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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dan, that you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve already sheared most of mine off.

“Dan, really, you know better -”

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

“No.”

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

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

“Mostly wax this early.”

“No need to be coy -”

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

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

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

“- Everyone can benefit from this resource.”

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

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

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

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

The days are getting warm now, and the nights.

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

Whilouby joins me but doesn’t say anything.

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

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

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

Pete eases back out. “Fair enough.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

2

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I won’t Dan.”

“Okay. Ready? One. Two. Three!”

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

Jim grunts then gently puts the debris back in place.

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

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

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

“I don’t want to.”

“It’s okay. They won’t hurt you.”

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

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

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

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

“I got two more.”

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

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

“We. We – found some bodies.”

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

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

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

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

“Henderson? How many?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We don’t know what they found.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I found something for you too.”

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

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

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

“In a minute. Just wait -”

“You’ll thank me when you see it.”

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

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

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

“You got it!”

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

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

3

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

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

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

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

“What kind of bees are your favorite?”

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

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

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

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

“You’ve got a good memory, Jim.”

“And they don’t make honey.”

“I don’t know about that –”

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

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

“I like the Japanese honeybee.”

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

“Do you want to know why?”

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

“Why the Japanese honeybees are my favorite.”

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

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

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

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

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

“When the giant hornets find a hive of regular honeybees, you know like we have, they mark it, bring their friends back, fly in, and kill every single honeybee then take all the honey, eggs, and babies back home and eat them. The Japanese bees figured out a way to beat the hornets a million billion years ago. They let the scout in and wait, and talk to each other, and plan. They let the scout hornet get all the way inside then, when the bees are sure it can’t escape, they all leap down and rub against it until it dies from too much heat.”

“You learned all this from the big bee book?”

“Yeah. Neat huh?”

“Sure is! Why don’t the regular honeybees do the same thing when a Hornet scout comes to the hive?”

“They don’t now how. They haven’t lived in Japan long enough I guess and the Japanese honeybees don’t teach.”

We both laugh at that for a minute. The hill steepens some but we manage to get to the bottom without any incidents.

The road stretches around another S-curve into what used to be Dalton, I think, and beyond that Stewardstown, and beyond that still Rt 93 running north to Montreal and south all the way to Boston. But we won’t cross that until after nightfall.

Ten miles north of here is where we saw the trucks last time out. Only ten miles. Reverend Lyons took a bullet to the arm that day or he’d be here leading the scavenge for sure. Jim stayed behind that week because he was sick with the strep. Probably better that he doesn’t know anyway. “Almost time to pull off the road and wait for the others.”

“I’m glad.”

“We’ll heel off over by the stone bridge and wait there. Keep the water at our backs for safety. Remember?”

“Can’t get jumped if you have water at your back.”

“That’s good Jim. You’re getting smarter I think.”

“I try and remember stuff.”"

Three hours later I fall asleep as Jim describes Japanese honeybees to Whilouby and Henderson beneath the gray light of a waning moon.

4

We link up with Whilouby and Henderson before wheeling the carts into town. The only zombies we saw were shambling up and down Rt 93, and even then it was just a handful. Summer’s coming though and they’ll come in force then. Used to be we’d pop a few from up on the tree line, but ammunition is scarce now and it’s best not to waste on fun.

Standard protocol for return from a scavenge is to inventory and add to the stores at the church. Usually The Reverend is with us, but today we’ll have to make sure he’s around or we can’t get inside.

The only stop we made before now was to unload the new hive for Jim and me.

We halt both carts on the road outside the church and shout up for Reverend Lyons.

Reverend Lyons struggles down the short steps to the sidewalk and makes his way to the cart. “Welcome back,” he says. His freshly bandaged arm hangs in a sling. A stranger stands beside him within the churchyard; young guy, long black hair, suntanned skin, well-trimmed beard. He wears a blue hat and wool sweater. A big revolver, probably a Magnum, hangs off his blue-jeaned thigh.

We all stare at the visitor and Reverend Lyons notices that none of us speak. “Let me introduce a few of our friends here.” He points us out in sequence. “Jim and his brother-in-law Dan, Pete Whilouby, Bob Henderson.”

The stranger says, “nice to meet you all. Duane, Duane Walker.”

“Duane has found his way down here from Canada. He’s part of a settlement outside Montreal, and they’re doing well enough to send out for more folks. A few thousand, isn’t that right?”

Duane nods and I notice that he’s taking a good long look over the downtown buildings. “Were you camping out in the orchard just west of town?”

“I stayed a couple of nights there, yes.”

Pete glances at me.

“Now, before we get all worried about a new face in town,” Reverend Lyons says, “I’ve called for a town meeting to discuss sending back an emissary with Duane -”

Jim interrupts, “You said you were headed towards Boston -”

“I am, but I have been authorized to provide a map and coordinates and even a route if necessary, to any friendly settlements -”

I ask, “has he met Linda yet?”

“Not yet. We’ll make sure she gets to the meeting tonight though. Until then we should unload and inventory what you have. Any perishables?”

“Some.” Whilouby begins untying the ropes that lash the booty down to the cart. “Duane, has the Reverend given you the full tour of the town?”

“Not yet, but I’m very excited to find so many people. Most of the world is wastelands now. I’ve found a few other small settlements north of here, but none as well developed as – what did you say the name of the town was again?”

“I didn’t.”

We unload all of the stuff and stack it behind the stockade fence so we can rest a bit before putting all of the boxes away in the sanctuary. I grab Jim’s arm. “Hey, do me a favor okay?”

“Sure.”

“Take the scout over to meet Linda, and make sure he stays there for a while. Have a cup of tea or something.”

“Ok, but I can help put things away faster -”

“Don’t worry. There isn’t much stuff. Besides, you can ask Linda if she wants to make use of our new hive. She has a good garden, remember?”

Jim smiles. “Okay. Hey Duane, do you want to go visiting with me?”

Reverend Lyons encourages them both and before anyone can think of raising an objection, Jim and Duane are headed down the road towards the cast iron bridge. “How’d the scavenge go. I don’t see too much that’s really useful -”

“There’s not too much that’s really useful left I’m afraid.”

“Any survivors?”

I think back to the burned out houses and the wire-wrapped skeletons. “None. Hey, do you know anything about Japanese honeybees?”

5

The remains of the little one bedroom house smolder just up the road from Linda’s place across the cast iron bridge that spans the roaring Pemigewasset. There’s nothing left but a tangle of charcoal and fluttering orange ash that climbs into the morning sky like wayward fireflies. The Reverend gave last rights only an hour ago and how he sits off on the side watching the smoke rise. He didn’t want this, but didn’t interfere either. Lyons understands, now, even if he doesn’t agree, and helped spread the plan around town. He gave last rights while the scout was still unconscious. The Reverend said he’d pray for us all.

Jim prods the charred timbers with a pitchfork. Most everyone has gone home now that sunrise has lightened the sky up but for a while, everybody helped out, singing and chattering as the scout, screamed and hammered and shot holes in the doors that we’d bolted shut and the window’s we’d boarded. The little house was old, and dry and went up very, very quickly with the help of some straw bales stacked on the porch.

After an hour or so, when the flames smashed through the roof shingles and the center collapsed with horrible moaning roar, you could barely hear him curse us all, before the fire silenced him.

All that remained was us, the townsfolk of Pleasant Hollow, abuzz with post bonfire excitement.

And Mikey had another two hours on watch.  He hated being up in the middle of the night, and the cold was just the cherry on top of the whole crap sundae.

Watch.  Ha. It wasn’t like Mikey could see that much, anyway.  It was too bad they couldn’t get a hold of some night vision goggles.  Like he’d seen on Discovery Channel, back when there was a Discovery Channel.  That show about futuristic weapons, with that ex-seal.  What he wouldn’t give for that kind of hardware.  Of course, if they did happen to get a hold of some night vision goggles, it’s not like they’d have been able to have an endless supply of batteries for them.

Listen to yourself, Mikey grumbled in his head, as if paying attention to thoughts qualified as ‘listening’.  You’re just a regular military nut, aren’t you?

It was true, though.  Most teenagers scraped together their minimum-wage earnings to get a junky car.  Mikey, as soon as he turned eighteen, was going to drive into Omaha and buy himself an M-14.  Not one of the easily-jamming plastic M-16 rifles that replaced it, but a real, wood-and-iron, thirty-caliber weapon.

Nobody was driving into Omaha anymore.  His dad had joined a few of the other men around town in trying to go there for some critical supplies, just after Mikey’s seventeenth birthday.  They never came back.  What little ham-radio scraps of information they heard about the world outside their hastily-erected town walls contained no news about them, and nobody but Mikey had the guts to go looking.  Not even jock-hero Carey Kolpack, even though his pop, divorced from his mom, had lived in Omaha when everything hit the fan.

Mikey found himself staring at the air three feet in front of his face again, like he did when he was a little kid and his mind would allow itself to get drawn into thinking about something.  He took in a few deep lungfuls of frosty air, which cleared his head, and tried to refocus on looking for anything unusual, or at least a deer or coyote to take a hunter’s shot at.

Instead of night-vision, a watchman had to rely on the perimeter lighting.  It was an unfortunate necessity, drawing valuable power away from the people inside the wall, but everyone agreed that a modicum of peace of mind was more conducive to sleep than additional heat.

At least he’d only drawn wall duty tonight.  This meant he had room to walk around, and he wasn’t a hundred feet up in the air like Riggs and Cooney, the poor bastards that had drawn sniper duty.  He looked to his right, at the looming cylindrical shape of the town’s grain elevator.  He made out some movement up there, but it was impossible to tell who it was.  There was no point in lighting the top of the elevator, after all.

A fresh blast of arctic air jolted Mikey, who hadn’t even noticed the last gust slack off.  He’d been pacing, and had to stumble a bit before getting his feet back under him.  He turned his body to the north, as if whirling on an inconsiderate stranger that had bumped into him on the sidewalk.

After letting a fresh curse word be carried away on the wind, he turned back south toward the outside.

Someone was standing out there.

Mikey’s weapon, not an M-14, but a Winchester .243 deer rifle that was shared by the sentries, was out from behind his shoulder in a heartbeat.  He fumbled around with the glove on his trigger hand.  Crap!  If the stranger had a rifle of his own, Mikey could have taken a round to the back of his head, leaving an inattentive, head-shot corpse.  They wouldn’t be able to let Janey and little Cass see him; they’d have to mourn an internal picture in their heads.

Of course, if it were a zombie, instead of a bandit, it wasn’t going to shoot anybody.  If it were a zombie, though, it would mean that it had somehow avoided freezing.  That would be especially troubling; relief from the walking dead was one of the few blessings of a harsh Nebraska winter.

“Hey down there!”

The stranger, his shape indistinct under a dark, flowing top garment, raised two hands in front of him.  They were covered by fur mittens of some sort.  Unable to see skin, Mikey continued to be unsure about what he was dealing with, until the man spoke.

“I’m not armed,” came the reply. “I’d like to come in.”  It was a man, then.  One with an odd voice; it was raspy, wounded, the product of vocal cords that shouldn’t have been heard over the howling wind.  There was also something familiar in the voice, something Mikey felt rather than heard.

“I’m supposed to say no.  Sorry, buddy, but we get a tad paranoid in here.  Especially when people show up in the middle of the night.”

The man simply shrugged.  “I can wait.”

Of all the responses that he could have given, that was the one that Mikey expected the least.  Usually folks would beg, or threaten, or swear vengeance.

Taken off guard, all Mikey could shout back was:  “Okay, then.”

At this point, the stranger should have walked off into the shadows, toward the trees to the south along the riverbank, to take advantage of the crude shelter they provided.  Instead, he remained standing.  Mikey thought about shouting to the guy.  Something about how if he hoped that him collapsing would stir a sympathetic reaction and get some of the defenders to run out, pick him up, and take him inside, he would be sadly disappointed.  But how do you say something with that many words when you’re shouting at the top of your lungs?

He couldn’t make a face out from under the garment that covered the stranger from head to toe.  Even when a fresh assault of frigid wind pinned the folds of cloth back, his face wasn’t revealed.   Mikey had a fleeting, perverse thought that if he just put a round through the man’s head, he wouldn’t have to keep feeling the stranger’s eyes boring at him through the winter air.

“You, ah, just gonna stand out there?”

There was no shifting before the stranger responded, nothing to indicate he’d been looking anywhere other than right at Mikey.

“You told me I couldn’t come in.”

“Yeah.  Well … don’t just stand out there.  Go back into the trees or something.  Catch a nap.”

“I don’t need a nap.  Are you going to shoot me if I don’t go away?”

“Yeah!”  As soon as Mikey yelled the word, he knew it didn’t sound like he meant it.

And, because Mikey didn’t shoot him, he continued to stand there.

#

It was a brutal two hours, but at least the stranger didn’t attempt to come any closer to the wall in an attempt to force Mikey’s hand.  He had no problem defending himself, but he wasn’t sure he’d actually be able to shoot if the guy calmly, with no show of belligerence, walked up to him.  The wall was twelve feet high, fashioned from precast concrete slabs that had been pulled up from one of the town’s streets, so it wasn’t like anybody could jump it or climb it, but Mikey had a creepy feeling the guy would be capable of doing something he didn’t like very much if he wanted to.

Carey Kolpack ended up being his relief.  Carey, the jock who had bullied Mikey around back in junior high, still made him feel off balance whenever they talked.  Crap, couldn’t it have been someone he liked, that he could confide in?

Instead, he just brusquely told Carey:  “I’ve got an idiot that’s been standing out there for the last couple of hours.”  He tried just to walk past him to the nearest set of stairs, but Carey grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Whaddya mean, somebody’s standing out there?  You didn’t call for backup?”

Mikey was going to explain that the standard signal of two quick shots felt like an unnecessary waste of ammo, but he knew that if he got into it he’d start whining like a seventh grader, they way he always seemed to around Carey.  The guy was still revered by many in town; after all, he’d scored three touchdowns against West Point the year they were rated in the Omaha World-Herald.    As a result, Mikey felt like nobody would take his side if he tried to challenge him.

“Well?”

All Mikey managed to say was: “He’s just standing there.  He hasn’t tried anything the whole time.”

Carey let a curse word out as he looked over the parapet, into the muddy glow of the perimeter lights.  He seemed to think of some sort of response that would humiliate Mikey in retribution for the breach of protocol, but appeared to be too sleepy to come up with anything.

“Yeah, well, tell Craig about it before you go to bed.”

Well, duh, Mikey wanted to respond.  He was going to tell Craig Marks, who was serving as the Watch Chief, as soon as he got off the wall, but after hearing Carey suggest it, he suddenly didn’t want to.

“Yeah,” he managed to grunt out, and walked along the parapet.

Before he descended the stairs that took him down to street level, he stole one more glance over his shoulder, at the form of the man who was still out there.

The guy had turned a little, to make sure he was still facing Mikey.

With a shudder that wasn’t a result of the cold wind, he descended the stairs and set off toward the Sheriff’s station.  He was almost certain the stranger continued to move to face Mikey, like a sunflower tracking the sun.

#

Craig Marks rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but Mikey liked him.  He was abrasive, nearing his fifties, and all stubble on his head and face, as if his hair and beard did their best to match his personality.

Despite the unkempt appearance and irascible personality, Craig was a leader.  When the shit hit the fan, if you weren’t looking to Craig, you were an idiot.  The problem was, when the shit wasn’t hitting the fan, and it generally wasn’t, it was hard to miss the fact that he didn’t like people very much.

That’s why, even though he was the best person to lead up the response to any security concerns, he took the night shift.  It meant there were less folks to deal with.

“What’s wrong?”

This was the greeting Craig gave Mikey as he walked through the door of the Sheriff’s station.  It was about as congenial as the grizzled man would get; he despised the exchange of pleasantries, and if he responded to the standard greeting of ‘how are you?’ at all, it was with: “Do you really want to know, or do you want me to give you the standard bullshit ‘fine’?”

Mikey had spent enough time around Craig to just answer him.  “Something weird out there on the perimeter.  A guy just walked up out of the dark and asked to come in.”

“And you said ‘no’, right?”

“I’m supposed to say ‘no’.  So I said ‘no’.”

“So did he piss off?”

Craig had asked this casually as his head rotated back to the tattered old book he’d been reading.  When Mikey responded, his head came back up.  “No, he’s just standing out there.  Been standing there for two hours, at least.”

“You left Carey out there by himself?  You should have signaled.”

“He’s fine.  It’s not like the guy was doing anything.”

“Yeah, but how often does someone just walk up to the wall in the middle of the night?  I think it’s been at least six months since anything but zombies have showed up, and that was in the middle of the day.  This guy’s by himself.  At night.  It smells funny.”

“You want to go check it out?”

Craig shot him a look that said, no shit, Sherlock, as he thrust an arm into the sleeve of his coat.  “You come too.  It’s probably nothing.  But if it’s something, I might need you to run up the wall and let everyone know what’s going on.  Especially Riggs and Cooney, ‘cuz I sure as hell ain’t gonna be the one climbing up that ladder.”

The muscles of Mikey’s neck groaned, and his fingers and toes protested, as he pushed the door open back into the frigid night.  Even though the wall was only a couple of blocks from the station, the walk back there felt like a death march.  The wind was mercifully at his back, but Mikey knew after Craig and Carey stared at the idiot interloper for a few minutes and dismissed him, he’d have to walk to bed facing fully into it.

The glow of the perimeter lights reached above the wall, and poked thin ribbons of light through where the slabs joined.  Mikey looked away from it, away from an inexplicable shard of despair the sight shoved into his gut, and cast his eyes down to the footsteps he’d just made on the walk up.  They’d already been mostly erased by the wind and fresh snow.

A movement from his periphery caused him to look up, in time to see Craig running past him toward the wall.  Without questioning, Mikey ran after him.

His brain was too sleep-deprived to ask ‘why?’, but he sensed something wasn’t quite right.

After drawing to within half a block of the wall, Mikey realized he should have been seeing the silhouette of Carey’s head and shoulders above the top of the parapet.

Craig bounded up the stairs, and quickly dropped to all fours.   He scrabbled along the parapet, a sight that should have been comical but was anything but.  As Mikey’s protesting, nearly seized legs pushed him up the stairs that he had descended just a few minutes before, he could see an odd shape on the walkway boards.

Mikey had almost forgotten why he had come back out in the first place.  He was so cold and tired.  Something tugged at his memory, though, enough to make him turn to his left and look over the wall.

The stranger was still out there, facing right at him.

“Get down!” Craig barked at Mikey.  Clumsily, he complied, his knees barely cushioned by the snow as he buckled himself onto the walkway.  Craig was still bent over the Carey-sized shape, whose edges seemed to flutter a little in the wind.

