Beyond the Barriers

No one plans for the end of the world. They talk about it. They stock up on supplies. They practice what to do, where to hide, and what to eat. They build shelters and participate in drills. They draw escape routes, keep extra batteries, and gallons of water on hand.

They plan for earthquakes, meteors, volcanoes, and nuclear strikes. But no one guessed the true way humanity would come to an end.

Then it happened.

I had been watching the news compulsively for three or four days before it happened. I watched the stupid television so much that it put me off shopping until it was almost too late.

It was the weekend, and I called in sick on Friday so I could stay home and follow the developing madness on the TV. The media made a point of saying that people weren’t going to work. I was one of them, content to be somewhere safe while civilization fell apart.

I was low on goods, like fresh meat and vegetables. The bottom drawer in my freezer was filled with crumbs from some chicken crap that spilled out a few months ago. Smelled too. That freezer burn reek that never really goes away no matter how many times you clean the damn thing.

I dug out a half pound of ground chuck and tossed it in the microwave to defrost. Half an hour later, I remembered it was done, and formed a half-ass hamburger out of the meat and fried it in butter. An egg and ketchup went on top. Bon appetite. Enjoy the food, because it may be your last meal, was my only thought as I ate like an automaton.

I could have become a survival nut—boarded up the place, set up guns by each window on the second floor. That way, if one of those things, or my ex-wife’s boyfriend, showed up, I could blow their heads off. That would be a fine sight. Allison returns to beg for help from her former military husband, and I start taking pot shots at them. Maybe I could grow a long scraggly beard and run around in my underwear, shouting about the end of the world. Now that would be a funny sight. Sure to keep the scavengers away for a few days.

I’ll never forget the day she left. She took her shit and left a big hole in my chest where my heart used to be. “Erik,” she tried to reason, “it’s not you. There is something wrong with me. Something that all the counseling in the world can’t fix.”

In the end, I tossed her bags on the sidewalk, took her keys, and removed the one that opened the deadbolts on the house. Then I threw them in front of the car.

Her new guy just sat there like a lump. He had on sunglasses and refused to look at me, no matter how long I stared. She had to load her stuff in the back of his beat-up Volvo, and then he puttered away from my now-lonely house on a stream of exhaust.

I crouched a few feet from the little, flat-panel TV I picked up at one of those Christmas sales and chewed the food, barely tasting the lump of greasy meat. I’m sure it was great, but I didn’t taste a single bite.

CNN had a live crew in Portland, and they were following a pair of the dead things around like paparazzi. It was silly, yet I couldn’t look away from the TV. I should have changed the channel to see if there were some better coverage of the event, but I let it roll as a pretty reporter in high heels followed the dead things, with her cameraman close behind. In the distance, a pair of camouflaged trucks rolled by, filled with men who had large guns in hand. It was so reassuring to see them on the scene that I almost cheered, like my team was winning a sporting event.

Then the camera panned back to the reporter as she approached one of the dead that stumbled around like a kid in shock. The dead guy’s arms hung at his side, and his head was cocked to the left like he had a terrible neck pain and couldn’t straighten up. The back of his head was drenched in blood, and he was missing part of his side. I could see ribs showing under the ripped shirt where the skin was torn away.

A flashing message on the bottom of the screen advised ‘viewer discretion.’ The video should not be watched by young people. No one should watch this stuff. No one in his or her right damn mind. But watch it I did.

Another of the dead came out of the space between two buildings—a little alley that was littered with torn trash bags. Discarded objects lay in piles over which the dead woman stumbled, falling to one knee then rising again on shaky legs. A normal person would have grabbed her appendage in pain, winced or sworn, but this thing just got up and came on. I could see where the skin was broken from when she hit the ground. A fresh stream of blood ran down her pantyhose-covered leg and onto her expensive-looking shoes. She had a blonde bob, and was probably a looker earlier in her day. Now she was missing most of her bottom jaw, and one arm hung by sinew and strips of flesh at her side.

It was like a movie, and I wondered for the hundredth time if I were just seeing some crazy prank put on by my friends. I wanted to run up and down the street and find those responsible and beat them to a pulp. I had seen a ton of zombie movies, and they were, for the most part, enjoyable but unrealistic. At least that was my opinion up until then; now it had changed dramatically. I wanted nothing more than to go back and watch those films, knowing they were BS, and make all this real stuff go away.

The reporter was so focused on following the dead man that she missed the woman coming out of the alley. The reporter had perfect hair and a face made for television. She was tall and lean, and I could pretty much watch her talk about stuff all day. Then the undead bitch closed in on her, looped one arm around her neck, and tried to bite her shoulder.

The reporter recoiled in horror, stumbled, and, in a half-professional move, dropped one knee and flipped the girl over her back, onto the hard pavement. It was a beauty of a throw, and I heard the cameraman gasp. She didn’t look much like a fighter, but that move was perfect. She fell back, landed on her ass, and then stared at the thing at her feet. She scrambled back as it came to its feet again, slowly, like a drunk getting up from a bender.

That’s when the cameraman started shouting for help and the view went shaky. He said some words that would have the FCC calling in the morning, and then the screen was filled with sky as he apparently fell down. There was movement all around as a swarm of the things descended on him. The noise that came out of the speakers horrified me. The guy tried to scream, but either his mouth was covered with something or, even more disturbing, the attackers were tearing his face apart. The noise of skin being ripped off was the worst, and it sent me cowering deep into the couch. I wanted to run to the toilet and throw up, but I stayed glued to the TV. It was almost as bad as the day the twin towers fell.

“They are everywhere!” the reporter yelled as she ran.

The camera fell over, and the screen came to a jarring sideways stop against the ground. The last image was the reporter running by with a couple of the things in pursuit. The cameraman’s arm plopped down limply by the screen. One of the dead things dropped beside it and clamped teeth on the exposed arm. With a jerk, it tore out a chunk of skin.

Then the screen went blank, and the shocked faces of the newscasters came on. After a few seconds of stuttering, trying to explain what we had just seen, the speakers crackled and the emergency broadcast signal came on, but there was no message.

I jumped to a local channel, and they were talking about the infection, or whatever it was, in calm voices. They made it seem like everything was under control, but if people saw what I just saw on CNN, they knew how serious this was. Portland overrun with the dead.

I didn’t even want to think the word let alone say it aloud, but I did anyway. It just slipped out.

“Zombies.” It was absolutely ridiculous, but there it was. The dead were rising and attacking people.

I took a breath and went back to the fridge for a Coke. There was a fresh six pack in the back, and it was ice cold. I popped one open and guzzled half of it in one shot. I felt unsteady as I looked toward the ceiling while the sugary bubbles slid down my throat. It reminded me too much of the camera’s view just before it fell on its side and the reporter ran off.

I took stock of my pantry. My weekly trip to the store should have been a few days ago, but the crazy stuff on the news kept me indoors. I wished now I had gone when the shit started to hit the fan, but it was no used getting worked up over it now.

I went to the front of the house and looked outside. It was picture perfect, calm, bright and clear. There were no cadavers walking around. But that was where the normal ended and the weird began.

The neighbors at the end of the little street were packing everything they owned into a car. Two children came outside with tearstained faces. The boy sobbed when his father took a big box of toys and threw them back at the house like they were trash.

I felt for the kid, but his father was just being practical. To a little one like that, maybe six or seven years old, he must have seemed like a monster. He spun around, picked up his boy and hugged him tight, while he whispered in his ear. His shirt rode up, and he had a big automatic pistol in the band of his pants.

Why did I ever give up my guns?

That gave me an idea, but indecision gnawed at my gut like I’d eaten some bad shrimp. I decided to get a feel for what was going on out there, so I grabbed my keys and walked to the living room, across our light-brown, hardwood floors. We spent a couple of weekends putting those things in, Allison and I. We worked hard, and when we were done each day, we took a shower together and made love like normal couples were supposed to. I didn’t know she was screwing that guy from work at the time, or maybe the affair hadn’t even started back then. It doesn’t matter now, I guess. What’s done is done.

I grabbed my shoes, sighed, and went back to watch more TV. It was comforting to have them on, just in case the things arrived. I didn’t really expect to see the dead here. I mean, we were pretty far off the beaten path in our little town of Vesper Lake.

The reporters went on, looking at each other in disbelief as each story was told. It was the same on every channel I turned to, as I spent several minutes trying to tie my shoes. Just a pair of old sneakers, but I kept pausing to watch the incredible images on the screen.

I came across a news chopper in the air over Portland. It was obvious events had gotten much worse. It was almost like a riot in the streets, and there were people running everywhere. The man in the chopper was talking into his mic about the level of hysteria, advising people to stay inside.

I had seen enough. I marched to the door, locked it behind me, and jumped in my Honda SUV.

The sky didn’t have a hint of cloud; it was as unusual for a late October day as you can get. I wore a light jacket to take advantage of the unseasonable warmth. I was pretty sure rain was on the way tomorrow, but when you live here, you just get used to it. I backed out of my driveway, my gaze on the pristine front lawn with its deep, green grass, plants in the front, including two shades of rhododendron right next to each other. They looked like they were about to call it a day for the next six months. The other plants were pretty well soaked from a recent deluge of rain, and hung limply as if they had given up.

My house was a little two-story—not the brick sort you see on TV on a perfect day, with a perfect family inside. It was white, an off-shade, and it had light blue trim, which Allison made me put on after we moved in. I remembered standing on a ladder, eight or nine feet off the ground, while I ran the brush back and forth. She would come out from cleaning the inside and check on the status, like a general inspecting her army. It was a hot day and she brought me lemonade, fresh squeezed from organic lemons, because the advertisers told her organic was that much better for you.

I couldn’t tell the difference, and now that she was gone, I just bought whatever was on sale.

I drove through my neighborhood and saw curtains pulled back, and faces hidden in shadow watching as I drove away. I thought I saw a wave from one house, so I waved back. The streets here were calm and quiet, which was eerie, because a day like this should have seen children playing in the streets, people walking dogs, taking their babies places.

I made it to the main street, navigating through smaller side streets—going the “back way,” as I liked to call it. This dumped me out on a main drag called Arthur Road, which would take me to the almost-highway numbered 322. That drag was old and always jammed with cars. The City of Vesper Lake sprang up over the course of twenty years, and the roads were never designed to support that much traffic. Housing developments like mine became all the rage as prices near downtown Portland went nowhere but up.

It was stop and go as I competed with other cars at the lights. I managed to maneuver behind a lifted truck. It flashed its lights and honked at me, but I didn’t care. I then took off like a shot at the light and got around a few more cars before arriving at my destination.

The parking lot was a nightmare, so I pulled up in front of the store, made a spot out of the loading zone, jumped out, and locked my car with a click of the button on my key. I had a baseball hat on backwards, and I guess the look on my face, which was probably determined, kept shoppers from saying anything to me about my choice of parking spaces.

I walked in like I owned the place. A/C blew down from giant units above the entrance, creating a wall of cold to keep the day at bay every time the automatic door slid open. A security guard was keeping an eye on nervous-looking shoppers who stood in an orderly line. I didn’t stop when he approached me. He was big, not as big as me, but he was overweight, and his forehead was covered in sweat.

“Sir, I can’t let you skip ahead like that.” But I ignored him and kept moving. The line of people behind me disintegrated as the folks who had been patient saw me take control. Making people wait in line while the world fell apart made no sense. They should have been packing people in here, getting the last of the money while they could.

The guard ran back, with his hands outstretched on either side, and yelled at them to get back in line, but they ignored his calls and streamed around him like a school of fish breaking up around a large predator. I moved past a couple that were filling their cart with fresh fruit and vegetables. The wife was inspecting each one like they were shopping for the weekend.

That wouldn’t last long. Fruit and veggies would go bad if the power went out in a couple of days. They should have been collecting canned goods. Things that would last for a while. I thought of boxed raisins, and decided to grab some if there were any left.

I went to the shelves, but found most had been swept clean. Employees moved around in their bright blue Walmart shirts and tried to keep order, but it was descending into a chaotic situation, and had been since I walked in the door. The stuff they were talking about on the radio. The screens above the aisles were running coverage of the attacks. Some stopped and stared, while others kept their eyes down, avoiding the images like it would somehow save them.

I found an unattended cart with a few items in it. I didn’t pause to look for the owner; I just put my hands on the handle and kept moving toward the back of the store. I tossed out the contents, some boxes of cookies and Twinkies, and kept moving like it was mine to begin with. Stopped at a canned goods section that had some things on the shelves and dumped Spam and corned beef into the cart. Then I swung through another aisle and found a lone, five-pound bag of white rice, and it went in as well. There were some sardines on another aisle, lots of sardines, so I swept those up too. Better a little protein and the vitamins they would provide than the sugar from a bunch of snacks.

Gunshots from outside elicited screams from other shoppers, but I moved on. I had heard plenty of gunshots in my life, and if a stray bullet had my name on it, well, nothing to be done about it once I was on the ground. Or deep in it, for that matter.

I ran into a traffic jam, where a guy was arguing with another guy over a few bags of Cheetos. Both men looked to be at their wits’ end, and I suspected it would come to blows soon.

I moved on toward the outdoors goods, hoping there was stuff left. I found a backpack hanging from a shelf and added it to my collection. It was one of the Swiss Army ones with straps and pockets everywhere. I hoped it had the same build quality as their knives. A good bag would go a long way, if the world did indeed go down the drain.

Then I hit the emergency section and found a pair of those flashlights that you shake to charge. A small wind-up radio was next to them, so I tossed that in as well. It was lying on its side, next to a couple of opened tents, through which someone had rummaged.

I came to the hunting supplies, and found some knives in a large glass case. I looked around for an employee, but folks were running here and there, and the store looked like it would descend into complete chaos at any moment. So I grabbed a wrapped poncho and tore the packaging open. Then I unrolled it and held it to my side. I put the thin, glass door to my back, glanced around to see if any security watched, and quickly swung my elbow into the door as hard as I could.

Glass shattered behind the bag, which muffled the noise for the most part. I took out a game cleaning kit, putting it in the bag, then a couple of Gerber knives. There was a small axe in there as well. It had a short haft, and the burnished metal finish was dull in the florescent lights.

I took one of the Gerbers out of a box and slid it into my pocket. It was a four-inch blade with a serrated edge. It felt good to have some kind of weapon with me, no matter its size. Next up was a real weapon. I passed the archery stuff and stopped at the gun rack.

A couple of years ago, the liberals tried to get Walmart to remove guns from their stores. For the most part, the gigantic company complied, but some stores in smaller towns, like ours, kept them. A lot of hunters stopped here on their way to the mountains, for needed ammo and the occasional hunting rifle.

A man stopped to look at the knife rack and the mess on the floor. A thin guy with a Hawaiian shirt stuck to his body, he panted like he’d run all the way here.

“What happened?”

“I guess someone got impatient,” I told him.

“Think anyone will mind if I help myself?”

“I don’t think anyone will care. In a few days, we won’t care about anything.”

“Jesus, it’s not that bad. The government will reestablish order soon.”

“Hey, you can’t do that.” An employee came around a corner aisle with a woman in tow. She was looking at the signs, and he was obviously trying to find something for her.

The thin guy looked between us, then marched off like he didn’t know what to say or do. He just spun on his heel and left. I stared at the employee until he looked away.

“You got a key for this?” I pointed at the gun rack.

“Yeah, but we aren’t allowed to open it anymore. The manager is worried about a riot, about someone getting a gun and shooting at people.” He was short and stocky. Perspiration covered his face over a sheen of oil. How many hours had he been here trying to keep order? Trying to milk the last dollar out of the consumers?

