I was just back from the war, about two months, still feeling like I was cleaning sand out of my private parts, if you know what I mean. I also had the bum ear and the bum leg from the war. So all in all I was feeling pretty useless to my family. We were in a tight spot, with Dad long gone, my brother Jorge deep into the meth, my sisters married off and living back in Mexico, and with a tiny sheep ranch that pretty much had no sheep. Well, there we had the two left. Ma tried to hold our family together. She kept saying the Sun always had to shine again sometime. But I could see in her eyes that things looked bad even to her.

The dog just showed up one day, probably looking for scraps. I saw my brother out front, playing tug-of-war with it with an old rope.

I told him, “Jorge, get that pinche dog outta here before it gives you rabies.”

“It’s a great dog,” he said, but I could see it was nothing but a curly-haired mutt, big empty patches of skin on it. Maybe it’s great grandma was a border collie, maybe, but the apple had fallen pretty far from the tree.

“It’s a mangy dog,” I said.

“Could be a great sheep dog,” he said.

“We ain’t got but two sheep, brainless,” I said, but he ignored me. I figured the dog would figure soon enough there wasn’t much chow for him here and then move along.

I limped to the truck and drove out to the edge of our property. Did a perimeter patrol. New habit. We lived outside of Mason, in Texas Hill country. Really pretty land. At least it used to be. You could go fly fishing one day, count wildflowers the whole next day. Now most of it was dry, unkind, not pretty anymore. Can’t keep up good land without good workers.

It was only a little while before the bank would come take it anyway, pretty or not.

Sure enough, we didn’t need another body to look out for.

* * *

The next day the dog was still around, sitting on the steps back of the kitchen door. I walked over, and it scooted out of my way, its tail between its legs. But it didn’t have that look that most dogs do when they’re letting you know who’s master. His body was wiggling, but that dog still had this sparkly look in his eye, like he was playing me for a fool. I give him a good kick off the steps.

But I hit it with my bad leg. Dang. A bolt of pain ran up my knee and to my skull. I caught my breath and yanked the door wide. Inside, I hollered at Jorge, “What’s that pock-mocked mutt still doing ’round here?”

He hit ’bout as high as the ceiling when I came in. The meth’ll make you jumpy.

“Marco!” Jorge was sitting there, rocking from side to side, his supper in front of him. “Marco!” he said again.

“Don’t be feeding that dog, guey,” I told him, “or it’ll never leave.”

Then that boy did something he’d been doing a lot of lately. Crying.

“Listen, Marco, I ain’t got nothing here. My girl left me and took my kids. Speedy’s run off.” Speedy was our collie. A good sheep dog. He went for a long walk months ago and hadn’t come back. Smart dog, I tell you what.

I could see the skin of Jorge’s face was dry and scratched. His mouth was already starting to concave.

“Listen. Listen,” he said, getting up and then sitting back down. “I didn’t get to go to school. I didn’t get to go to the army. That’s all you. On top of that, you’re Mom’s favorite. She looks at me like I’m a piece of furniture. So let me keep the stupid dog!”

My brother never was one to make a whole lotta sense. But I figured he was saying the dog made him happy. At least it wasn’t gonna kill him, like the meth.

“Fine,” I said. “Keep the stupid dog. That’s all we need is another mouth the feed.”

I took my supper and went to the living room. Mom was in there, watching the news. She had her after-dinner bourbon next to her, and was doing her knitting. The TV said Los Angeles was under martial law. Nothing new. Something about the flu getting out of hand, not enough inoculations. You hear the same thing every winter.

Mom looked up from the TV and said to me, “How you like that supper, son?”

She’d made ropa vieja and refried beans. It was pretty darned good. A world better than rations.

“It’s great, Mom. Just like you always made it.”

“Well, that just about finished that last groceries we had. You’ll have to go to market end of this week.”

“How’s our credit?”

“We’re still in good graces, gracias a dios,” she said and knocked on the wood of her chair.

Then she handed her glass to me. “Top me off, por favor.”

I got up, got her bourbon, and refilled her glass. Then I finished up my supper. In New York City, they’d declared a state of emergency.

* * *

I had the dream again. I was sitting in the back of a truck, and we were making good time on this road outside of Mosul. That’s when we must have hit it. An explosion so loud it was the last thing my right ear would ever hear. I went tumbling, feeling things break in my body. I was on the side of the road, one arm curled under me, my other hand opening and closing on the dirt.

I woke up in the corner of my room, blankets tangled around my leg, covered with enough sweat to make my shirt and shorts wet.

Lord, I hated that dream.

Well, it was about time to wake up anyway.

I hobbled downstairs and found my brother curled around that dog on the couch. You could see the ribs easy on both of them. I went to wake Jorge, when the dog bared its teeth and me and growled at me. That son of a bitch.

“Wake up, guey!” I said, bouncing then tilting the sunken cushions with my good foot so the danged mutt and he rolled off the couch and hit the floor. “Time to go to market.”

Waiting in the truck, I saw Jorge was bringing the dog along, helping it into the back.

I waited till Jorge was in the truck.

“I bet you named him already?” I said.

“That I did,” Jorge said. He was drumming on the dash like it was a conga.

“So what you name him?”

“Pendejo,” he said and used his fingers like drumsticks.

“Pendejo.” I laughed. “What the hell for?”

“It’s the only thing he answers to. “Get out here, Pendejo!’ ‘Sit, Pendejo.’ ‘Fetch, Pendejo.’ Old Pendejo is his full name.”

Pendejo was not a nice thing to call someone, even a dirty-looking, curly-haired, mangy dog. But I guess the name kind of fit.

* * *

When we pulled into the Super S mart, there were a mess of cars and trucks parked outside. People were coming out with two or three shopping carts apiece, hauling away food, water, supplies.

We passed Mr. Perez loading the back of his truck.

“Morning, Mr. Perez,” we both said.

“Marco. Jorge. Seems like new deliveries didn’t come this week and won’t be coming next week. Better stock up now, boys.”

We said our thanks, found a parking spot, and went inside the store. The dog would’ve followed us — it wanted to be wherever Jorge was — but my brother got some rope and tied it up in the truck bed.

I hadn’t seen this kind of chaos in the store since the last round of big tornadoes we had a few years ago. The shelves were pretty bare, and there was no beer left at all.

We was just about finished loading the back of the truck, the damn pooch Pendejo watching us the whole time, wagging his nasty excuse for a tail. He had chewed through the thick rope Jorge had tied him up with. Some chops on that dog.

So that’s when Jorge went up front to start the truck when I heard him yell.

I looked around the side and saw one guy punch my brother square in the face, knocking him back, then pulled him out of the cab. Another guy right was behind that guy with a crowbar. It was the Gardner brothers, Aaron and Ryan. Local roughhouses. I went to move, but the pain that shot through my leg stuck me in place.

That’s when the dog jumped them. He had gotten to the roof of the cab without my seeing him, and from there he landed right into Aaron’s chest with his paws, pushing him back and away from Jorge. Ryan took a step toward him with the bar, but the dog barked up a fierce storm. Old Pendejo flashed his teeth and growled like a bear and stood his ground. Jorge lay twitching on the ground, dazed and bloody.

Ryan swung the crowbar, but the dog was faster, and leaped high and bit the air — so close to Ryan’s face he must have felt the breeze.

“Whoa! Villalobos. Back your dog off,” Ryan said. “Thing’s probably got rabies.”

“What you want, Ryan?”

“We just want the truck, Marco. Just give us the truck.”

“Get your own goddamn truck.”

“Ours broke down. We gotta get gone out of town.”

“I ain’t letting you. And sure enough this pooch ain’t letting you.”

“Hell with this,” Ryan said, and he dragged his brother up and they got out of there. Pendejo kept up his barking and growling the whole time till they were out of sight.

I helped my brother up, and we both got the dog get into the cab with us. Then I hit the gas.

Fighting the Gardner boys would not have got us killed, but it wouldn’t have been easy, what with my leg and all. I had to admit I was impressed by the dog.

“That Old Pendejo’s full of fight,” my brother said, starting the conga again on the dash. “He sure can kick some butt.”

“Sure can,” I said. “Old Pendejo.”

We both laughed. It was good to laugh with my brother again.

* * *

On the way back to the house, Mom called my cell and told me she’d gone to Mrs. Coleman’s, who’d taken ill. Mrs. Coleman had two daughters, both of whom had moved to the coasts soon as they were old enough, so she had no one to take care of her. Mom was always doing stuff like that for people.

It was before noon, and my brother said he didn’t feel like looking over two scrawny sheep. I guess his laziness was catching because I didn’t feel like doing much of anything either. Maybe it was because my knee was throbbing. Maybe it was because Mom wasn’t around for the first time in a long time, and so it felt like we were kids who had the run of the house.

I said to my brother, “You want a beer, Jorge?”

“Say what? It’s not even noon, bro.”

“I’m getting a beer.”

“Hell, then get me one, too.”

So we sat drinking beers in the living room, me in Pop’s old chair, and Jorge in Mom’s, and Old Pendejo cleaning hisself on the rug in front of us, making these disgusting licking sounds.

“I wish I could do that,” he said.

“Don’t you think you should get to know the dog a little more, guey,” I said, and we both got a kick out of that for a while.

Jorge broke into a bag of chips and ate them like a starving man. “Chips,” he said. “Chiiippps,” between and during bites.

After a few beers I told him I was worried about Mom.

“She’ll be all right. Mrs. Brown still has her old shotgun she used to scare us with as kids.”

“No, I mean, Mom, Mom’s getting older, and this ranch ain’t got the legs to go much longer.”

“It’s pretty much past dead, I say.”

I looked at him. His body seemed melted right into the chair. He looked even more useless than I felt.

“I’m worried about you too, Jorge.”

He laughed. “You got your own problems. Let mine be mine.”

We didn’t say nothing for the longest time after that. Just drank beer after beer. The TV was on, but there was no picture. “Cable’s out,” my brother said. “Shoot, it was just on last night. Something about air traffic being stopped, borders being closed.”

“Same old drill,” I said.

“Same old drill,” he said.

I cracked open another beer. My brother kept shifting around in his chair, kind of restless, picking and scratching at hisself. Sometimes he would get up and walk around the room, and the dog would follow him. Finally, Jorge put in a DVD for some action movie we’d seen a million times. But then he started talking.

“What was up with those Gardners today?” he said, looking at the screen.

“Just loco,” I told him. “They were always a few sandwiches short of a picnic.”

He laughed. “But why would they want to leave town? You think this virus got them spooked?”

“Everything spooks them. Here we are, miles from the nearest big town. We got nothing to worry about. Worst thing’ll happen, it’ll hit Houston. They’ll make people wash their hands a lot, and that’ll be the end of it,” I said.

“But, Marco, I heard — I heard that people that pass from this thing . . . well, they don’t stay dead.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, that’s what I read.”

“Read where?”

“On the Internet. Though it’s not working.”

“What you mean?”

“I don’t know. Internet went down. Probably ‘cause of the cable.”

“People spend too much time on the Internet anyway,” I said. “That’s all false information and gossip. Shoulda seen all the stuff they wrote about us in Iraq. Don’t pay that garbage any mind.”

It was getting on long past suppertime, and we’d finished three six packs. I looked over at Jorge, and he was looking kind of paler than normal.

“You look tuckered out, guey. Go on to your room and get some rest,” I told him.

He said maybe I was right and took off. The dog followed right behind him. Me, I took two steps and collapsed onto the couch. I propped my bum leg on a pillow and lit out.

When I woke up, it was night time. I rolled over and saw my wallet on the floor. Must’ve fallen out when I fell asleep. It was empty.

I found the dog was tied to the front porch and gnawing on the thick piece of rope keeping him tied.

My brother was gone.

* * *

I had an idea where Jorge was, out at the Motel. Kids had been getting high there for years. Even I used to go there. I got out my M9 pistol from my foot locker, loaded it. I pictured aiming it right at Jorge’s head.

Pinche guey.

I put the gun in the drawer next to my bed, and threw myself down on the bed.

The dream came back that night. Sitting in the truck. Driving outside of Mosul. The explosion so loud. I went tumbling, feeling things break in my body. On the side of the road, I had one arm curled under me, my other hand opening and closing on the dirt. Then someone was calling my name, getting my attention, bringing me back to consciousness. “Villalobos! Villalobos! You all right?” It was my CO, and I think he saved my life, snapping me awake before I could fall deeper. You know what I mean.

I woke on the floor again, blankets around my leg, covered with sweat.

I noticed then the dog was in the room. It walked slowly over to me, its dirty nails scratching on the floor, wagging its dirty tail, and damn if that dog didn’t sit down right in front of me and put its head in my lap. He looked up at me with these huge brown eyes. Looking right through me. Like it knew.

I got up, got myself a shot from my bottle next to my bed, sat back down in that spot on the floor, and the dog put its head right back where it was before, and looked up at me again.

* * *

I woke up late, a few hours past dawn, and I was about to call Mom on my cell, when the house phone rang.

“Marco. Gracias a dios! Hurry!”

When your mother calls you half-hysterical on the phone, you better get going. I didn’t think twice when the dog followed me into the cab, and we raced out the ranch in a cloud of dust.

I heard the shotgun blast about a mile before we got there.

The truck had good pickup, and I floored it.

The dog and I jumped out of the car at the same time and ran for the door, Old Pendejo barking fiercely the whole way. I ripped open the front door. He pushed right past my legs and ran inside. In the foyer it smelled — it smelled like a thousand places I knew in the war. In the kitchen, there was Mom was sitting on the floor, with a shotgun in her lap.

And there, in front of her on the floor, was Mrs. Coleman. With her head busted open like a pumpkin tossed out a speeding truck. I’d see things like that before, but seeing it on Mrs. Coleman’s plain, brown kitchen floor just made it much more disgusting. She had on her bunny slippers, too.

My mom started talking. “She got the strangest fever I ever saw,” Mom said. “She was so cold, so cold. I made her some soup, but she wouldn’t eat it. Did you boys eat?”

“Yes, Mom, we ate.”

Mom nodded. Her hair, which was always neatly combed, was a big cotton candy mess above her head.

“What happened, Mom?”

“She got up, looking horrible. Really bad. And then she attacked me. Like she was . . . like she was trying to eat me. She was trying to eat me. She clawed me like an animal.”

My mother showed me long, deep scratches on her arm.

“I got to get you to the hospital.”

“I shot her. You have to understand, I had to. Then she got up again. She got up again. So I had to shoot her again.”

I saw then that Mrs. Coleman also had a spread of gunshot across her left side. The kind of shot that should have stopped just about any woman in her 60s.

“I’ll call the sheriff later,” I said.

Mom showed me the cell phone in her hand. “I tried. No answer.”

Mom seemed like she was in shock, but she said she just wanted to go home. In the truck, she whispered, “Drive faster, Marquito.”

At the ranch, I picked her up and carried her inside the house. There was blood on her apron.

* * *

I wanted to get Jorge, and drag his ass back to house, but Mom was sick, and I had to take care of her. I sat on the floor right outside her room while she slept. Old Pendejo, he stayed right there with me.

I went downstairs and made some toast and tea with a little of her bourbon and brought it up to her. She was propped up on a bunch of pillows and staring out at nothing. It looked like she had a fever, but she looked cold and pale.

The dog came into the room with me.

“Some food for you Mom.”

“Thank you, son. But I don’t think I could keep it down.”

“Well, I’ll just put it here. Tea’s got some bourbon in it.”

She reached for that right away. She said, “I see that mangy dog is still around.”

“Yeah, it’s Jorge’s. It’s his best friend,” I said and sat down in the chair by her bed. The dog sat on the floor next to me, and my hand naturally went to pet him.

“Looks like he’s pretty attached to you, too.”

“I guess.”

Mom suffered a lot in her life. My dad was from Mexico City, and he met Mom when he was in the army back in the day. She was from Fajardo, which is in Puerto Rico. That’s right, we’re Mexiricans. Mom used to live right on the beach, she told us. But Dad took her deep into the heart of Texas, I guess, where the skies go on blue forever, but there ain’t no beaches. I know she had a tough life here on the ranch, with one son a druggie and the other pretty much a gimp.

But what on Earth could have made her shoot Mrs. Coleman in the head? Mom was just too young to be senile.

“Where’s that wonderful brother of yours anyway?” she said.

“He’s —.” I couldn’t think of a lie fast enough.

“I know where he is. You don’t have to tell me.”

I didn’t say nothing. I just kept petting the dog.

“He’s why I hide my money all over the house, you know.”

“I know.”

She finished the tea and put down the cup. “I gotta close my eyes for a few minutes. You don’t have to stay.”

* * *

I closed the door behind me and stood there in the hallway, feeling more useless than ever.

That’s when the dog started wagging its tail. Touching my hand with its nose and then going to the stairs and coming back to do it again.

“What’s the matter, boy? What’s the matter, Pendejo?”

The dog led me outside, and then he did the damnedest thing. He found this rope and he nudged it right up to me. I picked up one end and right away he picks up the other in his teeth.

Dang. My brother was out getting high, and my mother had just killed her friend and now was upstairs sick with Lord knows what, and all this stupid dog wanted to do was play tug-of-war.

Stupid simple animal.

And you know what?

I could feel the heat of the setting sun on my shoulders, and Old Pendejo, he was pulling pretty hard. I could feel an ache in my forearms. I felt like a kid again, like a boy, better than I had felt in a couple years.

It was a good feeling.

Stupid dog was right. Right there he taught me something important. To enjoy the little things, the small moments.

And then he stopped.

His eyes did this sort of dance, to the left and to the right, and he dropped the rope from his mouth. He turned and looked toward the western arm of the ranch, where a series of hills lead over to the Brown property.

There were three of them coming over the hill. With the sun behind them I couldn’t see their faces. They walked slowly, wobbly, like they had all the time in the day and more to burn.

The dog started barking, then running toward them, and then running back, behind me. The dog was scared. I thought this dog had the biggest cojones I’d ever seen. But now he was scared and tucked behind me.

I looked back at the three figures. I was about the call out, when right then another figure ran out from a small grove of trees we had, over to my right.

It was Jorge, his mouth opening and closing, yelling something. I could hear it like a whisper in my left ear. It took a second to work it out. “Marco! Marco! Run!”

When he was a few feet away, the dog ran to him, jumping up and down on him, barking, “Hello,” I guess.

But Jorge ignored him. “Get your guns, bro!”

The three figures weren’t much closer. But I could see they looked pretty odd. One looked like it had a broken neck.

There was a Remington 700 in the house, and the M9. I got to the house first and grabbed the rifle.

“What’s going on?” I yelled at my brother, running up the stairs.

“Give me the rifle,” he yelled.

“You’re getting the gun.”

“Why not the rifle? We gotta hurry.”

In my room, I checked the pistol, then handed it to my brother.

“Why can’t I get the rifle?” he said. “I have to get up close with this!”

I ignored him and checked out the window and the three figures were just approaching the front yard. Then I realized there were a few more a few yards behind them. I could see now that there was something wrong with all of them. They were deadly pale, some of them had blood all over their mouths. One of them for sure had a broken neck. And another had a hatchet stuck in its chest.

“Who the hell are these people?” I said.

“They came to the Motel,” he said. “At first I couldn’t tell them apart from everybody else. And then they just starting eating people. It’s that virus, I tell you, that virus!”

“Whatever,” I said. “Vamos.”

You live in the Texas Hill country like we do, with its small towns and big ranches, its oaks and its rivers, and the miles of big open sky, you sometimes forget there is a whole other world out there. You think the world out there can’t touch you. Sometimes you forget. Until you’re forced to face it.

As I stepped out the door I shot the first one. The bullet went through his chest and he kept coming. Next shot I stood my ground and aimed. Right between the eyes. He went down.

My brother took aim and shot the ground in front of another one.

“Aim for the chest,” I yelled.

He did and shot the next one right in the face.

“Again,” I said.

Old Pendejo didn’t have a gun but he was barking his face off. He looked nervous, ready to pounce, standing there between me and my brother. Good dog.

We had four of them down by the time I had to reload. I could smell them from the front steps. It was nasty, hot smell, like being upwind of a body dump next to an overused latrine.

Just as I was reloading, that smell got even more powerful. Coming from my right. Just as I turned, I felt the dog right behind me. I saw him crashing into two of them.

Before I could react, I saw another one come out the trees, stumbling. I took a breath and aimed and breathed out and shot. His head split open.

I heard the dog howl. Old Pendejo was ripping and pulling at one thing but the other one was clawing, and sinking its teeth into the poor dog’s hide.

I fired the rifled but it was empty. So I swung and used it like a bat, knocking the biter’s head up and cocked to the side. With two more swing down I had crushed its skull. The dog meanwhile had made quick work of the other one.

“No fair when they go two on one, boy,” I said. And Pendejo, his muzzle covered in blood, barked back.

“We got those,” my brother said. He looked like hell. Pale and scratched up.

“You look like hell,” I told him.

“I’m still prettier than you,” he said.

“Pinche guey.”

“Listen, son, we gotta get outta here. There’s more of them coming.”

“What are those things?”

He asked where Mom was, and I told her she was upstairs, sick.

“Sick with what?”

I told him about what I’d seen at Mrs. Coleman’s, that I’d thought Mom was a killer, but now that I’d seen these things, I understood.

My brother right there checked his weapon for ammo. “Marco, listen, we gotta. . .  we gotta take care of her.”

“Of course, guey—.”

“No, we can’t. . . we can’t let the old lady go that way.”

“What do—?”

“The virus. She’s probably got the pinche virus. She’s gonna turn into one of them.”

“Hold on,” I said, but he was running up the stairs. The dog took a look at me and ran after him. “Jorge! Wait!”

Running up the stairs was not an option for me. But I couldn’t let Jorge do what he was going to do. I took the steps slowly, pulling myself up. He was right at her door at the top of the steps.

“Jorge, stop!” I wanted to understand this thing first.

He was in Mom’s room. I forced myself the rest of the way. He was aiming at her. Jorge.” He turned. I stood my ground and aimed. And shot.

He crumpled to the floor.

The dog sniffed at his body.

I bent down to check him — and from behind me my mother latched on to my neck.

She was one of them now. Jorge had been right. She’d been infected.

She was strong, but skinny. I found the pistol on the floor and used it.

The house was quiet after that. I didn’t feel anything. The world had turned into a crazier place that I ever could’ve imagined. I had fought a war to help protect people I had just killed.

I checked the MP. One bullet left.

Old Pendejo whimpered. He nudged me in my leg, but gently, almost caressing it. That’s when I realized. He was all bit up, too, like Mom had been. And those crazies outside.

Could it turn a dog? I wonder if he was wondering that, too.

He looked at me with those big, brown blazing eyes. He knew. And he knew what I had to do.

I had seen some of my best friends killed in front of me, but I never did for them what I did for that dog. I cried. I cried like a child.

“Goodbye, Pendejo,” I said.

* * *

I got the rest of the ammo and took the truck. Wasn’t much gas left but I figured I’d take it as far as it would go.

I got a few miles from the house when I saw them. Over two dozen of them, moving on the road that slow, stumbly way they do. There was no way around them. I revved the engine. As I came to them, they looked up and reached out for me.

I plowed. They were softer than people.

They flew apart in pieces.

There were so many of them.

I lost control of the truck. I couldn’t see where I was going with the blood on the windshield. The engine lurched. Then I hit something. Hard. The truck spun and turned, and turned over. Glass. Metal crunching. Then it stopped.

I crawled halfway out, got to my feet, reached back slowly for the rifle.

They were coming for me.

I got partway to my knees and took a position. I started shooting at everything that moved, my rage boiling in my guts.

“Pinche gringo culero ve a chingar a tu reputisima madre!”

I shot and reloaded, shot and reloaded.

“Pinche gringo culero ve a chingar a tu reputisima madre!”

And then — I thought there would be more. But it was silent there on the road.

I collapsed on the ground. Something else was broken inside me.

I couldn’t get very far. I didn’t have the will. I didn’t want to go no more. I was on the side of the road. I had one arm curled under me, my other hand opening and closing on the dirt.

It took a long while, but then he came. Of course he would. I turned my head as much as I could and saw him, walking slowly in. Doing that death walk, but on four legs. He looked even mangier. Old Pendejo. Bullet hole in his hide. Those old sparkling eyes empty now, but still looking right at me.

Well. If it’s going to happen, might as well be your best friend.

I could feel its hot breath on my neck – it stank like death and latrines – and just as a drop of foamy spittle hit me and made me shiver, the dog bit.

How could I describe this refuge? If you can imagine a powerful subterranean deity angrily punching the earth from below and forcing one hundred acres of passable farmland three metres straight up, then you have an idea of it. How more people haven’t stumbled upon this place baffles me. Perhaps there’s no one left alive to find it.

I guess it formed when time and erosion washed away the surrounding soil to leave a stubby limestone column standing a step above the surrounding countryside. It undulates a little, and its sides are low but suitably sheer. This is where the Bowen family kept their little farm for over one hundred and fifty years.

The entire farm is secure, thanks to Joseph, and I’m safe up here to die in my own sweet time from starvation and malnutrition. This doesn’t worry me though because I’m looking forward to death. I’m sometimes impatient for it – despite my security, and despite being able to range freely without fear of attack. Not that I do much ranging- I hardly have the energy to stand.

If I ever felt self pity, which I don’t, I could easily picture myself as the heartbroken princess of Bowen farm, expiring forlorn and alone on a petal strewn bed while gazing with big tragic eyes out of a high window, a hand held limply to my wan brow, my long braided hair snaking rope-like on the embroidered pillows…hmm, well, not really. It’s not quite me.

Whimsy aside, I intend to die as dignified a death in this comfortable bed as my failing body will allow. I can even guess my lifespan; a week, two weeks maybe, and when death comes it’ll be a welcome relief. It’ll be the end of my depression, my madness and my crushing despair. The loss of my children……Oh, I’m sick of sighing, but the loss of my children and my husband will be my real killer – not any worldwide calamity. When I think of my three poor babies…

In the bleak empty mornings – when my kids should be jumping into my bed for warm hugs and kisses – I feel only a pure uncomplicated loss. On waking my head fills with a drab liquid putty which kills my early memories of them. I can only recall the livid blood smeared across my littlest ones chin and her dull dead eyes that once shone green.

My wish to die isn’t based on the hope of meeting them again. In my saner moments I’m of a more practical bent. There is no shiny afterlife with love and light and joy, so there’ll be no heavenly reunions for me. There’ll just be a long dark vertiginous nothing. I intend to stand rock steady at the end of my life and click, my synapses will misfire and quit, and I’ll simply fade out like the white spot on an old TV.

It’s the memory of my baby’s blank eyes that drives me out into the early silence and I stand at the drop by the farmhouse where Joseph cut the rising road away. I survey the brightening day and observe the occasional corpse below. They’re within touching distance, those beauties. If one of them had the wit to stand on the shoulders of another it could reach up and shake my hand. I think they’d like to do that. But they don’t interest me.

From the edge of this low tableland I look with overwhelming longing to the place where I left my kids; out beyond the miles of fields that I spent red-eyed weeks in crossing; out past those low eastern hills blurred by the blazing sunrise, and when my grieving eyes are frustrated by the physical horizon I let my minds eye take over and carry me even further.

They’re out there still, you know, wandering somewhere; my three little ones, empty eyed and lost, stumbling dazed across the face of the world, and I can’t squeeze them or comfort them. I can’t sweep them up or protect them and I can’t make it better. I can’t remember their breath on my face or their hair tickling my nose. I can’t even dream of them.

I try to remember them in life, at least that’s where I force my treacly thoughts, but I inevitably think of them otherwise. How can I not? That’s the heartbreak of it. That’s the awful abyss at my core, and I can hardly bear it.

*****

You see, this emergency wasn’t supposed to last for long, but it did, and it showed no signs of abating, so when our limited food supply began to run critically low my husband Jimmy and I packed what little we had left, briefed the kids carefully on safety procedures, and cautiously left our little suburban redoubt. We struck out westward on foot, armed only with a baseball bat, in search of a less inhabited and therefore safer area.

Here’s what we had in mind, Jimmy and I: if a place – say a small rural community – had only a small population before the event, then logically it should still only have a small population, living or dead. Right? Simple!

To us the West was the least populated place on the map but it was also the furthest.

And our Plan? Find a place like I’ve described and systematically rid it of the dead, then settle in and consolidate. How? Damned if we knew. And how would we stop more dead from wandering in? We didn’t know that either. And this was the loose, shapeless scheme we based our desperate journey on.

And travel on foot? Why yes. You see, as an agricultural country one could theoretically travel in a straight line, solely through fields, right across the width of this island. Theoretically… Fields are barred and gated and thus reduce the chances of casual access by corpses. There would be roads and rivers to cross of course, but we decided to face those problems as they arose.

This was the thrust of our plan; to reduce the risk of contact. But we were only halfway to the West when my family; my husband and three children, were taken from me forever.

*****

Here’s how I found myself on this raised tableland farm. I would have stumbled right on by it, whispering and laughing at my children’s capering ghosts, but for a shout from a nearby rocky shelf.

“Hey! Hey! Be careful. Hey, you there! Look out to your right. To your right!”

I was startled out of my raving delirium by this voice; the first I had heard in weeks and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Don’t stop!” it urged; exasperated. “Keep moving!”

A man stood on a, well… cliff is the wrong word – it was far too low to be called that – a sheer sided ridge is better, which ran parallel to my path. It was about fifty metres away. I had been rambling idiotically along its base without even noticing this low, natural wall. The man seemed quiet frantic and I stared over at him in fascination.

He was wearing a jumper that only his granny could have knitted. It was like a prop from a Christmas sitcom and I wondered, as I watched him jump in agitation from foot to foot, if he had any idea of how stupid he looked. Unfazed by my appraisal he pointed frantically at a spot quite close to where I stood.

“Get moving, for pities sake!” he cried. “Follow me over here!”

I was puzzled by his urgency until I looked around and saw that a nearby corpse, which I had been completely unaware of, had me locked in its jellied stare.

It didn’t have the use of its legs and it was pulling itself along hand over hand through the sparse grass. Its clothes had been shredded by this movement and its visible ribcage was a mess of flayed flesh and ragged cloth.

I laughed at it.

“Move it,” shouted the man angrily.

He hurried away along the ridge and I followed at a weak stumbling trot. We reached a point, a hundred metres or so further on, where the rise dipped a little in height.

“There are some easy handholds here,” he said as he lay flat and reached down for me. And he was correct; the limestone wall had some natural grips on its weathered surface. I hadn’t been eating very well and my little run had exhausted me, but I began to climb. He quickly saw I was in trouble so he reached down, took hold of my armpit and hauled me up. I rolled over the lip of the rise and lay panting on the grass at his feet.

“Are you ok?” he asked. He spoke with a northern accent – perhaps Donegal. “I thought you were going to let that crawler get you.”

I nodded that I was fine as I struggled to recover my breath. He has names for them. He looked me carefully up and down and I felt a flare of anger at his blatant inspection. A surprising reaction really as I was utterly indifferent to my appearance. My vanity had died with my kids. The weeks spent starving and sleeping in fields, trees and bushes had torn strips from my self image, as well as from my wet and filthy clothes.

I realised that my coat was missing. I could have lost it weeks ago but its unnoticed disappearance abruptly chilled me. An irrational fear swept coldly over me like a bolt from the blue. Was this inexplicable terror a marker of my mental deterioration?

“You haven’t been hurt at all, have you?” the man asked. Meaning, I supposed; have you been bitten? I shook my head again. He looked dubious though, as if I was lying. I tried to stand up but I was too weak so he helped me.

I peered over the little cliff and right into the glutinous eyes of the pursuing crawler. It was trying to follow me up the rock face. It repeatedly grasped the stony protrusions but lost its grip and slid away.

Then it spoke to me. Annie, it moaned. We should have a little chat about your family sometime. Come down and we’ll talk, you and I. My terror increased and I looked at my rescuer. Did he hear that? He didn’t seem to, as he was talking away.

“I’m Danny.” He was saying. “You haven’t eaten in a while, have you? We don’t have a lot but we can spread what’s left a little further. Let’s get you over to the house for a cup of tea to start with.”

But I was too distracted to listen. That monsters voice had been right inside my head! It knew my name! Its expression held a hint of slyness as it attempted the wall again. I’m not alone like you; it continued – each syllable enunciated perfectly- my brothers and sisters are here. Look. They’re joining us now. A few scattered dead flailed about below, making their graceless way in our direction. And see how persistent I can be? I recoiled with dread. I had voices in my head. I knew the ramifications of this. I was totally, perfectly, properly insane.

They can’t talk, I knew. They don’t! I looked wide eyed at Danny but he was still rabbiting on about something or other.

“Those ones were below the house near the cut,” he was saying, “but I’m after attracting them round here with all my shouting. How did you manage to make it through this lot, anyhow?”

I hadn’t seen them. I hadn’t heard them or smelt them. Had I been this close to the dead these last few demented weeks? Had I simply gibbered undetected through their ranks? Maybe the mad were invisible to them? But no, this part of the country is different to the agricultural areas I had crossed. This was a wilder place with fewer fences so they could wander with impunity.

“You don’t say much, do you?” He remarked as we plodded east along the ridge. I was too frightened and distracted to answer. Was this a panic attack? I’d never had one before. Yes! I thought, desperate to give myself hope; anything to kill this fear. Maybe that’s all it is.

Danny was somewhere in his fifties. Not physically fit, exactly, but he was one of those people who looked younger than they actually were. My mother would have classed him as a lovely man; respectable, with a nice parting in his well groomed hair. He was clean shaven too, so I assumed he hadn’t been personally affected to any great extent by the end of the world. But I was possibly assuming too much, though. He might just have water, a razor, and some time on his hands- or an entirely different way of dealing with things than me.

He described the farm. He said the perimeter was three metres high at its uppermost point and at its lowest, where he had helped me to safety, just two and a bit. A driveway; once sculpted into the eastern wall had ramped up to the farmhouse but the owner, Joseph Bowen, had cut the last few metres away with his mechanical digger, thus giving continuity to the perimeter and rendering the farmland inaccessible.

It wasn’t lost on me that this was exactly the type of place that Jimmy and I would have searched for. We couldn’t have specified it better on paper.

Bowens dilapidated farm house, along with some outbuildings, were clustered on the south east corner of this tableland and dated from the eighteenth century. A spring supplied fresh water. Crops had been planted but had rotted un-harvested due to recent events. The garden had some vegetables and fruit. There was a greenhouse with tomatoes, and an orchard that had some scraggly apples.

Danny spoke incessantly as we approached the little clutch of buildings and despite my internalised terror I realised that he was simply filling in the silence.

“Annie,” I croaked.

“Pardon?”

“Annie.”

“Pleased to meet you, Annie,” he replied with nervous relief. “Were you travelling alone?”

I shook my head and he nodded sadly.

“We’re nearly there. Then we’ll get the kettle on.” He glanced uneasily at some stumbling dead who were dogging our footsteps below.

“Do they talk?” I asked suddenly. I could hear a wild edge in my voice.

“Who?” He asked, looking over the drop. “Them? Of course not.”

I clutched his arm. “Are you sure?” He looked at me and I let both my hand and the matter drop.

*****

Here’s how my babies died: I left them concealed in a ditch while I scouted ahead for food; it was my turn to forage you see, leaving Jimmy to safeguard the kids. When I returned several hours later I found a group of undead monsters feeding on them. There was a nightmare skirmish in progress with growling and confusion and swinging ropes of torn muscle. A mist of blood drizzled the air from the frenzy.

It was such a flurry of red hazed activity that I couldn’t tell where the living ended and the dead began. I was struck dumb at the sight of my youngest girl chewing on her brothers’ head while others gnawed and scattered the bones of my other daughter.

My littlest girl glanced up swiftly at the sound of my disbelieving whimpers and regarded me blankly with nictitated eyes. Her slack features were utterly expressionless as she moaned an empty greeting. A rope of crimson drool curved from her lower lip to her brothers ruined head. Tiny bubbles ran along it.

It was at this precise moment that my mind and I parted company and we haven’t yet been reconciled. Matters may have even deteriorated. I have no memory whatsoever of leaving that place.

*****

Danny led me through the farmyard at the back of the house and directly into the kitchen. He sat me at the table and busied himself with cups and kettles. It was once a room befitting a servant based household, but its current dilapidated state betrayed the decline of its owner’s means.

An old Aga cooker kept the room warm and it was on this that Danny set the kettle to boil. Turf mould lay in a brown patina on the flagstones round its open door and warmth blossomed from its smouldering depths.

The high ceiling was mildewed and the dirty whitewash peeled in places. The walls were papered in an elegant, but faded, oriental pattern. Above the skirting I could see where the mice had stolen pieces of it to line their nests. Damp patches bloomed beneath the rotting sash windows. The whole place was shabby. Hello magazine wouldn’t be shooting here anytime soon.

“We have no milk and only a little sugar,” explained Danny. “I hope that’s alright.” I nodded and accepted a steaming mug of tea. My knees were jittering up and down beneath the table and my gaze flicked nervously about.

“We’re down to recycling the tea bags too; I’m afraid, just like the old Japanese POW’s.”

As he slid into the chair opposite me I looked out of the window and suddenly stood, knocking my mug sideways and sending the boiling tea sweeping across the tabletop. Danny yelped in surprise at my unexpected movement. One of my children; my boy, stared in at me from the yard. He seemed more substantial than usual but he turned and left when I cried out his name.

“Annie!” said Danny, “It’s Chris, its only Chris. He’s Joseph’s nephew. He was here when this whole thing kicked off and he had to stay.”

I was frozen on my feet. My heart hammered. It wasn’t my child. He wasn’t mine. How could he be? I was stricken. The kitchen dissolved. I felt myself being guided by gentle hands back into my chair. How could he have been? I was so accustomed to seeing ghosts that I wasn’t prepared for the sight of one so real.

I clung to Danny’s arm. It was the first human contact I had had in too long and I was never going to let him go. I was in mental freefall and this comforting arm was all I had to keep me aloft. I pulled myself further into its embrace and hoped I’d never lose the strength to hold it.

The boy eventually crept in to the kitchen and regarded me cautiously. It was plain that he was wondering who this grotesque madwoman could be. He didn’t resemble my child at all. Not a bit. Once again I was the victim of a callous joke that lunacy must play on the bereaved. Danny’s embrace helped calm me down.

“There you are Chris,” Danny said nonchalantly to the boy, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He lifted his arm from my shoulder. “Say hello to Annie, our new guest! Annie, meet Chris, the golden apple of his uncles eye. Aren’t you, young Christy?” he added lightly.

Young Christy looked at me as if I had two heads. I attempted a tearful smile which must have looked as ghastly as it felt because he ventured no closer.

“I won’t bite.” I tried and he cringed at my choice of words. Danny smiled awkwardly.

It transpired that Chris, who missed his parents terribly, was at an age where he no longer believed in fictional terrors like the Banshee or the Pooka, but he was now confused as to how there were far worse creatures than those malignant faeries lurking at the base of his Uncle Josephs farm, moaning their sinister invitations to him to come visit.

*****

Immediately following the deaths of my children I spent days stumbling through a morass of grief and madness. How I wasn’t taken down and killed during this malaise will have to remain a mystery. I wouldn’t consider it luck.

In my worst extremity I think I returned to the scene of their deaths. I remember calling and calling. Sitting safely here proves that my shrieking cries went unanswered. It’s all quite vague; I‘m not really sure if that incident even happened or not.

An over pressurised ball of solid matter began to form inside my head and prevented me from thinking clearly. I kept waiting for it to explode out my ears in twirling cochlea shapes. Sometimes when chinks appeared in this gloopy darkness I would see my husband Jimmy standing close by. Then the mud would pour back in and I’d just drift blankly on.

One day I awoke in a damp scummy ditch and discovered to my sorrow that something resembling reason had regained a foothold in my head. I stood up and started walking numbly west.

*****

Just as Danny finished the introductions with Chris a large man wearing muddy Wellington boots and a black woollen cap walked loudly into the kitchen. He was in his middle forties and strongly built, but getting a little soft around the middle. He looked like a man who enjoyed a few pints, yet wasn’t beyond wrestling a grown bullock to the ground if it needed worming. He stopped dead and stared at me in surprise.

“Hello,” he said. “Who are you?”

I still couldn’t speak after the fright I got on seeing Chris. I wished Danny hadn’t let me go.

“This is Annie,” said Danny, when it became obvious I wasn’t going to say anything. “She’s a little upset. I found her strolling by the south face a few minutes ago. Annie, this is Joseph, Chris’s uncle. We’re here by his good grace.”

“Well, Annie,” said Joseph, “I’m pleased to meet you and you’re welcome to stay. I can see you’ve been though the wars, but you’ve arrived at a bad time, I’m afraid. We have a corpse wandering near the Callow and I don’t know how it got up here!”

The boy paled. Evidently this wasn’t an everyday problem. A corpse had successfully stormed their battlements. Danny looked uneasy.

“You know what,” said Joseph to the boy, dropping his voice to a reassuring level, “I think it’s that old wagon Mary Sutton from across the way. Remember her, Christy? She turned ninety during the summer.”

“Mrs. Sutton, yeah,” recalled Chris in a whisper. “She wasn’t that nice. How do we get rid of her?”

“Don’t you worry, Christy-boy, we’ll just fly-tip her over the side and forget about her.” He went down on one knee and wrapped his huge arms warmly round the frightened child.

“What’s she doing?” asked Danny.

“Just kind of walking about, really,” said Joseph. “Nothing much else. She didn’t see me, I don’t think, but we’d better arm ourselves, just in case.”

“Arm ourselves?”  Danny asked. “With what?”

“Well, I’ve a pickaxe, a sledgehammer. Eh… a slash hook.”

“Have you any baseball bats or anything like that? Golf clubs? Something to swing?”

“No. There’s a few oul’ Hurleys in the shed but I’d have to dig them out.”

“Well, we’d better do something fast. Have you any old sacks? We could just bag her if she’s so small. Toss her over the edge like you say.”

They seemed a little out of their depth. They were a couple of ordinary Joe Soaps who’d never been in a fight and were now faced with a deadly situation. As they debated tactics I gazed outside and saw my Jimmy standing over by the sheds. He crooked a finger at me; the same way he did to the kids when they were out of order, so I stood up and walked towards the kitchen door.

“Where are you going?” asked Danny.

“Outside,” I answered, nodding towards my dead husband by way of explanation.

Chris took a step towards me. “Don’t go out.” He said anxiously. “It’s not safe now.”

They couldn’t see Jimmy. I knew that, but I wanted to go outside anyway. I thought I’d feel calmer there. Besides, my head was putty filled and I didn’t want these people to realise how loopy I really was.

*****

As I trekked listlessly across the countryside I encountered a few lone corpses who had managed to penetrate the field system. They were easy to avoid. Once, when I was so low with depression that I was beyond stupid, I allowed one to escort me. My unhinged mind teased it. I’d wait until it was a metre away and I’d jump giggling out of its reach, stop, do exaggerated kung fu gestures at it and then prance away again.

The poor corpse eventually encountered problems navigating the rough clay ridges of a deeply ploughed field so I quit my little game and hurried on. Jimmy waited at the far ditch, shaking his head at my idiocy.

I walked up to him. “Hello, psychosis!” I yelled in his face.

*****

I left the farmhouse and followed Jimmy’s non-existent spectre west along a short track between small fields. No one tried to stop me. I could picture them looking questioningly at each other in the kitchen as I left.

When we reached the end of the lane I gazed appreciatively as the farm opened out. It was very green and well ordered. About half a kilometre ahead, maybe less, stood a spinney of old trees; chestnut and elm mostly – rare enough around here where the soil was quite shallow – and at the base of this little thicket was a lake- more of a pond – in which the trees were reflected in mirror like perfection. There was even a willow whose dangling branches reached across a bed of rushes and hung languidly into the water. This place was quite beautiful.

The landscape beyond the pond and the trees however, beyond the low tableland itself, was an unfocused smear of browns and greys which contrasted sharply with the surrounding greenery.

“I’m off to check on the kids before they wreck the place,” Jimmy said.

I let him go and surveyed the neatly trimmed hedgerows that marked the boundaries of Joseph’s fields. If there was a rogue corpse running loose I wasn’t too keen on bumping into it. The hedgerows were cut low enough to see anyone standing anywhere on the farm. Anyone of normal height, that is. But Mrs Sutton was very small, according to Chris. I looked for moving heads but saw none.

A boy’s soft voice from behind almost stopped my heart. My boy?… no, it was Chris.

