“Dad! Dad. I…”

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

“But what about mom?”

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

“But, Dad, I…”

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

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

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

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

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

She’s crying.

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

She’s crying.

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

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

“They?”

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

“But dad-”

“Get in the damned van!”

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

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

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

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

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

###

JOURNAL-

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

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

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

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

I don’t like him looking scared.

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

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

She should be home by now.

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

###

DAY ONE

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I look away.

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

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

THUNDER.

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

Has he gone crazy?

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

Wet.

I’m wet.

Red blood. On my hands, my pants.

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

###

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

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

###

FIRST NIGHT

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

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

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

So dark.

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

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

It’s dad.

Dad’s alive. His head is back on.

He’s got his hand over my mouth.

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

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

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

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

###

SECOND NIGHT

The screams wake me up.

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

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

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

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

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

He’s silent.

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

“Dad!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

They scream.

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

Dad yanks me through the window.

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

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

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

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

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

For just a second, it’s all okay.

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

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

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

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

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

It sounds like a demolition derby out there!

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

The noise fades.

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

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

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

Then he goes to the next.

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

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

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

A wet sound.

I hope he leaves that bat outside.

###

JOURNAL-The end of the world sucks.

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

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

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

He went to sleep. I couldn’t.

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

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

Where is she?

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

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

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

I had to find out.

I knew what I had to do.

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

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

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

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

They were bones. Stripped white. Something wet, fleshy.

I almost died when I saw a bloody head staring at me, mouth snapping. It was a woman. The screamers had torn up everything below her things.

Torn up everything below her breasts. They were still there. Below them were bone and flesh and blood. She stared at me. She tried to bite me. Her breasts were covered with blood.

I almost missed the other thing. It was pink and moving. A baby.

One of it’s arms were missing.

It was still moving.

I so wanted to scream. To run away. To bash my head until I couldn’t remember seeing those things. I still want to. I’m afraid to sleep now because I’ll see them in my dreams.

I didn’t scream. I was shaking so bad. I could see it in my head. They tried to run out the back. Screamers were waiting for them. They tore them apart. All except the baby. They must have run off after that car.

The baby was trying to crawl towards me. The mouth was open.

I slammed my rifle butt down on it’s skull. It stopped moving.

That was when I threw up.

If one had come up then, I’d have died. I was ralphing up everything, two days worth of food I think. I felt like I was turning inside out.

I still have a bitter acid taste in my throat. The last of the throwup. I rinsed my mouth but it’s still there. I wish I could rinse my head. Rinse the memory away.

The baby stopped moving. But I wasn’t done.          I went to the dead mom. She was looking at me. Her breasts were swaying as she tried to bite me. I couldn’t stop looking at them. Then I heard her teeth click as she tried to bite me.

I slammed the rifle butt down on her face. Again and again. Till she stopped moving.

I snuck back into the house and barricaded the back door again. Then I washed off the rifle butt with bleach. I rinsed my mouth, then my hands. I scrubbed them till they were raw.

Dad was still asleep when I got back into the room. He’s sleeping on the floor. I’m on the bed. He woke up when I got into bed. I’m hiding under the covers when he asks “Hey sport, you want breakfast?”

I kept seeing crushed skulls. Seeing the eyes looking off in different directions. Will I look that way when I’m dead? The thought of food almost makes me sick again. I told him I wasn’t hungry.

DAY THREE

I put down my notebook and steady myself.

Dad stacked all the food and stuff in boxes in the back of the van, on the sides and in the back. I’m on a box in the center. It’s like a fort. I’m looking back. Dad says I’m the tail gunner, that I have to shoot anything that comes at us from the sides or back. Both rifles are with me. He made me wear one of his old army camo shirts with the big pockets. All the loaded magazines for the carbine are in the left bottom pocket. When they’re empty, I’m supposed to put them in the right bottom pocket. He’s in the front. He has all the pistols so he can fire one handed.

I brace myself as we move. I have the rifle ready to shoot. Most of the side windows are already broken out. We taped plastic over them to keep rain out but Dad said I should shoot right through them. Through the back window too if I have to.

Dad is cursing a lot. We slow down. I smell wood smoke. It’s like a campfire.

I turn to look.

Houses are burning. Lots of houses. They’re so close together, old houses made out of old wood. No fire department. “Dad, did the zombies set them on fire?”

“No.” He’s annoyed. Not really mad. “Some damned idiot had a cookfire inside their house and set the place on fire. They built these houses so close together, the fire will jump from house to house. These old houses will burn like matchwood. We’ll have to go around. Okay, look back son. Watch your areas.”

I turn to look. “What a bunch of damned idiots.”

“Son, I don’t like you to…Never mind.”

He doesn’t want me to say damned idiots? He said it. Why can’t I? It’s so unfair.

We jerk to a stop going down a street. “Oh shit.”

I’ll bet he’d get mad if I said that too.

We’re stuck in an alley. We start to back up.

I see three shamblers come out from behind a dumpster.

“Dad! Shamblers, at, uh, six o’clock!”

I remembered! I remembered what he told me. I aim, even as we roll backwards. “Shoot ‘em son! Shoot now!”

I aim. I shoot. The first one goes down. Then the second one. That takes two bullets. We hit the third one! Yeah! He goes flying, just like in the movies! The van jumps and bounces as we roll over another! I keep shooting, more of them are coming at us. My shots are going wild as the van whips around. It sounds like the tires are slipping on something. I hear tires scream, like in the movies.

WHAM!

Why aren’t we moving? I keep shooting. My magazine is empty. The engine is making a funny sound. The van is shaking. I shove the empty magazine in the right pocket. Reload and keep shooting. We’re in the middle of the street. Zombies are coming out of everywhere. Dad’s saying terrible words now, cursing like the guys in the movies he doesn’t know I watch. We rock one last time, then he yells and shuts off the engine. He’s shooting now but they’re coming in from all sides. I keep shooting.

It suddenly reminds me of the last parts of the video games where they just come in from everywhere and there are too many to shoot.

I load a third magazine. They’re almost close enough to touch the van. I unstrap and crouch behind my walls of canned beans and beef stew and jars of peanut butter. I keep shooting. One bullet to each now.

Someone else is shooting. They’re shooting fast. Not like a machine gun but close. A different kind of rifle sound too. More zombies are falling.

A ladies’ voice. “Get out of the van! Come this way. I’ll cover you!”

“Get out Andrew. You heard the lady!”

“But dad, our food, our stuff-”

I find out a second reason why he made me wear his old army shirt. He grabs me by the collar and throws me out over the hood of the van like I’m a toy. This shirt is like a harness for me. He holds me by my neck so I drop feet first, then smacks the back of my head. “Run!”

I run. I can hear him behind me, glass crunching under my feet. I see the lady.

She’s standing in the middle of the street. She’s old. Not old like grandma, but old like mom and dad old. She’s dressed funny too, like she was going to church or something. Fancy clothes. Except for the rifle. It’s an M16. I recognize it from Dad’s army shows. She’s holding it up on her shoulder, firing.

Dad and I stand beside her. We’re a little circle now, all firing outwards. It sounds like a war movie. In a few minutes, we’ve shot every zombie in sight. We have the street to ourselves.

She’s reloading her rifle. She smiles at me. She has a nice smile, but there’s something wrong with it. There’s something wrong with all of us right now though, so it doesn’t bother me. “Hello young man. You and your father can go to my shop over there.”

She points to a little shop building. A sandwich shop. “The door is unlocked. There’s food and supplies inside.”

“Let’s go, son.” Dad slaps me on the shoulder. My neck is sore. We get to the door of the sandwich shop. I’m about to jump out of my skin. Dad stops me and looks back. The lady is still standing in the street. “Ma’am! You don’t need to stay out there to cover us. I’ll cover you now.”

“Just go on in. There’s fuel in the generator for a week. I have….something to do.”

Why is she just standing there? She looks like she’s waiting for the zombies to come.

“Ma’am! The door’s locked!” Dad rattles the door. Funny, I thought he opened it for a second. “I need you to unlock it!”

“I unlocked it. Go on in!”

“Sorry Ma’am, it must have re-latched! Do you have a key?”

I don’t know why I whisper when I say “Dad, just kick the door in!”

“Shhh!”

She slings her rifle like a soldier and walks towards us, digging around in her purse. It’s fancy, with pearls and stuff. Dad steps aside. She tries to unlock the door and it just opens as she grabs the knob. She frowns at dad.

He shrugs. He’s such a doof sometimes. “Sorry Ma’am, it much have been stuck. We better get inside. If some screamers come, they’ll see us in here and that’s all she wrote.”

Just then I hear a howl, like the screamers make. It can’t be more than a block away.

She looks at Dad like the screamer is his fault. Then we all go inside the shop and lock the door.

It’s nice. Not like a McDonalds, but nice with lots of old time stuff and little tables. Mom would love this place. Girly stuff like teapots and lacey napkins all over the place.

The biggest table has a body on it, covered by tablecloths.

Dad sees it and has both pistols aimed at it as soon as he sees it. The woman speaks. “Please stop pointing your guns at my husband. I already had to…had to…”

She looks like she’s about to cry. Dad puts away his pistols, blushing. “I’m sorry. It’s just been, you know, crazy. I’m sorry about your husband.”

“We thought we were pretty well set up for this.” She touches where the face is. Specks of blood are leaking through the tablecloth. “We had the emergency generator. My guns, the food, everything. Even each other. But we heard a noise last night and Truman had to go investigate. He had his pistol. But he forgot to take it off safe. A typical stupid boot mistake. One of them had broken in. By the time we killed the thing, it had bitten him twice. He fought the infection for hours. He was always so stubborn. When he turned this morning, I killed him.”

I give her a hug. She’s tall, almost as tall as dad. She wears a lot of perfume. She hugs me back. “Thank you sweety.”

“I’m Andrew. Andrew Simmons.”

She steps back and shakes my hand. “Pleased to meet you Andrew. I’m Jacqueline Bell.”

It’s weird. It’s like we’re all pretending this is some formal meeting or something. Dad shakes her hand and introduces himself. “You saved our lives. Thank you. That was some nice shooting out there.”

She smiles. Her voice sounds a little different. “It’s been a while. I’m glad I haven’t lost my touch. I was Airborne Rangers for eight years. Jumped into Grenada and Panama.”

“Wow. I didn’t know they let women in the Rangers back then.”

She laughs at that. I wonder what’s so funny. But she looks sad suddenly. “I left to marry Truman. He was the only man I ever knew who accepted who I was. And now he’s gone.”

She smiles, but it’s a sad smile. Then she gets all brisk and professional, like a teacher on the first day of school. She starts shoving bullets into the magazines she emptied helping us. “I’m going to go out and put a few marks in the scoreboard in his name. See how many of those things I can get. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. There’s plenty of food. We fixed the broken window where that shambler came through. There won’t be any more.”

“Wait!” Dad’s voice suddenly sounds calm. Too calm. Calm voices sound wrong now. “Ma’am, we’re grateful for the help. But I need to get my son to his grandmother’s house. It’s forted up and hopefully his mother is there by now. My van has a broken axle, we have to cross half the city and I would really appreciate your help getting my son to his grandmothers. I can’t make you help us. We have no claim on you. But we could really use your help.”

She looks at me. There’s an odd expression on her face. She’s quiet for a couple of minutes. When she talks, her voice is very quiet. “We always hoped we’d be able to adopt, but there were always so many forms and so many people we had to talk to…How old are you, Andrew?”

“I’ll be 13 in march.”

She sighs. “I’ll help you. But when we get him to his grandmother’s, I’m done.”

“Deal. You wouldn’t happen to know where we could boost some transport, would you? It’s a long walk.”

“Truman worked at a pharmacy about two blocks away. He had the keys and they had a delivery van.”

JOURNAL

Getting to the pharmacy seemed to take forever. We couldn’t start until Jacqueline had picked out new shoes. She said we might have to run and have you ever tried to run in heels? Whatever that meant. But she’d been wearing high heels when we first met her and she was shooting zombies. Girls are strange.

We shot a few zombies getting over there but not many. The pharmacy wasn’t a drug store. I’d thought about drug stores I knew with comics and game cards in them. I figured if we could take their van, I could get some serious “World of Warfare” cards. You know, it wouldn’t be like stealing if this is the end of the world. This drug store, though, had small windows and no comics or magazines. No candy section either.

Dad went to check out the van. Jacqueline said we should stock up on medicine and she began going through the bins in the pharmacy. She seemed to know them really well. I guess because her husband had worked there. She was checking a book when Dad came back. She’d given me a couple of cloth grocery bags, the type they say are green, full of bottles of pills. I could tell right away he wasn’t happy.

“An addict?” He said it that way, quietly. Like he didn’t believe. Then he asked Jacqueline why she was grabbing those drugs. He spoke real quiet at first.

She kept sorting. She said she we would need antibiotics, that the zombie plague wasn’t the only problem we’d face. Dad didn’t believe her at first.

DAY THREE-AFTERNOON

“The antibiotics are in these bins over here. What are you going through those bins for?”

“It’s personal.”

Dad stepped forward and grabbed her wrists. I look away. Where was a zombie attack when you really need one?

“Jackie, are you on drugs? I’ve seen what they do to people in the field. You don’t need this” He looks at one of the bottles. “Premarin? Estradiol? Estrogen? What the hell?”

Dad sends me to check out the van and put the bags of pills in it. He says to wait for them. I ran to the van. It’s just too much. I know there’s going to be a big fight. Except both of them are real quiet when they finally come in. Dad’s face looks really funny, like he was bonked between the eyes with a rubber mallet or something. Jacqueline is almost smiling. She looks kind of relieved. Both of them are carrying bags with big bottles of pills in them.

Jacqueline yells “I call Shotgun” even though she’sa holding a rifle.

Dad has me open the back door of the van and cover him while he opens the garage door to let the van out. Then he jumps in the van. Just as a screamer comes around the corner.

I shoot it three times with the carbine. It goes down. I jump in the van. Dad guns the engine. I feel the bumps as we drive over it.

I can’t see much in the back of the van. There’s a bunch of medical stuff there too, but no seats. I have to brace myself as dad drives. I still bang my head when dad stops suddenly. He and Jacqueline jump out as he calls “Hop out Andrew! Be ready to shoot!”

I was just getting used to the darkness in the van. The daylight is blinding. It takes me a minute to see we are parked by our broken minivan. Dad threw open both the side doors and started chucking the boxes of supplies out of our van and into this van. “Want me to help, Dad?”

“Cover your flank, Andrew.” Jaqueline spoke. “Don’t look back. Think of us as in the middle of a circle. You watch your half of the circle, I’ll watch mine and your dad can concentrate on getting those supplies.”

GreatI. Now she was going into War Machine mode too. Still, it made sense. I scanned with my rifle, like some kind of security bot from Star Wars, even imagining myself as a robot- until I saw a shambler come around the corner and look at me. It was a boy, younger than me. The front of his shirt was covered with blood. A little girl came after him. Her clothes were bloody too. They began walking towards me. They didn’t say anything. Their faces had no expression. So slowly. I almost wished they were running.

“Two of them over here! Do I shoot?”

Dad is sweating a lot. He’s kind of fat now. Not skinny like he was when he came back from the Air Force. I never thought about that before. He was just Dad. He drops another crate of food in our new van. “Take ‘em Andy.”

Okay I tell myself, aim. He’s not watching. He knows you can do this. He’s doing his job and trusting me to do mine. This must be like it was to be one of his buddies in Afghanistan. Aim. Squeeze.

Down it goes. It’s always a surprise when the gun actually kicks. It takes two shots to drop the little girl. I have to wipe the tears from my eyes after the first time I shoot her. Why am I crying? It’s just a zombie. In a torn pink nightie.

Jacqueline is firing. One shot, then two. No hurry. She’s so cool, like she was a soldier herself. “Ted, we’re drawing attention. Try to hurry, okay?”

A door slams. “Got it. Everybody in. Andy, you left behind the Ruger. Don’t do that again, okay?”

“Okay Dad.” He tosses me the Ruger. I sling it. The magazines for it are in my upper pockets. I’d forgotten about them.

I jump back into the van. There aren’t any windows except in the back doors. Huddled in the darkness, I’m glad there are no windows. Nothing I can see here.

It’s funny though. As the doors shut and we begin to move, I actually get a good feeling. It’s like we’re on a team or something, the three of us. If only Mom was here. Then it would be complete.

Jacqueline looks back. It’s hard to make out her face from the darkness, the way the sun outlines her. “Good work back there, Andrew. You are one strak little man.”

I don’t know what “strak” means, but the way she says it, it sounds good.

I’m so tired. I almost panic when we hit someone with the van again. Something goes thump against the back of the van when we stop. “Andy, shoot through the back of the van. Now!”

“How many shots?”

“Give it a full clip! Shoot!”

I shoot at where the thump sound came from. The bullets go right through the metal of the van. They just leave dinky little holes. All the holes are dark. Then suddenly, light is coming through them. We’re moving faster.

We stop a couple more times. Just for a minute or two while Dad and Jacqueline shoot stuff. I get ready but they tell me to stay put. When I try looking out the bullet holes I made, I can’t see anything. That’s starting to bug me.

JOURNAL

The last time we stopped, Dad and Jacquelinedidn’t do anything. Dad shut off the engine. We all just sat there for a second. I was getting this horrible feeling that something was wrong when Dad turned to face me. When he said “We’re here. We can get out.” I ran out of the van really fast. We were back at Grandmas.

It seems so quiet now. A big highway runs by a block away and grandma always complained about the noise. I guess it wasn’t there when Grandpa built the house. But there’s no highway noise now. It suddenly seems so quiet, under the old shady trees. The house always seemed old and clunky before, so big. Built out of those funny old bricks. Dad told me once that Grandpa built it himself. The tall chain link fence around the yard alway seemed ugly before. Now it seems so nice, so safe. It’s heaven.

My cousins came out with Uncle Dale. I thought they’d be happier to see us but they were all sad. Uncle Dale and Dad hugged each other after a moment. Uncle Dale isn’t wearing his civil war uniform any more. He’s carrying one of the old rifles though, with a bayonet fixed on it. It doesn’t look silly anymore. My cousins didn’t say anything as we all grabbed the boxes and took them inside. Once we were inside, Cassandra whispered, like it was some secret, that Grandma died while we were gone. It was a stroke, not a zombie bite. Cass said Dad and Uncle Dale are trying to decide how to get rid of the body.

Cass asks me who the old lady is. I told her she wasn’t an old lady, that she’d saved our lives and she has a real army rifle. Cass and I got into an argument then because I was mad she called Jacqueline an old lady and she yelled that at least we’d been outside and not stuck in this house surrounded by zombies. Then she asked me where Mom was and was Jacqueline going to take her place. I almost hit her then and we got into a real bad fight. Dad and Uncle Dale grabbed us both. They were really mad at us.

They’ve taken out all the old board games. Dad was teaching me a game called Risk back at the house. I guess we’ll learn all these, since the power is gone. It’s like we’ve gone to a whole new world.

DAY 3- EVENING

“Andrew, you and your Dad can go in and pay your respects to mom. Your grandmother, I mean.”

We go into Grandma’s room. There are pictures of her and Grandpa on the walls. Some when they were younger. Grandma is so still.

Dad looks a lot like Grandpa used to.

I feel sudden fear. What if her eyes open up. What if she opens her mouth? What if she starts moving?

Someone is whimpering.

It’s me.

Dad walks right up to her. Dad! She’s dead! What if she-

“Come here, son.”

He touches her cheek. Then I see a piece of metal in her ear, with some blood around it. It’s the head of a nail. A really big, long nail. But to be there, they’d have had to pounded it into her….

“I’m sorry son.” Dad puts Grandma’s hair back in place, covering it. “It was the only way they could keep her body from becoming one of them.”

Then I can touch her. She’s cold. I can’t cry. “It’s not her, is it dad? It’s just the shell. Like when Grandpa died. Just the empty shell left behind.”

“That’s right.”

I’m glad she’s not here anymore. She was so afraid the last time I saw her, when we dropped off the supplies.

We leave the room.

Jacqueline has given her M16 to Cassandra. She hands her the bag of magazines too. She still has a pistol, an old time army pistol, but won’t she need the rifle still?

She walks into the back yard. I remember there’s a gate in the fence there. Looking through the fence, I can see a couple of dead bodies lying outside.

Dad tells me to go inside. He runs to catch up with her.They’re both silent until I leave. Once I’m in the house, I run to the bathroom. I can hear them through the window from there.

“You promised. You seemed to understand back in the store. Don’t get in my way.”

“Yes Jacqueline, I promised. But we still need you. We need everyone who can help now.”

Her voice sounds funny. Like she’s trying not to cry. HIt sounds a little deeper too. “You have Andrew. From what you told me of your wife, you probably still have your wife too. She’s a lucky woman to have you. I didn’t fit in the world very well before this all happened. I fit in even less now. Truman was all I had. I want to be with him.”

“I don’t think you want to die. Someone who expected to die wouldn’t have grabbed all those meds back at the pharmacy.”

“Reflex. I was running on reflex.”

“I don’t think you want to die, Jacqueline. I think you’re still looking for a reason to live.”

“Go back to your son, Ted. He needs you. Your wife will need you too. I’m done. Please, have enough respect for me to let me decide.”

I can’t see, but I can hear Dad leave. No! Dad, stop her! I run out the back door of the house. She’s standing at the gate, getting ready to open it. She’s checking her pistol.

I run to her and hug her. Her perfume is really strong now. She was looking kind of ragged when we came in but now I can see she’s put on new makeup. “Don’t go Jacqueline!”

She hugs me back. She even laughs. “Don’t go, Shane!”

“Huh?” I step back. I’ve heard this once before, on the Venture Brothers, but it didn’t make sense. “Who’s Shane?”

“It’s a great movie. Before your time, Andrew. Did your dad send you out?”

“No, I swear. He’ll probably beat my butt for doing this. But I don’t want you to go.”

“You have your dad and your mom, Andrew. You don’t need me.”

I look out at the nearby houses. Yards are bigger here. A couple of houses have burned down. I don’t see any zombies nearby but I can hear gunshots in the distance.

I hear a screamer in the distance.

It’s like this everywhere now.

“Jacqueline, you and dad protected me to get me over here, right? You kept me in the van. Dad kept me in the back, even when I was doing dumb stuff.”

“Yes. That’s what a dad does. Andrew, please, start calling me Mrs. Bell.”

“Okay, Mrs Bell. But you and dad and my mom, you’re all good with guns. What about parents who aren’t? Or who don’t have guns? They’ll still protect their kids, even if it means they die. Right? Parents do that too.”