“That makes no sense,” I said.

The woman who had followed watched our exchange, then shook her head as if just remembering something, and walked off as well. There was a buzz to the air, and things were going to get violent at any moment. I didn’t want to stick around that long.

“Just open it for a second. I’ll even leave my credit card with you. Charge whatever you want.” I took my wallet out of my back pocket, extracted my Visa Platinum, and set it on the counter. My name gleamed back at me, embossed in plastic.

He looked at it, then at me, and started to leave. “I’m sorry.”

“Look, man, you know about those things, right? You got a family? You got a gun to protect them?”

“It’s not that bad out there. Everyone is overreacting.”

“Overreacting? I just watched a guy on CNN get torn to pieces. You married, Patrick?” I said, looking at his nametag.

“I have someone at home.”

“Then do us both a favor. Open the door, take a gun, and go there. Trust me on this one, pal. You don’t want to be here when those things arrive.”

He stood there for a few seconds, unsure what to say. I watched a drop of sweat leave his hairline and run down his forehead, until it dripped down his nose and onto the floor. He looked up and down the aisle for a manager, then he took a key out and unlocked the case.

Shotguns and rifles stared back at me. I took out a smaller-barrel shotgun, a 20-gauge, and laid it on the counter. Then I pulled out a Marlin .30-06 and looked down the barrel. The store didn’t have the highest quality guns, but I felt a weight lift just having the weapon in my hand.

Allison hated me having weapons, and I got rid of them for her. I sold my .40 caliber pistol, which I missed dearly, and got rid of my old hunting rifle, which was superior to the gun I held now. The worst loss was an M-16 semiautomatic I had treasured for a few years, but I gave it all up for her, and she left me for another man. I would have done better to get rid of her back then.

“What should I take?” The clerk’s gaze roved up and down the selection. He looked at the assortment and swallowed so loud that I could hear it from a few feet away. He even reached to touch one or two barrels.

I found a 12-gauge shotgun and handed it to him. It was good up close, and a blast would leave no doubt that his target would be dead. I was going for the smaller shot, because I knew from experience this gun was more of a hunting weapon, and worked better at a longer range. It didn’t have the impact of a gun like the one he held, but it would do for me.

Not wanting to stand around and comfort the clerk, I pulled a box of shells off the shelf and put them next to his new shotgun. Then I took a couple of boxes for my selection and put them in the cart with the rest of stuff.

“Wait. You can’t buy a gun and bullets at the same time.”

“Right.” I added a couple more.

“It’s against store policy.”

“Call a cop. If he can get here in five minutes, he can arrest me.” I took my credit card when he didn’t make an attempt to run it.

Pushing my cart down another aisle, I looked for some Sterno cans. When I found them, I grabbed as many as I thought I could carry. Now it was just a matter of getting out of the store.

I loaded as much as I could into the backpack, heading out of the hunting area as I packed. While I rushed to jam stuff in, I almost missed one important area. An upended rack held a wealth of camouflage clothing. I pawed through them quickly and found a Large. Holding it to my chest, I decided it would do all right.

People moved around me, rushing to find anything of use at the last minute. I felt like one of them, and cursed again that I didn’t go shopping earlier. A woman eyed my canned meat, and I stuffed it in my backpack with a scowl. A man stopped and stared at the guns in my cart, asking where I got them. I pointed him in the direction of the hunting goods, then made for the door.

The security guy who tried to hassle me on the way in saw my goodies and decided to get in my face. He was at the same door and had managed to regain some sort of control. I gave him the once-over, glad to see he wasn’t armed, except for a can of mace. I was willing to bet if he pulled it, I could take him down before he sprayed me.

“You pay for all that stuff, man? Mind if I see your receipt?”

“Yep. Forgot my receipt. If you hustle, you may be able to get it from the guy at the gun counter.”

“Okay, I’m gonna have to ask you to put that down.” He slipped one foot back, like he was going for a fighting stance. I studied his body language, marked striking points and his center of balance. I really didn’t want to hurt him. He was just doing his job, and, in his shoes, I would probably be doing the same. The only thing that stopped me from taking him to the ground was a scream at the entrance.

The blazing sun tore into the Walmart with a blast of heat, as the door opened for a guy covered in blood. A woman in a sweat suit was trying to get away from his grasping hand. The man was dressed in shorts and had on one flip-flop, but his shirt hung in tatters. He was missing an ear, and a gaping wound, probably made by a large-caliber gun, opened his middle. I should have been able to see the remains of his heart through the broken ribcage.

The woman stumbled on a pair of sandals that looked to be a full three inches tall. This put her height near mine. She had a tight body that a pink sweat shirt treated well. I took my focus off her chest and set it on the thing after her. It was one of them, that much was certain. I was shocked they were here already.

The guard reacted first by pulling his mace, running the twenty or so feet to the dead guy, and hosing him down with a full blast of pepper spray. The room started to reek of the stuff, and people coming in shied away from the smell as much as from the dead man.

Make that undead. I guess that is the proper term, after all. This guy clearly met a bad end then came back for more. He lurched forward, ignoring the mace, and struck out at the guard who had tried to stop me.

The man batted his hand aside, but the dead guy stumbled forward, and his momentum sent them both crashing to the ground. The guard let out a whoosh of air as he fought for his life. On top, the undead tried to bite him, but the guard struck the corpse a couple of times. No real strength to the blows—just fear and adrenaline forcing him to fight for his life.

Shock froze me in place. I had been about to fight the guard for the right to leave the store, maybe start a riot, when all of this went down. A couple of people screamed, and one man ran over to help. He grabbed the wriggling corpse by the pant waist and pulled. He was trying not to touch any blood, and I didn’t blame him. What if the disease spread that way?

He didn’t move the dead man very far, but the guard got a leg up, wedged between him and the dead guy, and pushed. The zombie rose into the air and fell to the side.

Rolling the other way, the guard coughed as he tried to stand. A girl helped him up; she was young and very brave. She had a splash of freckles across her face, and she smiled at me like we were old friends. I grabbed the zombie by the scruff of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. After marching to the door, I threw him into the road. He hit pretty hard, but rolled over and got to his feet.

Grabbing my cart of goodies, I pushed it ahead of me to keep the thing back. He grabbed hold of the front like he was going to leap over it.

A big pickup truck slid to a halt, and a guy in cowboy boots and a big brown hat stepped out.

“That one of the dead fuckers?” His voice carried a hint of Southern, but I was used to hearing that from some of the folks on the outskirts of Portland. Seemed like a clan of them moved from Texas and set up shop here a few decades ago.

“Yep. Dead as a doornail,” I replied as I pushed the thing back with the cart. Tired of the game, I let go of the cart. The zombie stumbled back, nearly fell over, and lurched into motion once again with me in his sights. I took a full stride and launched one foot in a full thrust kick that nailed the dead guy in the chest, just below the wound. The sound was sickening, as compressed guts and foul air shifted around in the walking corpse.

It had been a while since I had thrown one of those, but it was something I had done a thousand times. Good muscle memory, or just plain luck, was with me, as the creature flew back a few feet. It landed flat on its back and lay there for a few seconds, as if in a daze.

The cowboy moved around the dead guy and stared at the hole in his chest.

“Ain’t no damn way that guy can be alive. No way. His heart is gone!”

A couple of bystanders came over to look at the guy wriggling on the ground. They stood around as more joined us. One started talking in a cold, clinical voice about the wounds sustained and why he should be dead. He was a tall man, with a gray, receding hairline that rounded his head like a halo. Looked and spoke just like a doctor. All the while, the thing tried to find the motor skills to get back up. It snarled at the bystanders, and one of them, perhaps feeling brave, showed his teeth and snarled back. The others moved away with shocked looks on their faces. The guy held his hands out to placate the crowd and told them that he was just joking around, that he wasn’t some damn dead thing.

There was a scream behind me, and I spun around, expecting to see someone looking at the wounded man. It was a young woman, about twenty. Her face was etched with fear, lips peeled back as she let loose another howl for help. She ran, flat out on some sensible-looking sneakers, from another of the dead.

The man behind her was dressed in a biking outfit. He had on those shoes that lock into the pedals, spandex shorts, and a tight shirt. His helmet was askew, half-cocked on one side of his head, and the left side of his face was missing, like he had a really bad case of road rash. One arm hung limply at his side, and the opposite foot was broken at the ankle. He dragged it with each shambling step. His side was caved in, and, though it didn’t show, the damage was almost worse than the guy with the gaping wound. While we were distracted, the dead guy I had kicked managed to get to his feet and fall on one of the bystanders.

She screamed as he bit into her shoulder, pulling back a huge chunk of skin. His mouth darted back to the wound, like an animal going at a fresh kill. I stared in horror, just like the rest of the onlookers. There were five or six of us standing around like we had just been having some sort of community meeting when, absurdly, a woman was being eaten in front of our eyes.

I snapped out of it, stepped quickly to the dead man, and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck for the second time, yanking him off the woman. As he turned around, I pushed him down, not knowing what else to do. The axe was in the bottom of my cart, and could I really dispatch this guy with so many people watching?

“We need to kill him,” someone said in a high voice, and I wondered if they had the balls to back up the words.

“Someone call an ambulance,” the bleeding woman’s companion yelled.

“No ambulance can help that man,” another yelled back.

“Not him—my wife!”

“MOVE!” someone yelled, and I spun to watch the guy from the big pickup truck come out with a tire iron in hand. He shoved his way through the thin fence of onlookers, raised the curved hunk of metal in the air, and brought it down on the dead guy’s head. The undead had been in the process of standing up when the bar struck. It sounded like a bowling ball being dropped on a wood floor. A spray of blood struck many of the people who watched in horror. I backed up, wondering again about the substance. If it carried the disease, I wanted nothing to do with it.

That was enough for me. I grabbed my cart with its treasures, gun barrels sticking out but not reassuring me. My car came into view, and, brother, was it ever an inviting sight. I keyed the button and the locks clicked. When the back slid up, I tossed things in as fast as possible.

Glancing behind me, I spotted the man with the wounded wife pressing his shirt against her shoulder to stop the blood. He walked her to the car, one hand around her waist to help her along. Her head hung limply, and she moved as if in shock. He opened the door on a red compact and helped her in. Then he got in the other side, fumbled for his keys, and started the car.

I kept watching as I worked, because I hoped she was okay. I also hoped he got her to the hospital, and they were able to treat her. There was movement in the car; it looked like he was leaning over to hug her. No, it was the other way around. She was leaning in to … oh God no!

She tore into his neck, and blood sprayed out, striking the window on the passenger side. Oh holy hell - that was it. Time to go.

I had half a mind to go home and board the place up, but how long could I live there without enough food to get through more than a month? I could stretch the rice, and I did have some dried beans. I detested the things, but Allison liked them, so we had a few bags. That would extend anything I made by providing extra protein. Not to mention extra filler.

In the garage, I had a box of expired Meals Ready to Eat that I got from work. Some brainiac in the safety department wanted them in case we had an earthquake, but they went ‘bad’ in two years, and since I was formerly in the military, she asked me if I knew what to do with them. Now I was glad I took them off her hands. At the time, I thought I would donate them to a homeless shelter, but every call came up with a curt “No thank you.” The label might say ‘expired,’ but I knew that stuff would last a hell of a lot longer.

I drove around a minor accident, where two stressed-out drivers were arguing. A large SUV had backed into an old Toyota. Probably both in a hurry to get home. I slipped through the space, shot out into the opposite lane, and hung a hard right.

I slid my shades on, because the sun was drawing low and starting to obscure my view. A pair of clouds lazed across the sky like they had nothing better to do, but they weren’t the dark gray ones that brought rain. These were just plain old cumulus that cast a shadow on the land as they passed.

The main drag was just ahead, and I saw a pair of zombies stumbling into the street. The old highway didn’t allow for many shenanigans like that, and the first one was picked off by a silver BMW that was doing at least 60. Another car swerved to avoid the beamer as it slammed on its brakes. The woman got out and ran to the body that was tossed onto the side of the road like a rag doll. Even through my car window, I swear I heard the sound of a couple thousand pounds of metal slamming into its flesh.

The second undead swerved around, somehow avoided being hit by a bright yellow Hummer, and stumbled to the girl who talked into her cell phone while staring down at the body on the street. Her free hand moved all over the place as she reported the accident. I could drive across the parking lot, to the little hill that separated the road from Walmart, and help her. But before I could plan how to maneuver there, the walking dead man latched onto her neck with one arm and drove her to the ground.

I hit the window button and screamed out the side at the thing. I pulled alongside the little road, but I knew there was nothing I could do for her. She squirmed beneath him, even got a backward looping elbow to the side of his face, but he grabbed the arm and took a chunk out.

She screamed and thrashed under him, and I felt helpless to stop the assault. The dead guy leaned over and grabbed the back of her neck, pulling the flesh up so that I could see it hanging bloody and raw in his mouth. He chewed as she started to shake, the fight clearly draining out of her.

Where were they coming from? The dead seemed content with the taste he got, and stumbled up the hill toward my car.

I dragged the 20-gauge shotgun out from the back seat and dug around until I found a box of shells. One went in the breach, because it was all I would need.

Cars stopped and pulled over to stare at the carnage. Two people down, one an attractive older woman near an expensive Swedish car. This was newsworthy stuff—the kind of thing you went home and talked about at the dinner table. “You won’t believe what I saw today, honey.”

I pumped the shell into the chamber, stepped up to the small rise, and aimed down the barrel. Someone shouted at me not to do it. I opened my other eye for a moment to see that the cry had come from a van filled with commuters on their way home from work.

I pulled the trigger, and the gun hammered against my shoulder. The zombie’s head disappeared … the left half at least. He took one more stumbling step, then fell, lifeless again.

Welcome home, folks.

I got back in my SUV like I was out for a Sunday drive, and calmly drove home without looking back once. The shakes started about a minute later.

I clicked on the radio as soon as I pulled away. They were going on about the disease or whatever it was. Lots of speculation, but no answers. “Fix the problem,” I wanted to yell at the radio. Who cares how it started? I wanted to know what was being done to combat it.

It came on so fast. When the swine flu was being hyped as the next black plague, we were assured over and over again that the problem was being looked after with plenty of vaccines. Now no one wanted to talk about solutions. Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe there was no other way except for the one I came up with that day—a full load of buckshot to the brainpan.

My hand started to shake on the steering wheel as I drove. I felt it start as a tremble, and within a few seconds, it was a full shake. I clamped my other hand over it, but it was no use. I felt my lip tremble, and then I had to take some deep breaths.

My temper always did get me in trouble.

I had shot that guy in anger. I didn’t really think about the repercussions at the time; that I could be considered a cold-blooded murderer. I would have loved to have seen the case, though, hauled into court. Have the judge ask why I killed. What would happen when I countered with, “How do you kill the dead, exactly?”

The vision of the man’s head disappearing in a puff of blood and gore played over and over like an old film stuck in the projector at school. Why wouldn’t it melt away?

I pulled into my side street and slowed down in case kids were in the street. But there was no one there, and I got that eerie feeling of aloneness once again. I pulled into my driveway and noticed that my neighbor Hector Edwards was in his back yard. I could only make out the top of his head, so I waved a silent greeting and went inside without waiting for a response.