“I snuck out to bring you back. Mrs. Sutton’s really not nice.” His features were furrowed with concern. I tried to think but my head was too dense with expanding foam.

“Let’s go as far as the pool.” I suggested. “It looks really nice.”

“What? No!” He looked furtively around. “There’s a dead one up here.”

I tried to make sense of this.

“Do you mean Jimmy?”

“Who?”

I shook my head at the poor child. “Don’t mind me; I’m as mad as a hatter.”

“Please come back. Uncle Joes starting to barricade the house and we’ll both get locked out.”

Young Christy morphed into my child. “Oh, come on down to the pond,” I insisted. “I’ll let you throw stones at the ducks.”

He wore the expression he normally used when he knew I was making fun of him. I laughed. “Last one there is a bag of rats!” I cried as I grabbed his hand and started to run, but he snapped his arm out of my grip.

“All right,” I said; puzzled, “suit yourself.”

He looked at me strangely and jogged back to the house, glancing left and right as he went. I was bewildered. Normally a kiddie magnet like the pond would attract him in a flash.

My two girls were already at the water when I got there. No, I’m wrong, all three kids were there. The chance of seeing ducks must have changed his mind. The trees stood on slightly higher ground on the far side of the pond and I saw Jimmy waiting for me in their shade. I joined him and sat with my back against the large willow and got comfortable within the root system. I settled back and enjoyed the view of the farm buildings in the middle distance.

Through a gap between the farmhouse and the sheds I saw Danny struggling with a little old lady. She was small. Who might she be now? I wondered, and what on earth was Danny playing at? I could tell it was him because of his jumper. Little Chris appeared and walked over to help him. Oops, I’m wrong. He was helping the old lady.

“He’s a real boy scout, that one.” Jimmy said.

Chris wrapped himself round Danny’s leg and seemed to nuzzle it.

“Oh, that’s a bit bizarre.”

Joseph ran from the farmhouse and began beating all three with a broom. No, wrong again, he was just hitting the boy and the woman. He seemed furious; roaring and shouting, but then the melee drifted out of sight behind the sheds. What a complete bastard, I thought.

The kids threw pebbles into the water. A fallen twig became a boat and they pelted it with little stones to make it sink. I was a tad disconcerted at my littlest ones habit of floating down from the branches and putting her blotched white face into mine, but Jimmy held my hand and laughingly swatted her away. His touch was cold.

*****

On my journey, when not mentally benighted, I was sanely baffled. How was it possible to feel so awful at ones loss and yet still live; to feel ones sanity grow only to have it crash again in tatters. It was a terrible joke. I could only shake my foggy, bursting head at the horror of it all. It beggared belief. I was sick to my stomach thinking about my kids.

Their pallid faces wouldn’t leave me. I couldn’t exorcise them. In the desolate days they walked by my side or glided spectrally in front of my dragging feet. In the empty nights their grinning shades hovered upside down and whispered close to my tear streaked face.

I’d scavenge for drugs. As there weren’t any trains, trucks or buses to throw myself under I decided that an overdose of codeine, which is mostly what I found, would deactivate my liver or kidneys quiet efficiently; giving me a perfectly acceptable death. I hadn’t definitely decided to end it but I wanted the comfort of choice.

*****

I had snoozed against the willow. I awoke to feel Jimmy pressing a warning finger to my lips. I could taste an earthy quality to it. Something was wrong.

“Shh, be very still,” he whispered in my head.

Danny was standing motionless in the pond. The water was up to his knees and he had been torn to bits. I knew it was him because of his clothes- little bloodstained reindeer. His nose was gone and his teeth and gums sparkled brightly where his lips should have been. Flesh was missing from his legs, buttocks and arms. Especially his arms; he probably wouldn’t use them again.

His clothes were reduced to bloody strips and I doubted if they’d see out the winter. Come January he’d be wandering in his underpants.

“Better than that jumper,” whispered Jimmy.

Over his shoulder, at the farmhouse, I could see Chris and the old lady bumping against the walls. Both were reaching upwards. I didn’t move and neither did Danny. He was staring my way but he couldn’t see clearly through the curtain of willow branches. I sat without moving for a full hour.

Jimmy and the kids were gone. He must have whisked them away from the danger. Oh, what am I saying? They’d never been here. Even as I watched them play I knew, but I had let the fantasy run. It was a bitter comfort.

Across the quiet distance; all the way from the farmyard, I heard a moan. Danny turned groggily at the sound and struggled wetly out of the pond, his city shoes schlurping as he went. I waited for a few moments before standing. My back ached from the bark of the tree and my legs were stiff. I was bursting for a pee. Wait though, isn’t someone in the branches? I looked up. No, only the constructs of my malfunctioning brain. I spent a few moments allowing my faculties to reconfigure.

I remembered the struggle in the farmyard. Danny was dead. Young Chris was dead. The old lady had been dead already and Joseph was out of sight, or dead, too.

I scrambled clumsily round the willow and crested the rise behind. There was nothing here for me so I decided it was time to go. I reckoned the Atlantic was only twenty kilometres away and I was no better off now than I had been when Danny first spotted me a few hours ago. At least I got a hug. That had been nice.

The western edge of the farm was only a hundred metres away so I loped over to see if I could find a place to climb down, but I had to stop and rest halfway. The drop was a little higher than I expected but I soon solved the mystery of how Mrs Sutton had gained access.

A minor landslip had turned part of the vertical drop into a steep rocky bank. Any determined corpse would be able to climb up, just like Mrs. Sutton. My crawler was scratching pointlessly at the shale a few metres below, too. One moan from her and others would find the landslip, so I hung back.

I made a no-brainer decision. I had a set of personal horrors to deal with. My body was disintegrating. Better to have these things torment me safely up here than in the dangerous wilds. But this breech needed to be dealt with first. Could I operate Joseph’s digger? I needed to get back to the farm and find his keys, or him, or both.

Now here was something; I had made a rational decision and I was doing something constructive. I had a pee- but there was hardly anything there – snuck back to the pond, and checked the farm from the cover of the trees. There was no movement anywhere. After ten careful minutes of watching and listening I made my way to the northern edge and followed the ridge eastward, crouching low, until I was just north of the farm buildings. I stayed out of sight and soon found myself behind a shed which backed on to the farmyard.

I was clean out of energy and I waited to catch my breath before risking a peek round the corner. Danny, Chris and the old woman had their backs to me as they moaned softly and pummelled the kitchen door. Danny’s useless arms flailed limply as he thumped at the wood with his body.

The lace curtains of a first floor window flicked sideways and there was Joseph, safely in the house. He unhooked the latch and pushed open the paint stuck window with the palm of his hand. The three looked up and I took this chance to stand out in plain sight. Joseph nodded at me in discreet acknowledgement and began wrestling a large television set into the window frame. It wasn’t a flat screen either.

“Christy,” he said to his nephew. “Get out of the way, me darlin’.” Then after a moment he let the TV topple.

It did a slow half roll on its brief journey from windowsill to Danny’s head; compressing his skull with crunching finality and driving him into the ground. Joseph, appalled, fell backwards into the house but he returned a minute later with another TV.

“Christy,” he said. “Please, if you’re still in there, get out of the way of this!”

This time both corpses went down under the weight of the TV but they both remained active.

The old lady flopped about in place like a landed fish. Chris’s spine was smashed low down and one arm slithered bonelessly about. His jaw was shattered and his tongue lolled out. He moaned accusingly up at his stricken uncle. Joseph cried out as he stared at the unspeakable sight of his beloved, but broken, nephew.

He aged visibly. He slumped against the window frame and his shoulders shook. He cried out in anguish, his face became red and puffy. “Oh, Chris! Oh, Chris. Oh, me lad. You should have stood away.”

“I can’t do any more, Annie.” He shouted over to me. “I can’t hurt Christy any more. You’ll have to do it. Will you?”

I was horrified. From my hiding place I shook my head in an emphatic NO.

“Please!” he pleaded. He put his hands to his face. “Put him out of his misery! I can’t do it!” I motioned that I was going to go round to the front of the house. We could talk there.

When I got round he opened the door, led me inside, then barred and locked it again. He brought me into a large room to the right of the hall.

“The parlour,” he muttered, as if giving a tour.

Like the kitchen the Parlour was mildewed but it retained the ghost of its old refinement. A few dark portraits of wistful Victorian ladies and stern looking gentlemen hung undusted on the walls. Dark heavy furniture left little walking room. In another life I would have liked this room. It had big windows and a pleasant southern view. It was bright with sunshine.

Joseph was car crash shaken. He filled two glasses with sherry. It was a strange choice of tipple but perhaps it was to his taste. He had to hold his own glass with both hands and as he drank I explained to him about the landslip on the west side of the farm.

“You need to cut away the slope,” I said. “But you’ll need to do it now, before any more get up here.”

He nodded and filled his glass again. He wasn’t in the least interested in how Mrs. Sutton got up here. He turned his face to the large sunny windows and broke down. The delicately stemmed glass tipped in his large hand and the sherry dribbled in rich ruby drops to the floor.

I was too numbed by my own perpetual grief to even consider comforting him. It didn’t dawn on me. We stood like this for a moment; him weeping noisily and me waiting patiently for him to finish.

I took his glass and filled it again. The liqueur was too rich for my palate. He downed it in a single gulp and sat heavily into a large armchair.

“Does anyone else live here?”

“No. My mother died three years back. My sisters are married and gone. Christy…” His face twisted in pain. “What’s your story, then?” he asked deliberately to break his own train of thought.

I didn’t answer and he still wasn’t interested. The silence drew out as I waited for him to leave and get the digger started. He looked around the familiar room with desperation; as if trying to imagine that the world was normal, that his nephew wasn’t crushed on the farmyard concrete, that he hadn’t wilfully broken human bodies.

“You’re a cold one, aren’t you?” He said.

I felt a stirring of contempt which must have shown.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Was it bad for you?”

I nodded silently. I was sane right now. If I spoke the tears would come.

“I’ll deal with the three in the yard,” I offered after a moment, “if you deal with the rockslide.”

He threw his drink back and rose, then nodded and left. I sat on the sofa, sniffed at my glass and then I tossed the awful stuff into the fireplace. A minute later I heard the deep growling roar of large machinery firing up. I had no sense of urgency in what I said I’d do, but I knew I needed to act before reality slipped on me again. I work better in the real world and there was real work to be done.

Joseph had barricaded the kitchen door with the table and a large dresser so I couldn’t get into the yard that way. I looked through the window and into a shed. I saw him sitting high in the cab revving the engine. Chris’s broken corpse was struggling one handed in his direction.

I found a pair of marigolds in a cupboard beneath the sink and fumbled the foul smelling gloves on to my hands. I ran-walked through the front door and round to the yard.

The boy who was no longer afraid of banshees lay twisting near the shed. Joseph sat in his machine with his eyes screwed shut. He wasn’t driving anywhere while Chris was in the way. I walked over and took hold of the boys limp foot, pulled him roughly across the yard and round to the front of the house. I heard the digger rev and set off on its mission.

I released the boy outside the front door and stood out of reach. His loose jaw wobbled horribly as he moaned. There were answering moans from below the cut.

I was becoming clogged up again. The mud filled my skull and dulled my thoughts. The dead boy blurred and I couldn’t see him clearly. I realised that I was crying. No, not crying, I was wailing. Keening. I was blinded with tears. I swiped my forearms roughly across my face to clear my sight.

“Not now,” I mumbled.

I swatted Chris’s groping hand aside and grabbed his ankle. I dragged him across the gravel driveway to the cut where the roadway had been.

The few undead below were aware that something was afoot. They had heard the moaning, the screaming, the crying; not to mention the machinery, and they clustered in agitation below. I pulled the boy to the drop and unceremoniously rolled him over the edge. He impacted softly within the undead crush and they fell on him quietly.

Jimmy was down there. He strolled over to the feeding pack to get a closer look.

“Jesus, Jimmy…” I whispered.

“They can’t see me, Annie. You better go round to the yard and get the oul’ one and the other fella.”

In the distance the digger went about its business as I concluded mine. I hauled the skittering old woman round the house and dumped her after the boy. Danny’s uncomplaining, but larger body followed. He was heavy work. I was entirely at the end of my energy levels. I scanned the area for any sign of Jimmy but he had gone. My mind felt a little clearer.

*****

Then, while journeying onwards one grey dismal morning, crippled with fatigue and depression, I vaguely noted that the fields around me were delineated by dry stone walls instead of hedgerows, and had been for some time.

I was in the West at last. So what now?

What now, indeed. I sat down on my arse in the squelching mud. The misty rain swirled round me and I cursed the stinking bastard universe. Was there any further point to anything?

As a way of putting off my final decision I decided I’d go down to the sea and try my luck on the Aran Islands. That’s as far west as I could get. And if the islands were overrun? Well, that’s just the end of the world then, isn’t it?

Huh. Like I gave a fiddlers.

*****

Back in the house I discovered that the Aga also heated the water, and for the first time since the event took place I stood under a warm shower. It had been months. I was encrusted with grime and filth of the most unspeakable kind. I had fungal infections on my scalp, crotch and behind my ears. My hair was a matted, lice infested mess. How did Danny manage a comforting arm round my shoulder? Or young Chris brave undead territory to chase me down a lane? Kilos of dead skin sluiced down the plughole as I scrubbed.

When I left the bathroom I jumped with fright as my little one skittering across the ceiling and out of sight. I could hear the others downstairs; Jimmy was laughing softly in the parlour. I shut my eyes and put my hands over my ears. When I took them away the house was quite.

I found neatly folded clothes belonging to Joseph’s sisters in the depths of the airing cupboard and I burned my own filthy rags in the Aga. I wasn’t in the slightest bit hungry but I braved a can of expired vegetable soup and audible gurgles percolated from my stomach as I ate.

All was quiet. The digger had fallen silent some time back but Joseph hadn’t returned. I scraped the worst of the muck from my walking boots, took a heavy coat from a hook in the hall and shuffled quietly and carefully up the lane. Maybe he’d simply run out of fuel.

Erring on the cautious side, and expending most of the energy that the soup had given me, I took a roundabout route along the south ridge until I could see the bucket of the digger rearing like a dinosaurs head above the spinney. It didn’t take long for me to get to where it was parked. It was a few metres back from the edge, just short of the drop.

Its activity had attracted a handful of dead but they just looked stupidly up at the unreachable yellow machine. Joseph had made a good, decisive cut into the tearable limestone face of the rockslide and scattered the debris. The Plateau was now secured; mission accomplished.

I found him in the trees by the pond hanging very, very still from one of the Chestnuts. He had nothing to stand on so I guess he climbed into the branches, tied himself off, and slid out into the clear air. His half open eyes stared dully at his family home and the tip of his inky tongue protruded from blue lips. His Wellington boots were fifteen centimetres shy of the ground – so good spatial judgement there, Joseph. Well done.

I knew that we all make our choices and I left him suspended there. I lacked the physical and mental reserves to cut him down. And my choice? I wanted a warm night by the Aga with a hot drink in my hand. I wanted to listen to the cold wind howling outside for a change, and I intended to sleep safely in a real bed.

I woke in the early morning with my customary sense of loss in a strange silent house. I dressed warmly and went outside to the cut. Jimmy was standing near the edge but I choose to ignore him.

I began my habit of looking eastwards and trying to recall what my little ones looked like in life. The shock of their loss had knocked all of my memories askew, or eclipsed them entirely. If I was to live for another hundred years I would still stand out here in an effort to recall the way they used to be.

Jimmy walked slowly over and joined me. I could feel him searching for my attention but I gestured him away. I shut my eyes and put my hands to my ears. That should do the trick. But it didn’t.

“Annie?” he said.

“Not this morning, psychosis.” I answered tiredly.

“Annie, it’s me,” he said hesitantly.

The words sounded differently than usual. They weren’t in my head this time; they came from outside. I looked at his dishevelled form. A beard framed his dirt streaked face and he looked older and more haggard than I had ever seen him. He was filthy and I could smell him from where I stood.

I ran so fast into his embrace that we both hit the ground at the edge of the drop. The dead moaned in excitement but there was no way we were going over the side. Oh, no! Not now! Not now! Not a ghost, not my madness, not an alien voice in my head; it was the real Jimmy! I squeezed and squeezed him. I scarcely dared breathe while his arms held me close to his newly skinny body.

“I found you,” he breathed, “I don’t believe it! I found you. I really did.”

We both must have made the same journey. What were the chances? We lay wordlessly on the grass holding on to each other for dear life. Two lost souls reunited.

I eventually broke my hold and stood, pulling him to his feet. He cupped my face in his hands. As I stared disbelievingly through my tears I saw something in his expression that betrayed a terrible and haunting truth, and I suddenly knew instinctively what it was. I just knew.

The blaze of my joy sputtered and went out. It died in a devastating instant of clarity. This was Jimmy all right, alive and in the flesh; but he was suddenly a stranger, a reviled stranger. This was a man who valued his own safety above that of his children. My children.

My fractured world imploded and a mindless rage erupted. I slapped him so hard for his cowardice that his head jarred sideways. He himself was unable to hide the horror of his own guilt. I could take a gun to his head right now and he’d welcome it. He’d thank me for it. He was suffering unspeakably because of his weakness. But so was I.

“Oh Annie…” he began as I pushed him violently away. I didn’t want him touching me. He grunted in surprise and stumbled backwards over the edge.

“Jimmy!” I screamed.

Enraged or not, I hadn’t intended this! The waiting dead broke his fall and our eyes met momentarily before he was smothered by their attentions. He seemed almost grateful. I had accidentally released him from a life of overwhelming remorse.

His screams were muffled by dry papery skin and moving, liquefied meat as they fell on him. He struggled to rise but it was too late. I saw young Christy clamp his mouth firmly onto Jimmy’s flailing calf, his limp body getting dragged sideways in the frenzy as he held on doggedly with his teeth.

I stumbled away in a daze and by the time I reached the house my skull was bulging with mud and molasses and I was screaming, screaming, screaming. This was the real end for me, and Jimmy never came back into my head again. I had killed him there too.

A few days later I visited Joseph but the walk up to the pond was almost too much for me. That poor grey thing welcomed me with waving arms. I tentatively touched his outstretched fingers but I didn’t like it. He was company though, even if he didn’t smell that good. Besides, who was I to complain? I hadn’t bothered washing after Jimmy died. I didn’t eat again either. I just couldn’t raise the interest and I didn’t seem to have the energy, anyway.

Joseph spoke to me. “Have you considered the possibility that you might end up like me?”

“Hanging?”

“No, dimwit. Undead.”

“No,” I said thoughtfully. “I haven’t.”

“Well, you should. This is probably the only viable farm in the country. It could be worked. You should take precautions to protect any others who might come.”

Over the following days my health accelerated downhill. Fungal infections blossomed and my legs developed running sores. Eczema covered large swathes of my body until entire regions of skin resembled papier mache. Everything became an effort. I eventually stopped drinking. Soon after that I couldn’t walk.

While I still had the strength I prepared lengths of cord and tied them tightly to my bedpost. I made sure, for my own comfort, that there was plenty of play in them. In deference to Josephs point I found a large black marker and wrote the following in big scrawly letters across the outside of the front door:

“Hi, I’m dead inside. Annie.”

There was no pun intended. Soon after, sensing it was time, I made my way to the edge of the plateau – on all fours – and hoped I’d have the strength to crawl back to my bed. I shuffled into a sitting position above the heads of the moaning corpses and set my minds eye flying free. It soon found all my babies; one, two, three.

I gathered them up and told them how much I loved them. I explained in simple terms that I needed to sleep and wouldn’t be speaking to them again. Thankfully they were far too young to understand the terrible finality of this. Then I hugged them all and, for what it was worth, I wished them all the luck in the world. I turned away then. I was far too dehydrated for tears.

The journey back doesn’t warrant description, but I made it – just. I used the last of my strength to tighten the cord around my wrists before falling limply on to the bed like a discarded sack of potatoes. I pretended I was being hugged by my warm, living children as my body shut itself down and eventually pushed me out into the long, long, eternal………Click.

Jim leant against the window; the cool night air leaked around the broken frame and cooled his reddened, drunken face as he sipped at the whiskey trying to garner some resolve.  His eyes refocused on his own reflection, as grey, wan, and lined as the skin of any Zombie. He thought about the last sixteen years running from the knowledge he had lost everything in The Fall, the same as everyone else. He had a memory of that black time, of biting teeth and running in the dark from the moans. Times of black grief and reckless mourning that weren’t to be talked about.

The weight of the experience formed a cross too heavy to bear. Everyone in Greater London yearned to share the stories of that time and gain some solace, yet few could, because the cross was carried by everyone. The memory of the Zombie apocalypse was too dark and personal to be borne by others.  Jim wondered if he was the only one with that recognition. Then, as he poured himself another glass of rough whiskey, he thought about Shayna and the kids, three little gems of life, and although he had a picture on his desk he realised he hadn’t thought about them in a long time. He had hidden from the pain using responsibility. He realised, that after sixteen years of fighting the enemy and building this city, he hadn’t grieved for them. He knew that was probably the longest time for anyone in the city, but it was too late now to grieve, no tears came, and he wasn’t even sure any more of the name of the youngest one.

He tried to gain the will to face his men and tell them it would be OK, that it wouldn’t be like The Fall. He knew this to be a lie. It would be worse than The Fall, and they would all die, no one would escape that hadn’t left the city already.  He knew this because The Minister had phoned him and told him so.

Eight days ago it had started as a curiosity, a lone Zombie shambling slowly down Knightsbridge, wearing a smart suit and carrying a sign, the last protester at an Undead rally. It was picked up on CCTV and tracked by a tired, laconic, operator who reported it to the Gate Patrol. They acknowledged with a casual grunt and watched it move onwards in its own quietly determined way past the husks of cars and overgrown verges piled with detritus. It was an ‘Ancient’ with sunken eyes and wiry limbs.

Eventually one of the guards folded his poker hand, shrugged at his friends around him, took his winnings and climbed the ladder up the wall of broken concrete and cars. As he struggled upwards he passed the hanging drapes that warned those who left that they would receive no more safety once through the steel and aluminium gate.

The wall stretched along Piccadilly in one direction and along Grosvenor Place in the other, encompassing Buckingham Palace and the gardens within the walls of ‘Greater London’. He climbed the forty feet to the top of the gate, constructed at the end of Constitution Hill, sat on the little chair in the rain rusted corrugated structure, took the binoculars from the hook, and looked out towards the lone figure ahead in the cracked and dusty streets. Once he had a bead, he focussed in. It didn’t look too fresh, but strangely the suit did. It shambled past the remains of shopping carts pushed to the side, and over shrubs that grew from the rain filled drains. The sign, clutched in its white knuckles, wobbled about as the grey Zombie lurched inexorably left to right like a metronome. It read;

The End is Nigh.

The guard finished his tea. Rifled in his bags for some bullets, found some and with them a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and carefully loaded the rifle. Looking up, the Zombie was a little closer, so he finished the cigarette and waited. Finally the guard raised the rifle, cocked it, settled it into his shoulder, and shot the Zombie through the head. It flopped dustily to the floor. The guard leant the rifle against the chair, rested his head in his hands and sighed.

An hour later to the second, Control rang through. Two more had been spotted coming down Knightsbridge, both carrying signs. He told the operator in the Department of Control about the sign the first one was carrying, and she asked him to tell her what was on the signs these two were waving.

The end is nigh

The Minister is coming!

Ten hours later, the guard was flanked by snipers, dressed in black fatigues and dark polarised glasses, their protection from the morning glare. They settled on the walls like Gothic crows, kneeling, crouching and lying with eyes pressed up to the sights. The minigun stations were manned, as were the flamethrower apertures at ground level. Behind him troops ran, frantically ferrying ammo from supply vans to the individual guns. He could hear orders being barked, men and women sweating as they threw case after case of ammo into position. An alarm sounded. Everyone fell silent and over public address system, an announcement was made.

“Here they come. Wait until the order to fire.” The tinny, disembodied voice said.

They number of Zombies had doubled every hour until this wave held over a thousand.  The signs they carried repeating the same mantra.

The end is nigh

The Minister is coming!

Prepare yourself

For confession

In one week

He will come

As soon as the mobs of Zombies were in range, and the order was given, the miniguns fired up to speed with a spinning whine. There were four of them around the gate and as one they roared in defiance at the mob. The bullets ripped through the flesh of the Dead, into those behind. Those who were not shot in the head rose to fight again. The guns trained in on them and cut them down with efficiency. A few minutes later, it was over and the guns spun down. The acrid smell of hot metal pierced the senses of the soldiers around. They relaxed, flexed wrists, cricked necks, smoked, and waited

For an hour more ammo was ferried to the gunning posts, and Engineers tended the hot old guns with cooling oils and pastes in readiness for the doubling of the Zombies again. Jim had wondered at that time how many Zombies The Minister controlled, or could control, maybe it was about a thousand, as many as had been sent in the last wave. If that was the case, of course The Minister would be better using subterfuge, so why announce his arrival? Jim realised this was the psychological component. The attack had been broadcast all over the city on the BBC. Everyone knew the Minster was coming, everyone knew that something was about to happen.

After an hour the next wave never came, nor an hour after that, and there was nothing for a few days. Even the reconnaissance missions reported very few or no Zombies around. It was as quiet as ever in the City of the Dead.

Jim remembered sitting in his office three days ago. It was late afternoon and he was reading a very dry report about estimated repair times for the wind farm system when his phone rang.  He flicked the receiver up to his ear and held it there with his chin.

“Bramer.” He said curtly. There was a shuffle and a click on the end of the line. Jim was just about to repeat his name.

“Ahh Jim. I kent I would just leave ya a wee message.”

Jim’s legs went weak. He recognised the voice from the MP3 he had played to Paul Jollie all those months ago. It was flat, hollow, threatening even in the quiet between words.

“Dunnae try talking to me, I’m just a recording…..I just wanted to let you know that its time for you to stop fightin’ and ready yersel. I’ll come and hear yer confession. I want you to kneel afore me and admit your sins. I say this, Jim, because when you see me for the first time, in three days time, i’ll walk straight intae yer city an’ you’ll weep an’ realise that there is nothing you can dae. Nothing you can dae to stop this happening.  Make yer peace with God, Jim, and I’ll gladly welcome you intae my arms. See you soon big man. See you soon”

Jim held the phone long after The Minister rang off.  He felt as vulnerable as the first time he had hidden unarmed from the Dead. The Minister had told him that he wasn’t safe. All the mechanisms and safeguards they had built against the Zombie horde meant nothing when there was a mind behind it.

The call was traced to a payphone on the Isle of Dogs. CCTV found the person who made the call and held the Dictaphone to the receiver. His name was Charlie Willoughby, and he had entered Greater London through the North gate claiming he had come to trade, in his Land Rover, from one of the isolated communities to the north.  He had been admitted after screening, then made the call after travelling right across the six miles of walled city. Charlie was easily picked up, and under robust interrogation had admitted that the Minister had taken a thousand Zombies through his community and taken his family hostage, Charlie begged them not to tell the Minister when he arrived for the sake of his family. They reminded him they were more than likely already dead. According the Charlie the Minister was alive and well and on his way. They locked Charlie up and waited.

Then, on the morning of the seventh day the city of London awoke, turned on their TV’s and saw. Pictures were beamed live from a helicopter as it flew down Knightsbridge and into a sea of the Dead. They stood in a line starting a quarter of a mile from the gate. In between the buildings, they filled the car parks, streets, the shopping precincts, and sports fields, in every open space for mile after mile. The helicopter flew over not an army of the Dead, but a Nation of the Dead. Millions of zombies had appeared over night at the Gates of London and now stood facing the city in silence, evenly spaced and unmoving, muting all sound with their collective mass.  The BBC reporter was trying frantically to describe the vastness of the scene whilst concealing the fear evident in his own voice.

At that moment Jim knew that the Minister was right, there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t evacuate the city, but they would try, and in the end the nation of the Dead would roll over the city like a tsunami. Jim reached for the whiskey bottle. The Dead stood there as the city fell into chaos. The army stood resolute. They had been trained well, but the population fled to the east of Greater London and into any ships, planes and even rafts that would carry them. Now, as Jim watched the last hopefuls file towards Westminster Bridge, a wave of tiredness fell over him. The empty whiskey bottle fell to the floor and spun.  Jim lurched over and kept his balance against the desk. He was more drunk than he realised. He reached over to grab the faded photo of his long dead family and knocked it over. He scrambled to pick it up and looked at the smiling faces within. He had been wrong, there were tears left to grieve.  He flopped into the leather backed chair and stared at the picture cradled in his hands weeping until the alcohol took hold and he passed out.

…..

Little Paul Jollie sat up in bed and screamed.

“Mummy! Mummy!” He started to cry and although he knew he was safe at home he could still feel them all around him.

“Mummy turn the light on. Pleeeaaase” He wailed.

The door flew open  and the light came on, not to show the crowded dining room of his dream, crammed with dead and rotting figures with little Paul cowering in the middle, but to his little bedroom. It was blue and had all his toys and little boxes and all his Bob the Builder posters just as they should be. His Mum ran in and swept him up. He sobbed, terrified into her shoulder.

“Oh my darling what’s wrong?” She soothed as she hugged him close. Between sobs Paul blurted out.

“It was the dream again Mummy. I…I was not walking. I was just standing this time. They were all around me all stinky and ill”

“Oh my baby. My Darling. It was just a bad dream.” She whispered. Paul began to calm down after a time and slowly she lowered him back into bed, with words of love and gentle kisses.

“Mummy.” Said Paul. “Leave the light on.”

“I will babe.” She tucked the duvet round his shoulders. It was cool and welcome.

“Do you want me to stay for a while?” She said.

Paul nodded. So she sat there and gently stroked his head.

Finally as he drifted off into the grey of sleep he could feel the weight of his Mum on the bed. He could hear her gentle breathing, the warm smell of her in her bed clothes, then, just as the grey of sleep drifted over his mind, just for a second, they were all around him again.

There in the grey, the space that existed between sleep and consciousness, surrounded by tiny eyes of darkness, a speck of light hid from the enormous black hole that spun silently before it.

…..

Jim woke with the early summer sun full in his face. It streamed through the window and made his face sweat precious water. He groaned and tried to get up, but his old stiffened neck complained loudly with a crack. He rubbed at the loosened flesh. The war of flesh was coming. The memory shocked Jim awake. He grabbed a half empty glass of water from his desk and drained it. He staggered to the toilet in the other room, drained himself, washed quickly, and just as he straightened his hair while returning to his office there was a knock at the door.

“Come” Shouted Jim.

The door opened and in stepped Miss Mitchell, who was a short woman, in her late forties and fiercely efficient. She has short black hair and a faded but smart twin set.

“Good morning Sir. I have Control on the line. They want to give you a sit rep but couldn’t get hold of you, probably because your phone is off the hook.” She strode over and replaced it, shaking her head slightly. It rang immediately. She picked up the receiver.

“Mr Bramer’s office?…..He’s here…Yes….No, I’ll have him call you in five minutes…….Have the Zombies moved?……In that case, Sir, I will have him call you in five minutes.” She said tersely and plonked the phone down with just enough force to indicate to the caller on the other line they had been hung up on.

Jim sat at his desk, and Miss Mitchell wrinkled her nose at him.

“By the smell of you you’ll need coffee and water. All non-military staff have left the building so there’s no breakfast but I’ll see what I can do about toast. That was General Jones.”

Without saying another word she strode out of the office.  Jim had employed her simply because to her the Zombies were another obstacle to be overcome, like not having milk in your tea. He put his head in his hands and pulled his hair back. He picked up the phone and dialled.

“Control. General Jones speaking.”

“Jonesy. It’s Jim. What’s the situation?” There were too few Generals to not be on first name terms.

“No different. They haven’t moved all night, but while you have been incommunicado we’ve pretty much got everything ready. I have a Division of troops at the gate, minigun and flamer crews ready. Everyone else is lined up on top of the wall or barricaded on the top of buildings along Birdcage Walk, the Mall and Buckingham Gate. We’ve also managed to get twenty choppers on the go, but no armour.” Tanks, like most military tech too big to be carried, hadn’t been used since The Fall.

“Any luck with the TIC Snipers?” The TIC snipers were Jim’s best hope. The Minister was the only one alive amongst the crowd, and with Thermal Imaging Cameras, a sniper would be able to pick out the heat signature and take him out. Needle in a haystack didn’t even begin to describe the task.

“None so far and the BBC helicopter we outfitted hasn’t seen anything either.” Said General Jones.

“Keep looking. Remember the TIC snipers can fire at will, but only at a signature. I don’t want that bastard walking up to the gate only to find they are out of ammo.”

“Righto. There are no reports of Z activity from the other gates too, so we’ve pulled a couple of Divisions over to the West Gate.”

“Good idea. Any luck with the heavy ordnance? “Jim said.

“None. All the tridents were made safe years ago, and we know from The Fall what nukes would do to the Undead, even if we had any.”

“Radioactive Undead? Not Good”

“No. All the bombs, tanks and heavy stuff were dismantled for parts years ago.” Jonesy said.

“Its ironic. There hasn’t been a war between humans for sixteen years. Peace at last eh?”

Jonesy didn’t know what to say to that.

“Also the situation at the Docks is getting worse, we estimate two hundred thousand trying to get out, we can’t contain the situation much longer.” Jonesy continued.

“Where the hell are they gonna go, Jonesy?”

“Everything’s that’s got an engine, wings or sails has already left.”

“Pull your men out. Get them deployed this side of the river. If the people want out the gate then let them go. It’s their choice.”

“You think they’ll think twice and calm down if we play ball?”

“It doesn’t matter either way, if we can’t stop him they might stand a better chance on their own, and all his forces are this side of the river”

“Fair enough, but we’ll get him Jim.”

“I bloody hope so. Call me if there is any change.”

“Will do.”

Jim put the phone down and picked up the remotes. He turned on the CCTV system and logged onto the Control network. Several different sized TV’s fixed to the opposite side of the office flickered into life. He could see what the commanders on the ground could see. The might not have armour but they had information, nothing moved in Greater London without it being picked up. Jim flicked on the BBC as well and watched the footage of the reconnaissance flyover again. He couldn’t comprehend the scale. He had hoped to feel more positive after he woke but in the face of these odds, how could he? The gate might hold until they ran out of ammo. The gauntlet that the Zombies needed to run to get to Westminster and Westminster Bridge might thin them down enough. With a stroke of luck one of the TIC crews might pick up The Minister and they were then into a straight fight, but Jim was a realist more than anything else, and he knew that battles throughout history were won by the army with the most troops. He didn’t expect this to be any different, and as Miss Mitchell arrived with his coffee and toast, he swung into action. He picked up the phone, and made some calls.

…..

Paul knew that part of him was here, in the dorm of the orphanage set up in the compound of Windsor Castle. He couldn’t move but he could feel the warm sheets, he could smell the dirty pillow beneath his head. Part of him was here, in the now, but part of him was in the dream. The same dream he always had. He was walking at night, surrounded by Zombies, through broken streets and overgrown fields, endlessly walking. He had no control over his movements but could see his hands, and they were as dead as those around him. He screamed and sat up in bed. One of the other kids told him to shut the fuck up. Paul was eleven and his Mum was long dead. He laid his head back on the pillow and sobbed quietly until he fell asleep into the grey.

…..

“They’re moving. Yes they’ve started walking towards the gate. I’ve never seen anything like it. God help us. God help us all.” The reporter commentated, but Jim wasn’t listening.

The whole nation of the Dead, moving as one, started to walk towards the gate, their footfalls a low rumble through the concrete and stone of the cities’ foundation. Slowly, inexorably, they came. The images from the BBC helicopter showed them moving like an oily tide through the city, meandering over broken glass and rubble, around toppled streetlights and rotting furniture, the discarded remnants of history.

In the helicopter the camera span round to show a line of twenty helicopters heading out from the city towards the massed crowd.  It was a rag tag collection of machinery, converted civilian and military helicopters, older than the end of The Fall as the parts were easier to find or convert. They stopped over the front line and waited for the order. Cannons exploded simultaneously at the crowd, flicking bodies into the air and splitting the concrete below into a fine dust that rose from the army, mixed with their black blood in an oily mist.

The BBC helicopter lurched sideways and the camera focussed in to see a covered arctic trailer. It was being pulled by a line of Zombies, roped together like slaves moving a sandstone block for their Pharaoh. Suddenly the covered side of the trailer fell away and inside you could see a row of Zombies holding tubes. The cameraman tried to focus in on what they were doing as they raised the green tubes to the sky, it zoomed in frantically to see that all the Zombies in the trailer had stinger missile systems crudely duct taped to their hands, and as Jim realised what was happening, they fired simultaneously. Missiles streaked into the sky trailing ragged fingers of smoke. The helicopters had either had their chaff systems removed for parts, or the pilots were too young to have been trained in this pointless defence against Zombies. In the case of the two remaining military Lynx machines, their old Pilots fired the chaff but in their surprise fired too late and, with a searing light and concussive blast that knocked the crowd below off its feet, it showered the Zombie army with fiery helicopter parts. The humans’ air defence was removed with one stroke, along with the BBC helicopter as the screen in Jims office turned to static for a moment.

The phone rang.

“Jim, its Jonesy. Did you see that?”

“He’s rolled through every military base in the country, picked up equipment and tools. You better expect more surprises.” Jim said, coolly. He realised now they had underestimated the Ministers power and cunning.

“Is there any news from the TIC snipers?”

“No.” Said Jonesy

“Stick to the plan, Jonesy.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The Nation of the Dead approached the gate. Miniguns and rifles exploded at the crowd as they came within range. Thick cordite smoke rose lazily past banners on the gate pronouncing ‘Work Hard: Live Safe’ and into the summer sky as the miniguns and ten thousand rifles picked at the crowd below. Like pushing oil on a table, the fingers of each miniguns probed and prodded the mass only to be replaced by more dead as they surged forward towards the narrow opening.

The gate was sheet aluminium and steel, thick enough to protect against a multitude of banging fists, but not thick enough to protect against the thousand Rocket Propelled Grenades that streaked haphazardly toward the gate, loosely aimed by their Undead troops.

The Minister relied on quantity, not quality of each shot. They slammed into the gate and the surrounding area with such a ripple of explosions that it shook the windows in Jim’s office. He looked towards the gate, past the ramshackle city, and saw the flash of light past Buckingham Palace.  Some of the RPG’s flew ineffectually over the barrier and some hit the crowd of Zombies in front of the shooter, flicking them up like plastic soldiers duct taped to a firecracker, but most hit the gate or surrounding wall.  It shattered like glass sending shrapnel down Constitution Hill, shredding the home made polytunnels that housed some of Greater London’s food source, with a ripping sound.  The blast knocked over home made ploughs and farm equipment like a winter gale.

There was a calm after the explosion at the gate, as blackened shards of metal clanged and clattered to the ground, then the sound of injured troops crying out in pain, victims of the RPG’s or shrapnel blast that followed. This was followed by the sound of tramping feet as the Zombies breached the gate. The CCTV’s in Jim’s office switched to show the gate itself and as the smoke cleared the first line of Zombies shambled casually through the breach. They marched round the ruined Portacabins and markets used to process those coming into the city and provide them with food and water when they got there.

…..

The grey was nothing. Neither warm nor cold, neither dark nor light, it just existed as a distance between two unspecified points. Yet it had character, Paul could see this now. There were areas of grey thicker than others, clouds of etherea that he could use to hide from the black disc that spun in the centre of millions of black eyes. They watched it slowly rotate in rapture, these dead eyes, these soulless wells. All this time Paul hid from the dark. Then he could feel it, the road beneath his feet with the dead walking with him and the buildings that flanked them like broken monoliths. Ahead, he could see a gate explode as a thousand fingers of fire stretched from the dark hole in the grey to envelope it.

Paul juddered awake and could feel the warmth of Sarah against him in the cramped single camp bed and he wanted to stay here with her more than anything. They were young and in lust. He wasn’t dead, and it was just that dream again. He drank in her scent as she snored like a purring kitten. The fear finally left him, but he couldn’t sleep so he thought about passing his basic training in two weeks time and he rested his cheek against her soft warm ribs as they lay together in the darkness.

…..

Inside the gate lay Constitution Hill and the fields of Buckingham Palace gardens. Between that and the gate lay the semi circular ring of five bunkers, each equidistant to the gate. Inside, the guns spat rounds at the aperture where the gate used to be, tearing at the dead and those injured from the blast, without prejudice. The bunkers were constructed from rubble left over from the buildings demolished to make the wall but had never been used, as the wall had never been breached. The mound of corpses grew, unable to pass the weaving aim of the gunners.  Each gun was taken out in turn to cool, and for a while it held back the Zombies until, pushing through from behind, scrambling past their older slower colleagues, the runners came. They shoved their way through from the back like commuters hurrying for a train, each desperate to get to the front line.

These were the freshly dead. To run as fast as they did they must have been turned within the last forty eight hours, before they started to slow and become as unstable as their more ancient brethren. Jim realised that they must have been pillaged from the myriad small communities that had lasted since The Fall, or recently formed strongholds as humanity pushed back. They had been kept alive by The Minister until the day before the Nation of the Dead appeared. They had been turned into his shock troops, undead suicide bombers in The Ministers’ Jihad.

Figures sprinted through the thickening crowd, dodging and weaving towards the bunkers. Jim could see these were the young and fit dead, children and teenagers who had never known the world before The Fall, marched to the point of exhaustion and then turned to be moulded by the will of The Minister.

They closed on the bunkers and Jim could recognise the belt of grenades each wore, swinging wildly as they ran. The miniguns couldn’t track them all with the crowd of normal Zombies moving in behind past the gate. While The gunners concentrated on the runners, a solitary girl reached bunker number four to where the gun couldn’t reach. She ran behind the bunker and detonated. The steel door was blown off its hinges as a second runner, a thin teenage boy dressed in a dark blue shell suit, reached the entrance and disappeared inside. There was a crimson flash from the bunker and the minigun span down as smoke poured from the slotted window. One by one the bunkers fell and the mass of dead climbed over their comrades without a word, expanding out inside the city itself. Small groups closed in on the injured and dying, not to devour them but just to place a single bite so in a few hours they would join The Minister on his crusade.

Jim’s phone rang. It was General Jones.

“Jim. I want you to get out. Get on the last Evac and go. We didn’t last a fraction of the time we expected, shit we expected to run out of ammo first.”

“Don’t talk crap Jonesy. He’s after me, its my face on the posters. I’m ‘Uncle Jim’.” He said, quoting the posters all over the City. “He wants to make an example out of me and to prove no-one is safe”

“That’s why you should go.” Jonesy’s voice was cool and level.

“I’m not going. Full stop. Now give me an update.”

“Update is we’ve got a lot more Z’s left than we wanted, and we’ve lost everyone at the gate and along that section of the wall. At least ten thousand men if you include the support crews behind the gate.”

“Any TIC snipers left?”

“I’ve kept some in the city but most were on the wall.”

“And they saw nothing?”

“No.”

“Bollocks!”  Jim shouted. He banged the table in frustration. They had to find him to end this. They had to find the one lone heat signature.

“Pull back into the city for phase two, let’s hope the gardens thin them down a bit until they get into the streets.”

“Ok, Jim…and good luck.”

“You too, Jonesy.” Jim said replacing the phone gently on the desk.

The Zombies fanned out inside the gate and moved towards the converted gardens. They formed a rough front line before striding towards the Palace. They trampled across fields of corn, potatoes and lettuce, showing no regard for anything that was not human meat. They marched across the poly tunnels of tomatoes and strawberries. Jim watched as all his work was crushed into dirt.

Then there was an explosion as one of the hastily planted landmines exploded, showering dirt and body parts, flicking buckets and pots up into the sky to fall and smash to the ground. The Zombie Nation didn’t need fields or irrigation to survive, all it needed was time and meat. Greater London had the latter, The Minister the former. Further down the line a pipe bomb exploded flicking a Zombie above it into the air where it spun like a ragdoll before falling to the ground. Explosions ripped down the line as they advanced and the frequency increased until it was an immense firecracker celebrating the revolution. Corpses piled deep as the Dead marched on with most of the force still cramming towards the gate from the outside.

Jim and Jonesy had scant few hours from when the dead miraculously appeared to prepare. Every landmine and explosive had been used to make the killing fields the Zombie army now moved straight through. This was the perfect army. No fear, no morale, unswerving loyalty, invulnerable to pain and fatigue. It would not stop until it achieved the dark purpose The Minister set for it. The carefully ploughed fields and well stocked greenhouses were destroyed by both sides in their desperation to win this, the largest land battle the world had ever seen.

