that military bluff well enough every time.

“In this third month of America’s growing undead crisis, the CDC in Atlanta is dispatching additional personnel to handle processing of recently deceased in preventing further spread of the strange infection and losses in civilian lives. Funeral homes and crematoria nationwide have been given new guide—”

Tina switched off her car’s FM radio, a public news station she tuned in to settle nerves glimpsing horrors along I-335.

“Hey, I was listening to that,” Hank mildly protested, but then joked about this situation until seeing Tina’s trepidation behind the wheel, “just getting facts on undead Americans. I can drive if you’re tired.”

“No, that’s okay,” she laughed before supposing, “I guess you’re never tired after what they did to you, right?”

“The only rest I ever got was being immobilized inside that storage pod on the base. And even if I did need sleep, I think I’ve slept enough – 20 years as Rip Van Winkle.”

I love Tina, but how can any living human understand me?

Tina had revealed to Hank that Becky was a nurse working at Topeka’s Colmery O’Neill VA Medical Center, and lived with her two teenage children in a two-story home on Southwest Prairie Road of West Topeka – December 1984 divorce settlement spoils from ex-husband Theodore K. Hunt, M.D.

Hank and Tina saw large smoke columns rising from Topeka’s central and eastern neighborhoods. Listening to a local radio station while headed along I-470 after leaving 335, they heard the Governor had fled his residence and was meeting with the state’s legislators and police/highway patrol commanders at some nearby emergency headquarters to review the state’s crisis response plan.

This might not have been the best idea, the fugitive man realized, using stolen military credentials and keeping those sunglasses on at all times, hauling Tina into this mess.

They drove east off 470 onto Southwest 21st Street, north at Southwest Crest Drive and parked across from 1728 Southwest Prairie Road facing a corner with Southwest 19th Street.

“Here comes her car,” Tina noted that vehicle in the early evening’s sunlight, a green Chrysler Town & Country minivan with imitation wood panel trim, “Ted’s receptionist was moonlighting nights as a stripper and it turned on the horny bastard enough he finally left Becky. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” he kissed her right cheek, the realtor getting used to that cold touch, “wish me luck, Sis.”

Hank Peterson adjusted his jacket collar and watched Becky Hunt pull her SUV into the attached two-car garage’s left side beside that two-story house. She had raised the door with an automatic opener and stopped next to a black Honda motorcycle as Hank strolled across that road toward her home. The 46-year-old nurse lifted two brown paper grocery sacks from the back seats at the sliding right side door and turned toward that doorway leading inside her kitchen when she finally caught sight of the approaching stranger. Hank decided Becky looked attractive in her blue medical scrubs two-piece uniform with white sneakers, the slightly-graying darker blonde hair in a ponytail.

“Can I help you?” She then gasped when Hank removed the sunglasses and smiled, dropping her bundle in recognizing that long-dead man. “Hank, oh my God, that’s – you were buried in Great Bend and…”

One sack containing something glass made the loudest crash when those hit the cement floor beside her shoes.

“Mom,” a girl’s voice called out from an opened door behind the nurse facing this unexpected visitor, short-haired redheaded 14-year-old Lisa Hunt peering inside to investigate that noise, “did you drop something?”

“Was that glass?” Bushy brown-haired, lanky 17-year-old Tyler Hunt in the black Metallica T-shirt and blue bike shorts looked over his shorter sister’s head at the stranger with their mother. The teenagers had no idea who this was, as Tyler rudely asked Peterson: “Hey, what do you want, Dude?”

“Becky,” Hank pleaded as she became used to his glowing eyes, “please, I just wanted to see you again after all these years. Tell them everything is okay and we can talk some more. I’ve missed you so much, Sweetie.”

“Kids,” never looking back at them, Becky said, “I just got clumsy, had a really rough day at the hospital before my shift ended early. I’ll clean this mess.” She retrieved two white paper sacks from the minivan’s front seat, handing those items off her kids. “This is someone I knew in Great bend. Sorry dinner’s a bit late. I’ll be right in soon.”