The house comforted me after the afternoon I’d had. I didn’t want to go out again, so I hauled my goodies into the living room, depositing them on the couch. Then I clicked on the TV and switched it over to CNN. A group of men in white lab coats were debating the effects of the disease.

“Because it isn’t possible, that’s why! Why are you so ready to jump to crazy conclusions like this? The dead? Really? It is not physiologically possible for the dead to reanimate in any shape or form. It is utterly preposterous!” The guy had a full beard, and his face was bright red.

“Then how do you explain it? How do you explain the ones we have captured and brought in for testing? They move on their own like automatons, but they have no respiration, no brainwave activity, no pulse for God’s sake. How do you explain that?”

“I would like to see that. I would very much like to see a dead man moving around. This is a hoax!”

Then the scene cut away to an overhead view of New York City. There was no doubting that cityscape; it was like a fixture to the American public. A bird’s-eye view of that city was as familiar to people as the Golden Gate Bridge or the Statue of Liberty. The view shifted as the helicopter dropped a few feet, then adjusted as a shaking camera tried to focus on something down below. There was talking in the background, and it was pretty obvious the guys in the helicopter were thrown in without much prep time.

Then a voice popped in.

“Are we live? Live?” A man came into view who I had seen on the news many times. I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me. He had a blocky jaw, like an old-time movie star, and his pepper-gray hair reminded me of a politician’s.

“… the city where the disease has run rampant. We are over Times Square now, and we are seeing some activity that is being called a riot. The police have been called in to handle the situation; we aren’t sure how many are available. The riots seem to have caught the authorities by surprise. NBC would like to warn viewers that what they are about to see could be graphic.”

The camera shifted again, and then they went to an outside view that was crystal clear. They must have had another camera mounted to a strut to get such a good shot. Another helicopter shot past then slowed to a hover.

The scene below was chaos, as hundreds of people ran in the street. Some moved slower than others, and if people stumbled, the pursuers fell on them like prey.

“Oh my God.” It was the first time I had spoken since I got home, since I killed the man in the street. The undead man who had been like the attackers on the screen.

Within minutes, the ‘riot’ had become a full-scale mob as people ran every which way. I watched the people attacked rise up and go at others as they tried to get past.

A pair of ambulances pulled up slowly. Figures jumped out of both sides, and then some slithered out the back. They had bags in hand. Giant, black bags that reminded me of the bags they carry bodies to the morgue in.

The paramedics were torn into on the spot, attacked and beaten down where they stood. A pair tried in vain to wrestle one of the slow ones into a bag. I was glad the camera was too high to allow viewers to hear the screams of pain.

I sat in front of the TV for a long time. Once again, I thought of how Allison and I had watched the 9/11 attacks all day and most of the night. Somehow, this didn’t have the same impact, although it should have. An hour later, the street was covered with nothing but dead things, and I knew it was just a matter of time before it spread everywhere.

I had to get out. I had been thinking of a place to hide, to wait out the end, and I had a good idea where I could go. The problem was that it didn’t belong to me. My buddy Ray had let me use his cabin in the woods up on Mount Arrow a few times, and I was pretty sure I could remember how to get there.

I had gear, I had gas, and I had food. I could stay for a week or two, listen to the wind-up radio, and try to wait it out. I looked around my house at all the things I had accumulated over the years, all the things that Allison and I had added to it, and I knew there was no way to keep someone out once I left. I didn’t want to stay cooped up here, however, so I grabbed what valuables I had - that I wanted to come back for- and put them in big black bags. Portable hard drive and a smaller laptop. I planned to bring the larger one with me. I added some of my favorite CDs, some jewelry she had left, stuff I bought her. I pocketed her engagement ring, because it had cost me a small fortune. Then I wondered what I would do with the damn thing and tossed it in the bag.

I put pictures in the bags, along with some canned goods that I didn’t want to have to try to carry. It was already going to be a long hike to his place, so I didn’t want to have to carry a hundred pounds with me. Then I opened the closet, moved all the crap aside, including my rarely used vacuum, and tugged open the entrance to the space under the house.

I climbed inside and pushed the stuff to a back corner where the dirt met the concrete wall, and hoped it wasn’t too visible if someone else came along and looked. I was going to bolt up the house, but I had no illusions about how tenuous the hold on my property would become once I wasn’t here to defend it with a gun, or even my fists.

I was climbing back out, knocking dirt off my shoes, when a loud knock came from the front door. I popped up and looked at the couch where the guns sat. I almost went for them, but I didn’t think any crazies would be around this early. To the front of the house, I went, when my cell phone rang again. I popped it out of my pocket and looked at the display. Allison. Didn’t she have anyone else to bug? Like her new boyfriend?

I pocketed the phone and stared out the peephole in the door. My neighbor Devon stood on the porch. He craned his neck around to peek in the window then looked up and down the street. His face was covered in sweat, and his eyes shifted rapidly as he tried to look everywhere at once. I opened the door, and he let out a sigh of relief.

“Man, I thought you left or something. Except your car is here. Is everything okay? I mean, not that you need anyone checking up on you and all. Because of the war stuff. I bet you have a million weapons in there. Probably a good thing you didn’t start shooting.” He was babbling, and I felt like joining him. Devon and I had hung out a few times, shot the shit, talked about our wives, and downed a few six packs of beer. He was about as liberal as they come, but I liked him just the same. He had a quick wit and a fun way of looking at the world—kind of like a schizoid who was in control of his other personalities. He could flip from dead serious to making fun of the other neighbors in an angry German accent at the drop of a hat.

His wife was pretty and genuinely nice. I remember the day Lisa stopped by after she found out Allison had left me. She said she was sorry and brought over a meatloaf. I was touched by her kindness, and shocked when she hugged me, walking off with a furtive look over her shoulder.

“What do you know, Dev?”

“I know the whole goddamn fucking place is going crazy. Did you hear there was an attack at Walmart and the new Safeway? The things came out of nowhere and started attacking people. Just biting them in public.”

“Where did you hear that?” News sure was traveling fast in this tiny town today.

“My wife’s friend owns a latte stand, and the customers were reporting what they saw when they ordered drinks. Isn’t that funny? Let me get a triple shot mocha. Hey, did you hear zombies were eating people at the store?”

He laughed out loud, then looked down at the patio. His eyes went unfocused for a minute, and I thought I knew what he was thinking, because I had been thinking the same thing all day. What if this was really it? The end of everything? What I saw today, up close, as well as on CNN, had rattled me.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Hole up and see what happens. Maybe it won’t get this far and we’ll be safe.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been watching the news all day, and it is crazy in some of the cities. But we’re so far from all that, you know? I think we’ll be safe here. Just wait it out, wait for the government to call out the army or national guard. All you have to do to survive is not get bit, right?”

“Look, Dev, I am out of here. I’m packing my shit and heading to the hills. If you have another place to go that’s far from civilization, I suggest you go there and stay put until the smoke clears.”

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad. It can’t be.” He talked until he had convinced himself. I bet he practiced the speech in his head before he came over. I couldn’t do anything to convince him otherwise, and I didn’t want to take the time.

“I have a place to hide up in the hills. Why don’t you and Lisa join me?” I cursed myself even as the words came out. I didn’t have enough supplies to feed three mouths, let alone one.

He shook his head. A strong refusal backed up by fear in his eyes.

I looked over and noticed that Edwards’s little import was running, and the door was cracked open. In my haste earlier to get the goods in my house and sorted, I didn’t notice my neighbor had left his car idling. In fact, when I looked at his place now, I realized that his front door was open a couple of inches. But I saw him in the back yard, so he had to be home. I had seen the top of his head and assumed he was standing back to look at his yard or something.

Maybe he was just … then the noise came.

I moved to the side of my patio, where the corner nearly butted up against his yard, and looked into the back of mine. Edwards had been working on his fence off and on for about three months now, and it was almost done, but the back near our green belt hadn’t even been started. I saw my neighbor come around the fence and walk toward me.

“Hey man, everything all right?” I asked.

He was Argentinian and had a slight accent, but just now, he didn’t answer. We were on friendly terms, but not as close as Devon and I were. Still, I considered him a friend—well, up until now. He didn’t look so good. He looked gray and tired. Devon stood on the doorstep and slipped his glasses off, as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. He put them back on, and the gray man turned and stumbled toward us. His attention set on me, and he started moaning and snarling like a dog.

“Oh shit, what do we do?” Devon’s voice bordered on hysteria. He looked around at the empty porch as if searching for a weapon, but there was not even a scrap of furniture on it. Then he glanced over the yard.

I didn’t wait around to find a weapon. Edwards was moving slowly enough that I didn’t feel he represented much of a threat. Of course, I could have been fooling myself. After all, it had been a while since I was in the service, and all those fighting skills were a little rusty. I should have gone back and gotten the axe from my house, but I didn’t feel the same heat I did earlier when those monsters attacked the woman in the silver BMW. What I felt was oddly cool and collected, the same way I used to feel before we went into the action.

“Hey, you all right?” I had to be sure before I did anything. I was suddenly light on my feet; the old moves came back like I had practiced them just yesterday. I shifted to the right, so one side of my body was presented, while my left was at an angle, so I made less of a target. I’ve heard it called drifting forward, only I was about to become a whirlwind.

Edwards was covered in red, like he had spilled an entire bottle of wine down his shirt. He was missing one side of his neck, and the ear opposite hung by a flap of skin. He moaned at me like he was half asleep, and I saw a huge chunk of skin hanging out of his mouth. I wondered if he had bitten himself.

Then his wife, Cindy, came out the open door and stumbled forward. Half of her face was torn off. The portly woman always had an easy laugh, and told me dirty jokes when Edwards wasn’t around. She wouldn’t be telling jokes now. Not by a long shot.

“Devon, stay back,” I called, but didn’t look back for him, trusting he had the sense to stay in place.

Edwards shambled toward me, blood dripped from the wound on his head. It splattered down his face and onto his shirt. His wife didn’t look much better; her wounds were also horrific. I had a vision of him coming home, her greeting him at the door. Maybe he was freshly bitten and it hadn’t kicked in yet. But he died there while she dabbed at the blood and exclaimed that he needed to go to the doctor. He came back as his undead self and attacked his wife of over two decades. Now I would have to contend with them, and I didn’t feel anything but shame.

I lashed out with a side kick that swept my neighbor off his legs and onto his back. He was less than two feet away, and I just flowed into the move. Then I was past him, and I would have administered several punches to the face, but I was once again leery of the blood. What would happen if that stuff got in my mouth or into a wound? Would that be enough to kill and change me into one of them?

Landing like that would have taken the breath away from a normal man and made him think twice about getting up, but old Edwards must have been feeling lucky, because he rolled over to get up again. I kicked him hard under the chin, like his head was a soccer ball. He flopped over and didn’t move for a moment.

She was getting closer, and I didn’t want to hurt her. I dashed behind her, snatched the back of her shirt, and dragged her toward their house. She went under protest, trying to spin and snap at me the entire time. I shoved her inside so that she landed face first on the floor, and I slammed the door shut. I doubted she was smart enough to figure out how to get out. She seemed to have the motor skills of a toddler.

Edward was another problem altogether. He was getting back up again, and I didn’t think I could maneuver him inside the house while she was trying to get out.

I walked up to his form as it came up on all fours, threw my leg up high in the air, and then came down with the back of my shoe to his neck in a downward axe kick. I felt something snap beneath the blow, and then he fell to the ground, lifeless and still.

I panted for a moment, leaned over, and gasped for air. Then I turned from his body and threw up everything in my stomach.

That was two. Two people dead at my hand, and the day wasn’t even over yet. Devon stood on the patio and watched me come up on shaky legs. His eyes met mine, and I could only read a sort of horror that made me want to turn away in shame. I felt terrible that he had to watch it, almost as much as I felt bad about killing the two that day.

“That is why you need to get out of Dodge, my man,” I said and went inside to pack. “And my offer still stands. Just get Lisa, all the food in the house that is non-perishable, and meet me in front of your house in fifteen minutes.”

“I just can’t leave it all behind. I need to think, to think and to process,” he whispered, almost to himself, then turned and walked away.

Three pairs of jeans, that’s all I allowed myself. I took down some trusty flannel shirts from a box in the closet and jammed those into the pack as well. Then I added socks, underwear, the basics for survival and keeping warm. I had a pair of thermal underwear as well, which I slipped into a side pouch.

The box of MREs was stuffed in the extra room, the one we were going to make into a child’s room. Now it was filled with all of my accumulated junk. It looked just the way it had when we moved in, cluttered with boxes, but now there was a layer of dust on top of them because I had not been in the room in months.

I took the boxes and moved them to the front of the house. Gunshots popped some distance away. There were just a few a while ago, but now they were coming more rapidly. I thought of Devon and his wife crammed in their home, and for a moment, I considered inviting them to the cabin again.

I didn’t. He had made his decision to stay after all we had seen a few minutes ago. I didn’t have the supplies to become more convincing.

What good would they be if we had to survive? He had no survival skills, and I doubted he even camped. He and his wife were the type to stay in and watch a movie on the weekend rather than go into the woods and pretend they were outdoorsy. They would get in the way, and that was how I made my cold decision to leave them. Stupid common sense.

I had a big hunting knife—the kind of Rambo blade that had a bunch of tools screwed into the pommel. Part of it was serrated to use like a saw, and the rest was long and razor sharp. I tucked this into the back of my pants in lieu of a gun, and felt much more confident. There was nothing like a deadly weapon at your side to help calm nerves.

More pops of gunfire, so I moved everything I needed to the front door. I took a few shotgun shells and loaded them under the weapon, then I pumped a round into the chamber and set it with barrel pointing up at the ceiling, leaning against the wall.

I snatched up the Marlin, chambered a round, and set it next to the shotgun. I felt like I was more or less ready for war, but I would have felt better with my old handgun at my side. The .40 caliber was a powerful gun that would stop one of the zombies on a dime, turn his head inside out, leave him laid out and twice cold.

I went into the tiny garage and looked around for some tools. I found a small pry bar and added it to my stash, along with a tool kit that was neatly organized.

All of this planning was done on the fly. I had never really considered what it would be like to flee my home, knowing that I might never return. There was a deep gnawing in my gut that I knew was fear. Fear of going out there. Fear of leaving everything behind. Fear of never being able to come home again.

I looked around my house at all the things I had accumulated over the years. Well, Allison and I. I glanced at the cheap paintings that adorned the wall; one in particular had a large schooner breaking through a spray of waves. It could have been a bright and gaudy picture like you would see at a library or museum, but the artist had chosen a subtle palette of colors that fit into just about any room. Another fixture to leave. Yet I found myself staring at it for some time before my mind kicked back into overdrive.

I loaded the boxes in the car, and every time I went past Edwards, I tried not to look at his body. I tried to keep my mind on the task at hand, tried to ignore what my eyes would tell me if I gave them a chance. A dead friend. Killed by my own hand. I pushed my shame aside for the time being.

I moved the shotgun to the front seat and put the rifle in the rear with my backpack. I returned to my house for another load of MREs, when I felt the eyes on me. I looked up toward Edwards’s house. His wife’s ghostly face, with its splash of blood, was staring at me through the front window, as she tried to walk through the glass over and over. She would walk forward, rebound, put her arms up for balance, and then do it again. She left splashes of blood all over the glass.

Jesus, Cindy.

I shuddered and grabbed the last few boxes and shoved them in the back of my little SUV. Then I went around the house, unplugged everything I could, and grabbed a charger for my cell phone and one for my laptop. I had chosen the smaller one, the netbook with its long-life battery, and added it to my treasure. It didn’t have a broadband connection built in, but it did have a large collection of porn. If nothing else, I guess I am a practical man.