Eventually the firecracker died and the army rumbled on past the ruins of Buckingham Palace and the Victoria memorial. It was still covered with notes to the lost, little stories of those trying to find friends and families in the apocalypse. Left for all this time just in case, and now ignored by those who could be the object of the note, as they walked on into the city itself.

…..

For months the grey had been a static place, but now the black hole rotated furiously, casting its gaze left and right as the tiny pairs of black eyes winked out of existence around it, and yet the disappeared ones were just a drop in the ocean for the cloud of Zombie minds was seemingly endless.  The millions of empty vessels stared in rapture at the Undead Godhead.

Beyond, he could see the same familiar scene from all his dreams. He walked left, right, left, right endlessly walking with the thirst and hunger nagging him on, and then in daytime hiding in sewers and houses, in ruined sports halls and crumbling churches from the Helicopters that infrequently flew overhead.

As he lay in the hospital ward, numb from morphine with a memory of pain shooting through his temple and eye, he drifted in and out of the grey. He wondered, for the first time, just why the dream ran contiguously and yet he couldn’t remember a day between waking up and shouting for his mother, and waking up screaming in the orphanage. Yet the dream was changing and, rather than the endless monotony of walking and hiding, now the dream was a dream of carnage and horror as he joined his red armoured cohort and walked with the throng through the gate. He stumbled over corpses and rubble with the smell of death in his nostrils and the ripple of explosives and gunfire ahead in the distance. Then as he walked he realised that the black suited man in the centre of the cohort was a priest or Minister. Yet how he knew this and exactly who The Minister was escaped him.

…..

Jim and the personnel in Control saw it first. Moving through the gate, like Astronauts to the flight, sauntered The Minister surrounded by his personal guard. Six of Jim’s Special Forces troops, symbols of Greater London, England and humanity itself, murdered so their loyalty turned, with their black armour spray painted the colour of blood. It was aimed, like the phone call, at Jim personally, but with a psychological component recognised by anyone who hadn’t already fled the city. He was using the army to clear his route and allow him to walk straight into the heart of Greater London.

Just over half a mile ahead, the forefront of the Zombie Army entered The Mall, Birdcage walk and the treeless St James Park. The wide streets where covered in multi coloured lines of drying washing, and cabling criss crossed the street providing the city’s jury rigged power supplies. Old buses and lorries had been moved and converted into cafes and shops, and on every street corner there were posters and banners reminding you of your responsibility to the collective, and the rewards of safety and growth for you and your family for that work. The banners were red lettering on a black background with a portrait of Jim Bramer himself watching over those under his protection. Prince William was still the titular Heads of State, but Jim was the power in Greater London and everyone knew this city wouldn’t function without Uncle Jim. On every building along the route, on top of the once opulent buildings that lined the route to Westminster lay the bulk of the British Army. They hid between windmills and rain water collectors for the advancing horde.

The front line came within range, and over the comms Jim heard Jonesy give the order to fire. The CCTV operators changed the screens to show the route through to Westminster and Jim watched as the troops opened up on the Zombies below. Jim expected it to be more frantic than it was. The troops were confident that the entrances to their individual buildings had been sealed by steel doors and rubble. They took their time, drew a good bead, and fired when they were confident of a headshot.

From the window of his office Jim could see the rising gun smoke in the distance as the troops engaged the enemy, the rumble of gunfire punctuated by grenades tossed from rooftops into the crowd below, bangs and flashes echoing through the ruined canyons of London. The troops settled into a steady rhythm of fire, reload, shoot. Once again the tide was slowed and once again the humans had underestimated the time and thought Minister had put into the invasion, and the resources he had gathered on his drive through the ruined countryside.

Gun smoke burnt the nostrils of the troops and made vision difficult in the windless summer. On the streets below, Zombies wandered aimlessly up to the barricaded doors of the buildings in which lay the soldiers.  They meandered as close to the building walls as possible to make them difficult to hit by the soldiers above. In turn the soldiers picked numerous easier targets still making their way down the centre of the street. The dust and gun smoke obscured the Zombies close to the walls so they could not be seen to pull the pin on the grenade, or clamp the landmine in each hand, that many of them carried. The troops on the building rooftops could feel their barricades crumble and the slow tramp of feet up the stairs before they engaged the Dead that made their way slowly up to their position. Using time and numbers the first building fell, then the second, then the third. Then as the afternoon wore on and the troops began to run out of ammo the buildings fell more frequently, and still the mass crowded through the gate, with many more awaiting their turn outside in ruined London.

The Undead Army weaved its way through the streets, denser now and filled with the colour and life of the rebuilt city now abandoned for the second time. They made their way circuitously towards Westminster. Jim could smell the gun smoke now and see figures running through the streets as the troops backed from building to building in a running retreat, picking away at the masses as they went.

Jim and everyone in control heard the voice, it was quiet but authoritative, and in the background you could hear the moans of the Dead were very close to his position.

“Control? This is James Rogers. TIC crew seventeen. I have the target but no thermal signature. I repeat I have the target but no signature. Do I take the shot?”

The Minister and his red armoured cohort had entered the city; the start of the Mall was quieter now as the front line moved inexorably on a few hundred yards ahead. James was hidden on the roof of an already overrun building, near the entrance to The Mall, but they hadn’t seen him and he had waited for the opportunity that now presented itself. The CCTV showed the Minister walking down the street looking up at his troops on the rooftops above, but the smoke made an outline of Minister and Jim couldn’t put his finger on it but there was something wrong. Why was there no thermal signature?

Jonesy didn’t hesitate.

“Rogers. Take the shot!” There was a loud crack over the radio and the The Ministers head flicked back, his back arched and he fell to his knees before collapsing flat on his face. The comms went silent, no-one, including Jim, knew what to expect. Nothing changed as the cohort moved on leaving the black suited corpse behind, and then, in the crowd of Zombies behind the personal guard, one pushed through to resume The Ministers position. With a flourish he removed his thick overcoat to reveal the white dog collar and black suit within.

Over the open comms Jim could hear James Rogers fight his last desperate battle as the rooftop Zombies tracked in on his position from the crack of the shot. There was a scream before the operators cut the comms.

“It’s a decoy, any TIC crews remaining keep scanning the crowd for as long as you can. Standing orders remain. Only take the shot if you have a signature,” Jonesy said, dourly. Jim was sure he could hear “Goddamn it!” as he cut the connection.

Jim picked up the phone on his desk, hesitated slightly, and dialled the number.

“Miss Mitchell, could you come in here please?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The door opened and she stepped in.

“Its time for you to go, Miss Mitchell. You and the rest of the troops downstairs.”

“Are you leaving?” She asked, hand on hip.

“No.”

“I took the liberty of asking the men their opinion, and if you are staying so are we.”

Jim was dumbfounded. She walked over to his desk drawer, took a fresh bottle of whisky and two glasses from inside, poured two generous shots, took a glass and sat down on the cracked leather sofa on the other side of the room. She sipped half the glass straight off the bat.

Jim raised the glass at her, without a word, and drained it in one and she raised her glass in response.

It was nearing the endgame now. Jim stood slowly and looked out of the window. In the distance he could see the rooftop troops firing at the mass below. He could hear the distant rumble of continuous gunfire and he could see squads of troops directed by Control retreating from buildings to take up defensive positions closer to the Houses of Parliament. Jim sipped the whiskey and waited. Miss Mitchell watched the CCTV screens as the Zombies continued to pile through the gate in a never ending flow.

“How many do you think there are?” She said finally.

“It doesn’t matter.” Said Jim flatly.

…..

Paul couldn’t sleep. He had spent the day practicing the Z Kata on live targets in the new armour Jim Bramer had provided. The cage had been set up in the courtyard with troops positioned to take the captured Zombies down if Paul let his concentration slip for just a moment. Paul was young and strong, intelligent and quick witted, and had known the Z all his life; he worked hard to perfect his skills.

However, even with the Zombies’ nails and teeth removed the fear of fighting them was still omnipresent. It was their stench and that ungodly moan they made. He lay in bed unable to sleep because of the adrenaline pumping through his system. He thought about the day’s exertions and what he would say when asked about the effectiveness of the armour and the Union Jack sword. Suddenly Paul thought he heard a noise like an explosion and a scream, he stood up quickly, his pumped muscles sore from the lactic acid of the day’s work. He looked out of the window to the courtyard and cage below but saw nothing. Then he had the strangest sensation that he was walking, slowly and steadily, and he could hear the screams again. He lay back down in the bed and confusion clouded his mind. What had he done yesterday? What had he eaten this morning? He couldn’t remember yet he could remember dreams from years gone by. What did it mean? Finally, as tiredness overtook him, he questioned what was the dream was and what was the reality.

…..

Jim watched as the Zombies overran the entrance to the building below, slowly taking the gunners and their crew, falling and being replaced as if nothing had happened. The troops fought well and took many of the Dead with them, but the never ending well of Zombies replaced them immediately. The smell of blood and meat, both fresh and rotten drifted through the ill fitting window into Jim’s office and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. He watched The Ministers’ troops skilfully injure a stricken soldier by holding him down and biting his arm, ripping great ribbons of sinew from the bone. The blood ran in rivulets from the exposed artery. Then they wandered off in search of new prey leaving the man to stumble in shock and horror as the realisation of his fate overwhelmed him. More than one troop immediately raised the gun to his chin and pulled the trigger before the enormity of their fate could be realised.

Jim marvelled at the control The Minister had over his troops. He had expected a force of Zombies, thirty, forty, at the limit a thousand strong. This perfect army under the tacit control of The Minister was unimaginable. Each troop acting as they had since The Fall, yet operating within the boundaries set by The Ministers’. Working as the individual hunger drove them on, yet reined in by the power of the will of The Minister to mobilise the biggest army the world had ever seen.

Now they were in the building, and the roar of gunfire shook the ancient door on its hinges. Shouts and screams echoed through the home of a government overrun a second time. Then as Jim looked lazily through the window, and Miss Mitchell clinked bottle to glass on her mission to numb the forthcoming pain, he saw the battle move away from the window and towards Westminster bridge. Then through the smoke, and surrounded by the crowd he saw the red armour and the black suit. They walked purposefully down St Margerets street, and a rising panic took Jims’ drunken legs as the disconnect between the CCTV cameras and the reality outside his window was removed.

The Minister is coming

The end is nigh.

Jim chided himself and sat down in his chair. He straightened his tie and flatted back his hair. Suddenly he wished he had a gun, but at that moment he didn’t know who he would use it on when The Minister arrived. In the end he was glad he didn’t. He waited.

Then he could hear the shots die down to a sporadic pop and the screams fade to a panic filled gabble. The moans of the Dead rose in response and then there was the singing. It rose in volume pausing only to ask one of the dying troops the location of Jims’ office.

“All things bright and beautiful. All creatures great and small. All things wise and wonderful. The Lord God made them all.” It rang out triumphantly as it approached the door.

Three knocks, widely spaced.

Jim looked at Miss Mitchell.

“Come!” He bellowed with as much gravitas as he could muster, and the alcohol helped. He would stand up to the Minister. If it was a psychological battle The Minister wanted, it was a psychological battle he would get, and Jim would not fold nor confess his sins. At that moment Jim would be everything he guessed The Minister despised in humanity. He would not fold; he would be the very essence of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Good God, he would be the essence of England itself. Jim reached across his desk to the comms unit, turned down the volume and opened the mic. Everyone based over at the Department of Control, safely tucked away high up on Canary wharf, would hear his last stand. Miss Mitchell shifted nervously in her seat.

The door opened.

In shuffled a number of old Zombies. Their torn and shredded suits and dresses hung from their emaciated frames. Pockmarked and grey-faced they moved silently into position around Jim and Miss Mitchell. Jim had never been so close to a Zombie without running or shooting wildly, but they were here now standing within grasp. They swayed and moaned slightly, and involuntarily, as they waited for their Master. In came the red armoured personal guard. Jim recognised them all, each sent after The Minister, each never to return.  The plastic segmented armour looked scratched and bitten, the suit below ripped and torn with all the military insignia removed, but they still carried their weapons, including the short sword in the scabbard at their back. Looking through the open door, Zombies crowded in the hallway behind. The two nearest Jim leant down towards him and clumsily opened his suit to look inside. Satisfied they opened the drawers in his desk and rifled inside, finding nothing they pulled them out until they fell on the ground. Jim was glad he hadn’t had a gun after all.

“Hur, Hur ,Hur” Chuckled a voice in the corridor. The crowd parted and Jim could see a small figure in a ruined hooded leather cloak enter the room slowly chuckling to itself. Head bowed, it flicked the hood back. Jim was shocked to see a Zombie raise its head. All the reports he had received, and the MP3 where Joe Wyndham had described The Minister, had said he was human. It unclasped the cloak and let it crumple to the floor.

The Minister cut a small thin figure in front of him, tattered black suit and bloodstained dog collar hung limply from his ectomorphic frame. One shoulder was hunched higher than the other through choice or disfigurement.  Jim realised this was why the TIC snipers hadn’t found him, he was already dead. What had been a needle in a haystack search had become an impossibility.

The Minister looked around the room and saw Miss Mitchell. His brow furrowed and he waved his hand gently in her direction. The three Zombies nearest her turned slowly in her direction. She looked up at them and finished her whiskey in a long swig. The Minister let his subjects go and they fell on her with all the fury of their hunger unleashed. She tried to fight them off as they ripped at her clothes and flesh but she wouldn’t scream. One grappled with her arm and gnawed on it like a chicken leg, another peeled at her torso to reveal the red morsels inside, and the third buried his face in her neck until a torrent of blood pooled on the floor around them. They slavered and chewed at her loudly until she stopped twitching and hung limply like a concubine pleasured by her hungry suitors. Jim watched in terror but would not let it show on his face. He was angry now, there was no need for this other than a demonstration of power. More psychological warfare. All the time, The Minister watched Jim’s face, until he had had enough and the murderers stood back up to attention. Blood covered their tattered clothes and dripped lazily from their stained teeth. They were passive again, all trace of their fury gone.

The Minister sat slowly in the chair opposite Jim and his black eyes gazed into his. Jim hesitated and wanted to run, his legs were weak, but he would not let it show.

“Ye looked taller in yer posters, Jim.” The Minister said finally. He spoke in a low cracked voice that still rang with a resonance around the room. Jim ignored the comment.

“So, are you another decoy or the real thing, because I’m done pissing about with this shit” Jim spat. The Minister raised his eyebrows, and smiled a thin, wan smile.

“I walk straight into your city, just tae come and see you and this is the welcome I get. Nae way to treat a man of God, a pilgrim, is it now?” He said cheerily, crossing his hands in his lap.

Jim felt stronger. Dead or not, this was just a man. He paused, knowing the calm would make his enemy speak first.

“Well.” The Minister said. “I’m ready to hear yer confession. Time to make peace Jim.”

“I’ve nothing to confess to you, you murdering scum.” Jim said with just the right amount of control and contempt.

The Minister feigned a hurt expression.

“Murderer? Me?” The Ministers’ Scots brogue rolling the R’s in the word.

“Well. Only the once. I believe you know Paul here.” Jim saw the Zombie Paul Jollie step forward. He had known Paul since he was a lad and now he was just another puppet in The Ministers’ Army. Another victim in a world full of victims.

“It turns out I havnae really got the stomach fer it. Paul and I have a special relationship. He killed me and I killed him. Mutually assured destruction, they used to call it.”

“Shame he didn’t finish the job.”

“Jim. This antagonistic attitude won’t win you a place in heaven, now will it?”

“Then I’ll see you in hell.” The Jim smiled sweetly.

…..

Paul walked into Jim Bramers’ office full of trepidation about his latest mission.

“At ease, Paul” Said Bramer

“Sir.”  Said Paul, relaxing.

Bramer motioned towards a chair.

“Whiskey?”

“No thank you, Sir.” said Paul taking a seat in the red leather high back in front of the old mahogany desk.

“The reason I have called you here is, unfortunately, not a social one” Said Bramer

“It never is, Sir.” Said Paul, smiling

“No… No” chuckled Bramer.

“I want you to listen to this recording and tell me what you think”

Paul looked around, his brow furrowed. He was confused. He had been here before. He remembered this conversation. Jim leant forward to push the button on the Sony Vaio and Paul stretched and grabbed his hand. Jim just looked at him. There were two Jim Bramers. The real one he could see reaching forward with his hand and the ghostly image behind leaning back with a furious look on his face talking silently.

There were others around him too, dark shadows in the grey stood in the room with him, and, on the leather sofa over there, a ruined corpse. Paul could smell the fresh meat and a hunger rose in him. He wanted to grab Jim and consume him. He pushed the impulse away.

This didn’t make sense, why had he come here? What was the mission? How had he got here? The last thing he remembered was being in the hospital in a morphine fugue. What was the reality and what was the dream? Paul didn’t know anymore, but behind this all he could feel the grey envelop him as he shone like a bright star, close, but behind the gaze of the black hole that stared intently at Jim Bramer.

…..

Jim saw something from the corner of his eye as Minister talked. Pauls’ slack expression changed for a moment. It looked confused.

“Well, if I must confess to you, then at least answer me a question.” Jim said. “How did you do it? How did you make your Army appear from nowhere, and how did an army this massive move through the country unseen by the helicopter patrols?”

The Minister laughed his hollow laugh.

“You mean you hadn’t even worked that oot?”

Jim shrugged, and stared into the obsidian black eyes of The Minister, sunk in his graying, ancient face.

“James. James. In the day I hid them. Simple as that. In town halls and cinemas, in sewers and houses, away frae the prying eyes o’ your whirlybirds. That wus the easy part. The hard part was training them to use the missiles tae take them whirlybirds oot. Hae you any idea how long it takes tae train a Zombie to fire a stinger. Bloody months, and it has tae be the right Zombies tae. An if they failed at that, they could use they RPG’s. The real brainwave wus the runners, did yer see that one coming, eh Jim? What yer real question should be was how did I outsmart you and walk straight into yer city and intae yer office to sit here.”

“I already know the answer to that.”

It was The Ministers’ turn to smile.

“Don’t flatter yourself. Your tactics, if you can call them that, were juvenile. Cheap parlour tricks from your marionettes. You won through numbers and nothing else.  Your armies aren’t brave or noble or have any of the qualities that a great army has. You aren’t God or the Messiah, Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan. You are just a freak. In fact you haven’t been granted this ability; it’s just fallen to you through random chance. Maybe there are others in this world with your ability that haven’t realised it yet, or they were killed before they knew they had the gift. No. You were just lucky.” Said Jim, calmly. He paused, but didn’t give The Minister a chance to speak. He could see the doubt in his eyes now and pushed on.

“Each one of my men has given a good account of themselves and fought bravely until the end, each one of them is a hero, and given enough time and resources we would have whittled your army down to nothing, found you and put a bullet through your ugly head. Look at the piles of corpses you left in your wake. My troops must have taken a hundred of yours to every one of my heroes. Every single one of my men would die for his brothers in an instant, and every single one would die for his country to have things back as they were. Your troops aren’t loyal, they aren’t brave or heroic, they don’t recoil at the horror of war as they walk over their fallen comrades, they just are. You think God wants this? You think God wants his flock to die in screaming torment or turn into these monstrosities? No Minister whatever-your-fucking-name-is. God is on our side and one day God will grant one human the chance to put you down once and for all. Then we will rebuild this world without you or your army. Just as God intended.” Jim leant back in his chair and relaxed, smiling and in control of the situation. He had said what he wanted to say, let the bastard take him now.

This was a speech for the personnel in Control, not The Minister.

Anger flashed through Ministers’ face. He tried to reply but fury robbed him of the words.

…..

Thoughts rushed through Pauls’ mind, and try as he might, he couldn’t remember the days between the dreams, yet the dreams ran on, longer than his waking hours. It didn’t make sense. In the dreams he was Dead, in his memories he was alive.

What if.

What if he really was dead, and the dream the reality, and the reality the dream? Why would he think this? Why would his mind think this way?

Then it came to him. His mind had protected itself from the unimaginable horror of this reality the only way it could. Its living soul had retreated into the recesses of this dead brain so it could learn and come to terms with its new reality. He was dead. He had died with a sword in his belly in a kitchen in Edinburgh. Whatever The Minister had within him had mingled with the fake Ministers’ Zombie blood and Paul’s human blood, on the black and white tiled floor. This forced evolution created something new.

With an almost audible lurch, Paul was in the room with the Minister and Jim Bramer as they argued back and forth. The Jim stretching forward to start the MP3 was gone and Paul was there surrounded by the Dead in Jim’s office so many months after he had first received his orders to go to Edinburgh.

In the grey, Paul shone like a thousand stars in the murk, light poured from him like sunshine eating away at the edges of the black hole that raged at Jim Bramer, like bright dawn through skeletal winter trees.

…..

The Minister sat forward in the chair and ranted incoherently at Jim, while Jim sat back and watched impassively. The Minister spat insults and threats at him, promised tortures and pain to him and everyone who lived in the city or had fled in fear. Each sentence was unfinished, each threat worse than the last. Jim had hit all The Ministers buttons and he was giving it to Jim with both barrels. Jim’s failure to react did nothing to pacify him; in fact, it made the dead priest angrier.

Out of his peripheral vision he saw Pauls’ arm move. Instinctively he wanted to look, but knew The Minister would notice. Paul raised his arm slowly towards the Union Jack sword in the scabbard on his back, the look on Pauls’  face was grim and determined, yet filled with emotion. Jim was convinced this wasn’t The Minister in control, but Paul.

…..

Paul reached slowly towards the sword on his back. He couldn’t afford for the Minister to see him. He had one chance to do this and he wouldn’t waste it. In the end it wasn’t Paul’s movement that alerted The Minister but his proximity in the grey. The light was close enough to eat away at the black of the Minister and black hole span round to stare at the tiny star in front of it.

…..

The Minister spun and looked at Paul’s arm halfway to the sword on his back. He reached out and grabbed Pauls’ arm, pulling it down again.

…..

In the grey, the full force of Ministers darkness was brought to bear against the tiny spark of Pauls’ light. For a second it threatened to consume him totally. It overwhelmed Paul and he could feel himself fading against its might.

Paul pushed back, igniting his soul against the blackness. Paul raged in the grey. He would not be consumed.  The hunger and rage of a Zombie starved, combined with the anger and fury of a man who could avenge his own murder, created a firestorm of light that burned at the shadow. The black hole was fixated on Paul yet it seemed to struggle to turn away from him like a man forced to stare too long at the sun.

…..

The Minister held onto Pauls’ arm but couldn’t look him in the face, his head flicked frantically about and a gurgled cry escaped his lips.

Paul had one chance, and the firestorm of emotion filled his every point of being. He lunged forward and tipped The Minister’s chair over, spilling the skinny old man to the ground. Paul tried to scream in rage but air rushed from his dead lungs through his torn throat which hissed and gurgled ineffectually. He leapt over the chair and onto The Ministers’ chest. There was no Zombie or man here now, Paul was a being of pure fury.

The Minister struggled, turning his head furiously away from the light as the grey and reality became one. Paul plunged his fist through the brittle bones into The Ministers chest and grabbed at anything it could find. He ripped a lung from the old Zombies body and held it in his teeth, his other hand around the old mans throat. He bit at the lung like an animal and ripped it away with his hand, shredding it. He discarded it like a rag and ripped at The Ministers’ throat. Skin and sinew came free and he held the bits of flesh in the air like a caveman glorying in the hunt. He plunged his ichor blackened hands into the chest again and ripped out bone and decaying arteries that spat black fluid over the green carpet of the office.

Finally he grabbed the Minister’s flailing head with both hands, and ripped his gargling screaming skull from his body, twisting it, pulling it as the vertebrae snapped and the ligaments tore until it was free in his hands, attached only by a few sinewy cords. He flung the head over against the wall where it lay blinking until its black eyes faded milky white and its jaw hung limply from its pivot.

In the city the Zombies stopped and gazed blankly into the distance. Those humans still fighting hand to hand or firing from rooftops continued the battle, all caught in their own bloodlust.

In the grey, the final vestiges of black dissipated like wisps of smoke and Pauls’ soul shone like the sun in the gloom of a foggy morning. All the tiny twinkling eyes gazed unthinking at the new Godhead that spun slowly before them.

Paul crouched over the headless torso. Jim noticed he was panting with exertion, his Zombie lungs needlessly pumping air into his dead blood. It was a thoroughly human autonomic response.

Paul turned his head slowly to look at Jim, but there was no vestige of humanity there and for a moment Jim thought the creature would turn on him, but it lowered its head to stare at the headless torso below and it stayed crouched over the corpse.

Finally, slowly, its breathing, slowed and gradually it stood, head crouched with clenched fists. Its eyes still focussed on its prey below.  Then it turned its dark head, black fluid dripping from its chin and looked at Jim’s desk.

Jim stared aghast.

The Zombie Paul, its long dank hair hung over its face, raised its hand and stupidly shuffled the papers around until it found what it was looking for. It grasped the pen in its fist like a small child and raised its other hand to hold the paper in place. It raised the pen like a knife and tried to scrawl on the slippery page. The pen ripped the paper, so with its other hand it cast that paper to the floor and tried again. Slowly it drew on the paper and Jim noticed that its tongue was sticking out and Pauls’ face was screwed in concentration, like a small child.

Then it cast the pen to the ground, raised its head and lifted the paper to its chest. Jim stared in amazement as the creature raised its black, obsidian eyes to stare at him smiled a wide, twisted, scarecrow smile. Jim found himself, despite everything, smiling back at the monster before him.

Paul rustled the paper in front of his chest to get Jims attention. Jim stared at the crumpled form that it held to its chest and struggled to make out the words. In the city, and all around Jim’s office, the Zombies stood stock still and smiled a big, twisted scarecrow smile.

Finally Jim realised what the note said.

hElLO Jim

The End

“Look,” Kathryn said, “this one has the keys in it.”

“It’s probably out of gas,” Maureen acknowledged, “most of the ones with the keys left in them are out of gas.”

“Well,” Kathryn stripped off her business suit jacket and searched the mercifully empty streets, “we’re gonna have to give it a try.” She climbed behind the wheel and unlocked the passenger door so that Maureen could climb in the other side.

“I never thought that I’d be caught dead in a Hyundai,” Maureen said as she shut herself in.

“Yeah,” Kathryn commented, “but I’d rather be caught dead in a Hyundai then caught by the living dead.” She tried to turn the ignition over but the car coughed like a sick old woman.

“See,” Maureen said, looking around cautiously, “the piece of shit’s dead. Now let’s get the hell out of here, we’re makin’ way too much noise.”

Instead of answering, Kathryn tried to turn it over again, and this time the car sputtered to life.

“Hot damn!” Maureen said and squeezed Kathryn’s arm. “Let’s cruise.” Maureen was a huge woman; bordering on morbidly obese. Her thin, patchy, gossamer strands of blonde hair framed her red face and the blotches of psoriasis which traveled up and down her exposed arms were shaped like small countries on an oceanographic map. Kathryn was glad that they had found a car, not for her sake, but for Maureen’s. She was not sure that the heavily breathing fat woman could escape quickly enough in the dreaded event that they should become cornered.

But now that Kathryn had the compact car started, she was faced with a new problem. This model was equipped with a stick shift; a four on the floor.

“You know how to drive one of these?” She asked Maureen. ”

Maureen looked at her confused. “Put it in drive,” she said.

“Well hell, I’ve never driv…” Halfway through Kathryn’s sentence the passenger side window shattered and a white arm roughly grabbed Maureen by the hair. The big woman screamed, scratched and pushed at the chest of an attacker who’s face could not yet be seen. “GO! GO! GO! GO!” she shouted. Kathryn threw her arms up in vexation and scanned the car’s controls. But she may as well have been staring at the console of an airplane and her panic was giving her even less chance of figuring it out.

“GO KATHY GO!” Maureen continued to buck and kick at the form which was trying to enter the cab.

“I’M TRYING! I’M…” As she pawed the gear shift the clutch inexplicably popped and the little car scooted a few feet, momentarily shedding the assaulter whose gruesome white face then came into view as it stumbled: one eye gone from a rifle shot which must have missed the brain. But the car soon stalled and the abomination was on them again. Maureen scooted across the seat in an effort to avoid the cold white hands of the monster but this move only squashed Kathryn up against the driver’s door; making it impossible for her to try the ignition again. For several seconds all she could do was try and catch her breath as her friend fought for her life against one of the living dead. She couldn’t even reach the door handle. But then, just as she was contemplating what it would be like to roam the city as a shuffling corpse, the sound of a gunshot reverberated off of the high buildings. And she heard Maureen’s voice go from high pitched wails of terror to sobs of relief. A second later she felt the considerable bulk of her robust friend ease up and off of her. Maureen was shivering as if she were wearing soaking wet clothes in sub zero temperatures. “OH Jesus, OH Jesus, OH Jesus.” She kept repeating.

When Kathryn could turn around again she saw that the back window of the Hyundai was smeared with bright red flecks of rose colored blood. As Maureen recovered enough to climb out of the car, Kathryn leaned over across the upholstery and inspected the slumped over body of the dead-dead man. His second eye now shot out also. She tried to start the Hyundai again, but it was as dead as the felled ghoul; out of gas after all. Kathryn got out of the driver’s side and looked back over the roof of the car towards the source of the snipe.

“Just in the nick of time,” an approaching voice said and Kathryn locked eyes with a man in a plain green soldier’s uniform with a matching helmet. A long rifle hung from a strap around his neck. This was obviously the marksman who had re-executed their deathly pale stalker. The man’s round and puffy face seemed much too swollen for his trained and trim body.

“OH, Thank you, thank you sir!” Maureen gushed as she took two uneven steps over trash and rubble towards her savior. Kathryn suspiciously brushed her long brown hair off of her alabaster cheek. “How will we ever be able to make it up to you.?” Maureen continued.

“Well,” said the man, “I’m not sure that you can.” And Kathryn was wary of his weird grin and the facetiousness which she sensed in his tone. She walked around the deceased car and stood at her friend’s side; her taut yet curvy body evident even under the business skirt and long sleeve white blouse. “But I might be able to think of something your friend here can do.” The man quipped. Kathryn understood what he was getting at perfectly, but Maureen didn’t seem to get the gist of it. She took another step towards the man and was now standing no more than four feet from him.

“Well,” she smiled, “if there’s anything that we can do, I’m sure… I mean, you saved our life. We really don’t know how to thank you.”

“Hey,” the man held his palms out innocently and continued through an earnest smile, “don’t mention it.” He then quickly raised the rifle and shot Maureen in the throat. She didn’t fall at once, but could only stand back and cover the wound in shock. Then she took her hands away from it for some desperate reason and a straight line of blood shot fifteen feet across the asphalt every time that her heart beat. Kathryn rushed to her friend’s side and dropped to her knees, almost catching her as she collapsed onto the cluttered street. Oblivious to the gunman, she tore off a strip of her blouse and pressed it against the wound; but Maureen only gaped for air, her mouth opening and closing like a manatee out of water. Kathryn heard a second loud boom; as if she were an inch from two cars colliding and now there was a hole in Maureen’s forehead to match the one in her throat. The big woman’s eyes grayed over and stared into the distance of the next world.

Kathryn scooted away from the body and stared up at the murderer from the seat of her skirt. He was chuckling, yet his weapon was pointed at the ground.

“You’re not going to kill me?” she asked.

“Why would would I shoot a smokin’ hot fox like you?” the man answered.

“But um… But I… you shot you… killed her. Why did you kill her?” Kathryn stuttered through the shock.

“I was doin’ her a favor.”

Kathryn mulled this over for a few seconds. “And you won’t do me the same favor?”

“No,” the man answered, “I’m not going to shoot you.” A gleam twinkled in his eye that must have been similar to the one Adam and Eve saw with as they bit into the apple. “But don’t worry,” he finished, “there will certainly be favors involved. Now March!” He raised the gun again.

“No!” Kathryn resisted defiantly, “kill me here but I’m not going with you.” She meant it. She did not want to see what this violent cretin had in store for her.

“Look bitch,” he began, “there are worse things than gettin’ shot: now get up and make that nice ass a yours march before I show you what those things are.” Kathryn didn’t move.

“MARCH!!!” This mean bellow frightened her enough to where she got up and began marching in the general direction of where he had his gun sight pointed. They walked for perhaps ten blocks without speaking, around stalled cars, crude makeshift sandbag forts and fire blackened barricades. Finally they rounded a corner and Kathryn found herself staring at a huge edifice of crushed cars. They stretched in between two buildings to create an impressive blockade. There was a doorway sized opening which had probably been left there intentionally by the crane operator. A second soldier stood in this entrance, listlessly smoking a cigarette. The men nodded at each other as they passed. On the other side of the junker wall there was a long segmented vehicle painted camouflage and covered with nets of black mesh. It reminded Kathryn of a mechanical caterpillar. Reacting to a shuffling sound off to her left Kathryn caught sight of a dead MAN IN A SUIT AND TIE as he stumbled out of an office building. He did not have to push the exit lever since all the glass doors had been busted or shot out. Before Kathryn could even cry out, yet another boom raped the silence and the zombie jumped as a head shot met with its scalp. A JFK sized flap jutted out from the side of its exposed skull right before it fell. There was a sniper atop the caterpillar which Kathryn had failed to notice and he had skillfully lopped the dead man’s brain off.

There was a wrought iron door in the center of the long bus which opened down like a draw bridge. The soldier softly tapped Kathryn in the small of the back with the tip of the powerful gun. Feeling that she had little choice she climbed inside. There were several other women within the capsule/cell. They laid haphazard under freckled spots of sunlight which circled in through small, perfectly round holes in the wall, as if coin blanks had been knocked out of them. None of them spoke to Kathryn or offered up any theories in the way of explanation. Some of them wore clothes which were dirty and disheveled, others still looked halfway presentable. The soldiers were obviously on patrol to collect prisoners and this made Kathryn wonder why Maureen had not also been spared? The draw bridge like door clanged closed behind her.

Then as she looked around the cab the similarities began to hit her: even with their tatted hair and torn clothes; even with their grimy skin and wept away mascara; even with their stinking underarms and chipped nails: all of the women confined within the car were at least fairly attractive.

2.

“Well it has to be better than wandering around out there,” a pale girl with tired, purple chevrons underneath her pretty hazel eyes was saying, “I mean, at least we’re away from those dead things.” Some of the women shook their heads yes, but most were too exhausted to answer. Kathryn and the others had been led into a brightly lit room where they sat at small exam desks like school children or collage students. There was a blackboard on the wall but there wasn’t anything written on it and no chalk could be found on its built in shelf. There was no apple nor was there a teacher’s desk to set one on. The room had no windows but there were two doors: one which they had been led through after exiting the caterpillar and a second door which was in the complete opposite corner. On each desk a glass of ice water had been placed and most of the women drank greedily.

After about fifteen minutes, the door which they had been led through opened and a man sauntered in. He wore a similar uniform to the one sported by the men who had captured Kathryn, only he had a baseball cap on rather than a helmet and there were two silver bars on the shoulder of his long sleeve shirt. His polished boots were free of dust and grit and tufts of thick black hair sprouted out from underneath the hat at wild intervals. He looked the ladies over with maddening turquoise eyes and even though his movements were controlled and strict, Kathryn sensed that he was deranged inside his mind.

“Hello Ladies,” he began, “my name is Captain Enervy.” The women straightened up and cocked their heads to listen even though he was speaking at a drill sergeant’s pitch. “I have some very good news for all of you: we are now inside a guarded and heavily armed compound. You are completely safe from the monstrous creatures which have, unfortunately, taken over a large part of our city. This is a situation that our forces are working hard to rectify. In the meantime you will be given food, lodging and you will be able to wash whenever you wish. You will also sleep in a warm bed.” He paused here and some of the women began to rejoice; clutching each other’s hands, cheering and even crying. But Kathryn, who had watched her friend executed, did not join in the celebration. “All that we ask in compensation is that you women comply with our orders which includes supplying companionship to and satisfying the needs of our troops.” The joyful chatter ebbed quickly and the happiness decelerated down into a bleak silence. Captain Enervy proudly surveyed the scene, ready to gauge the women’s reactions and field objections. After a few confusing seconds one woman stood up.

She wore nothing but a grungy tank top and a pair of tattered Levi’s. Her hair was cropped into an extremely short crew cut. But even in this unflattering apparel she was a breathtaking beauty: boson brown eyes large atop chiseled cheekbones.

“You mean,” she said, “that you want us to have sex with them.” Captain Enervy looked the woman right in the face and Kathryn saw a flash of the temper which he was making an effort to conceal.

“Yes,” he answered simply, “we want you to have sex with them.”

“Jesus,” the standing woman said, “you guys are unbelievable. Instead of using your weapons to help people you want to turn the world into one big brothel.” Kathryn felt like telling the dissident to pipe down; she was sure that the girl did not realize how hot the fire she was playing with could scorch. Perhaps her introduction to this army had been kinder than Kathryn’s violent, murder splattered initiation. Oblivious to these grave dangers however, the girl continued. “Well I won’t do it. I refuse! I will not! I will not! I’d rather take my chances with the walking dead than have some sweaty grunt rape me every night. At least the dead are honest and up front about their intentions.”

Captain Enervy slowly strolled around the room, addressing everyone except the short haired woman. “I strongly suggest to all of you that you stay here with us in comfort and safety. I’m sure that, at some point, some of you may have to perform acts which you might find distasteful or immoral, but I assure you! There will be no rough stuff and you will be treated with respect as brides of the regiment. And I implore you…” Here he paused for effect, “I implore you to consider the heinous alternative.” The room fell silent as the women’s troubled, overloaded minds contemplated this difficult choice. The defiant woman continued to stand but she didn’t shatter the break. Finally, after about half a minute, Captain Enervy seemed to be speaking for her.

“Of course, if anyone feels that they have a better chance out there, with those shuffling ghouls, then they are free to go. Private Gliet!” He called out to a man at the back of the room. Kathryn hadn’t noticed the man before and she wondered how long he’d been standing there. She even supposed that it was possible that he’d been there for the duration of Enervy’s announcement, but she didn’t think so. He was a tall soldier: perhaps six foot two or three, in marvelous physical condition. Although his features seemed tainted by a trace of mental retardation; almost as if he were a mongoloid.

“Show this nice young lady the way out.” Captain Enervy said as Kathryn shivered and trepidation traveled up her delicate spine. Private Gleit nodded and gestured towards the standing woman like a waiter ready to show someone to their table. He held his arm out towards the second door; the one located on the opposite side of the room from which they had entered. The woman took a few timid steps, perhaps starting to sense what Kathryn already knew: that this seemingly carefree release from the regiment was too good to be true. And so it was.

As the woman approached the threshold, Private Gliet simultaneously accosted her while swinging open the door. The sunshine which flooded in was even brighter than the room’s white lights. There was no floor or stairway beyond the frame: just the thin air floating invisible over a twenty five foot drop. Before the short haired women even had a chance to scream Private Gliet hurled her out head first. When she did scream, it sounded as if her voice were floating up and out from an elevator shaft. At the bottom of her drop were the dead; hundreds of them crawling and falling over each other like salamanders in the mud. They did not even have the sense to catch her or break her fall. So when her vivacious frame met with the hard, packed down sand something could be heard snapping: perhaps an arm or a leg. They converged upon her quickly however; pulling her apart like lions raking at a bison carcass. Mercifully the screams didn’t last long as they soon pulled out her voice box. Her clothes quickly disappeared along with her skin. The carnage ended as someone who had once been someone ate her beautiful face.

Back up in the room panic ensued. Private Gliet, his mission accomplished, stood at attention with his back to the wall. The women roared and screamed and cried and several of them stood up on their chairs. They stomped their feet on the seats like cartoon wives in white aprons afraid of a kitchen mouse; as if trying to put as much distance between themselves and the dead pit as possible. Kathryn did not get up, but she buried her face in her hands and tears sizzled out from in between her fingers. Captain Enervy stood upright with his hands still clasped behind the back. The mad violence which always seemed to be spinning in his eyes momentarily quelled.

“Now!” He shouted spiritedly, “if there are no more conscientious objectors, I suggest that you all get some sleep.” He paused here to salute the moaning women. “Report for makeovers at 0900.”

3.

The salty smell of the nearby sea tickled their nostrils and billowy strips of evaporating clouds dissolved in front of the unbridled sun. The group rode on the back of a flatbed wagon; much like a hayride only devoid of any leisure or fun. They were being pulled along by a tractor which was driven by a heavy set, thick legged matron who was also wearing the now familiar uniform of the regiment. Only this version came with a skirt instead of pants. She had no holster for a gun, but a long truncheon hung from a loop on her accessory belt. The words: PENIS ENVY had been carved neatly down its shaft.

All of the women had gotten a chance to shower and they were furnished with toothbrushes, deodorants and other sundries. Not having a fresh change of duds however, they had had to put their soiled clothes back on. They did not see any soldiers along this path save for the matron and talk among the passengers soon turned to crude escape plots.

“I wouldn’t,” said Kathryn. Then she pointed to a distant tree line. Barely visible in the rising haze was a tall chain link fence with looping scribbles of razor wire and spikes at its highest point. As they got a little closer to that spot and rounded a bend, the dead could be seen clinging to its tiny octagons in between crawls of climbing vines; like grotesque butterflies on a screen door.

“We’re still inside the compound,” she whispered, “they must have gunners perched atop the perimeter: not so much to keep us in as to keep the dead out, but I’m sure they’d shoot anything that moved.” As if on cue a distant spit of machine gun fire crackled in the morning air and the peering dead peeled off of the fence. It was 8:45 AM.

Finally, the tractor ground to a halt in front of what had been a department store. Mannequins stood naked in front of the shattered out display windows and fallen clothes littered the aisles. Some of the panels were missing from the ceiling and sunlight made its way through the voids, taking over the job of the snuffed electricity. Otherwise, it looked basically alright. The heavy set woman who had been driving hopped down from the tractor seat.

“My name is Sergeant Marge,” she shouted, “what I need for your ladies to do is go inside there and pick yourself out some clothes. If I were you I would select something short, bright and sexy. You will also find a large assortment of cosmetics inside. I suggest that you paint those pretty faces up bright and rosy; the more the soldiers like you the faster they’ll be finished with you and you can go on back to your barracks. Do not use any hairspray as the men don’t like the way it feels and DO NOT select any outfits with pants: DRESSES only! Don’t worry about the living dead as this sector has long been cleared and you are behind friendly lines.”

Here one of the women, a thirty something brunette with thick, preened eyebrows, scoffed and whispered to her friend: “Yeah, real friendly.” This prompted Sergeant Marge to stop her instructional speech and walk through the crowd where she met the brunette. She put her chin one centimeter from the woman’s cheek and spat at the side of her face, “DO NOT interrupt me!” The woman froze and stood at attention. The big woman turned as if to walk away, before quickly spinning around, drawing her club and bringing it around in a three quarter circle onto the back of the woman’s leg. The brunette hit the street and cried out in agony as she tried to massage life back into her throbbing calve. Satisfied, the sergeant continued.

“So,” she picked up her lost thought. “You will be safe at all times. You’re all welcome to try and escape, although I can assure you that it is impossible and even if you did manage to breach our security you would still be without food, water or shelter. Not to mention that you would be at the mercy of the living dead, who, as we all know, are not capable of mercy.” She paused here, and looked around, waiting for her words to sink in. “While, on the other hand, if you’re smart and go along with our curriculum: you will be well fed, comfortable and in no danger. Hell,” before finishing this sentence, she even had to scoff at herself, “you might even find that, after a while, you’re startin’ to enjoy it.” The women said nothing, although the way most of them shuffled in place clearly indicated that they had their doubts. “Alright! I need you little whores to make yourselves beautiful. I’ll expect to see you back here and lookin’ like super models at eleven hundred.”

4.

When the sun was at its pinnacle, Sergeant Marge led Kathryn and the others down towards the beach on foot. It was a little treacherous walking on the sands since some girls had selected high heels or pumps. As they approached a sentry post which led onto the dunes two guards looked Kathryn and the others over lustfully. A wolf whistle was heard as one of the men feigned masturbation and leered like a chimp. Some of the girls had a little trouble climbing a high sand cliff in their prissy shoes. But the ground leveled off at the top and they all looked out over the omniscient ocean. A chubby cloud suddenly blocked off the sun’s rays and the waves whipped a dark blue like an endless dream of troubling shadows.