Mikey heard a curse word from the older man, and it finally dawned on him what the bundle was.  He stole a glance over the top of the wall, just barely, as if discovering what had just happened would cause the stranger to transform into a drooling, seven-headed monster.

Craig didn’t give Mikey any more instructions.  He whipped his hunting rifle, a lever-action .30 caliber, over the wall and aimed for a second before squeezing off a round.

From his vantage point, Mikey swore he saw the snow kick up directly behind the stranger.  Craig had hit the odd, flowing overgarment dead center.

He kept standing, as if he hadn’t even heard the gunshot.

Craig let loose a rapid string of profanities, far more meaningful as a whole than the individual words were, as he twisted the rifle and worked the action.  This time, he aimed for the head, the standard zombie kill-shot.  The rifle rested on Craig’s hand, which was buttressed by the wall, and he let all the breath escape his lungs, and squeezed.

Another flare of snow kicked up behind the shape, and this time Mikey swore he saw a scrap of cloth and something solid and black exit the back of the stranger’s hood.  Despite the certain head-shot, the figure remained standing.

Craig was working in another cartridge, and no words were escaping his mouth.  His eyes were wide, nearly bugging out, but still concentrating on the task at hand.  Mikey now got a full revelation of the man who had come back from the Middle East refusing to talk about his time there, but followed by rumors of heroism straight out of a Homeric tale.

As he took aim, the man out in the snow raised an arm.

Mikey’s gaze was torn from the stranger by a flutter of movement down the parapet.  The Carey-sized lump on the walkway had doubled in size.  Craig’s rifle leaned against the parapet, as if he had gingerly set it there before collapsing.

Now the man was approaching.

Mikey began to fumble for his rifle, but not for too long.  If Craig had actually missed twice, it was the first two consecutive failures he’d ever had.  Surely Riggs and Cooney would have heard the shots, and placed a few of their own by now, if they were alive up in their perch.

No, guns were no good.

“What do you want from us?”  It was all Mikey could think to say.

“I just wanted to come see you and your mom, Mikey.”

The apparition had gotten closer now, and the request sounded like he had whispered it in Mikey’s ear.  Even though it was a withered, dessicated version of itself, he recognized it.

“If the zombies got you, you can’t talk!  You can’t be one of them and still be able to talk!”

“I’m not a zombie.  The zombies fear me.”  The voice was between his ears, even though Mikey’s back and head was pressed against the parapet wall.  He’d only heard something like it once before: when a stoner buddy put a set of headphones on him and made him listen to the last song on The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.

“You can come out with me after I spend some time with your mom.  I’ll take you to Omaha, and you can get that M-14 you always wanted.”

Mikey squeezed his head between his hands, twisting his back into the parapet.  He had a feeling that it didn’t matter if he opened the gate or not.

——-

After evaluating the risk of living in a population center, Greg Hall relocated his wife, six kids, and pet tortoise from Southern California to eastern Nebraska.  When he’s not writing or making preparations, he’s a construction scheduling and instructional design consultant.  His work has appeared in print in Golden Visions Magazine, and online at The Harrow and Amarillo Bay.

The Minster: Verse 2

Against the gentle whump, whump, whump, of the helicopter blades, Paul Jollie listened to the last thirty seconds of the mp3 over and over again. He’d put the earpieces of his ipod underneath the bulky headphones to try and drown out the noise of the ancient Huey he was now sat in. He was studying the photographs of the living room of the old croft where the attack had happened. He tried to visualise the knock at the door, the surprise of the occupants, that final desperate struggle and what had happened after the tape stopped, after the bloody violence ended. He had listened to the MP3 over and over again, studying to every nuance of Joe Wyndhams voice as he described the Minister and that final line, the voice of the Minister himself; that drawn out Scottish brogue dripping with menace. No matter how many times he listened, he couldn’t gather any further information from it and yet every time he listened to the recording the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention.

The pilot leaned round from the front and pointed towards his headphones. Paul lifted each side of the helicopter headphones gently and removed the Ipod earpieces. He moved the mic into position.

“What?”

“Twenty minutes until we hit the Edinburgh drop zone, Sir” called the pilot

“Alert me at five minutes to drop”

“Yes Sir” said the pilot.

Paul relaxed and closed his eyes, his privacy invaded by the grating whine of the chopper as it sped over the desolate British countryside, and the cold misty morning looked almost sepia toned as the sun struggled to fight its way through the wet gloom. His mind wandered back to the meeting with the Minister of Special Circumstances, barely eighteen hours before.

Paul was one of the new breed of Special Forces employed by the British Military. He had just turned seven years old when the Fall had happened and in it he had lost his entire family. At nine years old he had fired his first pistol and dropped his first Z. At sixteen he had found himself on the front line at the Battle of Tower Bridge. The army had tried to reclaim North London by using the bridge as a choke point only to find that the mass of Z’s in that half of London was too great for the bridge and they had risen from the Thames, a mass tide of Z’s that flanked their position, rising up through the water to surround them, decimating the ragged British Army in the process. He was one of barely a thousand survivors of that great battle, who had fought a running retreat through the streets. Ten thousand people who had survived for twelve years swapped sides that day, making the retaking of London all that much harder.

His skills at knowing how the Z would behave, when to fight and when to hide had served him well and got him noticed by the newly formed Ministry of Special Circumstances. He joined the unit at eighteen and was trained in the use of weapons, both military and martial. He was taught the newly developed Japanese Z kata, a martial art specifically designed to keep as many of the dead at arms length or further whilst they were systemically and efficiently despatched by the best weaponry British sword smiths had developed. The ‘Union Jack’ was a high quality stainless steel blade with strengthening ribs criss-crossed along it, like the old flag. It was just long enough to sever a head at arms length and sharp enough to chop logs. It looked like an ancient broadsword but was considerably lighter and gunmetal grey in colour.

Paul had helped developed the Special Forces Z proof armour, lightweight black polypropylene recycled from waste plastic: Flexible, strong, yet slippery to hold, with bite proof Kevlar at the neck, knee and elbow joints. It looked like skinny American football gear crossed with a medieval suit of armour but was considerably lighter and easier to manoeuvre in. He had participated in the live testing where it was discovered that the facial recognition skills of the Z’s brain was partially how the fresher Z’s homed in on humans, so now a lightweight Motocross mask was used to hide the soldiers features. Paul had taken to using a stylised white skull painted on the front which confused the Z’s into thinking he may be a Z himself, this hesitation in their actions was all he needed and he was trained to take advantage of it.

He was now used by the Ministry to scout cities, towns, sewers and small isolated communities and to generally clean up where a single man could. Sometimes pre-Fall items were required: Laptops with military or scientific data, culturally significant items from museums or libraries needed to be saved, but most of the time but it was to help the disparate communities of survivors clear a local threat, or protect them whilst their community was expanded. After all it made sense that Special Forces worked alone. It was easier to hide, easier to run and it meant that you were not tied to the bonds of friendship which could make you put yourself in a deadly situation to save a comrade, risking you both in the process. It was you alone against the Z. Pre-Fall there were sixty seven million people living in the UK in a landmass less than half the size of Texas. Fifteen years after the Fall there were less than a million people left and it was estimated almost ten times the population in Z’s. Only Japan still had as many Z’s per live citizen, some of the more densely populated countries had no citizens left at all. Clearance was a morale term, a term to let people know that things were returning to pre-Fall normality. The reality was that this was far from the truth, and operatives like Paul Jollie were merely playing a numbers game, eventually his time would come and when it did he hoped that his kill figure was up in the five figures, it needed to be so that there were still humans left when the last zombie was killed, and not the other way around.

Most UK cities were still ‘out of play’ to use the military term. Only really London due to its cultural and historic significance, and Edinburgh because of the easily defendable castle, had significant populations. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, all these and many, many more were out of bounds to humans and still roamed day and night by their former inhabitants.

Paul had been summoned by the Minister of Special Circumstances and had arrived through the ruined London streets by Rickshaw cabbie. Civilian petrol shortages meant cabbies had cut the rear end off their taxis, and attached bikes to the front, most of them were happier that way as it kept them fit into the bargain and now there was virtually no traffic in the deserted streets, there was nothing to get frustrated at. He had been cleared by the dogs at the entrance to Westminster and entered the Minister of Special Circumstances private office. He stood in front of the desk and, although still wearing civilian gear, saluted stiffly.

Jim Bramer, Minister of Special Circumstances, had been an Operations Manager and engineer in a factory prior to the Fall; this training had given him a unique perspective on rebuilding the capital. He commissioned wind farms and solar panelling to provide some electricity. He had set up apprenticeship training programs for blacksmiths, motor mechanics, builders, pilots, and farmers. Virtually everyone in the London safe zone had two or three different trades and his idea to resurrect the wartime spirit of the British had given hope where previously there had only been despair. Posters, and adverts on the BBC were everywhere urging citizens to recycle, be vigilant, build not destroy, farm not consume, help not hinder. Crime was virtually non-existent.

However, Jim was most proud of his military achievements, the new Special Forces were seen as Knights of the New Monarchy, something for young minds to aspire too, and something to be feared in their black armour reminiscent of the medieval warriors on which Britain had been founded. To the outside the UK looked like a mix between medieval England and George Orwell’s’ 1984, with all the positives of stern governance, a strong King in William and a job for everyone to rebuild the shattered Kingdom. Yes, Jim’s job was much better than being a faceless drone in a factory. He was over sixty now, with short grey hair and a lined face that showed a history of starvation and struggle under its stern features.

“At ease, Paul.” Said Bramer

“Sir.” Said Paul, relaxing.

Bramer motioned towards a chair.

“Whiskey?”

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

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

“It never is Sir.” Said Paul, smiling

“No… No.” chuckled Bramer.

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

Bramer clicked play on the battered old Sony Vaio and the office filled with the sound of a recording of a mans voice. Paul listened intensely to the file and both men baulked at the end of the recording.

“But I thought the Minister was just a legend, a fairy tale to scare your kids” said Paul, visibly shaken.

“Apparently not… Paul, we have lost contact with several of the smaller Scottish communities north of Edinburgh and now we have lost contact with Edinburgh itself.”

Paul looked surprised.

“I want you to investigate and report back. This is a 24-hour recon and destroy mission. If you find The Minister your orders are to capture or kill him. If he is resistant to the disease then he can infiltrate communities destroy them and escape with impunity. We cannot allow that to continue.” said Bramer gravely.

“Of course not Sir” Said Paul

“This enemy is human Paul, capable of all the dirty tricks, lies and betrayals specific to humankind. You need to forget everything you know about fighting the Z and recalibrate to fighting someone who is immune to the Z. Someone who has survived the Fall and believes himself to be some sort of Priest doing Gods work. That is all we know but even that is enough to make him a danger to the State. We are rebuilding something wonderful here Paul and I won’t let this son of a bitch ruin it. I want him found and dealt with, nipped in the bud before the populace realise he is more than a legend. Panic, is our biggest enemy in this city Paul, did you know that?” Bramer was red faced now.

“Panic breeds Death, Sir” said Paul, quoting one of Bramers’ favourite propaganda posters.

“Yes, Paul. Exactly”

“One final thing.” continued Bramer “A question, actually”

“Why now? Why has it taken him all this time to start this crusade? Why not in the first few years after the Fall when we were weakest? You need to consider this, Paul, considerate it carefully before you go up against him, not because I don’t think you are capable, but because he is a different enemy to the one you are used to.” Bramer took a sip of whiskey. Paul merely nodded in thought.

“I’m in the process of arranging a chopper to take you north, other than that it’s your mission”

“As always sir” said Paul, darkly.

Bramer slid the thick file across the table to face Paul; on its cover it read:

‘The Minister: Top-level clearance only’.

The helicopter pilot turned and looked at Paul.

“Five minutes, Sir”

Paul retrieved the kit bag from underneath his bench on the Huey and opened it. He grabbed his black armour and pulled it over his head, tightening the clips, and securing it firmly. He grabbed the greaves and pulled them on each leg securing them as he went. He pulled the skull mask, with black tinted goggles over his head and finally secured the black, plastic ribbed, gloves over his hands. The small pack he shouldered had water and food, a couple of flash bangs, ammo, a maglite, some rolling tobacco (his only vice) and his radio. He took out his automatic pistol and tucked it in the back of his armoured suit. He removed the AS50 sniper rifle with telescopic sight, checked and loaded it before holstering it on his back. The P90 sub machine was also loaded and checked before slotting into the thigh holster. Finally, reverently, he removed the Union Jack sword and scabbard and strapped it to his back, crossed against the sniper rifle.

Paul opened the door of the Huey and noise exploded around him, the cold Scots air rushed through the ancient chopper chilling him through his armour. He held onto the rail above and gazed down as the green countryside rushing below him. They passed a small group of Z’s walking north; they looked up acknowledging the passing chopper. They were obviously ‘originals’. Z’s from the Fall, now naked, clothes fallen off after years of wandering and shrivelled, like grey tree bark moistened by the misty dew of the morning. In a way they were easier to deal with as they looked about as far away from human as you could get, and moved more slowly than the freshly turned. The only thing less human were the bloaters, those that had rotted in underwater for a long time and had swelled as the gases in their bodies expanded and the water separated their cell membranes. You could usually smell bloaters a long, long time before you saw them.

They passed several burnt out farmhouses and overgrown car parks littered with rusted cars, whitening skeletons, and dominating weeds. Nature itself was taking over; most roads except for the motorways were impassable due to wreckage and the encroaching hedgerows and flora were slowly breaking up the concrete road surfaces.

Ahead, Paul could see the twin hills of Holyrood Park. It was a perfect drop zone away from the urban area of Edinburgh itself. The Huey dropped between the two hills, the sound of the chopper muffled from the surrounding area by the imposing cliffs on either side. The pilot dropped to about fifty feet scanning for movement below. There was none, and no cover so when Paul indicated he would use the rope to rappel down, the pilot shook his head and dropped the chopper to the ground. Fuel constraints meant the pilot couldn’t afford the fly by of Edinburgh he requested but this didn’t matter.

“See you in 24 hours boss” said the pilot, cheerily.

“You will,” replied Paul.

Paul crouched and trotted away from the Huey as it rose with a rumble into the cold morning sky. The buffeting of the down draft subsided and Paul jogged northwest towards the crest of the hill. He wanted to get a vantage point to view the Edinburgh community from afar. He also knew that even with the secluded drop off point it would attract some unwanted attention. He stopped just shy of the crest maybe thirty feet higher and unslung the AS50. He would give it ten minutes in this safe spot and despatch the few inquisitive Z’s that would inevitably arrive. He rolled a cigarette and smoked it, savouring the flavour of the imported tobacco after the long flight, while scanning the area. Dead quiet, he wryly thought to himself.

Paul crested the hill and shouldered the sniper rifle, looking through the powerful scope. Edinburgh stood like a series of grey monoliths against the skyline. It was still too early in the day for the mist to clear and although he scanned the area of Edinburgh castle rising in the distance he couldn’t pick out any detail. No lights were visible.

He studied his route north towards Dukes Walk and the A1, again nothing except derelict cars and rubble; all colours washed away by time and the grey morning. He looked along Dukes Walk to Holyrood Road. He had memorised the route last night. No movement. By his reckoning he was a click away from the wall that ran along the A7, signifying the east side of the Edinburgh community boundary, with 500m of that across urban ground. Ideally he would need to find a route up to the rooftops, standard procedure for traversing a city due to the Z’s inability to climb. But it didn’t look good, he wasn’t into the city proper and the building density wasn’t great enough to allow rooftop travel. He shouldered the sniper rifle and checked the P90. Quietly he moved back into the valley.

The road had been cleared and broken rusting cars littered the verges, mostly empty, but he saw a people carrier with a family of rotting skeletons inside, including a tiny skeleton in the child seat. The drivers’ door was open but the driver had a large hole though his skull. Paul didn’t want to think about what had happened in that car and moved cautiously onwards. He cut north past a white permanent tent with glass sides, signposted ‘Dynamic Earth’; obviously an eco museum of some type. Didn’t feel too dynamic at the moment, he thought, as he padded silently through the windless grey like a stalking black cat. He passed Holyrood Palace and stopped for a second to look at its striking architecture of sweeping curves and glass frames; windows that were now smashed, rotting barricades that showed the battle that had been fought here to save Scotland’s fledgling democracy. Evidently it had failed.

Given that roof travel was impossible he decided to head north to Canongate and down the wide street to avoid side alleys and points where he could be ambushed from dark corners and Edinburgh myriad closes and alleys. Tall 18th century granite buildings rose on his left, now vine covered, with a small tree was growing out of an upper storey window. Ahead he could see the Barrier that used to be the A7 and across it there was a thirty-foot high wall of rubble with what appeared to be an aluminium gate at the end of Canongate road, with a guard tower either side atop the wall. The row of buildings had been demolished to make the wall which left a no-mans land about 100m wide all the way along the wall, north and south. Paul cut left and crouched behind a car.

Now there were two real dangers.

The first were unseen snipers in the guard tower, bored, stoned, or drunk they were known to take pot shots at any Z’s entering the no man’s land area. This was generally tolerated because after a few months the Z’s would learn not to go into that zone. Unfortunately for the Special Forces, these guards didn’t think that a lone human would stay in that area so they would usually take a pot shot at them too. Paul nearly lost an eye because of this a few years ago.

The second danger was crossing No-mans land itself, normally there would be a lot of Z activity just out of range of weaponry on the towers. Paul knew he was in that area now, but there was nothing, no movement, no moans, nothing. This, in itself, unsettled Paul. In fact he hadn’t seen a single Z on the way in. That was unheard of in a major population centre; where there were humans there were Z’s, simple as that.

Paul took the Maglite out of his pack and flashed it at the guard towers, using the series of signals agreed to show he was military and would be approaching the gate. He waited for a reply, after several minutes he tried again. No response. Maybe that’s why there were no Z’s: There were no humans. But it would still be dangerous to cross to the gate if there was no one there to let him in. It would leave him too exposed. He repacked the Maglite and looked at the wall again. To the right from the gate he saw a route where he could climb up some exposed concrete columns and granite blocks where they were poorly stacked and the steel reinforcement bars stuck out from the wall at a variety of angles. At about ten feet there was a small ledge he could use to stay out of reach if Z’s came. Hopefully, that would attract the attention of anyone inside to open the gate. He shouldered the P90 and got ready to move. Swiftly he left his cover and crossed the open ground towards the wall. Nimbly he scaled the wall up to the ledge and only then turned round. Nothing followed him. He scanned the buildings and dark corners where he came from. No movement, only silence and his own steady breathing.