“Any parents who are worth a damn.”

“Mrs. Bell, there are going to be a lot of kids whose parents weren’t like my mom and dad. A lot of kids who don’t have parents anymore. They’ll need someone to take care of them. Didn’t you say you and your husband wanted to adopt but you couldn’t? Those people who kept you from adopting, they aren’t around anymore. But the kids will be.”

Jacqueline- Mrs Bell- looked at me. She gave a sad smile. “You’re a very smart little boy, aren’t you Andrew?”

“I’m not a little boy. I’m 12.”

She smiles. Really smiles this time. “Of course.”

People are talking at the front of the house. Up by the gate. Loud voices. Something’s going on. I take my carbine off safety and run towards it. Dad’s up there. My cousins. I have to…

I turn and look back. Jacqueline has put her pistol away. She’s sitting down on a chair inside the gate. She shakes her head. “Go up there and see Andrew. But I don’t think you’ll need your gun. Take your time. I’ll be here when you get back.”

I run. Something’s going on. I round the corner of the house. The first thing I see is a dark little girl. She looks at me but doesn’t say anything. I don’t know her. Then I see my Dad and Uncle Dale and Cassandra and..

I’m running forward.

I throw my arms around Her.

Now I’m crying. Like a dumb little kid. Her arms around me, holding me. So safe. So warm.

Mom.

###

1st Place: NEEDS by Jeffrey DeRego

Runner up: LOST AND FOUND by Barrett Shumaker

A thousand thanks to our contributors and readers.

Lead them to victory.

Placing the rest of the cards on the table, Josiah stood. Turning carefully to his left he reached out until his questing fingers found what they were seeking: the Mule. The Mule had been Papaws turkey gun at one time, a Remington 870 Express Supermag. Papaw had sawn the barrel off back to the magazine cap, and removed the stock except for a rough pistol grip. What was left of the barrel had been carefully wrapped in glass fiber packing tape strengthen it.  The loads were hot loads, each of the five shells in the mag contained 10 one half inch diameter washers and as much powder as Papaw thought would fire without blowing up the barrel. Papaw had said, ‘She’ll kick you like a mule Josie, you remember that if you ever have to use her. You put her right up against the stinker, hold on to her tight, and just keep racking that slide and pulling that trigger’. Josie desperately wished Papaw were here now but Papaw was scavenging and would be back at daylight at the earliest.

Slinging the Mule over his shoulder, Josie carefully padded forward, left hand questing until he found the guide ropes. There were four of them. One led to the latrine they had set up downstairs, another to the pantry, the third to their sleeping quarters. He knew these routes by heart, having used them daily for the several months they had been at the factory. The fourth was the one he wanted, the emergency rope. Searching through the ropes by feel, he found the one with a piece of sandpaper around it. Grabbing the grip of the Mule with his right hand, left hand on the rope, Josie began a nerve wracking journey. He had to go up a short flight of stairs, across an elevated catwalk, down a similar set of stairs and across an old machine shop area. The entire time, his imagination conjured legions of stinkers before and behind him. He stumbled on the bridge and froze, not knowing whether the stinker had heard him or not. Chastising himself, Josiah rose and continued. What would Papaw have said, seeing him frozen there on the bridge?

As he arrived in the machine shop area, he searched the wall near the ring the end of the rope was tied to. His fingers found a large electrical junction box. The switch on the right side of the box was so stiff and heavy that Josie momentarily had to let go of the Mule and use both hands to push it up, into the ON position. It had taken Papaw the better part of three weeks to find and haul back the 12 car batteries and wire them up to the six rotary bench grinders in the machine shop. Once he had the grinders working he had welded half inch bar stock solidly to the work platforms of the grinders, right up against the grinding wheels. To add insult to injury, Papaw had taken a small sledge and bent the axle on the wheels of two of the grinders. Papaw had told him the racket they made sounded like ‘Black Thom O’ Bedlam and all the hounds of Hell a hunting’. Josie didn’t know about that, all he knew was that he could definitely feel the floor vibrating. The stinker had no advantage in sight, and now it had no advantage in hearing.

The machine shop area was a dead end, Josie had helped Papaw barricade the other two entrances with pallets from the factory floor. He couldn’t linger here, the floor vibrating like a roaring engine meant he wouldn’t be able to sense the stinker coming. Grabbing the rope left handed, with the Mule in his right, Josie edged back onto the catwalk ‘listening’ with his feet as the vibrations from the grinders faded. Had he felt faint thuds, as a Stinker would make, or were his nerves working against him? Releasing the rope, he edged forward, the Mule pointed ahead of him. There it was again, the faintest of thudding vibrations on the grated steel of the catwalk.

Josie wanted to fire then and there, but didn’t. Papaw had told him to wait. ‘Closer the better’, he had stated, ‘if you can get the barrel right up against em, even better. Just remember to close your eyes and mouth when you fire so you don’t get any Stinker juice in them.’ Josie let out a braying challenge that only Papaw would have understood. Not being able to hear himself speak meant that his speech was all but unintelligible to anyone who hadn’t heard it for countless hours.  As if in response to the yell, Josie definitely felt vibrations on the catwalk, slow but steady and getting closer. Hunkering down in a semi crouch, Josie tried to remain calm. His heart was hammering so hard in his chest that it was difficult to feel anything through the soles of his feet.

Just as he stood up, thinking that the stinker had turned around, a cold, waxy hand grabbed his left wrist. Screaming a battle cry Josie did as his Papaw had told him…

Several hours later Josiah’s Papaw discovered him, still on the catwalk next to the remains of the stinker. Josie had aimed low, the hot loads cutting the corpse in two. Still clutched in Josie’s hand were the remains of the Mule, battered and dented where the boy had used it as a club. As Papaw hugged him and finger signed into his other hand, he remembered the day his grandson had been born. They had known something was wrong right away, had even expected it what with his Mama having Scarlet Fever while she was pregnant with him. The boy had been born blind and deaf. Looking at what was left of the stinker Papaw had to admit the boy certainly had no lack of gumption. Yes Siree, the boy had guts…

I drag a moist towel across my forehead and squint into the big brick oven. Hickory pops and crackles in the back corner of the deep fireplace below and keeps the oven at a stable 400 degrees. I double-check the little stainless steel thermometer, something I dug out from the charred ruins of Luigi’s Pizzeria.

The House smells yeasty, pungent and a little sour. Very slowly the aroma of crusty bread begins to claw at that sourness until it chases all but the last wisps of beery dough smell away. A sponge – that is a bucket filled with wet flour, sugar, salt, and yeast – bubbles and rises very slowly on the floor beside the table. I made this sponge with the last of our dried yeast a year and a half ago, but I’ve managed to keep it alive and flourishing, irrespective of the persistent chill, near constant rain, and perpetual threat of starvation urging me to cook the whole thing at once.

A little tin goat bell clinks by the top of the doorway. A length of old fishing line stretches through a small hole drilled in the top of the window casement, it runs crosswise into the woods and along the driveway, hidden of course, to a wide spring operated pedal buried in the soft ground at the driveway entrance. The walk from the bell trigger to the gate takes three minutes, that’s plenty of time to check fortifications and draw a bead.

A pair of silhouettes walks straight down the center of the overgrown dirt driveway – already a good sign as zombies tend to swerve. I unsnap the hip holster stowing my .38 snub and draw up Dad’s old muzzle-loader that leans loaded and ready against the doorframe.

One figure stands barely half the size of the other. Both carry packs strapped around their shoulders and push adult-sized bicycles with packs strapped over the back wheels. I hurry down to the gate and peer through the sighting slot. I know them, Big Bill’s square-cut black beard is a dead giveaway. Little Bill walks alongside and looks just a half-sized copy of his father.

I pull the pressure treated 4-by-4 gate-bolt and flip the “come in” sign over the stockade top, then head back to the house and return to the big slab of butcher block and my waiting dough. I start practicing my smile until my face muscles limber enough that I look genuinely like a social animal and not a yeasty hermit – even if I feel and live like one.

“Hi Dierdre. We got some flour.”

“Come on in.”

Little Bill is short, as his name suggests, and spindly with spidery long arms and legs slicked in persistent end-of-the-world grime. He stands at the door with a scoped .22 rifle hanging at the end of his fingers then slowly turns around.

Big Bill withdraws an open five-pound bag from Little Bill’s pack.

“It was open when we found it, but it feels like it’s about a good four pounds. I figured it’d save you a trip to town maybe. Not much left out to scavenge within comfortable walking distance.” Big Bill takes the little .22 and leans it against the wall beside my muzzleloader.

Little Bill wriggles out of his pack and takes one of the three wooden chairs against the wall. His legs dangle over the edge just enough that his feet only skim the hardwood floor.

I touch my finger to the white powder and swirl it between my fingers. “Feels like flour.” I touch fingertip to tongue tip. “Tastes like flour too.” They don’t say anything, nor do they eye me suspiciously as both were present during the big dustup last year when Jolene Simmons tried to pass off five pounds of Bisquick and plaster of Paris. I’m more careful now — double-check everything — because one catastrophic mistake and we’ll never have bread again.

Big Bill strips off a ratty wool sweater and knitted hat then drops into the chair beside his son. “How’s things?”

“I’m not one for small talk, Bill. You know that.”

He sits quiet for a few minutes while I work the dough to about half the size of a volleyball. “How far did you go for scavenging this time?”

“About twenty five miles north east up towards Moosefield and the big dam. Still hard to believe it’s all gone.”

“Most places are just burned up squares in the dirt now.” Little Bill cranks his knee almost to his chin and works the laces on a pair of new-looking, oversized hiking boots. A splash of dried blood stains the outside edge of the left shoe.

“See any shamblers?”

Big Bill shakes a little. He pulls a flask of cloudy blackish liquid from his hip pocket and pulls the cork with his teeth. “Couple.” He swishes the bottle around before showing it to me. “Went down easy. Slow. Still real cold for them. Wearing camo. Probably died at the end of last summer, they were all torn up.” He swigs then offers me the flask.

I sniff the bottle mouth. “Blueberry?”

He smiles. “You have a good nose. It’s mostly just juice now, but I like to think there’s some booze left in it.” Big Bill walks over to the wash bucket on the little table beside the fireplace.

I sip. “Uck! Too sweet.”

We both laugh just a little. He dips both of his skeletal hands into the washing up bucket then rubs wet fingers around the back of his neck. “Hey boy, why don’t you go have a look around the outside of the house. I bet you’ll find a couple of good squirrel, or rabbit runs along the stockade fence.”

Little Bill’s eyes catch the flames from the fireplace and reflect them back for just a second. He shoulders his rifle and disappears through the door into the grayish morning.

Big Bill’s voice swoops down like a crow. “I got more than flour for you, Dierdre. If your amenable.”

“Oh?” I make something like a frown, but Big Bill’s been good to me, and I squash it into a thin lipped smile. He found me salt and a couple of bottles of bread machine yeast last year.

“Nancy’s sick, real bad sick. I can’t take care of her and the boy.” Big Bill waits for me to protest, but I don’t. “Diabetes. No medicine left to treat it. And with so little food around, it’s really hard to manage with diet.” Big Bill falls silent but his eyes plead better than his mouth can manage. “She had two fits last week. Almost couldn’t rouse her out of the second one. The ulcer on her too has gone to running yellow.”

I fold the dough, punch it, fold it, punch it – The muted swoosh-swoosh-thump, swoosh-swoosh-thump, swoosh-swoosh-thump of the kneading punctuates our silence. I push the shaped loaf to the side and start to pick fast-drying clots of sticky dough from between my fingers and dropping them into the bucket full of tomorrow’s dough. I catch Big Bill’s eye again and glimpse the abyss that swirls behind them. “Why me?”

A tiny wriggle in Big Bill’s mustache suggests a slight smile. “You need help here too, so it works out. If you get sick or — you know — we’ll need someone to carry on with the bread.” Bill pinches a wad of tobacco into his pipe and tamps it down with the end of his pinky. “Found this last trip out,” he says, “whole cellar full of cigars and stuff. Water got in so most of it was wrecked and bug eaten, but a little bit of it was okay. You want some?”

A flash of goosebumps rides up my arms and across my shoulders. “No Bill. I gave up tobacco when I couldn’t scavenge it anymore.”

“Suit yourself.” Bill pulls a twig out of the kindling box and reaches it into the fireplace. “Little pleasures are hard to come by, seems silly to let them pass. Little Bill is 13 now, has good hands. Smart. Good with a hoe and shovel too. You keep him working on your garden when he isn’t tending to bread –”

“Stop being so goddamn practical.”

Bill’s face droops and he returns to the chair against the wall. He sucks slowly on the pipe and the smell of cherry tobacco briefly fights off the bread dough smell.  “I don’t know what I’ll do without her. She needs all of me right now and that means there’s nothing left over for anyone else. Little Bill understands.” He pauses then whispers, “I hope he does.”

I used to envy the people who survived with their loved ones intact. How they always had that other person to stave off the loneliness and hold through the long cold winter darkness, or while the undead scratched and pounded at the door. The world got to them too, just slower, and they had to watch as their comfort wasted away, starved or got sick, then had to be dealt with. My grief came fast and early, when Greg couldn’t get out of Lowell as the undead rampaged through the larger cities and towns. We said goodbye on the phone. We wept together that night for the first and last time. He sent a final picture from his cell, in it he forced a smile but his eyes, glancing out of frame at some approaching horror, burned red with terrified tears.

“Why not bring him into town. I’m sure Linda can find someone better suited to –“

“They all have people. You need someone and Bill needs someone like you. Someone practical and smart. Someone with purpose.”

“You keep ladling on praise and I’m going to start to blush, Bill.”

Little Bill ambles back into the oven room and stands beside his father. “Couple good squirrel runs I guess.”

I scan over Little Bill, then Big Bill who hides his devastation behind a cloud of pipe smoke. “Normally I’d ask for a week to think about an offer like this but with so much dough to manage, and a permanent shortage of four to deal with – I don’t have accommodations so you’ll have to sleep in the root cellar or down here in the kitchen until I can get something more permanent set up.”

Little Bill shrugs then whispers, “That’s fine.”

“I knew I could count on your Dierdre.” Big Bill hugs his son, then wheels the boy’s bicycle from the dirt walkway to the porch. He unfastens a bedroll and some other basics from the frame and leans them against the door, Little Bill bolts the outer fence after his father passes through the gate.

These arrangements don’t warrant a long teary goodbyes or anything — not anymore.

“You ever make bread?”

“Nope.” Little Bill eases up to the floured butcher block. “Looks like when I used to make dinosaurs out of clay when I was a kid.”

“The dough isn’t all that different, really. Play dough doesn’t have yeast in it so you can make a stegasaurus but not a loaf of bread.”

A near silence descends on the oven room. Little Bill peers through the window slats at the decreasingly identifiable figure of Big Bill melting into the shadows of the long driveway.

Normally I like silence, but it seems unnatural with someone else in the room. “Do you like to read, Bill? I have a few books saved up.”

Little Bill shrugs. “I guess, maybe, I don’t know.”

“Games? I bet I still have some board games somewhere –” I have to think for a minute. I cannibalized most of that part of the house for plywood fortifications and fence repair.

Little Bill walks from one window to the other, to the other, to the other. He touches the iron brackets and wooden slats.

2

I rub my eyes, and for a second contemplate jamming my fingers in deep enough to touch my frontal lobes, as Tom Henderson and Reverend Lyons prattle on about the ancient sawmill at Old Man Orchard. Tom asked for me to participate in the discussion as it related to what I do. I don’t usually come to town for the more regular powwows where Linda and The Reverend hold court, not that I don’t think they are good for Pleasant Hollow or anything, but I never wanted to be involved in the day to day running of anything. I like my little niche and I don’t want it to get any bigger if possible. Tom keeps looking over at me like I should leap in and have answers, but I don’t.

Little Bill stands at the door like a bodyguard until one of Linda’s goats clip-clops up onto the kitchen porch and begins nibbling at the nylon strap to his red backpack. He drops to one knee and focuses all of his attention on scratching the goat’s chin. Linda says, “It’s a saw mill. I don’t know if the spindle can be adapted to grind wheat. I’m not an engineer –”

“Look, society has been growing and milling wheat since Babylonian times, for chrissakes, how can we not be able to do figure it out?” Tom almost pounds the kitchen table as he speaks. “We can’t have forgotten! We can’t be this fucking useless!”

“Calm down.” Reverend Lyons rubs the stump just below his right shoulder, where he took a rifle bullet about two months ago while on a scavenge, without antibiotics there was no saving the limb.

We don’t remind him that he’s lucky to be alive.

“I sketched what I think is the way the spindles work. Apologies for the crudeness.” Lyons pulls a crumpled sheet of paper from his side pocket and spreads it on the table.

Tom glances at me and sort of shrugs. “So?”

“I think we can simplify this whole thing and use the waterwheel to rotate a grinding wheel, or a hammer assembly, that’ll grind or pound grain into flour.”

Linda says, “No amount of water power or grinding ability is going to matter if we don’t have wheat to grow.” She waves at her familiar, Marjorie, a skinny girl of maybe 14 who brings a little jar of seeds from the top cabinet. “Start with this. See if you can triple the amount of seeds by the first harvest.”

Marjorie pours hot water over our used teabags and the final result is sort of like drinking hot water haunted by tea. Linda says, “Dierdre?”

“What?”

“Nothing to add?”

“I make bread, that’s all. I’m not a wheat farmer or an engineer.”

“We all have to stretch a little, Dierdre –”

“I’ll stretch when I don’t have to make twenty loaves of bread every day.” My temper flares a little. “Bill and I are going home. I have too much work to be part of this little brain-trust.”

The room goes silent. Little Bill stands up and shoulders his .22.

“Calm down,” Reverend Lyons says, “there’s no need to argue over any of this stuff. Dierdre, we’re just trying to plan for next season. We can’t just sit here and wait to starve.”

Tom says, “Everyone lay off her, okay?” He turns to me. “I’m sorry, Dierdre, I shouldn’t have dragged you. I just thought you should be part of any decision  that might effect what you do.”

I stare at him. I snap my fingers and Little Bill cranes his head away from the goat for a second. “Drop the dough on the table and lets go.”

Linda waves at Marjorie. “Honey and a little tub of goat cheese.” She glares at me. “We don’t take gifts, we trade, just so there’s no advantage.”

Little Bill places two jars of sourdough from his backpack on the table.

“Where did you get wheat seeds?” Tom turns the jar in the little bit of sunlight that sneaks in through the back window.

“Winter wheat grows wild. I sent the girls to find it with a picture of the stalk. We can find more, but we’ll save time and effort by cultivating a good field or two.” Marjorie helps Linda from her chair. Linda limps to the stove and dips her hands into a wash bucket beside the sink. “Time is everything and we don’t have much of it. Every day we get closer to another scout arriving. Every day we get closer to our stores running out. Henry and Abby found a pile of horse shit on the far south side of town when he was collecting his syrup taps. Other say they’ve heard a diesel engine on the highway late at night.”

“And that doesn’t even count the undead,” Little Bill says, “we’re into the thaw already. My dad thinks it’s going to be a long summer.”

Linda asks, “How is Big Bill?”

“I haven’t seen him since moving in with Dierdre.” Little Bill wriggles into his backpack and pats the little goat’s head before standing taking his place by the door. “Ready.”

Tom places the jar in my fingers and I stare through the glass at the little pile of seeds and into our future.

3

“Tom Henderson’s been around a lot. Is he your boyfriend or something.” Little Bill talks through chews of two-day-old bread skimmed with Linda’s traded goat cheese.

“No, though sometimes I think he forgets.” I pile six logs in the fireplace. I’d like to get fifteen loaves in the oven before lunchtime. “We used to have a thing but his work and mine weren’t on the same schedules and after a while he found a girl who was more amenable to his bowling and cards and movies, and I did the same, then I moved away.” The sky is almost dusk-dark and I wouldn’t be surprised if we drew some lightning and thunder by afternoon.

Little Bill struggles against the weight of a three gallon pail filled with dough.

“We have to bulk you up.” I sort of laugh through the end of the declaration.

“I’m not that small.”

“We’ll see if we can’t feed a growth spurt into you this summer.” I tear the first big hunk out of the dough and drop it onto the board as Little Bill slides a stool beside me and climbs up. He drags a five-pounder of all purpose flour close to the workspace. He counts out four cups and piles it into six nice piles.

We’ve got a semi-regular assembly line going before long. I punch the dough and he sprinkles in dry flour until I push the sixth cantaloupe sized loaf up into the line of dough balls that rest just off the work area.

He’s getting more confident with the dough and that confidence is key to making edible, well-risen, bread.

We both pound out three dozen roll-sized loaves and get those into the rising chamber last. It’s not even noon and we’re effectively done for the day. A load this size used to run seven hours, with Little Bill’s help we’re done in just a bit over four. Extra time is a luxury I’d forgotten.

I walk the perimeter of my little garden rectangle as the afternoon sun breaks through the dense clouds and creeps across the still muddy ground in irregular yellow-bright semicircles. One passes close enough for me to catch and the warm light washes over me.  I stand like I’ve just swung the oven door open, but the sun’s heat is different, more comfortably warm. Then, like a nervous kiss, it’s passed and I’m left slightly chilled.

I concentrate on the garden where we’ve worked in seed tomatoes, potatoes, corn, zucchini, and green peppers – almost time to weed a little. We’ve dug out another big rectangle too, where Tom Henderson scattered half of Linda’s collected wheat seeds.

“Hey!” Bill sits on the porch, smiles wide, and wipes his hands across a too small tee shirt. He’s dug out an old Monopoly game. “Want to play?”

4

“Three, four, five. ” Little Bill fumbles through his small sheaf of cards and compares the little green and little red plastic buildings. “Why are the red ones bigger again?”

“Those are hotels.”

I pour hot water for both of us and season it with a dab of honey and half teaspoon each of nonfat dry milk.  “Can I ask you something?”

Little Bill stops studying the railroad card and turns his attention to me. “I guess.”

“Aren’t you angry that your Dad dropped you here?”

He shrugs. “Mom’s real sick. He needs to help her. If I was real sick he’d drop Mom here and help me.” He drops the railroad card and pulls one of the yellow Community Chest cards and reads it silently.

“If you get angry. If you want to talk. Just say so, okay?”

Little Bill shrugs and puts his full attention back into Monopoly. “Can I buy Reading Railroad? I’ve landed on it.”

“For two hundred bucks you can.” I haven’t thought about money at all in three years and the colorful bills of the game threatens to pop a dam holding back three years of shit.