The soft and salty squalls teased the teased hair of the forced prostitutes as they were led towards several tents. The structures were small and circular, lavishly draped in velvet like a knight’s quarters. Triangular flags, tugged straight out by the ample winds, flapped atop each bungalow. As they approached the initial doorway, the first woman was ordered inside. She put up no opposition and disappeared behind the curtain. It did not take much imagination on the part of the group to know what was going to happen to her next, and even if it would have, they would soon be experiencing similar treatment themselves and would have no need to vex their imaginations. After three more stops it was soon Kathryn’s turn and she was ushered into one of the tents.

A black man sat at the edge of a wide cot; wearing only an army green t-shirt, dog tags and loose fitting boxing shorts. He was slowly breathing through a cigarette and made no more movement then a waiting spider. There was no floor save for the sand of the beach as Kathryn demurely stepped inside. There was a bottle of Crown Royal Whiskey sitting on a nearby backpack and two collapsible director’s chairs across from and facing the cot. At last he moved a little.

“Sit down,” he said, “you want a drink?”

Kathryn thought about this for a beat, decided that she’d never wanted anything more, and shook her head yes. Although the man had yet to look at her, he somehow caught her nod and poured her a sip in a plain plastic glass. She sat down across from him in one of the chairs. “Stuff’ll be gone pretty soon,” he said, “be a real shame to never drink Crown Royal again. Who knows what kinda shit we be resortin’ to drinkin’ after that; mother fuckers be goin blind and shit.” Kathryn didn’t answer or react in any way. After a few seconds, she did take a sip of the hard brown liquid. When she commenced coughing the man spoke again: “Yeah, I know you scared, but you got to ask yourself: who worse? ME!? Or them hordes out there? Any sane individual know the answer. If there are any sane people left that is. Hell, I ain’t that scary.”

In the pause, the man poured himself another. “What’s your name?” He asked.

“Kathryn,” she answered blandly.

“Hmmm, how you feelin’ Kathryn?”

It was an odd question, and after mulling it over for a couple of seconds, Kathryn just felt compelled to answer honestly. “I feel a little under it,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he half laughed, “no wonder, me too.”

He got up and walked over to a basin of water; bending over to splash some onto his tough and leathery features. As he toweled off he said: “Well, we best be gettin’ on with it. Climb up on that cot over there.”

Without much vigor, yet resolved to her fate, Kathryn walked over and laid down on her back. She didn’t even have a chance to settle in before the man was on her; his service revolver pressed up against her temple and his breath on her cheek. She gasped in shock.

“What you think huh?” he raved, “you think I’m like these animals roun’ here HUH! You think I force myself on some poor girl ain’t willin’ HUH!” Kathryn’s only defense from this offbeat attack was to close her eyes tight, forcing a hot tear to leak out and streak across her cheek. “What I want with you white bread? Me I gots… I mean I had… a wife and baby a my own. I know they out there somewhere,” He waved his arm in a gesture which represented everywhere. “I know they…” He stopped talking and jumped up suddenly. Kathryn rose up to a sitting position as he knelt down in the corner of the hut and began to weep roughly. When he had quieted some, she got up from the cot and walked over to where he was doubled over. Putting her petite hand in between his muscular shoulder blades she softly spoke.

“It’s okay,” she said, “We have all lost someone that we loved.”

After a couple of more minutes of sobbing, he slowly picked himself up and walked back over to sit on the cot. Kathryn stayed where she was, her knees in the sand. He swallowed the final gulp of whisky and began speaking on a new subject:

“Enervy is a monster,” he said, “not just a close minded grunt, but a dangerous killer. When he picks you, and sooner or later he will ’cause he always picks the pretty ones, you as good as dead.” Kathryn could only stare at him. “He like to make porno and snuff films; force chicks to fuck the dead, evil shit like that. I only wish that there was somethin’ that I could do for ya.”

Kathryn shrugged and smiled faintly. “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly as if a thought had just occurred to him, “wait a minute.” He leaned over and reached into his backpack; retrieving a handsome military issue buck knife complete inside a camouflage sheath. He got up quickly and offered it to Kathryn. “Hide this, don’t show it to that dyke Marge, don’t show it to any of the bitches in your barracks, don’t show it to no one. When Enervy picks you, wait until you get him by himself. When he turn around you bury this spike in his black heart ya hear me? It’s your only chance.”

Kathryn looked at the knife. It was long and intimidating, but she supposed that she could hide it inside her bottoms. She smiled gratefully and took the bracketed blade. “Thank you,” she said.

“Yeah alright,” He sauntered back over and reclined onto the cot. His relaxed posture a sharp contrast to the madness he had demonstrated throughout their rendezvous. “By the way Kathryn, my name is Granderson. Pleased to meet ya.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“When that dyke Marge comes back you tell her everything was cool; you had a good time.”

5.

Several days passed inside the stainless steel barracks which may have been more accurately described as a cell. Kathryn didn’t do much of anything during this interlude aside from lying forlornly in her bunk and praying that she wouldn’t be selected for a second and surely more intimate date. Now and then the dull, mirrored door would roll open and Sergeant Marge would call out the name of the next unfortunate escort.

Kathryn didn’t make many friends throughout this period, nor did she want to. Sporadic spurts of conversation floated past her ears intermittently, but the topics were limited to such small talk as the good condition of the food, the affable temperature of the cell and the crisp and clean sheets. No one seemed eager to touch upon the subject of their forced sexual encounters or the horrific encounters they’d had with the dead which had led to their imprisonment here. Kathryn didn’t much want to talk either, even though she’d been fortunate enough to avoid being blackmailed into intercourse; at least so far.

She hid the buck knife underneath her mattress since that was the only place to hide anything. At times when she felt the most dread, she would finger the blade which Granderson had loaned her, praying that she would have the courage to use it when the crucial moment came. Then she closed her eyes and drifted into a rash phantasm:

She was trapped inside a burning mobile home which had been surrounded by the dead. She could see the tops of their squash colored heads moving past the small, weak, roll out windows. She fled into the hallway bathroom and closed herself off inside a cramped closet. But the moaning marauders were relentless. They shredded their hands and forearms, even bashing their soft heads against the aluminum siding until she could sense that the panels were starting to give. Then they were walking inside the blaze; becoming the fire, awash in flames, willing to endure any Hellish barrage to get at her. Until they wrapped their cold burning arms around her and the last sound she would ever hear were chained up dogs howling in the distance. She awoke to Sergeant Marge calling out her name, in the same gruff pitch as the pit bulls from her nightmare.

She rolled over on her side before rising and slid the knife down inside her pink underwear.

Once outside she discovered that it hadn’t been night after all as the hot sun blushed in an endlessly clear sky. There was no clock or fixed schedule inside the barracks, making it impossible to tell the time of day. They did not return to the tents, but rather walked for a short stretch along the shore until they came to a lavish beach house. Its picturesque balustrade affording any onlooker a scenic view of the tumultuous pacific.

As Kathryn climbed the wooden stairs which led up from the beach, she recognized Captain Enervy sitting leisurely on a deck chair. His tan and muscular body covered only by a pair of oak green army issue swimming trunks. “Hello,” he said with surprising friendliness, and then as he looked past Kathryn, “that will be all Marge.”

The Sergeant saluted and said, “I’ll be at the bottom of the stairs if you need me Captain,” with that she turned and exited. Enervy studied Kathryn for several seconds before sipping an icy drink in a tall glass. His gaze did not seem as disquieting in this relaxing setting although he did not ask her to sit down or offer her a beverage. Finally he said, “Do you know why you’ve been brought here?”

Kathryn’s mouth turned up at the corners, “for sex,” she said bluntly.

Enervy chuckled petulantly, “because there are some things going on here at the base that I think you should know about.”

“Why tell me about them?”

Enervy got up then and began to pace. This reminded Kathryn of the military manner which he had displayed in the classroom and of his potential for being gravely dangerous.

“Because I like you. I’ve liked you from the first time that I saw you.”

“That’s nice,” Kathryn said sarcastically. He seemed to get a little peeved at this.

“You don’t understand, there are dangers everywhere. My offer to you could save your life.”

“Offer?”

“You could become an exclusive. An officer’s mate if you will. A position which would give you a chance to get out of the barracks; living in an officer’s quarters with only one man. In a monogamous relationship. Yet before I can offer up these luxuries, I need to have a sense of your attitude towards this promotion. Not everyone gets a chance to avoid the camp’s pitfalls.”

“You mean like the pit that women fell into when you ordered her murdered.”

Enervy grimaced again, he seemed to be getting annoyed at the way that she kept shooting him down.

“That was very unfortunate,” he said, “but she was trying to instigate a riot. We cannot have anybody stirring up controversy or inciting rebellion. DISCIPLINE!” He shouted with such force that Kathryn was taken aback as he began raving, “We must have order here or else every women in that room, including you, would have had to die. Every woman in that room would have to be sacrificed to preserve order and… wouldn’t that be a shame to waste all that beauty?” Here he smiled slyly and with a wave of his hand finished, “one bad apple, you see.” He sat back down and took a sip of the drink. His anger having passed as quickly as it came about. This gave Kathryn the courage to say:

“So you’re a good guy, is that it?”

He hatched a peevish grin, “There are no good guys or bad guys, only survivors.” He got up from the chair and stepped towards her. “It’s a difficult call, I understand. But I’m afraid that it’s one you’ll have to make rather quickly.” He was standing right in front of her now and she tried not to step back from him or seem intimidated. “I’m afraid that humanity no longer has any time for courting. And I personally have many responsibilities here at the base, so I won’t be able to wine and dine you.” He took her firmly by the shoulders and kissed her softly on the mouth. Her heart began to beat as if she were searching for a bomb in a maze of industrial pipes. She could feel the knife pressing against her abdomen as his hands traced down the small of her back and squeezed her buttocks. She knew that the time for action was now; it would only be a few seconds before he pressed against her and discovered the knife. But she was frozen by fear and stress. She leaned back, almost feinted and then was righted by his strong arm. When she went limp however her muscles contracted and the knife slipped and dislodged from her underwear. It hit the wooden deck with an audible thud. It then bounced under the railing and onto the sands below.

“What was that?” He shouted, “You bitch you… who sent you here to kill me?”

Kathryn couldn’t answer, the scene was too much for her nerves and she was going in and out of consciousness. He let her go and she collapsed onto the deck. Enervy abandoned her felled frame and walked over to the railing.

“Sergeant!” He shouted. Marge walked out from under the deck into view and looked up at them. “Fetch me that weapon.” She looked at where he was pointing and walked towards the knife. Enervy stormed back over and lifted Kathryn’s dizzy head off the wood planks. “Now bitch,” he began, “you’re going to tell me what you’re doing here or I’m going to cut your fucking eyes out!”

Marge stomped up the stairs then. “Hold her down Captain,” she said, “I’m going to teach this little hussy a lesson.”

He did so. “Don’t kill her Sergeant,” he said, “I need to find out some information from her.”

“Oh don’t worry Captain, don’t worry about anything.”

What happened next flabbergasted Kathryn to the point where she didn’t know if it was real or imagined: Sergeant Marge stepped around Captain Enervy and, in one swift motion, plunged the buck knife into his unprotected eye. He wavered, wavered and a stream of yellow liquid shot out from his retina. Sergeant Marge quickly reached over and extracted the knife before plunging it back in again as if she were hacking through a watermelon. This time the Captain fell; the blade still protruding from his eye; its handle covered by a wash of blood and other internal fluids which dripped down onto the deck and Kathryn’s fair forehead. She could feel his heavy body pinning her down and before her mind revolved into blackness, she heard Sergeant Marge say:

“Get up murderer, you’re going to have to answer for killing the captain.”

6.

When Kathryn awoke she was being marched down the beach. Sergeant Marge had her arm twisted behind her back; tangled in with the club like a splint.

“March whore! March whore!” She kept shouting and finally Kathryn’s feet began to walk for themselves, even though she had lost her shoes at some point and the grains of sand felt like miniscule shards of glass. They soon abandoned the beach however and Kathryn’s brown toes burned on the hot asphalt. Before long they came to a block building with the anagram Y CA hanging from the second story bricks. The second letter in the abbreviation was obviously missing with two bare, rusted prongs sticking out between the Y and the C. As Kathryn was being marched through a locker room she began to hear the moans. Like the cries of the prisoners of Dante’s Inferno themselves. She tried to run but Marge tightened the splint. “Don’t even think about it bitch.”

They came to the room which was the source of the ungodly noises. There had once been an Olympic pool at its center but the water had long been drained. Now the dead were crawling around on the hard floor; trying to climb out; sliding back down the walls and falling over each other; writhing like fat snakes. Marge marched Kathryn right to the edge of the pool. The dead made no reaction aside from continuing to try to escape. Kathryn braced her self for the cruelest of deaths but before she could be thrown in, she heard the sound of applause or rather; one man clapping.

Sergeant Marge whirled around as Granderson walked out of the shadows laughing heartily.

“Captain Granderson,” she said, “this woman murdered Captain Enervy and then she tried to attack me. I was taking her to the pool.” Kathryn stared at Granderson, desperation in her eyes. He shot her a reaffirming look that gave her hope.

“How was he killed?” He asked Marge.

“With this sir, she must have stolen it from one of the officers.”

Granderson nodded and retrieved his own gore splattered knife from the Sergeant. “Yes,” he said.

“Captain Granderson, this may be an inopportune time to bring this up. But you’ll be needing a replacement for Captain Enervy. I’d like to respectfully submit my name for serious consideration.”

“Don’t worry Sergeant Marge,” he answered, “you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“I’m glad to hear that sir, I have done my best for the regiment.”

“Mmm hmm, mmm hmm,” Granderson was staring at the knife and seemed to be thinking about something else.

“What about this wretched underhanded bitch sir? Do you want me to toss her into the pit?”

Kathryn stiffened in terror.

“Well,” he said while hatching a smile, “why don’t you let me worry about her?”

Marge looked around slightly confused and then, perhaps not wanting to defy the Captain, she released Kathryn from the wrestle hold.

“Will there be anything else captain?”

“I don’t think so,” he said before quickly pulling out his service revolver, “at ease Sergeant.” He pointed the gun and shot the thick bodied soldier right between the eyes. The back of her head exploded before she blinked once in shock and fell onto the tiles like a folded up lawn chair. Kathryn stepped back agape; this was the third time in less than a week that she’d watched someone executed at point blank range before her very eyes and the impact which the shock had upon her did not lesson with repetition. Granderson casually strolled up to them and nudged her body over the edge of the pool with his boot. She hit the pond of dead and bounced around like a dingy in a hurricane; before her body went under their solid surface and disappeared in a violent whirlpool of gore. He then looked at Kathryn and smiled wide.

“Ah, thank you, thank you so very much Kathryn for doing what I could not: I’ve wanted Enervy out of the way for some time now. But the sycophants within his faction never would have stood for it. I would have been tried for it and well… the trials around here usually end the same.” He gestured towards the pool. “But this: this senseless self defense at the hands of a whore. Why it’s practically perfect and I even get rid of that dyke Marge to boot. Too ambitious that one. Now I’ll follow you, through those doors.” He said before sticking the revolver in between her two shoulder blades. As she’d done so many times in the last few days, Kathryn began to march. He continued: “And with Enervy out of the picture my faction will take over the entire compound with me as commander in chief. Tantamount to a king nowadays.” Kathryn noticed for the first time that the colloquial street lingo he’d been using back in the tent was gone and he was now talking with the brio of a college professor. They crossed through a tiled opening which had no door and into a shower room. “Now as a reward for so bravely assassinating my biggest political rival I’m prepared to make you a star.” Kathryn rounded another corner and standing in front of a row of shower stalls she saw a video camcorder perched atop a tripod.

“A porn star maybe, but a star none the less.” Kathryn could hear an awful gurgling sound coming from one of the stalls which was obscured by a curtain, like a dog which had been run over by a milk truck whimpering and wounded on the road. She slowed down as she approached the source but Granderson urged her on with the gun. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.” He quipped. Grabbing her mane tightly so that she could not run. Granderson pulled back the shower curtain revealing a monstrous spectacle.

There was a purple faced dead man standing in the shower stall. He was held in place by an intricate web of barbed wires which made deep laceration in his beige skin. There was no blood flowing from these fresh cuts however and his upper lip had been either been lopped off or had disintegrated from decay. There was no teeth in his mouth and both of his arms had been surgically amputated at the forearm. He looked up at them with a savage longing in his bright teal eyes.

” This is Corporal John,” Granderson said, “he may be dead, but he does have one attribute that not every zombie has;” here Granderson paused and pulled a toga off of the hideous creature’s midsection. “You see old John here still has the fire down below.” Kathryn tried to bolt, but this only tightened the grip that Granderson had on her long hair. He continued as if she had not even tried to escape: “That’s right: John here, long lost buddy of ours, will respond to sexual stimulation.” Kathryn struggled and cried, but the Captain was much too strong for her. “So what I want from my actress is very simple Kathryn,” he reached up over his head and switched on a boom box which had been sitting atop the block divider wall. The familiar riffs of the Rolling Stones ‘Start Me Up’ strummed out. “You just listen to old Mick Jagger here, where ever he may be. Because he’s got some good advice for you and we’re goanna find out if your hot enough:” He switched on the camcorder. “We’re gonna see if you can make a dead man cum.”

7.

Private First Class John Wilkes Scooter Benson was glad that he’d joined the army. God knows where the hell he would have ended up if he’d went to college with his pencil necked high school buddies; probably roaming the streets like some possessed puppet, looking for some poor bastard’s entrails to munch on. Whew, he shivered. As it were he was situated inside a safe compound. He slept in a firm but comfortable bed inside a five star barracks. Chowed down on a hot breakfast, before reporting to his cushy duty. And while there were still poor bastards out there somewhere, scavenging for their very lives, he pulled on clean, laundered and starched socks every morning. Hell, next week it was going to be his company’s turn with the women. They… His thoughts were interrupted by a flash of motion on the far right of his peripheral and a quarter of a second later he emptied a clip into a walking corpse who had once been a very attractive woman in a yellow sun dress. Not long after the big slender bullets ripped her apart his two way crackled out a garbled spiel.

“What’s goin’ on over there tower sixteen? Over.”

Scooter picked up the two way. “What the hell da you think’s goin’ on? I got a walker two blocks northwest and I just took her head off. Over.”

There was a brief pause and then the radio barked again, “10-4. Over.”

Scooter had seen them riding by on the back of the flat wagon. Jesus they had looked good; some of those dresses didn’t cover much more than a napkin would have. They must have sent a rescue squad over to the Playboy Mansion to come up with those bitches. One more work week and he would get to sample the goods: if you could even call this work that is. Sitting in an armored tower shooting at these slow, stupid, mothers like they were clay ducks. He’d played video games which were ten times harder. Hell, some of the guys were even bringing twelve packs up into the towers with them. May as well drink as many cold ones as possible before the supply was gone forever. Sniper command knew about it but they didn’t give a shit. Hell some of the guys aim was even a little sharper with a couple beers in em, took the edge off. And the… His thoughts were boggled again by a stir of dust a great distance away; out past the old fish hatchery, which was barely visible on the farthest rim of the firmament. It looked like a dust storm kicking up or fog maybe.

“What the hell,” scooter muttered and picked up his binoculars. But he wasn’t really prepared for the sight he beheld once he lifted the field glasses to his eyes: THE DEAD! Hundreds of them, thousands of them, millions of them marching across the exposed prairies down past the old dilapidated foundries towards the outskirts of the town. Like maggots on the carcass of a deceased world; shaking and squirming and deathly white. Ready to attach themselves to any living or dying population. Scooter lowered the field glasses.

“Holy fucking shit!” he said.

8.

In her bare feet Kathryn scrambled across a high asphalt parking ramp. She could not see the beach, but she could hear the roar of the ocean splashing up against the concrete barriers and continuing on up underneath the beams which held the structure she was standing on in place. The drum like pop of automatic gunfire came from every direction; challenged in pitch only by the locust like drone of the moaning dead.

Back inside the Y CA from where she had just fled, Kathryn had stood up straight in front of Captain Granderson and told him to shoot her in the chest rather than force her to copulate with the grotesquely disfigured and demonized Corporal John. The officer looked out from behind the camcorder and grinned like a hyena, but just as he was preparing a fresh wisecrack, an invisible force slammed into his shoulder. He screamed in agony as a small geyser of blood leaped from the new wound in a vivid splash. Before he could even collect himself a second projectile struck him in the opposite shoulder, causing him to fold down onto his knees. Kathryn took a step forward towards the front of the stall as the shooter came into view; With his one eye twisted into a cruel taffy like laceration, which resembled a mass of egg yokes mixed with ketchup and tarter sauce, Captain Enervy approached them. Thick spiraled designs of dried blood on his bare chest. His good eye shining as blue as a whirlpool whipped by a cyclone; relishing the prospect of retribution and vengeance.

“Hello Granderson,” he said, “didn’t think you were going to get rid of a soldier of my caliber that easily did you?” Granderson didn’t answer but only writhed in agony on the hard shower floor. a huge circumference of gore widening around him. “You think I don’t know the people who want me out of the way around here? Your coup is through asshole and another bullet’s too good for you. Now get up and march to the pit.” Kathryn would have backed into the stall and hid, but with Corporal John zoned into the booth she had little choice but to stand her ground. Finally Enervy noticed her and turned towards her.

“Ahh, the little cunt.” he said, “still think you’re an assassin? I ought to throw you in the pits.” Kathryn said nothing, but could only stand dumbfounded by the awful sight of the maimed soldier. “Nah,” he said after a few seconds. “I think I’ll just blow your fucking head off.” But even as he pointed the gun at her to carry out this threat, Granderson sprang up from the floor. The two men locked onto each other as the gun went off again. The bullet ricocheted throughout the block partitions before hitting Corporal John in the head. His brain exploded like a stink bomb full of thick black ink and his horrid body collapsed only to be held up by the web of wires. This sight drove Kathryn into a near frenzy of fear and she shot around the two struggling men to escape down the hallway. She heard several more gunshots as she exited the building but would never know who shot whom.

Now she was crossing over from the asphalt and back onto the beach; grains of sand digging into the balls of her red feet like metal shavings. Wasps sang around her and she slapped at her head dizzily, before realizing with a rising sense of terror that it was gunfire in the air which was making the buzzing noise; gunfire which was narrowly missing her pretty head. She dropped onto her stomach to avoid the bullets, but a lump in the sand brushed up against her: It was a severed head with a hole the size of a grapefruit underneath its blood soaked hair line. She screamed and rose again. Running down the beach in an aimless panic.

She ran for a great while without reason or direction, zigzagging through a field of the living dead. But they were slow and cadaverous and she managed to avoid most of them easily. Periodically, some of them exploded and were hurled fifteen feet into the air; their frail bodies cracking apart like wooden figures on a firing range. Although Kathryn, in her distress, did not even realize that she was running through a mind field.

Ultimately, she came along to a line of soldiers. Slowly retreating as a massive front of the dead converged upon them. They fired their impressive weapons continuously; the large pellets seeming to evaporate in the cold flesh of the creatures like snow melting onto a hillside; only the occasional shot finding its target and obliterating an evil brain. They also coated the creatures with the incinerating spittle from a squadron of flame throwers. But, just as in the dream which Kathryn was now recalling in a deja vu, the wall of flames had a minor effect.

After Kathryn ran around and then past the battle, the soldiers began to be overcome. The sheer numbers of their maggot ridden opponents defeating their ample firepower. And the dead covered them over like the tide washing out the sands; their screams piercing the air like a bite pinching through flesh.

She continued on at a full sprint; darting in a line concurrent with the fence; the dead clinging to the links like fancy colorful insects pinned to a cloth; an endless mass of their decaying brethren swelling against the ramparts behind them. Hundreds of thousands of white ghouls as far as the eye could encompass. Kathryn fell for the second time, filling her eyes up with the coarse sand. For a few seconds she could only crawl slowly before she sensed a great violence around her and rose to run down the beach blindly. She bounced off of mysterious forms now and then but had no way of knowing whether or not it was one of the soldiers or one of the dead. After a few frightful seconds of this she could feel the warm ankle deep waters of the Pacific sloshing through her toes. She dropped to her knees and frantically washed the sand out of her eyes. When she could open them again, she saw the flags of the tents; the knight’s quarters where she had first encountered Granderson and the girls in her group had first encountered the lust of the regiment. The fabric was being ripped apart by the dead; who were perhaps hoping to find even more quarry inside the makeshift huts.

Instinctively, she began slowly backing into the waves until the warm waters were at her waist. Thankfully, the flesh eaters did not seem to be following her into the depths. Most of the soldiers gamely fought on against long odds rather than flee into the ocean. Perhaps the instincts instilled in them during their training spurred them on to make a stand or maybe they just did not want to get their precious guns wet. Now the water was at Kathryn’s neck as the fence collapsed in many sections under the great push of the lifeless yet living throng. The creatures crawled across the hot sands as if blind and hungry like a million infant crabs searching for a slimy meal in the wet dirt. The death shouts of the regiment were somehow louder and more painful than the steady moan of the cold crowd; as if the souls of the soldiers were suffering more misery than even the tortured, solid ghosts who confronted them. But even if they could defeat the dead in terms of agony, they could not defeat them in battle. The last pocket of the regiment was cornered and torn apart like strips of red rags. Kathryn sighed, nearly cried, turned from the horrid scene and began to swim.

END.

I barely smell the burlap smoke anymore, but I remember that it used to burn my throat and water my eyes. I blow into the tin fume-canister until a little flame leaps up then I slap the top closed and squelch the heat. I want the smoke, not the fire. A thousand or so honeybees swarm around the two hives I’ve placed at the edge of Old Man Orchard. I should camouflage them or put them a little deeper into the woods, but the big white boxes need sunlight if I want the bees to survive the long winters, so it’s a tradeoff I guess.

I pull the little red wagon train, three of the kid’s yard toys bolted together like train cars, behind me. Each car carries a pair of plastic buckets, plastic lids and stainless steel hose clamps to seal them tight. The first time I did this, without the clamps, the bees took all the honey back. Bees can get in anywhere.

Most of what I’ve learned about bees I learned by doing and taking my stings, but some things, like about the burlap and how it makes bees confused but not mad, you can learn in a book. Benson’s Big Book of Bees and Beekeeping, that I salvaged from the library has been a lifesaver, even if it’s a little more of a kid’s “about stuff” book than it is an instruction book.

I pump the little tin fumer until the acrid gray smokes drives the bees away a bit. The hive lid comes off easy and another few hundred bees surge out. They can’t bother me much though, my suit is a good one, leather and treated canvas, a stiff straw and vinyl helmet with a nylon net that hangs around my whole head like a curtain. Velcro fasteners hold the net’s bottom snug to my collar.

The first honeycomb screen comes out and I have to bang it twice against the hive’s base to free up the spoils from the swarm. I drain and scrape honey and beeswax into the first bucket then slide the frame back into place. I pump billows of smoke into the bucket to chase the more ardent bees away then cover and screw the hose clamp snug enough to seal the bucket.

I repeat this process until I’ve cleaned half of each hive and used up all my storage space. There is still more honey to take, but I can wait a few days before hitting this one again. The bees will go right back into their “get pollen/make honey” behavior almost as soon as I walk away. But, I linger for a few minutes and let them gorge themselves on whatever honey I managed to drop or spill during the extraction. Bees are notoriously good at recycling and within a few minutes there isn’t a drop of honey or a speck of beeswax left on me, or on any of my gear.

The swarm lessens with each foot I put between the hive and me. I reach the fifth row of stunted apple trees then strip the netting and gloves. I drag the honey train a few more yards though, just to make sure there aren’t too many really diligent sisters buzzing around my head.

No stings today. Any day without stings is a good day.

This should be a good batch with a little hint of apple swimming beneath the honey-sweetness. Apple blossoms fall like huge snowflakes from the rows of untended trees that make up what’s left of Old Man Orchard. I wipe a muddy sweat off my forehead with my sleeve and slip into the shade. I double check my hip holster, the .45 revolver hangs there unmolested – it fell off one time last year and I had to walk three miles between all of my hired-out hives to find the damn thing – The last thing you want to be missing when you need it is a revolver.

I glance back at the two white hives and risk a sting or two by prying off the bucket top to the first container. I draw out a little wedge of honeycomb and bite off the pointy end. “Thanks ladies,” I whisper before the profound sweetness overwhelms my taste buds. “Oh my god that’s awesome.”

“Dan, that you?”

I hear the voice before I see the lone figure straddling his bicycle on the roadside.

I wave because I’ve still got a good mouthful of beeswax.

“Scavenge tomorrow, you up for it? Three-day trip we think. West.”

I hope Pete Whilouby can’t see my furrowed brow from his vantage point near the old “U-Pic!” sign.

“Trying for medicine, seeds, and cleaning supplies. If we don’t have good luck there’s a couple of caches we left out last time to harvest.”

I wave and cough out, “Yeah, come by when you are all ready to go and I’ll come along. Jim will be with me too.”

“Okay, great!” Whilouby doesn’t wait for me to trudge up to the roadside. He pushes off and before I even get ten yards he’s pedaled down to meet me. “You alone?”

“Not anymore.” It’s definitely getting warmer. Pete only wears a flannel shirt over a tee shirt. His black beard hangs down almost to the middle of his chest, and his black mane is pulled back into a long ponytail, Winter Hair, that’s what we call that style.

I’ve already sheared most of mine off.

“Dan, really, you know better -”

“Jim’s still getting over strep and this has to be done. You have a bee suit?”

“No.”

“Then it’s moot. Unless you’re a sucker for stings. And they love long hair, so be careful.”

Whilouby doesn’t prolong the argument and instead pokes the sides of each bucket on the wagon train. “How much you get?”

“Mostly wax this early.”

“No need to be coy -”

“I’m not being coy.” This doesn’t seem to placate Pete’s reproving stare. “Look, it’s me and Jim’s business. I built the hives, I found the queens, I raised the bees. I made deals with the friendly locals to pollinate their gardens. I’m sure you’d like a piece of my tiny action, but honestly, there isn’t enough work even for me.”

Pete raises his hands. “No offense, Dan. Things are stabilizing, I know that. A little entrepreneurial spirit should be applauded but -”

“I’m as communal as the rest of you! But, if I’m going to spend a day or so a week tending the hives for people then those people need to help me make up the difference, got it? I’m not trying to be a captain of freaking industry here -”

“- Everyone can benefit from this resource.”

“I’m sure that us not immediately turning our jars over to Reverend Lyons at the church sticks in your craw.”

He snorts, hard. The sound is not totally unlike an angry bull trying to breathe out of a rage. “We’ve managed pretty well considering for three summers and four winters now because everyone worked together all the time. What happens when someone wants to just chop and trade wood for food instead of gardening or hunting? We don’t have enough people to sustain that kind of economy. Not yet. In another three years, sure, maybe, I don’t know. But now we can’t afford to be venture capitalists.”

“There’s nothing wrong with trade, Pete. Humans have been trading since cave-man times. You remember cave men, right? They were a lot like us except they didn’t have bicycles.”

We walk in silence towards the road. Old Man Orchard isn’t just overgrown with trees, the grass is three-years untended and hip high now. By mid spring, sometime in June, it’ll be head high. A shame no one in town needs hay because this stuff would be perfect.

The days are getting warm now, and the nights.

I stumble on a campsite hidden beneath the overhanging boughs of a Macintosh tree. I kneel beside a little heap of ash and charred rabbit bones surrounded by a ring of rocks. “Hey.”

Whilouby joins me but doesn’t say anything.

I dip my fingers into the cold ash then peer out into the surrounding fields. “I wonder if our visitors just walked on?”

“We’d have seen them in town or on the way if they hadn’t.” Pete kicks at the little campfire pit.

“No, wait. If they’re still around we don’t want them to know we’ve been here. Leave it. I have to come back in a week to harvest. If we haven’t seen anyone, and it’s undisturbed, I’ll clean it up. Otherwise, if it is a scout then we’re better off with them not knowing we’re around.”

Pete eases back out. “Fair enough.”

The early afternoon sun beats down on Pleasant Hollow. We’ve been lucky this year, only a couple-dozen shamblers found their way into downtown, and we’ve only lost three residents, a suicide, a flu, and a blight, since the thaw. Three years after the comet strike, the undead plague, the world circling the drain, and we’re starting to make things work. Now we work to sustain what little we’ve carved out of the end of the world.

Cracked and cratered asphalt stretches east towards Pleasant Hollow and west towards Shepherd Creek at the entrance to Old Man Orchard. Me and ten or so of the men felled a bunch of big deadwood, maple mostly and a few oaks, over the road just before the snow started in earnest last year. The barricade keeps anything larger than a pull cart out of town. Pete and me snake around the trunks. “You think it was one of Brother Charisma’s scouts?”

“We don’t even know if they have scouts.”

“They’re the closest big settlement to us, I think.” I follow Bob through the last of the toppled trees and skirt beside him on the narrow road leading back into town. My wagon train bounces and squeaks on the road behind me. “Maybe we should send a trade mission.”

The canopy of oak and maple throws the road into perpetual near-night, always damp and cool; always clammy. We almost crawl and have to listen hard for rustling leaves, sniff the air for corrupted meat. I keep my pistol ready while Bob peers through the riflescope into the darkness along the tree line. We wait a full minute before proceeding.

The undead aren’t subtle, or very smart. If they aren’t thrashing around trying to get to you within one minute, then they aren’t there.

2

Wisps of smoke rise up from the heap of charcoaled timber. The fire-smell is mostly gone and the earthy, leafy, moist smell of the springtime slips back beneath the smoke. I kick over one of the smaller timbers, a boot, half of the upper is burned away. Black bones poke out through the hot ash. “I got one.”

“Henderson says there’s more. A couple doors down too. I don’t get it, how do they get inside the houses and manage to start them on fire?”

I stare at Jim for a second then shake my head and fiddle with the shoulder strap of my bolt-action Ruger hunting rifle. “C’mere and help me move the debris and I’ll tell you.”

Jim strides over. He’s big, like, linebacker big still, but dumb as a stone wall. It’s not Jim’s fault, his mom, my Mother-In-Law, had a bad drink habit and he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, so he’ll never see the world any differently than a twelve year old even though otherwise he ages like the rest of us do. “Don’t burn yourself, okay? The wood is still hot.”

He slides a pair of gray leather gardening gloves over his massive calloused hands and stands over the far end of the rubble.

“Just push it up a little, okay? And don’t drop it on my head this time.”

“I won’t Dan.”

“Okay. Ready? One. Two. Three!”

Jim hoists the smoldering debris up to his waist then transitions it to chest high. I squirm into the space, reach in and feel around until I’m pretty sure I’ve got a handful of bone then slide the carcass into the daylight. “Let it down nice and slow.”

Jim grunts then gently puts the debris back in place.

I wrestle with the body for a minute. Some of the clothes are still intact, floral print cloth, probably a woman. “Look here, see?” I pry the arm back and show Jim the loops of wire around the wrists. “They didn’t stumble into the house and burn it down, someone tied them up, put them in, then burned the place down.”

Jim rubs the side of his big balding head for a minute then stomps out of the smoky mess. “Jeez. Why’d someone go through all that trouble then?”

“Maybe they weren’t zombies, Jim.” I ignore that he’s standing there staring at me again. “Help me count how many, okay? Then we’ll meet up with Henderson and Whilouby.”

“I don’t want to.”

“It’s okay. They won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not worry about being hurt. It’s too sad.”

“Don’t be stupid you big ox. Just help me and the sooner we’re done the sooner we can leave this sad place. Okay?” I try not to call him names, but sometimes when I’m tired or frustrated or scared I can’t help it. Today I’m all three. “Sorry Jim.”

Jim nods and begins to kick over piles of ash and shift twisted skeletons of metal furniture. “Two more here. I don’t care if you call me names.”

“See if they have wire around their hands.” I try to concentrate on my little slice of sooty Hell. There’s another tangle of bones mixed in with the bottom half of the skeleton in the floral dress. I can’t get this one out but I can see the wire around its wrists too. This skeleton is smaller. “Jim. Find anything?”

“I got two more.”

I step back and brush the ash across the front of my shirt. “I’ll get Whilouby.” I walk off and stop in the bushes long enough to vomit the little bit of friendship bread and goat cheese I’d gobbled down at first light. I curse and wipe the spittle off my whiskers. Damn it, I’m going to miss those calories in an hour or two.

Whilouby is standing as I was before the smoking ruins of a house. He cradles his lever-action Winchester and peers up the wide asphalt road, east, towards Littleton and the big Interstate highways.

“We. We – found some bodies.”

“Us too. Must’ve been a hell of a party. No supplies left. Everything that might have been useful to anyone is gone. Not even a can of beans.”

“Well, this is just the outskirts, right? I mean, Clara and me and Jim used to drive through here on the way to Littleton or Brattleboro. There’s a few brick places, police station, post office, that sort of thing, a little further down.”

“I used to know the pastor here. Nice fellow. Roderick, Ben Roderick. Baptist, had a really pretty wife.” Whilouby’ voice trails off leaving on the scant morning birdsongs to fill the emptiness.

“We’re only thirty miles from Pleasant Hollow.”

“Henderson? How many?”

“Three? Ten? Thirty? I have no idea. There’s bones all mixed up with everything in here. For all I know this place was full of people and chickens and goats and cows.” Bob Henderson’s head pokes up over the mess. “I’d rather not be in here if you don’t mind. It’s creepy.”

“Come on out.” Whilouby Lowers his eyes and offers a short nearly silent prayer. “It won’t be long,” he says finally, “before they come for us.”

“This couldn’t have happened more than two days ago.”

“Now the question is, which way did they go; west towards Littleton, or east towards us?” Bob wipes some of the soot from his jacket sleeves as he steps out of the rubble. ”

I think for a second about our two pathetic carts and how little they can carry. “Home. They have to bring back whatever they find. We’d have seen them if they came east. It’s not like we were in the deep-dark or anything.”

“You think there’s enough stuff out here, still, to warrant a return trip?”

“We don’t know what they found.”

Jim lumbers up behind me. “I know what they didn’t take. There’s a dozen bee hives piled up a couple of houses down. We’re going to take them back, right Dan?”

I glance at the others. We carried back two hives during the last scavenge and we had to sacrifice some other stuff to do it. “If the others don’t mind.”

Whilouby offers, “Just hide them for now, and we’ll grab them on the way back if we have space.”

“Only one of them looked like it had live bees,” Jim says, “I checked them over for rot, like you showed me, and they look pretty good.”

A strong hive can last through the worst winter if the box is set up right. You have to face the opening to the south and let the sun warm the outside of the thing all winter long. The bees make their own friction heat too, wriggling and squirming against each other like fuzzy little pillows. Benson’s Big Book of Bees shows a hive with an internal temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of an Alaskan winter.

“I wish I had my suit. Can we mark the map for a return trip? A good queen isn’t always easy to come by.”

Whilouby nods and pulls a battered road atlas from his knapsack.

We regroup and double check weapons before Whilouby and Henderson head back towards where we hid the carts. Jim and me walk into downtown, and like Pleasant Hollow, most of the buildings are little more than shells of brick and wood. A pharmacy with punched out windows sits at the main corner between the wide state road and the rural crossway that turns the center of downtown into an X-marks-the-spot. The pharmacy is empty of everything useful save for birth control devices, plastic toys, and old Red Sox tee-shirts that have mildewed into splotchy rags.

Jim starts methodically sifting through the piles of detritus while I scour the mess behind the pharmacy counter. White pill bottles, some as big as half-gallon milk jugs, litter the cracked and wet tile floor. Most of the labels are worn off or damaged and unreadable but I have to check them all. There’s always a chance that someone overlooked a clutch of antibiotics, or real-good painkillers, something that can get a sick person over the hump, you know? I pull a battered pill reference book from my backpack and try to match the dozen or so pink ovals in one of the bottles to the book.

“Jackpot!” Jim’s voice echoes through the ruins.

“What?” I don’t take my eyes of the book.

“This place is loaded! I got a Frisbee and two pinky balls!”

“Great, glad you found useful stuff.” It’s easy to forget that Jim is sort of stuck with the brain of a lesser than average twelve-year-old until some event brings out that side of him. Toys can usually do it, sometimes cartoon or comic book pictures, or if we get to talking about TV like when it’s dark and cold and boring, and he suddenly remembers that things used to be a whole lot better. Today he’s ecstatic with a Frisbee, tomorrow he may be crying over a remembered rerun of Spongebob Squarepants.

“I found something for you too.”

“Uh huh?” I scan each page but none of the pills shown match the ones in my hand. The book has over 500 pages describing every possible pill, name brand and generic, produced in the US right up until the comet strike.

We don’t usually find this many of any one medicine anymore as whoever managed to hang on for the last couple of years would have had to ravage their local drug stores like we did then and are doing now. Scavenging is on the downside too, we have to go further, longer, to get the same amount of usable stuff we once found only a town or two away. That our paths would cross with some other band of hangers-on is – was – only a matter of time, and persistence.

“Come and see what I found for you, Dan.” Jim’s voice lilts softly and I know he’s teasing me at least a little.

“In a minute. Just wait -”

“You’ll thank me when you see it.”

I whisper, “Round and pink with a C stamp, red oval, beige with an X stamp, beige oval with a C stamp – ” to try and drown out Jim’s chortling. All of these pills are for gastrointestinal something or other. I don’t even know if they are useful. I scoop the handful into one of the dry pill bottles and push my way up the counter. “Ok Jim, what do you have?”

He smiles and holds up two packages of ladies disposable razors. “Now we can put the lice on the run!”

“Excellent work!” I slap the counter top then scratch intently at my beard and long wild hair and Jim does the same. “Now see if you can pull off a miracle and find us some kind of soap, okay?”

“You got it!”

I bury myself in the pharmacy mess again until Whilouby and Henderson push through the debris near the front door. “We’re going to get a planning map, if we can find one, from the town office and scout for a safe billet. Let’s say we meet up again in an hour? Looks like there’s a post office down the road with a big parking lot.”

“Sure, we’ll be there in an hour.” I rattle another bottle of unknown pills and get back to work.

3

Jim and me walk point with the lighter of the two carts. Whilouby and Henderson trail us by about a half-mile, that way if we blunder into anything they’ll be far enough away to be out of the mess, and close enough to rescue if the situation allows. The same goes for them if they get jumped from behind we can double back. It’s not the best system, but when we can only muster up four or five people for a scavenge, there isn’t much choice.

“I’m tired of walking, Dan.” Jim leans into the cart as we shove it over the lip of a giant pothole.

“So talk about something. Take our minds off the walk. I’m sick of walking too.”

Jim is quiet for a minute and I know he’s scouring his memory for some new or old and interesting thing to make conversation from. Hopefully he won’t start to babble like an idiot, something he does when the tiredness slows down his brain even more.

“What kind of bees are your favorite?”

“I don’t know Jim. I never really thought about it. Honeybees I guess because those are the kinds we keep and the honey is food and can be used as medicine even. Yeah, honeybees. Those are my favorite.”

“I like those too. I don’t like yellow jackets.”

“Those are wasps. Remember how they are different than bees?”

“They can sting and sting and sting and not die. Right?”

“You’ve got a good memory, Jim.”

“And they don’t make honey.”

“I don’t know about that –”

“They don’t. Benson’s Big Book says so.”

“How about you Jim, what’s your favorite bee?”

“I like the Japanese honeybee.”

We round a big corner where a heap of rusted cars is nearly reclaimed by leaves and grass. The woods stretch down towards Franconia to the south and for a few hundred yards you can see something like fifty miles of rolling green hills and within them an occasional church steeple or rectangular roof jutting out and it looks almost like the last glimpse of a ship sinking in a green sea. We stop for a minute and just stare out into forever. I pretend for a minute that the world hasn’t really ended.

“Do you want to know why?”

“Why what?” The sun filters down through breaks in puffy gray clouds and casts drifting ovals of yellow over the canopy.

“Why the Japanese honeybees are my favorite.”

“Sure.” I wrap one of the leather cinches around my chest and tighten the buckle. “We got hills coming, so get ready.”

“They’re my favorite because they know how to protect themselves.”

I let him prattle on while we strap ourselves to the cart. The last thing I want is to have to chase this thing down the hillside then lose all of our booty on the roadside.

“They have a sworn enemy too, the Japanese giant hornet. It’s like a yellow jacket as big as your thumb. If one stings you, then you die. They’re wicked scary. I’m glad we don’t have those here.”

“Uh huh.” We start the decent gradually. The cart is pretty well loaded up but I rigged a friction brake after the last scavenge when we had two runaways. Now the cart rolls but not so fast it’ll run us over, or get away. I glance back at the leather and wood I’d screwed together into a brake shoe and hope it holds.