He listened intently to see if he could hear anything from the guard towers above or the enclave beyond. He considered calling up there, but decided against it, for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention to his exposed position. He spotted a route to climb up, so he took it and as he scrambled to the top of the wall he was in line with the crudely built guard towers. There was no one in them. He looked down at the rest of Canongate stretching out away from the gate. There were certainly signs of life and below him was a series of ramshackle tents and crude buildings, rusting caravans and MPV’s. Washing lines with drying clothes stretched across the road, as well as jury rigged electrical cables and chained extension leads. The population density was huge in Edinburgh; normally this would bustle with fifty thousand people crammed into a small walled city. There was only silence, complete and enveloping silence, the kind where your own breathing was all-encompassing. He looked at the building on either side of the street, boarded up windows to protect from the cold; some windows were still intact but there were no lights anywhere. He removed the sniper rifle and peered into its scope. He was close enough now to look along the high street, up towards the castle itself. It was like looking at an oil painting; nothing moved in the still air. Brightly coloured banners and tent covers lay static in the morning stillness in a long line right up to the castle, their colours washed out by the dull morning sun. Nothing moved. There was not even the sound of a bird or sight of an insect in the cold damp vista.

Paul shouldered the P90 and moved across to the guard tower ladder. He scrabbled quickly down it and onto street level, gun aimed along eye line constantly as he jogged. Checking corners and side streets as he moved up the middle of the road, he slid along the High Street through the granite canyon of the tall Victorian buildings. Pauls footsteps, light as they were, echoed gently from the old stone walls.

“I love you, I love you” said a cutesy voice echoing in the silent street. Startled, Paul jumped, aiming his gun as he left the ground. As he landed he saw he had kicked a child’s doll. Off key, it repeated its mantra.

“I love you, I love you”

“Jesus Christ” whispered Paul, bringing his boot heel down on the chest of the doll, silencing it forever. Quickly he swept a 360°, checking to see if anything had heard. Again there was nothing. His heart thundered in his chest.

“Jesus” he repeated, relaxing his aim a second. He kicked the doll and it skidded loudly across the road. He pursed his lips and exhaled, breathing heavily, assuming his stance with the stubby gun at his shoulder he moved of again toward Edinburgh Castle. Silence enveloped him once more.

Quickly, and quietly, he moved up Castlehill and through the inner blockade.  It was as if the entire population had vanished. He entered the main castle itself past a building with a faded gift shop sign, his black figure outlined in the glass reflection of the door.  A wide concrete area inside was well tended and neat, no signs of struggle. This was the highest point in the safe zone so he moved up to the north battlement, shouldered the sniper rifle, and looked north across the safe zone to the outer wall beyond. There was no movement; the vista was the same one he had moved through to get to this point, grey buildings, temporary structures, static mist but no life, or death, for that matter. Nothing. Through the gloom, the distant sun struggled to light the city around him, even though it was now mid morning.

Paul leant the rifle against the battlement, removed his mask, and took out his bottle of water, drinking deeply he considered what he had seen so far.

Normally after a Z attack where there were no survivors, the area of the attack would be rife with the dead. They would just mill about aimlessly, it would take days for them to wander and disperse, possibly years before they left the area entirely in search of the living. Here there was nothing. It was if the Hand of God had picked up everyone from Edinburgh and removed them. He considered Jim Bramers’ words once more. How could the Minister do this? Where the Hell was everyone?

He had checked East and North, he decided to roll a cigarette and check South and West. The yard was big that he felt he could see things coming so he relaxed as he strolled across the compound, smoked his cigarette and looked out across the South battlement. The view through the sniper rifle was desolate, no movement within the confines of the distant wall and the grey mist made dark silhouettes of the city beyond.

Finally he checked the West battlement, once again the city was empty, and he felt as if he was trapped in a Polaroid: A static scene where once there was bustling life. As he scanned across the horizon, he stopped. Was that movement in the distance? He tracked the scope slowly back, unsure as to what he had seen, or was it his mind playing tricks on him? He could just about make out a large structure in the distance, he thought about the landmarks he had studied last night in the dossier. That must be Murrayfield Football stadium. It looked the right shape and was in the right direction. He was sure he had seen something move at the base of it. Then he heard it, like a distant buzz. No, more like a background noise. Then it was gone. Paul decided it was the closest thing to a lead he had had all morning so he finished his cigarette, tossed it over the side. Grabbed the P90 and moved off back down Castlehill before doubling back west along Johnston Terrace and towards the west wall that ran along Lothian Road and the stadium beyond.

He made his way through the streets, growing accustomed to the silence, with increasingly more speed and less caution. This wasn’t carelessness but a realisation that the city was really as he saw it, devoid of anything. The west gate moved into view. It was wide open, as far as it could go; this was a cardinal sin in a community of this type. It was clear that whatever had happened had happened around here, yet there were no signs of a fight or struggle, no blood, nothing.

He moved past ruined buildings and overgrown parks at a cautious trot. He paused occasionally, sure that he could hear a distant rumble, perhaps even cheering or singing? He wasn’t certain but he was beginning to realise where all the people were. They must be in the stadium ahead. The A8 curved off to the right and to his left was a field or park between him and the stadium. It meant moving through long grass, an idea that didn’t fill him with joy. Anything could hide there, the perfect place for a starving, broken Z, to ambush him. He considered setting light to the field, but that would alert his position to anything around or in the stadium. He would just have to move carefully and be confident. He moved through the grass keeping a line of trees to his right, just far enough away so he couldn’t be jumped from behind a trunk. As he safely reached a line of trees between him and the stadium he could see across the wide concrete plaza that there were two Z’s stood by the main ticket stall entrance. There was maybe a hundred feet between them of open car park. Clearly now he could hear the faint drone of a man shouting from within the stadium. In the background he was sure he could hear something else, a crowd perhaps?

The two Z’s stood by the entrance shuffled from foot to foot but remained in position. Surely they could hear the human voices in the football ground, why didn’t they move towards the sound? The one on the left was fully clothed, but scruffy. Its pale skin matched the morning grey perfectly, ‘he’ looked like an average Joe: Jeans and trainers, black jacket and blue T-shirt; only a bloody leg gave away his status. The other was a tall girl, she had been turned longer than her companion; her black dress was torn and shredded revealing the shrivelled flesh of her legs and arms. She had suffered a blow to the skull at some point and a patch of hair was missing on the side of her head where there appeared to be a dent. This made her look strange and lopsided.

He had left his mask off since the last cigarette on top of the castle. He now replaced it, his face now a brilliant white skull against the black of his armour. He shouldered the sniper rifle. Removing the attachment from the side he fitted the silencer. He adjusted the scope for the distance involved and got ready. He would need to move in quickly.

He stood and strode purposefully towards the entrance; the two Z’s spotted him and shambled towards him, and as they both turned to face him he dropped to one knee and steadied his aim. The girl opened her mouth as if to moan and call others to them, with a ‘Pfft, Pfft’, they both dropped almost simultaneously, a small neat hole in each temple. Paul rose and strode towards the entrance quickly swapping rifle for P90 as he went, his movements practised and fluid. As he reached the entrance he flattened against the corner and peered inside. Nothing except for the sound of a man’s voice, clearer now, but he still couldn’t make it out. Other noises too; a definite sobbing and behind that a something else, he wasn’t sure. The interior was dim with no lighting but not in darkness due to the various tunnel and openings into the stadium beyond.

He moved in gun at the ready, sweeping corners as he went. If the citizens of Edinburgh were in the main stadium he needed a vantage point to survey the scene, ahead there was a wide set of stairs. At the bottom a cracked and broken sign showed four floors, at the top it said ‘Director Box’.

“Perfect.” whispered Paul to himself.

Covering the way forward with his gun, he rose deftly up the stairs to the second floor. Carefully, he poked his head up so that his eye line was level with the next floor. To the left he saw a long corridor curving round the edge of the stadium, every few metres he could see a tunnel leading though to the main stadium and at the entrance to each tunnel stood two or three Z’s. To the right the tunnel curved more dramatically around the short side of the stadium but again, at each tunnel entrance, more Z’s stood watch. None of them faced him and they all stood motionless looking into the stadium ground itself.

Paul moved silently but swiftly on up to the next level. As he poked his head up again, the scene was repeated, at every entrance the Dead stood, guarding every exit. He listened and realised that the murmur he could hear was a prayer: Thousands of voices speaking in hushed tones.

He moved up quickly to the third floor then finally the top level, unseen as he went. To the right were the wide mahogany double doors of the Directors Box, fortunately with no Z’s near it, however the entrance to the main stadium to the left had three Z’s in position. Again they looked fairly ‘fresh’. Although they stared impassively towards the ground Paul didn’t think he could get into the Directors box without them seeing him open the door to slip through. He needed a distraction. There was nothing around to use, no rubble or detritus, so, whilst ducking out of sight, he slipped the pistol out that was tucked in his belt, quietly removed the magazine, and took out a single bullet,. He replaced the magazine and the pistol as quietly as he could, and then tossed the bullet behind the heads of the three Z’s. It sailed threw the air and hit a plastic bench with a loud crack. The Z’s turned as one towards the noise and as they did so he slipped up to the door, opened it a fraction and slipped through silently.

Inside the opulent room the huge glass window to the stadium was shattered, glass littering the floor, the plush chairs had been knocked over and broken and the drinks cabinet raided. A large cracked and dusty LCD TV hung limply from the wall. Paul could clearly hear the singing now as fifty thousand voices, rang out, and tinged with terror, they sang:

“This is the feast of victory for our God, for the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign”

Paul shouldered the AS50 Sniper rifle and crept, on all fours, across the glass to the edge of the box. There was not enough sunlight to worry about reflections from the rifles telescopic sight. He peered over and was stunned.

Below him, the stadium was rammed with people; all the inhabitants of Edinburgh were crammed onto the pitch, most standing, with looks of abject terror on their faces, men huddled with their wives and children, holding them close. Some injured or dead lay on the ground. The smell of fear and rotting flesh rose like a cloud above them. Some of the citizens were sobbing uncontrollably whilst trying to sing and some appeared to be holding their arms aloft, eyes glazed in rapture staring at the figure that was leading the sermon, as if gazing at the face of God Himself. By the state of the grass they were stood on, now just a muddy stain, they had been here for some time, maybe days, without food or water.

Around the stadium stood a ring of impassive statue-like Z’s, maybe a few thousand of all types. They stared at the crowd, their faces a mix of passive death and abject hunger. They blocked every escape route and stood like grey mannequins, or patient shepherds around their flock. It was clear now. The Minister wasn’t just immune to the Z’s; he could control them and control a lot of them simultaneously. Paul couldn’t even begin to imagine how he did this, but it was clear this was what he was seeing below.

He tracked the guns sight to the end of the stadium to a small stage that appeared to have been there since before the fall. The skinny, black dressed figure, sung out, stamping the rhythm of the tune on the wooden stage. He was dressed as a man of God, his greying dog collar and black waistcoat were frayed and muddy; he raised his arms in exultation as the hymn reached a crescendo. The Minister looked starved and gaunt, grey stubble sprouted from his chin and his thinning grey hair was tinged with yellow stains. Spittle exploded from his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he sang, his eyes the most piercing sight in Edinburgh, burning with insanity as he sang.

“This is the feast of victory for our God. Alleluia. Sing with all the people of God and join in the hymn of all creation”

Paul could see a woman walking up the stairs to the stage, she was young and he could see her singing the hymn, arms raised, with the glazed expression of madness and horror in her eyes. She walked slowly up the stage and towards the Minister who regarded her with a gaze full of compassion. He smiled gently at her and placed his yellowed hand lightly upon her head. In the crowd where she had come from he saw a long haired boy shouting and struggling against the restraint of others who were holding him back. Faintly he could hear him scream and rage for the girl to come back, what appeared to be friends and family held him from running up the stage to try and retrieve her.

“Julie. NO!” The boy yelled over and over but she knelt solemnly in front of the Minister. The old man nodded to one of the Zombies on the stage and it stepped forward towards her as the Minister smiled at her reassuringly. She rose and the Zombie embraced her gently. The boys struggling intensified and for a moment Paul thought he might break free, but then the Zombie bit hard into Julies neck and pulled back pulling flesh and ligaments from her, and as blood flowed onto the stage in rivers she fell to the floor. The Zombie stepped back, yet the Minister sang on, as did the crowd, more shakily with individuals in the crowd falling to their knees and weeping. The boy fell to the floor out of grief and out of sight of Paul, and the macabre scene carried on as before. Paul wondered how many times the scene had been acted out since they had been brought here, and how many times the scene would be acted out again until the only living thing left in the stadium was the Minister himself.

Paul settled against the rifle, and slowed his breathing as he did so. Compensating for the distance the cross hair levelled at The Ministers’ forehead. He paused. Doubt crept into his mind. If he shot now, the Z’s, now free of The Ministers’ control would fall upon the crowd, ripping them to shreds. He would have to think of another strategy.

He heard a crack of broken glass behind him and quickly looked round, above him stood a huge Z, dressed in a stadium security jacket. The sound of the singing had masked the sound of it entering the room and now Paul lay prone beneath it. He swung his legs and caught the back of the zombies’ knee. It fell heavily but recovered quickly and they both rose together. The Z lashed out before Paul could react and knocked the sniper rifle out of his hand; it fell out of the window and clattered to the stands below. Stubby hands clawed at Paul’s armour but could find no purchase on the slippery plastic. Paul hitched his leg under the side of the Z and pushed hard. The Z fell over his leg, and scrabbled for the ledge as it also fell out of the window. He stood there now, his white skull mask contrasted against the darkness of the room around him, he realised that every being in the stadium was staring up at him. The humans had hope on their faces, but he was glad they couldn’t see his own, now devoid of hope as he gazed at The Minister.

The Minister addressed the Z’s now.

“Fall on them my brothers. Turn them all!” He raged.

The noise was deafening as fifty thousand people screamed in terror. Paul watched as the Minister jumped from the small stage and disappeared up the stands and down a tunnel into the rear of the stadium. He didn’t want to watch the rest, but knew he had one chance to end this. He took the P90 in his left hand and unsheathed the sword in his right, it sang as it cleared the scabbard. He would have to fight his way round the stadium and intercept The Minister before he could get away.

He kicked open the door of the Directors Box to see five Z’s moving towards him. They weren’t quite close enough yet for melee. Raising the P90 he shot two through the head, in single shot mode, and kicked a third in the chest as he ran at them, knocking it to the ground. Spinning, he raised the sword and extended his arm and as he completed the circle, two heads crumpled to the floor and the bodies sagged in front of him. He drove the sword vertically down into the eye socket of the remaining stricken Z and it twitched as the nerves were severed.

Running now, he passed one of the entrances to the stadium. He glanced in to see crowded faces of fear being pushed by the throng behind. The people at the front up against the Z were pushing back while the dead were picking victims like cherries from a tree. The Z’s themselves shone wet red, totally covered in blood and dripping with gore, their milky white eyes and flashing, broken teeth, piercing the façade. Paul saw the floor bathed in blood and organs, arms and heads, but passed too quickly to define movement from the scene and yet he already knew that brief vista would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Still running, he followed the curve of the tunnel. Small groups of two or three impeded his progress but the curve was not sharp enough so that they could get the jump on him. He barely paused, but quickly knelt and dropped the two groups with his P90 as they approached and moved on.

He passed another entrance to the stadium and saw a vision of Hell, straight from a Bosch painting. Their were no survivors at this entrance just an abattoir of body parts, blood covering all four walls, and Z’s feasting like starving sharks, as he continued on the sound ripping of muscle and flesh made him briefly want to puke. He pressed on, as the screams and sounds of the butchery echoed around him like knives.

As he reached the next stairwell, he saw Z’s pouring out through the tunnel ahead. Heart pumping he moved down a level and carried on round. He was closer now towards the carnage in the stadium, the roar of screams echoed towards him. If the Minister had stayed near the tunnel entrance then Paul would have to drop down another level and he should see him. He couldn’t afford to lose him now, as Paul would have had enough difficulty against a thousand Z’s, if all the dead in the stadium came after him it would be game over. He had to end this now; it might give the remaining people a chance, however slim.

As he passed another entrance he tried not to glance but couldn’t resist and his vision flicked to the ground beyond. In a flash he saw groups huddled together in raw panic, waiting to be picked off as Z’s ate lustily of their loved ones. The Minister had unleashed his wolves in sheep’s clothing, and they were hungry. Paul ran faster, each entrance he passed shown him a vignette of horror as he glanced down it, each a fresco of gore on his minds eye, each scene indelibly scorched on the paper of his memory like bright sunlight through a lens of terror, blood and screams.

He could see the last stairwell ahead but a group of about ten Z’s were moving toward him. Behind the stairwell he could see even more moving to block his access down the stairs. Paul flicked the gun onto auto as he ran and with one arm, raised the gun to head height. He barely slowed as he fired and swept the gun across the tunnel, the roar of the gun muffled by the sounds in the stadium. He dropped a few, too many to count at this speed, including a couple in the group behind. Z kata kicked in and he simultaneously dropped two with a roundhouse kick and decapitated two others with the sword, one grabbed at him from behind, its teeth gouging lines in his shoulder pad. Paul dropped to one knee, grabbed its ankle and pulled it over backwards. He was just going to finish it and deal with the last ones when he noticed the rear group was nearly at the stairs. No time. Paul sprinted, barging the lead one over who grabbed feebly at him, and jumped down the stairs three at a time as two dived at him and toppled down the stairs.

He reached the bottom and scanned the tunnel ahead, there were no Z’s but he could see a skinny black suited figure ahead at the furthest point you could see before the tunnel curved out of sight, he could hear the zombies descending the stairs behind him, and the sounds of slaughter in the stadium beyond. He stopped, raised his weapon, and burst fired at the figure. He thought he saw a shot connect, a small plume of blood explode from him but the figure darted left into a tunnel away from the centre of the stadium.

Paul raced down the tunnel and skidded, then he bolted left where the Minister had gone. The double doors ahead swung gently and he ran down and pushed through, fully aware of the mass of zombies behind him. Ahead there was another short corridor that lead to another door marked ‘Kitchen – Authorised personnel only’. To his left was a steel hostess trolley full of plates and dishes, after all this time the rotten food was odourless and reduced to black stains against the white crockery. He yanked it over and wedged it against the door handle hoping it would hold, and that there were no other exits for The Minister to escape through.