Devon was nowhere to be found. I imagined he and Lisa were back in their house relaxing, or making an attempt to. Hopefully they would keep their heads and think out the situation. If it were me staying, I would have started boarding up the house first, put something over the windows so none of those things could see in. Then reinforce the front and back sliding glass doors.

With everything loaded, I returned to the house one last time and went into each room to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.

Then I secured each window and double-checked the sliding glass door. A cursory glance under the house assured me the stash of black bags would not show unless someone got right down in there. I wished I had some carpet to cover the spot with, although if someone discovered the carpet, they would probably be more apt to poke around in the space. Why was I even thinking I would come back?

I went to the junk drawer I kept in the kitchen and dug around in the back. There was a picture in a simple frame, and I pulled it out. In the photo, Allison and I were smiling at each other. She was in profile, beautiful, and I remembered the day when we first met, when I swore I would always be a happy man if I could just wake up to her face. Long, blonde curls hung to her shoulders and framed her small face. She had on a bright green tank top that left her shoulders and slim neck exposed. How many times had I touched her there, ran my hand over her skin, and then kissed her neck as we lay together in bed.

Too many to count, that’s for sure. Might as well try to keep a count on how many times we made love, which was crazy, especially in our first year.

My face was nothing special next to her fine features. Where her eyes were a pale blue, mine were brown and deep set. A scar around the right eye gave me a bit of a leer on that side, which was my good side, so to speak. The other had a scar much longer that caressed the corner of my lips, and sometimes gave me a dour look that reminded people of the Joker, or so they claimed. Shrapnel kissed me there during the first Gulf War. I was young, and the firefight we had been in scared me to death. Especially after the burning metal sliced my face open so fast I didn’t even realize it until the pain slammed into me like a mortar.

Short, wiry hair that I kept close to my head. I was balding in the back, and that was okay. When I finally shaved it, I would look like a military man again. Didn’t shave this morning, so my face looked scruffy; that reminded me to grab a toothbrush and shaving kit on the way out.

I pocketed the picture and went to the bathroom to retrieve a black bag and fill it with toiletries.

My cell phone buzzed again, and that reminded me to get the charger from the wall. I had one in the car, and I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to get electricity where I was going. Maybe there was a generator there, maybe there wasn’t.

I snapped the phone up and saw that it was her again. I answered it so I could say goodbye. We hadn’t spoken much since the divorce, since it all went to shit, and I honestly didn’t know what I would say to her if we did speak. It’s not like I was going to wish her good luck in her new life with her new man.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” Her voice sounded so far away, hollow, and I could hear wind rushing past like she was on the move.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, some craziness, huh? I’m getting out of town and heading to my folks down in Eugene. I hope to be there by dark.”

“Good luck.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Erik, listen. I never had a chance to say I was sorry and I regret it.”

“Not saying sorry, or fucking that guy? Which do you regret, Allison?”

“Both.” Her voice came in small, and I was pretty sure I heard genuine regret.

“I’m heading out too. Call me when you get there and let me know you’re okay.” Then I clicked off the phone and pocketed it. Why did I bother with that last line? I shouldn’t have cared how she was or where she was going. What did she expect me to do? Drop everything and go rescue her the way I rescued her the first time?

That was a fine mess. Her boyfriend was a real piece of work. A sociopath who got off on locking her up all day, and didn’t let her go out unless he was at her side. She met him in college. They moved in together, and he started to display his real side. I never asked if he hurt her. I didn’t have to. When I came through the door, she practically rushed to hide behind me.

He got in my face and tried the tough guy act. I kicked him in the shin, and then threw my fist into his gut so fast that all he could do was grunt and fall. He screamed profanities, wanted to know where I was going with his property. But when I looked down at him, looked into his eyes, he decided to shut the hell up and let us go without a hassle.

I locked all the doors and checked the windows one more time. I set the house alarm, knowing it wouldn’t do much good. If the police were too busy with the virus, or whatever it was, there was no way they would respond to my piddly house alarm, no matter how much I paid.

I slid into the little Honda and fired it up. I’d had the car for a few years, and she was as reliable as anything I had ever owned. Plus the car had a four-wheel drive setting, which would come in handy.

The sky grew dark as big puffy clouds slid into view. I backed out of the driveway, forgetting my sunglasses for now. Edwards was still dead and lying in his front yard. I had trouble looking at his body as I backed out. His not-so-lovely wife was still banging away at the window, smearing blood all over it with her hands.

I drove past ghastly faces that rose up in curtained windows, past Devon’s, where I didn’t see a light or a trace of him or his wife. I stopped at the end of the street and looked both ways. The road was zombie free, for now, and I hoped it would stay that way.

I suspected that it would not.

When I got back to highway 322, I hit traffic. On the worst day, it could take ten or fifteen minutes to get through the city. Today, I didn’t think I would be able to make it in an hour. I pulled out of the turn lane after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, and then stopped again. A few cars had pulled over to the shoulder lane, so that was not an option. A few brave souls tried weaving into the opposite lane, but they met traffic, and had to either jump back into the correct lane or drive off the road and look miserably at the line of traffic that wasn’t going to let them back in.

It took ten minutes at one light, and then ten more at the next. I drove past the Walmart I visited earlier in the day, and the place was in full panic. I watched as a few of the dead walked toward shoppers. After the news reports all day, it was apparent that others had caught on to what to do. People didn’t stand around dumbly. Some fought back, but most ran. I saw a man pulled down by three of the things; he screamed over and over at the top of his lungs for help. My hand was on the shotgun before I knew it.

A horn honked loudly behind me, and I realized the light had changed, so I accelerated to the next light and waited there as well.

They were everywhere, a small army of them interspersed with the cars. Men, women, and even children walking around with blank stares, most covered in blood, some missing limbs.

Some were missing throats, and some staggered with broken bones. One walked right up to my window and snarled at me. He had a screwdriver driven into his chest, just to the left of center. It should have punctured his heart and made him drop to the ground, dead. Only he was dead already, or undead.

I gave him the finger, and the light changed. As I accelerated, I popped my door open quickly, which knocked him to the ground. A car tried to avoid him, but the one after swerved to the right a bit and drove right over him. Score one for the good guys.

I didn’t slow down to see if it smashed in his head.

The next light was just about as bad, but a side street called to me—one I knew well from my years of living in the little city. I shot down it into a residential neighborhood that led me to another side street. I ran parallel to the main drag for a while, but jetted down yet another street before emerging onto a lightly traveled road. It took a long time to get back to highway 322, but once I reached it, I was only on it for a few minutes before jumping onto a tiny, two-lane road. Home free at last.

I was on the outskirts of the Vesper Lake when something reassuring came into view.

A half mile ahead, I saw a row of military vehicles pulled into an orderly line along the side of the road. A group of men were piling out of a Humvee, while a pair rolled pylons across the street.

After the day I had, it put a smile on my face to see some response from the military. It didn’t matter if they were National Guard or the Marines. They could have landed a platoon for all I cared. They were here, offering some sort of protection.

I slowed down as I neared the men. I laid the shotgun in the front seat next to me, so that if anyone looked in, they would know I was armed but not an immediate threat. I considered putting it in the back, on the floor where it was less likely to be seen, but what was the point after the day I was having, and I was pretty sure others were in the same boat.

Two men dressed in camouflaged gear were in the process of maneuvering a heavy, concrete-filled barrel into place on the side of the road. A man dressed in jeans and a t-shirt jumped down from the back of a military transport. Others milled around a guy that gestured around the location. From the back, all I caught was grey hair shaved close to the skull.

As I rolled to a stop, I waited for someone to come out and challenge me. No one did, so I pulled forward until I was level with the guys moving the barrel.

“What’s the word?” I called after rolling down my window.

“Fucked. That’s a word I would choose.” One man said without looking up at me.

The other smiled and ignored me.

“So you guys army?”

“Something like that. We’re all they could call up on short notice. Some of us didn’t even have time to get our shit together, like Timmons over there—in the comfortable clothes.” He gestured to the guy in the t-shirt.

I caught the eye of the older man as he came over. He moved with a sure step and didn’t take his eyes of me. He wore a pair of snake skin boots that gleamed in the sun. I felt like getting out and saluting, maybe reporting for duty. Some men are just made for the job he obviously had. The job of being in charge and making sure stuff gets done.

He nodded, so I nodded back as he came around the front of the car.

“Heading out of town?” he inquired in a baritone that probably boomed when the need called for it.

“I was thinking about it. Depends on what’s out there.”

“I’ll tell you what is behind you. A whole world of hurt.” He grimaced.

I nodded. A couple of men rolled another barrel into place right next to my SUV. They nodded at the older man, and then looked at me like I was dirt.

“Don’t mind them. We’ve been together for a long while.” He gestured toward the men. When he lifted his head, I noticed a fine scar running from his chin to his neck.

“The name’s Tragger.” I stuck my hand out the window. I don’t know what possessed me to try and make a new best friend. The camaraderie of the military does that. Even though I had been out for a while, it felt like the right thing to do.

“I’m Lee.” He shook my hand.

Lee, huh? Was that a first name or last? His hand was strong, calloused. So was mine. We didn’t bother testing each other.

“So are you going to read me the riot act now? Explain why I should go home and wait it out?”

“It’s your life, son. I don’t really care where you’re going. My orders are to hold position here until we get other orders. You understand about orders?”

“I was in the army for a while.”

“You have the look. Things are getting crazy. We could use another man with some experience. You know much about that weapon?” He nodded at my gun.

“Enough. I know a lot more about some of the automatics your men are carrying.”

He glanced at his crew as they continued setting up the roadblock.

“I didn’t see any insignia. You guys National Guard?”

“Something like that. Let’s just say we have been together a long time, and we plan to watch each other’s back.”

“And this outfit you’re in, they allow shoes like that?” I glanced toward his boots.

“Damnedest thing. When the call came out, I didn’t have my regular boots. I think my wife put them in the attic somewhere. Anyway, these were the only shoes I had at hand that weren’t soft.” He grinned.

I didn’t bother pursing the matter of what branch he represented. Lee had his secrets, and I didn’t care to know any more about them. Whatever these guys were up to was none of my business. But a sense of unease settled over me. A feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I decided it was in my best interest to move along and follow my original plan to strike for the cabin.

Before I could offer a goodbye, a man ran out of the trees like he was being chased by fire. Lee’s head shot up to take in the sight, then he started calling out orders. Men piled out of one of the transports with guns in hand. Some were ready, but others fumbled for magazines.

“If you want to get your hands dirty, feel free to break out that cannon and help out. Just don’t get in the way. And don’t let any of my men shoot you.” He smiled. His teeth were yellowed—probably a lifetime smoker. One tooth was missing on the left side, and it gave him a garish look.

I sat for a few seconds, unsure what to do. These guys could probably handle a small army. Already they were taking cover where they could. Rifles were lowered, and someone was even putting together a large machine gun.

I could just drive away. Leave them to handle whatever was coming. I could put the automatic stick in D and just make for the cabin. I was just one guy and they were many. Would my little shotgun make that much of a difference?

I looked after Lee as he strode away. He tugged a large caliber handgun out of a holster at his side. His feet kicked up dust as he made a beeline for the trees.

I stopped when the first thing came out of the woods. The road in this location ran straight through the City of Vesper Lake, and ended in the city of Auburn before winding around to the mountains. A pair of cars came from the direction of town and swerved to avoid us. Why didn’t I follow their lead and punch it?

I opened the door and stepped out. Emptying a box of shells on the seat, I pushed a few into my pockets then reloaded the gun as I followed Lee.

There was just one at first—a man in his twenties, with a halo of blood dripping from his forehead. It splattered on his bright blue bowling shirt, then cascaded down around a huge wound in his abdomen. This person should have been on the ground howling in pain, or dead.

One of the men didn’t hesitate. He raised his M-16 and fired a shot that took the guy right between the eyes. His body flopped back and thumped on the ground. Whatever had pulled his strings was now severed.

A few more broke free of the woods. I felt the hair on the back of my neck come to attention. A chill struck me, like I had just stepped into a freezer. What was I doing here?

Lee didn’t have any trouble. He raised his hand cannon and blew one of them away.

Several more came from behind us, in the direction I had driven. My gun was at my chin in a split second, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Shots echoed all around me. Calls of “Good shot!” and “Nice one.” Didn’t affect me with any sense of peace at what we were doing.

It horrified me.

Not so long ago, I had killed to protect. So how was this any different?

A large man shambled toward me. I had no choice. I aimed low and blew his lower leg back. His knee disappeared as it splattered all over the pavement. He went down hard, but he didn’t stop. He dragged his body along the ground as he kept coming at me. His eyes locked on mine and they were dead—devoid of any kind of life.

I shook as I lowered the gun and pumped a ball of pain into his head. He flopped so hard that his head bounced back up and came to rest on a smashed nose. Brain and gore stained the ground, but I looked away.

The fight was brief.

Lee’s men stopped to congratulate each other. Some kept their eyes and weapons trained on the trees. Others went over their weapons while comparing stories of shooting brain-dead people to death. I didn’t feel the fire I had felt earlier. All I felt was empty. I was planning to leave, drive up the road a few miles, then throw up.

“Are you alright, son?”

Lee had come up beside me, while I stared at the body of a woman. She lay on her back, one arm at an odd angle over her head. Her other arm hung by stringy sinew.

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you move out? I don’t think you have the stomach for this.”

“No one should have the stomach for this.” My reply caught him off guard.

Lee stared at the bodies.

Back in my enlisted days, there was an enemy that wanted to shoot me. Somehow, that justified shooting back, at least in my mind. These were just people. They didn’t understand what they were doing.

“Tell you what. We have a lot of food. I’ll give you some, and a little water. You head out, and if you think you want to come back and join us, do that. Otherwise it was nice to meet you. Now fuck off and all that stuff.” Lee had a grin on his face that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

I liked Lee from the moment I had met him, but now I wondered at his motivation. Who had given him orders, and why weren’t his men wearing any sort of insignia?

The car roared to life, and, as I drove off, I caught his stare in the rearview mirror. He didn’t lift his hand to wave. He didn’t smile. He just watched me go.

I flipped through radio stations. Some of them were running the emergency broadcast system messages. Then announcers came on in prerecorded voices, advising people to get to safe places until things were under control. A list of buildings ran, which included schools, probably for the large auditoriums, and military bases, where people would be let into cleared locations.

I jumped around some more because I didn’t care for the bad news piling up. I came across a talk radio show where people were calling in and sharing their experiences. It saddened me when a kid no more than nine or ten called in and wanted to know what to do about his father, who was sick but locked in their basement. He wanted to see if his dad was okay.

The guy on the radio was at a loss for words, and I wondered how often that happened. He told the boy, after a moment, that he had called the police, and when the men in uniform showed up, he should let them in.

I flipped to a music channel and drove toward the hills.

The trees grew thicker along the side of the road as I drove on into the night. A fine mist of rain dropped from the sky, but didn’t stick around long enough to get the car wet. I beat at it with the windshield wipers and cranked up the brights as the car hummed along the old highway. I had the window open, and the smell of fresh, clean air with a touch of pine rushed into the car. We drove this way a few years ago, Allison and I, but it looked just like every hilly road I had ever been on.

A group of motorcycles shot by. They had been drawing closer in my rearview mirror for a few seconds before they caught up and passed me. They slowed for a mile or two then sped up. When I got to the area where they had slowed, I found a big yellow sign with a ‘Falling Rocks’ warning.