“When the giant hornets find a hive of regular honeybees, you know like we have, they mark it, bring their friends back, fly in, and kill every single honeybee then take all the honey, eggs, and babies back home and eat them. The Japanese bees figured out a way to beat the hornets a million billion years ago. They let the scout in and wait, and talk to each other, and plan. They let the scout hornet get all the way inside then, when the bees are sure it can’t escape, they all leap down and rub against it until it dies from too much heat.”

“You learned all this from the big bee book?”

“Yeah. Neat huh?”

“Sure is! Why don’t the regular honeybees do the same thing when a Hornet scout comes to the hive?”

“They don’t now how. They haven’t lived in Japan long enough I guess and the Japanese honeybees don’t teach.”

We both laugh at that for a minute. The hill steepens some but we manage to get to the bottom without any incidents.

The road stretches around another S-curve into what used to be Dalton, I think, and beyond that Stewardstown, and beyond that still Rt 93 running north to Montreal and south all the way to Boston. But we won’t cross that until after nightfall.

Ten miles north of here is where we saw the trucks last time out. Only ten miles. Reverend Lyons took a bullet to the arm that day or he’d be here leading the scavenge for sure. Jim stayed behind that week because he was sick with the strep. Probably better that he doesn’t know anyway. “Almost time to pull off the road and wait for the others.”

“I’m glad.”

“We’ll heel off over by the stone bridge and wait there. Keep the water at our backs for safety. Remember?”

“Can’t get jumped if you have water at your back.”

“That’s good Jim. You’re getting smarter I think.”

“I try and remember stuff.”"

Three hours later I fall asleep as Jim describes Japanese honeybees to Whilouby and Henderson beneath the gray light of a waning moon.

4

We link up with Whilouby and Henderson before wheeling the carts into town. The only zombies we saw were shambling up and down Rt 93, and even then it was just a handful. Summer’s coming though and they’ll come in force then. Used to be we’d pop a few from up on the tree line, but ammunition is scarce now and it’s best not to waste on fun.

Standard protocol for return from a scavenge is to inventory and add to the stores at the church. Usually The Reverend is with us, but today we’ll have to make sure he’s around or we can’t get inside.

The only stop we made before now was to unload the new hive for Jim and me.

We halt both carts on the road outside the church and shout up for Reverend Lyons.

Reverend Lyons struggles down the short steps to the sidewalk and makes his way to the cart. “Welcome back,” he says. His freshly bandaged arm hangs in a sling. A stranger stands beside him within the churchyard; young guy, long black hair, suntanned skin, well-trimmed beard. He wears a blue hat and wool sweater. A big revolver, probably a Magnum, hangs off his blue-jeaned thigh.

We all stare at the visitor and Reverend Lyons notices that none of us speak. “Let me introduce a few of our friends here.” He points us out in sequence. “Jim and his brother-in-law Dan, Pete Whilouby, Bob Henderson.”

The stranger says, “nice to meet you all. Duane, Duane Walker.”

“Duane has found his way down here from Canada. He’s part of a settlement outside Montreal, and they’re doing well enough to send out for more folks. A few thousand, isn’t that right?”

Duane nods and I notice that he’s taking a good long look over the downtown buildings. “Were you camping out in the orchard just west of town?”

“I stayed a couple of nights there, yes.”

Pete glances at me.

“Now, before we get all worried about a new face in town,” Reverend Lyons says, “I’ve called for a town meeting to discuss sending back an emissary with Duane -”

Jim interrupts, “You said you were headed towards Boston -”

“I am, but I have been authorized to provide a map and coordinates and even a route if necessary, to any friendly settlements -”

I ask, “has he met Linda yet?”

“Not yet. We’ll make sure she gets to the meeting tonight though. Until then we should unload and inventory what you have. Any perishables?”

“Some.” Whilouby begins untying the ropes that lash the booty down to the cart. “Duane, has the Reverend given you the full tour of the town?”

“Not yet, but I’m very excited to find so many people. Most of the world is wastelands now. I’ve found a few other small settlements north of here, but none as well developed as – what did you say the name of the town was again?”

“I didn’t.”

We unload all of the stuff and stack it behind the stockade fence so we can rest a bit before putting all of the boxes away in the sanctuary. I grab Jim’s arm. “Hey, do me a favor okay?”

“Sure.”

“Take the scout over to meet Linda, and make sure he stays there for a while. Have a cup of tea or something.”

“Ok, but I can help put things away faster -”

“Don’t worry. There isn’t much stuff. Besides, you can ask Linda if she wants to make use of our new hive. She has a good garden, remember?”

Jim smiles. “Okay. Hey Duane, do you want to go visiting with me?”

Reverend Lyons encourages them both and before anyone can think of raising an objection, Jim and Duane are headed down the road towards the cast iron bridge. “How’d the scavenge go. I don’t see too much that’s really useful -”

“There’s not too much that’s really useful left I’m afraid.”

“Any survivors?”

I think back to the burned out houses and the wire-wrapped skeletons. “None. Hey, do you know anything about Japanese honeybees?”

5

The remains of the little one bedroom house smolder just up the road from Linda’s place across the cast iron bridge that spans the roaring Pemigewasset. There’s nothing left but a tangle of charcoal and fluttering orange ash that climbs into the morning sky like wayward fireflies. The Reverend gave last rights only an hour ago and how he sits off on the side watching the smoke rise. He didn’t want this, but didn’t interfere either. Lyons understands, now, even if he doesn’t agree, and helped spread the plan around town. He gave last rights while the scout was still unconscious. The Reverend said he’d pray for us all.

Jim prods the charred timbers with a pitchfork. Most everyone has gone home now that sunrise has lightened the sky up but for a while, everybody helped out, singing and chattering as the scout, screamed and hammered and shot holes in the doors that we’d bolted shut and the window’s we’d boarded. The little house was old, and dry and went up very, very quickly with the help of some straw bales stacked on the porch.

After an hour or so, when the flames smashed through the roof shingles and the center collapsed with horrible moaning roar, you could barely hear him curse us all, before the fire silenced him.

All that remained was us, the townsfolk of Pleasant Hollow, abuzz with post bonfire excitement.

The Minster: Verse 2

Against the gentle whump, whump, whump, of the helicopter blades, Paul Jollie listened to the last thirty seconds of the mp3 over and over again. He’d put the earpieces of his ipod underneath the bulky headphones to try and drown out the noise of the ancient Huey he was now sat in. He was studying the photographs of the living room of the old croft where the attack had happened. He tried to visualise the knock at the door, the surprise of the occupants, that final desperate struggle and what had happened after the tape stopped, after the bloody violence ended. He had listened to the MP3 over and over again, studying to every nuance of Joe Wyndhams voice as he described the Minister and that final line, the voice of the Minister himself; that drawn out Scottish brogue dripping with menace. No matter how many times he listened, he couldn’t gather any further information from it and yet every time he listened to the recording the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention.

The pilot leaned round from the front and pointed towards his headphones. Paul lifted each side of the helicopter headphones gently and removed the Ipod earpieces. He moved the mic into position.

“What?”

“Twenty minutes until we hit the Edinburgh drop zone, Sir” called the pilot

“Alert me at five minutes to drop”

“Yes Sir” said the pilot.

Paul relaxed and closed his eyes, his privacy invaded by the grating whine of the chopper as it sped over the desolate British countryside, and the cold misty morning looked almost sepia toned as the sun struggled to fight its way through the wet gloom. His mind wandered back to the meeting with the Minister of Special Circumstances, barely eighteen hours before.

Paul was one of the new breed of Special Forces employed by the British Military. He had just turned seven years old when the Fall had happened and in it he had lost his entire family. At nine years old he had fired his first pistol and dropped his first Z. At sixteen he had found himself on the front line at the Battle of Tower Bridge. The army had tried to reclaim North London by using the bridge as a choke point only to find that the mass of Z’s in that half of London was too great for the bridge and they had risen from the Thames, a mass tide of Z’s that flanked their position, rising up through the water to surround them, decimating the ragged British Army in the process. He was one of barely a thousand survivors of that great battle, who had fought a running retreat through the streets. Ten thousand people who had survived for twelve years swapped sides that day, making the retaking of London all that much harder.

His skills at knowing how the Z would behave, when to fight and when to hide had served him well and got him noticed by the newly formed Ministry of Special Circumstances. He joined the unit at eighteen and was trained in the use of weapons, both military and martial. He was taught the newly developed Japanese Z kata, a martial art specifically designed to keep as many of the dead at arms length or further whilst they were systemically and efficiently despatched by the best weaponry British sword smiths had developed. The ‘Union Jack’ was a high quality stainless steel blade with strengthening ribs criss-crossed along it, like the old flag. It was just long enough to sever a head at arms length and sharp enough to chop logs. It looked like an ancient broadsword but was considerably lighter and gunmetal grey in colour.

Paul had helped developed the Special Forces Z proof armour, lightweight black polypropylene recycled from waste plastic: Flexible, strong, yet slippery to hold, with bite proof Kevlar at the neck, knee and elbow joints. It looked like skinny American football gear crossed with a medieval suit of armour but was considerably lighter and easier to manoeuvre in. He had participated in the live testing where it was discovered that the facial recognition skills of the Z’s brain was partially how the fresher Z’s homed in on humans, so now a lightweight Motocross mask was used to hide the soldiers features. Paul had taken to using a stylised white skull painted on the front which confused the Z’s into thinking he may be a Z himself, this hesitation in their actions was all he needed and he was trained to take advantage of it.

He was now used by the Ministry to scout cities, towns, sewers and small isolated communities and to generally clean up where a single man could. Sometimes pre-Fall items were required: Laptops with military or scientific data, culturally significant items from museums or libraries needed to be saved, but most of the time but it was to help the disparate communities of survivors clear a local threat, or protect them whilst their community was expanded. After all it made sense that Special Forces worked alone. It was easier to hide, easier to run and it meant that you were not tied to the bonds of friendship which could make you put yourself in a deadly situation to save a comrade, risking you both in the process. It was you alone against the Z. Pre-Fall there were sixty seven million people living in the UK in a landmass less than half the size of Texas. Fifteen years after the Fall there were less than a million people left and it was estimated almost ten times the population in Z’s. Only Japan still had as many Z’s per live citizen, some of the more densely populated countries had no citizens left at all. Clearance was a morale term, a term to let people know that things were returning to pre-Fall normality. The reality was that this was far from the truth, and operatives like Paul Jollie were merely playing a numbers game, eventually his time would come and when it did he hoped that his kill figure was up in the five figures, it needed to be so that there were still humans left when the last zombie was killed, and not the other way around.

Most UK cities were still ‘out of play’ to use the military term. Only really London due to its cultural and historic significance, and Edinburgh because of the easily defendable castle, had significant populations. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, all these and many, many more were out of bounds to humans and still roamed day and night by their former inhabitants.

Paul had been summoned by the Minister of Special Circumstances and had arrived through the ruined London streets by Rickshaw cabbie. Civilian petrol shortages meant cabbies had cut the rear end off their taxis, and attached bikes to the front, most of them were happier that way as it kept them fit into the bargain and now there was virtually no traffic in the deserted streets, there was nothing to get frustrated at. He had been cleared by the dogs at the entrance to Westminster and entered the Minister of Special Circumstances private office. He stood in front of the desk and, although still wearing civilian gear, saluted stiffly.

Jim Bramer, Minister of Special Circumstances, had been an Operations Manager and engineer in a factory prior to the Fall; this training had given him a unique perspective on rebuilding the capital. He commissioned wind farms and solar panelling to provide some electricity. He had set up apprenticeship training programs for blacksmiths, motor mechanics, builders, pilots, and farmers. Virtually everyone in the London safe zone had two or three different trades and his idea to resurrect the wartime spirit of the British had given hope where previously there had only been despair. Posters, and adverts on the BBC were everywhere urging citizens to recycle, be vigilant, build not destroy, farm not consume, help not hinder. Crime was virtually non-existent.

However, Jim was most proud of his military achievements, the new Special Forces were seen as Knights of the New Monarchy, something for young minds to aspire too, and something to be feared in their black armour reminiscent of the medieval warriors on which Britain had been founded. To the outside the UK looked like a mix between medieval England and George Orwell’s’ 1984, with all the positives of stern governance, a strong King in William and a job for everyone to rebuild the shattered Kingdom. Yes, Jim’s job was much better than being a faceless drone in a factory. He was over sixty now, with short grey hair and a lined face that showed a history of starvation and struggle under its stern features.

“At ease, Paul.” Said Bramer

“Sir.” Said Paul, relaxing.

Bramer motioned towards a chair.

“Whiskey?”

“No thank you, Sir.” said Paul taking a seat in the red leather high back in front of the old mahogany desk.

“The reason I have called you here is, unfortunately, not a social one” Said Bramer

“It never is Sir.” Said Paul, smiling

“No… No.” chuckled Bramer.

“I want you to listen to this recording and tell me what you think”

Bramer clicked play on the battered old Sony Vaio and the office filled with the sound of a recording of a mans voice. Paul listened intensely to the file and both men baulked at the end of the recording.

“But I thought the Minister was just a legend, a fairy tale to scare your kids” said Paul, visibly shaken.

“Apparently not… Paul, we have lost contact with several of the smaller Scottish communities north of Edinburgh and now we have lost contact with Edinburgh itself.”

Paul looked surprised.

“I want you to investigate and report back. This is a 24-hour recon and destroy mission. If you find The Minister your orders are to capture or kill him. If he is resistant to the disease then he can infiltrate communities destroy them and escape with impunity. We cannot allow that to continue.” said Bramer gravely.

“Of course not Sir” Said Paul

“This enemy is human Paul, capable of all the dirty tricks, lies and betrayals specific to humankind. You need to forget everything you know about fighting the Z and recalibrate to fighting someone who is immune to the Z. Someone who has survived the Fall and believes himself to be some sort of Priest doing Gods work. That is all we know but even that is enough to make him a danger to the State. We are rebuilding something wonderful here Paul and I won’t let this son of a bitch ruin it. I want him found and dealt with, nipped in the bud before the populace realise he is more than a legend. Panic, is our biggest enemy in this city Paul, did you know that?” Bramer was red faced now.

“Panic breeds Death, Sir” said Paul, quoting one of Bramers’ favourite propaganda posters.

“Yes, Paul. Exactly”

“One final thing.” continued Bramer “A question, actually”

“Why now? Why has it taken him all this time to start this crusade? Why not in the first few years after the Fall when we were weakest? You need to consider this, Paul, considerate it carefully before you go up against him, not because I don’t think you are capable, but because he is a different enemy to the one you are used to.” Bramer took a sip of whiskey. Paul merely nodded in thought.

“I’m in the process of arranging a chopper to take you north, other than that it’s your mission”

“As always sir” said Paul, darkly.

Bramer slid the thick file across the table to face Paul; on its cover it read:

‘The Minister: Top-level clearance only’.

The helicopter pilot turned and looked at Paul.

“Five minutes, Sir”

Paul retrieved the kit bag from underneath his bench on the Huey and opened it. He grabbed his black armour and pulled it over his head, tightening the clips, and securing it firmly. He grabbed the greaves and pulled them on each leg securing them as he went. He pulled the skull mask, with black tinted goggles over his head and finally secured the black, plastic ribbed, gloves over his hands. The small pack he shouldered had water and food, a couple of flash bangs, ammo, a maglite, some rolling tobacco (his only vice) and his radio. He took out his automatic pistol and tucked it in the back of his armoured suit. He removed the AS50 sniper rifle with telescopic sight, checked and loaded it before holstering it on his back. The P90 sub machine was also loaded and checked before slotting into the thigh holster. Finally, reverently, he removed the Union Jack sword and scabbard and strapped it to his back, crossed against the sniper rifle.

Paul opened the door of the Huey and noise exploded around him, the cold Scots air rushed through the ancient chopper chilling him through his armour. He held onto the rail above and gazed down as the green countryside rushing below him. They passed a small group of Z’s walking north; they looked up acknowledging the passing chopper. They were obviously ‘originals’. Z’s from the Fall, now naked, clothes fallen off after years of wandering and shrivelled, like grey tree bark moistened by the misty dew of the morning. In a way they were easier to deal with as they looked about as far away from human as you could get, and moved more slowly than the freshly turned. The only thing less human were the bloaters, those that had rotted in underwater for a long time and had swelled as the gases in their bodies expanded and the water separated their cell membranes. You could usually smell bloaters a long, long time before you saw them.

They passed several burnt out farmhouses and overgrown car parks littered with rusted cars, whitening skeletons, and dominating weeds. Nature itself was taking over; most roads except for the motorways were impassable due to wreckage and the encroaching hedgerows and flora were slowly breaking up the concrete road surfaces.

Ahead, Paul could see the twin hills of Holyrood Park. It was a perfect drop zone away from the urban area of Edinburgh itself. The Huey dropped between the two hills, the sound of the chopper muffled from the surrounding area by the imposing cliffs on either side. The pilot dropped to about fifty feet scanning for movement below. There was none, and no cover so when Paul indicated he would use the rope to rappel down, the pilot shook his head and dropped the chopper to the ground. Fuel constraints meant the pilot couldn’t afford the fly by of Edinburgh he requested but this didn’t matter.

“See you in 24 hours boss” said the pilot, cheerily.

“You will,” replied Paul.

Paul crouched and trotted away from the Huey as it rose with a rumble into the cold morning sky. The buffeting of the down draft subsided and Paul jogged northwest towards the crest of the hill. He wanted to get a vantage point to view the Edinburgh community from afar. He also knew that even with the secluded drop off point it would attract some unwanted attention. He stopped just shy of the crest maybe thirty feet higher and unslung the AS50. He would give it ten minutes in this safe spot and despatch the few inquisitive Z’s that would inevitably arrive. He rolled a cigarette and smoked it, savouring the flavour of the imported tobacco after the long flight, while scanning the area. Dead quiet, he wryly thought to himself.

Paul crested the hill and shouldered the sniper rifle, looking through the powerful scope. Edinburgh stood like a series of grey monoliths against the skyline. It was still too early in the day for the mist to clear and although he scanned the area of Edinburgh castle rising in the distance he couldn’t pick out any detail. No lights were visible.

He studied his route north towards Dukes Walk and the A1, again nothing except derelict cars and rubble; all colours washed away by time and the grey morning. He looked along Dukes Walk to Holyrood Road. He had memorised the route last night. No movement. By his reckoning he was a click away from the wall that ran along the A7, signifying the east side of the Edinburgh community boundary, with 500m of that across urban ground. Ideally he would need to find a route up to the rooftops, standard procedure for traversing a city due to the Z’s inability to climb. But it didn’t look good, he wasn’t into the city proper and the building density wasn’t great enough to allow rooftop travel. He shouldered the sniper rifle and checked the P90. Quietly he moved back into the valley.

The road had been cleared and broken rusting cars littered the verges, mostly empty, but he saw a people carrier with a family of rotting skeletons inside, including a tiny skeleton in the child seat. The drivers’ door was open but the driver had a large hole though his skull. Paul didn’t want to think about what had happened in that car and moved cautiously onwards. He cut north past a white permanent tent with glass sides, signposted ‘Dynamic Earth’; obviously an eco museum of some type. Didn’t feel too dynamic at the moment, he thought, as he padded silently through the windless grey like a stalking black cat. He passed Holyrood Palace and stopped for a second to look at its striking architecture of sweeping curves and glass frames; windows that were now smashed, rotting barricades that showed the battle that had been fought here to save Scotland’s fledgling democracy. Evidently it had failed.

Given that roof travel was impossible he decided to head north to Canongate and down the wide street to avoid side alleys and points where he could be ambushed from dark corners and Edinburgh myriad closes and alleys. Tall 18th century granite buildings rose on his left, now vine covered, with a small tree was growing out of an upper storey window. Ahead he could see the Barrier that used to be the A7 and across it there was a thirty-foot high wall of rubble with what appeared to be an aluminium gate at the end of Canongate road, with a guard tower either side atop the wall. The row of buildings had been demolished to make the wall which left a no-mans land about 100m wide all the way along the wall, north and south. Paul cut left and crouched behind a car.

Now there were two real dangers.

The first were unseen snipers in the guard tower, bored, stoned, or drunk they were known to take pot shots at any Z’s entering the no man’s land area. This was generally tolerated because after a few months the Z’s would learn not to go into that zone. Unfortunately for the Special Forces, these guards didn’t think that a lone human would stay in that area so they would usually take a pot shot at them too. Paul nearly lost an eye because of this a few years ago.

The second danger was crossing No-mans land itself, normally there would be a lot of Z activity just out of range of weaponry on the towers. Paul knew he was in that area now, but there was nothing, no movement, no moans, nothing. This, in itself, unsettled Paul. In fact he hadn’t seen a single Z on the way in. That was unheard of in a major population centre; where there were humans there were Z’s, simple as that.

Paul took the Maglite out of his pack and flashed it at the guard towers, using the series of signals agreed to show he was military and would be approaching the gate. He waited for a reply, after several minutes he tried again. No response. Maybe that’s why there were no Z’s: There were no humans. But it would still be dangerous to cross to the gate if there was no one there to let him in. It would leave him too exposed. He repacked the Maglite and looked at the wall again. To the right from the gate he saw a route where he could climb up some exposed concrete columns and granite blocks where they were poorly stacked and the steel reinforcement bars stuck out from the wall at a variety of angles. At about ten feet there was a small ledge he could use to stay out of reach if Z’s came. Hopefully, that would attract the attention of anyone inside to open the gate. He shouldered the P90 and got ready to move. Swiftly he left his cover and crossed the open ground towards the wall. Nimbly he scaled the wall up to the ledge and only then turned round. Nothing followed him. He scanned the buildings and dark corners where he came from. No movement, only silence and his own steady breathing.

He listened intently to see if he could hear anything from the guard towers above or the enclave beyond. He considered calling up there, but decided against it, for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention to his exposed position. He spotted a route to climb up, so he took it and as he scrambled to the top of the wall he was in line with the crudely built guard towers. There was no one in them. He looked down at the rest of Canongate stretching out away from the gate. There were certainly signs of life and below him was a series of ramshackle tents and crude buildings, rusting caravans and MPV’s. Washing lines with drying clothes stretched across the road, as well as jury rigged electrical cables and chained extension leads. The population density was huge in Edinburgh; normally this would bustle with fifty thousand people crammed into a small walled city. There was only silence, complete and enveloping silence, the kind where your own breathing was all-encompassing. He looked at the building on either side of the street, boarded up windows to protect from the cold; some windows were still intact but there were no lights anywhere. He removed the sniper rifle and peered into its scope. He was close enough now to look along the high street, up towards the castle itself. It was like looking at an oil painting; nothing moved in the still air. Brightly coloured banners and tent covers lay static in the morning stillness in a long line right up to the castle, their colours washed out by the dull morning sun. Nothing moved. There was not even the sound of a bird or sight of an insect in the cold damp vista.

Paul shouldered the P90 and moved across to the guard tower ladder. He scrabbled quickly down it and onto street level, gun aimed along eye line constantly as he jogged. Checking corners and side streets as he moved up the middle of the road, he slid along the High Street through the granite canyon of the tall Victorian buildings. Pauls footsteps, light as they were, echoed gently from the old stone walls.

“I love you, I love you” said a cutesy voice echoing in the silent street. Startled, Paul jumped, aiming his gun as he left the ground. As he landed he saw he had kicked a child’s doll. Off key, it repeated its mantra.

“I love you, I love you”

“Jesus Christ” whispered Paul, bringing his boot heel down on the chest of the doll, silencing it forever. Quickly he swept a 360°, checking to see if anything had heard. Again there was nothing. His heart thundered in his chest.

“Jesus” he repeated, relaxing his aim a second. He kicked the doll and it skidded loudly across the road. He pursed his lips and exhaled, breathing heavily, assuming his stance with the stubby gun at his shoulder he moved of again toward Edinburgh Castle. Silence enveloped him once more.

Quickly, and quietly, he moved up Castlehill and through the inner blockade.  It was as if the entire population had vanished. He entered the main castle itself past a building with a faded gift shop sign, his black figure outlined in the glass reflection of the door.  A wide concrete area inside was well tended and neat, no signs of struggle. This was the highest point in the safe zone so he moved up to the north battlement, shouldered the sniper rifle, and looked north across the safe zone to the outer wall beyond. There was no movement; the vista was the same one he had moved through to get to this point, grey buildings, temporary structures, static mist but no life, or death, for that matter. Nothing. Through the gloom, the distant sun struggled to light the city around him, even though it was now mid morning.

Paul leant the rifle against the battlement, removed his mask, and took out his bottle of water, drinking deeply he considered what he had seen so far.

Normally after a Z attack where there were no survivors, the area of the attack would be rife with the dead. They would just mill about aimlessly, it would take days for them to wander and disperse, possibly years before they left the area entirely in search of the living. Here there was nothing. It was if the Hand of God had picked up everyone from Edinburgh and removed them. He considered Jim Bramers’ words once more. How could the Minister do this? Where the Hell was everyone?

He had checked East and North, he decided to roll a cigarette and check South and West. The yard was big that he felt he could see things coming so he relaxed as he strolled across the compound, smoked his cigarette and looked out across the South battlement. The view through the sniper rifle was desolate, no movement within the confines of the distant wall and the grey mist made dark silhouettes of the city beyond.

Finally he checked the West battlement, once again the city was empty, and he felt as if he was trapped in a Polaroid: A static scene where once there was bustling life. As he scanned across the horizon, he stopped. Was that movement in the distance? He tracked the scope slowly back, unsure as to what he had seen, or was it his mind playing tricks on him? He could just about make out a large structure in the distance, he thought about the landmarks he had studied last night in the dossier. That must be Murrayfield Football stadium. It looked the right shape and was in the right direction. He was sure he had seen something move at the base of it. Then he heard it, like a distant buzz. No, more like a background noise. Then it was gone. Paul decided it was the closest thing to a lead he had had all morning so he finished his cigarette, tossed it over the side. Grabbed the P90 and moved off back down Castlehill before doubling back west along Johnston Terrace and towards the west wall that ran along Lothian Road and the stadium beyond.

He made his way through the streets, growing accustomed to the silence, with increasingly more speed and less caution. This wasn’t carelessness but a realisation that the city was really as he saw it, devoid of anything. The west gate moved into view. It was wide open, as far as it could go; this was a cardinal sin in a community of this type. It was clear that whatever had happened had happened around here, yet there were no signs of a fight or struggle, no blood, nothing.

He moved past ruined buildings and overgrown parks at a cautious trot. He paused occasionally, sure that he could hear a distant rumble, perhaps even cheering or singing? He wasn’t certain but he was beginning to realise where all the people were. They must be in the stadium ahead. The A8 curved off to the right and to his left was a field or park between him and the stadium. It meant moving through long grass, an idea that didn’t fill him with joy. Anything could hide there, the perfect place for a starving, broken Z, to ambush him. He considered setting light to the field, but that would alert his position to anything around or in the stadium. He would just have to move carefully and be confident. He moved through the grass keeping a line of trees to his right, just far enough away so he couldn’t be jumped from behind a trunk. As he safely reached a line of trees between him and the stadium he could see across the wide concrete plaza that there were two Z’s stood by the main ticket stall entrance. There was maybe a hundred feet between them of open car park. Clearly now he could hear the faint drone of a man shouting from within the stadium. In the background he was sure he could hear something else, a crowd perhaps?

The two Z’s stood by the entrance shuffled from foot to foot but remained in position. Surely they could hear the human voices in the football ground, why didn’t they move towards the sound? The one on the left was fully clothed, but scruffy. Its pale skin matched the morning grey perfectly, ‘he’ looked like an average Joe: Jeans and trainers, black jacket and blue T-shirt; only a bloody leg gave away his status. The other was a tall girl, she had been turned longer than her companion; her black dress was torn and shredded revealing the shrivelled flesh of her legs and arms. She had suffered a blow to the skull at some point and a patch of hair was missing on the side of her head where there appeared to be a dent. This made her look strange and lopsided.

He had left his mask off since the last cigarette on top of the castle. He now replaced it, his face now a brilliant white skull against the black of his armour. He shouldered the sniper rifle. Removing the attachment from the side he fitted the silencer. He adjusted the scope for the distance involved and got ready. He would need to move in quickly.

He stood and strode purposefully towards the entrance; the two Z’s spotted him and shambled towards him, and as they both turned to face him he dropped to one knee and steadied his aim. The girl opened her mouth as if to moan and call others to them, with a ‘Pfft, Pfft’, they both dropped almost simultaneously, a small neat hole in each temple. Paul rose and strode towards the entrance quickly swapping rifle for P90 as he went, his movements practised and fluid. As he reached the entrance he flattened against the corner and peered inside. Nothing except for the sound of a man’s voice, clearer now, but he still couldn’t make it out. Other noises too; a definite sobbing and behind that a something else, he wasn’t sure. The interior was dim with no lighting but not in darkness due to the various tunnel and openings into the stadium beyond.

He moved in gun at the ready, sweeping corners as he went. If the citizens of Edinburgh were in the main stadium he needed a vantage point to survey the scene, ahead there was a wide set of stairs. At the bottom a cracked and broken sign showed four floors, at the top it said ‘Director Box’.

“Perfect.” whispered Paul to himself.

Covering the way forward with his gun, he rose deftly up the stairs to the second floor. Carefully, he poked his head up so that his eye line was level with the next floor. To the left he saw a long corridor curving round the edge of the stadium, every few metres he could see a tunnel leading though to the main stadium and at the entrance to each tunnel stood two or three Z’s. To the right the tunnel curved more dramatically around the short side of the stadium but again, at each tunnel entrance, more Z’s stood watch. None of them faced him and they all stood motionless looking into the stadium ground itself.

Paul moved silently but swiftly on up to the next level. As he poked his head up again, the scene was repeated, at every entrance the Dead stood, guarding every exit. He listened and realised that the murmur he could hear was a prayer: Thousands of voices speaking in hushed tones.

He moved up quickly to the third floor then finally the top level, unseen as he went. To the right were the wide mahogany double doors of the Directors Box, fortunately with no Z’s near it, however the entrance to the main stadium to the left had three Z’s in position. Again they looked fairly ‘fresh’. Although they stared impassively towards the ground Paul didn’t think he could get into the Directors box without them seeing him open the door to slip through. He needed a distraction. There was nothing around to use, no rubble or detritus, so, whilst ducking out of sight, he slipped the pistol out that was tucked in his belt, quietly removed the magazine, and took out a single bullet,. He replaced the magazine and the pistol as quietly as he could, and then tossed the bullet behind the heads of the three Z’s. It sailed threw the air and hit a plastic bench with a loud crack. The Z’s turned as one towards the noise and as they did so he slipped up to the door, opened it a fraction and slipped through silently.

Inside the opulent room the huge glass window to the stadium was shattered, glass littering the floor, the plush chairs had been knocked over and broken and the drinks cabinet raided. A large cracked and dusty LCD TV hung limply from the wall. Paul could clearly hear the singing now as fifty thousand voices, rang out, and tinged with terror, they sang:

“This is the feast of victory for our God, for the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign”

Paul shouldered the AS50 Sniper rifle and crept, on all fours, across the glass to the edge of the box. There was not enough sunlight to worry about reflections from the rifles telescopic sight. He peered over and was stunned.

Below him, the stadium was rammed with people; all the inhabitants of Edinburgh were crammed onto the pitch, most standing, with looks of abject terror on their faces, men huddled with their wives and children, holding them close. Some injured or dead lay on the ground. The smell of fear and rotting flesh rose like a cloud above them. Some of the citizens were sobbing uncontrollably whilst trying to sing and some appeared to be holding their arms aloft, eyes glazed in rapture staring at the figure that was leading the sermon, as if gazing at the face of God Himself. By the state of the grass they were stood on, now just a muddy stain, they had been here for some time, maybe days, without food or water.

Around the stadium stood a ring of impassive statue-like Z’s, maybe a few thousand of all types. They stared at the crowd, their faces a mix of passive death and abject hunger. They blocked every escape route and stood like grey mannequins, or patient shepherds around their flock. It was clear now. The Minister wasn’t just immune to the Z’s; he could control them and control a lot of them simultaneously. Paul couldn’t even begin to imagine how he did this, but it was clear this was what he was seeing below.

He tracked the guns sight to the end of the stadium to a small stage that appeared to have been there since before the fall. The skinny, black dressed figure, sung out, stamping the rhythm of the tune on the wooden stage. He was dressed as a man of God, his greying dog collar and black waistcoat were frayed and muddy; he raised his arms in exultation as the hymn reached a crescendo. The Minister looked starved and gaunt, grey stubble sprouted from his chin and his thinning grey hair was tinged with yellow stains. Spittle exploded from his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he sang, his eyes the most piercing sight in Edinburgh, burning with insanity as he sang.

“This is the feast of victory for our God. Alleluia. Sing with all the people of God and join in the hymn of all creation”

Paul could see a woman walking up the stairs to the stage, she was young and he could see her singing the hymn, arms raised, with the glazed expression of madness and horror in her eyes. She walked slowly up the stage and towards the Minister who regarded her with a gaze full of compassion. He smiled gently at her and placed his yellowed hand lightly upon her head. In the crowd where she had come from he saw a long haired boy shouting and struggling against the restraint of others who were holding him back. Faintly he could hear him scream and rage for the girl to come back, what appeared to be friends and family held him from running up the stage to try and retrieve her.

“Julie. NO!” The boy yelled over and over but she knelt solemnly in front of the Minister. The old man nodded to one of the Zombies on the stage and it stepped forward towards her as the Minister smiled at her reassuringly. She rose and the Zombie embraced her gently. The boys struggling intensified and for a moment Paul thought he might break free, but then the Zombie bit hard into Julies neck and pulled back pulling flesh and ligaments from her, and as blood flowed onto the stage in rivers she fell to the floor. The Zombie stepped back, yet the Minister sang on, as did the crowd, more shakily with individuals in the crowd falling to their knees and weeping. The boy fell to the floor out of grief and out of sight of Paul, and the macabre scene carried on as before. Paul wondered how many times the scene had been acted out since they had been brought here, and how many times the scene would be acted out again until the only living thing left in the stadium was the Minister himself.

Paul settled against the rifle, and slowed his breathing as he did so. Compensating for the distance the cross hair levelled at The Ministers’ forehead. He paused. Doubt crept into his mind. If he shot now, the Z’s, now free of The Ministers’ control would fall upon the crowd, ripping them to shreds. He would have to think of another strategy.

He heard a crack of broken glass behind him and quickly looked round, above him stood a huge Z, dressed in a stadium security jacket. The sound of the singing had masked the sound of it entering the room and now Paul lay prone beneath it. He swung his legs and caught the back of the zombies’ knee. It fell heavily but recovered quickly and they both rose together. The Z lashed out before Paul could react and knocked the sniper rifle out of his hand; it fell out of the window and clattered to the stands below. Stubby hands clawed at Paul’s armour but could find no purchase on the slippery plastic. Paul hitched his leg under the side of the Z and pushed hard. The Z fell over his leg, and scrabbled for the ledge as it also fell out of the window. He stood there now, his white skull mask contrasted against the darkness of the room around him, he realised that every being in the stadium was staring up at him. The humans had hope on their faces, but he was glad they couldn’t see his own, now devoid of hope as he gazed at The Minister.

The Minister addressed the Z’s now.

“Fall on them my brothers. Turn them all!” He raged.

The noise was deafening as fifty thousand people screamed in terror. Paul watched as the Minister jumped from the small stage and disappeared up the stands and down a tunnel into the rear of the stadium. He didn’t want to watch the rest, but knew he had one chance to end this. He took the P90 in his left hand and unsheathed the sword in his right, it sang as it cleared the scabbard. He would have to fight his way round the stadium and intercept The Minister before he could get away.

He kicked open the door of the Directors Box to see five Z’s moving towards him. They weren’t quite close enough yet for melee. Raising the P90 he shot two through the head, in single shot mode, and kicked a third in the chest as he ran at them, knocking it to the ground. Spinning, he raised the sword and extended his arm and as he completed the circle, two heads crumpled to the floor and the bodies sagged in front of him. He drove the sword vertically down into the eye socket of the remaining stricken Z and it twitched as the nerves were severed.

Running now, he passed one of the entrances to the stadium. He glanced in to see crowded faces of fear being pushed by the throng behind. The people at the front up against the Z were pushing back while the dead were picking victims like cherries from a tree. The Z’s themselves shone wet red, totally covered in blood and dripping with gore, their milky white eyes and flashing, broken teeth, piercing the façade. Paul saw the floor bathed in blood and organs, arms and heads, but passed too quickly to define movement from the scene and yet he already knew that brief vista would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Still running, he followed the curve of the tunnel. Small groups of two or three impeded his progress but the curve was not sharp enough so that they could get the jump on him. He barely paused, but quickly knelt and dropped the two groups with his P90 as they approached and moved on.

He passed another entrance to the stadium and saw a vision of Hell, straight from a Bosch painting. Their were no survivors at this entrance just an abattoir of body parts, blood covering all four walls, and Z’s feasting like starving sharks, as he continued on the sound ripping of muscle and flesh made him briefly want to puke. He pressed on, as the screams and sounds of the butchery echoed around him like knives.

As he reached the next stairwell, he saw Z’s pouring out through the tunnel ahead. Heart pumping he moved down a level and carried on round. He was closer now towards the carnage in the stadium, the roar of screams echoed towards him. If the Minister had stayed near the tunnel entrance then Paul would have to drop down another level and he should see him. He couldn’t afford to lose him now, as Paul would have had enough difficulty against a thousand Z’s, if all the dead in the stadium came after him it would be game over. He had to end this now; it might give the remaining people a chance, however slim.

As he passed another entrance he tried not to glance but couldn’t resist and his vision flicked to the ground beyond. In a flash he saw groups huddled together in raw panic, waiting to be picked off as Z’s ate lustily of their loved ones. The Minister had unleashed his wolves in sheep’s clothing, and they were hungry. Paul ran faster, each entrance he passed shown him a vignette of horror as he glanced down it, each a fresco of gore on his minds eye, each scene indelibly scorched on the paper of his memory like bright sunlight through a lens of terror, blood and screams.

He could see the last stairwell ahead but a group of about ten Z’s were moving toward him. Behind the stairwell he could see even more moving to block his access down the stairs. Paul flicked the gun onto auto as he ran and with one arm, raised the gun to head height. He barely slowed as he fired and swept the gun across the tunnel, the roar of the gun muffled by the sounds in the stadium. He dropped a few, too many to count at this speed, including a couple in the group behind. Z kata kicked in and he simultaneously dropped two with a roundhouse kick and decapitated two others with the sword, one grabbed at him from behind, its teeth gouging lines in his shoulder pad. Paul dropped to one knee, grabbed its ankle and pulled it over backwards. He was just going to finish it and deal with the last ones when he noticed the rear group was nearly at the stairs. No time. Paul sprinted, barging the lead one over who grabbed feebly at him, and jumped down the stairs three at a time as two dived at him and toppled down the stairs.

He reached the bottom and scanned the tunnel ahead, there were no Z’s but he could see a skinny black suited figure ahead at the furthest point you could see before the tunnel curved out of sight, he could hear the zombies descending the stairs behind him, and the sounds of slaughter in the stadium beyond. He stopped, raised his weapon, and burst fired at the figure. He thought he saw a shot connect, a small plume of blood explode from him but the figure darted left into a tunnel away from the centre of the stadium.

Paul raced down the tunnel and skidded, then he bolted left where the Minister had gone. The double doors ahead swung gently and he ran down and pushed through, fully aware of the mass of zombies behind him. Ahead there was another short corridor that lead to another door marked ‘Kitchen – Authorised personnel only’. To his left was a steel hostess trolley full of plates and dishes, after all this time the rotten food was odourless and reduced to black stains against the white crockery. He yanked it over and wedged it against the door handle hoping it would hold, and that there were no other exits for The Minister to escape through.

He moved down the corridor and slowly pushed open the door. Inside was a large industrial kitchen, dusty stainless steel appliances, with pots hanging above and the remains of unwashed plates in the sink. Paul moved in and instantly heard a shuffle to the left, in another doorway stood the skinny black frame of the minister, only it wasn’t. This was a Z in black suit and dog collar; its hair was black but had been crudely spray painted white. Paul paused and realised too late it was a trap; realised too late it was a simple human deception; realised too late that he hadn’t heeded Bramers’ words and the heavy steel frying pan was brought down with a clang on his skull.

He keeled forward spinning round as he fell, his mask slipped from his face and landed on a nearby work surface. In an effort to catch his fall he dropped the P90, which skittered under an oven and the sword clattered to the floor. Paul landed on his back, his vision swam, and he tried to scramble backwards as he faded in and out of blackness. He banged his head on the steel unit behind him, and scrabbled to lean against it. His vision cleared slightly but all he could see were myriad figures in front of him, spinning round and round. In a moment of clarity he realised he was sitting on his pistol, which had come loose, but just as he realised this, one of the figures in front of him bent down and reached what looked like an immense grey finger towards him. As it entered his body he realised it was his own sword, used against him.

Paul screamed and adrenalin surged though his body, he reached under and grabbed the loose pistol he was sitting on, raised it and fired eight shots at the figures in front of him. His training ensured, even in this weakened state, that he always left a bullet for himself. A wave of darkness enveloped him and the pistol clattered to the floor as he lost consciousness.

He awoke unsure of what had happened, the sword sticking out of his gut reminded him, and he guessed by the flow of blood, and the pool around him, that he hadn’t been out for long.

“You’re nae deid then son” rattled the prone figure in front of him.

Paul looked up; sat against the stainless steel unit opposite him was The Minister. Four bullet holes punctured his muddy black coat, and blood was running out of the wounds and pooling on the floor around him. Near the door he could see the fake minister lying dead on the ground, a gaping exit wound in the back of his head, the blood coated the pattern of the floor. Paul tried to move but he was weak, the wound in his belly stung as he shifted. He realised that the trap he had fallen for had been set by The Minister in such a way that the Z’s had lead him down the stairs to this place, hell; he may have even known Paul was there when he dropped the first two Z’s at the entrance.

“No I thought I would lie here and wait for the ambulance,” said Paul, with a thin smile.

The Minister broke into a chuckle, which turned into a hacking cough; a small trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth.

“The ambulance, heh, Very good soldier boy. Very good” said The Minister finally.

“Well at least we’ll nae die alone eh?”

Paul looked down at the sword again and considered removing it, but he didn’t have the strength. He realised he could still hear screaming in the background, but it seemed to be less frequent, more sporadic.

“Whats yer name son” said the old man.

“Paul” Said Paul. “What’s yours?”

“Ted…Edward. They call me Ted” Said the Minister, raising a hand feebly.

“Nice to meet you Ted.” nodded Paul.

They studied each other for a moment. Then the Minister spoke.

“Its nice tae have someone to speak to. My flock here, are obedient, but are not known for their conversational abilities. Ken whit I mean?”

Paul smiled.

“So how do you control them then?” Enquired Paul. They were dying. No point in beating around the bush he thought.

“Ahh well, that’s a tale…” Said the Minister

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Paul, blackly.

The Minister shrugged.

“The fall happened frae me the same as everyone else I s’pose. I had a nice wee Parish, some good folk, in a nice wee town. Then the plague came and we barricaded oorselves away frae everyone. Same as most people. But we didnae hae the luck o’ some others I’ve met. We were isolated and far from a city. It made food hard tae come by and we didnae hae a Doctor. Each year more people died of disease and starvation, the bairns were born deid, or their mothers died. The fathers did theyselves in. I prayed but it was a Godless place; people stopped worshipping and I stopped praying. Winters took the weak ones, and the Zombies took the strong.”

The Minister paused and looked down at his wounds.

“So the last of us got on a bus and headed south. First place we came to we found one o’ they big outta town supermarkets and just drove the bus straight in. We piled oot and ravaged the place frae anything we could eat, gorging ourselves like heathens, on beans tinned salmon, that sorta thing, but we were stupid, and all the old staff were in the back. They poured out and ripped us apart. I just curled up and waited frae the bites. Ye ken?”

Paul nodded.

“I waited and waited until the silence returned and everyone was deid. But I didnae feel nae bites. I just lay there with my eyes closed, thanking my lucky stars at least I would die with a fully belly. Hunger’s funny like that. I dunnae think I even prayed. Then, after a long while I opened ma eyes and guess what?”

“What.” Paul said, impassively.

“They were all stood roond me, just staring. I closed ma eyes again and I’m nae ashamed tae say I wept son, wept like a bairn. Now again I opened ma eyes and they were still stood there, just peering at me with them soulless eyes.” He paused as if deep in thought.