He moved down the corridor and slowly pushed open the door. Inside was a large industrial kitchen, dusty stainless steel appliances, with pots hanging above and the remains of unwashed plates in the sink. Paul moved in and instantly heard a shuffle to the left, in another doorway stood the skinny black frame of the minister, only it wasn’t. This was a Z in black suit and dog collar; its hair was black but had been crudely spray painted white. Paul paused and realised too late it was a trap; realised too late it was a simple human deception; realised too late that he hadn’t heeded Bramers’ words and the heavy steel frying pan was brought down with a clang on his skull.

He keeled forward spinning round as he fell, his mask slipped from his face and landed on a nearby work surface. In an effort to catch his fall he dropped the P90, which skittered under an oven and the sword clattered to the floor. Paul landed on his back, his vision swam, and he tried to scramble backwards as he faded in and out of blackness. He banged his head on the steel unit behind him, and scrabbled to lean against it. His vision cleared slightly but all he could see were myriad figures in front of him, spinning round and round. In a moment of clarity he realised he was sitting on his pistol, which had come loose, but just as he realised this, one of the figures in front of him bent down and reached what looked like an immense grey finger towards him. As it entered his body he realised it was his own sword, used against him.

Paul screamed and adrenalin surged though his body, he reached under and grabbed the loose pistol he was sitting on, raised it and fired eight shots at the figures in front of him. His training ensured, even in this weakened state, that he always left a bullet for himself. A wave of darkness enveloped him and the pistol clattered to the floor as he lost consciousness.

He awoke unsure of what had happened, the sword sticking out of his gut reminded him, and he guessed by the flow of blood, and the pool around him, that he hadn’t been out for long.

“You’re nae deid then son” rattled the prone figure in front of him.

Paul looked up; sat against the stainless steel unit opposite him was The Minister. Four bullet holes punctured his muddy black coat, and blood was running out of the wounds and pooling on the floor around him. Near the door he could see the fake minister lying dead on the ground, a gaping exit wound in the back of his head, the blood coated the pattern of the floor. Paul tried to move but he was weak, the wound in his belly stung as he shifted. He realised that the trap he had fallen for had been set by The Minister in such a way that the Z’s had lead him down the stairs to this place, hell; he may have even known Paul was there when he dropped the first two Z’s at the entrance.

“No I thought I would lie here and wait for the ambulance,” said Paul, with a thin smile.

The Minister broke into a chuckle, which turned into a hacking cough; a small trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth.

“The ambulance, heh, Very good soldier boy. Very good” said The Minister finally.

“Well at least we’ll nae die alone eh?”

Paul looked down at the sword again and considered removing it, but he didn’t have the strength. He realised he could still hear screaming in the background, but it seemed to be less frequent, more sporadic.

“Whats yer name son” said the old man.

“Paul” Said Paul. “What’s yours?”

“Ted…Edward. They call me Ted” Said the Minister, raising a hand feebly.

“Nice to meet you Ted.” nodded Paul.

They studied each other for a moment. Then the Minister spoke.

“Its nice tae have someone to speak to. My flock here, are obedient, but are not known for their conversational abilities. Ken whit I mean?”

Paul smiled.

“So how do you control them then?” Enquired Paul. They were dying. No point in beating around the bush he thought.

“Ahh well, that’s a tale…” Said the Minister

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Paul, blackly.

The Minister shrugged.

“The fall happened frae me the same as everyone else I s’pose. I had a nice wee Parish, some good folk, in a nice wee town. Then the plague came and we barricaded oorselves away frae everyone. Same as most people. But we didnae hae the luck o’ some others I’ve met. We were isolated and far from a city. It made food hard tae come by and we didnae hae a Doctor. Each year more people died of disease and starvation, the bairns were born deid, or their mothers died. The fathers did theyselves in. I prayed but it was a Godless place; people stopped worshipping and I stopped praying. Winters took the weak ones, and the Zombies took the strong.”

The Minister paused and looked down at his wounds.

“So the last of us got on a bus and headed south. First place we came to we found one o’ they big outta town supermarkets and just drove the bus straight in. We piled oot and ravaged the place frae anything we could eat, gorging ourselves like heathens, on beans tinned salmon, that sorta thing, but we were stupid, and all the old staff were in the back. They poured out and ripped us apart. I just curled up and waited frae the bites. Ye ken?”

Paul nodded.

“I waited and waited until the silence returned and everyone was deid. But I didnae feel nae bites. I just lay there with my eyes closed, thanking my lucky stars at least I would die with a fully belly. Hunger’s funny like that. I dunnae think I even prayed. Then, after a long while I opened ma eyes and guess what?”

“What.” Paul said, impassively.

“They were all stood roond me, just staring. I closed ma eyes again and I’m nae ashamed tae say I wept son, wept like a bairn. Now again I opened ma eyes and they were still stood there, just peering at me with them soulless eyes.” He paused as if deep in thought.

“Eventually I just got up the courage tae run, and run I did son, run I did. Everywhere I went they just followed me until I couldnae run no more and I just walked, I’d become like them Paul, all deid inside, just wandering through the countryside wi my wee troupe o’ disciples. That’s when I had an epiphany son. You ken whit an epiphany is Paul?”

“Like a revelation.” said Paul

“A revelation, exactly!” exclaimed the Minister “In fact I had two. The first was to realise that all the close scrapes I’d had wi’ zombies across the years weren’t scrapes at all. Every time I thought they had gone frae me they had really gone frae someone else. I always thought it was luck, or the provenance o’ The Lord, but it wasnae, they weren’t interested in me. The second revelation was that every time I moved, every time I took a step, they moved at exactly the same moment I did.”

Paul looked confused.

“They were reading my mind Paul. They were doin whit subconsciously I wanted them tae dae. It was like they couldnae dae enough tae please me. Well, I’m no ashamed tae say son; I went a wee bit mad after that. I got them daeing things I shouldnae, things tae each other, things tae me.”

The Minister visibly shuddered.

“Anyway, as I wlked the land I pondered the reason for this frae a long time, and I decided that this apocalypse, these creatures weren’t man made at all. It was the Rapture, Paul. The End of Days and I had been chosen as Gods servant to stop the suffering o’ mankind and lead them oot o’ purgatory an intae the Kingdom o’ Heaven. Praise the Lord! I was tae use this power to lead the creatures to cleanse the Earth ready for the coming of the saviour!” exclaimed the Minister.

“You could have used the power to draw the Z’s out so we could kill them, Ted. You would have been a hero” interjected Paul, into the Ministers increasingly fervent rant.

The Minister stared at him and blinked. He smiled.

“You know, that never even occurred to me. You’re a clever lad Paul, but no. It wouldnae hae been right, it wasnae whit God wanted.” The Minister broke into a hacking cough, blood flowed freely from his mouth and he carried on coughing for several minutes, spraying blood over the kitchen floor. In the meantime Paul was feeling weak and fuzzy round the edges. The pool of blood was larger, mingling with that of the Minister, all around him now. His legs tingled even though felt less pain, and the background roar in the stadium seemed to have stopped.

The Minister recovered a little and spoke once again.

“So I took my little troupe and roamed the countryside, converting righteous souls where I could until I came here. But Paul, I want you tae know this. I didnae want to take them by force, I wanted them tae believe. That’s why I brought them here, so I could tell them. So I could convince them. So they could feel the power of the Lord and believe. Do you see? Do you understand?” The Minister asked, almost meekly.

“You’re insane, that all I see, mate.” said Paul defiantly.

“And you’re a prick” said The Minister, smiling. Paul smiled then, two dying men having a gallows joke.

“Anyway.” said The Minister “Do you think we’ll survive? As a species I mean. I havnae heard the news recently so I dunnae ken.”

“The Americans are doing well I hear, pretty much cleared the whole country was the last I read.” said Paul.

“Really?” The Minister sounded surprised. “I always thought it was a Godless place, I always thought they would be first tae go…..Ah well. I’m tired now Paul. I’m gonna hae mysel a wee sleep.”

They sat in silence for a while until The Ministers head sagged down onto his chest. Paul noticed the blood was slowing from his wounds. The Minister was dying. Paul himself felt exhausted, there was no pain, and he just felt dog-tired. He looked across at the grey haired old man and saw his chest fall for the last time. The Minister was dead. Mission accomplished, thought Paul. At least there was that. He was just another victim in the end, and Paul’s Z count? He thought maybe he had done enough.

Paul waited. He’d expected to hear the dead thumping against his makeshift barricade but there was only silence in the kitchen and silence in the stadium beyond. He might just have a little nap himself. His eyelids were heavy, so he though he would close them, just for a minute.

“Hur, hur ,hur.”

Paul snapped to full consciousness, across from him The Minster, was shaking gently as he laughed. Paul saw the flow of blood from his wounds had turned into a trickle of black ichor. His skin was white with black veins traced underneath. His hair now deathly white, no traces of yellow remained and his dirty, gaunt hands were now skeletal in appearance.

“Hur, hur, hur.” laughed the Minister and when he spoke his voice was lower; hollower.

“So it seems Soldier boy that God won’t even set me free from this place” croaked The Minister, as he slowly raised his head.

“It seems that God, still has a role fer me even now”

Paul reeled in shock at what he saw. The disease didn’t work like this, he thought. It took hours to turn people, this wasn’t right; this wasn’t the way it worked. The Minister stared at him and Paul knew he was dead. The Ministers eyes were obsidian black and Paul saw his prone refection in them, the sword sticking out of his gut. The Minister shifted slowly onto all fours as he spoke.

“I’m gonna do the Lords work my boy, I’m gonna take this world to Rapture, I’m gonna save this world by ripping it to shreds wi’ my bare hands, and you’ve just old me where tae start. I’ll take this island, then the good ole’ US of A.” The Minster was crawling towards Paul. Black ichor exploded from his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he spat the words, his knees and hands leaving trails through the pools of blood as he shuffled closer.

“And do ye ken what?” The Minister was in his face now. Paul could smell the death on his breath, and the stale stink of his dirty clothes.

“I’m gonna need men Paul. Good men like you tae be ma generals, ma disciples, and you are gonna be my first, ma right hand man, because I like you boy.”

“No Ted. Don’t do this please, please just let me die” Said Paul, his voice shaking with terror, his eyes wide as he gawped at the demon in front of him. He remembered using the pistol bullet as a decoy earlier and starkly realised there wasn’t one left for him even if he’d had the strength to lift the pistol once again.

“But I have to Paul, because this is what the Lord wants, this is whit I want, and do you know why else?”

Paul shook his head, trying to turn away, but was transfixed in horror.

“Because I. AM. THE ZOMBIE MESSIAAAAAH!” The Minister screamed, the last word turning to a gurgle as he bit down on Pauls neck. He felt the warmth of the blood running down his chest and felt the rip of skin, tendons, and sinews. The last thing he heard was the triumphant roar of the new zombie army in the Stadium beyond and the last thing Paul realised – before the blackness enveloped him – was that The Minister, The Zombie Messiah, was now unstoppable.

———

Pete Bevan currently lives in Worcester, UK with his beautiful wife and baby daughter, writing occasional works of fiction and comedy for friends and relatives.  Pete was shown ‘Dawn of the Dead’ at 7, an experience that has lived with him ever since and means that trips to shopping malls and church fetes in graveyards make him excessively twitchy, and prone to eyeing scruffy people with suspicion. Zombiphile doesn’t go far enough in the opinion of friends and work colleagues.

Guide to Reading Scottish:

Frae = From or for

Fer = for

Ken = Know (Do you ken/know?)

ma = my

Hae = Have

Roond = Round

Assume that n’t words are replaced with nae, hence,

Couldn’t = Couldnae

Wouldn’t = Wouldnae

Can’t = Canae

Also some letters may be missed off the end of words.

Mysel = Myself

In addition a ‘close’, as mentioned in the text, in Edinburgh is like a very small covered alleyway. Edinburgh is riddled with them due to the way the city developed around the castle.

Thanks the ‘The Broons’ and ‘Oor Wullie’ from the Post, and Irvine Welsh’ ‘Trainspotting’ for this method of bastardising English to create Scots as used in the final sections.

Big thanks to my wife unwavering support when I don’t do the things I’m supposed to be doing because I’m upstairs writing. Big thanks also to Phil Walsh for proof reading skills and encouragement.

[ I look down on the city of LA, from my perch on a balcony in the hills above the city. The sounds of reconstruction and clean up still echo even 10 years after the war. I'm waiting for the owner of this large, walled in compoud. It is definately a post war consturction. Part House, part shooting range, part bunker and storage facility. It's owner, a very successful business man, gives lessons in shooting, and most importantly, the art of killing the undead. I'm here to get his story of what had happened when the day came, when the dead walked the Earth. ]

My name is Jack. It had been four months since my inactive reserve status had expired, from my tenure in the Marine Corps. I had joined back in 02′, right out of high school. My grandfather had his war, in Europe, my father had his war in Indochina, back before it was even Vietnam, and now I was going to have my war, in the Middle East. I busted my ass to be the top of everything I did, and it paid off. I was noticed by a Gunnery Sergeant who was looking for people to take the “indoc” as they called it for Force Recon. Those guys were the best of the best. I jumped at the chance. I nearly killed myself trying to pass that thing, and nearly drowned during the swimming portion. I eventually made it. I was pipe lined through all the appropriate schools, and a few months later, was part of a 4 man team kicking in insurgents doors in Iraq, and later Afghanistan. Five years…Four deployments in all, and I’d had enough. After my extension was up, me and the Corps parted ways.

Four and a half years later I wondered if I was any better off. I was going to school, working a part time job, barely scraping by. I kept hearing on the news about this African Rabies thing going around. African Rabies? Christ. Every year it was something new. SARS, Bird Flu, that damn thing the mosquitos give you now. Whatever. Not like I thought it’d ever bother me.

I was always the prepared type though, you know?

How so?

Well. Coming from a Spec Op background, you’re always trained to expect the worst, hope for the best. I had some MREs stashed in the garage, a few cases of water. You know. In case something happens. Earthquake, Riots…I don’t know.. Aliens? Hell. I even always joked with my girlfriend about the zombies coming. I loved zombie movies. [he laughs] I guess that paid off in the long run. Anyway. I was a firearms collector too. It was a pain in California, prewar anyway. I also kept a lot of stuff when I left the Corps. Combat losses, you know? I must have had 3 or 4 sets of body armor alone. I had some nice toys too. My buddy snagged me this beauty of a scope from the Armory when we left Afghanistan. Said it was lost in transport. That came in handy when it…happened.

Where were you when you realized something was wrong?

It was a Friday night. I don’t remember the date exactly. My roommate was a big party person. He’d go out clubbing, and I’d have the place to myself. So me and my girl would stay in and watch movies. We weren’t really the go out type ya know? Anyway. It was like two in the morning, when my roommate came in. I had just gotten back from taking Justina, that’s my girl’s name, home when he asked if we had any hydrogen peroxide. Some crazy homeless guy had bitten him when he threw him some change. He was bleeding pretty good, so I took him into the bathroom, and checked it out. It didn’t look like it needed any stitches, so we cleaned it out, wrapped it, and gave him a shot of vodka for good measure. He said he wasn’t feeling too hot, so he went to bed. I must have crashed out on the couch not too long after that, because the next thing i know, its early in the morning, and I hear this loud banging from his room.

What did you think it was?

I didn’t know. Sounded like he was wrestling a bear. I thought maybe someone had broken in through his window, woke him up, and was fighting them off. I slipped into my room, and grabbed my Kimber. I had bought a matching set of them for me and my girl. Both the 4inch SIS models, we have had our names engraved on both sides of the slide. How romantic, right? Anyway, I always had it with me…

Wasn’t that illegal?

Depends. It wasn’t for me, because I had a concealed weapons permit at the time. Prior military service made that easy to get, oddly enough in California.

Sorry, go ahead.

Where was I? Oh right. I slipped into my room, and grabbed it out of the holster, still attached to the jeans I was wearing the night before. I only had one mag loaded, with those nice 235 grain hydra shock hollow points. I locked and loaded, and headed to his door, and put my ear on it. The banging was gone, but I could hear this raspy breathing sound. Sounded like someone breathing when they have a real bad cold, you know. That mucus sound? We had shaggy carpet, so I couldn’t peek under the door, so I quietly tried the door knob. Locked. I considered asking if he was ok, but if there was someone else in there, they’d get the drop on me. I cringed at the thought of what the apartment manager was going to say when I showed him the kicked in door that needed to be fixed, but I did it anyway. The door flew open, taking a chunk of the frame with it, and I Immediately covered the room. It was just Chris, my roomie, standing by the window. “Chris dude, are you alright? What the fuck was all that noise?” The only answer I ever got this blood curdling moan, and he slowly turned. He was a dark gray color.. His eyes were glassy and unfocused..kind of blood shot too. He started slowly shuffling at me. Stupid me. I’m still standing there asking questions. Whats wrong? Why is your skin like that? Too long in the shower? Not talking to me? Then he lunged at me. Teeth snapping. “What the fuck?!” I side stepped him, causing him to miss and fall flat on his face. He kept trying to bite at me and grab me the whole time.

What did you do?

I was really freaked out. This is what they were saying on the news that happened with the whole African rabies thing. I didn’t know what to do at first. I didn’t know if it could be cured, or whatever. I decided on a middle road. Our bathrooms connected, between our rooms. I led him into his, ran through to mine, and closed the door, running back around through his room, and closing the door behind him. I stood there for a few seconds, waiting for him to just turn the door knob, but he didn’t. Just banged on the door. The doors were pretty flimsy, so I knew I didn’t have much time. I ran back into my room, grabbed my pants, my boots, my keys, and my cell phone. I about left the room when I noticed the four empty magazines on my desk. I ripped open the drawer, grabbed the box of .45 ammo I kept there, and the mags and ran for the garage. On my way, I looked into my neighbors window, and saw him feasting on his wife on the floor. I’d seen some fucked up things in my time in Iraq, but never anything like that. I probably turned white.

So what happened when you got to the garage?

I opened the door, ran in, and closed it behind me. It gave me a little zone where I felt safe, and I could think out my plan. I turned on the radio in my car, and listened in. It was absolute chaos. I guess Chris wasn’t the only one who was bitten. There were cases of it exploding in LA, all the way down to San Diego. The freeways were a mess, and they were telling everyone to get out of the populated areas. Great I thought. How the hell are you supposed to get out of this place when the freeways are jammed? I remember glaring at my car when I heard someone in the complex rocket out on their motorcycle. I felt stupid, as I looked over the car at my bike. It might have been jammed for cars, but bikes are always skimming by on the narrow edges. I thought I was going to be okay. But then it hit me.

What did?

Justina. I was so panicked, I almost forgot. I dug around my pockets for my phone, and called. No answer. I tried again. Nothing. Shit. That’s when my all that hard wired training I got kicked in. First things first. Equipment check. You remember when I said I “borrowed” a lot of stuff from the Corps when I left?