Little Bill counts out from his carefully sorted stacks and hands them to me. He catches my eye. “You okay, Dierdre?”

“I – I need to go for a walk. Just wait here.” Once I’m sure Little Bill hasn’t followed me out into the punishing afternoon rain I let the dam crumble and the despair sluice out.

The rain is good.

The rain carries away my tears.

Greg and I were just starting to make it. A couple of miscarriages resigned us to growing old together, alone. Greg’s gig as a human resources manager at Sylvania was rock solid, and I was settling into a full time position managing environmental impact surveys for a coalition of PACs and PIRGs. We had a house, a nice one, with antiques and computers and BMWs and yearly trips to France –  one where I attended a week long baking seminar to learn that boulle meant “round” and baguette meant “long” – we both hit our forty five with enough in the bank to plan an early retirement, or work just a little more and tour the world.

But the world ended without us.

I cry for a good ten minutes, recover, then curse the little indulgence of weakness before walking back to where Little Bill waits.

“I have two hundred.” He drops the colorful paper money onto the board.

I hand over the card. “I don’t feel like playing anymore right now. Okay?”

Little Bill fumbles with his cards. “Okay, I guess. Do I have to put it away?”

“No. We can play later. It’s just – I used to – Before we –”

Little Bill scoots over next to me and places his thin, bony arms around my shoulders. “I understand,” he says, “I was kicking your ass anyway.”

5

Monday’s take the longest because the families come for bread from the furthest ends of town. I lay out the tally sheet and a pencil nub and glance over the names. Adams, Baker, Chatergee, Clemens, Duncan.

The goat bell clanks.

Little Bill peers down the road. “Five or six coming.”

I get the gate cleared and sign up with a full ninety seconds to spare. Little Bill has washed his face, arms, and head stubble and stands behind the table like a miniature store clerk. I double check the snub .38. Little Bill shows the .22 before leaning it against the butcher block. I check each person walking through the gate briefly against the list.

Little Bill makes happy smalltalk with each of the family representatives before handing over their bread. Normally the people come in, get their stuff, and leave after a short round of hi how are you, yes I’m fine, I heard so and so blew their head off, but Little Bill is a big chatterbox.

“How long have you got him,” Tom Henderson asks outside of Little Bill’s earshot.

“I dunno. Depends on what happens with Nancy. Big Bill says she’s falling off real bad now.”

Little Bill points out the Monopoly board, frozen mid game, with him about to become a railroad magnate. His mouth never stops moving.

Tom catches his eye and smiles. “He’s good for you. You should ask if you can keep him.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You’ve been alone too long.”

“Let’s not start that again –”

“I’m just saying it’s good that you’re being, I don’t know, friendly.”

I shrug. “Most of it’s him.”

Tom smiles again, this time at me. “You’re looking good, Dierdre. Sometimes I forget how pretty you are.”

I roll my eyes and walk back to my usual spot in front of the big fireplace and oven to watch the little congregation mingle until the families begin to drift out. I walk Tom to the gate. “See you next week.”

“I don’t have to go. I mean, I can stay and make some dinner or something.”

I pull the bolt open and Tom leans in and kisses me. I blush and pull back. “Go,” I whisper.

Little Bill slides in beside me. He unslings his .22 and hands a cloth bag filled with bread rolls to Tom. “Everything okay?”

“I was just leaving.” Tom backs out through the gate and bungie cords the cloth bag around the handlebars of his bike. We lock the gate. I climb into my loft and curl up fetal on the mattress. I miss Greg, and usually when I feel hollow and dusty his memory brings a little comfort. Today I can’t remember the color of his eyes, or which way he combed his hair. The harder I try the more I see Tom. He eclipses the past, swallows it like some black hole at the center of a collapsing universe.

Damn you Tom, damn you to hell.

Little Bill tends the garden and walks the perimeter fence alone. Later he bounces two dice over the Monopoly board over and over and over again.

6

We haven’t seen Big Bill in three weeks.

Little Bill works a loaf in silence, the dull throb of his hands kneading the dough drown under the crackle and pop of the fireplace. The tin goat-bell clanks. Little Bill steps back from the dough and begins a quick accounting of the room.

“Stay on the bread. We’ve got time. I’ll do the check.” I peer through the view-slat with his yellow binoculars to a girl pedaling hard on a mountain bike. “It’s Marjorie Whatshername from Laura’s house. That crazy girl is all alone too, jeez!” I run from the house, yank the bolt back and kick the gate open as Marjorie coasts past me and into the yard. She skids to a stop by the steps and drops a heavy backpack before leaning the bike against the porch rail. “Laura sent me with some stuff; tea and some honey and maple syrup a couple of jars of preserved potatoes too.”

“I don’t have spare loaves to trade. And what the hell’s wrong with you riding all the way here alone? It’s ten miles, kid, and we’re in the warm season. We can’t afford to lose anyone now, especially not to stupidity.”

Marjorie brushes her mop of straight black hair under a sweaty red kerchief, “I’m fast enough. Besides, I wasn’t alone for the trip. Tom Henderson’s on the way over too but he wanted to check on Big Bill.”

“Don’t say that to Little Bill, understand?”

Marjorie nods. “Where is he? I didn’t just come to trade, I came to see him.”

I lock up the gate then lead Marjorie inside. Little Bill brightens up as soon as he sees our guest. “It’s not your day for bread,” he says then pulls a roll from the cooling shelf and places it on the butcher block before her. “It’s mine, but I want you to have it.”

Marjorie blushes. “Did you make it?”

Little Bill smiles. “I make lots of bread now.”

Marjorie eases closer. She’s taller than Little Bill by almost half-a-foot but short of that they might as well be classmates. Bill finishes up the last loaf for the last batch and slides it into the rising cabinet.

“You have good hands,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“Laura says I should ask if I can learn how to make bread too because you can’t ever have enough bakers.”

“I can teach you,” Little Bill answers.

“You’re smart too, not just handsome,” she says. For all her youth, Marjorie’s clumsy flirtations aren’t lost on Little Bill who smiles and broadcasts almost adult confidence as she gushes and giggles.

I guess the world ending forces everyone to grow up a little faster.

Marjorie notices the Monopoly board. “Oh god, you still have this! Can we play? I haven’t even seen a board game in forever!”

“Sure! Dierdre was teaching me, but I’m too good and she doesn’t like losing all the time.” Little Bill glances over at me and winks.

“I’ll give you two a little privacy.”

The goat-bell clanks. Tom Henderson cruises slowly down the driveway on his old Schwinn three-speed and meets me at the gate. His face is pale and sweaty.

“Where’s the kid,” he says and looks over my shoulder at the house.

“Inside. Why?”

Tom begins to push past me. “He should know –”

“– Should know what! Tom, stop!” I grab his arm and hold him back.

“Nancy’s dead, Big Bill too, and both of them are gone.”

“Wait a minute, what good is it to tell Little Bill? You think he’s going to grab his squirrel rifle and go off hunting for his zombie parents? Are you fucking nuts or something?”

“He should know.”

“If Big Bill and Nancy walk into town they’ll be dealt with. This isn’t the end of the world – that’s already happened, remember?” Suddenly, I crack up laughing, I don’t know if it’s the phrase or the sarcasm I’ve let slip into my comment but I can barely stand as the laughter consumes me.

Tom steadies me. He smells filthy – not that I’m a rose mind you – musky and earthy. His arms radiate strength. I grab his matted shoulder length dreadlocks and bury my tongue in his mouth.

Tom pulls back, “I thought you didn’t want –”

“Do you know what one of the last things Big Bill said to me was?”

Tom shakes his head.

“He said it was stupid to deny little pleasures when they’re offered.” I scratch softly at the nape of Tom’s neck. I whisper, “And now he’s probably dead.” I kiss him again and this time he doesn’t recoil. Silence nuzzles in between us. I lean against Tom and let his warmth comfort me. My arms fit just right around his starvation-trimmed belly, not like when we were kids and he was two pizzas away from joining the 300-plus club.

Tom whispers, “We have to tell the kid.”

“I’ll do it. Just give me time. This is probably his first time being a little bit happy in as long he can remember, I don’t want to destroy that.”

7

I lay across the musty futon in the loft. It’s late, and usually the nighttime sounds – rain, peepers, owls – lulls me to sleep. Tonight I’m restless. Greg is there hiding in the darkness but the memories don’t want to come out and be massaged tonight. His voice is a mix of voices now, his face is a mix of all faces.

I roll over and sigh. Greg’s become an abstract, papered over by the new memory of Tom’s sharp features, warm hug and wet kiss.

The goat bell clanks – clank-clankity. I roll over and listen. Animals sometimes trip the trigger plate.

Little Bill shuffles out of his sleeping bag downstairs. “Dierdre?”

“Lay down, Bill. It’s nothing. That was probably a deer. You won’t get much sleep this spring or summer if you worry every time you hear the bell.”

Clank-clank-clank.

“I’m getting my rifle ready just in case.” Little Bill shuffles to the door and slides the view slit open. “Can’t see anything.”

I sit up and yawn then slip down from the loft to the kitchen. “New moon, I think.” I peer trough the view slit into the relentless nighttime black. “No light at all.”

Clank-clank-clank-clank-clankity-clank.

“Well, if whatever it is stays up by the roadway ・”

“I wish we could see something.” Little Bill reaches for the door knob but I push him away.

“Just let me go to the gate.”

“No.”

Clank-clank-clank-clank.

“Dad says the zombies go someplace that had meaning for them before they died.”

“No one knows that for sure, Little Bill.” Tom’s words race back through my head. We gotta tell the kid, Big Bill’s dead and gone. Little Bill being here would certainly have meaning, and if Big Bill stumbled into more zombies they’d follow him.

Zombies tend to horde.

“He said we’d be safe back home because he didn’t have any friends and no one ever visited.”

Clank-clank.

“Shhhhh!” I try to unlock the door silently ・ zombies still hear, still smell, and still see, depending on decomposition ・ but manage to elicit a few tiny clicks as the bolt retracts into the housing. Soft misty rain swirls in the darkness. The droplets catch the tiny orange flicker from the dying embers in the fireplace and glow like dull sparks. The mist squashes down the usual smells, suffocating them in must and humus, but beneath that hides a vein of the sick sulfury air of flesh-rot. I draw up the muzzle loader. “Stay here. I’m just going to the gate. If I have to run back you might need to slam and lock the door behind me.”

Little bill takes my hand and squeezes for a second. “Wait. No.” His voice quavers. “Don’t go down.” He’s surprisingly strong and pushes me back from the door before slamming it and twisting the lock closed. I force him aside and even though I know he can’t see how I glare at him. All that noise is going to bring them for sure now. Then, as if on cue: Clankity-clank-clank. Bwoooooooaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Scratch-thump.

“Upstairs into the loft. Now!” I push Little Bill towards the ladder then quickly check each of the bolts, locks, and slats downstairs before climbing up and fumbling the ladder in behind me. “The dough should be safe. They won’t get in even if they get over the fence.”

Little Bill sits pressed into the corner. He holds the .22 like it anchors him to the Earth’s surface. He whispers, “Sorry I made noise.”

I glance out the window into the mist but can’t see anything through the murk. “We’ll just wait it out. It’s not big deal.” My mind races over the slats and bolts and lock and doors and everything else, then when I’m sure I didn’t skip anything, the race starts again. I slide the window open just enough to hear them.

Grooooooannnnnnnn – Thump-Thump-Thump – Mooooooannnnnnnnnn.

Little Bill crawls over towards the futon mattress.

“The only way in is the ladder that I pulled up. Don’t worry, okay. Just try and get some sleep. I’ll sit up until morning when we can see what’s what.”

He slides into the futon and pulls the quilts in tight. “I can’t stop shivering.”

I listen at the trapdoor but all’s quiet in the kitchen below. Morning won’t come for hours and hours. I drag my holstered .38 over and slip into the bed beside Little Bill. He scoots beside me, He shivers through the heavy layer of blankets. I roll over and wrap him in my arms until his breath falls into a relaxed and sleepy rhythm.

Sometimes I forget he’s only 13.

Whatever scratched at the gate moved on deeper towards Pleasant Hollow by sunrise.

8

Little Bill slides the Monopoly box into his backpack. He hasn’t stopped chattering all morning. “Marjorie and me are going to play, like, three games at least,” he says, “maybe we can get you and Linda to play too. There’s plenty of money and pieces and dice and stuff.”

I pack two almost stale rolls and the last nice crusty loafs from this week’s baking. I don’t usually take days off to mean I can actually go into town, but after last night we need a change of scenery and to let Reverend Lyons and the others know we didn’t get eaten.

“Do you mind if we stop by my folk’s place on the way? Dad hasn’t been back to the house and I want to make sure everything’s alright.”

I stare down into Little Bill’s eyes. “Bill,” I drop the Little this time, “What happened to Betty Crimmins?”

“Died from the flu two weeks ago.”

“Right. When people are sick, now when there’s no medicine except maybe chicken soup, there isn’t much hope –”

Little Bill picks up, and immediately checks his rifle. “You can come with me or I’ll meet you at Linda’s.”

He bungi-cords the bags to the flat rack over his back tire and shoulder-slings the .22. A moment later we’re both pedaling up the long driveway.

We slalom through felled old-growth pine and spruce and oak that lay across the state road. Little Bill has more energy than me and before long I’m almost yelling for him to wait up.

He skids to a stop right at the crest of Owl’s Nest Lane, throws his bike onto its kickstand, and unslings his rifle. I struggle to pedal up the steep hill where he waits.

“Slowpoke,” he says and there isn’t a hint of humor in his voice.

I scowl at him because I don’t have the wind to swear.

Little Bill pries his yellow binoculars from the backpack and peers down the hill towards a small brown house set against a big red barn. “Everything looks like how we left it.”

I see the bricked windows, the high fences, barbed wire, the useless pickup truck. “No chimney smoke.”

Little Bill asks, “You really think he’s dead?”

“I don’t know. If the dead come to places that mean something when they were alive, there’s no other good reason we had them at the gate last night. If Big Bill is dead and walking then he might have come to my house because of you.”

“I need something if I’m going be the last one. ” Little Bill swings his bike over the crest and leaps on before I can follow.

“Come back! Wait! Come back Little Bill!”

He hunches down over the handlebars and rockets towards the farm.

I coast down and listen for screams and/or gunshots but there’s nothing. Little Bill’s bike leans against the stockade fence a few feet from the open gate. A bicycle chain swings lazily from two iron loops bolted into the wood. I hop off my 10-speed and stand it by the road. I push the front door open and count slowly to three. My eyes struggle against the murky darkness. Cold white light leaks in between the the wooden slats and badly mortared brick that covers all of the downstairs windows. Footsteps echo from the upstairs rooms.

Almost-mid-morning sunlight floods the entry and the remains of the room beyond. Heaps of filthy moldy clothes clot on the water-warped hardwood floor. A pile of swollen, water-soaked books crumbles beside the remains of an overstuffed chair dotted with blooms of mildew.

I draw the pistol. The steps to the upper floor are sealed behind a metal door.

The entrance door throws a rectangle of light. The shadow of a human figure resolves in the sharp stretched rectangle. Tall – but that could be the light – no rifle. The figure shuffles up the last step into the house.

I raise the pistol. I pry the hammer back as the shadow looms, pull in one long, quiet breath, settle my finger on the trigger. The little bead on the end of the snub barrel blurs. I blink and squeeze off two rounds.

“Jesus Christ!”

I know that voice! “Big Bill!”

“Dierdre?”

“Oh my god! I thought you were one of them and I – I panicked  – Oh my god are you hurt? Did I hit you!”

He steps past the door where two fresh bullet holes catch the sunlight and glow like cat’s eyes in the midnight dark. “No, but you’ll owe me for the years you’ve shocked off my life.” He looks different. His matted beard and thick ponytail, the hallmarks of post-apocalyptic hair, are gone. Big Bill wears a suit. The pants are crusted with dried brown mud.

I realize he’s cleaned up for a funeral. “You – You buried her?”

“I did the right thing first.” He pats the pistol slung at his hip. “Nancy asked to be buried near her mother and father. Near Littleton. I promised. I did a lot of thinking on the way there.” Big Bill pries a half-smoked cigarillo from his breast pocket and lights it from a kitchen match. “Where’s my son?”

“He ran in here before I could catch him. Upstairs I think. Tom said you were dead. I wouldn’t have come – I mean – Little Bill thinks you’re dead too.”

The two gunshots haven’t gone unnoticed as Little Bill slowly emerges from the upstairs stairway. He creeps and sees that I’m alive and unhurt, then sees his Dad also alive and unhurt. A blush races across his cheeks. “Hey,” he says as nonchalantly as a 13 year old can manage. “I heard shooting. Everyone okay?”

Big Bill says, “We’re fine.”

Little Bill throws himself against Big Bill’s chest.

“It’s okay, I’m here,” Big Bill says. He leads us all just up the road to where he’s set up a little caravan of carts with a shoulder harness. “I came back for you but I can’t stay here.” Big Bill glances past his son to the house and barn. “There’s too many memories.”

Little Bill opens his jacket and pulls out a picture frame with a portrait inside. The photo shows Big Bill dressed in a black suit, Nancy in her nicest Sunday dress, and Little Bill with a close cropped haircut and a wide smile. His eyes sparkle with innocence. He hands the photo to Big Bill and looks at me. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want you to go either.”

“I can’t. You aren’t old enough to understand. But everything here reminds me of her.”

Little Bill sniffles then backs away and takes my hand. “Go then. Go and be dead.”

Big Bill shakes his head. He squats down and hands his son the family portrait. “Be a good baker.” His eyes well up a little. “Maybe I’ll come back someday.”

Little Bill’s face hardens but only for a second and he crumbles into his father’s arms. “Don’t forget me.”

“Impossible,” Big Bill straps himself into the wagons.

We watch him walk until he disappears around a long gentle curve.

Big Bill never looks back.

Little Bill glances over his shoulder only once at the little gray house and big red barn on Owl’s Nest Lane as we walk our bikes back up the hill.

“If you want to talk just say so.”

Little Bill smiles meekly up at me. “I’ve got you, bread, Marjorie, the future.” He slides up on his seat. “Come on,” he says, “I don’t want to miss my chance at beating all of you at Monopoly.” Little Bill pedals off.

I ride off in pursuit and remember that these arrangements don’t warrant a long teary goodbyes or anything — not anymore.

The dog lay beside the old man on the truck’s threadbare bench seat. The shiny thing lay in the man’s lap, still clutched in his hand. The dog had seen the shiny thing only once before. He knew it made a loud noise and scared away strange people, but he didn’t know it would hurt people. He didn’t know it could make them dead.

The old man reeked of death just like the strange people that wandered past the old man’s truck from time to time. They staggered around uncertainly among the abandoned vehicles littering I35. Occasionally they would stop walking then shuffle off again in a new direction.

The dog was lonely.

The dog lifted his head and rested it on the old man’s thigh beside the shiny thing. The old man didn’t move. He hadn’t moved for days. He hadn’t moved since the shiny thing made the loud noise.

The dog remembered the first time he saw the shiny thing. It was when he and the old man went to see sweethart and the goddamnsonuvabitch. The old man had been really mad. On the long drive over to sweethart’s house he kept patting his pocket where the shiny thing was and saying that the goddamnsonuvabitch was not gonna touch muhbabygrrl ever again. The dog didn’t know what the goddamnsonuvabitch or muhbabygrrl were. He knew sweethart, and she was where thuhgrrls were. They gave him food so he was happy to go.

But right now the dog wanted to be petted. He nosed the old man’s hand. Same as before: nothing happened. Instead the old man’s hand slipped down his thigh to rest on the bench seat. His fingers were black and smelled of decay. The dog wanted to lick them. He wanted the old man to wake up, but the dog had learned a lesson yesterday: don’t lick black fingers. They will make you sick.

The dog couldn’t stay any longer. It was time to go.

He didn’t want to leave the old man. The old man was his pack leader. But the dog was very hungry. He had to move on. He had to find food. They had been going to sweethart’s house when the truck stopped. Sweethart had food. Maybe she could be the leader now.

Reluctantly the dog jumped down from his seat beside the old man to the road below. He trotted away, letting his nose guide him to sweethart and thuhgrrls.

****

The smell of death was everywhere. It permeated everything. It was so thick at times that death was all the dog could smell, having driven all other scents from his nose.

The roadside was littered with clothes, trash and overturned coolers of spoiled food. Near one cooler the dog found a plastic-wrapped ham. The ham was too large for the dog to get his mouth around, and its shape made it impossible to hold still. It rolled away when he tried to pin it down with one paw. Holding it down with two paws made it roll past his elbows and under his chest. The dog gripped the ham between his forelegs and pressed his chest against it, holding it firmly in place. He then craned his neck back and scraped his jaws on the ham’s slippery wrapping until he managed to get a tooth through the thick plastic. The dog had just torn a hole in the ham’s wrapper and was savoring its salty taste when a shadow fell on him.

The dead stranger lunged at the dog from between two cars. The dog sprang away, narrowly avoiding the stranger’s outstretched arms as the stranger crashed to the ground, landing on top of the ham. The dog skittered around at a safe distance, tucking his tail under his belly as he kept the dead stranger in sight. Ignoring the ham, the dead stranger crawled toward the dog, clicking its teeth together as it picked itself up off the ground. The dog paced a wide circle around the dead stranger, hoping to steal the ham back. The dead stranger stumbled to its feet and lunged for the dog again. Seizing his chance, the dog darted in and snatched the ham. He had turned to dart away when he noticed the taste.

It was terrible. The dog had never tasted something so bad before. The ham wasn’t salty and meaty and good anymore. It was noxious.

The dog tried to escape with his prize, but the flavor was just too awful to bear. He had retreated nearly a foot when he gagged the ham from his mouth. It was smeared in some disgusting fluid. The dog coughed a wad of phlegm up from deep within his throat, pulled his lips back from his teeth, dipped his head and vomited. The dead stranger lunged again, catching the dog by a back leg. The dog tried to jerk free but couldn’t. The reek of death rolled off the stranger, assaulting the dog’s senses even further. It pulled the dog’s leg toward its open mouth. Before it could bite him, the dog attacked. Snarling, he spun around and bit the dead stranger’s head. It released the dog’s leg and grabbed for the dog’s throat, allowing the dog to break free. He ran away through the grass beside the road, up over a hill and was gone.

No amount of grass the dog ate could get the disgusting taste out of his mouth or make his stomach feel better. He ate grass and threw up, ate more grass and threw up again, until the sun went down, the sky grew dark and his stomach finally settled.

****

The dog’s sleep was fitful.

He remembered riding with the old man in the truck.