“Eventually I just got up the courage tae run, and run I did son, run I did. Everywhere I went they just followed me until I couldnae run no more and I just walked, I’d become like them Paul, all deid inside, just wandering through the countryside wi my wee troupe o’ disciples. That’s when I had an epiphany son. You ken whit an epiphany is Paul?”

“Like a revelation.” said Paul

“A revelation, exactly!” exclaimed the Minister “In fact I had two. The first was to realise that all the close scrapes I’d had wi’ zombies across the years weren’t scrapes at all. Every time I thought they had gone frae me they had really gone frae someone else. I always thought it was luck, or the provenance o’ The Lord, but it wasnae, they weren’t interested in me. The second revelation was that every time I moved, every time I took a step, they moved at exactly the same moment I did.”

Paul looked confused.

“They were reading my mind Paul. They were doin whit subconsciously I wanted them tae dae. It was like they couldnae dae enough tae please me. Well, I’m no ashamed tae say son; I went a wee bit mad after that. I got them daeing things I shouldnae, things tae each other, things tae me.”

The Minister visibly shuddered.

“Anyway, as I wlked the land I pondered the reason for this frae a long time, and I decided that this apocalypse, these creatures weren’t man made at all. It was the Rapture, Paul. The End of Days and I had been chosen as Gods servant to stop the suffering o’ mankind and lead them oot o’ purgatory an intae the Kingdom o’ Heaven. Praise the Lord! I was tae use this power to lead the creatures to cleanse the Earth ready for the coming of the saviour!” exclaimed the Minister.

“You could have used the power to draw the Z’s out so we could kill them, Ted. You would have been a hero” interjected Paul, into the Ministers increasingly fervent rant.

The Minister stared at him and blinked. He smiled.

“You know, that never even occurred to me. You’re a clever lad Paul, but no. It wouldnae hae been right, it wasnae whit God wanted.” The Minister broke into a hacking cough, blood flowed freely from his mouth and he carried on coughing for several minutes, spraying blood over the kitchen floor. In the meantime Paul was feeling weak and fuzzy round the edges. The pool of blood was larger, mingling with that of the Minister, all around him now. His legs tingled even though felt less pain, and the background roar in the stadium seemed to have stopped.

The Minister recovered a little and spoke once again.

“So I took my little troupe and roamed the countryside, converting righteous souls where I could until I came here. But Paul, I want you tae know this. I didnae want to take them by force, I wanted them tae believe. That’s why I brought them here, so I could tell them. So I could convince them. So they could feel the power of the Lord and believe. Do you see? Do you understand?” The Minister asked, almost meekly.

“You’re insane, that all I see, mate.” said Paul defiantly.

“And you’re a prick” said The Minister, smiling. Paul smiled then, two dying men having a gallows joke.

“Anyway.” said The Minister “Do you think we’ll survive? As a species I mean. I havnae heard the news recently so I dunnae ken.”

“The Americans are doing well I hear, pretty much cleared the whole country was the last I read.” said Paul.

“Really?” The Minister sounded surprised. “I always thought it was a Godless place, I always thought they would be first tae go…..Ah well. I’m tired now Paul. I’m gonna hae mysel a wee sleep.”

They sat in silence for a while until The Ministers head sagged down onto his chest. Paul noticed the blood was slowing from his wounds. The Minister was dying. Paul himself felt exhausted, there was no pain, and he just felt dog-tired. He looked across at the grey haired old man and saw his chest fall for the last time. The Minister was dead. Mission accomplished, thought Paul. At least there was that. He was just another victim in the end, and Paul’s Z count? He thought maybe he had done enough.

Paul waited. He’d expected to hear the dead thumping against his makeshift barricade but there was only silence in the kitchen and silence in the stadium beyond. He might just have a little nap himself. His eyelids were heavy, so he though he would close them, just for a minute.

“Hur, hur ,hur.”

Paul snapped to full consciousness, across from him The Minster, was shaking gently as he laughed. Paul saw the flow of blood from his wounds had turned into a trickle of black ichor. His skin was white with black veins traced underneath. His hair now deathly white, no traces of yellow remained and his dirty, gaunt hands were now skeletal in appearance.

“Hur, hur, hur.” laughed the Minister and when he spoke his voice was lower; hollower.

“So it seems Soldier boy that God won’t even set me free from this place” croaked The Minister, as he slowly raised his head.

“It seems that God, still has a role fer me even now”

Paul reeled in shock at what he saw. The disease didn’t work like this, he thought. It took hours to turn people, this wasn’t right; this wasn’t the way it worked. The Minister stared at him and Paul knew he was dead. The Ministers eyes were obsidian black and Paul saw his prone refection in them, the sword sticking out of his gut. The Minister shifted slowly onto all fours as he spoke.

“I’m gonna do the Lords work my boy, I’m gonna take this world to Rapture, I’m gonna save this world by ripping it to shreds wi’ my bare hands, and you’ve just old me where tae start. I’ll take this island, then the good ole’ US of A.” The Minster was crawling towards Paul. Black ichor exploded from his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he spat the words, his knees and hands leaving trails through the pools of blood as he shuffled closer.

“And do ye ken what?” The Minister was in his face now. Paul could smell the death on his breath, and the stale stink of his dirty clothes.

“I’m gonna need men Paul. Good men like you tae be ma generals, ma disciples, and you are gonna be my first, ma right hand man, because I like you boy.”

“No Ted. Don’t do this please, please just let me die” Said Paul, his voice shaking with terror, his eyes wide as he gawped at the demon in front of him. He remembered using the pistol bullet as a decoy earlier and starkly realised there wasn’t one left for him even if he’d had the strength to lift the pistol once again.

“But I have to Paul, because this is what the Lord wants, this is whit I want, and do you know why else?”

Paul shook his head, trying to turn away, but was transfixed in horror.

“Because I. AM. THE ZOMBIE MESSIAAAAAH!” The Minister screamed, the last word turning to a gurgle as he bit down on Pauls neck. He felt the warmth of the blood running down his chest and felt the rip of skin, tendons, and sinews. The last thing he heard was the triumphant roar of the new zombie army in the Stadium beyond and the last thing Paul realised – before the blackness enveloped him – was that The Minister, The Zombie Messiah, was now unstoppable.

———

Pete Bevan currently lives in Worcester, UK with his beautiful wife and baby daughter, writing occasional works of fiction and comedy for friends and relatives.  Pete was shown ‘Dawn of the Dead’ at 7, an experience that has lived with him ever since and means that trips to shopping malls and church fetes in graveyards make him excessively twitchy, and prone to eyeing scruffy people with suspicion. Zombiphile doesn’t go far enough in the opinion of friends and work colleagues.

Guide to Reading Scottish:

Frae = From or for

Fer = for

Ken = Know (Do you ken/know?)

ma = my

Hae = Have

Roond = Round

Assume that n’t words are replaced with nae, hence,

Couldn’t = Couldnae

Wouldn’t = Wouldnae

Can’t = Canae

Also some letters may be missed off the end of words.

Mysel = Myself

In addition a ‘close’, as mentioned in the text, in Edinburgh is like a very small covered alleyway. Edinburgh is riddled with them due to the way the city developed around the castle.

Thanks the ‘The Broons’ and ‘Oor Wullie’ from the Post, and Irvine Welsh’ ‘Trainspotting’ for this method of bastardising English to create Scots as used in the final sections.

Big thanks to my wife unwavering support when I don’t do the things I’m supposed to be doing because I’m upstairs writing. Big thanks also to Phil Walsh for proof reading skills and encouragement.

A zombie lurched across the lawn wearing a red, white and blood letterman’s jacket. Pimples glowed on the pale face of the once living teenage boy.

Jeremy, seventeen years old himself, aimed a revolver out of the upstairs window of the cookie-cutter suburban house he called home.

“All right, you rotter…”

Jeremy centered his sights on the zombie‘s head, pulled the trigger…and missed.

“Frak!”

The revolver blasted a second time, and the zombie’s ear disappeared. The undead goon shuffled in an aimless circle, perhaps confused by the gunshot’s echo. The books said they followed noise.

Jeremy bit his lip and steadied his aim. This time the bullet didn’t even take out an ear. Jeremy had no idea where it hit.

“Damn it!”

The zombie reached Jeremy‘s house. Its moans sounded like the forlorn notes of a didgeridoo.

Jeremy couldn’t hear said moans because the pistol left him with ringing ears. Earplugs didn’t show up in the movies. Characters simply pulled out their guns and performed headshots with cool proficiency.

The gun grew heavy. Sweat tickled Jeremy’s forehead. The zombie bumped into the house over and over again, apparently trying to walk up the wall.

“So stupid,” Jeremy said, pleased to label someone else for once. The zombie looked up, and Jeremy finally managed to shoot it in the skull. No cool spray of blood, just red fluid bubbling up with no more pressure than a drinking fountain. The creature collapsed in a lifeless heap — well, a more lifeless heap.

Fictional characters usually got sick after their first zombie kill, but Jeremy felt nothing but a jazzy accomplishment. He assumed this made him stronger than the average zombie apocalypse survivor.

Holstering the revolver, Jeremy hurried downstairs. The weight of the gun pulled his pants down, and he had to hitch them up. From now on, the pistol never left his side. Close-quarter combat against the undead was generally inadvisable, but the revolver would even the odds (a sword would make a cool weapon, too), and if the odds became too great, Jeremy could save the gun’s last round for himself.

Both garage stalls stood empty. Jeremy’s parents worked at the hospital, and he guessed they would not return. Hospitals were always the first to go as zombie victims were brought in, turned and attacked the medical staff. Jeremy’s emotions fluctuated between vague sadness and vague guilt at this — sadness because he felt he should miss his parents and guilt because he didn’t. For the last four years, they looked upon the disaffected, black-clad, heavy metal/horror fan their son had become with a mixture of confusion, uneasiness and a perhaps a dash of disdain.

Jeremy grabbed a crowbar from his father’s tool rack. A regular handyman was Joe Mears. He built a birdhouse the spring before and asked Jeremy to help. Jeremy said no and watched TV instead.

Jeremy climbed up on a chair and wedged the crowbar into a seam between the particle boards that made up the garage’s ceiling. Each board was three feet wide and five feet long. This made them perfect for barricading the home‘s lower windows.

The crowbar refused to breach the seam, and Jeremy’s shoulders soon ached from working with his arms above his head. He rested a moment and spotted a hammer on the tool rack. He retrieved it, used it to pound the crowbar into the crack between boards and started prying.

Sweat poured down Jeremy’s face. He thought he was in decent shape. Sure, he didn’t look as trim as the jocks, but he knew he could be as good as them. He didn’t get a fair chance is all. He tried out for basketball in seventh grade, and the coach had him sit on the bench. Finally, Jeremy got sick of it and quit.

After struggling to get his fifth board loose, Jeremy realized he forgot something.

Water!

Utilities probably wouldn’t break down while he barricaded the house, but if they did, he needed to have at least some water saved up.

Jeremy moved into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of bleach from under the sink. Outside, a dozen zombies shuffled down the street. The ghouls swatted at SUVs and Hondas filled with accountants and soccer moms trying to flee the city. One of the undead jaywalkers hopped onto the hood of a Toyota and tried to chew through the hard shell of its windshield to get to the soft, gooey drivers inside. The Toyota weaved, attempting to throw the zombie off. Another ghoul, who might have been a grocery store worker judging by his apron, was clipped by the rearview mirror of a passing Accord. The impact spun him into the path of the Toyota. The vehicle hit the zombie dead center, and the driver lost control. The car went up and over the curb and crashed into a house.

Jeremy gave a grim shake of the head. People were better off staying home and trying to wait it out at this point. The roads would be packed with everyone trying to leave the city, and stranded motorists made themselves easy targets for the undead.

Leaving the window, Jeremy ran upstairs, filled the bathtub and added bleach to keep the water from growing unsafe to drink. On the way back to the garage, Jeremy passed the kitchen phone, remembering a call he recently tried to make.

Jeremy’s zombie apocalypse fantasies always included the same things: coolly dispatching ghouls, looting whatever he wanted, collecting caches of food, outfitting the Mears home into a fortress (hiding out in a mall would be the ultimate, though), rigging up his father’s generator so he could play video games and watch movies (which he looted in large quantities), foraging for miscellaneous items (like a sword, perhaps), being tricked out with guns he would find somewhere (MP-5s, shotguns and Berettas, oh my!) and cool SWAT gear like gloves, Kevlar vests and fireproof Ninja masks. Of course one would also come across a beautiful girl (or, much better than an anonymous beautiful girl — Julie) who would need protecting. At first she would be stand-offish, but once she realized how much her protector cared and how competent he was in the undead world, she would need to be held in the dark while she cried. And perhaps that holding would lead to more…

But first things first.

Jeremy finished prying boards. Carrying them into the house and laying them before their respective windows left him lightheaded. He went to the refrigerator for a drink. The orange juice went down cold and burned in his stomach, making him feel sick. The effects of physical labor surprised Jeremy. Then again, the only exercise he got was standing in front of the mirror, sucking in his gut, flexing his biceps and thinking he was pretty buff, all things considered.

Night fell as Jeremy finished the windows. He decided not to barricade the doors, just keep them locked tight. If they could keep a burglar out, they could keep a brainless zombie out.

Exhausted, Jeremy staggered to the basement. Outside, sirens swelled. Gunshots and screams followed. Jeremy locked himself in his bedroom and turned on the TV to drown out the sounds of doom. One channel still ran a Seinfeld episode. The others were either off the air or showed disheveled newscasters reporting what Jeremy could already guess.

The zombie pandemic began two months earlier, with vague reports of a plague in Mesopotamia. The cradle of civilization gave birth to the casket of humanity. Some said the plague was a virus that started with a monkey attack on a human. Others said a new germ evolved deep in the jungle. Regardless, the pathogen came into contact with man and found him good. A village was the first to be infected, and the epidemic could have perhaps ended there. Instead of doing the prudent thing, however, like firebombing the area, scientists donned biohazard suits and went in to study and collect. Suffice it to say, they screwed up. The disease escaped and followed Horace Greeley’s advice about going west, young man — and east, north and south.

Jeremy finished his junior year of high school when the newscasters started showing grainy footage of native ghouls munching on their grass-skirt wearing buddies. The skepticism of John Q. Public shrank in inverse proportion to the resolution of these videos. Grainy footage equaled no way, uh-uh, but once viewers saw the homeless hordes of New York City lurch up from the subways and attack business folks out for their noon luncheons on 1080p high-definition plasma screens, skepticism went the way of the dodo bird.

Jeremy’s belief never wavered, however. For years prior to Z-Day, he watched every zombie movie he could find, often getting down on his hands and knees to search the lower racks of the video store’s horror section. He watched every zombie movie that showed up on cable. In addition, he read all the books, the short stories and even wrote his own fan fiction.

The moans, the pallid faces, the hordes, the foraging, societal collapse, I have seen the enemy, and he is us, and the entrails, my god, the entrails — Jeremy knew them all and loved them all.

On a practical level, Jeremy realized a zombie apocalypse was a terrible thing. On a darker level, he dreamed about it happening. The removal of all rules, roles and expectations appealed to him. In a zombie apocalypse, resourcefulness became the measure of a man rather than social standing. In a world of the undead, Jeremy believe he had a chance to have a life.

TWO

By morning, Seinfeld gave way to static. Were Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine out there, staggering around with insatiable appetites for human flesh? That more than anything drove the reality of the situation home to Jeremy. A calamity wasn’t real until it affected TV characters. Jeremy wept when Buffy went off the air. He never shed a tear when his grandfather died.

Jeremy sat up and groaned. Bone-deep pain wracked his body. He always thought jocks were wimps when they complained about aching from workouts. One time he missed a bus and had to walk eight blocks. His hips and thighs were sore the next day, but he didn’t whine about it. This pain was ten times worse, however.

Jeremy doddered his way to an upstairs window. Plumes of smoke rose in the distance, widening at their tops and making it look like tornados besieged the city. The car that crashed into the house was still there, and three other cars now sat abandoned and windowless in the middle of Cottonwood Avenue. Splotches of blood marred their paint. Otherwise, the neighborhood was empty — no zombies, joggers, walkers or early commuters.

Stomach growling, Jeremy hobbled down to the kitchen. The house still had electricity, so he fixed himself a bowl of oatmeal. Somewhere far away, yet on the threshold of hearing, a person screamed.

“Help!”

Jeremy sprinkled cinnamon on his oatmeal.

“Please!”

Jeremy forced the oatmeal down his dry throat.

“Don’t!”

Jeremy drank some water. Oatmeal churned in his guts. A flush came over him.

“No! No! No!”

Jeremy’s face pinched in on itself. The screamer should have been finished by now. One scream, engulfed and torn apart by the undead — that’s how it worked in the movies, not this dragged-out shrieking and begging. Jeremy couldn’t tell if the victim was male or female. Desperation turned the voice genderless.

Jeremy spooned another clump of oatmeal to his lips, and his belly gave a gurgling lurch. He just reached the toilet in time. First, stuff came out while he kneeled. Then stuff came out while he sat.

And still the screams drifted in from far away.

“Stop! It hurrrrrrrts!”

Jeremy fumbled for the shower radio his mother received the previous Christmas. Most of the channels were static, but at least it was noise. Jeremy found a channel still on the air. A voice trying not to be frantic spoke a recorded message.

“If they are able to travel safely, survivors should try to reach one of two safe zones. One is located at Federated Coliseum and the other is at the Windfair Soccer Fields. From these safe zones, survivors will be transported out of the city. Please do not try to use the expressway. If you cannot reach a safe zone, stay inside, lock your doors and board up your windows. Troops will try to reach you.”

Safe zones. Yeah right. More like all-you-could-eat buffets for the undead. The Windfair Soccer Fields stood four blocks away, but Jeremy had no intention of trying to reach them. Rather, he took the radio back to his room. He held it next to his ear as he crawled back into bed. That way he couldn’t hear anything else.

Jeremy’s mind turned in on itself for comfort, thinking about a day in tenth-grade English. He often got to class early. He didn’t waste time in the hall between bells, talking about stupid stuff like weekend plans and dates. He stood looking out the window at the perfect spring day. Trees and grass grew green. The sun threw the dappling shadows of leaves across the scene. Even the cars looked like something out of a Rockwell painting. And Julie — nice-girl Julie — who talked to everyone, including guys named Jeremy whom everyone else called “Germ-y,” came and stood next to him.

“What are you looking at?” Julie asked, all sapphire eyes and golden hair. When she looked at Jeremy, he saw possibility in her gaze.

“Not much,” Jeremy said.

Jeremy wondered where Julie was now. Once the question occurred to him, it wouldn’t go away. He rolled over, grunting at his aches and pains, and grabbed his phone. He received the phone for his sixteenth birthday. His parents looked pleased and expectant as he opened the gift, like they believed they just gave him the key to being cool. But they were wrong. First, everyone knew cell phones were way cooler than land lines, but Jeremy’s parents were so far behind the times they didn’t even have a computer. Second, Jeremy had no one to call anyway. He used the phone only once, shortly after that day in tenth-grade English class. Jeremy dialed and hung up, dialed and hung up for over an hour, each time losing his nerve between pushing the last digit of Julie’s phone number and waiting for the receiver to ring on the other end. At last Jeremy did let it ring, every nerve ending tingling with the anxiety being secreted by his stomach. A woman answered — Julie’s mother, Jeremy presumed. He tried to speak, and all that came out was a broken croak. He hung up and didn’t try again.

Now Jeremy picked up the phone and dialed without hesitation. The rules had changed. It was no longer about who was cool or not cool. It was about who was surviving. The phone rang four times, the final ring truncated by the click of a connection.

“This is Scott, Melissa and Julie Anderson,” a male voice said from an answering machine. “If any loved ones are trying to contact us, we are going to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. We will get a hold of you as soon as possible. God bless and protect you all.”

Jeremy hung up.

A church, he thought. That was almost as bad as a hospital or safe zone. How long until the religious kooks inside started measuring each other with sidelong glances, marking who would be the blood sacrifice to appease god’s wrath?

That’s how it happened in the books and movies.

“Julie,” Jeremy whispered.

THREE

Guns crackled in the distance, along with the occasional explosion. The city’s last stand had started. It was a losing battle, Jeremy knew. Sooner or later the undead hordes would overwhelm any fighting force.

Jeremy stood in front of his mother’s full-length mirror. He wore black jeans (he tried warm-up pants, but their nylon material swished when he walked) and a black sweatshirt. The pistol was belted around his waist, along with a fanny pack that held a multi-tool, paper, pencil and extra bullets. Jeremy also wore his school backpack, which contained a first aid kit, granola bars, a thermos and garbage bags for loot. Jeremy pulled on a pair of gloves and a ski mask and admired his proficient appearance. Satisfied, he drew the revolver and pointed it at his reflection, emulating SWAT poses he had seen in various movies and magazines. Despite the soreness of his muscles, he felt empowered.

Ka-pow! Ka-pow! Ka-pow!

Then the lights went out.

Jeremy calmed himself, thinking of the generator in the garage. His father bought the generator after the east coast blackouts. The salesman bragged the device operated at noise levels no louder than human speech. With the garage and its doors insulated, that volume of sound shouldn’t attract zombies. All Jeremy had to do was turn the unit on, and he’d be watching his horror DVDs while other survivors stared at the wall and got cabin fever. Jeremy headed for the garage, pleased with his handle on the situation.

The generator was a squat contraption encased in a red housing. Jeremy didn’t have much experience with electronics or machines, but he considered himself intelligent enough to figure the device out. Sure, he had a C-average in school, but that was because he wasn’t interested in any of the classes. He knew he could get straight A’s if he tried.

The generator had a key and a push-button start. The gas tank was easy enough to find. Jeremy spun the cap off and found it full. A thick cord came out of the back of the generator. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it plugged into a special outlet mounted next to the home’s electric panel. Easy as one-two-three. Plug it in. Turn it on. And viola — power.

Jeremy plugged the generator in and turned on the garage lights. That way he could see if he had power once the generator started. Jeremy turned the key and cringed at the potential racket. The generator chugged into life with a combustion cough and idled at decibel levels that were indeed comparable to human speech.

The garage lights didn’t come on.

Frowning, Jeremy examined the generator. A lever said “run” on one end and “generate” on the other. It currently pointed toward “run.” Jeremy deduced he wanted “generate” and pushed the lever forward.

The garage lights glowed.

“Let there be light,” Jeremy said.

The garage lights flared white and exploded in a shower of sparks. Meanwhile, the generator cycled up and down. A buzzing sound came from the electric panel, and smoke rose from the cracks around its door. Frantic, Jeremy switched the generator off as something either overloaded or short-circuited.

And then Jeremy smelled it, faint but unmistakable — smoke. He rushed into the house.

The light above the kitchen sink had been on and exploded, as well. Sparks igniting the window curtains. Jeremy grabbed them, thankful he still wore his gloves, and threw them in the sink. He turned the water faucet on, but only a trickle came out. Thinking fast, Jeremy grabbed a jug of milk out of the refrigerator and dumped it over the flames. The crisis averted, he leaned against the countertop, breathing heavy.

Adrenaline made his senses hyper aware. Jeremy smelled the milk underneath the overpowering stench of smoke. His own sweat and the faint odor of apples that escaped the refrigerator also pricked his nostrils. He even smelled the low stink of decay that began to permeate the air a little more each day. Jeremy felt the pattern of linoleum beneath his stocking feet. He heard the wind, milk dripping down the drain and the cooling tick of the stopped generator. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the soft glow of lights in the living room and the bill holder hanging on the wall. He could even read the addresses on the envelopes despite the fact he stared straight ahead—

Soft glow of lights in the living room?

But the power is out…

Jeremy whipped his head around. Light came from the living room all right — firelight. Jeremy grabbed a half-full pitcher of Kool-Aid, along with two water bottles, and rushed through the doorway. Flames found their way out of an electrical outlet and climbed the wall with feeble yet determined strength. Jeremy doused them with the last of his non-bathtub drinking supply. The flames extinguished, Jeremy didn’t waste time celebrating. Other electrical fires could be working their way out of the wiring. He moved through the downstairs, checking each room and finding no signs of fire. Jeremy searched the basement next, nearly tripping and falling and braining himself on the stairs. The basement fine, he headed upstairs. Again, everything seemed all right.

But the dream of electricity was dead.

Jeremy pounded on the wall in frustration and winced. It wouldn’t do to break his hand. In these times a medical emergency was truly an emergency. Then Jeremy spotted a better way to vent his anger.

Jeremy opened a window as a zombie shambled past. The ghoul looked fresh. Its skin was nearly pink, and its limbs moved with a degree of dexterity. The zombie was male, probably in his early thirties. He wore a jogging suit. One sleeve was ripped away, and a bite wound was visible on the man’s bicep. Jeremy put the revolver’s sights on the man’s skull and pulled the trigger. He saw the bullet strike the zombie in the abdomen.

“What the hell!” the man cried, grabbing his belly, stumbling backwards and falling over.

Shocked, Jeremy pressed against the wall inside the window. The man was alive!

“You shot me!” the man said, incredulous.

Reaction shook Jeremy’s limbs. One word flashed red inside his mind: murderer.

It’s not my fault, Jeremy told himself. The guy shouldn’t be outside looking like he looks. What did he expect would happen?

“It’s okay,” the man said with a hoarsening voice. “I’m dead anyway. You can come out.”

Jeremy didn’t move.

“I mean it.”

Jeremy peeked around the corner. The man sat on the curb with a hand pressed over his bullet wound. The man’s head perked up when he saw Jeremy.

The man tried to smile. His cheeks twitched with the effort. “It doesn’t hurt. I can’t feel much of anything anymore. You just go numb. The only thing I feel is my head. It feels like it’s floating away.”

Jeremy stepped into full view. The man’s face went whiter as he watched, and his legs stiffened.

The man nodded at his bitten arm. “It was my wife. I shouldn’t have went back for her, but what could I do? She was my wife…” The man drifted off to silence. Eventually he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Jeremy.”

The man nodded with effort. “I’m Bob. You alone?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to be alone for this. Can you talk to me until it happens?”

“I guess so.”

“I can’t get my mind around it. You’re dead, but you’re not dead. Maybe that means you don’t have to meet God. I’m afraid to meet God. I don’t think I’ll measure up. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

The man started shaking and stopped talking.

Jeremy stepped back from the window so he couldn‘t see the man anymore. From this angle, with the sun shining, he could almost believe he was in tenth grade English class. Perhaps he got there early and now stood looking out the window, looking out on this perfect day. The trees were green. The sun threw the dappling shadows of their leaves across the grass and streets. Even the crashed cars looked like something out of a Rockwell painting. And Julie, a phantom Julie, who talked to everyone, even guys named Jeremy whom were called “Germ-y” by everyone else, came and stood next to him.

Jeremy went back to the window.

The man was gone.

What are you looking at? Julie asked.

“Not much,” Jeremy said.

FOUR

The food in the refrigerator turned rotten, not that there was much of it to go rotten. Jeremy’s mother bought groceries for the moment, not in bulk. Yet, it wasn’t nourishment that worried Jeremy the most. Water pressure was gone, the faucets useless. The bathtub was still full, but it wouldn’t last forever. Plus, Jeremy put too much bleach in it. Drinking it gave him diarrhea. To make matters worse, Jeremy no longer had a working toilet. He used a bucket. He couldn’t empty it outside either. The smell might attract zombies (some of the books said smell was how they tracked the living). Rather, Jeremy dumped it in whatever empty tin cans, jars or milk jugs he found in the recycling bin. Jeremy didn’t know what he would do when he ran out of those items. It was time to forage before things got to be an emergency.

Just go next door and check things out.

Yet, Jeremy couldn’t move. His brain told him to reach out and twist the lock on the backdoor, but his hand wouldn’t perform the function.

Jeremy spent the hour before doing reconnaissance from the upstairs windows. The occasional helicopter flew over, but that was all. Nothing moved on the block. Unlock…the…door…

Jeremy imagined Julie beside him. He did that more frequently lately. Jeremy always was prone to daydreams, but he never had imaginary friends as a child. Rather, he imagined he was friends with schoolmates, and they were with him as he played.

We need water, Julie said. Her voice was soft with desperation.

“I know.”

I’ll go with you. We’ll watch each other’s back.

Jeremy turned to the girl who wasn’t there and looked into her eyes.

“All right,” he nodded. “For you.”

Jeremy unlocked the door and stepped outside.

The swing set Jeremy outgrew stood in the backyard, its chains squeaking in the wind. It was early morning, gloomy and on the verge of rain. Jeremy had his sights set on the house next door. Its owners were named Larson or Leeson. Jeremy wasn’t sure which. Since he didn’t do much socializing at school, he didn’t do much socializing outside of school either. He never knew what to say to people, and their questions of “how are you?” (not cool) and “what do you do?” (nothing) didn’t give him much to work with, other than self-consciousness.

What do you think? Julie asked.

“Soonest begun, soonest done.”

Jeremy ran to the back of the Larson or Leeson house. He scanned the surrounding lots, desperate to spot an approaching zombie before it was upon him. Through the crack of an alley, Jeremy spotted an abandoned police car a short distance away. Such a thing would be worth checking out for the weapons and gear it contained, but that was for another time.

Jeremy peeked in the window of the Larson or Leeson garage. Empty. The backdoor was unlocked and he stepped inside. The place was neatly maintained and smelled of oil. A shelf of car-care products hung from one wall. A lawnmower, a baby stroller, bicycle, shop-vacuum and a stack of tarps rounded out the place.

Jeremy tried the door to the house — locked.

“Stand back, Julie.”

Jeremy kicked the door like the cops did on TV. It didn’t budge. Jeremy kicked again and again. Somewhere after ten tries, the door burst open. Breathing heavy, Jeremy stepped inside, looking at a kitchen through gun sights. Beyond the kitchen was a dining room. A hallway stretched from it to a den and what looked like other rooms. A stairway led to a second story.

Jeremy checked the refrigerator, and a grin creased his cheeks. “We’re in business.”

A six-pack of water sat on the bottom shelf. An assortment of food also filled the refrigerator: cheese, pasta leftovers, yogurt and various other items, but most of it had spoiled. Fortunately, Jeremy found canned goods in the cupboards. He removed his backpack and stuffed it full. His main goal accomplished, Jeremy decided to look further into the house.

Eager puffs sounded. Jeremy whirled, expecting a ghoul licking its chops. Instead three miniature poodles bounded down the stairway. Jeremy might have laughed in relief, but nothing about the dogs appeared funny. They came at him full speed, gaunt and with shining eyes. Hunger-crazed, they meant to attack.

One of them latched on to Jeremy’s shoe, growling.

“Hey! Get off me!”

Jeremy kicked. The dog yelped and sailed across the room. Another poodle came in like a furry piranha and sank its teeth into Jeremy’s ankle. He cried out, stumbling into a coffee table. The attacking canine was dislodged, but the other two came in fast and furious. One leapt for Jeremy’s thigh. He twisted away, tripped and fell on the couch. The third poodle jumped onto the cushions and lunged for Jeremy’s face. He batted it into the wall with a panicked fist.

The dogs zipped around furniture and came in for another attack. Absurdly terrified, Jeremy drew his revolver. The gun’s blasts were deafening in the enclosed space. It felt like they blew Jeremy’s eardrums out of his skull like balloons. He no longer heard the dogs barking, nor could he hear himself screaming. Jeremy continued to fire, blowing holes in the carpet, exploding a vase and taking out the TV. Finally, the pistol clicked empty as the dogs fled back up the stairs. Jeremy limped for the exit.

“Poodles,” he muttered. A world full of zombies and he got attacked by poodles. The concept unexpectedly unsettled him. Zombies were one thing, but the loss of order to a point where poodles became life threatening was another thing entirely.

Jeremy hurried through the garage and crossed the lawn, trying to look everywhere at once. His ears still rang. Anyone or anything within two blocks, maybe three blocks, could have heard that racket. He wanted to get out of sight and fast.

Jeremy ducked around the corner of his house and straight into the arms of a waiting zombie. Jeremy shrieked as the ghoul’s cold hands scrabbled over his cheeks and gripped his shoulders. A road-kill smell made Jeremy’s eyes water, and he was aware of a cloud of flies surrounding the ghoul. The zombie was an old man, bald, with liver spots and wearing a flannel shirt and chino workpants with what looked like a soup stain in their lap. The zombie’s mouth opened wide. Jeremy saw fillings and bridgework.

“No!”

The zombie chomped down on the hollow of Jeremy’s neck and shoulders. Teeth worked at his sweatshirt, trying to gnaw through to flesh. The probing, violating sensation made Jeremy’s skin crawl. A rotten cheek rubbed against his own, and Jeremy dropped his revolver. He didn’t think of fighting back. He didn’t wish for a sword. He emulated a rape victim more than any hero from a book or a movie. Through the ringing in Jeremy’s ears came the eager moaning and slurping of the zombie — and then piercing in its hyperactivity and hunger, the barking of three poodles.

Two of the poodles latched on to the zombie’s pant leg. The other worried at Jeremy’s already wounded ankle. The zombie stopped chewing on Jeremy long enough to snarl at the animals with something close to kinship.

Jeremy’s paralysis broke, and he managed to squirm out of the zombie’s grip. He ran for his house, the third poodle still clinging to his ankle and being dragged along. The dog was dislodged as Jeremy bounded up the steps to his backdoor. He ripped it open, lunged inside and locked it behind him.

Mewling, Jeremy put a hand to his neck, grimacing at the cold zombie saliva soaking his sweatshirt. He ran upstairs, ripping his clothes off as he went. Jeremy’s insides churned with sick fear and dread. Visions of ragged wounds filled his head — gory holes pouring blood, blood that carried the infection that would turn him into one of the undead.

Jeremy stopped in front of the bathroom mirror. His skin was unmarked, other than a slightly red area where the zombie gnawed, unable to get through the material of Jeremy’s sweatshirt. Jeremy ripped open the medicine cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of alcohol, spun off its cap and poured the liquid over his neck. Then he grabbed a washcloth, scrubbing the skin until it was raw. Finally, Jeremy jumped into the bathtub, sloshing his hoarded water onto the tiles. He soaped his entire body repeatedly, sobbing.

FIVE

“This is Scott, Melissa and Julie Anderson. If any loved ones are trying to contact us, we are going to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. We will get a hold of you as soon as possible. God bless and protect you all.”

Jeremy dialed the number and let it ring in one try most of the night. Some things had become a lot less scary in the face of other things — like wondering if one was going to turn into a zombie. Despite what Bob said, it was never a pleasant process in the books and movies. A victim died piece-by-piece, feeling each part slip away, feeling the blood coagulate in their veins, feeling cold rigor mortis freeze their limbs one inch at a time, feeling the insatiable appetite for human flesh grow…

Jeremy’s fear made him sweat, and he wondered if the sweat was the first stage of the sickness. His brain exaggerated each nose sniffle into the onset of the resurrection plague and tricked him into thinking he had to cough every minute and that each cough was the beginning of the end. When Jeremy looked at himself, he wondered if he would want to bite himself and then worried that he did want to bite himself for wondering such a thing in the first place. The only distraction was trying to call Julie until the phone lines finally died in the middle of the night. The world itself was going piece-by-piece, communications the latest casualty. Eventually, morning came and with it exhaustion. Jeremy fell into a fitful sleep that lasted until noon.

When he awoke, Jeremy still felt human and figured he would stay that way if he had made it this far without any of the physical symptoms of becoming undead. Thirst needled him. He rued the loss of his bathtub water, which he had drained away in case it contained zombie germs. With no other recourse, Jeremy reached for his backpack and pulled out one of the water bottles. Jeremy gulped down half of it, thought he should conserve it, but finished it anyway.

Jeremy let the water bottle drop between his feet, and stared at nothing. A stack of schoolbooks sat on his desk. The top one was for psychology class, an elective Jeremy signed up for in the hopes that he could learn how to feel better about himself. Fat chance when he had Tim Hagen and Jason Thomas sitting behind him. They sang Winter Wonderland under their breaths in reference to Jeremy’s dandruff. Jeremy made sure he didn’t wear a dark shirt the next day, but it didn’t matter. If they lost one thing to make fun of, they found another. The worst was when they called him “Little Man” in the locker room.

Jeremy wondered where Tim and Jason were right now. Did they survive? If not, good riddance. Jeremy turned out to be the vindicated one. They thought him weird because he liked horror novels and movies. Well, now he knew what to do, and they didn’t.

You didn’t do so hot yesterday.

Jeremy shuddered at the recalled feel of the zombie’s grip. Then Jeremy went rigid at another aspect of the memory. The revolver! He dropped it, and it was still outside!

Jeremy rushed upstairs so he could have a clear view of the backyard. The gun rested on the lawn, undisturbed. Jeremy pressed his face against the glass, trying to see as far as possible in each direction. No sign of any zombie. No sign of anyone.

Jeremy descended to the backdoor, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“What do you think, Julie?”

I think it has to be done.

“Right.”

Jeremy opened the door — wincing at the smell on the wind — and sprinted across the lawn. As he snatched the gun up, the three poodles charged like a dinner bell rang. Jeremy beat them back to his house, got inside and sagged against the wall, shaking.

Get a grip, he told himself. It’s fine.

No it wasn’t. Nothing was fine.

The dogs pawed at the door, growling and yipping with ravenous hunger.

Jeremy ignored them and tried to eat. He didn’t have much appetite and settled for a jar of creamed carrots. He sat at the kitchen table and chewed with mechanical chomps. The carrots tasted overly sweet, and made Jeremy’s mouth pucker. What he wanted was a hamburger. Jeremy wondered how much meat was on a poodle. He shook his head when he realized what he was thinking. It was a product of loneliness, he discovered, to think strange thoughts that seemed rational. Jeremy had always been lonely, but this loneliness was different. It was more like a physical sickness than a mere feeling.

A cry drifted on the wind: “Is anyone there?”

Jeremy froze with a spoonful of carrots at his lips, looking like a rabbit under the shadow of a hawk. The voice came from the street, and it wasn’t just any voice.

It was a woman’s voice.

Jeremy rushed upstairs, a queasy excitement rolling through his belly. To just be thinking about loneliness and now this…it was too good to be true.

“Please answer me! Someone!”

Jeremy’s mouth fell open on its own accord, but he choked the response off before the words escaped his lips. He wanted to see her first. Maybe it was a trap. In one book Jeremy read, this guy went to aid a woman crying for help, and it turned out she was with a group of guys who were using her as bait to rob and kill Good Samaritans. Then again, maybe it was a woman who honestly needed help, a beautiful woman with flowing black hair and ripped clothes. Jeremy would take her in, help her get cleaned up and give her new clothes. Maybe she would pass out and he would have to help her out of her old clothes… The possibilities flipped through Jeremy’s mind, creating a strange mixture of anticipation and dread of mysteries too wonderful to comprehend.

Jeremy peeked over the windowsill.

The woman stood in the middle of the street, turning in a slow circle as she called out. The queasy excitement in Jeremy’s belly drained away. She was an obese woman, at least thirty years his senior. She wore a dirty muumuu. Her face was plain.

“Someone! Please help! Is anyone there?”

Jeremy ducked out of sight. He brought his knees to his chest and huddled there, listening to the cries of the woman fade away.

SIX

Jeremy stared at a pile of dirty cans and dishes. Flies infested the mess. Flies everywhere. Jeremy imagined dark clouds of them leaving the country for the population centers of the nation. No more road kill for flies. The country had become a smorgasbord.

Heck, the whole world…

The house seemed too small, and Jeremy felt like the bird inside of a cuckoo clock. Any moment now the clock would strike midnight, and he would burst out, bouncing at the end of a spring and shrieking.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Something thumped against the front door.

A chill prickled the hairs of Jeremy’s neck. He listened for a time, but the sound didn’t come again. Jeremy rose like an old man, still toothache-sore from his physical exertions. Tiptoeing, Jeremy moved down the hall. He passed the row of hooks in the entryway where he always hung his jacket. A pair of his shoes rested on the floor mat, along with a pair of his mother’s sandals and his father’s work boots.

Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, Jeremy thought. He replayed the thought over and over as he leaned in to look out the front door’s peephole. Did his father tell him that? His mother? No, he thought he heard it in a song. What did his parents tell him? Jeremy remembered vague things, and realized that they told him plenty. He just never listened.

And now the telling was done.

Jeremy later wondered if such thoughts were premonitions, because when he looked out the peephole, he looked into the rotting faces of his parents.

Joe Mears had purple skin. Part of his cheek was torn away, revealing the raw meat of tendons. His teeth were bloody from where he ate his lips. Beth Mears missed a large chunk of hair, and the white of her skull gleamed with ping pong ball luster. The fish eye lens in the door further distorted their faces into funhouse shapes.

Trace memory, Jeremy thought. Just like the stories. Zombies lost their intelligence but retained instinct. Sometimes familiar places drew them…

Jeremy knew what had to be done. He had seen this scene in pretty much every zombie movie ever made. He had read this scene in pretty much ever zombie novel ever written. It was the scene where the transformed family member/friend/lover had to be put down.

Jeremy drew his gun. The moment was always charged with emotion in the stories. Jeremy felt nothing, just an actor playing a part. Then he realized he never felt like anything but an actor playing a part — the outsider one step ahead of everyone else. They just didn’t know it. Or at least that is what he told himself.

It was better than the truth certainly.

Jeremy touched the doorknob. The muffled moans of his parents reached his ears. He pressed his forehead against the wood, and the moans grew louder. The revolver felt like deadweight in a hand a million miles away.

Instead of doing what had to be done, Jeremy had his first real conversation in years with the people who used to rock him to sleep at night.

“I saw a movie once,” Jeremy said. “Zombies took over the world, and this group of people were trying to get to Alaska. They figured the cold would keep the zombies away. One by one they died until only this guy and girl were left.”

Hands patted the door; whether eager or confused, Jeremy couldn’t tell.

“The guy and the girl were trapped in an attic at the end. They had a gun and one bullet. Both of them were bitten. That’s how it ended.”

The moans grew louder; whether hungry or urging him to go on, Jeremy couldn’t tell.

“That was one of my favorite endings,” he went on. “I liked bleak endings because happy endings seem fake. The stories I write all have bleak endings. You didn’t know I wrote stories, did you? You saw me do it once, though, dad. You remember that?”

Fingernails scratching.

“I was just learning how to read and spell. School was fun then. Everyone was the same, no jocks and stuff. I was typing a story on mom’s typewriter one night. It was about a goldfish that got flushed down the toilet and mutated. I was really proud of it. You came in the room, dad, and I said, ‘I’m writing a story!’ Then you said all grumbly, ‘You don’t want to write a story.’ So I felt like it was a bad thing. From then on, I always felt embarrassed when I tried to do something I liked.”

Teeth grated against the door.

“Why did you say that?” Jeremy asked his dad. “I always wanted to ask you that.”

How long Jeremy waited for an answer, he didn’t know. The grating, scratching and patting gradually stopped, but the moaning circled the house.

“I should have asked sooner,” Jeremy said.

SEVEN

You need to try it again, Julie insisted.

Jeremy stared at the wall, waiting for the day to end. Surely each minute was an hour, each hour a day, each day…forever.

You can’t sit here all the time. If you don’t go out, you’ll rot in here like they rot out there.

“There’s no reason to go out. We’ve got water…and some food.”

What about the police car?

Jeremy perked up a little.

MP-5s, shotguns and Berettas, oh my! And cool SWAT gear like gloves, Kevlar vests and fireproof Ninja masks…

Julie continued to prod. Jeremy appreciated the way she did it, though. She didn’t nag. She motivated him in a supportive way.

Eventually, Jeremy saw her point and rose to his feet. He felt a little more with it once he got moving. He got dressed and holstered his father’s revolver. Joe Mears bought the gun for home defense. It wasn’t a great gun, Jeremy had decided. It couldn’t hit anything with any consistency. One needed a good gun in a zombie apocalypse. The police car might have one.

Before going to the backdoor, Jeremy checked to see if his parents still waited at the front. Sometimes they circled the house, but not this time. They merely stood in front of the peephole and swayed with the breeze.

“You got my back?” Jeremy asked Julie.

Sure, it’s your best side.

“Not funny.”

Still, Julie’s humor helped lift Jeremy further out of his funk. He opened the backdoor and stepped outside. It was sunny. Birds tweeted. They went on with their lives despite the apocalypse.

You could learn a lesson from that, Julie said.