Yeah..

You have no idea.. [ he laughs ] I still had my exact kit that I used when I was kicking in doors. Hell, I still had the flex cuffs still dangling from the back of the vest. We had a safe in the garage. That’s where I kept my 2 rifles. I had to drive all the way to Yuma to get these guns, because they were illegal back then. God. Everything was illegal back then. It took me a good fifteen minutes to get that safe open. I couldn’t get my mind and hands to function together to get the combination right. Eventually, I got it. I tried calling Justina every 2 or 3 minutes, with no answer. It was nerve wracking. I was trying to hard to focus on that I was doing, and not what could be happening, or have happened to her. I grabbed my FN FAL first, checked the action, and jammed the 4 magazines I had for it, and threw another 140 rounds in a backpack. I could remember arguing with myself over which gun to take. The FAL had the range, and knock down power, but was heavy, and the ammo was heavy as hell, but it had a folding stock. The SIG 556 I just bought was much lighter, and had more ammo. I opted for both, and told myself I’d need them both. I jammed all 32 magazines I had for that Sig, again all from my old kit in the Marine Corps, and threw another 600 rounds in the backpack. I did the same with my Kimber. Some people might have thought I was crazy, and a little paranoid, but I tell you this. That day I was prepared. I was fucking prepared.

So what did you do next?

I topped off the bag with the main meals, and crackers from the MREs, and a few bottles of water. I tried Justina again, and finally there was an answer. She didn’t say anything, and hung up. Before I could call back I got a text from her. It simply said “Alive”. So I sent her one back asking if she was okay. She said she wasn’t hurt. Her parents attacked her. She had shot her mother 7 times in the chest with her Kimber, and she got right back up. She panicked, ran back to her room, blocked the door, and was hiding in the closet. It had taken her all that time to work up the courage to leave the closet long enough to grab her phone. She said they were beating on the door trying to get to her. I told her to be absolutely quiet, and not to move. I was on my way.

How far did you have to go?

Fifteen miles. Through little Mexico as I liked to call it. If this bug had hit there, I was going to need a tank to drive through the hordes of crazy gray biting people. I jumped on my bike, and popped the garage door open. It was chaos outside. Helicopters were flying all over, I could hear screams, and even gunshots. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. I checked myself. Made sure everything was secure. I had my FAL zip tied to the back of my vest, my Sig slung along my side, and my Kimber in a drop thigh holster that I also took. I must have had close to 70 pounds of stuff on.

Why did you have all of those bullets, and why the body armor?

There was a gun show a few months before it all happened. I always went and bought surplus ammo. The more you bought, the cheaper it was. I’d always go out to the desert and just blow off rounds at targets. Some was to keep my training muscle memory, some was stress relief. I was even trying to teach Justina how to fire the rifles. She was just too small. A 100 pound Vietnamese girl, with a 7.62 NATO assault rifle? [he chuckles to himself] She was always better with the Kimber. Good enough to make me not want to get on her bad side. As for the body armor? People have guns. When stuff starts getting crazy, they shoot people. I didn’t want to get shot. I figured I’d rather wear it just in case, than get shot, regretting not taking it in the first place.

You obviously survived the trip. What happened?

Our street was pretty quiet. I could hear screams further down the street. I slowly made my way down to the main avenue. To the right, was the I-5 Freeway. Jam packed. I could see people running across the bridge, with those things chasing behind them. On the Ave, the street was clogged with empty cars. People had left them, opting to go on foot. I slipped between two cars, and rode down the sidewalks. I made it a good half way to Justina’s place before I ran into trouble. Not from those things. From the living. There were a pair of Mexican guys trying to wave me down. I knew they were going to try and take my bike. The one had a knife clearly visible in his hand. I slowed down trying to find a way around then, when one of the gray bastards came running from a house, and tackled one of the Mexicans. The other ran, so I zipped right past. I wanted to help, but I had to get to Justina before I stopped for anyone else. I came across several scenes like that, with people fighting for their lives, or simply running away. I used it all to my advantage to get by. I was lucky. Most of the streets were fairly clear. Most of the congestion was near the freeways.

What happened when you got to Justina’s place?

She lives in this gated apartment complex. I parked the bike next door. It was one of those storage space places. I hid the bike behind a dumpster, and went in on foot. It’s weird now that I think back on it. Three weeks before the outbreak, I had just bought a red dot scope for my Sig. And a Week after, took it out to the desert to zero it. Fate? I don’t know. Maybe. But it saved my life. I Poked my head around the wall, through the gate. From what I could see, it was all clear. I entered the code for the gate, and it started opening. Opening in its loud, squeely, creakyness. I heard half a dozen moans before it opened all the way. I cursed it, and went through, rifle at the ready. Thankfully, they were pretty arthritic, and slow moving. I Took two shots at the closest one, perfect shots, center mass. Dropped like a rock. I quickly changed targets to the next one back, and again. It dropped. As I swung my sights on the third, to my horror, the first one stood back up. My mouth must have hit the ground. I remember thinking to my self very clearly…”What…The…Fuck…” I sighted in on the first one again. Two more shots. Got right back up. The last time, I went for the head. There was a splat sound, and it dropped, and stayed down. Carefully this time, I took careful aim and dispatched them. The whole thing took maybe 30 seconds. It felt like a life time.

I knew my shots were going to draw more attention, so I headed for her apartment. I quickly cleared the immediate area. I grabbed my phone and sent her a text. I’ll never forget it. “standby…breaching”. For the second time that day, I kicked down someone’s door. Both her parents turned, and shambled at me. Her mother was a mess. All seven of her shots were dead center. Almost key holed. That made me proud for a split second, before I had to drop them both. It looked like her father was bitten first, since there was steak knife coming out of his shoulder. I guess he went on to bite her mother, judging by the large chunk missing from her arm.

I remember yelling at her to let me in, and after a few minutes the door opened. She was a mess. Absolutely cried out. I spent a few minutes trying to calm her down and to get herself together, when they started coming through the door I kicked down. We ran into her room, and blocked up the door again. Her door was pretty solid, so we had a few minutes to plan. She grabbed some clothes, reloaded, got dressed, and discussed our options. I’m still surprised by how strong of a person she turned out to be. Her parents just tried to eat her, her neighbors were now trying to, and we were trapped in a room.

She was pretty damn calm, and collected for all of that just happening. We ended up making the decision to go to the Costco that was only 2 miles down the road. It was a good place to hole up. Plenty of food, water, and very defensible. I peeked out the window, it looked clear. Apparently most of the things went through the front door, and were trying to get into the room that way. We crawled out the window, and made a run for the gate before the bastards noticed us from inside the house. We made it out just in time. As soon as I cleared the window, the door shattered. We made it back to the bike without incident.

Did you think that anyone else would be headed there?

I considered that. It was a chance we were willing to take. We made it to the parking lot of the Costco. To our horror, there was a giant mass of the things in front of the door. I could see movement on the roof. They were people. They started waving to us, I waved back. One of the men on the roof was pointing at the door. I didn’t know what he wanted me to do. There had to be at least a thousand of them in front of that door. Two more men appeared on the roof. They started yelling and banging on the edge of the building. They were drawing them all off to the side. I was just getting ready to make a bee line to the door when one of those things made a grab at me. We were thrown off balance, and fell off the bike. We were lucky. That gave us a precious few seconds to react. We were able to get a few shots off to kill the thing. Its flesh was ripped and torn. There was no blood. Only this Thick. Black fluid that seeped out of the holes in its chest neck and head.

Unfortunately, our shots also attracted the attention of some in the crowd. They let out one of those moans, and like a flock of birds, they all turned on us. We were nearly surrounded. They were coming from the crowd, coming from the houses behind us, from down the street, the way we just came. We only had one choice. Run for the building. We sprinted like we never sprinted before. They had opened the door just enough for us to crawl under. Justina went first, as I covered, and as I went under, my vest caught on the door. I struggled to get free, and eventually someone grabbed my arm and pulled me through. When I got through, I checked myself. No bites… Not entirely [Jack holds up his foot, and turns it to the side, revealing a large gouge taken from the heel] My lucky boots. One of those things almost had my leg for dinner. Instead, it got a mouth full of rubber. [he laughs] My lucky boots. I still wear them.

Once we calmed down, we finally got a good look around. There were about 50 people in there. Some men, some women, and a few children. Two police officers came forward from the back of the crowd. They introduced themselves, and looked me up and down. “Military?” the one asked. Former, I told him. The younger of the two cops. I guess he just got his badge. You know he actually had the nerve to ask if I knew that my rifles were illegal? [he shakes his head] I told him if he wanted to walk me to the police station, and arrest me, that I’d be right behind him. That got a laugh out of the crowd.

We spent the next few days trying to use out phones, but they became useless after all the circuits got clogged, and eventually shut down. There was a computer in the office, with internet access. We were able to keep tabs on what was happening, the plans for evacuation, and what people were saying. But eventually servers started going down, and even the internet didn’t work. We also had the TV, and radios, but after about a week, the power went out.

We had enough food to hold out for months maybe even a year or two. Thank god for Costco. Over the next few weeks we were able to get some survivors inside. Some weren’t so lucky. We had to watch a few people get eaten in the parking lot. Eaten, then turn into one of the the crowd outside trying to get us. We spent a lot of time on the roof, trying to get helicopters to notice us. The first few weeks, there was a lot of air traffic. We watched civilian helicopters, military transports, and even gunships on the hunt.

After about a month, the metal rolling door was pretty well banged up, from all those damn ghouls banging on it day and night. There was concrete mix in the building, and we spent our time fashioning a wall around the door frame, to reinforce it. We turned part of the store into a barracks of sort, giving everyone their own privacy. We ended up with close to 150 people. I spent a lot of my time either listening to the radio, listening to what was happening in the outside world. We heard about Yonkers, the incidents in China, and the whole Pakistan/Iran incident. It was a mess.

When did help finally come?

It must have been about 3 months into the siege. A civilian pilot had noticed us, and came our way. We figured that one of the corners of the building might be able to support the weight of his helicopter. He filled us in on the establishment of safe zones, and that he was picking up survivors where he could. We told him how many we had, and I remember that cringe he made. We knew he couldn’t take us all. We brought up the kids, and he took as many as the youngest ones he could. He promised that he would let the military know about us. A few days later, a trio of Marine Corps CH-43 helicopters appeared on the horizon headed right for us. We crammed as many people as we could onto those birds, and as I, and the two officers went to board, we were blocked. All the birds were at max weight, and couldn’t take us. They said we’d have to wait another few days. We figured no big deal. We had waited months already. So we thought.

The weight of the helicopters landing on the corner of the building had weakened the walls. They gave out. The whole corner of the building sagged, and collapsed. That giant mob now had access to the roof, and the inside of the building. We retreated to the back corner of the building, by the emergency exit. We kept all of our weapons, and ammunition, along with our “survival packs” crammed with food, water, and ammo, should they get in and we had to run. It paid off. We hunkered down, and fought them off for a good forty five minutes. There was actually a wall of dead bodies. Well. Dead, dead bodies seeing as how they were undead. It was nothing like the images I saw after the war of the great eastern push.

Eventually, we just couldn’t sustain enough fire to keep them away from us. We each grabbed a bag, and opened the door. We were lucky. None of the ghouls were in the back of the building. They all seemed content trying to follow us through the front door so many weeks before. There was a bank across the parking lot. It had one of those self contained indoor ATMs, where you had to swipe your card to get inside. The two officers knew it was a good place to go. They had those thick shatter proof windows. We’d be safe for the time being. We just had to get there. It was a long parking lot. And there were a lot of ghouls between us. We had made it to about three quarters of the way there, were we decided to use a car in the lot as a firing point. We started taking out any of the zombies in the way of us and the doors when one of those little crawling bastards struck. You know? The ones where their legs are gone, or they don’t work? Well. One of those little bastards crawled under the car, and bit one of the cops. He screamed in agony, and we all turned to give it a lead bath. Before we could even say anything else, he threw his bag to his partner, and yelled go, and turned his sidearm on himself. I cant blame him. Better than turning into one of those things.

We eventually made it to the bank, and pulled the door. Locked. We thought we were done for. As I turned to look for another place for us to go, Hal, the older of the two cops was digging in my bag. He pulled out my wallet. He threw it in there a long time ago when we made those bags, just out of habit. It saved our life. The bank must have been running on some kind of emergency battery power, because the card reader still worked. I swiped my ATM card, and it unlocked. We made it just as the first of the swarm made it to the doors. We were safe for the time being, but right as we were about to rest, I heard the distinctive “whump whump whump” sound of a Huey. It was circling the Costco. Hal mentioned there had to be some kind of roof access. We shot out the glass doors that lead into the inside of the bank, and there it was, in the back office. The ladder to the roof. We made it up, and had to figure out a way to signal the helicopter. What better way to do that, than firing every weapon we had into the air? It did the trick, and the pilot noticed us.

The pilot had told us we were lucky. They were already at bingo fuel, and were getting ready to leave. They didn’t think anyone was left alive when they saw the zombies crawling all over the building. We eventually made it out to Ft Irwin, out in the high desert, far away from the cities. The outbreak was much more easily contained out there, and the base had been set up as a rally point for refugees and the military.

What happened after you made it there?

First thing? I had to hunt down Justina. We were reunited. It turned out to be a pretty good day considering the world was ending. I eventually joined up with the base security team, and helped them conduct perimeter patrols, all the way to the end of the war.

What are you doing now?

I give shooting lessons. Ever since the whole incident, its been almost encouraged that everyone carry a sidearm these days. They think that it’ll eventually help prevent another outbreak. There are always little ones, every spring when the ice thaws, and those damn things come down from the north. It makes sense. Enough people with guns on them, can take down any individual zombies they come across. Who knows? I’m just here to teach people how to shoot now. The first 3 days, you’re on a range shooting a paper target. The fourth day, is your pre qualification. You have 20 rounds, and you have to get 15 of the 20 as head shots. The final day is the pit. Its you, one of the instructors, and 3 ghouls. You have 10 seconds to drop all three.

What happens if they miss?

Well. That’s what the instructor is for. He doesn’t miss. We cant have our customers getting eaten. We want them to come back again. And pay again of course.

Where are you getting the zombies?

From up north. They use a ground penetrating radar to find them, and dig them up. They ship them down south to us, and others like us. We keep them frozen until we need them. It works out pretty good. Anyway, I hate to cut our interview short, but Duty calls. Care for a free lesson?

He was a big man, the bulk of his weight centered in his gut. A thick, brown beard covered his face. He wore a flannel shirt, torn in several places, and a pair of dirty, faded jeans. Chubby fingers plucked the cigarette out of his mouth, which was curled into a smile as he stared at the roof across the street from him. On the ground Jack made note of the shotgun leaning against the guardrail, as well as the pistol tucked away in the man’s pants.

The man didn’t see Jack; far more concerned with the family across the street, though, as the conversation continued, it became obvious the man really just cared about the family’s thirteen-year-old daughter.

“Hey, if you want help, you have to pay the price, and money ain’t worth shit anymore,” the man yelled. Two lecherous eyes fixated on the young girl who did her best to hide behind her father.

Jack had been listening to this conversation for the past ten minutes. The family across the street was trapped, and this man happened upon the roof and saw them over there. They called for help, which he said he’d gladly give, for a price.

On the streets below them thousands of corpses shambled along. This block was once part of a nice downtown district, filled with just about anything a person could want. Now, it was a cemetery just like the rest of the city. Jack had grown so used to the low moans and cries the dead made, he didn’t even notice anymore.

“Fine. If you want to die over there, be my guest,” the man yelled. Jack could only partially hear the other side of the conversation. He hid behind the stairwell door that Mr. Pedophile had walked through a few minutes earlier. Jack stood on this roof for the same reason Mr. Pedophile did; he had been rummaging through the stores for anything useful, and planned to get to the next building by rooftop. When he heard the sound of footsteps, he decided it might be best to observe his friend before making contact. Jack was happy with his decision.

“Well fuck you too buddy. You can rot over there.” Mr. Pedophile turned around and shook his head. He reached down to pick his shotgun off the ground. He froze before his fingers could touch it.

The barrel of Jack’s gun almost touched the man’s forehead. A man like this didn’t deserve to live. Even if the world hadn’t gone to hell, Jack would’ve had no problems putting a bullet through the brain of a pervert. He certainly didn’t hesitate now.

The bullet ripped through Mr. Pedophile’s right eye and blew out the back of his skull. He stumbled back, dead on his feet, and slammed into the guardrail. Jack quickly leaned down and grabbed the man’s legs to finish tossing him over the edge. Might as well give the dead something to eat.

The body slammed into the roof of a car and immediately the zombies swarmed all over it. They tore at Mr. Pedophile until there was nothing left, most of his body gone in the span of minutes there were so many of them.

“Why’d you do that,” Jack heard someone yell. He looked up at the family across the street and the look of anger on the father’s face. He probably hated the notion of murder, even if the person deserved it.

“I helped improve the human gene pool,” Jack replied, annoyed with himself as he realized he didn’t take the cigarettes from Mr. Pedophile before he pushed the body over the edge.

The father looked like he wanted to say more, but then obviously realized it might not be in his best interest to insult the man who might be able to save his family. So instead, he yelled back, “Can you help us?”

Jack leaned over the edge of the roof and stared down at the street filled with zombies. “And what might you need help with?”

“We need to get out of here. We don’t have any food left. My family hasn’t eaten in days.” His wife stood next to him, thirteen year old in front, as if he showed her off to Jack as a means of getting sympathy.

Unlike on the side of the street Jack stood on, the buildings across the street were further apart. That was one of the reasons Jack didn’t bother to loot them. The risk was just a little too high.

“And where do you expect to go?” Jack yelled.

“We just need to find someplace with food.”

There really wasn’t any conflict of interest. A family needed help, and Jack had the ammunition to help them. “Okay, I’ll be right over, but remember, I’ll help you, but I don’t need a family tagging along behind. Understand.”

“Yes, and thank you,” the father yelled.

Jack turned away from the ledge and glanced down at the shotgun. As tempting as the weapon was, he already had plenty of ammo and weapons. He had a backpack slung across his shoulder filled with various supplies. Looting a gun shop proved quite helpful.

He walked down the staircase and thought about what he planned to do. He didn’t have access to any kind of sewer or underground passage to the other side of the street. If he wanted to cross, he’d need to shoot his way through the masses, and the idea didn’t sound tempting, but in the end, he didn’t know what other choice he had.