Looking closer, Hank noticed the 5’ 2” Becky appeared a bit heavier after having two kids but still attractive in his sight. Those teens departed with fast food meals after final stares at this acquaintance of their mother’s. Two military helicopters then buzzed over that neighborhood as Hank spoke again.

“A lot has happened to me since 1968. I just want a chance to explain it all. I never forgot about you, but couldn’t get away from what I did for the CIA back then.”

Becky laughed and shook her head while salvaging the two grocery bags, setting the one without broken glass and spilled liquid (cooking oil) on that minivan’s floor first.

“Boy, you’ve got a lot of nerve coming back and giving me a crazy story like that, Hank, the world turning upside down from an unknown pathogen the CDC can’t isolate with all their money and personnel. They’ve taken over the VA hospital where I work, and I was lucky the Independence Day holiday meant working a short shift today. The shopping center and grocery store were insane with people buying everything not nailed down thinking it’s the end of the world as those dead people killing everyone has finally spread to almost every corner of the country.”

Hank slowly moved beside Becky as she salvaged shopping bags and hugged her once.

“Oh my God, you’re so cold – just like a dead…”

Peterson stepped back with both arms spread out to prevent his old girlfriend panicking.

“I swear I won’t hurt you or your kids, Rebecca.” He used her full first name whenever serious. “Please let me explain it all – how the CIA and US Army treated me with some serum out of a crashed UFO bringing me back from the dead after Vietnam. It was a project code-named Gravedigger.”

Suddenly, Tina appeared behind them and cleared her throat, nodding at the nurse.

“Hey, Becky – it’s true. I found him at our old house down the road from yours earlier today.”

Hank briefly stared at his shoes as Becky became transfixed by the man’s eyes.

“I’m guessing that’s a side effect of your treatment.”

The man nodded before Tina explained her joining them now.

“I just heard on the radio Topeka is being sealed off by the Army and police from across the Kansas River and on every road out of town.”

So that’s why we had more trouble getting through the last Interstate checkpoint at the 355/470 interchange.

“Crap,” Becky confirmed, lifting both grocery bags again, despite one being wet on the bottom, “I heard folks at work say we might evacuate patients to a special camp south of here. But they can’t just seal every living person in here, right?”

“Apparently they can,” Hank replaced the sunglasses in case anyone else saw his unnatural eyes, “like what I heard has been done in New York, LA and other big places under martial law.”

“We’d better move fast, Brother dear,” Tina insisted as she regretted their trip here for the first time, “before Topeka becomes a zombie concentration camp. We can take Becky, Tyler and Lisa with us.”

“Could you do that for us, Hank?”

Considering the matter a moment, they all heard other cars race along streets outside and somewhere beyond as jets roared overhead closely followed by explosions in the distance. Tina jumped slightly before briefly grabbing Hank’s right arm.

“What’s going on now?”

“Sounded like a low-level bombing run,” Hank led their way around the garage to look toward the downtown’s skyline and see rising fire plumes, “yeah, just like calling for an air strike on Charlie in the bush. They’re serious.”

The flames competed with a setting sun’s orange glowing on partly cloudy skies. Minutes later, residual heat from attacks across Topeka added to the sultry summer weather.”

“Get your kids and dog, Becky, take whatever you’ll need for overnight and pile into my Bronco,” Tina offered before she led that nurse inside her home, “I’ll help organize – I’m good at that.”

“Yeah,” Hank absentmindedly watched additional bombing runs releasing Napalm or some other explosives on city blocks nearer the Kansas River, “hope I can still talk us out of this with my stolen ID.”

The unusual zombie also glimpsed signs of distress from one block away on Southwest 17th Terrace to the north and beyond at what Peterson would later learn was Mount Hope Cemetery. Some locals not fleeing their homes fought off strangers or loved ones attacking them. This man recognized the other dead people were slowly winning that ground war.  Low-buzzing jets from the Kansas Air National Guard brought the man back to reality. He raced over to start Tina’s Bronco and pull it beside Becky’s drive, turning west to let her parked vehicle idle. Minutes later, Tina emerged carrying a yellow cooler chest with Becky, each also bringing one bagged clothing bundle. Somewhere behind them Tyler and Lisa were carrying school backpacks with personal items and a small white beagle trailed them, until one of those aircraft flights dropped explosives on this neighborhood. The spreading fireball consumed Becky Hunt’s house, dog Sadie and her kids as they were still inside the garage, the minivan and cycle also exploding. Tina was thrown against the Bronco’s interior and hit her head on the left rear passenger’s door. Hank pulled Becky inside the Bronco’s front seats just as they were hit by burning shrapnel.