Jeremy crossed the lawn, head on a swivel for danger, and entered the alley leading to the police car. Bushes hedged him in on both sides. He caught glimpses of the undead through their leaves. One walked in a circle on a lawn, an older woman in a faded housecoat dragging a dog leash. The other was a girl who sat in the street, gnawing on what looked like a tree branch.

Jeremy reached the police car without incident. Before searching it he made sure an incident wouldn‘t sneak up on him. He saw only one zombie, moving away from him. It looked like a nurse…or maybe a dental aide.

The police car’s driver side door was open. Jeremy’s heart beat faster when he saw what was inside.

“You were right, Julie!”

Jeremy slid into the driver’s seat, eyeing the shotgun mounted to the dash in a vertical bracket. It gleamed cool and deadly. Jeremy grinned. He wouldn’t miss too many zombies with a weapon like that.

Jeremy grabbed the shotgun’s barrel and pulled. The gun didn’t move. He looked closer and noticed a lock on the mounting bracket. Jeremy’s eyes went to the ignition, and his grin faded.

No keys.

Jeremy hissed exasperated air through his nostrils. That familiar sensation began in his stomach and spread through his body, the same thing he felt in school, the same thing he felt when he thought of life outside of books and movies — futility.

“Now what?”

But Julie didn’t answer.

Snarling, Jeremy grabbed the shotgun’s barrel, pulling harder. The gun didn’t budge.

A high-pressure keening escaped Jeremy’s lips. He pushed and yanked with every bit of his strength, trying to work the shotgun out of its mount like one works a post out of the ground. The entire police car shook with Jeremy’s efforts, but the gun didn’t loosen from its locked position one iota.

An inarticulate cry of rage tore out of Jeremy’s throat. He pounded on the steering wheel with his fists. The car’s horn didn’t honk because the vehicle’s battery was long since dead. Jeremy went from pounding on the steering wheel to butting it with his head.

Eventually, Jeremy went home…to sit.

EIGHT

The smell of decay filled the air like a physical presence. Jeremy felt like he had a thin layer of mold growing on his body. He took his mind off that and other things by staring at a school yearbook. Julie’s picture was in the top corner of page fifty-seven. She wore a blue and white checkered shirt over a white tank top. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Low maintenance, Jeremy thought. The best kind of girl. Her teeth were even and white, a braces smile. The picture was black and white, but Julie’s eyes still had a shine to them that made Jeremy feel five degrees warmer.

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church…

Jeremy wondered if Julie was still there. Sounds of fighting moved closer the past few days as the last stand began at the Windfair Soccer Fields. It surprised Jeremy the safe zone held out for so long. If they had, a chance existed St. Paul’s Lutheran Church had, as well. Jeremy wondered how bad it was for Julie by now. Surely, the women worked as slaves, perhaps even in harems because that is what the men told them God required.

“I have to save her,” Jeremy whispered.

Once the words were out, a flare went up in the dark recesses of Jeremy’s mind and everything became clear. No looting, no video games, no DVDs, no electricity, no gleeful zombie kills and no woman who needed to be held in the dark. That was the problem. The most important part of Jeremy’s zombie apocalypse fantasies were not about stuff. They were about not being alone…

Could he actually have Julie with him?

Jeremy shook his head. It was better to nip vain hopes in the bud. Nevertheless, Jeremy got up to get a phonebook and looked up St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. He made note of its street address and located it on the town map at the front of the phonebook.

The church was roughly nine blocks away.

A mile and a half…

A person could walk a mile in ten or fifteen minutes. The suburbs weren’t crawling with the undead. Most of them probably congregated around the distant fighting. Jeremy saw handfuls and stragglers, not mobs. His mother and father still circled the house, of course, but Jeremy knew he could avoid them.

“What do you think?” Jeremy asked the invisible Julie. As soon as he thought of her answering for real, he knew the answer to the question.

NINE

Jeremy crouched at the corner of a house, looking left and right. Steeling himself, Jeremy ran across the street, and a voice sounded in his wake.

“Hey, kid!”

Jeremy dove over a row of shrubs and huddled there. His eyes looked everywhere at once, and the smell of his sour sweat pricked his nostrils like ammonia. Chilled with adrenaline, Jeremy drew his revolver and cocked the hammer. Zombies weren’t the only danger in an undead apocalyptic wasteland.

“It’s okay, kid!” the male voice shouted. “We want to help you! We’re with the army!”

Jeremy didn’t answer.

“We’re trying to locate survivors!”

Jeremy spotted the owner of the voice. The man peeked around the corner of a house a block down. He held what looked like a Beretta pistol and wore a Kevlar vest over civilian clothes. A SWAT helmet covered his head. A partner looked over his shoulder, dressed the same but carrying an AK-47 assault rifle.

“Did you hear me?” the man called “Come with us!”

“Yeah right,” Jeremy said under his breath. The man lied. They were the types of guys who scavenged as much as they could for themselves by stealing from others, the types of guys who broke into other people’s shelters, executed the occupants and gorged on their supplies, the types of guys who would hold a woman prisoner and have their way with her every night, the types of guys who were worse than the zombies.

“What unit?” Jeremy shouted.

“What do you mean what unit?

“What army unit?”

“We’re not the army! We’re helping them! They’re busy enough! Come out!”

The man’s response increased Jeremy’s distrust. Like the army still functioned in any official capacity. The military only went one way in a zombie apocalypse. It fell apart. In fact, running across army guys was as bad as running across scavengers and religious people. Rogue military units took what they wanted and killed what they didn’t, mostly because they had the firepower to do what they pleased.

Jeremy stuck his pistol through the shrubbery and pulled the trigger.

“What are you doing?” the man cried, ducking out of sight. “Knock it off, kid!”

I’ll knock you off, Jeremy thought, knock you off the planet. He fired off the remaining rounds of his gun and ran. That kind of noise would attract the nearby undead for certain. He ran for St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. There was no going back now. The armed men stood between him and his house.

Jeremy went two blocks before encountering four zombies. He darted behind a dumpster and looked back the way he came for signs of the armed men. Seeing nothing, he peeked around the corner at the zombies. They saw him and shifted their course like a flock of birds in flight. They lurched and shuffled with their arms held straight out, begging for a treat — him.

Jeremy tried to reload his pistol. He managed to snag a round out of his fanny pack and dropped it. Once he got it picked up, he realized he hadn’t ejected the spent cartridges yet. The zombies closed. Jeremy pushed six new shells in his gun and blasted them into the mass of zombies. Sparks whined off the pavement where rounds went wild. One zombie jerked with a thigh hit. None of them fell.

Jeremy retreated through a home’s backyard, dodging a sandbox. He passed through an alley, another yard and emerged in the street a block over. Two more zombies in fast-food attire spotted him and lumbered in his direction. Jeremy’s lungs flagged and his legs ached. He always thought people got in better shape as the apocalypse world hardened them. It turned out to be the opposite. Since he hadn’t been eating well and doing nothing but sitting around the house, he was even weaker than usual. Not weak, he reminded himself. He could have played football or basketball or whatever, too. He just didn’t want to waste the time.

Just when Jeremy thought he was going to keel over with cramps, he spotted a church steeple two blocks away. He covered the remaining ground with no members of the undead in sight — no armed men on his trail either. He jogged on, keeping a row of houses between him and the church. Jeremy didn’t want them to see him. When he found what looked like a good vantage point, he committed. No time to be choosy. He ran up the house’s porch steps and tried the door.

Fortune smiled upon him. It was open. Jeremy crouched inside the opening, revolver up, only then remembering it was useless since it was empty. Fortune smiled upon him again because the house also appeared to be empty. Jeremy slammed and locked the door. Then he ran upstairs, picked a room facing the church, shut and locked that door and huddled in the darkness of a corner. Eventually, he slept.

TEN

Jeremy watched the church for two days. He ate cold soup and stale saltine crackers. He drank from the water that collected in the home’s sump, just like he discovered he could do at his own house. It would work until the ground froze at least.

During those two days, Jeremy learned the church’s guard schedule. Every two hours a new pair of guards entered the steeple. First, the current duo descended some internal ladder. Then the new duo came up. Sometimes the steeple was vacant for as long as five minutes and never shorter than three.

The church was tailor made to withstand a zombie outbreak, it seemed. Perhaps its architect was a zombie fan and designed it according to his own fantasies. It was a squat building with a gently sloping roof. The north side faced Jeremy and was window free. That was good. They wouldn’t see him coming. All the north side had for features was an emergency exit. The church’s main entrance was on its east side. A cement walkway slanted up to double doors, which were boarded over. A smaller entrance marked the south side. There, boards covered a single door. The west side contained another set of barricaded double doors. Jeremy knew these details because he did a hurried recon of the church the night before. Windows on the east, south and west sides, all of them at least fifteen feet off the ground. Due to their height, they had not been boarded over.

Combining this data with what equipment he could find in the house he occupied, Jeremy formulated a plan. The things he needed stood ready to go in the garage: a collapsible ladder and two glass bottles filled with gasoline, which he drained out of a lawnmower.

Jeremy also found a machete. It wasn’t a sword, but it was close enough.

Prepared, Jeremy waited.

A couple of zombies walked the street: a toddler dragging a bloody blanket and a soldier missing his shirt. The soldier’s pallid chest looked scrawny in the twilight. He had no wounds that Jeremy could see. Maybe he died of a heart attack.

Jeremy felt nothing profound while watching the few zombies in the vicinity stagger along their routes. He drew no parallels between their slack faces and the faces of people who watched too much TV. He made no comparison between their aimless staggering and how some people drifted through life. Jeremy never asked himself who the real monsters were, and he didn’t equate their hunger for human flesh to socialism at its most extreme. The question of whether or not the world was better off with more dead people than living people never occurred to him. The fact that spotted owls would now thrive did not factor into his thinking. Nor did he quote Darwin, Nietzsche or even Robert Browning. He didn’t even curse the government. The only reaction the zombies elicited from Jeremy was when one of them tripped over a curb and fell on its face. It reminded Jeremy of a Jackass stunt, and he laughed. Even then, he didn’t think of something pseudo-philosophical like: if all the world is a stage, what’s the difference between a tragedy and a comedy? The answer — death is a tragedy and life is a comedy. Or was it the other way around?

Jeremy checked his watch and kept an eye on the steeple guards. At six in the evening the two men disappeared down the steeple’s ladder. Jeremy, who watched from the house’s garage, moved. He hurried out the backdoor with the collapsible ladder. It was made of lightweight aluminum and expanded to its maximum length. He toted the ladder across the street and up to the wall of the brown, wood-paneled church. There, he laid the ladder on the grass, close against the wall and out of sight. Then he sprinted back to the house from which he came. The entire operation took less than two minutes. No zombies spotted Jeremy. As far as he knew, no one from the church spotted him either. He made sure he had his revolver loaded. Next, he checked his Molotov cocktails and readied a book of matches.

The next two hours went surprisingly fast. Jeremy was ready for this act. It was for Julie, not for him. That made things easier. He always felt cut loose and drifting when he was alone, but now he was going to be with someone. His thought processes and will operated more smoothly as a result.

That’s love, Jeremy reasoned.

When the two hours were up and the guards ducked out of sight, Jeremy went into action. He popped a match, lit the cloth wick on one of the Molotov cocktails and ran across the street. He didn’t worry about the zombies seeing him. That was part of the plan. In fact, Jeremy fired two shots in the air to get their attention. Next, Jeremy arrowed for the church’s main entrance and tossed a gas bottle through the window. Shouts sounded inside. Jeremy rushed down the length of the building, leaned the ladder against its roof, fired two more shots into the air and climbed. The shingled surface sloped gently, and Jeremy hastened to the steeple. Once there, he descended and readied himself to shoot the guards. Even though they were human, Jeremy believed he could do it. He did it with Bob (even if it was an accident and ultimately didn’t matter). Plus, religious extremists were no better than zombies when one got right down to it.

Jeremy encountered no guards, however. They must have went to fight the fire. He found himself in an unfinished attic-like crawlspace. He passed through a door that led into a cramped room full of organ pipes. Through another door and Jeremy stood in the church balcony. Flickering orange light painted the ceiling, and smoke rose from the main floor. Jeremy went to the railing and saw a group of shouting men trying to extinguish the fire with blankets.

Satisfied that everyone was distracted, Jeremy reloaded his gun, lit his second Molotov cocktail and tossed it toward the front of the church.

Jeremy wilted for a moment under the stone gaze of the Christ statue suspended over the altar. Bob’s words echoed in his head: I’m afraid to meet God. I don’t think I’ll measure up.

Jeremy heard that Christ died for mankind’s sins to remedy that fear, and in that look, Jeremy could believe it. Christ’s gaze wasn’t accusatory. It contained pity and disappointment. Jeremy fled that gaze because it made him believe he might be wrong about everything. He ran down the balcony steps and took off down a candle-lit corridor on the guess that it led to the basement.

Men and women passed Jeremy, but they paid him no attention in the shadowy hall. Jeremy had discarded his urban excursion outfit in favor of more plain clothes. Plus, he held a handkerchief over his face.

“Fire!” he coughed. “We have to get out!”

If any of the men and women were distrustful enough to stop and look at Jeremy, his words, the smell of smoke and the sound of shouting dissuaded them.

The passing people encouraged Jeremy that he was on the right track. He figured the women would be kept in the basement, since religious people oppressed women and all that. At the bottom of a short flight of stairs, Jeremy passed through a meeting room and into a large kitchen/dining area.

Julie stood with three other teenagers and five younger children. In the candlelight, her hair was the color of spun gold — as Jeremy had seen the shade described in books. Reaching the goal at the end of a quest was a hard thing to assimilate. No celestial choir sang. No pang stabbed his heart. But it took Jeremy a moment to find his speaking ability, regardless.

“Julie!” Jeremy ran to her.

Julie turned, frightened and confused. “Jeremy? What are you doing here?” The dimness of the dining area gave her girl-next-door face a mysterious undercurrent. Jeremy had never thought she looked more beautiful.

“Mom and dad didn’t come home. I was alone. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started calling classmates. I heard the message on your phone, about how you came here, so I figured it was safe. I saw men surrounding the place, though. I tried to get through to warn everyone, but I couldn’t. Now we have to go!”

“Go where?” Julie asked, bewildered.

“Out!” Jeremy didn’t want to give her time to think. He saw a movie once where a guy had to deal with a brainwashed girl and that was the method he used.

“But mom and dad—”

“They’re evacuating!” Jeremy grabbed Julie’s hand. “We have to go, too!”

“I have to watch the kids—”

“Bring them with us! Before we’re trapped!”

Jeremy pulled Julie along with him. At first she resisted, then came more willingly as the group of kids followed, all needing the leadership Jeremy faked. He joined up with a line of perhaps twenty people heading for what he imagined was the emergency exit. He caught a glimpse of the fire on the way out. Flames raged among the pews. Jeremy wasn’t expecting a fire so large. Christ’s stare now seemed stern and followed Jeremy out the door. He was glad when he passed out of the statue’s view and into the darkness.

Night was a shock after the fire inside the church burned as bright as day, but Jeremy’s eyes adjusted to the gloom fast enough to see that it was the chaos he had hoped. People poured out of the church to see zombies converging on the scene.

Jeremy drew the machete from under his shirt as a mailman zombie lunged forward with a special delivery — gnashing teeth. Jeremy swung the blade. Instead of decapitating the undead postal worker, the machete chocked into shoulder and stuck there. The impact of the strike hyper-extended Jeremy’s elbow. Not phased in the slightest, the zombie reached for Julie’s screaming neck. Jeremy drew his revolver and shot the creature point blank in the temple, the first time he hit what he aimed for on the first shot.

Nearly disastrous, the encounter ended up having a positive effect. The shock of it removed all resistance from Julie. She only said two things as Jeremy got her running in the direction of his house.

“Wait!”

“There’s no time!” Jeremy said.

“But mom and dad!”

“We’ll meet up with them! I know someplace safe!”

ELEVEN

It’s one of those crazy things that never should have worked. Yet, there was Julie, in his house, with a world full of zombies outside. Something had finally gone right. It was as shocking as water dripping up. When was the last time something he cared about and put effort into worked? Not since he was a child and caring and effort went no further than seeing a particular cartoon or obtaining a certain toy.

Julie slept on the couch. The sight of her breathing mesmerized Jeremy. A petite fist curled against her cheek, and her jaw line was the most exquisite line in all creation. Thrust together in a world gone mad, somehow they would navigate their way through it. They just needed to hold on to hope and to each other.

Might as well start now.

Jeremy went to lie down next to Julie and pull her close. She would wake up and there would be that moment of resistance, of course, but then she would give in and thank him for saving her.

Julie’s eyes opened before Jeremy reached her. “What time is it?” she asked in a toneless voice.

“A little after eleven.”

“Are mom and dad here yet?”

“No.”

Julie’s calm façade cracked a little.

“It’ll be okay,” Jeremy said.

Julie rose. “Where can I see out?”

“Upstairs—”

Julie climbed to the second story and scanned the street through Jeremy’s sniper window.

“I’m sure they’ll be here soon.” Jeremy followed at her heels. As Julie put a knee on the window sill to boost herself to a better vision angle, her pants leg pulled up. Jeremy noticed the cucumber hairs of unshaved legs. He quickly looked away.

“I don’t see anyone at all.” Julie’s voice hitched.

“It’ll be okay,” Jeremy repeated, like it was a magic phrase — the Open Sesame to Julie’s heart. He noticed the tension in her shoulders and reached out with a comforting hand. Julie shrugged it off, and Jeremy frowned. “You’ll like it here,” he said. “It’s better than the church. No one will make you do anything you don’t want to do. You’ll be safe.”

Julie scowled. “I was safe at the church. No one made me do anything. We took care of each other.”

“It would have broke down,” Jeremy explained with condescending patience. “It always does.”

“Always does? When has this happened before?”

“It’s happened—” Jeremy began and stopped. He wanted to say, lots of times. But only in books and movies. He changed the subject. “You’re upset.”

Julie’s voice took on a shrill timbre and her posture became defensive. “Of course I’m upset. Someone burned my church down. I don’t know where my parents are, and the town is full of zombies.”

Fortunately, Jeremy knew what women wanted. They weren’t objects. They had feelings. “Here,” Jeremy said and reached out his arms.

Julie pushed him away. “Leave me alone!”

“It’ll be okay,” Jeremy insisted.

“Stop saying that!”

Julie stomped down the stairs.

Jeremy followed, fists clenched. He noticed how dirty the house had become and how much it smelled. He tried to see it through Julie’s eyes, and it made him even more desperate to regain control of the situation. Things were not going as planned. Things were supposed to be better now. He wasn’t alone. Julie was at his side and was supposed to be cooperative and appreciative.

Julie sat at the kitchen table. She looked at Jeremy. Jeremy looked at her. Silence enveloped them like a wet sheet. Julie noticed the plate of bones on the counter.

“Where did you find a chicken?” she asked.

Jeremy lied about the poodle bones. “A neighbor kept some as a hobby.”

“Do you have any more?”

“No, but I’ve got some tomato sauce.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s a lot.”

“That’s not a lot,” Julie shook her head. “We had a lot at the church. We were collecting for the food shelf before all this happened, thank God.”

Jeremy rankled. He risked his life to save her. He was trying to make things better for the both of them, and she kept throwing his efforts back in his face.

“There is no God,” Jeremy said.

“You ever read Psalm fourteen?”

Jeremy had no intention of going there. He made a conscious attempt to calm down. “Look, we have to be strong for each other now. No one is coming to help us.” He tried to reach out again, and Julie batted his hand away. An distant observer might have thought they gave each other a high-five.

“Stop trying to touch me,” Julie grated.

Jeremy flushed with the heat of anger — among other things. “You’ll feel better.”

“Do you have any water?”

Jeremy ran a hand through his hair, resisted the urge to tear some out by its roots, and grabbed a water bottle from the fridge, where he kept it out of habit. “It seeps into the sump,” he explained. There, that made him sound competent.

Julie drank. “Where’s the bathroom.”

Jeremy reddened. In that department, he had moved from the empty containers he found in the trash to the plastic shopping bags his mother had collected from the grocery store, but he couldn’t imagine Julie doing such a thing. Maybe she just wanted to check her hair. He lead her and vain hopes to the bathroom.

“Does the toilet work?” Julie asked.

“No.”

“Then I’m not going in there.”

Jeremy’s jaw clenched. He had a sudden impression of working with a mule. “What did you do at the church?”

“We had a generator for the essential things.” Julie’s voice went wistful, and Jeremy took it as an insult to his abilities. She’d have to learn to not live in the past. Jeremy pulled a pail his mother used for cleaning out from under the sink. Thankfully, it wasn’t the pail he used for his toiletries.

“We can throw it outside,” he said, changing his practice to suit her. Relationships were about compromise, after all. He would be the bigger person.

Julie grabbed the pail, pushed Jeremy out the door and shut it in his face. Jeremy leaned against the wall, waiting and wondering how to proceed.

“Go away,” Julie said through the door.

“I am away.”

“Further away. I don’t want you listening.”

Jeremy went back to the living room and flopped on the couch. He winced in pain as the movement jostled his wounded elbow. Perhaps he needed to try a different approach. Even with his lack of experience with women he recognized that he was fighting a losing battle. Despair and frustration fought each other for supremacy in his chest — despair because even when he could literally be the last man on earth (living, that is), he still wasn’t good enough — and frustration because Julie didn’t appreciate his efforts and none of it matched up to his fantasies or imagined conversations.

Jeremy rose and went to the bathroom door. He tried to inject understanding and sensitivity into his voice. They’d just have to talk it out. “Julie…”

“Why did you bring me here?” Julie asked point blank. “My parents aren’t coming, are they?”

“Sure they will,” Jeremy groped for words that tasted sour. “Come out.”

“No.”

Jeremy fished for a solution, any solution. “I’ll get you some new clothes.”

“I don’t need any new clothes.”

“Come out, Julie. It’ll be—” Jeremy caught himself and changed the worthless platitude into, “please.” He immediately regretted the plaintiveness of the request.

“No,” Julie answered as concisely as a guillotine.

Jeremy’s ire started to climb even higher. “You can’t stay in there forever.”

“I’ll come out when I’m ready.”

Gritting his teeth, Jeremy returned to the couch before he started beating on the door. That wouldn’t accomplish anything. Jeremy felt something ticking in the center of his forehead. A headache grew with each passing moment. He imagined something inside of himself imprisoned behind a great door, something unpleasant that pressed against the door with immense strength. The door started to bulge outward, bowing under the pressure, cracking, creaking…

Only then did Jeremy realize the creaking was real and not imagined. He turned. Julie had quietly exited the bathroom and now tried to tiptoe past Jeremy to the door. As soon as he spotted her, she started running, stocking feet peeling out on the polished hardwood.

“Don’t!” Jeremy cried, erupting from the couch. He chased Julie down and tackled her from behind. His shoulder hit the wall hard enough to put a dent in the drywall. He groaned with the pain.

“Get off me!” Julie fought against him.

“It’ll be okay.” Jeremy tried to wrap his arms around her. Julie clawed Jeremy’s face and drew blood. Jeremy’s hand moved on its own accord. The slap echoed through the room, and Julie’s eyes became dazed. “I’m sorry!” Jeremy whimpered, and put his arms around her, holding her close. His lips found her cheek on their own and kissed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Get away from me!” Julie screamed. Her knee came up and found Jeremy’s crotch.

White light pain.

Julie twisted free and went for the door.

“No!” Jeremy shouted.

Julie opened the door, and Jeremy’s zombie mother and father lunged inside. Julie stumbled backwards, shrieking, tripping over Jeremy and landing on her rump. Mottled arms reached. Jeremy rolled out of their grasp, piling over Julie. Somehow the two of them managed to get to their feet while Jeremy’s parents lurched at their heels, all hunger and rotten stink.

“Go!” Jeremy pushed Julie down the hall. He pulled his pistol, firing four shots wildly behind him and not looking to see if he hit anything.

Julie ran into the study of Jeremy’s father. An oaken desk dominated the room. Its surface was as Joe Mears had left it: blotter centered and nothing on it but a large lamp, pen and notepad. Bookcases lined the walls, filled with western novels and do-it-yourself manuals.

Jeremy and Julie sought safety behind the desk as Jeremy’s parents entered the room. Jeremy pulled the trigger of his revolver until the hammer went click. One of the last bullets hit the doorframe. The other tugged at Beth’s remaining hair. Crying, Jeremy threw the gun, forgetting the vow of the last bullet for himself. The weapon bounced off his father’s chest and landed harmlessly on the carpet.

Meanwhile, Joe and Beth Mears paused a moment, seeming to consider how best to capture their prey. Their carrion pit mouths opened and closed, like they were warming up the tendons for the chewing about to commence. Their waxy skin made them appear to glow in the windowless room. Whether it was strategy or an accident was unclear, but Joe and Beth split up, each coming around one side of the desk.

Jeremy felt his bladder let go. His hand found Julie’s shoulder and squeezed it in abject terror. This time she didn’t shrug it off, too frightened to notice his touch. This is how it ends, Jeremy thought. Good God, Jesus Christ, no, no, no!

“Help me!” Julie cried, breaking Jeremy’s paralysis. She had twisted around and tore one of the bookcases from the wall with a strength made possible by terror. Books tumbled to the floor as she levered the bookcase between herself and Beth Mears, whose head darted forward like a vulture’s to take a bite. Julie warded the woman off with the bookcase and pinning her against the wall.

Jeremy, in turn, pushed against Julie, his father’s hands snagging the neckline of his shirt. For a moment, Jeremy felt himself being pulled toward slobbering teeth. Then his shirt tore and Jeremy was free. Panic and fright sent him stumbling for the door. He reached it, slamming and locking it behind him.

Only then did Jeremy realize Julie was still inside.

“Let me out!” Julie pounded.

Jeremy sank to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he gasped.

“Let me out!”

Tears wet Jeremy’s cheeks as he hugged his knees.

Julie screamed. Jeremy heard crashing, hungry moans and plodding steps as the zombies tried to corral her. Flapping thuds followed as Julie must have grabbed books and threw them at her attackers. Then Julie’s screams stopped being desperate and started being bloodthirsty. Jeremy heard a sound like a cantaloupe being struck with a wooden spoon. Then a thud. Then a second thumping sound and thud. Finally, a third thud.

Then silence.

How much time passed, Jeremy didn’t know. He heard nothing, no wet tearing, no chewing. Eventually, he opened the door and peeked through a cautious crack. His mother and father lay in a heap, their heads bashed in. Julie also lay on the floor, the lamp she used to brain Jeremy’s parents by one limp hand. She appeared to have fainted.

TWELVE

Jeremy finally brought himself to take care of the remains of his parents in the backyard. He doused them with lighter fluid and struck a match. The day was fine and clear. Smoke rose into the sky, blemishing it. Jeremy watched it rise. His face was harder now, the face of a person who had crossed some inner line. He thought of a Saturday not too long ago when his dad brought out the grill and asked for help cooking hot dogs. Jeremy said no, went to his room and reread his books. His mom came and knocked on the door, telling him it was time to eat. He said he’d come when he came. By the time he pulled himself away from his fictions, the meal was over.

Jeremy listened to the crackling of the fire.

Just hot dogs, he told himself. They smell good. Right, mom? Right, dad?

Jeremy looked at his watch. The day had a long ways to go, a lifetime perhaps when each minute was an hour, each hour a day, each day…forever. Well, at least he had a diversion now. Jeremy reentered the house, plodding through the mess. He noticed pictures on the wall that he had avoided noticing before. He didn’t like the way they reminded a person that the past always seemed better than the present and the future seemed without hope. But now he looked at the photos, distant enough from the people they framed to view them objectively.

One showed a boy beside a birthday cake with seven candles. He held a comic book, making a muscle with his arm like the hero on the cover.

That boy could grow up to do whatever he liked, Jeremy thought. The reflection of his face was superimposed in the glass over the boy’s face. The two still matched up despite the gulf of years. The only difference is one of them smiled. The other just stared.

Jeremy went upstairs, going to the guest bedroom.

Julie was asleep on the bed, tied up and half naked.

How far would he go this time? Jeremy didn’t know, but he knew there was no going back.

A noise grew in the street then.

Julie’s eyes opened, rolling with fear and the hope of rescue.

Jeremy ran to the window as the low grumble of engines drew nearer. An armored personnel carrier appeared at the end of the block. Troops with machineguns and flamethrowers marched beside it. People in civilian clothes rounded out a huge throng; some were armed; others looked weak and were helped along.

“Help me!” Julie screamed. “Someone please help me!”

Jeremy jumped on top of her, holding her mouth shut.

“Quiet!” he hissed.

Julie bit his finger. “Help!” Her voice seemed loud enough to shatter the world.

“What are you doing?” Jeremy growled. “They’ll—”

What would they do to her that he wasn’t already doing?

Jeremy shook the thought away, stuffed a sock in Julie’s mouth and hurried back to the window. Soldiers moved toward his house like they meant business, rifles raised.

Jeremy mewled and rushed downstairs, heading for the backdoor. As the front door burst open, Jeremy drew his revolver and fired. The soldier swore, ducked and his gun roared. An invisible sledge hammer slammed into Jeremy’s shoulder. He seem to float to the floor. When he hit, pain filled the world. Soldiers loomed over him, kicking away his gun.

“Stay down!” one of the troops yelled.

Jeremy watched soldiers go upstairs. Moments later they led Julie out, wrapped in a blanket. She cast Jeremy a baleful glance. Unlike that day in tenth grade English class, her gaze contained zero possibility.

“What do you got for hostiles?” a voice crackled over the soldier’s radio.

“Just a kid. He’s hit. We need a medic.”

Jeremy stared down the barrel of the man’s gun. It was an MP-5. He had trouble focusing. Things went black, and vision came back.

More soldiers came in and loaded Jeremy on a stretcher. They carried him out into the sun. People lined the streets as the armored caravan stopped. Jeremy saw the two men he had fired on when he traveled to the church. They stood over the obese woman he had seen crying for help, giving her a drink from a canteen and putting a hand on her shoulder.

Thank you, Jeremy read her lips.

It’ll be okay, the men answered.

And there was Jessica, enfolded in the arms of her parents. Their clothes were partially burned. A group of other soot-stained figures gathered round them.

Jeremy looked up into the boiling sun, letting its rays stab his eyes. That hurt less than the things he saw on the street, which proved everything he had thought was true was wrong. Then the sun was blotted out by a trooper with a Red Cross armband. The medic couldn’t have been many years out of high school himself. He cut Jeremy’s shirt open so he could get to the wound.

“What were you thinking?” the medic asked as he worked. The words came out confused, uneasy and a perhaps a bit disdained. “Why didn’t you go to a safe zone? Four blocks away. Food, shelter, transportation out of here. Instead you hole up here, keeping girls prisoner and shooting at soldiers.”

Jeremy couldn’t get his lips to form a response.

The medic shook his head and said:

“Not cool, little man, not cool.”

— END —

Anomaly suited the object better than moving finger, at least in her scientific mind. After all, a disembodied finger wasn’t supposed to move. Even worse, the body it had been cut from shouldn’t be moving either. Especially since troops found it in a sealed copper sarcophagus confirmed to be at least five thousand years old.

“You ready for the presentation?”

She barely heard the muffled whisper behind her. The biosuits made conversation difficult, even at close distances.

“Guess so, Dan. I hate to drop everything to tell government officials what I don’t know.”

Dan propped a video camera on a tripod and attached a cable to a monitor. “I’ve already got a camera on the zombie–”

“Don’t say that word,” Amanda said. “It’s an anomaly, but hopefully not for long. We only have to find out how the virus works on the corpse’s tissue to solve this riddle.”

“Whatever,” Dan said. “One camera’s on you, one on the anomaly, and I’ll carry another where it’s needed. I’ve got the monitor divided into split screens to focus on one to three different things. The large monitor on the wall will allow you to see the interviewers live from a conference room upstairs. They’ll see what you see on your monitor and if you want to highlight anything, just highlight it with the cursor. Everything’s routed to one computer where I’ll burn it on DVD.”

She glanced around as several researchers and assistants left their stations and formed a line to leave and be decontaminated one by one. Apparently, General Cranton didn’t want the President to think things were too crowded in the Slammer. The Slammer served as a quarantine room for possibly infected workers and to treat and supervise patients suffering from known or unknown pathogens. But until now, all patients had been technically alive. The Slammer’s appearance was unremarkable, nothing like what most people would think a state of the art level-four containment facility would be. White concrete blocks formed the walls around the dark doorframes with their steel or wooden doors. A dull light copper paint colored the floors. Only the yellow and red warning placards provided any bright colors. Hell, she’d been in small town clinics fancier than the Slammer.

This new viral strain caused so much fear among even seasoned researchers that Fort Detrick’s Base Commander decided to keep everything related to the anomaly in one place. With the Slammer rarely in use, they had cleared out one examination room to house the anomaly and converted the other rooms into a high-tech research facility devoted to cracking the new virus. Better to do it that way than risk infecting any of USAMRIID’s other labs or other level-four facilities like The Centers for Disease Control or World Health Organization.

Amanda watched the anomaly lumbering around its secure room. Its brown flesh looked like wrinkled, cracked leather. Brownish crud was packed between its yellowed teeth. Its dried eyes barely moved and the flesh of its neck was too brittle to allow it to turn its head, forcing the anomaly to rotate its entire body to look at something. How could it even see through those eyes? They resembled little deflated balloons floating in dry goo that looked like the filling of those chocolate Cadbury Easter eggs.

“We’re almost good to go,” Dan said. “Hold the headset directly to your biosuit’s hood. The sound’s cranked all the way up, so you shouldn’t have trouble hearing. Your microphone is on the table and is super-sensitive. As long as you speak loudly and clearly they shouldn’t have problems hearing you.”

An image appeared on the large monitor of several men taking seats around a semicircular table. The President sat directly across from the camera with the Secretary of Defense to his right and General Cranton to his left. An elderly man examined the clay tablets that had been found in a smaller copper cylinder inside the anomaly’s sarcophagus.

“You dolts are lucky that soaking these cuneiform tablets in that chemical bath didn’t destroy them.” The old man yelled at Cranton.

“Excuse me Professor Thatcher, but we had to make sure they were properly decontaminated,” General Cranton said. “However, we recently discovered that risk of infection is very low from inanimate objects, but Dr. Mackenzie will fill in the details. Whenever you’re ready, Dr. Mackenzie.”

“What we know is that the virus, the Inanna Strain we’re calling it, only lives outside the host for less than an hour. During that hour, it can be carried to another deceased host through airborne means or through exposure with contaminated objects. However, having vacated the host, the virus is immediately weakened to the point of near non-lethality. But we have found that even the weakest–”

“But, Miss Mackenzie, you just said a new host could become infected.” The President leaned back in his chair and stared into the camera with a squinty, confused look. “But then you said it was non-lethal. Does that mean it can make someone sick? How bad?”

“That’s DOCTOR Mackenzie, Mr. President. But the weakened virus cannot infect a living human. However, it can reanimate dead tissue. So if you have a corpse within an hour’s airborne infectious distance of a living anomaly, said corpse could become infected and reanimated. Or if someone placed a corpse on a surface previously visited by an anomaly within an hour of its leaving.”

The President shook his head and leaned so far back in his chair that Amanda thought he’d flip backward. Others at the meeting glanced at each other, but no one said anything. Amanda remembered having the same feelings of doubt and disbelief, but that was before she came face to face with a walking corpse. She motioned for Dan to get a close up. He moved toward the window. Immediately the thing pounded on the impact resistant glass and gnashed its teeth. Amanda highlighted the image with her cursor and enlarged it until the anomaly’s face filled the entire screen.

“That can’t be possible,” the President said.

“I’ve heard of drugs that can slow and quiet heartbeats to the point that they mimic death. Surely, that must be the case.” The Secretary of Defense said.

Amanda bit her tongue and took a deep breath. “This corpse was found buried under twenty feet of earth in a sealed copper sarcophagus. Objects found with those clay tablets were carbon dated to five thousand years ago. That thing’s heart is shriveled and dried like a leathery prune. But it’s still walking around.”

The President leaned close to the Defense Secretary. The two whispered a quick conversation before the President nodded to a young officer who made a call on his cell phone.

“So this virus can raise the dead.” The President mumbled to himself.

“Excuse me, Mr. President, but I’d like to hear the threats to living people, please continue, Doctor,” Professor Thatcher said.

The President, Secretary of Defense, General Cranton, and especially the two Secret Service guards standing near the door all glared at the professor for his impertinence.

“But first I’d like to hear how she found out about the reanimated tissue.” The President shook his finger into the camera, but an almost perverted smirk curled the sides of his lips. “There had better be nothing immoral about your research.”

Amanda felt her skin crawl from his smile. A smile that turned his moral concern into a lie.

“No Mr. President, I’m not using Seventh Day Adventist conscientious objectors for medical experimentation like Fort Detrick did in the past. We used samples from a cadaver who donated her body to science.” She uncovered a beaker to reveal two more moving fingers. “I placed one finger in a Petrie dish where airborne pathogens reanimated it. I rubbed the other across that window the anomaly’s beating on. Any questions?”

Nothing except shocked faces stared across the monitor screen.

“Very well, now the worst part. We’ve found the Inanna Strain closely related to known viruses belonging to the Filoviradae viral family. Infections from Filoviradae viruses are caused through contact with bodily fluids, blood, vomit, saliva, etc. In this case, we’ve found evidence of brain activity and limited activation of the nervous system. Therefore, it seems that the virus, although it exits in all parts of the anomaly’s body, is strongest and most prevalent in the head. Oral swabs have shown abnormally high pathogen amounts present in spittle-like secretions emitted through its gums. This bodily secretion is highly infectious and could cause infection through a bite or should a scratch or wound come into contact with it.”

“Do you think it’s strong enough to be absorbed through the skin?” General Cranton asked.

Amanda shrugged her shoulders. “As I said earlier, the virus almost immediately weakens to the point of non-lethality once exposed to the air. So unless a deep wound or cut is present, infection through skin contact with the secretion is unlikely. Although someone with a weakened immune system would be at greater risk. We need to do more testing to be sure. The main threat of infection is through an anomaly’s bite. It tries to bite anyone who gets close to it.”

“What about the possibility of a vaccine?” The President asked.

“We don’t know enough about it yet. But hopefully we won’t need one. We’d need to see a living person become infected to replace these theories with facts. But I think we should destroy the anomaly and all samples of the Inanna Strain before that happens.”

“Unacceptable,” The Secretary of Defense said. “It is the mission of USAMRIID to study this stuff to help protect United States troops from infectious or chemical agents. There could be more of those things just waiting to be found and we need a vaccine. Other avenues of opportunity need to be explored.”

Other avenues of opportunity, what the fuck? Amanda shook her head. “But I truly believe that if this virus makes it into the population, it will have a 100 percent fatality rate.”

Another man stepped into view. “Pardon my interruption. I’m Captain Ford, Special Forces, recently appointed to security head for this project. These dead people, whether old dead or recently infected, how would you stop them?”

Amanda paused as two thoughts worked through her mind. She really had no idea. If fingers could live after amputation, couldn’t the whole thing survive unless it was completely destroyed? And why the hell was an unknown Special Forces captain in charge of security for this project? These stupid assholes were really gonna do it. Amanda feared it from the start, but hoped she’d figure out a way to talk them out of it. They wanted to study the Inanna Strain for possible weapons applications.

“Well, Captain, total incineration would work. Seeing that the brain is the only functioning organ, I suppose destroying the head would at the least slow its motor functions.”

“And one more question, ma’am.” Ford said. “The sarcophagus and objects were dated to ancient times, but you couldn’t allow the corpse to be dated without the virus possibly infecting the public. How do you know that this isn’t a modern weapon of mass destruction and that terrorists didn’t stick a new cadaver into an antique sarcophagus?”

“Allow me to field this question,” Professor Thatcher said. “My department carbon dated the artifacts, including samples of copper used to seal the sarcophagus. I can state with 100 percent surety that the sarcophagus was sealed for thousands of years. The Inanna strain isn’t a modern weapon of mass destruction. This anomaly, as you call it, was an icon of religious devotion worshiped by an ancient cult.”

“I know you’re one of the world’s foremost experts on Sumerology and cuneiform writings, but how do you know for sure?” General Cranton asked.

“And what the hell is Sumerology and cuneiformism or whatever?” The President asked.

Thatcher leaned back and sighed audibly. “I study the archaeology and anthropology of the Sumerian culture. Cuneiform is the distinctive wedge-shaped writing of the ancient Near East. Anything else?”

“Please, continue,” General Cranton said.

“I assume most of you know little or nothing about the Goddess Inanna, her descent into the underworld, or what it has to do with your walking corpse, but to make a long story short, here it goes. General Cranton called me three days ago and told me a military unit found the sarcophagus while digging fortifications about thirty miles west of the ancient city of Uruk. Each major Sumerian city-state had its own primary deity; Uruk worshiped Inanna. After the death of her husband, Dumuzi, Inanna descended into the underworld to rescue him. She threatened to raise the dead if Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, wouldn’t free him. A deal was struck and Inanna never raised the dead. But someone did.”

“Who?” The President asked.

“These tablets told me everything. Ritual prostitution wasn’t getting the Inanna priestesses enough funds. They needed a miracle, something to prove Inanna’s power, and more importantly, increase donations. They sent acolytes to find a powerful wizard living in a cave somewhere in the Zagros Mountains. This wizard would have actually been more an alchemist, herbalist, or something of that nature, a scientist of his day, not a Lord of the Rings type wizard. Whoever he was, he was a genius. Without modern lab equipment or modern knowledge, he created a potion to raise the dead, used his own blood and flesh to nurture it. Something in that potion caused the virus you’ve named the Inanna Strain. I doubt it was an accident; because, according to these tablets, the wizard was famed for Necromancy, raising the dead.”

“And they really did it,” General Cranton said. “We’re looking at the indisputable truth.”

“Oh yes,” Thatcher said, “they did it. In fact, your anomaly is a rival priest from another cult. They murdered him and resurrected him to prove Inanna’s power. But the unthinkable happened, the dead priest bit several worshipers, who in turn bit several more. Luckily, King Gilgamesh, angered because he believed the priestesses insulted his favorite Goddess by mocking her power, split their skulls with his bronze-headed mace. He killed them, living and dead alike, save for one, the priest who had been the king’s friend. Gilgamesh imprisoned the priest, hoping he’d die naturally. But he lived for years without food or water and tried to bite anyone foolish enough to get close. In desperation and anger, Gilgamesh sent warriors to find the wizard and retrieve his secrets or kill him before he could reproduce the potion, but they returned empty handed. Finally, Gilgamesh ordered the priest’s hands, feet, and jaw bound with golden straps and had him sealed in the sarcophagus. Priests placed the tablets in the sarcophagus as both a warning and to tell future generations that living dead could be stopped by wounds to the head. These tablets are a lost chapter from The Epic of Gilgamesh. The King ordered this to be the only copy so that it wouldn’t inspire people to meddle with Godlike power.”

“That’s why I called it The Inanna Strain,” Amanda said. “Professor Thatcher said the tablets were about her, but he never told the whole story.”

“I didn’t want the story to influence your research, but you’re obviously on the right track.”

The President and Secretary of State both leaned toward General Cranton and a brief discussion followed. Cranton shook his head and seemed to grow angry. “You’ll do it or I’ll have you replaced,” the President yelled.

“Amanda,” Cranton said. “The President wants Dan to get a close up shot of the anomaly from within the secure room.”

What part of secure did that retard not understand?

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but the anomaly is unrestrained because we’ve been monitoring its motor functions and reaction times. Seeing that we’re the only ones in the Slammer, it wouldn’t be safe to send Dan in.”

The secretary of Defense tossed several files across the table. “We’ve got dossiers on several possible replacements. Unless you both want to lose your jobs, I suggest you do as you’re told.”

“I’m a civilian, you’ll not order me like a recruit,” Amanda said.

“But you work for me,” the President said.

“I’m a citizen of The United States of America which means you actually work for me. As long as I control this lab, what I say goes.”

“We’ve already planned for that,” the Secretary of Defense said. “Captain Ford, assemble a team to cordon off the Slammer. Also, I want all civilian and nonessential military employees of Fort Detrick evacuated in less than an hour. All troops under General Cranton’s command are ordered to their barracks or off-base housing. Dr. Mackenzie, you’ve just been fired.”

“This is ludicrous,” Cranton yelled. “This is still my base.”

“Not anymore,” The Secretary of State said. “This command is now under the direct and total control of the President and his advisors. We have our own scientists who are being suited up as I speak to take control of all scientific procedures.”

“How can you do this?” Thatcher asked.

“Because I’m the President.”