For the next few hours, I drove steadily upward as my car sought the top of the pass. I lost myself in thought, and changed the channel like a kid with ADD. Sometimes I tried to focus on what was being said, really said. There was a virus of unknown origin; it made people sick and most died. Within moments, sometimes seconds, the dead came back to life. It was the stuff of nightmares and late-night B movies. I couldn’t stand to think it was serious, and yet I had killed two men with my own hands in the last six hours.

I came to the cutoff, and saw the familiar sign for a deer crossing. I took the turn and came to a fence with a big padlock on it. The fence itself was old and rickety, but the lock was shiny and new. On either side of the dirt road, trees reached into the dark. There was no way I could drive around it. I shut off my lights and let my eyes get used to the dark.

The moon was out, but it was barely visible through the clouds that had rolled in over the past hour. I stared into the night and thought about my day. It ran through my mind in slow motion—the trip to the store, the dealings with the clerk at the gun counter. I wondered if he had taken my advice and gone home to protect his family with the shotgun I pulled out.

I eased the car forward until the bumper kissed the gate, and then gave it a little gas. The fence, from what I had seen, was an old wooden pair of slats that someone had nailed onto much larger chunks of wood. It may have been a better gate at one point, but now it was just a makeshift barrier that I hoped wouldn’t stand up to much pressure.

I gave it a little more gas. There was a snap, and I was through. The car gave a little bounce, like I had ridden over something. It sounded loud in the confined space, like I had done some real damage.

I pulled up about ten feet, hopped out of my Honda, and tried to inspect the underside. The car was sitting flat, so there were no popped tires. I couldn’t see anything underneath, so decided to trust luck rather than spend much time crawling under the car. I would have to get in and dig around in my backpack for a flashlight if I did that.

I ran back to the fence and inspected the damage. The gate had pulled away on the left side and fallen to the ground. The lock was still in place, so I picked it up, set it on the remains of the old post, and wedged it between two large nails.

It wouldn’t hold up in a stiff wind, but until I came back to fix it, the jury-rigged thing would have to do. I drove slowly for the next minute, trying to remember how the road curved. It was difficult to see in the dark, so I rolled down my front window and stuck my head out. When I felt like I had made it far enough around a curve for my lights not to be seen, I popped them back on and sped up the hill.

The SUV bumped over the gravel then larger rocks as I got farther from the road. Once I had a clear view, it was just a matter of maneuvering around the larger rocks and branches that lay in the way. No one had been here for a long time. I came to one large branch and got out of the car. I had to drag it, grunting and straining the whole time, until there was a clear path. It looked more like a small tree had fallen down, and it was long and inflexible.

I drove the car past it, then got out again and dragged it back to its original spot. I was being ultra-paranoid now, but I didn’t know what to expect in the coming weeks. Maybe it would all end with the world back to normal in a few days. All the footage on TV over the last week had led me to believe, at least in the beginning, that the virus was contained and the authorities were taking care of it. Footage leaked out on the web, slowly at first, of attacks all around the globe.

The ports and airports into the U.S. had been shut down first. A strict policy of checking every arriving passenger had gone into effect. After a day of that, they put a stop to flights altogether. I remembered watching the video, just a few days ago, of a plane landing and the emergency slide opening while men and women streamed out of the plane. Some were bloodied, and when they reached the bottom, one dropped her bag, turned to her companion, and tore his throat out. Then it was chaos, as more of the things went down the slide and poured away from the plane in a full panic.

“I can’t believe what I am seeing here. Now, this is live footage from Sea-Tac airport where a plane has landed, in distress, and the passengers seem to be attacking each other. Folks, I have never …” then his voice cut off, and one of the newscasters was caught staring to the side in shock. She turned to face the camera again and, in a calm voice, started talking about the sports world. I should have left then. I should have planned this better.

The road ended in another mile. It came up against a copse of trees that were at least fifty feet tall. I got out and stretched, glad that I had arrived. Assuming no one was in my old friend’s cabin, I had made it to my home of isolation. I took a deep breath of the cool air, which smelled like pine and upturned dirt. It was a clean smell. Earthy. I almost smiled.

I guess I have always been somewhat of a loner, but now I planned to cut all ties to civilization for a while.

I walked straight past the road until I came to a massive boulder. It looked like a tiny mountain had fallen from the sky and landed here. It was the landmark that told me to cut right and walk about a hundred yards. I had to trust my sense of direction, which was usually pretty good. It kept me in a straight line, until I heard water and knew I was by the tiny lake. My flashlight held up pretty well, although the LED light didn’t seem to be as bright as the halogen one I used to have. I shook it again to charge it, feeling ridiculous as I did, like I was jacking the thing off.

I almost walked into water. I stopped at the shore, then shone the light up and down the edge of the lake until I saw an upturned boat about thirty feet to the left. It sat there like a beached whale—just a curve in the dark that told me I was close to my destination.

As I got closer, I saw the edge of the cabin in the woods. A space had been cut in the trees, forming a square around the wooden structure. In the dark of night, they rose like giants into the night sky.

Ray let me use his place a few years ago. Allison and I had come back from our honeymoon in Belize, but we had a few days left before we had to go back to work—her teaching accounting software at the Payco Inc. and me as a security consultant at Hamnar Enterprises. He gave me the key and a hand-drawn map on a Wednesday, and said we could stay for as long as we wanted. A couple of days turned into a week in which we fished, skinny dipped, and jumped in the sack several times a day.

Looking back now, it was one of the best times of my life, but it was oddly shadowed, tempered by the feelings I had for her now, which were far from love.

The cabin was a welcome sight after the madness of the last few days. I walked up the noisy, three stairs to the porch and stopped at the door. I didn’t have a key this time, and wondered how I was supposed to get in. This was the big gap in my plan.

I tried the doorknob, but it was locked. I pushed on the door, but it was secure. I banged on it and called out “I’m a friend of Ray’s,” but no one answered.

Praying that no one tried to shoot me, I wandered around the cabin and tried the windows. All of them were shut, but one in the back—a tiny one that allowed a view of the trees from the bathroom—was loose. I shoved it up and caught a pair of splinters in one hand for my effort. The window had budged, however, so I went back to the car and got the pry bar.

It was just a matter of breaking past some old, dried wood stain, or paint, to get into the room. I pushed the window up, smiling when I found I had to turn nearly sideways to get in. I made an awful racket as I maneuvered into a space that was only a little bigger than the size of my body. I fell into the room, knocking over several plastic bottles and whatever other toiletry items Ray kept in here. I hadn’t seen my friend in a few years. He was an old friend of my father, served in the police force for many years. His dream had always been to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, but then when he finished the place, he couldn’t give up his job and ended up working another half dozen years past his retirement.

I landed on the ground in a heap, and felt around for the edge of the old cast iron tub. Something he had paid a small fortune to bring into the woods. When I reoriented myself, based on my memory of the visit years ago, I made it to the door and opened it, but kept low in case someone was waiting outside to blow my brains out.

“Name’s Erik. I’m a friend of Ray’s. If someone is there, please say something.” Then I waited a full thirty seconds before cracking open the door. I crouched down and waited for shots to echo over my head, or for a very angry person very much within his ‘right to bear arms’ to blow my fool head off.

No one moved in the room, and after a few seconds where I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest, I moved into it. Shadows coated the place, like relics of the past. I could smell dust and the sure signs of disuse. I clicked on the flashlight and shone it around the cabin’s main room. Unlike in the bad horror movies I liked to watch, there was no masked killer waiting to slice me to pieces with a machete. In fact, everywhere I looked, everything was covered in dust. Some of it sat so thick that I could draw shapes in it.

It was much as I remembered, but like most places you visit and have fond memories of, it was a lot smaller. There were white sheets over most of the furniture, so I left it alone and went into the kitchen. I found a pantry stuffed with canned goods, like jam and vegetables. I wondered when they were made. I had plenty of time tomorrow to do an investigation. First I would have to start the generator, make sure the cranky thing still worked.

I propped the front door open, then I went to the car and started hauling things inside. I set most of them by the door, because the events of the day were crashing down on me, as if from a great height.

I loaded the shotgun with fresh shells, pulled my new camo jacket out of a brown paper bag—the very same field jacket I had grabbed from Walmart that morning. I dragged a white sheet off the couch, curled up with the shotgun on the floor near my feet, and slept until dawn.

Very early in the morning, I woke to a sound I had not heard in a long time. Birds. It seemed like hundreds of them were hanging outside the cabin, and all with the express purpose of bringing me back to the land of the living.

The land of the living. What an odd thing to think about.

I rose and looked around the tiny cabin to find it was just as I remembered. A woven rug lay before the fireplace. It was old but very colorful, and done up in a Native American style that gave the place a distinct western flavor. There was a small, hand-carved wooden table next to the kitchen. Four or five thick chunks of maple had been glued together, figures like bears and salmon were etched in, and then the thing was covered in a thick layer of lacquer.

A pair of chairs was under the massive table. They were gaudy, having been constructed of thick tree branches. The main area was pretty small, about ten by fifteen, and the old couch barely fit in it. A rocking chair sat opposite, and a small glass table with magazines from the seventies lay between them. I eyed an old copy of Time magazine that had Star Wars on the cover. It was an interesting contrast to the Spartan cabin. I leafed through it, careful of the old paper, but it had held up quite well. I wondered if he found them stuffed in an old box.

There was a tiny room not much bigger than the small bed it housed. Allison and I had to get very close in order to sleep in it together, which had been just fine with me at the time. I remembered waking to her smiling face one morning and wondering if a man could be much happier in this life.

I stretched and wished I had a cup of coffee. Too many years in the city made that my first priority. I wandered into the kitchen, which had a bright patch of light shining through the window over the sink, and took another look in the pantry. There was a simple curtain covering the opening, so I slid it aside and considered the contents.

Jars stood in neat rows. There was jam, vegetables, and fruit. On a lower shelf, I found barley, dried noodles, and beans in larger jars. I pulled one down and checked the date on the top to find the food was almost two years old. I had my doubts that it was still good. I’m sure the dried goods were fine, but the fruit and other perishables were probably spoiled. Then again, they had been stored in a cool place, so some might be salvageable.

I found a tin marked coffee and pulled it out. A freeze-dried bag of beans was inside, and when I cut it open with my new Gerber knife, the smell hit me with its familiarity, making me feel homesick.

I dug around in the cabinets and found a hand grinder for the beans. There was some wood stacked outside the door, so I got a small fire going in the little oven and then went out back to get water. The rear door was locked, and had a double pane window that was covered in dust. I wiped at it to get a look out the back. All I saw were trees and a patch of cleared space around a tiny back yard.

There were wildflowers growing everywhere, and the morning air was bracing, to say the least. The clouds were gone again, and as I walked to the lake to get water, I stared at the pastoral scene around me. It was like something from a painting. I splashed some water and marveled at how clear it was. I took a sip, and it tasted like heaven.

Water in the pot, I managed to make coffee by dangling a paper towel filled with grounds in it while it boiled next to the fire. I didn’t want to turn the place over just yet looking for luxuries like coffee filters. Later in the day, I would check the stove and clean it if I had to.

I spent the day setting up shop. I uncovered everything, opened the doors and windows, and let the place air out. The smell of dust went away after a while, as I cleaned. I took everything I could get my hands on outside and pounded on it as best I could.

Unloading the SUV only took a few minutes. I stored the hunting rifle, and then set the boxes of bullets on the main table so I could get a count. Later I hunted around until I found some large nails and a hammer. I walked the mile to the gate and, after making sure no one could see me from the road, I nailed the plank back into place. Then I used the axe to hack some large branches and created a half-assed covering for the entrance. A cursory glance, and it would look like the road was overgrown. It wouldn’t fool anyone who got close to it.

I aired out the bedroom, with its tiny twin bed, as well. I took the sheets off early and made an attempt at washing them in warm water; some I had boiled and the rest came from the lake. I found a pair of hip waders and walked into the water until it was almost to my hips, giving the sheets a good soak, then I rinsed them and wrung them out. I hung them between the edge of the cabin and a tree, letting them dry all day.

Night came soon enough, and I decided that I had waited long enough, so I took the radio out of the box and wound it up. I flipped through channels that played music or the emergency broadcast message that still instructed folks to get to secure places. These were listed off by county.

I found a radio station that was talking about the virus, but it sounded like a repeat, because it was all old news. Well, not that old, I guess. The collapse of civilization seemed to have happened in less than a week.

I found a bottle of Scotch on a shelf, but I didn’t recognize the brand. I took a pull from the bottle, and it burned all the way down my throat until it hit my stomach. Then I did it again, drinking some water as a chaser. I remember watching old westerns where the guys sucked down shots of whiskey with barely a grimace; they must have had iron guts, because this stuff felt like fire.

The surface of the lake was calm under the glow of the moon. A shadow slid over it, and I chalked it up to an owl on night patrol for a bite to eat. There was nothing to listen to up here, nothing to waste my day away on, like the television. It was so easy to just veg on the couch, but I doubted days like that would ever come around again.

I thought of Allison and took another long pull from the bottle. Was she okay? She and her new guy? I popped out my cell phone, but there was no signal. I wondered if I went onto the roof, would I pick up a tower.

Tomorrow I would scout around the lake and see if there were more cabins with people in them. I would be well advised to meet the neighbors.

After a night of tossing and turning on the bed, I wandered outside and got some fresh water from the lake. There was movement behind me, but a good ways off. I would guess about fifty meters. Probably a deer or elk.

Bored. I had stacked my food supplies, counted the bottled goods, cracked one open and sampled the jam. Tried a jar of pickles, and they tasted decent. I made a list of all the food then figured out what I should eat each day to get a decent mix of veggies and enough starch. I made lists of the beans, how much made a portion, and then the rice, and how much I could get away with eating each day so that I wouldn’t starve. Then I planned a menu where I would be comfortably full each day.

I cleaned my clothes in the tub. Now it was barely noon, and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I cranked the radio a few times, but all I picked up was more of the emergency broadcast station with the same message as yesterday. I found a station playing classic rock songs with no commercial interruptions, which was weird. Maybe they put the place on autopilot and headed for the hills like I did.

I checked out the generator in the back shed, but there wasn’t much diesel for it. I had decided to rough it as much as possible and conserve the fuel. Well, roughing it in a cabin. It’s not like I had to sleep outside. I broke out my laptop and played a game of solitaire for half an hour, but watching the battery drain made me crazy, so I shut it down.

I stared at the pad of paper I had found in a drawer and the box of pencils. I wasn’t able to find a sharpener, but my new Gerber knife made short work of it. I pulled the pad into my lap and started to recount all that I had seen in the past few days—the very journal you are reading now. How long I can keep up the writing is a mystery even to me. Once upon a time, I wanted to pursue a job in journalism. I even wrote for the school paper and dabbled in a few creative writing classes. The military was a strong calling, even in my early years.

The days passed ever so slowly. I tried my hand at hunting, but it had been a long time. I didn’t even see a hint of game, let alone get a shot at one. A lot of smaller animals raced in the undergrowth, but I was far too slow to catch even a glimpse of one.

One late afternoon, I caught a squirrel trying to shimmy up a tree. I got it in my sights and I was pretty sure I could put a hole in it, but once down I wasn’t sure how to clean and prepare it. So he got a reprieve for now.