At the entrance Jack stopped and took off his backpack. Given what he was about to do, he didn’t feel like reloading if he could help it. He already had two fully loaded guns tucked in his pants, and another almost fully loaded gun in a holster on his hip. He grabbed another one, and zipped the bag back up. With a deep sigh, Jack pulled open the glass entrance to the store he stood in, and ran out in the street.

Guns weren’t a hobby of Jack’s before all of this started, however, survival proved good for training. He fired off five quick shots and took down two directly in front of him. Another bullet ripped through the head of a third one. By this point all of them turned to grab for Jack as he tried to weave in between them without wasting too many bullets. He quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen.

Decaying fingers groped at Jack’s arm. His bullet tore through the corpse’s neck, shattered its spine, and blew its head clear off. Another one, once a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, lunged at Jack’s throat. The barrel of the gun was almost in the zombie’s mouth when a bullet burned away its tongue before it blew out the back of the zombie’s head.

Jack didn’t hesitate and didn’t waste too much time aiming anymore as the hordes closed in on him. He unloaded his weapon and quickly grabbed the next, almost to the other side of the street and safety. Only then did he really consider whether or not the door would be unlocked, a fact he wished he had considered when he found it wasn’t.

He almost shot out the glass door, aware this would leave the building open, but what other choice did he have? Then, from inside, he saw movement as the father ran down the stairs and to the door.

Seven more shots, and Jack pulled out another gun. Jack had killed most of the zombie’s closest to him, allowing him a bit of safety, until he heard the sound of bare feet pounding on pavement. Apparently he’d found a runner.

The corpse of a teenage boy clad in a t-shirt and jeans burst through the crowded streets and ran towards Jack. Part of his right arm had been chewed away, presumably the wound that had eventually killed him. Aside from that unfortunate injury, he looked fine, probably turned only a few hours ago at most. The runners were always fresh.

Jack took aim at the running boy and fired. His bullet cut through the side of the boy’s neck, and didn’t make him falter in the least. Doing his best to aim, Jack waited for the boy, until he was almost there, bloody hands outstretched in eager anticipation. The entire top of the boy’s head exploded. Dead feet no longer supported the body, but the momentum still carried the boy, and his near headless body crashed into Jack and knocked him to the ground.

By that point the father managed to open the door, his family behind him, and he help push the corpse off of Jack’s chest and help him into the store. He shut the door while Jack wiped blood off his face. Outside the zombies closed in around the door, but none of them made any worthwhile motion to break the glass.

“Are you okay?” The wife asked with a look of concern. Jack nodded and looked around the building. He stood in the middle of an antique store, the family’s home presumably on the second floor.

“How long have you been here?” Jack asked as he looked around.

“A few weeks. Since all of this started,” the wife answered. She reached out her hand to Jack in order to shake, and said, “My name is Mary.” Jack took her hand and shook it, and as he did she motioned to the rest of her family. “George is my husband, and this is my daughter, Tracy.” Mary placed a hand on Tracy’s shoulder. The girl stared at the glass window; stared at the bloody, putrefying faces on the other side of it.

“Is there any backdoor to this place?” Jack looked at George as he asked the question, but Mary answered. Still, Jack couldn’t take his eyes off of George, who had a look of contemplation on his face that Jack didn’t like.

“Yes, to an alley behind the building, but those creatures are out there, too. We tried to leave, but we can’t get past them, and don’t have a weapon to use.”

“Let me see,” Jack said, and started to follow Mary as she motioned to show him to the back door. They only made it a few steps before George gasped, and drew everyone’s attention.

A stricken look touched George’s face as he stared at Jack, and Jack knew George recognized him. Jack had never met George or his family before, but that didn’t mean George wouldn’t know Jack’s face. Most of the country knew Jack’s face before all of this started.

George lunged for him. Jack assumed George hoped to catch him off guard and get the guns away from him before he could defend himself. George did manage to slam Jack into the wall. He reached for the gun in Jack’s holster, and Jack wasn’t able to stop him from getting it. However, Jack managed to pull out a gun of his own, and so the two faced off, each with a weapon pointed at the other.

“What are you doing?” Mary screamed at her husband, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of two gunshots.

The glass entrance shattered as the bullet that tore through George’s head continued on into the door. Blood trickled down Jack’s shoulder from where George’s bullet had grazed him, but he ignored the flowing warmth. He saw only the glass shatter and hands covered with dead, rubbery skin reach through into the store.

Time slowed for Jack as everything went to hell around him. From far away Jack heard Mary scream her husband’s name. She rushed to the side of her dead husband, her goal to grab his gun. Would she use this gun on the horde of the dead climbing through the door, or Jack? Mary brought the weapon up with a scowl on her face. She screamed something Jack didn’t hear. He didn’t hesitate when he saw her intentions.

Two bullets, and Mary crumpled lifelessly to the floor. The zombies fell to their knees in front of the two bodies and began to claw into them. Jack didn’t let this momentary reprieve go to waste.

In the corner of the room Tracy tried to make herself invisible, both to the zombies and Jack. He hadn’t wanted to kill her parents, nor did he want to see her die if it could be helped. He’d seen far too much death already that day. So Jack hurried over to the girl. She screamed as he grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the room.

Already most of the zombies hurried past the fallen Mary and George. Jack ran through a long hallway with a set of stairs at the end of it and a fire escape along the wall. Fortunately, Tracy only cried, and didn’t struggle against his pull as he dragged her down the hallway.

Out the back door and into the alley Mary had told him about. Only three of them shambled along, but that would quickly change when the others came flooding out of the back door.

Four bullets, and two of the three zombies crumpled to the ground. He had two doors to choose from, one of them he found locked, the other thankfully open. Jack slammed the door behind him but couldn’t find a lock. Of course, so far as he’d seen, the dead couldn’t turn a doorknob.

The two of them stood in a storage room. Metal shelves stacked with books surrounded them. The lights overhead were dead, the power to most of the city long since extinguished. For a few minutes the two of them didn’t do anything, Jack leaning against the door, and Tracy a few feet away.

Now had come the time to face the girl. She stared at him, obviously fearful of his intentions, but just as afraid to run. Jack didn’t say anything at first as he met her gaze. Finally he lowered his head and took a seat on the floor.

For a month before all of this started everyone in the country knew the name Jack Krendan. The body count was up to twenty-three before society crumbled. No connection between the victims. No specific group targeted. He’d kill anyone if he wanted to, and he always carved his initials into the victims. Let the world know he’d done the deed.

His face from a mug shot taken a few years back was all over the media. Jack was on the verge of getting caught, and nearly did, when out of nowhere, the dead began to get up and walk.

And why did Jack kill all those people? At the time, it gave him a rush of power he’d never had before. He killed each to prove his worth to himself. Now, Jack knew how powerless he really was. Surrounded by death, saving a life seemed more meaningful than taking one.

“I’m sorry,” Jack finally said, and glanced over at Tracy. “I didn’t want to kill them.” And he didn’t. Jack didn’t want to kill anyone anymore. The very idea disgusted him, and when he thought about the people he had killed, his stomach hurt. People like Mr. Pedophile he had no problems killing. People like that only caused misery, and right now, the world had too much misery.

He almost tried to explain that he’d changed, and that her parents brought it on themselves, but in the end Jack didn’t say anything. He stood up, pulled off his backpack, and pulled out a gun. Tears streamed down Tracy’s cheeks as she backed away, but still didn’t run.

Jack made sure the weapon wasn’t loaded before he walked up to Tracy and handed it to her. She recoiled from him at first. “Take it,” he finally said, and Tracy obeyed.

“Like I said,” Jack continued, “I didn’t want to kill your parents. Here’s a weapon. I’ll leave you some ammo for it. If I thought you wouldn’t shoot me, I’d give you the ammo right now.” Jack opened his mouth to say more, but in the end just shook his head and walked past Tracy.

Where the storeroom ended Jack opened a door into a bookstore. He glanced over his shoulder at Tracy motionless behind him, the weapon gripped firmly in her hands. He felt sorry for her. She was going to die. There was no getting around it. Even though he wouldn’t pull the trigger, her death was his fault. Jack set the ammo on the ground and walked into the bookstore.

Out front the street was largely cleared away as the dead continued to pile into the store next door. A few zombies turned to face Jack when he walked out into the street, but they never came close to him before he hurried to the next store. He needed some food himself.

Before he went in another building Jack couldn’t help but glance back at the broken glass door. He wanted to think his days of killing people were over. Hopefully the next survivors he came across wouldn’t recognize him.

With a sigh, Jack walked into another building, and left the dead behind him.

—-

Please see www.philipmroberts.com

The only problem was that the magazines weren’t being printed any more, and the places that used to sell them had probably all been looted. Meanwhile, the day really had come when the world ended, and all I did have was my grandpa’s old Smith & Wesson. It was no one’s fault, probably just a matter of bad timing. I happened to be up at Gramps’ old cabin doing a bit of fishing in the lake to clear my head. A recent break up will tend to do that to a man. Gramps had been up in Alaska, hunting bison or some such, so he’d said to ahead on up to his place, relax, do some fishing, drink some beer, and clear my head.

That’s what I’d been busy doing, and in her own way, maybe Clare breaking up with me saved my life. If she hadn’t shown me the door, I might have stuck back in the suburbs, waiting like for end like a canned ham. Instead, I was sitting out here in the sticks of Illinois, barricaded inside an old cabin and wondering how long I’d last.

I had it pretty good in some respects maybe. There was still a hand pump in the kitchen, so I had plenty of drinking water, drawn up from the old well. Hell, for that matter the lake was fresh water and I could probably boil it. When I dared to go out, I could even still catch my supper. Though Gramps had the larder of the place stocked with enough canned food to last for months.

I’d added to that by baking all the flour in the place (there’d been 25 pounds of it in a sealed plastic bin) into hardtack. Gramps had loved his bread machine I’d gotten him one year for Christmas. Loved it so much that it sat up here in his cabin. The hard tack was just flour and water baked down into a hard cracker. Sealed in plastic bags, it would probably last for years.

The next Christmas, I’d gotten old Gramps one of those Ronco food dehydrators. I hadn’t know what else to get him, so I’d ordered it at the last minute and had it shipped. That had been sitting up here too, along with the Foreman Grill, the Hair in a Can Kit, and a dozen Chia pets dating back into my childhood, including no less than four Chia herb gardens.

The closet full of unused Christmas presents had proven to be rather useful, as I’d used to the combination of them to cook up all the food in the freezer and dry it, even drying the fish I’d caught so long as the power stayed on. In the first days, I’d gotten jumpy and drilled a large orange tabby cat. Waste not, want not, so I’d cooked that into a stew with some potatoes. For the end of the world, I was styling.

Gramps had called one last time off his cell phone, to say that he and Sarah (I couldn’t call her Grandma, as she was younger than I was) were okay, and that things weren’t too bad in Alaska. That was the last I’d heard from him, though a postcard showed up that had been mailed a few days before everything started.

The mail kept being delivered for a good two weeks into things. That wasn’t bad all things considered, since the phones were out by the fourth or fifth day, and the power went off and stayed off at day ten. The phone weren’t worth much from the first or second day, first with all the circuits busy, and then dropping off, node by node. I’d heard that in the interests of Homeland Security, that the government might have yanked the phone network. I didn’t know for sure though, as a lot of wild rumors had spread at the end.

I’d lived a pedestrian life up in Novi, working that most stereotypical of jobs, selling copiers and digital imagining equipment. I’d avoided being tied down by a wife and kids, or so I thought until it looked like Clare would be the one. Then Clare had decided that her friend Penelope was more her style than I was. Last I’d paid attention they were off somewhere planning a same-sex union. More power to them, though I wished Clare had returned my CD collection.

I’d never caught Gramps bug for hunting, even though he’d raised me after Mom and Dad died when I was still a boy. Those were the days before airbags, before side impact collision standards. Back when cars moved fast with lots of nice explosive gasoline in their tanks. I’d been sitting with Gramps watching Scooby when that call came in. Funny, but I’d never been able to stand that dog after that.

I’d gone out grouse hunting with once, but I’ll confess that I never did learn what a grouse looked like. Funny though, even with no interesting in hunting, I’d taken to Gramps other hobby, shooting just to shoot with some passion.

So it was that back in Novi, sitting in my townhouse, provided it handed been looted, were a nice Sig-Sauer .45, a Glock 9mm, a 7mm Remington Magnum rifle, a scoped .22 bolt action, and Remington 870 12 gauge. Most ironic of all, sitting under my bed was the Colt AR-15 (basically a semi-auto only M16) that I’d bought worried about Y2K. Instead all I had was Gramps old Smith & Wesson, which had still been sitting in the original box he’d gotten it in back in ’67. Gramps had never been much of one for handguns, but he’d felt he needed one just to be safe, what with all those crazy hippies I suspect. So he’d bought that old .38.

I still remembered shooting tin cans with it up here at the lake. The blued finish was a bit worn, and the grips had seen better days, but it was still as tight as a good watch. The end cap on the box said it all, identifying it as a Smith and Wesson Model 15-2, blued, four inch barrel, with Magna combat grips. The model also had a name, “Combat Masterpiece” it said.

There were five boxes of ammunition sitting with the revolver, the most recent purchased in the late 90s. I was down half a box now, as the revolver had proven to be, if not a “Masterpiece”, down right useful.

I watched the television 24/7 at first, falling asleep in front of it and waking up again, riveted the whole time. Gramps never went up to the cabin much, but that didn’t stop him from having satellite TV with all the channels. Before he’d met Sarah, he’d been somewhat addicted to pay per view porn. Thus I’d been able to flip back and forth between CNN, MSNBC, and local affiliates.

When the power went out, I set up a little black and white battery operated set and watched that until the D-Cells were drained. There had been a FOX affiliate still on there as long as the batteries lasted. The scenes from closer to home were the same as those from far away. Rioting, anarchy, evacuations, martial law… Starting in Bangladesh and soon everywhere.

I’d boarded up the windows after the first one showed up. It must have been fresh, maybe from up off the highway, still wearing a blue J.C. Penney suit, only with one arm torn, a huge bloody chunk gone, just gone. At first I had thought it was an accident victim. The television and radio had said that the highways were clogged, though the sunspot activity was interfering with reception even then. I’d walked up to him, thinking I’d try to help him. I don’t know what I planned to do, it wasn’t like I could call 911. I still had a full tank of gas in my truck, maybe I half thought I could play good Samaritan and drive the poor SOB to the hospital.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw his eyes. Sunken in, bloodshot, and no longer focused… I’d seen people on drugs though, but then he’d opened his mouth, revealing half broken yellowed teeth. He’d come running at me then, not shuffling like they do when they’ve been gone a while, but sprinting. Habit saved the day, for a guy who didn’t like pistols, Gramps had taught me well. It was called a Mozambique drill, two to the body, one to the head. That drill saved my life. The only ammo I had was semi-wadcutter target rounds, accurate and they put nice clean holes in paper. Not the best manstopper around, but they did tend to penetrate deeply.

My aim was dead on, the sights on the Smith still registered for that identical load. The first two hit center of mass, but just like the TV had said, that didn’t do much good. The third round nailed him right between the eyes. That dropped him as though he’d been struck by lightening.

That first one I buried, even putting on a pair of heavy latex gloves, the yellow ones like you’d do dishes with, and fishing out his wallet. It said his name had been Randall Stevens. I dug a proper hole, and even said a few words. I think I might have still believed in God then.

Four more came later that night, pounding on the windows that I had boarded up, taking the time to shutter them up good, and even to screw in the big square pieces of sheet metal that Gramps had kept around for no apparent reason. They banged on the metal, scratching at it. Later, in the morning, I’d even find their fingernails still stuck in the wood, broken off.

They went from window to window, banging, shattering out the glass. Finally I tired of the noise. The power was still on, that was the second to last day that I had it. I used a Sawz-all to cut firing slits for myself. Then I took the Smith and Wesson back out.

I used eight rounds of ammunition on the four of them. The two who were dressed like paramedics were bad enough. The third looked like a soccer mom, still wearing her jeans and a sweatshirt. The fourth was the worst, a preteen boy dressed in a little league uniform, only with half his face gone.

Those four I still put in a hole, but I don’t remember saying any words after over them. There were two others I shot before the lights went out, one bullet each on those, I was getting better at it. Once the lights were out, I was bothered five more times, these went into a drainage ditch. I poured some paint thinner over them, mixed with old motor oil, and set them alight. I’d dragged them down the road a bit, using Gramps lawn mower and chaining the trailer to it that had once been used to carry lawn trimmings.

I don’t think they burned all the way, but I hoped they were far enough gone that I wouldn’t be getting any new and horrible diseases, or even any old and dreadful ones.

There were a dozen bottles of Chivas, still in their gift boxes, sitting in the closet. One of Gramps partners at the firm had given them to him, every year, like clockwork for Christmas. I was starting to like the fact that Gramps never seemed to use a gift. He was always an Irish whiskey man. The next two weeks, I spent drinking to fill the void. Sometimes I’d hear a banging outside, I don’t know if they smelled me, sensed me, or just happened along.

Each day I’d sit and eat my dried fish, some hard tack, and a can or two of what I had laying around. I’d found eight jars of Tang in the kitchen. Sarah had been in the habit of mixing Tang with her Vodka, though there was no Vodka. At least I wouldn’t die of scurvy.

The days started to blur even more. I’d eat when I was hungry, empty my slops bucket outside during the day when I felt it was safer, and sleep when I was tired. Sometimes I’d wonder about Gramps and Sarah, and whether they had made it. Other times I’d think about Clare and Penelope, and hope that they hadn’t. Maybe that seems harsh, but she’d never returned over half of my CD collection after all.

Eventually I dug out the Chia pets, and the Chia Herb Garden. I planted them all, and found that Chia wasn’t bad with hardtack and dried fish. I was surprised that the seeds still grew after all that time, but I suppose being sealed up in the boxes, still shrink wrapped, must have preserved them as well as a Pharaoh’s tomb.

The truck still lingered outside, and at first I thought about running. I suppose I might have, but I didn’t know where I’d run to. Gramps and Sarah were in Alaska, assuming they were still alive, and I knew I’d never make it that far. God knows where Clare was, or what she was doing. I didn’t really have any other family, or close friends. I suppose I should have been more worried about things, felt a greater sense of loss, but I didn’t.

Instead I started going through the closets again. I found the battery operated automatic shoe shiner I’d given Gramps when I was a freshman at college. It worked even better than I’d imagined, and I polished up my hiking boots and my good dress loafers. The power was out, so I could try the automated tie steamer, but I imagine it would have been grand too.