He remembered the wind in his face and all the smells it held.

He remembered thuhgrrls putting things on his head and wrapping feathery things around his neck then bringing him to sweethart or the old man. Thuhgrrls and the old man and sweethart would laugh. They would give him a treat.

He remembered thuhgrrls giving him food under a big table and the old man making him get out from under the table and go OUT.

The dog remembered finding a treasure under the couch at sweethart’s house. It was a crinkly plastic thing with chocolate and peanut butter on it. It was just like one he found once before, but this one had more tasty stuff on it. The old man made him spit it out. The old man told sweethart that thuhdawgalmost choked to death on a wrapper last week. The dog didn’t know what thuhdawg was. He just wanted his treasure back.

He remembered the old man holding sweethart after the shiny thing had boomed and scared the strange man away. Sweethart was crying. Thuhgrrls were crying. The old man was quiet. Thuhgrrls cried, “Mahmah” and sweethart and the old man gathered them up and carried thuhgrrls away.

****

The sky got bright again, and the dog woke up. He was thirsty. He was starving.

The dog got to his feet and sniffed around. He still smelled death in the air, but he also smelled grass and bushes and trees. He felt good when he smelled good things. Natural things.

Nose to the ground, he went in search of food. Many sniffs later he smelled urine. Mouse urine. He followed it to a hole under a bush and dug. A small mouse sprang from the enlarging hole and the dog caught it immediately. Two quick chomps killed it. The dog swallowed it whole.

A lizard came next. It ran out in front of the dog as he searched for more food. The lizard didn’t taste as good as the mouse. Neither tasted as good as the food the old man gave him: crunchy, meaty things in a shiny bowl. That’s what the dog wanted most of all. Crunchy, meaty things that smelled and tasted like crunchy, meaty things and not like mice or lizards.

The dog searched for more food.

No matter where the dog was, he could smell the road. The wind blew its stink everywhere. The stronger the stink, the closer the road. He nosed his way through bushes and trees and back to the road all the while thinking about the shiny bowl and the meaty things the old man filled it with.

****

Things were burning everywhere along the road. Black smoke gushed out of burning cars. Grey smoke drifted out of the ones that weren’t burning anymore. It was all stinky smoke.

The dog didn’t like stinky smoke.

The dog liked smelly smoke. The smoke the old man would make in the fireplace at home was smelly smoke. And when the old man burned leaves outside when it got chilly, that made smelly smoke too. Smelly smoke smelled good. It smelled right.

Not like stinky smoke. Stinky smoke was bad.

The dog watched dead strangers walk in the stinky smoke. Some of them were on fire. They didn’t notice.

The smell of the burning strangers was intoxicating to the dog. They smelled like bacon. The dog LOVED bacon. But there was another smell under the bacon smell. A bad smell.

The dead smell.

He couldn’t go to a dead stranger for food. They would try to hurt the dog if he got close to them. From the smell of it, every stranger walking on the road was a dead stranger. None of them would feed him. The dog would have to find a stranger that wasn’t dead.

Suddenly the dog remembered! Sweethart and thuhgrrls. He was looking for them. They would know where his food was. They had other food he liked too, and they had the crinkly stuff.

The dog skirted the roadside, trotting along with renewed purpose. He followed it from a safe distance, beyond the reach of the dead strangers.

Sometime later he found water. It was little more than a puddle. It smelled bad, but it was wet. It tasted like the smoke that cars puffed out in traffic. The dog was too thirsty to resist it. He drank the bad water. He even licked the mud when all the water was gone. Later when the sky was getting dark, the dog ate grass, threw up, ate more grass, threw up and lay down until he stopped feeling bad.

The sky went dark and the big white ball was in the sky again. As he lay on the ground the dog could hear other dogs howling in the distance. He sat up and joined them, his belly grumbled in protest. The dog didn’t feel so alone listening to the howls of other dogs as their voices echoed in the night. They howled back and forth until the dog got sleepy and lay down.

****

The old man was sitting in the truck, mumbling angrily at the cars surrounding him. Nothing was moving. Strangers got out of their cars to shout at other strangers. Horns honked. Strangers got into fights with each other.

Many of them were angry.

Many of them were scared.

Fear’s bitter aroma mixed with the warm spice of fresh blood wafting through the truck’s open windows. The dog smelled it in the air as easily as he smelled the old man next to him.

He growled low in his throat as a pair of strangers started fighting in front of the truck. Other strangers walked over to try and make the two strangers stop fighting. All it did was make the fight bigger. The air was electric. It tingled with anger. The dog raised his hackles. The strangers’ anger had become his own.

The wind changed. A breeze blew through a stand of trees up on a hill and across the road. Something bad was in the air. Something wrong.

Again the dog smelled blood in the air, but it was old blood, not fresh, and mixed with it was another smell.

The dead smell.

Suddenly lots and lots of people came through the stand of trees on the hill. They poured over the hill like ants. These strangers smelled wrong. They smelled like death.

The dog heard people shouting. People screaming. He saw people get out of their big trucks and little trucks and cars and run away. The dog smelled urine and feces on many of them as they ran past him. He sat in the truck with the old man, watching and waiting for his leader to do something. The old man just sat and looked ahead. The dog saw strangers grabbing other strangers. Strangers biting strangers. Strangers knocking other strangers down and eating them. Strangers reaching in other stranger’s cars, pulling them out screaming and bleeding.

The old man leaned over the dog. The dog thought he would get petted, but the old man reached past the dog and opened the door instead. “You be a good boy,” the old man said as the battered door screeched open. He gave the dog a pat on the head and a scratch behind his ears. “Now go on. Get out. You gotta make your own way now.” The dog looked at the man, searching his eyes for a command, something that would mean he could stay and not go OUT.

The old man smiled sadly at the dog. The dog recognized the smile and replied in kind, wagging his brushy tail. “Oh no. None of that, now. Out. Go on. OUT,” the man commanded.

The dog didn’t understand why the man wanted him OUT. The dog thought he must have done something the old man didn’t like. Reluctantly he turned and hopped from his seat, down to the asphalt road. The dog turned around and looked up into the cab. He waited for the old man to call him back in. All he could see from the ground was the seat and the truck’s headliner. He heard the old man take a deep breath and say, “I’m comin’, sweethart.”

That wasn’t what the old man said when he wanted the dog to get in the truck. That was kummown. But it was close enough for the dog to get excited that the man wasn’t mad at him anymore. The dog wagged his tail and crouched down, gauging the distance so he could jump back in. A loud noise boomed inside the truck and hurt the dog’s ears. The dog ran a few feet away and turned back to look at the truck, but he didn’t go back to it. Not yet. That loud noise scared him. He didn’t want to get close if it was going to happen again.

The dog could see the old man from his perch on the gravel shoulder. The old man was sitting in the truck, but there was blood all over him. Its steely smell was overwhelming. The old man didn’t move. He didn’t call for the dog to kummown. The old man’s head was tilted back and his mouth was open. The dog knew the old man wasn’t asleep.

The dead strangers came. The dog ran away.

The dog came back when it was dark. There weren’t any strangers around. He jumped in the truck and lay beside the old man. The old man didn’t pat the dog on his head. He didn’t scratch the dog behind his ears. The old man was dead.

****

The dog wandered the road for a long time, straying from it only when it failed to provide food or water. Once his needs were met, the dog resumed his journey, following the road as it meandered through the world.

Frequently he would catch a whiff of food, animals, even other dogs as their scents rode the wind. If the smell was fresh and strong he tracked them down, at times traveling great distances from the road.

Sometimes his nose led him to dead animals. They were often torn apart, the pieces of their bodies scattered on the ground. The dog scavenged every bit of nourishment left from the remains. Nothing was spared. He even chewed the bones, gnawing off the ends to get to the rich marrow inside.

****

Bright skies and dark skies passed overhead in endless repetition.

The dog traveled with other dogs he encountered. They hunted and scavenged together, keeping one another company in the desolation that surrounded them. But eventually competition for food would force the dogs to fight. The fights left wounds on the dog that bled, then wept and finally closed. The wounds left scars, but they left him stronger than he was before.

He followed the road and his nose as they guided him to food, company and something else. Something he had forgotten but knew existed. Something he was searching for but was lost in the strange world he now found himself in. It lay somewhere along the debris-cluttered road, if only he could remember where or what it was.

The days grew longer and hotter. The trees and bushes at the roadside smelled of sap and earth and pollen. Soon the air was filled with the chirps of birds and the chirring of bugs.

The soft pads on his toes became thick and rough. The layers of fat beneath his coat melted away, replaced by lean muscle. The dog began to win more fights than he lost. His hunting skills grew stronger. He killed his prey more swiftly as the muscles of his jaws thickened. The dog no longer had to chew the ends of bones to extract their marrow. He shattered the bone to pieces in his powerful bite, devouring marrow, cartilage and all. The comforts of his life before the road dimmed in his memory. Instinct replaced them.

The road was his territory now, and he marked his passing on cars and trees and asphalt. Howling at night announced his presence to the world. He ate what he could catch. He took food from weaker animals, chasing them away and claiming it for his own. And when they stood their ground to defend what nourishment they had, he fought them for it. The dog and his life before the journey slipped away, and the animal within guided him.

****

It rained throughout the day. First it was a steady drizzle that beaded on the dog’s thick, oily coat and ran down his flanks to the asphalt below. At midday the dark clouds gathered, blocked out the sky and brought down a torrential storm. Fierce winds whipped around the dog. Thick raindrops pelted him from above. Even the dog’s dense fur couldn’t keep the rain at bay. Water wicked through his coat and clung to his skin, chilling him to the bone.

Cold, tired and hungry, the dog crawled beneath an abandoned delivery van for shelter. It kept the rain at bay but not the wind. He curled himself into a tight ball and shivered. Eventually the dog fell asleep.

The dog dreamed of an old man scratching leaves up into a pile with a long stick. The old man smiled at him.

The old man was familiar. Comforting. The dog felt a sense of purpose when he looked at the old man, as if his place in life was to be at the old man’s side.

The old man began to speak. The dog didn’t understand what the old man was saying, but his voice filled the dog with joy. Anxious energy jolted through the dog as the old man reached into the pile of leaves and withdrew a stick.

The dog wanted the stick. He needed the stick. He knew the old man wouldn’t give it to him freely. The old man would make the dog work for that stick, and the dog welcomed it. He rose to his feet. His muscles tensed with anticipation. His legs quivered with excitement. The old man leaned back and hurled the stick into the air. The dog bolted after it.

The dog’s toes dug into the earth as he ran. The crisp, cool air and rich smells filled his nose with every breath: the damp loamy scent of rotting leaves, the sodden stink of puddles gathered in yellowed grass. A wave of peace washed over him. His anxious energy burned away with every stride. The stick fell to the ground only seconds before the dog snatched it up. Stick in mouth, the dog pranced ecstatically back to his master. He gnawed his prize as he returned, savoring the bitterness of the bark on his tongue.

The old man struck a tiny stick of wood against a small box and dropped it into the leaves. A curl of white smoke lifted into the sky almost immediately. The old man beckoned to the dog to come closer. The old man wanted the stick back.

Just before the dog reached him, smoke from the burning leaf pile billowed out around the old man. The dog couldn’t see him anymore. The smells of nature, of life and the dry chill of winter traveled within the smoke. The dog breathed deeply, savoring each and every nuance of this perfect place with the old man.

****

The dog awoke with the smoke’s aroma lingering in his nose. It was still raining. Still dark. And the wind continued to blow. It stabbed at the dog in cold, rain-dampened gusts.

The dog tucked himself into a tighter ball, trying to retain as much body heat as he could. He looked out at the grey, wet world from the relative shelter of the van and sighed.

Lightning flashed in the dark sky, briefly revealing the world around him before plunging him back into the inky blackness of night.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep as another gust of wind buffeted him. For an instant the dog smelled smoke. Not the stinky smoke that reeked of rubber and plastic but the smelly smoke of burning sticks and leaves. The dog sniffed the air again, but the smell was gone, replaced by the clean aroma of lightning and the heavy scent of water-laden air.

The dog tucked his muzzle against his side and stared blankly into the night. Thunder boomed in the distance, shaking the earth with its might. The wind shifted and whipped under the van.

Smoke. Smelly smoke! Faint but real. The dog lifted his head and breathed deeply, drawing the fading scent into his nose. Yes, it was definitely smelly smoke.

It was nearly undetectable, but it was there. The wind changed direction and took the scent with it.

The dog didn’t want to lose it. Not so soon. Smelly smoke meant people. People meant food, and the dog wanted food. His empty belly rumbled with hunger. The smoke aroused his palette. The dog’s mouth watered with anticipation.

As soon as the dog crawled from beneath the abandoned van, rain pelted him mercilessly. He trotted into the downpour, testing the air for smoke with every step. Powerful, turbulent winds robbed him of the scent one second and inundated him with it the next. The dog was certain of one thing: the road was leading him closer to the smoke.

A flash of lightning briefly illuminated an overpass before him, and the dog headed straight for it. The scent of smelly smoke was coming to him intermittently, but as he drew closer to the overpass, the smell grew stronger.

The dog trotted through a veil of water cascading from a gutter on the bridge above. The runoff splattered noisily on the road beneath him. Once through the soaking waterfall, the dog found himself in a cold, dry void of darkness. He shook himself dry, nose to tail, and pressed further into the abyss.

Claps of thunder boomed outside. Flashes of lightning lit up the darkness as if it were day, then plunged the dog back into the black of night.

The dog tested the air again, huffing lungfuls of it into his sensitive nose. The smoke seemed to waft down to him from the bridge above. On either side of the road, large hills of cement rose steeply to the underside of the overpass. There they met large grey beams of metal that spanned the sky above him from hill to hill. The smelly smoke smelled stronger to his left, so he trotted to the concrete slope and began to climb.

As the dog climbed, catching whiffs of smelly smoke in his nose, a memory flashed in his mind. It was of an old man raking leaves; suddenly it changed. The old man was sitting by a small fire in the darkness. Three small people were around him, chattering excitedly as the old man stabbed something white onto the end of a thin stick and held it over the flames. The small people − no, that wasn’t right. They were called something else. What were they?

The white thing in the flames began to smoke, and that smoke smelled wonderfully sweet, so sweet that the dog began to drool. The old man held the white thing on the stick out to the small people. Small people…small…thuhgrrls! That’s what they were! And suddenly the white thing was smeared on their fingers and around their mouths, and the dog was licking the sticky sweetness from their fingers as they giggled.

The dog reached the top of the hill and found that it was flat with a short wall. The grey metal beams sat on top of the wall and in between the beams were small recesses. He trotted along the embankment’s top, poking his nose over the short wall, testing the air of the recesses for the smoke. He finally found the source at the far end of the hill.

The dog didn’t smell anything sweet like the white, smeary, sticky things, but he did smell smoke. Maybe thuhgrrls were up there. Had he found them? Did they know he was looking for them?

Sitting on his haunches, the dog could just poke his nose over the wall. He huffed a snout-full of air from the recess above and heard a gasp and whimpering. Fear roiled out of the recess, falling heavily on the dog’s nose.

Someone was up there, but it wasn’t thuhgrrls.

Thuhgrrls smelled like sweethart and the old man and the goddamnsonuvabitch who left because the old man showed the shiny thing to him.

The dog wagged his tail in greeting. The thick bush of it drug across the concrete like a straw broom and was nearly as loud.

No one answered his greeting. Thuhgrrl didn’t reach out and pet his head. The dog thought that maybe thuhgrrl couldn’t see him so he propped his front legs up on the ledge and looked inside.

Thuhgrrl screamed. Her eyes were wide with fear. The dog pulled his ears back to soften the blow of her high pitched shriek. Although her scream hurt his ears, he stayed where he was.

She held a short, shiny thing that ended in a point out in front of her. It looked nothing like the shiny thing the old man had. This shiny thing had a little black handle thuhgrrl gripped in both of her trembling hands.

A little pile of glowing embers lay on the floor between thuhgrrl and him. In the dim light the dog saw thuhgrrl lower the shiny pointy thing to the ground, still clutching it tightly in her small fists, and begin to cry. Saltwater streamed from her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

The dog dropped back down to the hill’s flat top and readied himself to jump. He gauged the distance and gave his back legs a pump, rising up on them to determine the force he would need to get to the top. With a grunt and a scratch of his toenails, he leapt up into the niche, nearly landing in the hot embers.

The dog stepped over the small pile of glowing coals, wagging his tail so thuhgrrl could see how happy he was to see her. His tail made a soft thump, thump sound as it struck the walls of the tight space. Thuhgrrl sat back on her feet, dropped the shiny pointy thing and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her hands, lost in the dog’s thick coat, gripped him with all of her strength as she laid her head on his back. She cried deep racking sobs that shook them both.

Thuhgrrl made the same sound over and over again: mahmah. And each time she said it, thuhgrrl would shake and cry and grip the dog tighter. The dog remembered that sound and immediately got excited. He remembered that thuhgrrls made that sound a LOT. Thuhgrrls made sounds all the time, unless they lay down and went to sleep, but the mahmah sound they made to sweethart constantly. The dog looked around anxiously to see if sweethart was near, but he couldn’t smell her anywhere.

Thuhgrrl cried for a long, long time. The dog had never experienced this before. Even at sweethart’s house thuhgrrls never held him like this. Still, the dog let her hold on. He remembered that when thuhgrrls were sad, they would pet him, and they wouldn’t be sad anymore. They would laugh when he licked the salt off of their faces. And sometimes they would scratch his hard to reach spots and laugh even harder when he tried to help them by kicking a back leg or two. He loved a good scratch, especially when he didn’t have to do it himself. The dog hoped thuhgrrl would scratch his hard to reach spots.

After some time thuhgrrl stopped crying. After a longer time she let him go. She sniffled and wiped the tears from her face. The dog licked her cheeks, hoping to get some of the salt before she wiped it all away. Thuhgrrl started laughing through her nose, just like thuhgrrls did. The dog wagged his tail again, remembering thuhgrrls and how happy they made him, but it was only a half wag. He was very tired. He wanted to lie down.

The niche was small and barely gave him enough room to turn around in, but the dog managed to get himself settled, flopping to the ground with a grunt. Thuhgrrl lay down behind him and draped her arm over his chest.

Bright and dim white lines danced through the smoldering embers, bathing the dog and thuhgrrl in a gentle glow. Thuhgrrl stroked the top of his head, lazily drawing her hand down to his left ear and tugging it through her fingers. She started scratching behind his ear −a good spot− and scratched lower to the back of his neck − a REALLY good spot. The dog was kicking his rear leg to help her scratch harder when her fingers struck something hidden beneath his fur.

The dog was enjoying the scratch so much that he didn’t notice her sit up on an elbow, slip a finger underneath the thing and tug, dragging it around to the back of his neck.

“Rusty,” she said after a moment of tugging and scratching at the thing with her fingernails. The dog perked his ears. That sound was familiar somehow.

“Your name’s Rusty.”

The dog remembered the sounds: ruhs-tee… rustee. Yes. Yes, he knew that sound! It was his name! It was the name the old man gave him, the one sweethart and thuhgrrls called him by when it was time to play fetch, the name the old man shouted when the dog stuck his head in the trashcan looking for goodies!

“Nice to meet you, Rusty. I’m Jenny.”

Rusty wagged his tail at the sound of thuhgrrl saying his name again. She lay back down beside him and wriggled closer, enjoying his warmth.

Rusty found thuhgrrl and thuhgrrl found his name. Sleep quickly found them both.

“My Raymond is going to end up in the gutter if he doesn’t pull his socks up.” His mother once prophetically stated, never dreaming of the circumstances in which her words would come true. At the time of her pronouncement the rest of Ray’s large family sat round the dinner table and nodded their heads respectfully in agreement.

“But that’d be my Raymond all over, wouldn’t it?” she added sadly. They all nodded again. “He hasn’t any sense at all, sure he hasn’t?” She continued, perhaps looking for words of consolation.

“No, Ma. He hasn’t.”

“Its not like he has any badness in him though, sure he doesn’t?” She asked.

“No Ma, He doesn’t”

The reason Mrs. Wilkins made her statement about the gutter is this; before the rise of the Dead her son Ray had lived a useless, unproductive life filled with disappointments and failure. His lack of resilience and his inability to cope with simple everyday problems soon put him on the road to drug dependency and alcoholism. This, unfortunately for Ray, soon alienated him from even the staunchest of his sympathetic friends and family members.

But Ray, and all other petty little worries and squabbles were put to one side and ultimately forgotten as soon as the streets of the world became clogged with walking corpses. Walking corpses. It was better than nuclear conflict for putting some perspective on the little things.

Now let’s skip forward a couple of years and we find Ray Wilkins in the very circumstances foreseen by his mother. Just look at him down there now; snoring softly on the bed of a wet, mulchy drainage channel which follows the rural roadside edge of a meadow just outside of the ashen ruins of Dublin City West.

Earlier in the day Ray had staggered, trembling and frightened, along the weed-cracked tarmac above, his mind a cauldron of nightmare confusion, his body buzzing unpleasantly from erratic nervous impulses. He was also being pursued by the grotesquely blocky corpse of an aged catholic priest. In his panic to avoid the grasping undead, Ray had swerved from his erratic path and jumped blindly off the road through a thick wall of brambles. The drop was further than he expected and he landed awkwardly in the meadow before rolling unconsciously over the lip of the deep open drain in which we now find him.

It’s true to say that his mind, never quite complete, had become so damaged by malnourishment and cheap plundered booze that it wasn’t unusual, in these apocalyptic days, for his own name to occasionally escape him. Never one to be accused of vanity Ray was quite happy to neglect himself in these times too. If, and when, he bothered his arse to forage for supplies he always looked for booze and drugs before considering food, so it didn’t take long for him to resemble the dead in most aspects – especially to the casual observer’s visual and olfactory senses. More importantly Ray was forced, as were all other solitary survivors, to become acclimatised to abject loneliness.

It’s important now to clear up a small point before we proceed with our tale: it’s unlikely that Ray’s substance abuse, mental decline, and absence of personal hygiene fooled the dead into thinking he was one of their own, yet amazingly he had managed to evade them through sheer luck and simple accident.  He certainly didn’t possess any natural wit or cunning. His survival was a mystery.

But here he is in the gutter at last. His mother would have been pleased if she herself wasn’t shuffling blankly past Davy Byrnes Pub at that very moment with someone else’s mouldering hand clamped in her gummy jaws.

Ray exhales malodorously through the corner of his slack mouth, his long thinning hair plastered greasily across his face as he lies on his skinny side, his head resting limply on an out flung arm. His thickly bearded face sports a deep scratch across one eyebrow and a thin trickle of blood oozes through the coating of grime on one sunken cheek. This comatose condition was, for Ray, a welcome break from his deranged reality.