I tried to swim in the lake, but it was so cold I started shivering uncontrollably the moment the water reached my knees. Then I regretted not having hot water to shower in. By the time I got the tub full, I would be sweating.

I climbed on the roof a few times and tried to get a signal, but it was no use. The cell phone showed no bars. Either I was too far away or there was a complete breakdown in the cell towers. Either theory was relevant. I thought about climbing a tree, but being this far from any sort of medical attention meant I could possibly die if I fell out—or at least impale a leg or arm on a broken branch.

I tried fishing with a little success. I caught a small fish that looked like a trout, but it tasted plain no matter how much seasoning I put on the chunks of meat.

And so my days passed. I wondered almost constantly if I should leave the cabin and go back to civilization. It had been two weeks, and I was starting to doubt the severity of the situation below. Maybe the military came in and set everything right, cleaned up the infected, and shipped them off to some camp where they were being cured even now.

I was probably fired from my job, having been gone for so long. I bet they would understand. My manager Tammy was the no-nonsense sort, but she did have a sense of humor. I could see it now—her laughing as I told her I went to the mountains and lived like a hermit for a few weeks.

Tomorrow I would walk the mile or two to the road and take a look.

It was cold and gray. Rain threatened from the moment I woke up. I didn’t have a rain jacket, so I decided to wait, and wait I did. For the next six days, it rained almost nonstop. I became so used to the sound of water running down the roof and the side of the cabin that I heard it even when there were breaks in the rain.

I heated water one day, because I felt like the damp had soaked into my bones, and took a long, lazy bath in the tub. I sang songs from memory and even put headphones on and listened to my mp3 player for a precious half hour of music. I planned to fire up the generator in a day or two and charge all the electronic devices.

The rain let up for a few hours then set in again. I went to sleep after finishing off the scotch, but had to keep one foot on the ground to stop the room from spinning. The next day, I felt like shit, but I hauled myself out of bed and drank what seemed like a gallon of water. At least the rain was gone, so I popped a pair of aspirin from my medical kit and ate some food from one of the survival kits. Dry cakes of some shit that tasted gritty, but provided good protein and nutrients. The only downside was that the stuff caused terrible gas.

I had a couple of cans of corned beef hash calling to me, but I was saving them for a special day.

I would suit up and head down to the road in a few minutes.

Nothing. That was what I saw in an hour of standing around behind a tree waiting for a car to pass. Nothing went by, not a car, motorcycle or even a logging truck. I walked out to the street, inspecting the gate first, but there was no one in sight. I wanted to jump in the Honda and head back to town. It was driving me insane—the not knowing. Or maybe it was just loneliness.

I flipped open my cell phone, and a single bar of connectivity faded in and out. I walked around the side of the road, then into it a few times, until I got a partial bar again. Then I dialed Allison, because I was worried about her. No matter what our problems had been, I loved her at one time. The phone tried to connect. It made some clicking sounds, followed by a fast busy signal. I tried another number, my manager at work, but got the same thing. Then I called Devon, and the sound repeated.

I wandered back to the cabin and spent another week dreading the fact I needed to go back and see what was going on.

The cold of winter came on like a heavy curtain. I passed the next few weeks uneventfully.

I hunted, and finally decided to climb up a large tree and lie on a branch. I took my rifle down, and after what seemed the whole day, I saw movement. I raised the rifle and sighted down the barrel. It had a very basic scope, but I was still able to bring the elk into focus. He wasn’t exactly heading toward me, but he was passing fairly close. I took a bead on his center and exhaled. I stroked the trigger, and the rifle hammered into my shoulder.

The elk staggered and started to run, but I must have tagged him good, because he took two stumbling steps then went down. I let out a “yippee” and climbed down the tree to inspect my prize. The animal was huge, and his eyes remained on mine while I approached. He took deep breaths, and a light puff of fresh snow moved around his nose where the air snuffled in and out.

I took my knife out and put an end to his suffering by slicing it through his neck. Now I had the problem of what to do with the meat. I spent the next few hours taking off the haunches, and then I skinned him as best I could and tried to bury the organs in the ground, but it was hard going with all the roots. The dirt was miserably cold, and after a while, I went back to the cabin and dug out some old plastic garbage bags. They provided a pretty poor substitute for a deep hole. Any predator with half a nose would seek them out in no time. I just hoped it wasn’t a determined bear.

I didn’t bag everything. I set aside the liver and kidneys for stew. I felt like a real hunter, so I took a bit of blood and drank it down. Then I had to fight to keep from gagging.

I dragged back chunks of the big animal and put them on the porch. Some of it I would turn into jerky. If the snow came on, as I suspected it would, I would bury the rest in an outdoor freezer and hope it didn’t thaw out too soon.

I went back and hacked at the ribs for a while and took a huge piece back. This I chopped and broke into smaller sections, and then I let a rack of six roast near the fireplace. I didn’t have much seasoning, but they were just about the best ribs I had ever eaten in my life.

Winter was like a heavy blanket of white, and I was stuck for the time being. Stuck may have been the wrong word. I could certainly head out in the SUV and drive nice and slow out of the mountains, but I thought it would be a good idea to stay in place and wait for the winter to pass. Make a fresh run at the city when all the madness was over. And so my existence ground to a slow crawl as I waited.

I went out and started the SUV. I let it run for a good half hour. I ran the heater very high, so I could get at any moisture. The car already smelled like mildew, but it was worth a shot.

I drove up and down the little drive way a few times, taking care to hit a few potholes. I wanted to shift the gas in the tank, let it move around. If condensation built up on the inside and mixed with the gas, I would have a hell of a time going anywhere.

I created a calendar on a sheet of paper and put a reminder to do this again in a week.

Days were routine, mainly focusing on what I would eat. The survival packs would only get me through another two months at best, so I made more of an effort to hunt.

I took down a big buck and gave him the same treatment as the elk. After dragging the carcass a half mile away, I freaked when I thought I had lost my way in the snow. Stupid. If a fresh dusting of snow came along and covered my tracks, I would likely freeze out here.

Weeks fled past and became a blur. For Christmas, I opened the last can of corned beef. I sang a Christmas carol or two and built up the fire. Low on wood, I would have to go stand in a foot of fresh snow tomorrow and chop some logs. If Ray came back, I would ask his forgiveness for removing some of his tree line. Until then, I wasn’t planning on hauling wood back through the snow.

It was February when I ran out of food. The last of the emergency supplies were gone, and I was down to the gristly parts of the last deer I had shot. I sat in the tree for three days, and not a single one wandered by. I knew from my old military training that I could survive for a few weeks with nothing to eat, as long as I had water. And that I had plenty of, thanks to all the cursed snow.

I didn’t plan to wait around for that, so I packed a few supplies, loaded the shotgun, and put them in the car.

I had to crank at the key a few times, but the car puttered to life. The gas had sat in the tank for a few months, and I hoped it would be fine. I backed out of the snow, which was somewhat melted and only a few inches thick. The bigger concern was the ice that lay underneath it.

The car stuttered as I struggled to get moving. Hopefully shifting the gas around in the tank had helped.

I opened the gate with a steady hand, but some of the nails fell out from my jury-rigged repairs. Once I slid past the gate, I put it back in place and pounded the nails in with the tire iron. Then I got on a road that was pure white; there were no tread marks at all. The cabin wasn’t too high up, another thousand feet, and I doubted I would have been able to drive at all if it had been up much higher.

In four-wheel drive, the SUV handled quite well, but I wouldn’t have wanted to take it out in deep snow. I drove out of the mountain with the radio constantly scanning for signs of life. I came across a few stations that were playing music. One had old rock music on, and the sound of Steely Dan soon filled the car. The other was playing classical music for which I didn’t care, but I listened for the sake of listening.

What would I find when I returned? The lack of news, talk radio, other channels had me concerned. I charged my cell phone as I drove. It had gone dead a few weeks ago. I was doing my best to conserve gas, so I didn’t bother firing up the generator to charge it. I tried to call Allison, but the phone gave the fast busy again. Then I tried co-workers, my manager at work. The phone clicked like it was trying to dial out, but I never got a ring from the speaker.

There was less ice the farther I got down the road, and I was able to add some speed.

I came across a small town—just a blip on a map, really. There was a gas station with no attendant. I slowed down and looked into the windows, but saw no movement. The pumps were an older variety but still electronic, and from my vantage point, I could tell they were dead. I waited but didn’t honk my horn. The road here was much clearer, and it was impossible to tell if anyone had driven here.

I moved on and came across a small convenience store. I pulled into the parking lot and stared at the front window for a moment, but like the gas station, there was no movement. Leaving the car running, I jumped out, hoping for the best. I walked to the front door, where a sign proclaimed the store to be closed, but the inside was a mess, like someone had tried to pack the place into many large boxes that lay open on the floor. I tried the door, but it was locked. A metal gate shielded most of the door, but if I smashed it, I could probably wiggle in.

I got in my car and headed back to town. As I hit the old back roads that got me here in the first place, I saw house after house sitting dark. I didn’t want to risk someone shooting me, so I drove slowly but only looked. If things were as bad as I thought, there was little point in me trying to approach one, in case someone was waiting with a shotgun behind the front door. I would be, if it were me.

I came out of a street and found the main drag that led back to Vesper Lake. The two-lane road was free of traffic.

I went around a bend doing about 45 MPH and skidded to a stop at a military checkpoint. There were a pair of men blocking the road, and a Hummer stood obstructing part of it.

It has been a while, but I was pretty sure this was the same checkpoint I had left when it was manned by Lee and his men. Could this still be them? This didn’t make much sense. Why would they still be in the same location? It was probably another platoon tasked with keeping the peace.

When I saw them, I felt a sense of relief. At last, I could get all of my questions answered. Maybe the town was under protection, maybe there was a full military presence and the whole thing was under control. I wanted to laugh with relief. I wanted to jump out and hug the soldiers standing by the wooden barrier.

They had their backs turned to me, so I slowed down and approached at a creep, giving them time to hear me coming. I didn’t want to scare some recruit into filling my car with .50 caliber rounds from the big gun on the Hummer. I rolled down the window and called out.

“Am I ever glad to see you guys! I’ve been hiding out up in the mountains and missed out on the last few months. Anyone want to give me the ten-second run down?”

I was holding out my ID when the first soldier turned toward my voice. He moved fast, but in an odd, uncoordinated way. I saw his eyes first, and almost dropped my identification card as I recoiled in horror. His face was slack, like he had had a stroke. His eyes were dilated, the pupils almost the size of his irises, and they were blood red. His skin color was just wrong. A dull greenish color clung to it like he was illuminated by a Christmas tree light. He didn’t exactly glow; it was more of a tint that emanated from every inch of exposed skin.

He snarled at me; his lips drew back, and his teeth were jagged points. I reached for my shotgun, knowing there was no way to get it up in time before the freak shot me with the M-16 he was carrying.

His partner raised his hand and hooted into the air, then stumbled toward me. A cry to my left pulled my attention to the tree line surrounding the roadblock. From out of the thick trees and shrubs, a veritable army of demons poured forth. They had the same greenish tinge to the skin and were in a mish mash of clothes. There were more soldiers but also civilians—both men and women. Had the virus turned them into this monstrous form? If so, it was a far cry from the zombies I saw four months ago.

One raised his gun, but it was unsteady in his hand, as if he were not familiar with the weapon. He aimed it toward me, but his shaky grip almost blew it out of his hand when he pulled the trigger. He staggered back, and bullets stitched the air over my head. I hauled the shotgun up into my lap, chambered a round by pumping the action, and aimed it at the guy. I started to back away, but he didn’t seem to get the message that I was planning to put a hole in him if he didn’t stop aiming the gun at me.

I slammed the car into reverse and hit the gas, but a flood of them were on the way and didn’t look too interested in talking about the plague.

“Ah fuck it!” I yelled, extended the gun barrel, and blew the first soldier back into the barricade. It was flimsy and reminded me of the one I put up at the cabin. Dear God, why did I leave the cabin? I could have made it at least a few more months if I stuck with the hunting.

I jacked the pump and grimaced when my hearing went away. The noise of the shot had been like a cannon in the small space, but I shoved aside the instinct to worry about it and aimed for the barrier as I put the car into drive. The things were an army behind me. I didn’t stand a chance of plowing through them, because they were six or seven deep, and they looked like hell itself had opened up and spit them out.

I fired again, and the gun leapt in my hand. I missed the wooden slats by a mile. Just plowed through them and the other soldier who was standing in front trying to bring his gun up. His mouth opened up in a big O that might have been a scream when my bumper slammed into his midsection, tossing him face first onto the hood of my little SUV. His body made a pretty good cushion as I barreled through the barrier. When I hit it, the thing splintered like balsa wood. The guy clutched at the hood, so I hit my brakes, and his forward momentum kept him going right on over the car and onto the ground. Then a bump as I passed over him.

Gunfire behind me, and I hit the gas to get away. I had to swerve to avoid a pair of gutted cars that lay rusting in the road behind the tiny barricade. Then I was past, and the army of howling creatures was behind me. I kept my focus pinned to the rearview mirror as I accelerated away, which almost cost me my car. I was so fixated on the ones behind me that I missed out on the ones ahead. They were also pouring out of storefronts on either side, flooding the street with fresh bodies. Some howled when they saw me, while other shambled aimlessly.

I had to slam on my brakes or risk barreling into them. I rolled up my window and hit my horn over and over, hand pressing hard against the plastic device. Sweat made me slip off it, but not for long. They crowded in, and I had to drive into the mass. I pushed them aside with the car, but a couple climbed onto the top. I wanted to punch the gas, but I could tell these weren’t the same things I had seen before making my escape from the city.

They looked like regular people, more or less, just hungry. I pushed forward with the car, punching the gas as I tried to swerve through the mass. A pair of them came out with bars, and one smashed my rear door window and started to climb in. They both had glowing green eyes that made me want to bite my tongue in half.

That was the last straw. I tried to play nice and treat the people with some respect regardless of the fact that they were screaming for my blood, but that was obviously the wrong tactic. So I floored it and grimaced as the car thumped over several of them. The guy who was trying to get in had on an old helmet that looked like it was straight out of World War II. He howled, and when I turned to look at him, his mouth was a jagged horror of broken teeth. His parched tongue hung out, but no words came out of his mouth. I maneuvered the gun around the front seat, leveled it at the guy, and pulled the trigger. One-handed, the shotgun was heavy, and it was a struggle to raise it while steering the car to level it at the crazy man. My hearing had been coming back, but was still a dull buzz that made my teeth ache. The gunshot was so loud in the car that it took it away again before I could hear the end of the retort.

The smaller load was great at a distance, but up close it turned the guy’s head inside out. He flopped out of the car, and the pursuers fell on the body like scavenging birds coming across a fresh kill in the desert. That gave me an idea. I rolled the car forward and avoided a stuck car that was completely stripped. I rolled down the window on my side and smashed one of the followers in the face. This time, an overweight woman in a faded sundress that looked like she should be freezing in it. She fell back, so I hit the gas a little more to get some momentum, then stood up in the car and fired a shot at one of the things.

Then I dropped another after pumping a round in. They fell on the fresh kills like they were starving. This gave me some room, so I floored it and leapt away from the pursuers.

My hands were shaking on the steering wheel like I’d just bench pressed a couple of hundred pounds. I couldn’t control them. My breath was fast and ragged, and it took an effort to slow it down. I didn’t want to hyperventilate; I was already feeling lightheaded from the fight.