#

Hank Peterson climbed out of the red Ford Bronco, as it lay on its left side, flipped by the explosion, and righted the car back onto four wheels by himself with serum-generated strength. Finding Tina only had a concussion and remained unconscious, and Becky’s children Tyler and Lisa Hunt were charred bone fragments inside their home’s ruins with Sadie the beagle, the man loaded Becky’s unconscious shrapnel-injured dying body into the Ford’s front seat, leaving Tina resting in back, and raced toward the hospital where Nurse Hunt worked. Using his military ID to gain access inside the Colmery O’Neill VA Center, Peterson found an abandoned examination room for checking all his ex-girlfriend’s blast injuries.

Her pulse is getting weaker, he then touched a jagged piece of metal in Becky’s left temple that bled badly along with other shrapnel injuries, also noticing her sprained right elbow from its odd angle, and this place is busy evacuating any remaining patients to safety.

He heard gunshots from rifles and pistols somewhere inside this facility, helicopters landing atop its roof and fighter jets still bombing the greater Topeka area, noting Betty Hunt’s pained features caked with soot and blood. Rubbing her face and noticing the wound on his left forearm that had already started healing with yellow serum from the dead circulatory system dried over that laceration, Peterson knew how he might prevent Becky becoming another mindless walking dead.

Radio reports said it takes minutes for a new corpse to start moving and attack the living.

Hank had felt faint hints of that craving for human flesh since his recent awakening, but realized the Gravedigger serum made him distinct from other corpses. Taking one cardiac needle and syringe, he siphoned a few ounces of the yellow-green liquid from his right elbow crook and injected it directly into Becky’s heart as her breathing slowed.

I know from reviewing computer files while in storage they had replaced all my blood with this stuff. It has to work again now.

Seconds later Becky Hunt died, but soon sat up on that exam table screaming. Hank restrained her against that gray leather upholstered surface until her thrashing motions ceased and she rested. At that moment, two men in camouflage uniforms wearing Military Police armbands and carrying M-16 rifles burst through the door, both weapons pointed straight ahead.

“We heard someone screaming,” a swarthy Latino of the duo stared at Peterson with heightened suspicion, “and – hey, what’s going on in here?”

“Oh my God,” the suntanned MP with red hair and freckles stared at the slow-moving injured Becky through widened eyes, “she’s one of them! Shoot her!”

“At ease, men,” Peterson kept his sunglasses on and pulled out that pilfered ID, “I’m Lieutenant Krebs temporarily attached to the National Security Agency. This staff nurse is going to be fine. Just leave her to me.”

“Sorry, Sir,” the first man’s dark eyes showed conviction in standing orders, “they get their freaking heads blown off, no exceptions.”

Before either man could pull his trigger, Peterson leaped across the exam room and shoved them through that door into the hallway cluttered with abandoned gurneys, IV stands and other discarded equipment or medical garments. His programming taking over, Hank crushed the trigger happy redhead’s throat chopping his trachea, suffering three hits in the left neck and shoulder. The other man’s bullets went through Hank’s right cheek, temple and scalp, but he smashed that rifle in the MP’s face fatally forcing his nose into the brain.

It didn’t hurt, just like every other time I’ve been shot.

The MPs both dead, Hank took their rifles and collected Becky, the reanimated woman now calmly allowing this former love to lead their way from this chaos as her eyes also glowed. The men he had killed would soon add to confusion inside this VA center’s deteriorating security situation.

She’s responded to the injection. Maybe it can help others like us someday become almost normal.