Shortly before sunset one of his gunge encrusted eyelids cracked open and he squinted painfully at the retina searing light blazing down through the spiky thicket above. When his shocked eyes adjusted to the gentle daylight he turned stiffly onto his back and contemplated the sky through a pleasant ceiling of leaves.

High cirrus clouds drifted smoothly in the blue and a hissing flight of starlings suddenly rushed over his hiding place, making him flinch. The dull realisation that he was actually awake prompted him to sigh despairingly.

On good days – whatever that may constitute in Ray’s world – as many as two or three seconds might pass after waking before his reality puffed away into ashes and depression enfolded him wetly in grey, shroud like billows; so as he looked upwards he waited in resignation for his treacherous mind to leech away life’s colours.

After a moment he dimly realised that this didn’t seem to be happening; maybe the leeching was being delayed due to technical difficulties. He snickered at the notion. But while this brittle peace remained unbroken he was more than content to gaze at the delicate shapes in the sky. He scratched absently at a city of lice which nested grapelike in his clotted beard and he tried to think of a single reason to move. He had no plans, he had no pressing business to attend to, and he had a nice leafy roof for shelter and concealment. He wasn’t particularly cold or hungry, and the mulch on which he lay was passably soft, if just a bit too wet for perfection. And, more importantly, the Late Father Murphy obviously hadn’t found him. Ray farted wetly and was as content as he could ever expect to be. He scratched at his lice in the knowledge that it was unusual for him to be counting blessings.

Then a nagging, familiar desire made him frown. The furrowing of his brow caused tiny flakes of dried blood to crack and peel from the cut on his forehead. Without bothering to sit up he fumbled in his jacket; a worn black fleece he had found blowing around a street in Rathcoole, and pulled out a little boxlike can with an elongated plastic nozzle. It made a hollow clunking sound in his filthy grip.

“Howya,” he whispered to it. He brought the needle-like nozzle to his mouth, being careful to avoid the ring of infected sores that were once his lips, and squirted the last of its contents against his blistered tongue. The harsh solvent constricted his chest and made him gag and choke noisily. He froze and stifled his coughing to prevent the ecclesiastical corpse, wherever it was, from overhearing. Ray rolled into a foetal position, scrunched up his craggy features, and hunched his narrow shoulders to keep in the pain. He tried not to whine as the lighter fuel washed into his empty, ulcerated stomach.

He waited nervously until his system settled before thoughtlessly discarding the can with a dismissive flick of his wrist. It landed soundlessly in the deeper shadows of the bushes. No Litter Wardens around these days’ boys, he thought with mild regret.

With his immediate craving dealt with he turned his head to survey his surroundings. To his amazement he found himself looking straight up into the green eyes of an emaciated domestic cat – a crouching long haired tabby – which was regarding him curiously from the edge of the windswept meadow, its feline shape framed against the colourful, pre-sunset sky. The cat was as skinny and undernourished in cat terms as Ray was in human.

Rays heart skipped an excited beat at the sight of this living beast and a wonderful, unexpected delight blossomed in his chest.

“Hello, kitty,” he wheezed; the first words he’d spoken directly to a living thing in sixteen months. There wasn’t anyone left to talk to and besides, even human detritus like Ray knew that speech in a silent world only drew the wrong kind of attention. Sadly for Ray the few living creatures he had encountered since the Collapse had quickly sized up his ragged, graceless figure moping towards them and mistaken him for a corpse. All of them, human and animal alike, had scarpered accordingly.

Then something bleak and awful came over him, replacing his joy as he returned the cat’s unblinking stare. Ray wanted something else – badly – and as he watched the half starved cat his belly became awash with a strong disagreeable sensation. There was darkness and loss in it.

His breathing grew shallow and his chest tightened; maybe it was the lighter fuel, or maybe not. He hoped it wasn’t his asthma. He felt a strong compulsion to hold this cat in his arms because suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, the loneliness he had grown accustomed to gripped him hard in its desolate jaws. That’s what this horrible feeling is, he realised. Lonely. He needed the consolation of physical contact with a warm creature. He badly needed a hug.

“Come on down here willye Kitty and give us a nice big cuddle,” he whispered hopefully in a low husky voice. “Nice puss. C’mon. All I want is a little hug, willye?”

Without taking his eyes off the alert looking tabby Ray slowly lifted the back of his head from the wet ground.

“Have yeh no pals, pussycat? Have yeh not? Yeh poor oul’ thing. Me neither. C’mon down here and give us an oul’ hug. I’ll be yer pal. C’mon, puss puss. Jaysus, yer just gorgeous.”

As Ray lifted his shoulders from the muck the cat’s attention darted away as a movement in the field caught its eye. Ray froze with fright. What did it see up there? Was it that terrible priest? Had it spied him as he took his heroic dive through the bushes and followed him down? Had it seen the cat, perhaps? Was it stumbling towards him at this very instant?

The cat looked back down at Ray, seemingly unfazed by whatever it had seen, so Ray relaxed. Well, if the cat wasn’t troubled why should he be?

“Please god,” he nevertheless implored quietly. “Don’t let your dead priest find me, and please god let this cat allow me to pet it wouldye? Please? Please?”

Normally, because of his own personal history, Ray considered the concept of prayer a joke; it was just an old ingrained habit to invoke it. He had grown up in a religious household and had gone to mass every Sunday with his parents, brothers and sisters. After things started to go bad for him as a teenager he prayed fervently to god to look out for him and make life easier – not just for himself – but for his mother too, whom he knew suffered the most because of his shortcomings.

It wasn’t long before he noticed that the harder he prayed for something the worse things got. And when things got worse, the harder he prayed. If he asked god to get him out of a hole he always fell deeper into it. If he asked god to get him out of the frying pan he ended up in the fire, whereas if he asked god for more heroin well, god normally came through with the goods on that one. Where’s the sense in that, he thought. It was terribly frustrating.

“Prayer?” he had screamed at his mother one troubled teenage night after she told him she always said a little prayer each day to keep him out of trouble. When she stated that yes; the power of prayer would help him, Ray exploded.

“The power of Prayer? The power of my shite!” He had yelled as he slammed the front door after him. So, as far as prayer was concerned, Ray felt that he’d probably be better off just using his non-existent charm to seduce this hairy, cuddly tabby.

Still terrified to make any sudden movements in case he frightened this precious living thing away, Ray inched his hand slowly back to his jacket pocket. With shaking fingers he removed a small piece of dried sardine he had found earlier in a discarded can and he held out the miserable, mummified fish to the mange ridden cat as if it were a holy offering.

“Here, puss puss. I have something for you. You’ll like this. Willya join me for supper, little pussycat, hmm?” he wheezed. “I don’t suppose you’ve any booze? I just drank me last little drop. You won’t run away, willya! Please don’t…I can find more fish for yeh if yeh like…” He tittered nervously. His desire for physical contact was fast overcoming his fear of any nearby dead possibly overhearing his hoarse whispers.

“Come on down here puss-puss, where I’ll keep yeh safe from our Dear Departed. Come on down to me, me darlin’. Wouldn’t yeh like to join me for a hug? I’ll give yeh a good tickle behind the ears an’ all. All cats love that, don’int yis?”

The tabby looked down haughtily but its eyes followed his hand as he waved the dried fish around.

“Come on pussycat,” beseeched Ray in a whisper, “come on me darlin’, take the bleedin’ bait, willye?”

The scent of the fish had indeed aroused the cats’ interest. It craned its neck forward as if testing the air, but it obviously didn’t trust the human. Ray shuffled carefully and clumsily into a kneeling position. Pools of moisture formed round the points of his bony knees as they pressed into the ditches sodden bed. The cat tensed and Ray stopped in fear of it leaving. Dead wet leaves clung unfelt to the back of his head. Tiny little lights sparked and drifted across his field of vision before blinking out. He was in such poor physical shape he thought he was about to faint from the effort of kneeling up. The world turned white for a moment and wavered in and out of focus.

“Puss-puss,” he gasped, keeping his flow of patter moving until the dizzy spell passed. “Please don’t go.” He scrunched his eyes shut and waited. “What’s new, pussycat?” He knew he was babbling, but this was nothing new. He had babbled all through the relentless awfulness of his…well, we’ve already skirted briefly through his past already, haven’t we?

The cat blinked lazily as if bored with the situation, although it recognised Rays offering as an easier option to hunting for its supper – but how could it get to the food without having to touch this reeking human? It doesn’t smell like the dangerous ones, thought the cat, though it moves slowly, just like them, so it’ll be easy enough to avoid. Still, it really smells bad; as if it carries its own waste around with it instead of burying it.

But the human had food, and the tabby wanted that. Rays knees shook as they settled deeper into the wet soil but he waited until his head cleared properly. A surge of hope swept through him when the crouching cat relaxed and sat down. It even licked absently at a front claw.

Despite his surge in optimism Ray knew the cat wasn’t going to let him near it. He just knew. It wasn’t fair. The cat is just there! Look at it! It’s less than two metres away!

“You’re goin’ to run away, aren’t you puss puss? Yer sittin’ down there as cool as a cucumber but I know yeh are. I don’t want yeh to, but I know yeh will. That’s bad. Here’s me alone all this time with drink as me only friend. An’ there yeh are, yeh big tease, just flauntin’ yerself. I mean yeh no harm horse, but I’m goin’ to hafta give yeh a bit of a fright. Y’see, I’m goin’ to grab yeh as soon as I spot a chance, but maybe after an oul’ hug and a friendly pet we’ll prob’ly be great mates…”

With his mind made up Ray leaned forward veeery slooowly and rested his weight on his free left hand. The cat spotted another tiny movement in the long grass again and its predatory senses were aroused. It looked away from the smelly human and scanned the meadow for possible rodents.

Ray stopped again. Maybe that corpse was in the field and that’s what the cat was tracking. He listened hard but heard nothing. No uneven footfalls, no swishing of decomposed legs through the long grass, no moans.

With his eyes locked on the distracted cat, Ray pulled one foot carefully out from underneath his skin and bone frame. A burst of pins and needles tingled in his foot. Logic dictated that this was probably his best and only opportunity to strike as the cat was looking the other way and he had his feet underneath him. The tabby, thinking Ray a slow mover, was foolishly complacent; its pointed ears flicking left and right as it looked into the middle distance.

“Now!” Ray screamed mentally. “Now! Now!” His heart pounded in his narrow chest as his spindly, ulcerated legs launched his emaciated body up the side of the shallow bank. He was aware of the proximity of the bramble and hazel thorns above his head so he was careful not to sacrifice an eye to them in his leap.

Malnourishment was probably the main reason that the surprised cat reacted a tad too late to save itself. It felt Rays bony hands close tightly round its midriff a millisecond before it could bound away. The momentum of his jump carried Ray only partially into the field. His legs were still in the drain so he had to scramble forward into the meadow using only knees and elbows, the wriggling, screeching cat pulled in tight to his wasted body.

He had done it! He had done it! Ray laughed wildly but it just came out as a gasping bark. He glanced around for the dead priest, just in case, but saw no sign. He must have wandered away in the service of the pope.

The enraged cat shrieked, spat and pummeled away with all four claws, its talons raked Ray’s jacket sleeves and his unprotected belly. It sank its pin like fangs deeply and repeatedly into his unprotected hands, fighting him ferociously with a horrifying strength.

“Ouch, pussycat! Stop! Jaysus! It’s all right! I’m not goin’ to bleedin hurtya, willye take it easy for Jaysus sake? Take it easy,” he grunted desperately. “I’m not goin’ to hurtya; just give us an oul’ cuddle! I just want to pet yeh.” Rays triumph became terror as the cat fought fiercely but he wasn’t going to release it. Not after so much time alone.

“For fecks sake puss puss, c’mon, I don’t want to hurt yeh, I said! Willye take it easy just, willye?”

It was meant to get tired and slow down and eventually succumb to the delights of Ray’s deft fingers as he tickled it. Then it would rub itself against his legs and become his bosom buddy for life. Ray and his Cat. The Adventures of Ray and his Cat! But its struggles continued.

Rays hands were getting badly ripped but his adrenaline levels prevented him from feeling any immediate pain. When they were about twenty seconds into what the cat considered a life and death fight, a desperate and uncharacteristic plan came to Ray: if he could just make it a bit more manageable…a bit quieter, then they could have an oul’ hug and they’d both be the better of it. Confidant that he had the animal securely contained, yet unaware of the damage its scrabbling claws was doing to his belly, he cautiously withdrew one shredded hand and, face pressed into the fragrant earth for traction, reached into his pocket for a small rusty penknife.

“Please cat,” he gasped. “Stop fightin’ willye? I don’t want to hurtye. Willye please just bleedin stop? Oh god,” he prayed, “please make it calm down, please?”

He manoeuvred himself carefully with elbows and knees until his knife hand was under his body with the lunatic cat, and after several more moments of careful positioning he was ready.

“Last chance to stop yer feckin messin’” he pleaded. He insisted that the tabby listen to him but the cat just wasn’t interested in reason. With a tinge of alarm Ray could feel his asthma beginning to tighten his airways.

“I’m warnin’ yeh! Stop your bleedin wailin’ or I’ll use this knife! I will! I’m bleedin tellin’ yeh!”

He held the trapped animal solidly with his shredded left hand, feeling the drumming of its heart beneath its soft fur. As it refused to surrender quietly he began to do his necessary work. He shut his eyes, leaned his weight forward and drove the little blade meekly, without much resolve – almost lovingly – against the struggling animal’s body, but the blunt tip of the useless knife failed to puncture the flailing tabbies’ pelt.

It recognised the new danger and screamed afresh at this outrage. Its new wailings were louder and more attention seeking so an alarmed Ray punched the blade in a little harder. With a terrible dismay he felt the knife shallowly pierce the feline’s body.

“Ah Jaysus, ah no, ah Jaysus…” he gasped in shock.

This wasn’t the way he wanted things to turn out. He had hurt it. He really had. This wasn’t going the way he wanted at all. In his misery he loosened his hold. The cat squealed and wriggled slightly from the mans ragged grip. Weeping, Ray withdrew the blade but as he did so the cat slipped from his blood slimed hand and broke free in a lashing flurry of fur and limbs. With a terrible croak of loss Ray struck out blindly with the knife and by sheer dreadful chance he struck the animal through a hind leg.

“Ahhhh!” he cried in shock. “Aw, no! Aw, Jaysus!”

The cat flipped head over heels from the force of the blow but it regained its footing and fled limping and rolling into the long grass, leaving the malodorous and bloodied man weeping as he staggered to his feet. The meadow grass swallowed the wounded animal but Ray could see the tussocks twitching and waving in its wake.

His airways were tightening faster. Mindless now of any undead danger and slowly beginning to suffocate from his exertions he stumbled after it. Tears and snot streamed down his face and blood flew unnoticed from his mauled hands. Despite his constricted breathing he soon overtook the injured cat and blocked its path. It dodged left and tried to double back but Ray swung out hard with his right foot and he felt little ribs shift and click beneath the cats clotted pelt as his toes connected. The solidity of the skinny cats mass surprised him and he felt a jolt of pain shoot through his foot. The momentum of the kick threw Ray off balance and he fell heavily into a patch of stinging nettles, his hands, despite the knife, scrabbling at his clogged throat.

His kick had launched the cat skyward where it was silhouetted briefly against the blazing eye of the setting sun, momentarily blinding an appalled Ray. He hadn’t meant to kick it so hard. He hadn’t meant to kick it at all; again it was just reflex. The cat twisted in flight, its claws outstretched for balance, tail waving, and it landed with a soft thump and rolled.

“Oh puss,” choked Ray in distress as he lay on his back, unable to continue, tears streaking his filthy face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Come back, come back! I won’t hurt yeh again!” No sounds came with his words. His airways had closed. He felt his eyes expanding and bloating in their sockets as his bladder and bowels loosened, warming his jeans. He knew from experience that this would be a nasty attack. One of his mangled hands fumbled successfully for his nebuliser, the only personal item he’d never discarded and he was lucky, there was at least one out-of-date spritz left. He soon felt the aerosol begin to do its work.

As soon as he felt able he dragged himself into a sitting position and looked in the direction the tabby had gone. To his amazement he found it hadn’t moved from where it landed, but it was watching him.

When Ray went down the cat took the opportunity to rest its broken body. But now the human was up again. The tabby turned painfully for the ditch; its knifed leg trailing. Ray soon closed the distance between them and caught it by the tail. It shrieked and twisted in his grip. He lifted it to eye level and it swiped its three good claws across his face.

Without thinking Ray punched the little knife hard into the suspended body. The luckless animal seized up, sensing serious damage. Ray withdrew the blade and thrust it in again. The tabby slowly arched its back, opened its mouth and uttered a low mewling sound. It stared at the multicoloured sunset sky with wild emerald eyes. Ray looked at it for a moment and laid it gently on the ground.

But the cat wasn’t quite finished. It struggled awkwardly away; half walking, half crawling through the waving grass towards the hedgerow, the rusty blade embedded in its ribcage. It made it to the lip of the drain before collapsing.

Rays knees buckled beneath him and he slumped to the ground, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to suck air through his traitorous windpipe. He raised his hands and for the first time he gazed in bewilderment at the cat-ripped strips of flesh that hung like ribbons from his wrist to his knuckles; glaring white bones visible through the gashes. He brought them closer to his astonished face and stared in fascination as his blood ran down the insides of his tattered sleeves. He could actually see it flow. It was then that he noticed that his grubby shirt and fish white belly was as shredded and bloody as his hands.

Huh?

He dropped his arms and looked up at the clouds as if the answer to his unspoken question was mysteriously written there, his features bathed in garish light.

Wha’?

His feeble intellect struggled and failed to make sense of the last few minutes. He attempted to stand but couldn’t. He looked over at the cat as it lay in the shadows of the brambles and hazel, staring warily at him, the light in its eyes fading. Ray crawled the distance on all fours and the tabby emitted a low keening threat that chilled him, its ears pressed flat across its head as it hissed.

“Please, pussycat.” Ray begged. He stared aghast at the dying creature; still not understanding what had happened, or what he could do about it now. He had hurt it.

Had he hurt it? He knew he had, but only so it wouldn’t leave him; that was all! So he could give it cuddles and hugs. And love! But now it was in awful pain. It was going to die. The prospect broke his fragile heart. What had he done?

“Oh, kitty. I shoulda prayed for you to run away. Knowin’ my luck with prayer you might of let me pet yeh instead.”

He watched its pale yellow fur rise and fall. Its pink tongue protruded as it panted like a sweating dog. Blood glistened on its belly. A powerful sympathy rose in Ray’s chest as he knelt beside it.

“Oh, kitty! Oh, kitty!” he mouthed. He was still having serious trouble breathing. “Oh, my darling. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll be good. I won’t hurt you again. I promise. There now pussycat. Shush now, shush. It’ll be ok. It will. I’ll make it ok.”

He gently lifted it with his mutilated hands. Its broken and dislocated bones moved unnaturally beneath its fur. It lay limp and motionless as he cradled it lovingly, stroking it. A huge emotional burden was lifted from him at its touch and he felt blessed relief suffuse his system. His breathing improved. His prayers had finally been answered. He had a living friend at last.

“I’ll look after yeh now, pussy wussy.” He whispered tenderly. “I’ll keep you nice and safe and warm and comfy,”

The cat raised it head and spat. Ray dropped it in shock and watched as it rolled limply into the ditch, right down to the spot where he had lain when he first saw it.

He slid after it into the gloom, protecting his eyes from the thorny bushes with his forearms; the shadows of the hazel branches projected sharply onto his features by the low sun. He sat in the mulch beside the cats’ prone body and picked it up again, adoring it in his arms. As he lifted his face to the sky in an effort to pull more air into his lungs it voided on him. He felt as if he were breathing through a tiny hole in a thick plastic bag, although the touch of the tabby made him feel a lightness he couldn’t describe. It was better than Smack.

“There now, puss puss, there now. I’m sorry. Its all right, there’s no problem. Yiz’ll be all right now. It’s all ok.”

Ray had prayed that the cat would stay with him and look…it was in his arms. He had asked for his loneliness to be taken away and look…it was gone. Maybe prayer was the answer.

He sat in the wet leaves and luxuriated in the dying cats company. He whispered and sang silently to it. The cat was his darling, his love, his soul mate. He wet it with tears and slobber as he kissed and caressed it through its final miserable breaths. He soothed it under the thorny bushes, blessing and cursing it in equal measure until it expired dismally twenty five minutes later.

At the end of twilight, just before full dark, Ray had regained enough of his breath to climb up into the meadow again, the cooling cat held gently in his ruined, heartbroken arms. His faulty mind was puzzled by its passing and in a sudden rage he threw the broken body to the ground. Frustrated beyond his powers of expression he lifted his head and howled his loss at the first stars peeking out of the darkness. All that really emerged from his abused airways was a hissing croak, but in this silent, post-human world, that was all the noise required for other things to take note of one’s presence. Ray had simply been lucky, as usual, that he hadn’t drawn attention to himself sooner.

He looked down, and in a fit of remorse he knelt painfully and stroked the cats blood caked flank. His mind, twisting again, made him pick it up by the tail. He flung its carcass high over the bushes and out onto the abandoned road, its body stamped briefly against the twilit sky, jet black against dull orange.

He was my best friend ever, mourned Ray. “Oh god, please don’t let me be alone. Why can’t I have a pal? What’s so hard about that? Is that too much to bleedin well ask?” The damage to his hands and lacerated stomach were seriously making their presence felt and although Ray didn’t know it, he was already in shock from serious blood loss.

Sensing movement he glanced to his left and saw a human figure stumbling awkwardly out of the dimness, its arms spread wide. Ray watched this agitated silhouette grow; lurching and tottering its way across the uneven surface of the meadow.

It moaned plaintively as it closed the distance and then, out of nowhere, a chink of light appeared through a tiny gap in Rays despair. An incredible thought had struck him. Maybe there was some power in prayer after all, he thought; at least there has been today. He had prayed that the cat would stay and it did. He had asked for his loneliness to be taken away and it was. What had he just asked for now?

A Pal! That’s what!

With growing hope he stared into the gloom and opened his arms wide to embrace his prayer conjured friend, the crashing loneliness lifting like a weight from his shattered heart. By the time the moaning form had impacted wetly into him, forcing them both backwards, a rare smile had already cracked the infected skin on Rays suppurating lips.

“Howya, pal” Ray gasped as he and his new friend toppled in a cold embrace to the darkness at the bottom of the mulchy ditch.