Finally, I found a picture album, the first Christmas gift I’d ever bought for Gramps out of my own money. It’d been when I was ten, and it was the finest Corinthian leather. I’d worked all summer mowing lawns to get it. This I opened and paged through. I found my entire life contained in it. From pictures of me as a baby, up through last Christmas’ photo of Clare and I holding hands at the beach. The leather was worn, and a few pages torn. I could tell that this was Gramps’ favorite Christmas present of all.

That night I sobbed, and I’m not even sure why. Each night I slept, not very soundly, with the Smith and Wesson by my side. Spring turned to summer, and then to fall. It was getting colder and I was running out of food. I began to raid the other cabins that I knew were nearby. I took odds and ends, just what I needed to survive. I found a catering truck abandoned on the highway, it read “Two Moms Catering”. The wedding cake and buffet ingredients were long since consigned to the realm of mold, but there were dozens of cans of Sterno on board. Enough to have warmed a buffet fit for several hundred people by the looks of it. I loaded them all onto the back of Gramps’ lawn trailer and hauled them back to the cabin.

That night I ate a veritable feast of crutons, dried fish, and macaroni and cheese. I even had an appetizer of canned tomato soup. Maybe it was the hot food or maybe I was going stir crazy, but I knew that I couldn’t stay where I was forever. Yet I didn’t want to leave either, I’d been at the cabin for months. I decided to wait for spring.

It was a long and hard winter, the worst in centuries. I think the cold kept the revenants at bay, it’s hard to move when your joints freeze up. Maybe this brought everyone some time, or maybe the things just started moving south. Dead or alive, Florida was probably a better place to winter.

“Today is Tuesday,” I said to myself on the first day of spring. I knew it had to be spring because I could hear the birds chirping and I saw the first dandelions sprouting.

I’d only seen three of the creatures all winter, but I saw the fourth that day. For a moment, I let myself believe that she was alive. When I first saw her at a distance, wearing BDUs and her hair flowing lose, I believed that the cavalry had arrived. A flash of a million fantasies went through my mind, salvation, romance, a happy ending. I wanted to run out and hug her. The impulse lasted only a moment. As the soldier drew closer, I could see that her uniform was torn, ragged, and in need of repair. The woman herself was in only somewhat better shape. One of her breasts hung from her torn uniform top, languidly, a chunk gone from it.

When she saw me, she moaned. I hadn’t heard one of them moan before. One boot missing, she tripped over a torn piece of concrete and fell, struggling to rise. I imagine that cold winter might have frozen and rotted her flesh even more. Before she could get up, I shot her in the face. Maybe it was anger at having my fantasy so abruptly ripped away, or maybe it was despair, but I kept shooting her until the Smith and Wesson clicked on empty.

Afterwards, I put the thick gloves back and gave her a grave. Her dog tags were gone, perhaps torn off, perhaps lost. I went through her clothes before I buried her. There was a damp pocket New Testament, the pages ruined. I laid that in her palms. Perhaps she’d been attractive once, I don’t know, death and six .38 bullets had ruined her faith. I wanted to see peace on her face, wanted at least that benediction, but there was nothing save a bloody, torn mess.

I threw the dirt over her corpse. The name tape on the uniform was missing, but there was a name written in laundry marker on the tag of her uniform slacks, it said “E. Stavros”. I pulled the tag loose and tied it to a crude wooden cross.

That night I resolved to blow my brains out unless something changed soon.

When morning came, I harvested some dandelion roots. I roasted them in a Dutch oven (which had sat unused in Gramps’ kitchen for years). If you cook them enough, they make a passable coffee substitute. Bitter, like chicory, but I had a bit of sugar left.

I sat at the kitchen table and cleaned the Smith and Wesson, oiling it. I checked the action repeatedly. It had to be perfect, every speck of dirt gone, every pull of the mechanism as smooth as it could be. When I was finished, I wiped it down with an old T-shirt. I tried to remember how long it had been since I had had a warm bath or a decent change of clean clothes. In the end, I couldn’t remember. I leveled the Smith and Wesson at the empty, quiet refrigerator and pulled the trigger, dry firing the action. The hammer fell with a satisfying click.

Removing the shells from my pocket, I took my time loading it.

I don’t know where you are or if I’ll ever see you again. The events of today have shocked and confused the world, but they’ve shocked and confused me even more. I’m still not sure if any of this is real, but you two are gone, so it must be. If I can never find you again, then I made a terrible, selfish mistake letting—no, forcing—our family to be separated. If you are safe, I hope you won’t read this until you’re eighteen or older. What happened today was terrible. That much is obvious even to young kids like you. For our family, though, it was doubly terrible, which you probably don’t know about. I don’t know how to explain it to you, or even if I should explain it. I hope to see you both someday soon, but I won’t tell you about it then. I’ll let you read this when the time is right . . . if the time is ever right again.

*

It was one of those fine early summer mornings. The winter rains had ended and the breeze brought with it mild temperatures and the faint scent of the Pacific. To Melinda, that breeze, that scent carried with it the calm pink hue of fresh salmon. The kids were still upstairs asleep. Robert, as usual, was out in the mud feeding his pigs. She cupped her large earthenware mug of Darjeeling with both palms to ward off the morning cool.

Every morning, she started her day at the CBC News homepage. This calmed her and allowed her to get the bad stuff done with early so the rest of the day would be smooth sailing. The headlines usually involved suicide bombers in the Middle East, huge icebergs floating down the Pacific coast from Alaska, East Side gang violence, missing prostitutes, or cross-boarder trade disputes. None of those stories made the headlines that morning.

“Rob!” she yelled out the kitchen window. “Rob! Come in here, quick!”

“Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire?”

“Just get your ass in here, now!”

“Awright, awright. I’m coming.”

The man clad in overalls wiped the oily, sweaty strands of a too-long comb-over back from to the top of his balding head, removed his mud-crusted rubber boots, and walked through the kitchen door.

“What’s got your panties all in a knot, woman?”

“Just have a look at this.”

“Okey doke . . . hmm . . . what in—this has to be some joke.”

“I don’t think so. Look, it’s here on the CTV site, too. And the BBC, and CNN. I checked them all.”

“What about the TV news?”

“The TV isn’t working. All the channels are just showing snow.”

“Jesus.”

“What are we going to do?”

“And they’re just popping up right out of the ground and attacking folks?”

“Yes. That’s what it says. Jesus. What are we going to do?”

“Just shut up a second! Christ, I gotta think.”

His face becoming paler and paler, Rob stood at the sink scrubbing his hands over and over as he intently surveyed the yard and pigpens.

“Robert! Would you stop thinking about your goddamned pigs for one minute! We’ve got to do something.”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me.” He spoke calmly but with thinly veiled menace. “Are the kids still asleep?”

“I think so. We’ve got to get them up.”

“No. No. Let them be for now. You lock the doors and keep an eye out. I’ll go down to the basement and get the guns.”

Melinda was locking the deadbolt on the back door when she saw her first zombie. Stumbling through the muck among the squealing pigs, the thing moved slowly towards the house.

“Robert! Get up here now. I see one.”

“Hold tight, I’m coming,” he huffed as ran up the steps from the basement three at a time. “Out of the way, I see her.”

Melinda had always felt uncomfortable with Robert’s obsession with guns and war. Every farmer needs a shotgun or two, he’d say about the guns. You can never trust those commies and our pinko government, especially with us so close to the States, he’d say to justify maintaining the stocked bomb shelter. Now, she breathed a sigh of relief as the droopy grey flesh on the dead woman’s face exploded into the air and the stumbling body fell still in the muck. She briefly wondered if the zombie had been someone she knew. Not with a bright pink skirt that short.

“Okay, Melinda. We’re okay for now. Go rouse the kids and get them in the shelter.”

While following Robert’s orders, she heard another two reports from the shotgun and hurried even more.

*

I’m sure you kids know all about the zombies by now. Hell, I’m sure you know far more about them than I do. You remember me rushing you out of bed and down into Daddy’s shelter for safety. You were still so sleepy, you didn’t really question what was going on. You probably questioned why I didn’t come with you with the RCMP that morning. A lot of things happened outside that shelter before you guys were rescued. That’s what I have to tell you about, though it’s the hardest thing to ever tell someone.

*

When she came back upstairs, Ed was again staring out the kitchen window towards the yard and pigpen. She noticed two more bodies, decayed but mostly intact, lying headless near the muddy grounds of the pigpen.

“Don’t worry, dear. We’ve got lots of ammo. None of them bitches is gonna get near us. I’ll make sure of it.”

Melinda looked quickly at the bodies in the yard and suddenly vomited into the sink. Her eye caught sight of a hand wriggling its way up through the muck. Half the flesh on the fingers had disintegrated so that only bone and tendon remained. Check that, she thought to herself, bone, tendon, and gaudy oversized rings. A series of silver bracelets rattled against each other and the boney wrist emerging from the pigpen floor. The high-pitched tinkling brought a convulsive shiver coursing through Melinda’s body and raised gooseflesh all up and down her arms.

“Here comes another one. Don’t you worry a bit,” Ed told her, waiting until the zombie had fully emerged before blasting its head off. “I told you that farmers needed guns, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

“Y-yes. You did. You were right.”

“That’s right, I was I right. Now you keep an eye out on the front of the house. I’ll stay here and cover the back. If you see anyone coming, just holler.”

By the time the first RCMP cruiser pulled up in front of the house, a total of seven headless zombie bodies littered the muck and grass out back.

“Rob! George Black is here. Thank God!”

“What’s he want?”

“He’s here to save us. What else would he be here for?”

“Well, we don’t need no saving, but okay, let him in.”

“Hi Mrs. P, Robert. You’ve heard the news, I see.”

“Yes, we have,” Rob replied, resting the butt of the shotgun on the tiled floor of the front hallway. “Come on in. What the hell is going on out there?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Some religious folks are calling it the Rapture. Suzuki and his folk are blaming climate change—maybe some bug released from one of those melting icebergs . . . but it seems to me we’re all just groping around in the dark.

My job is to keep folks safe, so that’s what I’m trying to do. We’ve been working our way around the county checking on folks. First, we start with homes close to the graveyards—that’s where the trouble is starting—and then to folks not so close. I hope you guys haven’t had much trouble all the way out here.”

“If you call seven zombies not much trouble, then no we haven’t had much,” said Melinda.

“Seven? My goodness, that’s the most I’ve heard of out in our parts. Where are they?”

“Just out back here. Luckily, Rob keeps a shotgun around and took care of them. See?”

“Well done, Robert. Well done, indeed.”

“Just protecting my family. Anyone woulda done the same.”

“ . . . five . . . six . . . sure enough, there’s seven of them. Uh-oh, looky there. Here comes number eight. Now where’d you come from, poor thing.”

“Don’t worry, I got her,” Rob said.

“Nope. Not this one. Let me do my job here, Robert.” Constable Black unholstered his sidearm and fired two shots at the zombie. The first entered her sheer black halter top, producing a hollow popping sound. When the zombie continued forward, he aimed more closely and sent shocks of half-blond half-black hair across the yard as the skull shattered.

“Now that’s odd,” the policeman spoke slowly. “All of these corpses are female . . . young females from the looks of it. Where could they be coming from?”

“Robert! What are you doing?” Melinda screamed too late.

The back of Constable George Black’s head had disappeared through the open kitchen window in a blast from the farmer’s shotgun.

Melinda fell to the floor behind the table, crying and repeating, “What did you do? What did you do? What did you do?”

“You shut your mouth you stupid bitch. We don’t have time for crying now. Get up! GET UP! Now calm down. We gotta get rid of this body and the car.

“What did you do? Why—”

CRACK! Robert smacked her across the jaw, leaving a large red hand print. “Listen to me and listen good. You’re going to go down to the basement and get the spade. Also, grab another box of shotgun shells—you know what they look like. We’re going to bury him out there. Let the pigs unbury him if they ain’t too scared today. I’m taking his keys and I’m gonna move the car around behind the barn. I have the shotgun and this .38 in case any of those bitches get in my way. Do you understand? Do . . . you . . . understand? Nod if you understand!”

Melinda nodded.

“Okay then. Get to it! Go go go!”

*

That morning, I’d found out some very sad and disturbing news about your father. So, when the police came to save us—to take us away to safety, I had to stay behind to help your father. I don’t know if you remember the trouble then or not. The police really wanted to take us all to safety, but I couldn’t let them. Your father and I had some issues to deal with. I’m not proud of all my actions that day. That’s something you’re going to have to come to grips with as you grow up—being an adult doesn’t mean you always know what to do, or that you always make the right choices. Eventually, I convinced the police to take you two from the house and leave your father and I behind. I hope they took good care of you.

*

Melinda stumbled her way down the wooden stairs to the basement. The spade was hanging on the wall, suspended on two old nails. She began shuffling through the boxes on Rob’s workbench. She found the shells for the shotgun and something else. She remained in the basement for some time, unable to stop looking through the contents of this other box.

“Melinda! Get up here now. Bring the spade for Christ’s sake.”

Robert was staring out the kitchen window when she reached the top of the stairs.

“There’s another one out there. Just give me a second,” he spoke, raising the barrel of the gun to his line of sight.

*

“Awake? Robert? Wake up, Rob. Good. Take a minute, look around, get your bearings. That’s right, you’re still in the kitchen. You’re still alive. You can’t move, no. You can’t speak, no. I tied you up. That’s right, I did it. I found what was in your little goodie box downstairs. You fucking pig!” Melinda finally broke down and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. With the adrenaline running through her veins, she left large purple hand-shaped welt.

“Oh, no you don’t. Wake back up, you sick bastard. You’re going to be awake for this. I don’t know who you are anymore, or who I am, or what anything is while we’re at it . . . but I know you’re going to be awake to witness all this. Let’s see, you killed seven this morning. There’s one out there right now. How many more are going to show up, huh? Judging from those pantyhose in that box, there will be at least a dozen more. A dozen you sick fuck!” She wound up for another slap, but suddenly stopped herself. From out front came the sound of a car engine idling and a door being shut. She grabbed the shotgun and ran to the front door.

“There’s one out back right now,” she yelled to the RCMP officers slowly approaching the front door. “Come on in.”

“Sure thing, ma’am. We’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. Just have a look out there.”

The two officers, a man and a woman, rushed into the kitchen and immediately saw Robert, gagged and tied up to a wooden chair with an assortment of mismatched torn pantyhose.

“What’s going on here?” the female officer asked, turning around and seeing Melinda with shotgun raised towards them.

“Listen carefully to me, okay? I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to take my kids, but I’m staying here with Robert and you’re going to leave us.”

“Okay, okay, calm down now,” the male officer spoke. “We can’t just leave you two out here.”

“Oh, yes you can, and you’re going to. But you’re going to make sure my kids are safe first.”

“Where are your kids, ma’am?” asked the female officer.

There was a sudden bang at the back door as a zombie wearing black lycra tights hit the door and began scratching.

“The kids are downstairs in a shelter. They’re safe, but they don’t know anything about what’s going on here.”

“And just what is going on here, ma’am?” the male officer asked.

“You’re the cops. You tell me.”

“We know what’s going on out there,” he replied. “But you’ll have to tell us what’s going on in here.”

“On any other day, you’d be as happy as hell with what I’m going to show you. It would make your careers. Look out in the yard and tell me what you see.”

“Okay. I see—what—seven headless zombie corpses?” he said.

“Look closer. What else do you notice?”

“My goodness, Tom. They’re all women, and look at what they’re wearing,” the female officer added.

“My God. We’ve been looking for them for years. This is huge. Zombies or not, this is fucking huge,” Tom said. “We’ve got to take him in.”

“No you don’t,” Melinda said. “You’ve got bigger things to take care of, including my kids. I’ll handle him.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let—” Tom began.

“Yes, we can Tom,” the female officer said. “We sure can.”

“But, this is—”

“I know who this is. I know damn well who this is. On any other day, we could be heroes for bringing him in. Today, we’ll be heroes for leaving him and bringing in others. That’s right, isn’t it, ma’am? He won’t be a problem for anyone much longer, right?”

“You got that right,” Melinda said.

The three stood silently in the kitchen for some time. Tom, constantly surveying the scene finally rested his eyes on the man gagged and tied up with old pantyhose. “Where did you say your kids were, ma’am?” he asked finally.

“They’re downstairs in the shelter. Bring them out through the living room, please. They don’t need to see this.”

“Okay, ma’am. We’ll do that. Now, what about you?”

“I’m going to stay here.”

“I understand. Do you want us to come back?”

“I really don’t know what to say. You’ve got a lot of work to do out there. I’ve got my work here. If you can, come back tomorrow, but I won’t hold you to it.”

“Alright, ma’am,” said the female officer. “Good luck.”

*

What happened that day was terrible for the world and terrible for our family. I hate to have to tell you this, but your father died that day. He kept a secret from us for a long time. You see, your father was a very sick man. I stayed behind to take care of him. I guess the best way to tell you is just to tell you: your father had a brain tumor. When the zombies first came out of the ground, the shock of the news just killed him. You have to understand that I had to stay behind to bury him—to make sure that he would never become a zombie himself. It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. But, it’s all done now, so we can rest at peace, at least a little. I pray that I’ll see you tomorrow, but I don’t know what will happen to me, or especially to you kids, which is the scariest thing a parent can face.

Love always,

Mom

*

Later that night—she waited until at least ten luridly clothed women crowded the back door. She pulled Rob’s chair over in front of the door, ignoring the man’s struggles and the deep scratches the chair legs left in the linoleum. Gun cocked in one arm, she pulled open the door and fled to the shelter down the stairs.

THE END

END

—–

Brian Rosenberger was last seen in the company of Sushi, a featured dancer at Innsmouth’s infamous Thrills and Gills Gentleman’s Club. Prior to that, his writings appeared or will be appearing in Cthulhu Sex Magazine, Erotic Tales V. 2, Blackest Death V. 3, Twisted Cat Tales and more. He also authored the chapbook Poems that Go SPLAT. Updates concerning his current whereabouts can be found at home.earthlink.net/~brosenberger.

Those words haunt me even today, I mean, as if anything could haunt me worse than watching Zack annihilate city after city, and town after town. I can’t get over the feeling of when it actually hit me. When the infected were already in the adjacent towns, the whole thing really slammed the bolt home. We’d get to thinking every so often, the both of us, about how the whole thing started. If we were informed of what this thing was earlier, then we probably could have controlled it. It’s not as if it was fucking airborne, they had to bite you, and they moved slower than dog shit melting the sun. Instead of being told that it was a form of rabies, it would have been great to know how to kill them. Most of us had to figure that out on own accords.