I needed to find a way back to the main street and get back to the cabin. I’d be damned if I was going to stay stuck in this town with those howling things. I could always hit the convenience store I passed earlier and raid whatever was left of their food.

I started to take a left onto a side street that would lead back to my house. I was here, and it seemed worthwhile to retrieve all of the things I had hidden in the space under the house. I could also gather up any canned goods and add those to my hoard.

I also wanted to check on my neighbors, particularly Devon and his wife. Maybe they were okay and holed up. Maybe they had banded together with some of the others on my block. Maybe they were with the screaming horde I had just fled.

It was looking like I had lost them when they poured into the street again. There were hundreds this time, and they were coming from the trees along the secondary road. I hit the brakes and spun around in a circle then zipped back to highway 322. I could always find another way to get to the old house later on.

When I came up on the main drag, a group of them was busy pushing cars into my path. I spun the wheel to the left, hard, and took to the sidewalk, mowing down several in the process. They thumped off the hood of the car, and one left a trail of blood on the already red hood. Crimson waves of it seemed to smash down on me, as I thought of the end I was facing. I couldn’t imagine what these people wanted, nor did I care to stick around and find out.

I left the sidewalk and there were more of them. I was within sight of the Walmart I had raided a few months ago, what seemed like a lifetime ago. They were everywhere. I honked at them to get out of the way, but they just snarled at me as I bumped into them. Without risking serious damage to the car, there was no way to push through them.

Not all of them moved fast. Some were slack jawed, empty eyed, hands raised as if in supplication. They were not frenzied as the green ones.

One threw something under the car, and I felt it give way and collapse to the side with an audible pop. They had flattened the tire with some sort of spike. The thing had been flat, with nails driven into it, and looked like a club one would see in medieval times. If I could get my hand on it, I was going to make the fuckers pay dearly before they took me down.

I drove as hard as I could, but it was soon on a metal rim. Another pop forced me to slow down. One of them darted forward and slashed the rear tire on that side.

It wouldn’t be long now. I took my hands off the wheel and jammed as many shells as I could into the shotgun. I lost count of how many rounds I had fired, and just filled until no more would go in. They surrounded the car, and I tried to keep my foot on the gas, but the weight of them combined with the flat tires slowed me to a stop. I guessed the rear window would be my undoing.

I opened the sunroof and slithered up onto the seat. One of them was climbing onto the top of the car, so I blew a hole in his midsection first. I planted my hands on the side of the car, so I would have a chance to run and not get stuck inside when they took me down. I lifted up and sat on the edge of the roof and shot another one. The blast took her in the shoulder, spinning her into the crowd with a massive spray of blood. I swung my leg up and stood on the top of the car so I had a full view of the area around me. The metal underneath me was flimsy and buckled as I jockeyed for position.

I kicked another one with my size twelve boot, and then shot another in the face.

There were too many of them—a veritable ocean of the things. I wondered if I should just put the barrel under my chin and do myself in. I didn’t want to be eaten by these things. So let them feast on my corpse and choke on it.

I swung the gun up and braced it against my body as a pair climbed onto the blood- and brain-splattered hood. I smiled at one—a big, full-mouthed grin—and then pulled the trigger.

Click.

Not good!

I fumbled for a shell. It fell out of my pocket and rolled down the side of the car. I bashed the first freak over the head with the stock of the shotgun. Big hollow thunk as he went down. I lashed out behind with one foot and caught a tall, skinny kid in the gut. He fell on his face, so I smashed his head into the roof with my foot.

Went for another shell, got it, slid it home. Now I was surrounded on every side, and I would never get the damn thing up to blow my own brains out. One of them rose in front of me with a howl. His mouth was wide open, but my ringing ears didn’t hear him. I whipped my hand up to slash at his throat, but he teetered on unsure feet, and I ended up slashing him across the chin with the edge of my hand. I had planned to smash his throat. Another scrambled up behind me. Well, here we go.

A shot rang out, and I half-expected to feel a punch as it struck my body. The one in front of me dropped, then another shot sounded in the distance, and one dropped onto the hood of the car.

I spun around and punched the guy behind me. A full blow with the shoulder behind it that rocked my wrist, even though I stiffened it just before impact. He flew back, and then there were gunshots all around.

“Get the fuck down!” someone called out , and I didn’t look around to see if the guy was serious. Instead I dropped to the hood of my car and started popping shells into the shotgun.

Blasts bounced off the SUV or settled in the metal. There was screaming, which came through loud and clear as my hearing returned. Bodies dropped on either side, heads exploded, chunks flew, blood misted; it was like a warzone. I slithered onto the car via the sunroof, banging both elbows and my left knee in the process. I ended up with my ass in the air, staring at the gas pedal as I tried to right myself.

The things outside the car were no longer interested in me, having discovered the much more accessible flesh of their fallen comrades. What sort of creatures were these? Since I rolled into my old town, I had no time to stop and consider the things. More shots broke up the mob, and they soon got the message and cleared the street. I forgot to turn the engine off in my haste, so all I had to do was pop the car in drive and hit the gas. The SUV squealed as two metal rims skittered over the ground, but it did move.

There was a group of men on the little ridge that lined the road leading up the rise to the big Walmart. Ironically, they were in the same spot that I had been in when I shot the attacking zombie in the face a few months ago. That fateful day I had made my run to the store to collect supplies to hole up and wait it out.

As I squealed up the small road, I noticed that a giant metal fence surrounded the place. They stood before it, five or six of them, and laid down fire, gesturing for me to hurry up. I must have looked pretty ridiculous in my car, rubbing metal on the road, sparks flying as I tried to outrun a bunch of bloodthirsty demons.

I made it to the little road leading up the hill, and then pulled up and into a giant metal gate that they were opening for me. The men—well, men and women. I saw it was an even mix—shot as they ran, three dropping to their knees and shooting at any of the things that still followed me. The other three ran a few feet, and then laid down covering fire for the others. They moved with a military precision that impressed the hell out of me.

The parking lot was a mess of cars, trucks, and even a couple of semi trucks. They were scattered all over the place, and most looked to be in good condition. The heavy metal fence slammed shut behind me. I pulled over, but a man gestured me forward, so I steered the squealing car along a road that ran up toward the big store. When I reached the front of the store, I pulled into a parking spot.

I fell out of the car more exhausted than I had been since Special Forces school. I left the guns in the SUV and stood up to greet my rescuers. One of them, a tall man with gaunt features and a long, straggly beard of brown and gray, walked toward me. He slung his assault rifle over his shoulder—M-16 or AR-15 from my very brief glance. He had a big smile on his face, as if we were old friends. Then he tugged a handgun from a holster at his waist and pointed it at my head. He stopped a good five feet away, too far for me to try any heroics like a grab and sweep. Professional all the way, or he had learned a lot over the last few months.

“Tell me who you are, how you got here, and, more importantly, why I shouldn’t blow your brains out.”

Things were just getting better and better.

“Name’s Erik Tragger. I been holed up in a cabin for the last four or five months. I bugged out when the shit went down.” I tried to keep my voice neutral, but having a gun pointed at my face wasn’t making me a happy camper.

“That’s a great story, Tragger. Only the goddamn ghouls have gotten better and better at sending in people closer to being, well, people.” On the outside, he was all polite, but there was a sense of tension that told me I didn’t have much time to convince him my story was true.

“I wish I knew what you were talking about. Look, man, I been out in the woods for months. Living on MREs and what little I could hunt or fish. I have been out of the mix. I don’t have the slightest fucking clue what’s going on, except some crazy guys that don’t look much like the zombies I gunned down months ago just tried to take me apart.”

The truth in my words seemed to be getting through. He lowered the gun just enough so I could see his eyes and not the eye of the gun barrel. He was younger than me, but not by much. His eyes were a gray color that was hard around the edges. He had seen some crazy shit, and I knew he would just as soon shoot me in the head as have to worry about me turning on them. They must have needed me for something, because they helped me get in the compound.

“When did you escape?”

“A couple of days after it started. I was busy watching the news, just sitting around not sure what to do, when I decided to head to an old cabin my friend has up on Mount Arrow. I took all I could safely carry, stopped at this very store and grabbed a couple guns, ammo, and some supplies and left. I haven’t heard anything since then. Radios are dead, and I couldn’t get a signal on my cell. Besides, man, you must need me or you wouldn’t have helped back there.” I looked at the street, where a small mob of ghouls was creeping up on the fence.

“Only saved you for your car. We need more transportation. You? I say we just kill you and be done with it. No offense, but we’ve survived this long by not trusting anyone. Besides, we don’t usually let creepers in.”

Creeper? Was that another version of the monstrosities I had just fought?

“Oh come on. Just keep a guard on me or something. I can help you out. I have a lot of training.” I couldn’t believe how badly this was going. What happened to returning to civilization? Coming back to a world that worked the old way—buy, sell, stay at home and stay out of the limelight. Right now, I felt like every cold eye in the world was on me.

“What kind of training?”

“Hey, I think I know this guy,” someone spoke up. One of the men moved behind the leader and squinted at me. I didn’t know the guy. Never seen him before in my life. He was stocky, dressed in black, and had a long dark beard. His eyes were hollow, lined with circles like he didn’t sleep.

“You do?”

“Yeah, guy saved my life when I worked here. He came in when the shit was going down. Just walked in with this no-nonsense attitude. Smashed a couple of displays and took knives and a pair of guns. Then he handed me the shotgun that saved my life, and told me to go and protect my family. It was like a wakeup call. I went home less than an hour later, and we hid up until the enforcers got started. I shot ten or fifteen zombies with that gun, man. Saved my life.”

I couldn’t remember the guy’s name, nor could I remember if I even looked at his nametag when I went storming through the store. I was happy that he made it, though, but not so happy that he and his friends were about to shoot me.

“Really? You sure you know him, Pat?”

“I’m sure.” And the guy smiled at me.

There was a moment that passed, a moment when I felt my life hanging in the balance between life and death. Call it cliché; call it a sense of déjà vu. I had faced death more times in that one day than I had when I was enlisted and trained to take on the world.

The guy lowered the gun at last, and we both breathed a sigh of relief. He held out his hand. I found myself taking his in mine and shaking with a firm grip. We smiled like we were old friends, and just like that, the tension went out of the situation.

“You said you had some training? What kind of training?”

“I went out for Special Forces and almost passed.”

“Real badass, eh? Almost passed—is that like almost getting laid?” His voice had a hint of humor to it.

“It’s a long story.”

“How far did you get?”

“Right to the end. They called me back for a family emergency, and I was offered a chance to start over. But I didn’t take them up on it. Finished my tour and got out a year later so I could be with my girl.”

“Did she make it?” No hesitation, no dancing around the subject. This was a different world. If I had been asked that a year ago, it would have been met with a lot of skating around the question.

“Don’t know. So can you fill me in on what I’ve missed over the last few months?”

“Not much to tell. The world went to hell and was overrun by zombies.”

“I remember that part. Where did those other guys come from? They don’t exactly act like those undead things did when I left.”

“The ghouls. Yeah, they are a real problem. Damn things. See, the zombies didn’t take much to put down; they were dumb as a box of rocks. Make a bunch of goddamn noise and they come running, then we shot them or blew them up, or sometimes just set them on fire. We started to run out of ammo. Had to teach the survivors how to shoot with a purpose. It’s surprisingly hard to get Mom and Pop to blow people’s heads off, even if they are trying to eat them.

“Sure there are a lot of zombies out there, but the real problems started when people got hungry and turned to cannibalism. Hard to believe, right? But this ain’t the same world, ain’t the same damn world by a long shot.” He sighed and dropped his hood. His hair hung long and lank, and he had a halo around the top of his head where he’d lost a lot of hair. I imagined no one really cared for monthly haircuts anymore.

“See, eating people is bad enough, but then they started eating the zombie flesh—just a few at first. It changed the people that did it. Made them a weird hybrid, like they had half a brain. It didn’t affect everyone that way, though. Some it just made stronger and meaner. Now they drive the army of zombies before them, like some weird slave drivers. Messy business, all those half-changed people running around.”

“What’s with the green glow?”

“Don’t know. Something to do with the virus. It changes people’s chemistry, makes their blood toxic. Well, toxic in that it would change you into a damn ghoul if you got any of that shit in your system.”

“Is that the same for the creepers you mentioned earlier?”

“Creepers? Nah. Those are the people that live on the outskirts. The ones that don’t want to find a group to stay with. They prefer to go solo, so to speak. We call them creepers.”

Creepers. I guess I was one of them. I had been up in the woods for so long, it seemed the perfect name for the man I had become. Stuck in a cabin until I decided to creep back to society.

He turned and walked toward the entrance to the store, so I tagged along at his side.

“They moved from town to town gathering up survivors and converting them. They made them eat the flesh of the undead and, bam, they were magically changed into those things. But they ran into trouble when they got to this town. We had already put up the fence, and the back butts up to a forest, so we made the band of metal from all the stores around. We hit up Lowe’s, Home Depot. We gathered up so much chain link, seemed like we would have enough to cover the entire town.”

That thing? It didn’t look strong enough to hold any of them back. A few hundred storming it, and they would be overwhelmed.

Already a pack of them were streaming toward the fence near the entrance. There were calls all up and down the line, and men and women faded from behind trees, rusted cars, stacks of shopping carts, piles of trash, and just about anything that could be considered a cover. There must have been twenty or thirty of them, and they were all armed to the fucking teeth.

I expected them to start opening up at any minute with all the automatic weapons. It would make a hell of a mess. Instead, the leader, whose name I somehow managed to miss, waved at someone from the roof. A few seconds later, a scratchy sound came from the same direction, like an old LP was being played. As it sped up, it became a huge siren that whined at the sky for all the world to hear.

The creatures came at a rush when the sound howled across the parking lot and echoed up and down the street. Then the sound of a generator or motor started up along with shouts from the direction of the building.

The ghouls hit the fence and started climbing over it, and then over each other. One was just about to reach the top when the leader stuck his hand in the air and pulled it down. A crackling sound erupted from the other side of the building, and a low hum that made me want to bite through my gums sounded.

The zombies stuck to the fence were fried. The fence was apparently electrified, and it wasn’t that stuff they ran through animal deterrents—the little buzz that warns them to stay back. This was a full-on, nasty jolt that stuck many of them to the fence. Most were silent as they stood transfixed, like men and women at the Rapture. They shook and shivered, and the sound of crackling energy buzzed through the air.

They cut the power after about thirty seconds, and bodies slumped to the ground. Some remained stuck to the fence, but the others, ones that managed to avoid the fence, snarled and then slunk away. The smell of cooked meat made my nose wrinkle, but it also flooded my mouth with saliva.

“They never learn.”

The leader walked toward the entrance once again. I turned to Pat, the guy who had saved my life. Well, I guess it was a trade, more or less. He had a shotgun slung over his shoulder, and if I didn’t know better, I would’ve guess it was the same one I handed him six months ago.

“Come on, Erik, I’ll show you around.”

The leader’s name was Thomas, but he said he wasn’t really the leader. He had been a cop when the world changed, and he was used to walking onto a possible crime scene and taking charge. He said that people seemed to like that, to respect it, so when he started to organize the Walmart, they just kept him on.

The large store had two main entrances, but one was completely boarded up, so there was only one way in the front. The inside had been rearranged so that racks formed a maze at the door. The first few had somehow been welded together to make them reach to the ceiling. The back had racks, but on the front, they were flat and bare. I suspected that there was a shelf especially built on the other side, so gunners could sit up there and pick off anyone coming in. Pretty smart design. Then it was a veritable maze of shelves from here on that would funnel any invaders through a killing screen.