“You’re the answer to me prayers, you are.”

Steve Blum scowled in pure hate as he heard the cackle of the old woman. How he hated her. He hated her more than he hated the roaming dead. They had an excuse for what they did. They were dead and, if the scientists were to be believed, simply acting on instinct. She, however, did it because she was senile. The hag was a drain on their resources, and Steve had made this very clear many times. Not only did she take up room in the already crowded refuge but also she wasted their supply of food and water. Not to mention the time it took to look after her. As long as she was awake then someone had to be with her at all times.

He said a small prayer of thanks to whoever may be listening that it wasn’t him today. She seemed to be acting up more than usual. Making stupid noises and, no doubt, causing trouble for whoever was unlucky enough to have to keep an eye on her.

Another shriek made him grip the rifle in his hands even tighter and grit his teeth as he walked a few feet down the walkway he stood watch on. He reached the end, opened the door and stuck his head inside the building.

“Who’s looking after the annoying witch of the east today?” he asked the man inside.

He got no response from the person sitting in the wooden chair with his back to him.

Noticing a bit of the wall to the concrete building was loose he pulled off a small chunk and threw it across it room. It missed the man but ricocheted off the table in front of him and hit the radio that was on it.

The man quickly sat upright and looked over to the door. Noticing Steve stood there Jason Price took his headphones off and put them down by the radio he had been listening to.

“What’s up mate?” he asked.

Steve repeated his original question.

“Vicki,” Jason replied, a smug grin on his bearded face.

“For fuck sake,” cursed Steve. “So I get the day off from her but I get to hear about it when the wife get homes. I hate that bitch so much.”

“Vicki?” teased Jason.

“No not Vicki you idiot, the mad hag. She’s half deaf, almost blind and senile so why not just put her out of her misery.”

“Because she’s still a human?” replied Jason.

Steve just snorted and went to leave the room. At the last minute he turned back to Jason.

“Anything on the radio today?”

“Nothing recently. I thought I heard something earlier though. A conversation between two guys about a safe house and flying a helicopter there, but I lost it. Lots of static you see. It may have just been an old recording on repeat. There are still plenty of abandoned military bases and police stations that are transmitting emergency broadcasts”

“Well good luck mate. I would rather listen to static for hours, than that bitch for a minute.”

“I’ll tell Vicki you said that about her.”

Steve walked out of the room giving Jason the middle finger as he did.

Jason smiled and put the headphones back on. He put his feet up on the desk and sat back listening to static as he stared out the window at the sea that stretched out to the horizon.

~~~

Jason and Steve were just two in a group of thirtyish survivors who had come to call the small dockyard on the English east coast their home. It was a perfect place to hold up for the time being. A 10-foot high concrete wall with steel supports and topped with barbed wire ran along three sides of the area, with the North Sea providing the fourth defensive wall. The edge of the port that ran along the sea was a good six-foot from the water at high tide so nothing could climb ashore unseen.

Other than using a boat there was only one-way in and out; a large, solid metal gate that took three men to open when it was unlocked. A walkway ran most of the length of the wall, connected to the only real building on the site, what used to be the office block. The two-story building had been converted into the command centre of the group. Weekly meetings and strategy planning were carried out in the ground floor offices whilst the upper floor was used as a lookout post and radio room.

The survivors had made their living areas out of the many large shipping containers that had been stored in the dockyard. Once a few holes had been cut out to allow in light and some furniture moved in they weren’t too bad. Some people had even moved into containers that had been stacked two high, cutting a hole in the floor of the upper create and the roof of the lower crate and using a ladder as a staircase.

It wasn’t perfect, and the slightest knock on the create would vibrate around the whole of the inside like ringing a bell, but they were warm, dry and allowed the occupants some privacy and could be locked from both the inside and outside for extra security.

Steve walked along the wall, looking out over the industrial estate beyond the safety of the dock. Most of the warehouses had already been raided for anything useful. Generally it had been fishing supplies; nets, baskets, create to store fish, etc, but there had been a few good finds. A sporting goods warehouse had provided them with lots of hand held weapons, like cricket bats and golf clubs, but also stuff to keep them entertained. Steve had spent many hours just whacking golf balls into the North Sea.

Fishing provided the main source of food. Now that the North Sea was void of fishing vessels the fish had flourished. I was almost impossible to drop a line in the water without getting a bite. It took some of the fun out of it, but Steve still enjoyed a bit of fishing on his days off.

He wished he were doing that right now as the shriek of the old woman brought him back from his day dream.

What was her problem now? Normally she just made the odd noise then shut up for a while, but this time she was continuously shrieking. Suddenly there was another scream, a woman’s voice. Then a gun shot.

Steve ran down the walkway back towards the office building, removing the safety on his rifle as he did. He burst into the radio room and pulled the earphones of Jason.

Jason looked up at Steve, about to chastise him for his actions until he saw the look on his face and the curse died in his throat.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Gunshot. Downstairs.”

“Shit,” said Jason, opening a draw in the desk before him and pulling out a handgun. As he stood he hit the warning siren button.

Originally it was just the tannoy system to alert workers they were needed in the office, but it had since been hooked up to an air horn. Once the main button was pressed it simultaneously turned on the tannoy and pressed the air horn. Once people heard the noise over the loud speakers situated around the dockyard they made their way to the largest container and locked themselves in. A few people would stay on guard duty until the all clear was given.

“Just how loud is that radio that you can’t hear a gunshot?” asked Steve as they cautiously made their way to the staircase.

Jason said nothing as they both slowly edged downstairs. As they reached the bottom they could hear talking coming from the front room that used to be the reception. Opening the door they stepped into the room. The first thing they noticed was the smell, a mix of dead flesh and sewage. A zombie lay on the floor, most of its head missing or splattered on the ground next to it. The old woman was cowered in the corner sobbing, being calmed by one of the other women.

Len Clark stood in the middle of the room trying to calm down the half dozen people who surrounded him. Steve noticed Vicki sat down, her usually bright face now pure white and she cradled her right arm in her lap, her left hand gripping the wrist tightly.

Steve ran over to her, ignoring everyone else.

“Baby, what happened?” he asked.

“Steve, it was an accident,” she replied, looking up with sad eyes.

“What was?”

“Please don’t get mad. I don’t want to remember you being mad.”

Steve stood up to face the group of people milling around the room.

“What…. the fuck…happened?” he growled.

Len walked over and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. He shrugged it of as soon as he felt the touch.

“Would someone please tell me why there is a headless zombie on the floor and why my wife has a bite mark on her wrist?”

“From what we can tell,” started Len, “this one somehow made it into the compound. We have people looking for more now.”

“I don’t give a shit about more of them. How was my wife bitten?”

“He was banging on the door,” answered Vicki. “But at the time we didn’t know who it was outside.”

“We? You mean you and her?” said Steve pointing an accusing finger to the old woman in the corner. She shrieked and backed further into the corner as if Steve’s finger was a gun about to go off.

“She opened the door,” continued Vicki, “and it burst in. I tried to shut the door again which is when I got bit.”

“I was in the other room and came as soon as I heard the commotion. I managed to put it down but not before it got Vicki.” said Len. “So you see Steve it was an accident.”

“In which case so is this,” Steve lifted his rifle up and pointed it at the old woman who was now rocking back and forth, sobbing madly.

The woman comforting her moved so she was in the way of the shot.

“Don’t Steve, please,” she pleaded.

Steve was suddenly aware that several of the others had drawn their weapons as well, and had them pointed at him.

“Put the gun down Steve,” said Len calmly. “Don’t make us shoot you.”

“You would kill me to protect her?”

“No one has to die. Just put the gun down and lets talk.”

“She is a drain on our resources. She wastes man-hours looking after her. And now she gets my wife killed. She deserves to be put out of her, and our, misery.”

“It was an accident Steve. Please put the gun down.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if it was your wife who had been bitten Len.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But that isn’t the point right now. Put the gun down or I will put you down.”

“Fuck you Len”

Len sighed, shaking his head.

“Damn you for making me do this Steve.”

Len lifted his gun pointed it right at Steve’s head and flicked off the safety. Steve turned his head slightly to look at Len, which is when Jason hit him round the back of the head with the butt of his gun. Steve dropped to the ground. He heard Jason say sorry before he fell into unconsciousness.

2

Steve slowly came round. He reached up to his head and remembered too late to stop himself from prodding the back of his skull. The pain caused him to almost black out again. He would be having words with Jason at some point.

He felt the warmth of sunlight on his bare arms and slowly opened his eyes so as to let them grow accustomed to the brightness. Once he was able to see, he looked around at his surroundings. He’d been laid out on a pile of blankets in the corner of one of the shipping containers. The only hole that served as a window was high on the back wall, clear plastic sheeting covering it to keep out as much of the wind as possible, and far too small to fit through.

Half way along the container metal bars had been welded to the top and bottom to create a cage that he now found himself in. On the other side of bars Len sat on a white plastic patio chair.

“Morning.” he said.

“Got any aspirin?” replied Steve. “I’ve got a killer headache.”

“Some on the table.” Len said, gesturing to the corner of the cell with a nod of his head.

Steve cautiously got to his feet, the pounding of his skull a constant reminder of his situation. In the corner of the cell was a simple wooden table. On it sat a plastic cup of water, half a bottle of pills, a candle in a holder and some matches.

He removed the top of the pill bottle, tipped three into his hand and threw them down his throat. Without touching the water he swallowed and went back to the pile of blankets. He sat down, his back leaning against the back wall and looked at Len.

“Not thirsty?” asked Len.

“No telling what’s in the cup.” replied Steve.

“Damn it Steve, no one wants to poison you.”

“Maybe not, but maybe you just want to keep me sedated.”

“In which case why take the pills?”

“I’ve got a headache,” said Steve, smiling for the first time.

“What am I to do with you?” asked Len, smiling himself.

He stood up from the chair and paced back and forth along the bars. After a few minutes he stopped and turned back to look at Steve, who hadn’t moved the whole time.

“If I let you out of here, what will you do?”

“Kill her,” replied Steve, without a seconds pause.

The smile left Len’s face.

“Fuck sake Steve, leave it. It was a disaster what happened, but it was accidental. You must know that.”

“She was allowed to wander around. She should have been confined to a container, like this one. Nice job by the way. How long did it take to get this ready?”

“Couple of hours,” replied Len. “Once me made sure you were going to be ok we put you in here and welded these bars in place. Only way out is for us to cut you out”

To prove his point Len grabbed the bars and tried to shake them. They didn’t move an inch

“But that’s not what we are here to discuss. Look Steve, we’ve taken your views on board. You have a right to say how she is dealt with. She has now been confined to a container. We’ll let her out for a few hours every day to get some air and stretch her legs but other than that she’ll be a prisoner. It’s the best I can do, because I am not willing to end her life.”

“Then let me. It’s my damn right Len and you know it!” shouted Steve.

“You’re getting upset and that’ll get us nowhere,” replied Len. “Look I’m going to give you some time to cool off again.

He walked over the end of the container and pushed the door open. As the light came in Steve saw the roofs of the warehouses outside their compound and knew they must be high up.

“Three containers high Steve,” said Len, as if reading his thoughts. “Even if you do get through the bars you’ll not be able to get down with out a ladder, which by the way I will be taking with me once I get down.”

“So I’m just expected to live out the rest of days in here?”

“Just until you calm down and see reason. She’s no longer a threat or a burden to anyone. Instead of someone watching her 24 hours it’ll just be a couple whilst we let her out for a bit each day. I’ll be back later with some food and something to read. We’ll talk again then.”

Len started climbing down the ladder.

“What about Vicki?” shouted Steve.

Len stopped, the top of his head just visible above the edge of the container.

“About four hours ago,” replied Len, sadly. “She came to say goodbye, but you were still out. Again, I’m sorry Steve.”

“So am I Len,” Said Steve as the container door closed. “So am I”

3

Steve spent the next couple of weeks contemplating his situation. He rarely spoke to anyone, declining any visitors and just mumbling a few words of thanks to those who brought him food and items to pass the time.

He spent hours thinking back to the times he and Vicki had spent together. The fun they had together with his children and his parents before the outbreak, then trying to survive on the run with his family. The pure devastating feeling of failure when he’d lost his children and praying he’d never have to feel that way again. The joy at finding safety with other people, and the security it offered with new friends.

He cried for days at the loss of Vicki, but came to terms with it quicker than he would have liked.

But what made it worse was every time he tried to find it in his power to forgive the old woman the rage built in him. Len had given him a pair of boxing gloves after finding him pounding his blooded fists into the side of the container. He wanted him to work the anger out in any from he could, but didn’t want him to hurt himself in the process.

It was the start of the third week when he finally started talking again

~~~

It was Doug’s turn to bring food to Steve. Everyone was surprised Doug had survived this long. He was a skinny kid, only 24 and completely bald. He had a slight limp and was a bit on the slow side when it came to thinking. From a distance he looked like one of the walking dead. The group often joked he should paint his head a different colour so they would recognise him and not accidental shoot him.

He awkwardly passed the tray of food through a gap bars to Steve who walked over and picked it up.

“Thanks Doug.”

“No worries Steve. See you later.”

“Wait a minute. You got some time?”

“Err, sure. What’s up?” Doug sat down on the patio chair removing the rifle he had slung over shoulder and resting it across his across his lap.

“Nothing really. How is everyone?” asked Steve.

“Good, I think. They don’t talk much to me really, but everyone seems fine.”

Steve carried the tray over to table and placed it on the top. He picked up the fork and then froze. Tilting his head he walked over to the makeshift window and looked out.

“Not hungry?” asked Doug.

“Thought I heard something,” he replied.

“I hear things as well,” said Doug, a simple smile across his face, glad to be in a conversation.

“Shhh!” hiss Steve.

As he listened he heard it again. It could have been a gull, but Steve was sure it was a human scream, and this time it was louder. A couple of seconds went by with nothing happening, then Steve saw a girl come running out from behind a container. She stumbled and fell, looking back over her shoulder whilst crawling hurriedly across the floor. Seconds later a zombie lurched out from behind the same container, arms reaching for the girl, mouth moving silently.

“Shit!” said Steve. “That’s Valerie’s daughter.”

He turned to Doug who was still sat on the chair, a smile on his face.

“Doug, quick give me your rifle and go tell Len with have a Z in the compound.”

Doug’s face screwed up in concentration.

“I shouldn’t give you my gun. Len would be unhappy with me.”

“Do you think he would be happy if Samantha is killed by a zombie?” asked Steve.

Doug bit his bottom lip as he thought over the question. Steve turned back to look out the window. The young girl now had her back to a container, the zombie advancing slowly. Her shoulders bobbed up and down quickly and Steve knew she was out of breath and probably unable to move anymore.

“I shouldn’t leave you alone with the gun either,” said Doug.

Steve turned back to him. Trying to hold his anger back. Getting frustrated wouldn’t so any good now.

“Ok. Stay and keep an eye on me, but give me your gun or else someone is going to die.”

“Do you promise to give it back after, and not hurt anyone?”

“Yes I do. Now give it to me.”

“Cross your heart?”

“DOUG!” shouted Steve, regretting it straight away. If he upset Doug now he could have just sentenced Valerie’s daughter to death. He thought his fears would come true as Doug stood up and started to turn away. Instead he moved back towards the bars and passed the end of his rifle to Steve.

Grabbing the rifle he spun it round as he hurried back to the window. The angle wasn’t great, and he hadn’t fired a weapon in a while, but he knew he was good enough to make the shot.

Breathing slowly he aimed down the barrel and fired a shot. The bullet missed the zombie by a couple of feet and bounced off the ground, causing Samantha to let out a yelp of panic.

Wind must be blowing more than I know, he thought, as he compensated for it. His second shot hit the zombie in the shoulder. It staggered slightly but continued to make its way towards the promise of an easy meal.

“Shit,” muttered Steve. If he missed this shot then he knew it would be all over for Samantha.

Once again he aimed down the barrel, and adjusted for the wind. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out before squeezing the trigger. The zombies head exploded, seconds later its body dropped to the ground, like a puppet with the strings cut.

Samantha let out a scream as the zombie’s hand landed on her foot and shook her leg until it was no longer touching the lifeless limb. She slowly turned her head to look up at Steve, a smile of relief and joy on her young face. Steve smiled back. He heard the sound of people running and calling out to Samantha as he walked back across his cell and handed the rifle though the bars to Doug, who had been waiting patiently.

“Told you you’d get it back and I’d not hurt anyone,” he said.

Doug took the rifle and looped the strap over his shoulder.

“I better go now. Bye Steve.”

“Do me a favour Doug. Tell Len I’m ready to talk.”

4

Steve sipped his coffee, pulling a face at how strong it was. It had been a while since he had drunk coffee and knew it would take a few more cups before he was used to the taste again.

He looked up from the black liquid in his mug and focused on Len, who was sat on the other side of the table to him.

“So you will not go anywhere near her accommodation unless in a dire emergency, is that agreed?”

“Even in dire emergencies I may decide to stay away,” replied Steve, smiling.

“Damn it Steve, will you take this seriously. Unless you want to spend another week in that cage I have to make sure you’re not a threat to anyone on site.”

“Look Len, I will stay away from her as long as you can promise me I won’t see or hear her around me.”

“That’s fine. You won’t even know she’s here.”

“Then we’re good,” said Steve.

Seeing another zombie attack in the apparently secure area had forced Steve to make the decision that there were more lives at stake here than he was willing to risk. With his incarceration it meant there were less people out there protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. So he had agreed to follow Lens rules if he were to be released. He would stay away from the old hag at all times, and promise to do her no harm. In return he would be given areas of patrol that were no where near her, and she would be confined to her living quarters 23 hours of the day, only allowed out an hour for a walk, and whatever toilet breaks she may need. During those times Steve would be informed before hand and be moved as far away as possible. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but it was the best they could do at the moment.

Steve was glad to be out of his cell and free to move around. He was desperate to find out how two undead had been able to get inside the compound.

They hadn’t come through the main gate that was for sure. He had been guarding it on the first attack and he knew that someone else would have been there during the second. Plus the zombie had come from the port side. There was no way it could have made it that far across the compound without being seen if it had come in the front way.

“So what are you thoughts so far?” asked Len, noticing Steve had been sat in silence for the past few minutes.

Steve explained about his theory of the zombies coming in by the port side.

“Well that makes the most sense but I’ve had guys on patrol around the waters edge since the first attack. The tide hasn’t been high enough for something to climb up, and there haven’t been any waves strong enough to wash a floating corpse over the edge.”

“They’re getting in somehow Len, and we need to find out soon or else we could be over run before we know it. I’m going to patrol the grounds tomorrow and see what I can look up, but now I really need to get some proper sleep. That cage just wasn’t comfy.”

Steve got up and finished the last of his coffee. The now cold liquid made him pull a face again. He nodded to Len as he made his way out of the meeting room into the night air and across the yard towards the container that he called home. The home he used to share with Vicki. The memory brought with it pain and his eyes started to water. Maybe it was time to move. There were plenty of families who could use a bigger container, as he only needed a single now.

He didn’t notice someone walking up behind him until it was almost too late. If it weren’t for the awful smell he would have been dead before he knew it. As it was the smell brought him back to reality.

“Good lord, what the hell is that?” he wondered aloud.

As if answering the question the zombie that had moving up behind him let out a groan. Steve spun around and narrowly avoided its grasping hands by a hairs breadth.  He backed away, cursing the fact that he didn’t have a weapon on him. He should have asked Len for one as soon as he had been released. Too late for that now though, he had to work out what to do. One on one with a zombie shouldn’t be too much bother, but he was weapon-less. He could out manoeuvre the thing easily, but that would only do him so good. He needed to find a weapon or someone with one.

It seemed luck was on his side. As he backed away he saw a torchlight sweeping back and forth. Just at the edge of his night vision he could make out a black shape of a man walking behind the zombie, completely oblivious to what was going on just meters away.

“A little help here.” he shouted.

The figure looked around and his torch illuminated Steve and the zombie. For the first time Steve got a good look at his attacker. It was a regular zombie in most aspects with the typical sunken eyes, greying skin and rotten teeth. The few distinguishing features he did notice were the sailors clothing it wore, the fact that it was dripping wet and stank of shit.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed the figure with the torch. He charged at the zombie and shoulder barged it out of the way of Steve, who also fell over backwards in his attempt to get out of the way. The creature stumbled sideways, hit the side of a container and fell to the floor.

Steve heard muttered curses coming from inside the container; the zombie’s collision had obviously woken up whoever lived there. Steve watched as his rescuer, who he now recognised as Paul, pull out his gun and put a single shot through the zombie’s head. The zombie twitched for a second before laying still. Paul waited a few seconds, the gun still aimed at the zombie’s head. He holstered his weapon once he was sure that he had delivered a killing shot.

“You alright mate?” asked Paul, offering his hand to Steve and pulling him to his feet. “I just came back from the toilet so you’re lucky I was patrolling this area, otherwise I would have been on the other side of the compound.”

“Actually I’m fine.” replied Steve. “I think I may have just solved the zombie mystery thanks to sailor Jim here.”

“If you think it comes from the sea just because of its clothing you’ll have a hard time proving it. We’ve had guys on sea watch since the first attack.”

“But I think I may have discovered another clue, something to check out in the morning. Night Paul.”

“Night mate.”

Paul walked off as he carried on his nighttime patrol. Steve smiled to himself. If he was right he may have just saved the community further zombie attacks, and also have a way to settle accounts with the person he hated the most.

5

“What do you see?” Steve asked Len.

They were stood on the deck of the small fishing vessel that was used for gathering fish, patrolling the waters and, if ever needed, escape from the compound.

Len looked out towards the compound, taking in everything as the small boat bobbed up and down and the gentle sea.

“Our compound, which consists of several containers and an office building, the dock side where this ship is normally moored up and an impenetrable wall surrounding the whole thing.” said Len eventually.

“A bit too literal, but a goods start.” replied Steve.

“Well just tell me then.”

“Look below the compound.” said Steve, ignoring Len.

“I see a solid wall which is around eight foot from sea level to the top.”

“And?” pressed Steve.

Len looked again; he was slowly getting frustrated with the game of eye spy.

“I don’t know what you want me to see Steve, but I’m obviously missing it so just tell me.”

“The large hole about seven feet down from the top and a foot from sea level.”

“You mean our sewage outlet pipe? What about it?”

“That, my friend, is how the undead are getting in to our compound.”

“Impossible. We’ve been using that old sewer pipe since this thing began and we decided to hold up in the docks. We just built the toilet over an existing water pipe that ran out to sea. That pipe also goes all the way inland as well, and to make sure nothing did walk down the pipe we barred it up just before it reached our entrance.”