Peterson loaded Becky into the Bronco wrapped with a white blanket and Tina’s sunglasses over the eyes, and spread another blanket across his sister in the back seat. He reasoned jets would never attack moving ground vehicles as the average zombie lacked intelligence and driving coordination.

“We might make it, Sweetie,” he reassured the nurse still stirring occasionally as the serum continued affecting her body, “just hold on.”

He had glimpsed files inside the California base’s computer system about how the alien Gravedigger serum replenished itself by reverse-engineered advanced microorganisms. This innovation prevented dependence on transfusions to maintain any artificial life, and the scientists presumed the UFO ETs used it preserving injured bodies until later medical treatment was received. Hank removed Becky’s larger shrapnel and patched the wounds with some medical supplies from that hospital.

She might need more injections. We’ll wait out this crisis in Great Bend. It should be safe there for now.

The man used his Krebs ID to get past check points, guards that allowed him passage from Topeka’s quarantine zone with two wounded women ignoring bullet holes or yellowish residues dried around them on his face and clothes. Peterson used his sister’s gas card to charge fuel for the return drive across Kansas that night, figuring she would not object. They stopped at her house east of Great Bend a half-mile north off US-56 and Hank reunited his semi-conscious sibling with Alvin Meyers, borrowing the Ford taking Tina for medical care before reaching the Peterson farm.

#

At first, it was a few wandering by along that road and stopping to remain under the oak trees, but before long the non-living crowd gradually enlarged as this crisis stretched across summer. Hank and Becky heard reports, from the battery-powered radio he found inside an abandoned farm two miles west of here, about America and many other nations where the dead overwhelmed government efforts to control or eliminate them. The US Air Force had sterilized major cities using thermonuclear bombs. The radioactive fallout only served to sicken and kill people for miles around, producing more zombies.

“Those fools,” he remarked, holding Becky’s hands seated at an old card table, that and chairs found from other homes, “they finally really did it. We’re immune to radiation.”

“Maybe it’s for the best, darling,” Becky had regained full power of speech after a half-dozen injections, “we’ll manage.”

Becky’s skin had regained its vigorous tanned appearance, despite her body never being above room temperature. He gave her a dozen injections in all, the serum slowly replacing that lady’s congealed blood and creating an imitation of life.

“And just what do they want? I never liked crowds.”

He looked out his living room’s exposed front window at the wandering dead people staring toward their farmhouse, each one seemingly awaiting something.

“They never attack us,” she noted, as he kissed the spot where shrapnel was once embedded in her skull, “whenever we take walks together. Maybe you should say something to them like a politician. We’ll need to rebuild civilization.”

Initially scoffing at his lover’s quaint idea, Hank later realized Becky might be correct.

But do these other zombies even think or understand?

Days later as leaves began changing color in this part of Kansas, Henry Lee Peterson stood on the front porch’s top step with Rebecca Lynn Travers (she dropped her ex-husband’s name as death now parted them long after divorce). The couple had found some nice clothes resembling their Senior Prom attire for this occasion – Hank an ill-fitting blue suit and Becky a spaghetti-strapped peach bridesmaid’s dress.

“Maybe I can do this,” he remarked to her as the lady took his right hand, “I have to see it as an opportunity. Hell, I served my country once in Vietnam and again for the CIA after getting killed. Today I’m doing it for the third time.”

“They say ‘third time’s the charm,’” Becky gave him a small encouraging kiss on the right cheek, “and I believe you’re the one to be their leader, so go knock them dead – sorry, deader.”

There were a few thousand zombies in the yard and fields, no longer harassed from combat jets seeking targets to strafe by bullets or bomb with ordinance. As if sensing this moment’s importance, the creatures surged closer toward the couple.

“Hello, my fellow undead Americans,” he felt silly starting with words aping some Presidential State of the Union speech, “we gather here today in the sight of God after our nation has suffered its greatest crisis, as your presence testifies to our resilience against adversity. Now we begin again.”

Hank enjoyed the zombie spectators staring at him in rapt attention but never reacting otherwise, recalling an old saying appropriate to his nearly-unique (apart from Becky) role within a strange new world.

In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king.