“Do you have any further tablets to translate, Professor?” Captain Ford asked.

“I’m finished, in more ways than one.”

“Very well,” Ford said. “You will be escorted to a secured area for debriefing.”

“And I assume this debriefing will last quite a long time.”

“Indefinitely,” Ford said. “That goes for you as well Dr. Mackenzie. Decontaminate immediately, men are waiting outside the Slammer to escort you.”

Amanda sat in silence. How had this happened so quickly? They must have planned this from the beginning. All of the old conspiracy theories she used to laugh at swirled through her mind. Witnesses or even officials who had seen too much were often eliminated. Were they going to eliminate her? She couldn’t barricade herself in the Slammer. There was nowhere to run or hide. Her only chance was to play along, maybe escape or find someone to get a message to the press. All she knew was the Slammer really was a slammer; she didn’t want it to become her tomb.

Amanda sulked toward the decontamination chamber, opened the door, raised her arms, and turned around three times as the decontamination chemicals showered her and cleansed the chamber. Two M-4 armed soldiers waited outside the chamber. A line of four researchers waited several feet away while she removed her boots and biosuit. She tried to see her replacements, but didn’t recognize any.

The soldiers led her to an upstairs office where Professor Thatcher, General Cranton, and most of her colleagues sat around a rectangular table. Most of the desks and other furniture had been removed and the windows covered with black plastic sheeting.

“What the hell is going on?” She yelled to the entire group. Most shrugged their shoulders or shook their heads. Thatcher sat with his elbows on the table and his chin propped atop his clenched fists.

“I don’t even know,” Cranton said. “They went over my head. Sent most of my staff home and evacuated everything except USAMRIID labs and offices. They had a thousand Special Forces troops and private security guards move in after your presentation to make sure everyone left peaceably. They piled everybody into a bunch of trucks and shipped them out in less than fifteen minutes. They’ve brought in anyone who had any knowledge of the anomaly here. They’re even rounding up personnel at their homes.”

“But you’re the base commander. Aren’t protocols in place for something like this?” Amanda asked.

“I’m just a soldier and soldiers follow orders. I received direct orders from the President. They probably trumped up some Department of Homeland Security bullshit, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

The anger built in Amanda until she punched the wall. “We all signed non-disclosure agreements, anybody who so much as heard a rumor about the anomaly, whether civilian employees or military. Why should we be treated like this? Who in the hell could they have replaced us with anyway. We’re supposed to be the best in our fields.”

Thatcher finished wringing his hands and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’m the most disturbed of all, downright scared. I’ve got no immediate family, no close friends, only acquaintances and colleagues. They don’t need–”

“Hold it right there,” Cranton said. “I know this is highly unusual, but don’t jump to conclusions. I don’t see any evidence that any of us are in danger.”

Thatcher’s face reddened and he clenched his fists. “How do you know? If the stakes are high enough or the agenda far-reaching enough, the powerful always seem to get their way. I’m an old man. I could have a heart attack or get in a car accident and no one would question it. All they’ve got to do is cook up some bullshit about the anthrax attacks and they can ship you all to Gitmo indefinitely. That goon, Ford, even said this so-called debriefing could be indefinite. If they really want to tie up loose ends, they’ll pull a false flag terrorist attack. You’ll all be shown on television as either heroic victims or terrorists. What a crock of–”

Cranton jumped up and sent his chair slamming against the wall. “Listen you crazy conspiracy crackpot. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I’ll not allow you to start a panic. Let’s just stay calm until the debriefing.”

“The professor’s right,” Amanda said. “We’re up shit creek and we all know it, including you, general. We didn’t do anything wrong and we’re being treated like traitors. We’ve been replaced by bootlickers who I didn’t even recognize. There are only a handful of people in the country qualified to enter the Slammer under these conditions. Everyone qualified at USAMRIID is already here or being rounded up. If the President won’t trust us, he sure as hell wouldn’t trust anybody from the CDC or WHO. We need to be concerned for our safety in more ways than what Professor Thatcher suggests. We need to worry about what those amateurs are going to screw up.”

“She’s right,” a lab assistant, John, said. “If the Inanna Strain is released because of incompetence . . . I’ve got a family only three miles from here.”

“I . . . I still don’t understand why,” Cranton said. “This isn’t the way things are done. Why?”

“Because a dead body is walking around in a government-funded laboratory.” Thatcher flopped back into his chair as if the exhausting argument had taken years off his already elderly life. “They’re probably already calling scientists from pharmaceutical companies. Dollar signs are flashing in their eyes and military drumbeats pounding in their ears. What drugs, cures, or life extending treatments could be made from chemicals derived from this virus? What good would an army of the dead be in practical modern warfare?”

“And now they want to weed out who will stand up to them and who will join them,” Amanda said.

The door opened and Dan stumbled into the room. He backed into the corner and slid to the floor. “They don’t need me anymore so they brought me here. They really did it.”

“Did what?” Amanda asked.

“That cadaver you cut the finger from, they put it in the room with the anomaly. First, it bit her, but it didn’t like either the meat not being fresh or the chemicals used to preserve it because he spat it out. It still infected the corpse, a corpse damn it. It got up five minutes later. They put another cadaver in an adjoining room. I don’t know how it happened, but that body got up too. I think it was the moaning.”

Amanda knelt next to the almost hysterical man and held his hand. “What about the moaning?”

“The anomaly occasionally emitted that loud moan. You remember, whaaaa? I think it was calling for help or trying to speak with other dead. But when both dead couldn’t reach the third cadaver, their moans changed to a low whoooo sound. It was like a blowing sound. I think they blew the virus into the room.”

Amanda stood and faced the group. “So they’re not just dumb brutes. At the very least, they have instinct, possibly intelligence even . . . an agenda, the basic need to reproduce their kind.”

“That’s not the worst part.” Dan said. “Those stupid pricks don’t have much experience talking in biosuits. They were yelling louder than necessary and I heard the leader mention bringing in a living subject. I think they want to infect a human being.”

“What do we do?” A woman asked.

“We know this place like the backs of our hands,” Amanda said. “We break out and get to the press. Some of us might make it out. After they check our credentials, the press will have to believe us.”

Ford burst through the door and glared at the group one by one. “We have a dozen of your colleagues en route to the debriefing location. The implications of this discovery are of monumental importance to this nation. We have to see if you’re on board with the official agenda.”

“And what if we’re not?” Amanda asked.

“You’ll spend many years in a place that makes Gitmo look like a five star resort.”

“If you want to hang me out dry, go ahead,” Cranton said. “But these scientists have exemplary records.”

“And you all will continue to have your careers and lives as long as you play ball.”

“Can’t I talk some sense into you people?” Amanda asked. “I don’t know what your plans are, but you’re about to open Pandora’s Box.”

“You’re not playing ball, Dr. Mackenzie. You’ve all just walked into black ops territory. Nobody really believed what you had until we saw it with our own eyes. But we still formulated a contingency plan just in case. Details are way above all your security clearances combined. That is unless you take the same deal others took before you when they stumbled upon things that should not exist or things that fell outside congressional, judicial, or constitutional control. Things like Roswell, does that ring any bells? One last thing, if any of you try to leave, my men have orders to shoot to kill. I even have sniper teams deployed.”

Frantic pounding reverberated through the door followed by a frightened voice. “Captain Ford, sir, there’s a situation developing.”

Ford slammed the door behind him. Amanda listened at the door, but heard nothing. Christ, those goons didn’t even make it an hour before they screwed things straight to hell. She jumped when the shrill alarms sounded a major containment breech.

“Getting out of here is no longer a debate,” Thatcher said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“This isn’t what I swore an oath to defend,” Cranton said. “They played us for fools all along. I guess I was blind all my life, but no time to bitch about that now. Black ops guys are a nasty bunch. We may have to kill to escape. Do any of you have a problem with that?”

“How quickly your tune has changed,” Thatcher said.

Cranton looked at the entire group with rage trembling in his eyes. “Unlike those assholes out there, I took my oath to my country and constitution seriously. To protect them from all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

The scientists all looked at each other without saying a word. Amanda knew what they were thinking. The same thoughts crept through her mind. They were doctors, scientists, not killers. What about the damn Hippocratic oath? Hell with Hippocrates, he was long dead and Amanda wanted to live.

“I’ll do what I have to do,” Amanda said. “We’ve got to get word to the public.”

“And I’ve got to get to my family,” John said.

“We all do,” said another.

“I’ll check what’s going on outside,” a scientist said as she rushed to the window and tore down a piece of plastic sheeting before Cranton could stop her. A small hole cracked through the window and her pulped brain exploded through the back of her head along with a misty spray of blood and purplish-blue brain matter. She didn’t fly backward like in the movies. Her head flopped back and she collapsed almost straight down, landed on her ass and slumped backward with arms and legs splayed wide.

The youngest assistant, Cindy, ran screaming toward the door, but Amanda caught her around the waist and pulled her to the floor. No other shots came. But Cindy’s cries sounded over the blaring alarm. A fecal stench drifted from the body and soon mixed with the aroma of vomit as a technician named Toshiro splattered his lunch across the table.

Other screams soon joined Cindy’s. Only these cries echoed through the door. Gunfire and the thunder of fleeing footsteps followed.

Dan handed Amanda a small DVD. “I compromised my own biosuit to smuggle that out. It’s the recording of the presentation showing the President, Defense Secretary, and the anomaly. It’s the damn smoking gun that will blow the lid off this. I was gonna use it to save my ass, but you’re right, word has to get out. You’ve got the credentials to be taken seriously.”

Amanda slipped the disc into her pocket and nodded.

“We’ve got to get out of here now. I’ve got goodies in my office to use for a diversion,” Toshiro said while wiping vomit from his chin.

“What goodies?” Cranton asked.

“I’m a rocket hobbyist. I’ve got rocket fuel.”

“You know that storing flammable or explosive materials in your office is against base regulations,” Cranton said.

Toshiro laughed and flipped the general off. “So fire me. Oh wait, somebody already did.”

“What’s the plan?” Amanda asked.

Cranton cleared his throat. “Toshiro’s office is down the hall and to the right. Better yet, It’s only a couple doors down from Lab 4-B. They use a lot of oxygen tanks in that lab . . .”

*****

Cranton ripped the door open and slammed the improvised club, made from a table leg, across the bridge of the first guard’s nose. Dan and three other men rushed past and tackled the other guard before he could raise his M-4 rifle. Cranton finished his guard with a knee to the groin and an open palmed thrust to his nose, ramming his shattered nasal bone into his brain. The other guard tossed Dan and John off his back and squeezed off a short burst that ripped through a scientist’s stomach. Kicking the gun aside, Cranton cracked the edge of his club into the guard’s forehead, dropped to his knees, tossed the club aside, gripped the sides of the man’s head, and twisted. The audible crack of his neck reverberated in Amanda’s ears.

Toshiro took one M-4 and handed the other to Cranton while Dan took Cranton’s club and started stripping spare magazines from the two guards’ pouches. The dead guard had a Baretta M-9 pistol that Dan handed to Amanda along with two spare magazines. She pulled the weapon’s slide back slightly to check that a round was chambered and tucked the two mags in her pocket.

“Glad to see you know how to use it,” Cranton said.

“My dad taught me to shoot his .45 when I was twelve. I think I can handle a puny nine millimeter.”

Cindy removed her lab coat and pressed it to the wounded man’s belly. In seconds, the white coat turned into a soggy crimson lump of cloth as their colleague bled to death.

Cranton led Toshiro and Dan to Toshiro’s office while Amanda guided the rest through the hallways leading to the open stairwell descending to the lobby of USAMRIID labs. Luckily, the gunfire hadn’t attracted more guards. From the screams and shooting still blaring from downstairs, Ford’s troops had their hands full.

Peeking around the corner and over the edge of a short glass wall, Amanda looked down into the lobby and noted six guards. Still, a long walkway separated them from the stairs. Short, impact resistant glass walls lined the walkway on either side. Unfortunately, the impact resistant rating didn’t include 5.56mm ball ammunition.

Elevator doors opened in the lobby and four disheveled troops stumbled out. “We’re running out of ammo,” a soldier said. “We shoot them and they just keep coming.”

Amanda almost laughed. Ford knew how to kill them. Was he dumb enough to have forgotten, or dead?

“One of them tore a chunk out of Fred.”

Amanda’s heart skipped a beat when she saw the blood soaked bandage wrapped around his arm. How long ago had he been bitten? When would he turn?

“He’s acting really funny. We need to get a medic.”

The bitten soldier slumped to the floor. His friends gathered around, joined by two of the guards.

Half of Amanda wanted to warn them, but they had to get past the guards.

Gripping one of his buddies around the neck, the now dead soldier pulled him forward and bit out his throat. The wounded man jumped back with blood flowing through his clenched fingers. While the others stepped back, the dead man clutched another’s ankle, pulled him down, and chewed a chunk from the back of his leg. Four guards formed a line and each fired a three-round burst into his chest. A guard pressed against his friend’s throat wound with his bare hand, but his buddy died in a fit of twitching limbs. Seconds later, the dead man bit the hand that had tried to save him.

Impossible, Amanda thought, only seconds between death and rebirth. Of course, the infection would spread quicker if major blood vessels transported the virus throughout a victim, even if that victim only had seconds to live. No wonder Ford’s men were having such a hard time.

“You’re all safe,” Cranton said. “We heard the gunfire and I thought they got you.”

“The dead are active. It’s a massacre downstairs.” Amanda said.

The three men all carried four Snapple bottles with damp rags tied around them. Toshiro pointed to a bulging bag draped over his shoulder. “Hastily improvised smoke bombs. They’ll either conceal us from the snipers or kill us from the fumes. And seeing we’re no longer scientists, I’m gonna start calling these anomalies zombies.”

“Whatever,” Amanda said.

Cranton peeked into the lobby. “Shit, what a mess, but we’ve only got about thirty seconds until hell breaks loose. We’ll take the lobby and toss out the smoke bombs. You’ll be OK under the concrete canopy outside the doors. But then stay down and everybody run along the wall to the tower, then cross the road to the USAMRIID sign. Use that for cover until I can take out the guards by the Humvees. Oh, and plug your ears right about . . . now.”

An explosion rocked the building, followed by a fireball blasting down a far hall. Immediately, Dan and Toshiro lit the rags on two Molotov cocktails while Cranton burst around the corner and opened fire on the distracted guards below. Two dropped immediately. When two others raised their rifles at Cranton, Dan and Toshiro lobbed the Molotovs. Flames erupted around the soldiers’ feet and engulfed their legs. Toshiro bounded forward, raced along the walkway, and emptied his M-4 while screaming like Rambo, but didn’t hit anything but floor and wall. Dan lobbed another Molotov, which exploded against a zombie’s chest.

With the flames spreading and all the guards or zombies dead or dying, the group raced down the stairs. In the lobby, Thatcher coughed and stumbled as the black, putrid smoke enveloped the room. Amanda helped him up. Toshiro, Dan, and Cranton all hurled improvised smoke bombs. The chemicals ignited and plumes of yellowish-green smoke drifted upward and across the street between the building and large USAMRIID sign.

Amanda led Thatcher and the small group of scientists out and kept them pressed to the wall and behind the tower that jutted from the building.

The four soldiers guarding the Humvees, already alerted by the gunfire and flames inside the lobby, advanced through the putrid smoke with their weapons shouldered. A long burst from Cranton’s rifle cut one down and sent the others for cover. Before the soldiers reached the sign, Toshiro and Dan both hurled the last of the Molotovs between the men and the sign. Another burst from Cranton tore through a fleeing soldier’s back.

Amanda’s group ran across the street. Dan and Toshiro tossed their last smoke bombs between the sign and the Humvees before sprinting across to join Amanda. The thinning smoke from the first bombs no longer concealed their movements. Toshiro’s forehead caved in and his head flopped back. A misty crimson cloud still lingered in the air after Toshiro’s body collapsed in a heap. Dan rolled and landed next to Thatcher.

Concrete dust erupted from the canopy’s beam that provided Cranton cover from the two soldiers’ return fire. Both the sniper and soldiers had him pinned down. Amanda needed to help. She inched to the edge of the sign and peered around. The nearest soldier was less than twenty feet away. Light from the burning fuel illuminated his face, just a kid, probably no older than nineteen. This was life or death, no time for hesitation. She aimed and fired three shots. Her first bullet punched through his left eye and the others caved in his face between the eyes and blew his nose off in several pulpy fragments.

The other soldier spun toward her, but Cranton’s fire spun him around. “Oh shit,” the soldier cried as he dropped his rifle and stumbled forward three feet before falling on his face.

“We gotta go,” Dan said. “The smoke’s almost aired out.”

“You go for the second Humvee,” Amanda said. “I’ll fill up the first and head for the exit. You take everybody else and pick up Cranton. Got it?”

Dan nodded.

“Move it,” Amanda yelled and ran around the sign in a low crouch. Instead of going around, Amanda led them directly through the last swirls of putrid smoke. Thatcher’s labored breathing echoed in her ears until a choking gurgle replaced it. She glanced over her shoulder and noticed Thatcher staggering away with a fountain of arterial blood spraying from his neck. A scientist rushed to Thatcher’s side and soon his brains splattered across the dying professor and the parking lot.

Only ten feet to go, Amanda’s heart thudded and the pungent smoke burned her eyes and throat. Suddenly, a scientist only two feet behind her clutched his chest and lurched sideways, knocking John to the ground with him.

Amanda reached the first Humvee as gunfire erupted behind her. Dropping for cover and turning, she saw that the shooting wasn’t at her. Cranton fired over the Humvees toward the water tower. Of course, it was the perfect sniper’s perch; the old white water tower provided a view of the entire area. Concrete erupted from a bullet impact only a couple inches from Cranton’s face, but he fired until his weapon ran dry.

Cindy pulled the now limping John toward the Humvee’s rear door and Amanda climbed into the driver’s seat. “Somebody get on the machine gun,” Amanda yelled as she slammed down the gas pedal. “Shoot at the water tower.”

John climbed up but fumbled with the weapon. “I see the bullets in the side so I know it’s loaded, but how do I shoot it.”

Cindy climbed next to him and pulled the .50 caliber away. “Didn’t you see the last Rambo movie?” A huge muzzle flash belched from the weapon as the small woman blasted away. Amanda watched the tracer rounds streaking toward the water tower followed by sparks as the bullets slammed into the tank and sent small fountains squirting from the bullet holes.

“Give it to ‘em. Give it to ‘eee–”

Cindy screamed as John’s corpse slumped into the Humvee leaving a bloody streak across her skirt and legs. Luckily, Dan sped his own Humvee behind them with Cranton returning fire from his own .50 caliber.

Dozen’s of figures stumbled from USAMRIID labs and flooded the parking lot. Some had burning clothes from the raging fire in the lobby. But not all were stopping to drop and roll. A wave of dead flooded over the living. A ball of flame exploded from the lab’s roof and roiled into the night sky. Ford had lost his battle with the dead and Amanda wondered if he was one of the staggering zombies.

“Watch where you’re going,” Cindy screamed.

Amanda swerved as an eight-wheeled armored vehicle drove into her path. She recognized it as a Stryker, but this had a freakin’ cannon like a tank on top. Flooring the Humvee, she raced toward the base gate with Dan’s Humvee close behind. A massive flash erupted from the Stryker’s mounted 105mm howitzer and Dan’s Humvee disintegrated in a blast of flames and debris. The shock lifted the back of Amanda’s Humvee, but she regained control as she passed the guardhouse. Another shell blasted a shower of bricks, glass, and part of a sign, which had once read WELCOME TO FORT DETRICK, around the fleeing vehicle. Amanda raced into the city streets and hoped they were out of sight.

Ditching the Humvee a block from Cindy’s house, the frightened women crept from yard to yard until they met Cindy’s boyfriend by his truck. Amanda borrowed Cindy’s car and advised her to leave town. Cindy’s boyfriend only looked at the flames rising above Fort Detrick and pointed to the back of his pickup, already loaded with food, camping equipment, and supplies.

On her way to her friend Jill’s house, Amanda noticed the President’s helicopter flying low toward Washington, D.C. Amanda had never been into the geeky side of computer technology, but Jill and her boyfriend were as nerdy as they came.

As soon as Amanda pulled into the driveway, Jill ran out. “You’re all over television. The cops are after you. They say you sabotaged USAMRIID labs.”

Amanda handed Jill the Disc. “Watch that if you want the truth. I think the authorities will soon have their hands full.”

Jill and her boyfriend watched the DVD with wide eyes. Amanda half-expected them to think she was nuts. She’d think it herself if she hadn’t lived it.

Jill started copying DVD’s while her boyfriend looked up the addresses for every major news outlet. While Amanda stuffed the DVD’s into envelopes, Jill put copies of the film on several internet sites and emailed copies to friends and alternative news sources. One way or another, the word would get out.

“Check it out,” Jill’s boyfriend yelled from the living room. “Presidential news conference about the,” he made sarcastic quotation mark signs with his fingers, “terrorist attack on Fort Detrick. It’s a fuckin’ zombie attack, morons.”

The Secretary of Defense finished his statement while the President lingered behind him. “Yes, the President and I witnessed the attack. A good many brave young men gave their lives.”

“What were you doing there?” A reporter asked.

“A top secret debriefing.”

“And what about the reports starting to come in about zombies roaming the streets near Fort Detrick?”

“Conspiracy theories to detract from the truth. If you believe stories about the walking dead, then you’re buying into terrorist propaganda. Zombies, get real.”

Cameras flashed and reporters rose when the President stepped toward the podium. Instead of reaching for the microphone, he grabbed the Defense Secretary, sank his teeth into his throat, and ripped out a fleshy chunk. Reporters fell silent as the Defense Secretary’s shirt turned from white to crimson and blood arced from his severed arteries. The President pushed the podium over and toppled into the crowd, biting any unfortunate reporters within reach. Instead of dragging the President off the reporters, the Secret Service guards pulled away any reporters who attempted to defend themselves, allowing the President to bite several more. Soon, The Secretary of Defense stumbled to his feet and started chomping his own way through the crowd.

Before the last reporter fled, Amanda noticed a Band-Aid on the President’s hand. It must not have been more than a scratch, but deep enough for the virus to enter the bloodstream. Amanda looked out the window. Flames from the now uncontrollable fire at Fort Detrick glowed across the night sky. Cars and pedestrians packed the normally quiet street. Screams and gunshots echoed from nearby. The Inanna Strain was spreading beyond control.

“There aren’t too many women left.” He said. “That’s for sure. Butthere are even less men. Forget about Anneliese man- she’s gone. When things settle down a little bit around here… well you’ll have your pick.”

“You gotta be crazy.” I told him. I would never or could never forget about Anneliese; Her blonde strands scattering across my memory like strips of sunny light streaming through the joined arms of the dead red trees which grew on the despondent landscape of my nightmares. I bluntly asked him to tell me where she was. He pleaded and spoke my name, lowering his arms in a gesture which
represented calm.

“Those women over there are not just as good as dead,” He implored. “I think they are dead.”

“Don’t say…” I began to shout at him before stopping myself in mid-sentence. He sighed and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry Johnny.” I said much lower. “You’re a good friend to me and it’s good of you to tell me. But you know I’m going to have to go over there.”

He shook his head. “It’s been four years a this shit. Weren’t you better off when you thought that she was just dead or gone?” He paused but when I didn’t answer he said, “I’m only against you seeing something that could make it even more terrible.”

I shook my head. “Nothing could be more terrible than this.”

He scoffed and looked out the window. “I doubt that.” He said as I followed his gaze out to the mailbox. One of the balloons- a very small version- floated up to the mailbox. There it birthed a perfectly rectangular slab of tan meat onto the concrete. The patty was smoothly ejected somehow from its silvery surface. Only to land softly on the sidewalk where it sat like a piece of dung on what looked like a plain sheet of tin foil.

“Well,” Johnny said. “Time for lunch. Better get it before the ants do.”

I contemplated this. “Do you think there are any ants left alive.”
I said. “Besides, how do you know what they’re feedin’ ya won’t
kill ya.”

Johnny shrugged. “It’s either that or eat the leaves off the
trees.” He made a move for the front door. “You should try it.” He
said. “With a little water it’s pretty swell.”

“Johnny?” I grabbed his arm. “Where is she?”

I could see these printed lines on his face, as if there were
black ink leaking from his brain and flooding into his blue eyes
until the thought of where she was turned them a dark purple. For
a moment I thought that he was going to tell me that I wasn’t the
only one who’s life had been ruined by all this: That no one had
been left untouched by the balloons: That he couldn’t think of one
person who hadn’t lost everything. I thought that he was going to
tell me that I was acting like a spoiled child. But instead he
only shrugged and said,

“The Municipal Pool.”

#

As I walked along the barren streets towards downtown, I did not
see any girls or women as Johnny had described. I didn’t see any
men either or persons at all for that matter.

Although all of the shops were closed, they had not been boarded
up nor had their outsides been desecrated. I guess the merchants
hadn’t had enough time to gate the doors and windows properly.
Consequently, the stores looked as if all someone had to do was
spin around the OPEN/CLOSED sign and they would be ready for
business once again. Perfectly edible canned goods still lined the
shelves inside, but these were known to be off limits.

It was probably about a two mile walk down to Hill Street. Then
twenty five blocks over to Kecksburg Lane and perhaps another half
mile to where the Municipal Pool sat on the corner of Flatwoods
and Walton.

The balloons were everywhere and they patrolled the streets
endlessly. Since they were in complete control of the city and had
selected whomever they pleased to do God knows what with, those of
us who were left were allowed to roam the thoroughfares freely, so
long as we were on foot. Anyone bold enough to leap behind the
wheel of a car or truck may as well have had the grim reaper
riding in the passenger seat with them.

No one knew where the Balloons came from or who’s bidding it was
that they had manifested onto the town. Some people said they were
from Russia, Cuba or outer space but, to my knowledge, these tired
cold war theories were never proven or even put to the test. I did
not know of one person who had ever communicated with one of the
orbs in any fashion. They came in a plethora of shapes and sizes
and all the same drab iron gray color. You could not go thirty
feet in any direction without seeing one. It was also not known as
to why they were feeding what was left of the population. ( Most
of the time what they were feeding the population was also a
mystery. )

Not really being able to identify them, everyone just started
referring to them as the balloons. Which I think was mainly
because of the way that they floated around or suspended; A slow
oscillating drift which was similar to the flight of helium
balloon’s. ( Although our balloons could go up, down, sideways
and so on and so forth. ) But I think that what they really were
was some sort of pods. They reminded me of a documentary I had
seen on TV several years earlier. It was a dramatization about a
farmer who had spied several “pods” as he called them, taking
soil samples from his bean field somewhere in Iowa. I myself had
once watched a small balloon absorb a rose into its metallic
skin. Whether or not it was using this as a sample or for any
sort of tests were unclear.

They did not resemble any drawings or illustrations that I had
ever seen of UFOs or flying saucers. Although, as objects, they
would certainly have to be classified as unidentified. And, if
they had not been identified by now, I didn’t see how they ever
would be. There were no little green men, grays, or humanoid
figures of any type anywhere. At least not that I had ever seen or
heard of. Actually, it was only an assumption that they had any
connection with or to outer space at all. You could not hear any
engines running when they moved nor did they give off any light in
the extreme darkness of the neon deprived night. Again, the best
way I can think of to describe them is just to say that they
looked exactly like balloons.
Two blocks from Hill Street I came along to the powder blue body of
a dead man propped up against a fire hydrant. It was said that
somehow the balloons could manipulate the life force of a human
being, and since I never really understood or figured out what that
meant, that’s about as simple as I can put it.

I can tell you this much; It was cleaner and quicker than a heart
attack. People simply dropped dead at the will of the balloons.
And for this reason, the gun metal grey anomalies  occupied the
metropolitan area without a shot ever being fired.

All law enforcement officials had been crossed out by the
balloons. Although it would have been difficult to confirm whether
or not they had been targeted specifically. Since you could use
any occupation as an example; A doctor or a lawyer say, and you
would be hard pressed to find any of these people alive. In other
words, so many human beings were dead that it could have just been
random. Although the lack of police presence was not a problem per
se. Since anyone noticed causing even the slightest disturbance
was summarily executed by the balloons. And, since you could not
go outside ( Or in some instances even inside, ) without seeing
one of the orbs, crime rates dropped to an all time low right
along side the population.

As I turned onto Hill Street, on of the bigger balloons was
floating down the avenue about three stories up. Another smaller
one was following close behind. It was like a nightmarish farce of
the Macy’s day parade. On some of the larger balloons, long
spindly sticks jutted out from their sides like the thin legs of
arachnids. These legs appeared to push the balloons away from the
buildings, thereby preventing them from scraping against the
bricks or hard corners. Whether or not there were any beings
inside the big balloons, or whether they were some type of
creatures themselves, was also unclear.

A horrid gray rain began to cascade down from the metallic clouds,
loaning a sheen to the excessive number of balloons Which filled
the shallow sky. The streets were slick, but there was no longer
any rush hour or worry of automobile accidents to contend with.
Wet garbage clogged the curbs and drains. A traffic light which
was stuck on red, or rather, stuck on stop, blinked like a winking
crimson eye squinting from the drizzle.

As I came to Kecksburg Lane I picked up on a flash of motion and
color on the other side of the intersection. In a never ending
wall of blackish glass, which had once been the window of the
Oldsmobile showroom, I saw the reflection of a disheveled and
bedraggled girl. Before her actual figure came into view from
behind the decaying frame of a furniture truck. She was wearing a
long, furry brown coat over a stained and dingy party dress. She
looked like she’d been living outside for weeks.

When she saw me, she immediately began walking towards me, and
that’s when I noticed that there were three little balloons
following behind here like puppy dogs on an invisible  leash.

“Hey Sir!?” She said, hair in tatters, wild as an unkept field.
“Hey Sir?! Do you have any food?” When she stopped, her balloons
stopped. I shook my head no.

She lowered the coat down off of her shoulders and began
unbuttoning the dress. I raised my hand to object but this did not
stop her. Soon she was showing me her red chest, which was  housed
in a slash of black bra. “Now do you have any food?” She said,
swaying seductively. I looked at her coldly and then glanced down
at the ominous balloons. “OH don’t mind them.” She said. “They
like to watch.”

I told her that, if I had any food, I would readily give it to her
and ask nothing in return. “Besides.” I wondered aloud. I couldn’t
understand why she needed food since the balloons were supplying
it to everyone. ( Although their motive for this was murky at
best).

“Maybe I don’t like the cuisine.” She quipped, pulling the coat
back up onto her shoulders and sticking her nose in the air. With
that she walked away, the balloons bobbing behind her like a
banner being pulled by a plane.

As I negotiated the final blocks I felt like my stomach was full
of salt water and the muscles in my legs began to harden and
spasm. I hadn’t been getting very much exercise lately; lying in
bed under waves of blankets, watching the incessant shadows of
circles on the wall. The scent of Anneliese’s skin cream on the
deserted sheets. The stolen specter of feminine powders and
perfumes saturating the pillow cases. Sinking under the waterline
into a paranoid sleep. Balloons in the room, bouncing off the
ceiling, trying to escape as if they really were trapped or full
of helium. But they would never just drift away in the sky…
drift away in the sky.

My knees were heated like half coconut shells baking on a tropical
island and my buttocks felt equally as greasy as I came to my
destination. The Municipal Pool came into view looking as ordinary
as any YWCA. As I got closer the frame of a young man who was
standing at the front door came into focus. He was clean cut,
shaven, well nourished, privileged. He was holding what looked
like a long stick in his hand and, as I got closer, I could see
that it was a shotgun. He barley acknowledged me.

“I’m looking for a woman.” I queried. “I think you may have her
inside there?”

He looked me up and down, the shotgun pointed at the sky. “Yeah,”
He began. “We got lots a women in there. Ya got any money?”

I looked down at the concrete and shook my head. “Let me ask you a
question.” I said pointedly. “What good does money do you or
anybody else now?” Even as I said this, I realized that I still
had a whole wallet full of twenties that I just could not bring
myself to throw away.

He whistled a sigh, his patience seemed to be evaporating. “Do you
have any money or not?!”

“YEAH.!” I growled. “I got money.”

“Go through there,” He began a little nicer, like he just wanted
to get rid of me and an argument would only prolong my standing
there. “Talk to the guy behind the desk.”

I walked through the clear glass doors, then through a brief
breezeway, before quickly locating the ‘desk’ which was really
just a white card table. The fellow who was sitting behind it must
have thought that he was some sort of art type, for he was wearing
an impeccably shaved goatee and a tam. There was a metal strong
box sitting in front of him. A row of plastic slats rose from
inside it to support a bevy of assorted bills.

“Hi.” He said with surprising friendliness.

I nodded.

“Have you been here before?” He asked through the beard.

I shook my head no.

“For five dollars admission; You can select any girl from the pool
area for one on one time in a private enclave, one dollar per
minute with a minimum of twenty minutes. Got it?”

I indicated that I did before pulling the rumpled notes out of my
disintegrating billfold. Past my permanently expired driver’s
license, credit cards, social security. I had hundreds of dollars
in there. I hadn’t spent a penny in over a year. I handed over a
twenty and a rumpled Lincoln which, I guess, were not so worthless
after all. He put it in the strong box. “Have a good time.” He
said.

I had been swimming here on one occasion many years ago. But the
pool area was now drastically different then it had been at that
time. No one had bothered to mop in a while and, what looked like,
black drag marks intersected on various points of the tile floor.
All the deck chairs and lawn furniture had been removed save for
one crooked umbrella shading a plain grey folding chair. Where a
second man, also wielding a shotgun, sat grimly. The setting sun,
its light the hue of a black rose, tried to strain past some
sinking clouds to peer through the high rectangular windows.

I could not imagine why these men figured that they needed
shotguns? Weapons certainly were not required to control the
remaining population. The balloons had already established that
dominance without so much as a shot ever being fired. Or, if these
men were against the balloons, which it was obvious from their
actions that they were not, their guns would have been totally
useless against such a powerful and enigmatic force as the orbs
anyway.

One of the biggest balloons I had ever seen was either attached to
or scraping against the high ceiling. It was rotating slowly, like
the hand which measures seconds on a clock. Dozens of spindly legs
sprouted out from it at various angles and degrees like the limbs
of some mystery arachnid. These apparatuses curved and dropped
down from the body like long steam hoses. There, they were somehow
fashioned to the backs of scores of women. The females milled
through the waist deep septic water. The pool had been partially
drained and what was left of the aqua was browned and rancid. Most
of them were stripped naked with their pale breasts sagging. Their
eyes were the eyes of taxidermy animals, as if their gaze had been
laminated, covered over by a coat of plastic. They shuffled around
slowly in an uninspired circle, goaded along by the tentacles of
the pod, mechanical as carousel ponies.

Mirroring their bitter sleepwalk I shuffled to the edge of the
pool and stared in at them in disbelief. Of all the many
unfortunate ladies sifting through this cesspool broth, I did not
see Anneliese anywhere among them.

“See anything ya like?”

The man with the shotgun had gotten up from the plain grey folding
chair to stand with me by the side of the pool. He was very
muscular and his head looked like a concrete block with black
sideburns. The rifle was down at his side like he was about to run
through a ‘taps’ routine. I resisted an overpowering impulse to
try and drive my fist through his nose. Because I knew that if I
did that, I would either be killed, which I didn’t really have any
aversion to, or that I would never see Anneliese again, which I
could not bear the thought of.

“Um,” I tried to play ball. “I have a favorite you see, a blonde
girl about five foot five, five foot six she…”

“Look friend,” He interrupted me. “They all look the same to me.”

Hurt and confused, I babbled on. “Yeah well, is this everyone? I
mean, are there more? Are they all here?”

His brow zigzagged. He was starting to get annoyed with my
questions. “A few of the girls are tied up right now,” He gestured
with his hand towards nowhere. “But you can’t stay in here. Why
don’t you just pick another one out for today?”

My eyebrows arched. I could feel the sadness collapsing in my mind
like a flash flood sweeping towards a rickety dam. Near tears, I
shook my head. “No,” I pleaded. “I really can’t see anyone else
but her.”

Noticing the hint of spray in my eyes must have alerted him to my
true mission. For he raised the rifle to his chest like a karate
pole and pushed it towards me. “Move out asshole!” He said meanly.

I put up my hands. Not really resisting, yet not really
retreating. “I said MOVE OUT!” He looked like he was about to
swing the butt at my jaw until a new man stopped him by putting
his hand on the barrel.

“It’s o.k. Eric,” The new man said. “Go have a smoke, I’ll sort
this out.” Eric smiled at the second man. Gave me a final dire
stare then walked out of the pool area.

The second man was very young and unusually handsome. He was tall
with blonde streaks through his long rocker’s hairdo and tan like
a surfer dude. Though I doubt that he or anyone else had been
riding the waves lately.

“What do you want?” He said harshly, but his eyes were kinder.

“I want a girl,” I said. “What else?”

“Cut the crap.” He barked back. “I should have let Eric waste you.
Why don’t you get the hell out of here?”

“I paid my money.” I claimed. “Just like everybody else.”

“Look man,” His voice dropped down and lost its curtness. “I’m
just trying to tell you for your own good. If you’ve got an old
lady or a daughter or somethin’ in here… just let it go man.
This place is a bad scene.”

“Thanks for the advice.” I quipped rudely. “But if it’s such a bad
scene what are all you assholes doin’ in here? I mean how the hell
can you be sucking the ass a these monsters just for clean clothes
and a haircut?”

He bit his lip and shook his head. “O.K. asshole,” He began. ‘You
think you know about everything there is to know huh? Why don’t
you come with me?” He walked across the browned tiles and I
followed. He ushered me into a side room lounge where a drab and
faded plaid couch was flanked by two loud orange chairs. “Sit
right here.” He said. “The rest of the girls will be rinsing off
any time now.” With that he ducked out of the lounge. As I sat
down on the couch, a musty moth born stink  bubbled out from the
dusty cushions. As if the furniture had been sitting in an
abandoned lot or a junk covered field. When I was sure he was
gone, I put my face in my hands and began to weep.

After about a minute of miserable heaving I un-tucked my T-shirt
and dried my eyes with it. After that I just stared blankly at the
block wall until the blonde fellow came back in. His kinder side
had won out. “Look,” He began. “Why don’t you just go on home man?
Even if you have someone here… I can promise you that they’re no
longer anyone you want to see.”

I looked at him frankly, my lips trembling. But before I could
even say anything yet another unseen voice from behind the door
said, “What are you a fuckin’ guidance councilor? If the asshole
wants to see some bitch let him see here.” It was the horridly
scratchy voice of a wretchedly thin and wrinkled woman. Her nose
hooked through the doorway, curious and vicious like some predator
bird. She stood in the open threshold with her hands on her hips
and tapped her foot at the young man like an impatient girlfriend
trying to extract a boozing fiancee from a bar. The blonde boy
looked at me almost sadly and said, “All the girls are back now,
if you’d like to go have a look? If you don’t see your favorite in
there now, I don’t know what to tell you.” Acting like he’d washed
his hands of the situation the aryan haired boy walked out. I
followed him and the evil woman out into the pool area. Somewhere
outside, the sound of a train snaked through the comatose city and
I couldn’t imagine who might be driving it or why?

But this time, and almost as soon as I walked through the door, I
could see Anneliese’s luminous and original blonde hair sticking
out among the crowd like a golden coin in a pile of grimy pennies.

“That one,” I said, finally as cold as them. “The blonde.”

Neither of my hosts answered, but almost as soon as the words left
my mouth, the spindly silver appendage pulled Anneliese’s naked
body from the putrid water. Her hairy legs, which had not been
shaved in weeks, shined and dripped the brownish liquid. Her head
lolled groggily and rolled on her shoulders to one side. Just from
that fleeting glance it looked as if she’d gained a little weight.
Then she was out of view, pulled by the pod’s tentacle over a
block wall and into a separate room. Evidently, the top rows of
the blocks had been removed to accommodate the awe inspiring pod.

“Go through there.” The horrid woman said. I quickly obliged,
almost slipping on the slimy tiles. As I hurried past the pool a
second girl was troweled out. Her dark skin looking almost purple
in the dusky light which continued, duller now, to streak through
the high windows. Thick varicose veins were noticeable on her legs
as she also went over the wall.

The door to this new room had been removed and upon entering I
spied a sentry; An aging man with graying sideburns sitting on a
bar stool around a high table. Blurry tattoos of a long defeated
and disbanded navy were sketched onto his forearms. The shotgun
was lying across that stand next to a half empty pint of Jim Beam.
Thick cigar smoke was slowly escaping from the doorway. He looked
at me without much interest, exhaled a smoky mouthful of his
pungent cuban, nodded and said,

“Fourth stall.”

I looked to my right down a long hallway. Where freckles of light
sprinkled onto the partially busted tiles. Evidently this was
where the shower or changing room had once been located. As I got
to the first stall, I could now see that a spotted and stained
mattress had been dumped over the shower’s drain. A naked girl was
laying on top of it, her eyes looked empty, as if she had a bullet
lodged in her brain. A second girl, who was fully clothed in a
long over coat, lay on the mattress with her, hugging her, tears
streaming from both their eyes. She looked enough like the naked
girl to be her sister. I paused momentarily, lifting my hand as if
to help them or say something. But before I could, I felt the butt
of the rifle in the small of my back. It was the grizzled guard
ushering me along. “Fourth stall.” He said, his casual tone and
countenance replaced by a meaner demeanor.

The second stall was empty, with only a blackened mattress laying
sideways under a torn shower curtain.

The third stall had no shower curtain and I could see the wide
back of a rotund man. Thick doodles of dark hair were scribbled
all over his shoulder blades. He was bent over the woman from the
pool, the one with the varicose veins. He looked up as I past, a
beard which had similar circular whiskers as the ones growing from
his back covered his puffy face. Spit flew from his mouth as he
addressed me.

“She used to be a stuck up bitch.” He rationalized. “I used to see
her every day at First National… She wouldn’t even say hi to
me.” I said nothing as I walked past. A dried condom was splotched
onto the wall.

Anneliese was in the fourth stall, laying half in and half out of
the shower. They must have ran out of mattresses, since her legs
were curled under her limp body and her blonde hair lolled wet
against the raised step at the entrance to the stall. I slowly got
around behind her and cradled her head in my lap. The strands of
her locks felt waxy or coated over, like sludge or seaweed. Her
mindless eyes had thick purple crescents  underneath them and her
lips were slit with miniscule cuts and small pin head sized cold
sores. She was still soaked and the septic water from the pool
seeped onto my pants and shirt. These girls and woman had been
conditioned somehow and she could not talk. A sizzle of slobber
ran from the slack corner of her mouth.

I closed my eyes and tried to take in her scent. But I could not
overcome the fecal reek of the Municipal Pool. A white fire like
loud static spread across my brain like windy flames across dry
grass. My mind nearly exploded from the sadness and I prayed that
I would go mad so I could abandon all rational thought. In my
grief my eyes ran down over Anneliese’s violated body. That’s when
I noticed just a hint of mint green branching out from underneath
her arm pits. Her nipples were… crooked almost, one higher than
the other, like a shirt which had been put on inside out. Her
fingers were thicker, not as dainty as I remembered. The toes on
her feet were more rectangular, her biceps more muscular. Her legs
were obviously shorter then I recalled and that’s when I realized;
It was Anneliese’s head and face but it was not her body.

“Ohhh Ohhh,” I said and stared high up at the block walls, salty
tears stunning my lips. I reached into the side pocket of my pants
and pulled out the knife. The Confederate Generals stared at me
from its commemorative handle. Without thinking another thought I
plunged the blade into the chest of whoever’s body that it was.
Anneliese’s face groaned weakly and, for a diced instant, I
thought that I could see a gleam. A glimpse of some recognition
either of or by her: The real Anneliese. Then the eyes waxed over
again and half closed while all the air escaped through the hole I
had made in her transplanted chest. Like all of the air scuttling
out from the inside of a balloon.

END.

Tom Hamilton is an Irish Traveler. He currently lives with the clan
known as the Mississippi Travelers. His work has appeared in over one
hundred publications around the world. Including the Rockford Review,
Red Wheelbarrow Literary Journal and Sinister City among many others.
He has two poetry chapbooks published. ‘The Rain Draw Bridge’ from
‘Alpha Beat Press’ and ‘The Last Days of My Teeth’ from ‘Budget Press’
His short story ‘The Spider’ is available as an E-book from ‘Curious
Volumes Publishing’ Along with his wife Mary Theresa and their three
small daughters, Tiffany, Hope and Catalina, he lives in Rockford IL
USA.