“That’s what I think is causing the problem.” replied Steve.

“How so?”

“Well normally any debris which was swept up into the pipe would be flushed all the way through. Since you put up the bars in the tunnel you created a net of sorts. Anything washed in gets caught on them and stays there. Now we know the pipe goes underwater at high tide, so I’m guessing a zombie floating in the sea gets washed into the tunnel where it stays until the tide goes down. When someone goes to the toilet the zombie tries to get at the food and eventually manages to climb out and goes on a wander.”

“That’s a lot of big coincidences to consider.”

“True, but that’s why we have only had three attacks in almost as many weeks not more. The one that attacked me last night was wearing a Royal Navy sailor’s uniform. I can only guess he fell overboard from a ship or maybe he was at the coast on leave. Plus it smelt of shit, and Paul had just been to the toilet before I was attacked. I bet if you check with Samantha she will say she had either been or was just heading that way as well.”

“So what do you suggest?” asked Len

“Put up another grill at the entrance to the tunnel. In the mean time I’ll keep guard of it. It’ll keep me well away from you know who.”

“Well ok. But I’m still not convinced. I’m not going to go to the trouble of sending men to put up a grill that may not be needed. It’ll be a waste of manpower and resources. You can stay on guard and if you can prove your theory then we’ll see about the grill.”

Steve smiled to himself as he walked back to the controls of the boat and started to steer them back to dry land. Len had reacted just as he hoped he would. His plan was slowly coming to it conclusion.

6

It took several weeks until Steve could complete his plan. He had been on guard every night for almost two weeks outside the toilet with no sign of any zombies. He was beginning to think that maybe his theory was just that, and the zombies were in fact finding another way in. Then one night he heard the almost unperceivable sound of moaning. He entered the toilet, opened the lid of the bowl and looked down the hole. Staring back at him was a pair of dead eyes.

The zombie began frantically clawing at the air above him, despite being a few inches short of actually grasping anything that it could use to pull itself up. The zombie’s feet were covered in seawater, but the walls around the sides were not yet wet. So the tide was obviously still on its way in. It wouldn’t be long until the zombie would be floating enough to grasp the ledge and pull itself up.