Paul and I were in the shit nonstop from when it all began until World War Z ended. We managed to observe the 1^st Norfolk Militia in southwestern Pennsylvania about four weeks after the infection spread from DC into Alexandria, Virginia, eventually routing their men north of the border. We had been humping across the mountainous areas of the Appalachians for a while when we saw them. It was a patrol slaughtering a group of Quisling nut-jobs getting devoured by their undead counterparts. I would have to say that despite the fact we were seeing a group of people taking charge and killing the infected, we were both apprehensive about making contact with them. Seeing as the first Quislings were popping up everywhere and these were still in the early days of the outbreak; it was somewhat like a totally paranoid anarchy. I was expecting to receive a bullet to the face if we approached them outright, even with my rucksack full of ammunition carrying an M1 Carbine, and Paul with his Ruger .22 from Wal-Mart.

When their gunshots had finally stopped, I stood up from the prone and announced our names and purpose. I do look back on this and laugh a little, because it felt as if I was trying to communicate with aliens at first. From their five-ton truck, they dispatched a group to escort us back to the vehicle, and check us for bites. Paul and I had done a great job at avoiding Zack back in those days. The only time we fired our rifles was if we absolutely had to. We knew after watching wave after wave storm in on screaming people, that sound was definitely not something you wanted to make, especially if you were looking to survive longer than a day. Hell, I remember one evening just before nightfall we couldn’t find any suitable houses to occupy, so we got up on the roof this old Victorian place. The house was still in decent condition from what I could see in glow of the sunset. The inside had been torn to pieces though, and probably in the due course of the initial panic.

We had run into a few deserted Mom and Pop hardware stores along the way while we were foraging for more of our necessary supplies, and managed to pick up a box of thick nails, a decent hammer, and some sturdy nylon rope used for towing light stuff with lawn tractors. I don’t know why we got those things, but it looked like something we might need later. Maybe we thought we could board up a house or something; it beats me to be honest.

We used what we had and nailed a length of rope to the roof, and used more rope to secure our equipment and ourselves to the makeshift anchor. We slept against the relentless distant moaning of Zack atop the roof that night. The air and sky was full of smoke from the burning cities, so the stars and moon were masked in our area. With the exception of the occasional white flash cascading across the dim clouds, and the eventual thud that followed it, the power was out and we couldn’t see two feet in front of us. Zack was on to us all right, we knew that for a fact. We could both hear a few of them moaning desperately down below, and this made me wonder if they could just smell us up here, or if maybe the hammer falls for the anchor gave away our position. I can’t be entirely sure of which.

When my eyes opened the following morning, I swear it was as if the whole region had already been infected. It seemed like hundreds had flocked to stand below us in the morning rays of the summer sun, with hands grabbing at the sky, and mouths wide open. It made me think of those Pentecostal churchgoers from back in the day, only these ones were hell bound, and wanted nothing more than to eat us alive. I can’t say I wasn’t shocked because most likely I was, but I suppose in retrospect I had almost expected something like this to occur sooner or later. I shook Paul awake, and told him not to look down. Though by the time I had finished my sentence, he was already peering over the edge of the roof into an abyss of the undead. The tether around his waist and legs pulled tight against him, and if he had not been wearing it, he probably could have fallen off. I can understand that, I mean I was somewhat weak in the knees when I first saw it too.

He shot back with surprised gasp after a few moments, as his brain took a long look at what he just saw, and had to take it all in before he could react. I can remember him looking like he was about to throw up the contents of his stomach. It took me a second to try to calm myself down. I think I was almost panting with fright at the time once everything had registered with me too. Eventually I stopped, and this allowed me time to try to calm him down as well. We still had enough food and water in our supplies to last another week, so I assured him that we were going to make it out of this fucked up situation. This was definitely around the time that we realized we could hear rustling below from inside the house. I will never know exactly how many were in there, because neither of us wanted to find out. I can only imagine the scores of them aimlessly wondering right beneath us, probably in the same awkward hands-held-high position as their friends outside. Personally, I don’t think to think about it. When you’re that close to them, the images can get burned into the back of your mind; as if your eyes were a big screen projector left on the same picture for too long.

This was when we realized that the infestation had grown out of the scope of controlling it. He said to me on many occasions in the weeks before finding the militia that he wasn’t sure we were going to survive. At times, I had found myself agreeing with him, but I would always tell him that if we’re going to go down, we were going down with a fight, guns-a-blazing, as I liked to put it to him. Anyway, the rope that we took earlier in the week ended up saving our lives as you can see, because Zack’s stupid ass was only out in front of the house. There were a few stragglers in the distance to the rear when we came down off the roof, at least half a mile away, probably coming over to join in the festivities.

Back then, they still looked semi-normal before all of the eventual walking decomposition started to set in, and sometimes we would find ourselves feeling sorry for them in the beginning. Of course, that is if you could get past the glassy grey eyes, pale bloodless skin, stained clothing, and the non-stop moaning; they could have been your neighbors about two months before that point. It was times like that we really had to stop and look at what they really were. It was hard sometimes, but the best way of looking at it for us was, at least we’re not the Quislings. I always thought they deserved to be shot anyway, and a lot of the time, we couldn’t tell if they were actually infected, so they’d get a bullet to forehead just like the rest of ‘em. We’d take bets every so often in the heat of the battles that came later on, despite the fear, we’d be laughing our sick bellows, our faces covered in carbon residue from the rifle chambers, and wondering about which ones were the Quislings. Only in the latter half of the war did we start rule out thinking the Quislings could even still exist. Zack attacked them regardless of their mentally retarded disposition trying to act like the real deal, so by the end of everything I think the Quislings were just as extinct as the zombies themselves were.

In the 1^st Norfolk, “No Prisoners” militia the setting truly did resemble the Regular Army. We wore woodland BDUs, the chow lines were long, the food tasted like cardboard sometimes, and people still occasionally acted like morons despite our situation. We used the same rank system as the Army too, although people gained rank due to corrupt leadership a lot of the time. Everybody in 2^nd Squad knew it, but there was nowhere else for us to go, so we just dealt with it. Occasionally we would lose an officer to a bite, or a First Sergeant, and that meant someone needed to be put into that position to fill the slot. The both of us started our undead extermination careers as Privates, and inherently so. Some years later, we had our own squads, and we both watched many of our friends get bit, and sometimes we were the ones to finish them.

Paul and I had a game that we played sometimes in the unit once we were settled in. We called it “First to Forty”, and whoever could shoot forty of Zack would get a little extra sleep the next morning. In other words, you had no guard shift during the night. It never really made much of a difference who won anyway. Hell, because after a while Zack would come to you in your dreams, and the recurring nightmares were never a highlight of my nightlife. The longer you were asleep it seemed, the worse some of the dreams would get, so if you won the game it wasn’t exactly your lucky day more often than not. One time this person John Collins, a tall administrative assistant from Fairfax, Virginia won and he told us to go fuck ourselves. I let out a bit of real laughter to that one, not the battle laughter I was talking about earlier. Jokes were not as funny as they used to be back in those days, because laughter usually leads to Zack creeping up on you in the middle of the night, so jokes were rather forbidden in the beginning. Silence wasn’t bliss in the night, but it was the best we could do to keep down the night attacks.

When we were not fighting off the masses of undead, we were stacking them into gruesome barricading walls, on each side of our twenty-five foot tall wooden palisade built around the original missile silo structure our command center was based. For a bunch of backwoods people, I was surprised to see the marvel of engineering that went into the design we had setup. The silo, having been abandoned by the US Army back in the early 90’s, or at least that’s what the higher ups said, was surrounded by a wooded area with maybe three-hundred meters of open land in each direction. To our luck, an existing three layer chain-linked fence with razor wire lined the perimeter and was still intact. It provided some protection from the hordes in the beginning. This little bit of help gave us the ability to send out detachments to deforest portions of the area, in which the logs later became our inner perimeter fortress walls.

The deforesting teams were only dispatched outside of the fort during daylight conditions. When the rest of the companies were keeping Zack busy on the other side of the compound, was usually the best time. We did lose many of our men on those details over the years, but once the construction of the palisade was completed, everything was all right for the most part. At least you didn’t have to worry about being selected to go “outside” to chop down massive oak trees. The methods they used to get the wood back into the place were a completely different deal, and I had nothing to do with it. They had taken some old construction equipment from somewhere in town and made it all come together. Of course, they had to spend time using our slim resources, welding plates on to the frames of the huge vehicles so that they could not be attacked outright. That was smart on our part, because those machines were crawling with undead fucks by the time they made it back into the perimeter.

For about six months during my third tour, I spent my time in the supply section. The unit had taken in so many refugees and trained them to fight, that we were running a little thin on rifles for a while. It was my job to go outside of the perimeter with a medium sized detachment from 1^st Platoon and 2^nd Platoons of Alpha Company to go into surrounding towns to gather non-perishable food items, medicines, gasoline for the generators, weapons, and ammunition. The systems worked like this. At the inner palisade, there were two sets of massive thick wooden doors to pass through to get to the outer perimeter. Guard towers were at the main gate section, and were powered by some strange motorized contraption one of the engineers devised. If the motors failed, the contingency was that the guards could still close the doors by hand from the mid-level of the tower by pulling on a set of large wooden beams. The beams were connected to the center mass of the door, and were on rollers to there was as little resistance as possible.

The hinges were special, so the outer perimeter doors swung very quickly outward, and only to the width of our biggest trucks, maybe give or take a few feet. This way, the moment the trucks passed through, the doors could be closed with a minimal amount of the infected getting in. A gun team in either guard tower would kill off the ones that managed to squeeze by the vehicles. On the return trips, we would use our CB radios to notify the teams that we were inbound, and they would be waiting to open the doors back up for us. Usually on the way back in, Zack would be plowed through by the trucks and get into the perimeter; however, it really wasn’t much of a big deal, because most of them were liquefied on impact anyway.

The surrounding cities were infested pretty badly in some parts, so we had maps with us showing the areas that were heavily populated with the undead. Sometimes the intelligence would be wrong, and we would have to haul ass to another town with the Zacks hot on our shit. There were more than a few times we were almost overrun on missions. Paul requested to ride along with me on the mission. I remember it was into the heart of Leechburg. Everything was going as planned, and we met very little resistance from Zack on the way out there. We were all off the trucks getting supplies when the security teams started to report movement from all directions. Our first stop had been the Lucky Shot gun store, which to our amazement hadn’t been looted by anyone previously. It seemed kind of odd altogether, especially given the zombie infestation and all, but I suppose it was our lucky day; pun very intended.

I remember that by this time we had fully automatic weapons, because some self-proclaimed geniuses with rifles or more like eccentric ex-Special Forces types would spend time modifying our weaponry to be more effective. AR-15 rifles and civilian versions of the M4A1 were their favorite ones to tinker with if I recall. There were plenty of them in PA it seemed, and were common to find once you got past the infected hordes.

The CB radio on my chest clip was going wild with chatter as I was filling our big plastic totes with boxes of bullets. Range reports were coming in from 1^st, and 2^nd squads at less than six-hundred meters. 3^rd and Weapons squad were reporting multiple flocks in the distance east of our position at about eight-hundred meters. Considering the speed that Zack trudges along at, it really doesn’t matter until they get within two-hundred fifty meters; then it’s time to book it out of there. What we didn’t know is that a separate flock of more than three-hundred was coming at us through the town’s alleyways from a few blocks over. 1^st squad spotted them and began frantically requesting permission to fall back. I heard Sergeant Billings’ from 2^nd come over the CB authorizing the order.

By the time our foraging teams gathered up as much as they could from various places on the block of Morgan Street, the infected were on top of us in full force. We lost an entire squad that day, because as 1^st was retreating into the path of the oncoming flock. They didn’t realize that what they saw was only the back end of it all, because the road leading to the trucks was curved; the fuckers were waiting for them when they came into the bend. The rest of the elements managed to make it back without too much skirmishing. Some of the men were shouting to 1^st squad as they watched them get torn apart. From the back of the trucks I’m sure to them it was like watching a horrific real-life movie that got smaller and smaller until it faded out of sight. I’m not saying that we didn’t lose a lot of good men that day, but we all knew the risks that went along with the supply missions.

You just had to assume, as most of us did anyway that if you were overrun, there was no chance of being rescued. The unit doesn’t like to send its detachments into the same stretch of area any more than three times a month. That’s once a week or so, and if you think you’re going to survive out there for that long with Zack breaking down your door, you’re dead fucking wrong. The plan we had for any such occasion was to kill as many as you could, then turn your rifle on yourself before they got to you. At the very least, this way, you wouldn’t become one of them. I suppose in some kind of grim way it was the honorable thing to do. If you became Zack, then you were just another mindless zombie the unit would eventually have to fight off, so you’d really be doing it out of respect more than anything would.

Missions were never expected to succeed outside of the palisade, so even if you came home with less than half of what you left with, you still came out on top. The infected were everywhere, and it was only a matter of chance a mission lead to anything other than total failure. On many other occasions, some teams were never as lucky we were. Men that I had known since Paul and I had enlisted were killed off on these supply detachments all the time, well after I was taken off the ready list and switched to the roving perimeter guard element. Eventually after this, we both stopped making friends and just concentrated on the job at hand. We found that it wasn’t as hard to deal with the loss of our men whenever they got bitten if we didn’t care about them in the first place.

The worst thing that I saw the men do was become complacent with their surroundings. Some of them would go right up to the outer perimeter line and talk shit to the zombies. I don’t think we ever lost anyone that way, but just because they were willing to stand face to face with them, spit on them, and occasionally waste a few of them for fun, as they used to say it, often made me feel sick. If I saw it though, I would tear into their asses for doing it, because the last thing we need is people who are comfortable being surrounded by hungry dead people. I remember that we did lose a person who flung himself right into a flock outside the gates from the guard tower. Why he did it, we’ll never know. He left his weapon and ammo behind on the floor before he Zacked himself. I suppose that his idea of suicide was different from the rest of ours, but at least he did the honorable thing by leaving his rifle for another able body.

Life inside the palisade reminded me of seeing pictures of old world civilizations. In the beginning, before all of the refugees poured into the gates we didn’t have very many women. I’d say that our numbers were substantial toward the end of the war. You would think that rape would have happened more often than it did, because the man to woman ratio was still awfully skewed. I mean, the rule was if you committed murder, rape, or any like acts we would throw your ass over the walls so you could get eaten alive. For the most part this deterred the men from getting stupid, but someone always has to be that guy. When our interesting version of the Military Police caught Private Adler with Maria Lanning’s fourteen year old daughter Trisha, after some of the townspeople (which is what they pretty much were) heard screaming from inside one of our little tents, he was less than enthused.

Adler was crying for forgiveness, pleading with the MPs in an incoherent blather. Justice was swift inside the fort, because within a few hours after Trisha testified to Colonel Everett that Adler had raped her, his ass was over the wall. I remember hearing him scream blood murder, especially when he was in mid-air. You could hear his hollering for a mile, which wasn’t so great, because later on that day we had one of the worst firefights in our history go down. From that point on, any subsequent offenders had their mouths taped shut and their arms tied behind their backs before they were tossed. This definitely cut down the repercussions having a screaming maniac outside the wall can cause. Shit, even if it’s a few minutes, it’s still enough to get the attention of every infected fuck in a four-hundred meter radius.

When the Army showed up on our doorstep near the end, people didn’t really know what to think. For the past however long we all kind of lived in our little society, doing what we had to do, living our lives hour by hour. The Army seemed kind of like a relief, because at least they had machine-guns, tanks, and a lot of food. If they hadn’t offered rations outright, I’m sure most of the townspeople would have been rather pissed off, however the Army did is right when they came to us. In some way, they didn’t rescue us, because in another way it seemed like all they did was help us wipe out the Zacks faster than ever before. For the most part, after years of supply parties being sent out further and further, our ammunition, food, and medical supplies weren’t top-notch, but we had plenty of everything we needed.

For ten and a half long years, Paul and I served side-by-side, waging what felt like an endless war against Zack. I’m sure that it was endless to just about everybody anyway, even after the declaration of victory in the states. It still felt like the war was raging along even though it had finally ended. We continued to serve in the 1^st by patrolling the car-laden streets with grabbers and our surrounding bodies of water. Occasionally Water Zacks, at least that’s what we call them, would show up on the banks of the Crooked Creek trying to gnaw on some poor kid’s ankles when they’re trying to fetch wash water for their family. Sometimes we still get dispatches from the local CDC Outbreak Prevention Center in Old Ford City. My blood runs cold when those calls come in, because it reminds me of when it all started. It still feels like it will never be over, even though it essentially is, but at least we do a good job disposing of them. We have to be on the money with that kind of stuff, I mean, who wouldn’t be? Do you think I want to go through all of that shit over again? I don’t think anyone does; and I have my doubts that WWZ II is on anyone’s Christmas wish list.

One of the biggest problems I have had since everything has calmed down a little, and the paranoia around me isn’t as great; is the thought of my family. I know haven’t mentioned them all throughout this account, because I have a tendency to forget that they even existed in the first place. I don’t know, the memories come and go. I don’t even have a picture of them to remind me of what they looked like. When the outbreaks started the panic was so widespread, and so immediate, that the phone relay systems were reserved for military, local law enforcement, and emergency calls. The cell phone providers were so bogged down back then that it was pointless. So essentially, because I was staying with Paul in northern Maryland at the time, I saw no reason to risk everything to try to round them up. I guess I figured that everything would pan out for the best, and there was no reason to go crazy about the outbreak. After all, it was so far away, and it didn’t seem real when it went down.

My family lived in Baltimore, which turned into a Zack factory in less than two months after the first reported cases in the state. I really just assume that they were turned before they knew what these things really were. The panic was widespread, but I have a feeling they tried to make a stand against the things. The city fell rather quickly and I haven’t been back to Maryland in thirteen years. I miss them, but I can’t let it destroy me, because a lot of people just like me were put into the same situation so long ago. I go to the “MemorieZ” talk group here once a week in the city to talk about all of this shit, but the best coping mechanism so far is telling myself that its okay that I made it through, and they did not. You can’t live your life dwelling on the past.

Also, one last thing before I have to go to my evening formation. Since the war ended, our original numbers have dramatically decreased. Most of the vets decided to settle down after the war, but right now Paul’s on deployment in Virginia doing sweep and burial detail. The National Guard has recognized us as full unit of the United States Army, and we are getting new men every day that want to help with the cleanup efforts and about 35% of the main body consists of them now. I will probably be joining him down there in a few weeks. When you contacted me, I got permission from Colonel Everett to stick around up here so that I could tell you about my experiences. Sometimes I think it’s important that people get a good taste of history from all walks of life. If the kids being born today aren’t going to know what a CD player is, they might as well be taught why they don’t.