Steve hurried out of the toilet, leaving the lid up. If anyone tried to go before he had managed to complete his plan they would be able to see the zombie and avoid any disasters. His main job was to silence the alarm but he needed to hit the tool shed first.

~~~

Jason removed his headset as soon as Steve walked in radio room. Normally he would be watching the sea for signs of ships, or just daydreaming, but as it was still dark outside he was content to drift off in his own imagination whilst watching the door.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” asked Steve.

“Only when there’s something boring on the radio.” replied Jason.

Steve smiled and walked closer to Jason.

“So aren’t you supposed to be on toilet guarding duty? Looking for the zombie from the black latrine.”

I found something.” replied Steve. “I need to speak to Len, is he around?”

“Still in bed I would guess. Like most people. I think it’s just me you and two other guys on guard duty tonight.”

“That makes things much easier.” said Steve, still smiling.

He suddenly pulled his gun on Jason, the barrel resting no more than a few centimetres from his forehead.

“What’s up buddy?” asked Jason, going crossed eyed whilst trying to stare at the end of the gun.

“I don’t want to hurt you mate, just get of the chair and slowly move away from the radio.”

Jason did as he was told. A part of him was thinking it was all a joke, and any minute the other guys would all jump out and yell surprise.

Steve stayed in the same spot, just turning his body to keep the gun pointed at Jason. When Jason was by the far wall Steve told him to stop. He fished in his pockets and pulled out a pair of handcuffs and tossed them over to Jason.

“Put these on and handcuff yourself to the radiator please.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I am.”

Jason did as he told, fastening one of the cuffs over his left wrist and the other around the old metal radiator that was secured to the wall. He tugged his wrist a few times to prove he wasn’t going to be able to move anywhere.

Steve nodded to confirm he was satisfied. He walked to the door and stopped just before he left the room.

“Tell Len I’m sorry I betrayed his trust and let him know he won’t ever see me again.”

Steve walked out the room, but came back in a few seconds later carrying a small bag. He slid it across the room so it was in easy reach of Jason.

“There’s a hacksaw and a pistol in there.” he told him. “If you start on the cuffs now you should be free in about 20 minutes, and the gun can be used in case something goes wrong. But don’t try to shoot the cuffs off like in the movies, you’ll only hurt yourself.”

Steve left again and Jason reached for the bag. True to his word Steve had put the hacksaw and gun in the bag, along with two spare hacksaw blades and an extra magazine for the pistol. There was also a chocolate bar and bottle of water.

“Damn it Steve.” Jason said to himself as he pulled out the hacksaw and started on the handcuffs. “Just what are you planning?”

Steve moved as quickly as he could from container to container. He checked each one had someone inside before locking them, making sure the handles to the containers were in the closed position and inserting a metal peg into the hole that would normally accommodate a padlock. He found the two men on guard duty one at a time and, at gun point, escorted them into a container before locking it as well.

Finally when he was sure that everyone in the compound was locked up safely he went back to the toilet. The moaning was still audible as he carefully opened the door. He couldn’t have timed it better, as soon as he opened the toilet door he saw the soaking wet zombie dragging itself out of the hole to the sewer pipe.

Its dead eyes locked onto Steve and it started making more of an effort to pull itself free, moaning louder now it saw a potential meal.

Steve slowly backed away, keeping the door open the whole time to make sure the zombie didn’t loose interest in him. With one final pull the zombie freed itself from the hole and fell forward towards Steve, landing a few feet from him in the doorway. Steve slowly started walking away, checking behind him to make sure the zombie was following him.

The creature at first started to crawl after Steve until it managed to pick itself up and slowly stumbled after Steve, arms raised in typical zombie fashion.

Steve walked off leading the zombie to his final destination, the only container he hadn’t locked. As soon as he saw the container ahead of him he checked behind him one last time to make sure he was still being followed and quicken his pace.

When he reached the container the zombie was still about 30 feet away from him. He pulled open the containers door hiding behind it as he did so. This was now the biggest gamble of his plan. Hopefully the zombie would walk into the container instead of following him.

Not wanting to wait around in case the it case it decided he was the tastier option, Steve made his way past the container and started walking towards the docks.

As he reached the end of the container he heard a voice shouting to him.

“Help me. Rotting thing. Rotting thing.”

Steve glanced to his side and saw the old woman at one a window that had been cut into the back wall of the container. Bars had been welded into the gap to prevent anyone getting out. She held the bars tightly, knuckles white, her face pushed out as far out as she was able to.

“You, help.” she called to Steve.

He just carried on walking.

“You deserve this you hag.” he muttered to himself as he made his way towards the waters edge, pulling the boat keys out of his pocket.

“Please Steve, don’t do this. I love you.”

In a rare moment of clarity the old woman had suddenly regained her senses. Maybe it was the knowledge of imminent death that had allowed her to fully understand what was about to happen.

“STEVE. STEVE!”

As Steve walked away he tried to block out the shouts. They slowly turned from coherent words to just random noises. Either her sanity had retreated back into her brain in order to block out what was going on, or she had given up trying to appeal to him and was now attempting to rouse help from another source.

Eventually the noises turned into screams.

Steve climbed into the boat and took one last look at the place he had called home for the better part of a year. He had lost so much here it no longer held anything for him.

“Goodbye Len, Jason and everyone else.” he said to the air.

Turning the key the boat sputtered into life.

“Goodbye Vicki. I’ll always love you.”

He manoeuvred the boat away from the dock and turned it to face the open sea.

Just before he throttled the engine he thought he heard one last high pitch scream coming from the compound. He gritted his jaw, and put the boat in to gear as he headed off, saying one last goodbye.

“Goodbye mother.”

“Yes, but isn’t it true you had access to this virus at Cornwallis?” one of them shouted, faceless in the crowd, “That you were mutating it for this exact purpose?”

“What purpose?” the scientist snapped, looking pale and sick and in the glaring light it was impossible to tell whether he was breathing. “Infecting half a million people? On our side of the globe, no less? Sir, we are not bogeymen waiting to steal your children in the night. I can assure you our dealings were of purely scientific intent.”

Another reporter filled the gap without pause, clambering ratlike over the anxious crowd in front of her.

“Large corporations leach hundreds of tons of toxic waste into the waterways every year. Is it possible then that Cornwallis leaked it into the water supply?”

For a moment, the scientist glanced off screen, to stage left where someone’s lawyer was waiting with an expressive face and battered cell phone. Whatever direction the lawyer gave left the scientist’s face curdling like cream as he turned to face the crowd again.

“That is, quite frankly, a load of inflammatory hippy bullshit. Cornwallis is the most secure research and testing facility in the world. There is simply no possible way we leaked this virus into the water supply. Even if we wanted to—even if global suicide was our idea of a party—the vials that contain the samples neutralize all contents should they ever leave the building. And trust me, there are too many protocols in place for that to ever, ever happen. Even,” he said, glaring at a particular member of the press, “through a drain.”

Someone coughed, sick and wet with a squelch like rotting flesh on pavement and a panic broke out in the rear of the crowd. They churned away, moving as a single, wavelike mass towards the podium, away from a hunched figure in the shadow of the door, wiping something from the corner of its mouth. A rifle fired twice in rapid succession and the body was carried off by hazmat before it ever hit the floor.

The scientist looked startled. He glanced at his lawyer again and back to the crowd before removing his glasses, cleaning them methodically on the hem of his long since un-tucked shirt.

“This virus is similar to ours in basic appearance, I’ll warrant you,” he said, and there was quiet resignation in his voice. “But ours can be timed. The sickness progresses at regular intervals and can only be contracted by direct contact with the virus. But this—it seems any sort of contact with the carriers is enough. We suspect…”

He paused, returned his glasses to his face and stared out at the crowd, eyes empty.

“We suspect the virus is opportunistic and while aided by a direct path to the bloodstream, will ultimately find a host regardless.”

Someone in the seething mass of bodies laughed, high and cruel.

“You want us to believe this isn’t just some corporate game of chicken, professor?” he snarled, hyena-like and stifling giggles, wrenching a reporter’s microphone as close to his mouth as he could manage. “I can’t help but notice it seems that uh… Cornwallis stands to gain a rather tidy sum from the marketing of a cure.”

For a moment, nothing happened. The scientist only stared into the crowd, mouth fixed and grim. He did not raise his voice when he spoke and though it was barely loud enough for the mechanics to catch, everyone unfailingly heard.

“There isn’t one,” he said, and the sound of hope dying spread like brush fire in the sudden silence. “We cannot splice the virus. There is no cure.”

* * *

Cora sat quietly in the empty space of what used to be her living room, hair matted with blood that was not her own, listening as the commercial jingles between newscasts drowned in the sirens wailing outside. A hollow riot tank, she knew, hunched at the nearby intersection, serrated edges peeled back with impossible strength, torn open for its contents. She could still see the stains on the sidewalk painted on her eyelids, sticky liquid shadow in the streetlights as the sound cannon continued on in stilted, mechanical warning.

“You must dis-perse,” it intoned, its speakers badly damaged. “Imm-ediate police action will en-sue. Ex-treme measures will be tak-en. Re-main at your own risk.”

She leaned back, into the body behind her, feeling the skin cool and slick under her fingertips. After hours of waiting, the bleeding had finally stopped, but she knew it was only because there was nothing left to bleed. Cora closed her eyes, pressed her cheek into the mess and tried to convince herself she could still feel heat as the body rose and fell beneath her ear.

Tried to convince herself, as she lay there, she heard a heartbeat.

In the apartment below her, something careened against the wall and the entire house shook. Someone was crying, someone human, screams battering against the sirens, pleading, desperate…

And then someone wasn’t.

Cora sat up, listened to the single, wet smack barely heard through the stained carpet beneath her and waited. She wondered if they could peel back the floor as easily as they’d torn open the police cruisers. It was only because there’d been a mob of them, of course. Masses of lithe, writhing bodies, clawing at each other, at the steel, peeling it apart and she’d never heard a grown man scream before tonight. Had never seen a child crouched on the street corner, dark and feral, gnawing bones down to dripping marrow.

There was only one of them in the apartment below. Two at most. She was safe. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. But there wasn’t a cure—there wasn’t a cure—and the words kept playing over and over in her head as she listened, feeling sick and cold as something pounded up the rickety wooden stairs outside her door. It gurgled, warbling something like a laugh, something that could have passed for human language half an hour before and slammed a shoulder into the door.

Wood splintered in the door frame and she could see the edge of the deadlock bend towards her, but the furniture blocking the door did not move. One of her great grandfathers had made that armoire, back when war and cholera were the worst they had to look for and one sick, mutated freak was not going to budge five-hundred pounds of oak and metal. It tried again, lunged against the door and ricocheted back, over the railing and into the pile of abandoned trashcans below her door. She heard plastic snap under its weight, heard something hit the larger, metal dumpster and then nothing, only the barest metronome thud of footsteps running down the alley.

There wasn’t a cure.

Cora turned back to the TV, changed the channel with shaking hands to some cartoon, rerunning on an endless loop now with no one to manage the programming. She glanced back at the figure behind her, laced her fingers through a hand stiff with cold and something that wasn’t rigor and tried to talk. It was important to talk to people who were sick. People sat by coma patients all the time at the hospital, telling them dire, desperate things they’d never hear and Cora knew she should try it too—all those people couldn’t be wrong—but her mouth was missing.

She pressed the back of a shaking hand to her face. It was there. Of course it was. Of course. But the words still wouldn’t come and she settled for stroking the shadow behind her instead as the cartoon creature on the screen laughed and laughed, high and trilling and far, far too like the monsters outside.

Cora turned back to the news.

* * *

The newscaster was young. He’d barely graduated last year, had just gotten the job earlier this week—economy was improving, see; they’d said it would—and now this. He stood on the rooftop of one of the last few secure buildings, in the center of the abandoned helicopter pad, in a clear violation of protocol no one was left to enforce. He was ghostly pale, coughing into his sleeve, trying to ignore the howling on the streets below.

“The mayor left with his family and a select few members of the scientific community from this pad only hours earlier,” he said and all the optimism of his youth had rotted in his eyes. “Their intended destination is as of yet undisclosed and it is unknown whether or not their flight was approved. As of three o’clock today, the entire city is under quarantine.”

He coughed again, into his elbow, and it sounded like glass grinding in his lungs.

“The government assures us, however, that the situation will return to normal in a matter of days. People are advised to remain calm and indoors, barricaded and alone whenever possible. We’re not, as of yet, entirely certain how the virus spreads, only that it is spreading and that anyone—alive or otherwise—can be a carrier.”

The man paused, took a deep, shaking breath through his nose and went off script.

“To be honest, there is no real, official information coming in. All I can tell you is that no one is safe. Even…” he stopped, choked on a cough, on rising panic and bile and too much adrenaline flooding a system that could no longer process it. “Even children—especially children. It seems they were the first infected, but their metabolism somehow put the virus into a brief period of dormancy. I don’t know. I can’t tell you—I only took chemical biology freshman year—but I can tell you that it is crucial to barricade yourself alone.”

He swallowed and coughed, spat something black and brackish into the dust and looked wide-eyed into the camera.

“Once infected with the virus, adults lose their capability for speech,” he said and there was something horrible in his voice. “This is not the case with children. They will continue to cry for you—they will beg and plead and the moment you go to them, they will claw out your eyes. There is no one left, folks. This is it.”

He coughed again, brownish tears streaking down his face, and stared into the camera with something twisting like a smile at his lips.

“Love you, June-bug.”

The screen cut out, flashed for a moment to the inside of the empty studio before returning to the old footage of the remote controlled government helicopter, flying well above contamination level, blasting a cheerful, prerecorded message.

“This city is under quarantine until further notice. Please, remain indoors. Everything is under control. Normalcy will soon be restored. Have a nice day.”

* * *

Cora sat with her knees drawn up into her chest, listening to the screams outside, wanting to go to the window, wanting to hide forever and not knowing which was better. Another group of them had amassed on the streets outside. She could hear them screaming, all of them screaming, so like cats in heat, like banshees, like nothing that was ever human and louder than the sirens.

“You must dis-perse,” the riot tank announced to no one. “Imm-ediate police action will en—”

And then, in a shattering of glass and grinding metal and something that sounded far too much like bone, it stopped. The high pitched siren whine it had been emitting to control long dead crowds fell into a murmur and dissolved altogether. Something laughed under her window, chittering, scrabbling at the brick. Cora huddled in on herself, listening as it fell, clawed at the brick again, screamed and launched off down the street.

Her lights flickered—once, twice—and blinked out like an eye in darkness.

She sat there, unmoving for an indeterminate amount of time, only listening to the rasping, watery breathing of the figure behind her fill the room. She was not alone. There was no cure and she was cold, stuck together with blood, only waiting as her heart throbbed painfully in her chest. But she was not alone.

Cora wasn’t sure that made it any better.

She pulled her laptop from where it’d been left in preparation for the inevitable, carefully away from the spreading stain on the carpet, and wiping her hand on the last clean section of her dress, turned the machine on. Her homepage popped up like a familiar grin, announcing in happy, buoyant print she had three emails—all ads and weather alerts—and would she like to read them?

Cora stared at the screen for a long moment, wondered what it meant that the wireless internet was still up and wondered if it wouldn’t still be up when there was no one left with mind enough to manage it. Found herself thinking about her battery—it barely held a charge anymore, hadn’t for months—and clicked on the live feed that led to the news.

* * *

The news caster that had started out the crisis looking fresh and fashionable in her pastel pink suit and surgically corrected wrinkles looked harried and sick now. Dark circles blistered through her makeup—under her eyes, under her chin—and panic seared like electricity through the scarecrow lines of her body. She was crouched behind a barricade of wooden pallets, dumpsters and piles upon piles of trash. A blue and purple row of fingers poked from the frayed edge of a bag only inches from her leg.

The woman didn’t seem to notice. She sat on her haunches on the pockmarked asphalt, crumpled newspapers wadded up around her Prada heels. The camera angle was wrong, propped on something—no human could hold it like that—and even in the sketchy dark, the tell tale gleam had already caught in her eyes.

“They’re everywhere,” she whispered, tried to whisper, her voice quiet but piercing as nails on slate. “Everywhere. Not even people anymore. Not really. Not people like we think of people, anyway. They’re—” she broke off, giggling, sick and high and finished like it was a prophet’s secret, “They’re animals.”

The woman grinned, gnashed perfect teeth and reached for the purse at her side, dyed and spattered to match her shoes.

“Gum,” she announced. “I need gum. Never have a goddamned stick of gum when I need one. That’s the thing—that’s the thing, you know. Thieves, all of them. Thieving little bastards. Running around like the zoo just splattered all over the city. It’s awesome. Really—no, really. Awesome. Awful. Full of awe, at any rate, and horrible, just horrible.”

She stopped, giggled and choked and looked as though she were talking, unaware of the horrible, broken whinny spilling incessantly from her mouth.

* * *

Cora stared at the screen, thinking this was what corpses sounded like after the death rattle—after the rising acidity of the blood rendered vocal cords wiry and rigid. In the corner of her screen a pixelated skull and crossbones flashed over the empty shell of a battery and beeped at her. Minutes passed. The woman on the screen vomited in streams of foul, black fluid, and turned, lips stained, to claw at the camera, that horrible noise still bubbling from her throat.

“Battery Low,” her computer flashed at her. “Shutting Down.”

Cora watched, silently, knees pressed to her chest as the internet peeled away, leaving her staring at a picture of her honeymoon. They were so happy, grinning and healthy, arm in arm and flushed with sunburn. And then that too was gone, the last light winking out, leaving her not-alone in the black of her apartment. She turned, one hand groping across the ruin of her carpet, reaching for the shadow sleeping behind her, for human—not human—contact, and found only wet, empty space.

And two eyes stared at her from the doorway of their bedroom, the police car overturned beneath the window painting blood and frost on the craggy ruins of his once beautiful teeth.

*****

Ahh, Seamus…Just look at all those stars up there. Do you see how the Milky Way sweeps down the sky from high Cassiopeia through Cygnus to southern Sagittarius – the grand blazing heart of our galaxy. The failure of electricity years ago solved the astronomy world’s old problem with light pollution, allowing you and I to enjoy this unprecedented view of the great silent cosmos. You must pity the poor astronomers though when, on receiving their fondest wish, they go and disappeared with the power as well. Poor old them, eh? But hurray for us! We’re still here.

Nights spent outdoors on lonely hillsides such as this, surrounded by Gorse bushes and admiring the wonders of the night sky are one thing, but there are other nights, while sitting in the cosy glow of our hidden camp fires, that I find myself admiring the sleeping forms of Whelan and O’Keeffe. Purely, of course, from the point of view of how big an imaginary steak I could slice from either of their skinny arses. There’s just no decent meat to be had these days, and I do miss a good steak.

Fate smiled on us earlier though, didn’t it, when I rediscovered the trapdoor to the Souterrain, that ancient underground bunker. I knew it was here somewhere, cleverly hidden within this thicket, but I hadn’t been sure of its exact location. It’s been a while, after all, and then to find inside, as a bonus, a pair of ragged, huddled survivors. What luck, eh?

Lucky for us too that there was enough meat on that malnourished toddler to satisfy our bellies, yet as I prepared and cooked the child her mother, filthy and white faced from shock, fear and lack of sun, was stupidly murdered by those simians Whelan and O’Keeffe – after they had forced her to satisfy their baser desires, that is. They really make me laugh, those two. As soon as they were finished with the woman they bashed her brains in with a piece of lead pipe- to prevent her from reanimating, they said- yet within ten minutes of her unnecessary killing they’re back using her for sex again. Listen to them below. They’ve been at her for ages now, taking turns.

Those two are perfectly adapted to this era, you know. They are living proof of Natural Selection yet they haven’t got a pair of brain cells to rub together. They’re thugs. Animals, pure and simple, yet they are the new human, the pinnacle of evolution and, along with the dead, they are the inheritors of the earth. What they lack in intellect they more than make up for in savagery. They question nothing. They appreciate nothing. They simply do. Unless, that is, I tell them otherwise. They consider me to be more savage than they are. And I am. And I suspect this little fact is all that keeps us alive, you and me. The day will come when I will fear to turn my back on them, and I don’t intend for that day to arrive anytime soon.

I first came across them..oh..when was it now? It must be eight or nine years ago; within a week or two of this undead upheaval beginning in earnest on these shores. I saved their lives I suppose, idiot that I am, and I’ve been asking myself ever since then; why? Why? They are boils on the arse of this suffering planet. A blight on the landscape every bit as deadly as the undead. But they’ve been useful, I suppose.

I freed them, starving and close to giving up, from a crashed prison van I happened upon as I cycled quietly along the motorway close to Newgrange. I heard muffled voices from within a relatively fresh tangle of smashed and abandoned vehicles so naturally I paused to investigate.

Their driver was dead, poor man; the lower half of his once corpulent body crushed and trapped in a spaghetti of dried entrails beneath the overturned wreck. But, deceased or not, he still regarded me with fierce interest, his shattered forearms dangling from his elbows like limp puppets as he reached for me.

I crushed his skull with a convenient concrete block. The eejit should have worn his seat belt. I searched for the door keys but they weren’t on the ignition keyring. I suspect they were in his pants pocket – mangled into the unreachable remains of his legs. The cab of the small truck was a twisted mess of metal and broken glass. The driver must have been thrown through the windscreen and then had the truck fall on him. The back of the vehicle was quite intact.

The trapped men called out to me as I considered their predicament. I crouched by the rear of the van and whispered through the door that I would soon have them out. I asked them to be patient and I specifically asked them to be quiet. At this point in the game I felt a rare feeling of goodwill towards them – but that was about to change.

This world demands silence, for obvious reasons, yet they didn’t seem too aware of this. As I tinkered and teased at the complicated lock with my little Swiss army knife I could clearly hear them making a plan to jump me once I had freed them. I mean really.. What was in their heads? The idiots must have mistaken my educated vowels for deafness.

That was my introduction to Whelan and O’Keeffe and the other one.. What was his name? I can’t recall. It doesn’t really matter about him, anyway.

So my nice thoughts fled and I decided on murder. It wasn’t because they wished me ill. It wasn’t because they insulted my intelligence by thinking I wouldn’t hear them. It was because they were retarded enough to allow me to hear them. Now anyone else; some saner person, would have walked away right there and then and simply left them to their deaths, but the Urge was upon me. I wanted to harm them. That’s what I like to do; indulge my baser instincts. Anyway, who’d miss them.. and who’d convict me of any crime?

I counted three voices. On one hand I didn’t know how strong or fast they’d be, but I reasoned that they hadn’t eaten for a while due to being trapped. Whereas I, on the other hand, dined regularly as foodstuffs were still available enough, at that time, for the canny looter. It’s even possible they had already resorted to drinking their own urine – I never asked.

When I eventually disengaged the lock and the door fell open sideways I found myself the subject of three feral teenage stares. Their membership of the lower class was obvious from the slack jawed ugliness that poverty and bad breeding creates. Their whole gormless demeanour, as they regarded me with jackal smiles, betrayed their places on the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder. I smiled back of course, though not with the confidence I had previously felt. You see, I had just heard a fourth voice groan dismally in the gloom behind them.

And there you were; poor silent Seamus the prison guard, barely visible behind them in the wreckage. So, luckily for those ugly tree dwellers I was forced to implement plan “B”.

What a fright! I didn’t know whether you had been assaulted or injured in the crash, but I could see that you were a professional man, still in uniform. As such you were a representation of what we were rapidly losing; order, security and discipline. In my opinion your life was valuable, yet I couldn’t help you by myself. What could I do alone? Who could help me? Why simple, the lower castes, that’s who!

You know Seamus, on recollection; it’s really your fault that those two cretins are still alive. Yes! That realisation makes me feel so much better. Its good to talk, isn’t it? Oh, don’t be like that; you know I’m just kidding.

Anyway, it took less than a second for a sharp man like me to assess the situation, so before they could put their plan of attack into action I implemented my own. I reached out and grabbed the closest young thug by the ear and pulled him roughly over the lip of the door. His head hit the hard surface of the glass strewn roadway and my little knife was at his face is a flash. I released him when he squeaked and turned to await Laurel and Hardy’s move.

They stared in slack jawed shock as Thug Number One regained his feet and staggered backwards away from us, his hands clawing at his pimply face. His pals watched him bump and ricochet off stalled cars and burnt out trucks; pinballing about like a clown as he attempted to push his eye, which I had deftly hooked out of his head, back into its socket. But, surprise surprise, he was an untalented surgeon.

At this, sinister stirrings, like the low buzzing of bees, began along the lines of traffic. Sluggish movements could be seen in both directions as the semi-hibernating dead rose moaning in undetected numbers from their vehicles to the irresistible sounds of human distress.

As he convulsed and cried I directly addressed Thugs Two and Three as they cowered in the bowels of the van. “Boys,” I said in a reasonable, yet urgent tone of voice, “We have no time left, so let’s not allow this little situation to degenerate into a pissing contest about who’s boss. Do you agree?”

Whelan and O’Keeffe, (yes, for it was they), were gobsmacked, not only by my actions but by the joyriding potential right under their noses. Perfectly good cars abandoned just outside of their little van. They were unaware that the world had gone to hell during their incarceration! Their ignorance still beggers’ belief.

I mistook their silent surprise for defiance. So to hammer home the point I grabbed Thug Number One again (he happened to be passing at the time) and neatly removed his remaining eye as if it was an act I practised twice daily. He stood stock still in surprise, gobbling like the birdbrain he undoubtedly was, and off he went running into cars again. I may have told him to shut up. Unreasonable of me really when you think about it.

The boys silence dragged on as they stared past my shoulder. “Well?” I urged them.

So at my instruction, and at the sight of the closing undead, (which their reptilian hind brains recognised as dangerous), they lifted you from the van – none too gently I may add – and thus accepted my leadership. The only sign of intelligence I’ve ever witnessed in them.

I can tell you now we were running a severe risk of being trapped. I had completely underestimated the volume of dead in the vicinity and they were creeping and slouching closer to our little tableau every second. There were hordes of the bastards surrounding us! It was absolutely time to trot.

Then an unexpected line of ragged reinforcements crashed and stumbled through the trees and bushes that marked the median of the motorway, bumping shoulder to shoulder in our direction like the clumsy army they were. We were about to be caught in a pincer movement that Patton would’ve admired, but happily for us Thug Number One’s distressed antics, which had attracted them in the first place, now diverted their attention marvellously. We fled with all possible speed; me leading the way on my trusty bike and you in the clumsy arms of the starving teens.

The boys later claimed later they could hear Thug Number One.. Ryan, didn’t they say that was his name? Well, they said they could hear him all the way to Dundalk- but they exaggerated. All sound, even that monotonous, chilling moaning, just faded as we put blue water between ourselves and the motorway.

Whelan and O’Keeffe were pathetically grateful to be free and they were astonished at the state of the country – of the world! As I said they hadn’t an inkling of the situation. Nor did they realise that they were alive simply because I needed them to tote you about until you were strong enough to travel unaided.

As I nursed you through the next few weeks I came to appreciate, through orders they willingly carried out, the dark nature of my new underlings – as they already appreciated mine. They admired me because I had casually blinded their friend to make a point, whereas I had no regard for them whatsoever. They were less than pack animals to me. Or trained chimps. My opinion hasn’t changed since.

They’re not like you Seamus though, eh? I have come to depend on you so very much though I rarely know what you’re thinking. You keep your opinions about our way of life to yourself. That’s good, I suppose. You’re not like us at all, are you? We are criminals and you are a warder. An ex-warder. I’ve seen you turn away in disgust at our excesses. I know that for a man of your character and background we must be the worst, most disagreeable troupe of bandits you could have fallen in with. Though you are stoic as we are what we must be! It’s all about the survival of the fittest, the smartest and the toughest; by whatever possible means.

But Seamus, we must soon discuss our immediate future. That flight of aircraft we heard to the north some weeks ago has great significance. It’s been on my mind too, you know. Aeroplanes! The human race may be rallying at last in an organised fashion, if not in the Republic than perhaps in Ulster or the Mainland. We must seriously consider our prospects, you and I, in light of the terrible things we have perpetrated for our survival and amusement. Only let’s not say anything to the boys just yet. Maybe later on. You know how the poor darlings fret.

I know you appreciate the importance of silent witnesses. When required. As for my part? Well, I’ll simply remember, for my sins, where the bodies are buried. Not all of them though, as I foolishly lost count some time back.

I fear I’ll wake by a cold campfire some morning and you’ll be gone, having melted away into the big wide world in the wee quiet hours; escaping at last from the clutchs of our wicked band. But maybe you won’t. Maybe, like the boys, I just worry too much. I think perhaps you’re in too deep. If law and order is re-established you’ll be put against the wall along with us as an accessory. Don’t misconstrue my words Seamus, I know you’re not like us; but the possibility is there.

Oh.. listen to me rabbiting on! It’s getting chilly. Let’s go into the snug stone chamber below and see if those troglodytes have finished with their live performance. Based, no doubt, on the Karma Sutra for Dummies. The entrance hole in the earth is very narrow. Raise the trapdoor there but take care on that home made ladder. It’s very rickety.

*****

And.. we’re down. Home sweet hole in the ground! Look; the lads are still making sweet, sweet luuvv! How precious!

Now, now boys, don’t stare at me in that insolent manner or I’ll be forced to remove your thumbs for broth. You know I will. Why not leave the dear departed to rest in peace for a little while. She’ll still be there in the morning. And put those objectionable appendages back into your pants, you’ll only frighten Seamus.

Oops.. I’ve hurt your feelings. I apologise. Do you know what, lads? I’m talkative tonight! I’m in that kind of mood. Seamus and I have just had a great chat up above on the surface, didn’t we Seamus? Learned discourse is what separates us from the animals and all of that. But in your case I’ll..well..never mind. Come on; let’s sit round this little peat fire and have a good old chinwag.

Ignore the cold stones against your back, gentlemen. This is a safe and secure subterranean hideaway. Has been for over a thousand years. This passage is what; one metre wide? Five long? Stone walled and slab roofed. And it’s astonishingly dry for its age, perhaps because it’s been lived in recently by our late hosts. Safe from all the lumbering monsters above! Bar us, that is. Can you see how this passage once wound back into the earth before a cave-in blocked it?

I was an archaeologist before all this plague stuff, you know. Yes, I was! In fact, I’ve been down here before, you see, in this very chamber. That’s how I knew of its existance. But I had a laptop and a measuring tape with me then instead of a knife and a bludgeon. I had a hard hat and a yummy little assistant named Rose who was built purely for speed. When I had finished surveying this little hideyhole for the local council I went and surveyed Rosie, who didn’t mind at all. Afterwards we enjoyed a packed lunch just down the hill in my Beemer.

These Souterrains were built in their thousands by the plain people of Ireland to hide them from the Vikings. Those Norse murderers sailed their longboats round our coast and simply took what they wanted, without pity or mercy, from those too weak to resist. They butchered the men and stole the women as slaves. They were vicious, evil, immoral bastards. But what fun they must have had!

Yes, O’Keeffe. I suppose. They were like us. You could say that we are the new Vikings. Except that they were after plunder whereas our excuse is survival. My Urges help; I’ve never denied them in these undead times, and why should I? You know about the Urges too, don’t you O’Keeffe? We recognise each others traits; proper Vikings. A pair of terrible Norsemen, we!

But unlike the Vikings, who were proud and vain and dressed in fine garb, we dress in rags and smell. Our teeth are falling from our jaws. Who in their right mind enjoys washing in the frigid waters of our brown boggy rivers and lakes? No one! So we rarely wash. Even if we had the balls to withstand the cold we’d have every chance of becoming fodder for some submerged, watery monster.

Houses and shops, if many still stand, have been plundered dry. We’re lucky to have the shoes on our feet. Having a shave is a beautiful memory. There is nothing left of the previous world, or if there is I’ve seen no evidence of it in five years. Shaving with a knife is only tolerated when the fleas get too bad. And barbers? What’re they? Scurvy’ll kill us long before the cursed undead get their naked claws on us.

Nevertheless, I feel blessed that the Reanimation of the dead should have happened in my lifetime. It freed me from cloying respectability. It released me from hiding my true nature away. I’m so grateful I could almost believe in a god again.

Ever since walking corpses became commonplace across our fair green land I have submitted entirely to my Urges and I have had such delicious fun smashing heads and breaking bones, severing limbs, crushing ribcages, ripping out livers, kicking in faces, popping eyeballs, cutting out tongues and destroying, destroying, destroying. This is my time.

And we all know, my uneducated friends, that if the action gets sparse, why.. we can always kill a zombie or two just to get by. Sure, aren’t they just standing around in their millions to be had, as the fella said.

Lads, don’t you ever feel it? The beauty in death and its delivery. The exuberance! The wonder! The screams and shouts and cries for mercy, the arcs and spills and trajectories of blood. The visual art in the skyward vector of a lopped off limb. The sweet music of a sucking wound- whose melodies I could listen to for hours- or at least until the musician expires to the appreciative patter of my respectful applause.

These times though I’ve probably gone a bit mad; I’ve lost the run of myself completely. At least that what I hear you whisper to each other when you think I’m out of earshot. I’m looking at you Whelan, you maggot, so don’t be coy. I happen to agree with you. What harm does a little madness do these days? And who would expect a Viking band to behave any differently?

We may have to change our ways soon though, boys. And I say this with sad regret. Who know what light may be at the end of the tunnel, eh? Who knows? But if not, it’s my considered opinion as a thinking man that we’re not long for this earth. The food chain is in disarray and I expect that many species, Man especially, are heading for the black abyss of eternity. Hah! Do you like that, boys? Doesn’t that just conjure up the despair and hopelessness of it all? “The black abyss of eternity.” I just made that up right now. Good, isn’t it?

Let’s face the inevitable, my cranially challenged companions, it’s been two years or more since we’ve come across anything as previously ubiquitous as a tin of food. Beans. Or peas. We’ve seen plenty of empties all right, but the number of full ones is finite and falling. And we haven’t seen an animal of any kind in over two weeks. Not even a rat or a bird.

I strongly believe that human eating human is becoming commonplace out of pure necessity. We’re coming across fewer and fewer survivors. And those we meet regard us in the same way as we regard them- we size each other up for the pot. Do you recall those bones we found in Kells? Femurs, tibias, spines? All cracked and the marrow gone? Ghouls’d do that, you say? Yes, they would. But they wouldn’t reassemble the bones into grotesque recognisable shapes. We’re not the only ones at it, boys. We’re now competing with the dead and humans. We’re becoming the ghouls. We’re going native.

But enough cheery talk. We’ve had a good day. We have full bellies, a roof over our heads, and you two boys got your rocks off. Seamus, you take first watch. I’ll take the second. The illiterates can take third and fourth.

And O’Keeffe, I saw you hanging those ears round your neck earlier. Don’t practise your primitive rituals in my company or you’ll wake up in the morning with your ears round mine. They’re to go into the pot with the little ones bones for soup. Waste not, want not!

Sleep well then, my erudite companions! I so enjoyed our little dinner party. Next time do bring a decent wine and some nice Stilton. Nighty night.

*****

As I watch Seamus gingerly climb the wobbly ladder to the hillside above I wonder if this is the night he’ll finally decamp. Did I foolishly inspire him to leave? This soon-to-be post-human world is a wonderful playground for the callous likes of me but to be left alone with these two mongoloids .. Jesus Christ! It just doesn’t bear thinking about. I’d rather travel unaccompanied and lessen my chances to five percent.

Just look at them in their rancid sleeping bags. Scratching and farting in their rags. But we all scratch nowadays. So the question begs to be asked: why didn’t I dispose of them all those years ago when I had my chance? Once Seamus had gotten stronger? I suppose it was because of the group dynamic that formed during his convalescence. Whelan and O’Keeffe were a constant amusement but I find them painfully tiresome nowadays. I have no other explanation. Perhaps the Academic in me was fascinated by their repugnant and pointless lives. Wait.. who am I kidding? I take all that back. It was simply the convenience of their brainless muscle.

I gaze beyond them to the shape of the desecrated woman with her shattered skull. She survived all of these terrible years through who knows what horrors and degradations, successfully caring for herself and her child until today, when the New Vikings invaded and stole everything from her; nullifying her long fierce struggle for survival in less than ten awful minutes. She died the most undignified, indecent and vile death imaginable.

There she lies; a cooling bundle of rags, skin and bone. Unburied and unmourned in the arse end of a forgotten hole in the ground. Over time her body will break down into its constituent parts and melt quietly away out of all memory, joining once more the cold bitter soil.

I regret her death for its pointlessness and waste. If she’d lived we could have cut fresh meat from her. She could have shared, too. No, that’s just the “bad me” talking. And the boys could have lavished her with their own tender ways, too. I suppose we could still eat her but the thought of those two gibbons defiling her just ruins my appetite. They’ve tainted her. They can have her if they want.

*****

I doze upright against the ancient knobbled wall until an imperceptible rustle disturbs my nap and I find myself on high alert. My pulse is rasping in my straining ears as I listen..listen..and..there it is again, a slow scratch on the earthen floor on the other side of the sleeping underachievers, just beyond the sullen light of the embers.

A rat wouldn’t have made it past us in this claustrophobic burrow so I suspect the worst. I waste no time in standing, my grimy blanket sliding unnoticed from my shoulders.

I grab my small pack (I believed in travelling light) and take a single quiet step to the ladder, head bent to avoid smacking it against the low stone roof. As I carefully climb in a calm panic up the jittery, flimsy rungs I hear her emit her very first moan. She must be almost on her feet by now, taking her first little baby steps. Oh bless.

Whelan and O’Keeffe slumber on as I feel the gorse thorns brush against my emerging face and neck. I rise quickly from the earth into the cool fading night, pulling myself and my backpack through the rough opening in the ground like a cork from a bottle.

That useless pair of braindeads! Both of them bashed her brains in and they couldn’t even get that right, could they? I stand above the trapdoor and dither indecisively for all of two seconds before pulling the ladder up out of the ground and tossing it into the gorse in disgust. Then I console myself with warm thoughts of the boys being reunited with their new girlfriend. I have no doubt she’ll be delighted too, and they’ll all live happily ever after in their little underground kingdom.

Seamus loomed out of the darkness, puzzled at my noisy presence above the ground. His expression cleared when a low, undead moan drifted up from below. She was well and truly on the scent now, the lucky girl. I gently closed the camouflaged trapdoor, giving the young lovers a bit of privacy and locking down the souterrain for another thousand years.

“Two less mouths to feed,” I remarked as we tiptoed away. We had only gone ten metres through the damp tussocks when we heard the first muffled, subterranean shout of surprise. The lengthy and confused cafuffle of alarmed underground voices faded as Seamus and I strolled out of earshot.

We soon reached the spot where we had hidden our bicycles. Before we mounted up I rummaged round in my backpack until I found what I wanted. It was time for a little celebration. Or should we be drowning our sorrows? Yes? No? Who knows? I unscrewed the cap from a small bottle of the rarest, most wonderful liquid ever devised and took a swig. Not too much though. You don’t waste this stuff because once it’s gone; it’s gone!

I hummed softly with delight as the liquid necter ran smoothly into my belly. I passed the bottle to Seamus. “Not too much, now,” I instructed. “Take it easy.”

His bushy beard lifted as he tilted back his head to drink. I ripped my serrated knife hard across his bared throat from left to right. His Adams Apple was no obstruction to my keen blade. I didn’t see the arc of blood fan out in the dark but I heard it patter like rainfall across the gorse. Seamus coughed and I instinctively grabbed the brandy bottle in midair as it slipped from his shocked fingers.

“What a catch!” I laughed in pleased surprise, momentarily forgetting the circumstances. “Oh, my dear friend,” I exclaimed quickly, genuinely appalled by my insensitivity. “I am so sorry for laughing. I truly am.”

He was making guttural noises as he choked on his blood. I hoped he could hear me as I wanted to explain why it was I had killed him. He deserved that much.

“Listen Seamus,” I began, “I think our race is run. The forces of law and order may finally be poised to reclaim the earth from the undead. And all those unfortunate people we encountered..” I paused to gather my thoughts; to prevent myself from slipping into my habitual longwinded ways – I didn’t have much time.

“You were always going to be my last witness, Seamus. My last buried body, and now is as good a time as any to say a heartfelt and truly sad goodbye to you, and to thank you. You’ve been the best companion a man like me could have had through years like these.”

He threw up suddenly in the predawn gloom, gagging noisily and blowing blood from his ruptured windpipe. Bile leaked from the gash in his throat and his shaking hands clasped his neck tightly, pushing strands of his beard into his opened neck. He stared at me through bugged out eyes.

“I’ve been dreading the arrival of this distressing moment for a long time.” I confessed. “Had you left in the night I’d probably never find you and I was so afraid you’d leave. What if I couldn’t find you? How could I protect myself? How would I prevent you from telling others the story of our crimes?”

I believe he accepted my reason for this desperate act and was forgiving me even as I spoke. We looked at each other for what seemed like an age; he couldn’t speak for choking and I had nothing more to say. He remained standing and I began to wonder if I had sliced him correctly. I was positive that I had. I’m forced to admit that if O’Keeffe or Whelan had done the job I’d already be berating them for imbeciles.

After a long moment spent considering my cutting skills I shrugged off my doubts and busied myself re-capping the bottle (automatically giving it a little shake) and putting it back in my pack. Then I wiped my blade in the long grass and tucked it away as well.

Just as I was becoming embarrassed by his failure to expire Seamus had the good grace to slump to his knees with a wet grunt. I took this as my cue to saddle up and I gladly pushed off down the slope, the wheels of my bike whirring melodically as I progressed.

Behind me I heard the thump and rustle of his body falling into the soft undergrowth. At almost that same moment I spotted Venus shining brightly in the east. And look, there’s Mercury too; a tiny pinpoint of light almost lost in the glow of the approaching dawn. NASA still has a probe orbiting up there my old friend, yes they do, but it’s probably dead now. I think Seamus would’ve enjoyed me pointing out this rare sight to him. This gave me pause for thought and I sighed resignedly.

Despite this being an unsentimental era I knew that I shouldn’t just leave him lying on the grassy hillside in such a callous manner. It wasn’t fitting and it wasn’t fair, and his remains would soon fall prey to some rotting predator.

I applied the brakes and walked the bike back up to where he had fallen. His body was half hidden by a clump of gorse so I pulled him gently out until he lay beneath the big wide sky he had loved so much. I gazed at him thoughtfully. He had been such an interesting fellow, but in all the years I had enjoyed his company I had never heard him utter a single word. Not once. I didn’t even know for sure if Seamus was his real name or not. Funny that really, when you think about it. But the important thing to remember is that we had gotten on famously, so I knew he’d understand just why it was that my little pack was full to the dripping brim with freshly cut meat as I cycled away down the hill once more.