Once we navigated the maze, I found the area behind it to be neat and orderly. There was a section with a guard posted that had been set aside for food. Boxes and crates of canned goods were stacked high, as were giant bags of dog and cat food. Familiar brands like Purina, Iams—stuff that was obviously saved or set aside for the time they ran out of regular food. I found my mouth filling with saliva at the thought of something to eat. The emergency food on which I had lived for the last few weeks, while nutritionally sound, left me feeling strange, like I was buzzing. It also tended to give me terrible diarrhea.

There was a large section of tents, where everything in the store had been shoved aside and people set up their little houses. There were batches of flashlights taped together that pointed at the ceiling to provide light. I saw a kid running between them, picking up each bundle and then shaking it violently up and down to recharge the internal batteries. Clever.

There was another section covered by white sheets that were run up on poles or hung from the ceiling. I got a peek inside, and there were rows of cots, ten or so, with sleeping bags on them—this must have been the triage area.

“We don’t have to use that much, scrapes and bruises mostly, but occasionally we get into it with the natives and people get hurt.”

“Bites?”

“We don’t let them in. Everyone here understands that if they are bit, they are dead. Most elect to take the quickest way out. Some don’t, and we take care of the problem.”

I didn’t comment.

A woman joined us. She was probably in her mid-forties and had long, auburn hair. She grinned at Thomas and pecked him on the cheek. Attractive, she possessed an air of self-confidence that I found suited her.

“My wife, Ella. Although we aren’t really married, since there is no one to marry us.”

“We just live in sin,” she said and then grinned at him. I found their affection for each other infectious, and wished I had someone. I had lived in a tiny cabin all alone for four months, and I craved attention. There were times up on the mountain when I would talk to myself, going so far as to hold entire conversations about what to make for dinner, like I was some deserted island loon.

They fed me a mix of something that was warm and, I was pretty sure, made at least partially from the animal food I had seen. Not that it mattered. I was starving, and I would have eaten a raw rabbit if someone handed it to me. They seemed tense around me. A few asked questions about the early days, and whether I had seen others when I escaped. They probably held out hope that some of their loved ones escaped as I had and were also hiding out. I pleaded exhaustion and went to find a place to sleep.

They gave me a cot that first night. I lay in the dark, listening to all the other people around me, and I could not sleep. I was so used to the silence and solitude of the cabin that I found any noise pulled me back from the brink of slumber. Of course, there was more to it than that. I kept going over my arrival, over and over. Standing on my car, adrenaline jacking my system to the max as I unloaded a shotgun at a guy who was trying to sink his teeth into me. His body blown backwards as the shot took him in the chest and turned his heart to mush. I saw the terror in his eyes even before I leveled the gun at him, like he was driven to attack, like someone was pushing him on. I saw the pain and fear in his gaze, and I responded by killing him.

I was also hurt. Bruises ached all over my body. I felt like I’d gone twelve rounds with a champ. Only I was a punching bag instead of an opponent.

The ghouls—they were something that should not exist. Zombies were unnatural enough to begin with. But men who ate the dead and became the monsters I had seen simply should not be.

How did the zombie virus start? The next morning, I planned to ask questions. I rose and put my jeans on, having opted to sleep in boxers and a t-shirt. The building seemed well insulated, but it was cold nonetheless, after coming out of the sleeping bag that had been like a warm cocoon.

I slipped on my boots, laced them up halfway, and then wrapped the laces around and tied them in front. Then I left the sleeping area and wandered. It was dark, but some of the flashlights had been left hanging down near the ground to illuminate a path. There were port-a-potties set up along the far right wall, which made it a long walk, but it kept the stench far away from the sleeping area. I passed countless bodies huddled in tents and on cots. Some moved, as people did what they had done for years when the lights went down. When was the last time I had been with a woman? There was Cheryl, a friend who took pity on me and took me to bed about six months after Allison left. Sex felt out of place with her, and, in the end, we agreed it was a bad idea.

We drifted apart until, after a few months, we barely greeted each other at the gym.

A sentry looked me up and down, and decided I wasn’t a zombie sneaking in to terrorize the store. I moved along an aisle, finding metal walls built up to hold in other supplies. A whole locker that was fifteen or so feet square contained an armory of weapons. They all looked army issue, and with the amount of fighting and chaos that had gone on at the outset of the ‘war,’ it was easy to guess that the stuff was probably left lying around on bodies or in abandoned vehicles. I saw a few M-16s and planned to ask about getting one, if the need arose. It was probably a good idea to slip that suggestion in Thomas’s ear in a few days, once he got used to seeing my face.

I walked to an enclosed area that looked as if it may have been a set of offices at one time. There were some padded mats, dummies, and punching bags in the corners. In the center of the floor was a large, black cushioned bag with the sand or water-type base. I walked to it and pushed. It didn’t budge, and I guessed they had some sort of pad underneath it so the thing would be harder to slide across the floor.

I took a tentative punch at it, and then another. I looked behind me, then closed the door so I could work out in peace and quiet. I slipped my shirt off in the cold, stretched my joints and tendons. I had tried doing basics in the cabin, but halfheartedly at best. If I were going to be any use to these people, I would need to loosen up and get the old moves back.

I hit the bag with a quick set of punches, moved past, and then spun around and launched a series of kicks, low and high. I worked a style I had learned from a guy I met in Thailand years ago. I leapt up and planted knees in the pad. Then I came down and slipped boxing into my impromptu workout.

I worked a form in the air—something like a kata but with fast whip-like strikes. Within a few attempts, I felt like I hadn’t forgotten as much as I thought I had. Then I worked the forms against the bag, and even found a rubber knife to incorporate into the session. I had always been good with knives—nasty things with razor-sharp edges that I could use as an extension of my arm.

I nearly knocked the bag over with a roundhouse kick, but it wobbled back to the surface of the floor with a heavy thump. Flowing from the kick into a straight punch, and then a series of close-in elbow strikes as I passed, I heard a noise behind me and came to a stop. My breath rumbled in and out like a locomotive.

I spun around, and a shape slipped out of the shadows of the room near the door. It stepped into the dull light from the hanging flashlights, and I saw that it was a woman. She must have been close to six foot, and had black hair that hung around her face in a bob. She tucked one side behind an ear as she walked toward me and the bag. Her features were fine—sharp little nose and pixie eyes that were hard around the edges. I would put her age a few years younger than mine, but she had a look of weariness that betrayed her years.

“Fighter, huh,” she said, as if commenting on the rain. Her body was slim and athletic. She had sculpted arms that hung out of a tank top, and I could see a vein running over the top of her biceps. Not a bodybuilder’s frame; she was just in good shape. I smiled at her as she walked past me toward a dummy in the corner. I let my eyes wander down her tight sweats, and couldn’t help but keep the smile on my face.

“Imprinting it in your memory?” She looked over her shoulder. I noticed she had sparring gloves on, and I wondered if she was good with them.

I didn’t know what to say, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut.

“That’s okay. This is a different world than the one you left. The rules have changed, you know.”

“How so?”

“All that petty bullshit—it’s gone. If you like someone or something, then you just take it. Like the goddamn ghouls; they think they can take whatever they like, and we won’t do anything about it.”

“They’re driven by a disease. They aren’t rational,” I pondered out loud.

“Piss on rational. They’re animals, and they deserve to burn. Each and every one of them.”

I didn’t press her on that. She grabbed a dummy and dragged it by the shoulders, after tipping it on its side. I moved to help, but she hauled it out and stood it up so that it popped up like a jack in the box, then she swung forward. Before it could right itself, she punched it right in the throat. The model recoiled, and she launched into a vicious assault that saw the life-size man fall back under a barrage of punches and kicks that impressed me.

I went back to work on my hunk of plastic, but every once in a while I felt her eyes on me, just as she surely felt mine on her. She moved with grace and speed, her hands darting in to strike with their sides as well as knuckles and fists. She pulled out a couple of interesting moves that had her whipping her hand around like a punch, but at the last minute twisting her hand so her first two knuckles pointed toward the floor, palm up, striking with the back of her hand.

I was tired. Sweat poured off my forehead and spread down my bare chest. It had been months since I worked out this hard. Certainly living alone in the woods, hunting, climbing, walking, working on the cabin, all of these things kept me fit to some extent, but there was nothing like a good thirty-minute balls-to-the-wall workout. I stepped away and looked around. There was an old water fountain on the wall, and I went to it and hit the button. Nothing came out, and I smiled at my action. This wasn’t a superstore anymore; this was a powerless hulk of a building that provided nothing more than protection and warmth.

She tugged a bag out of a corner and unzipped it. She pulled out a bottle of water, pulled the top off, and drank deeply. After what seemed like an eternity waiting for her to finish, so I could ask her where to get some, she flipped the top closed and tossed me the bottle.

I caught it, and, after staring in her eyes, which seemed to hold a mocking glint, I popped the lid and drank. The water had a slight metallic flavor, but it was wonderful, so I sucked down some more.

“How long’s it been?” She walked toward me.

“Pardon?” I sputtered water.

“Since you worked out like that. You look like you know the moves, but you seem unsure of some.”

“About four or five months now. While I was hiding out in the woods, I didn’t have much call for punching stuff.”

“Yeah, I saw you get here. That was some arrival,” she said, as she took back the water bottle. After chugging the rest, she tossed the bottle at her bag.

“You had a pretty good body count. Wayne put it at an even dozen, but I thought it was a lot less—maybe five. Dave from security said he bet you wouldn’t even make it. But you made it. Come on, fighter. I’ll find you a towel and show you the showers.”

I followed her out and down a passageway that was constructed of more shelves, until we reached a section of employee changing rooms. We chit-chatted as we walked, mainly about how I came in. She asked questions about the ride, how the roads were, if I’d seen any gangs. I asked her about life in the store, how people got along, how disputes were settled. She moved ahead of me at certain junctures.

The old rooms were set aside for breaks, training, and changing clothes. I followed her lead by taking a bucket of water, about a gallon, and a thin brick of hard white soap that was well used, then followed her into the room. She turned to me when we reached a juncture, then pointed to the right.

“You go in there.”

I smiled at her. Of course. What else did I think was going to happen? I started to say something, but a small grin quirked her lips. I realized she had been teasing me all along. Despite her weary look, she was quite an attractive woman, and I wondered what it would be like to take her to bed.

“I didn’t get your name.”

“No, you didn’t. But I didn’t get yours either.”

“Erik Tragger.” It was the second time in a day I had used my name in front of others. After the long, lonely time in the woods, it still sounded weird to my ears. “At your service,” I added lamely.

“I see. Well, my name is Katherine Murphy, but don’t even think about calling me Kat. I hate that fucking name.”

“Noted.”

“Good. So, Tragger, meet me at the workout room tomorrow, and maybe we’ll go a few rounds.”

“Same time?”

“You got a watch?”

“Yep.”

“Well I don’t, so just guess.” She turned and left.

I stared after her for a while, until she rounded a corner and was gone from my sight. Water splashed a moment later, so I went into the men’s side and did my best to wash away four months of loneliness.

Morning came on slowly, like someone was pulling me out of a warm bath. I rubbed my eyes to the sound of someone banging on my metal cot. I opened them, and there stood a boy of about five foot eight. He was a pudgy child, with a sloping forehead. He hit the side of my cot with a plastic toy soldier.

“Can you stop that?”

“Travis, what?”

“Stop it. I’m tired, man.”

“Travis, what?” His words were slightly slurred, and when I looked up, he was rolling his eyes up in the back of his head, looking at the ceiling and then back at me. Just what I needed. Some retarded kid to wake me.

The kid wandered off, bumped into another cot, which brought a cry from the inhabitant. Still staring up at the ceiling, he ran off. I lay back, put my arm over my eyes, and breathed in the smell of people again. It was a long time since I had been around anyone, and now I was surrounded by them.

I sat up after a few minutes and rubbed my eyes. Glancing at my watch, I found it was close to seven in the morning. Others snored while I got up and used the bathroom, suspecting there would be a line later on. I was greeted by several people on the way, but others just glanced up at me then looked away. Some had haunted looks in their eyes; others just looked unfriendly.

I looked out for the woman I had met the night before, but I didn’t see her. She was probably in a tent with one of the men. Someone like that would be very desirable, and I envied the man she slept next to every night.

I ate another bowl of gruel-like food that filled me up, but didn’t taste so hot. The cook had put some effort into spicing it up, but I knew I was eating dog food again. There wasn’t enough paprika in the world to change that. I spent the day with Thomas and a tough-looking man named James, who had a scar running across his nose from cheek to cheek. They headed to the weapons cache and I followed along, hoping to get a look at their arsenal and maybe borrow a decent gun. Borrow? Who was I kidding? I would probably die before I had a chance to return it.

They looked over the weapons, and I noted, out loud, that they weren’t properly taken care of. James scoffed, but Thomas glanced my way, then took down a handgun and gave it to me.

It was a Baretta 92F. The weapon was a standard military pistol with interchangeable parts. I stripped it in a couple of seconds, breaking it down enough to peer into the chamber. They seemed impressed. Thomas asked me to take a look and let him know how bad the damage was.

We went over the guns, and I pulled out assault rifles and inspected them. No one had done a proper cleaning, so I took the worst of them, stripped them, and cleaned them. People stopped by and looked on from time to time. Perhaps it was being back in a civilized setting after being alone for so long, but I found the company of others comforting. However, I chose not to engage anyone in conversation for very long.

I took an AR-15 from a rack, inspected it, took a box of shells, and went outside. The morning was chilly, and I thought I could smell rain in the air. The clouds hung around, keeping it generally gray. Around the fence, the ghouls wandered, snarling and running at the barrier but stopping short. I saw a few zombies as well, and when they chanced upon a ghoul, or got too close, a fight broke out.

I climbed up on the back of a truck with a flat bed. A lot of the other trucks had been outfitted with metal plates where holes were cut in the side for firing ports. Spikes hung on them—short sharp things that wouldn’t provide much grip if a ghoul tried to climb up, but would discourage them.

My Honda had been parked in a different spot and now sported new tires. No one asked me about my car, and I really didn’t care. The old world was gone, just like my two-hundred–and-fifty-dollar a month car payment.

I stood up, inspected the gun, loaded it, and then put the stock against my shoulder. It had a scope to provide some magnification, but it wasn’t intended for long-range work. I sighted down it, tracked one of the zombies, and then stroked the trigger. He fell, wearing the same stupid look on his face that he had before the 5.56 round entered his forehead.

I got used to firing the weapon again and, in the process, attracted a few onlookers. I dropped a couple more zombies, then went for some faster-moving ones. One jerked to the right as I shot at him, so I only ended up taking off part of an ear.

I packed up the gun and ammo and turned to the store, intent on cleaning it and putting it back. There were about thirty or forty of the things, and they howled and snarled as I turned my back on them, so I held up one hand and gave them the finger.

Throughout the day, I had thought of Katherine and her lithe body. I wanted to work out with her, but more than that, I wanted to talk. Just talk. I wanted to know more about her.

At last night fell, and we locked up the guns. Thomas said he had a feeling about me, so he gave me a key to the armory. I felt honored and almost hugged him.

I went to the workout room that night around the same time, and went a few with the same dummy Katherine had gone at. She didn’t show up, even thought I waited for close to an hour. So I called it a night and showered with the bucket of water.

The next day was much the same, except I talked to more people. The retarded kid, Travis, wandered by a few times and stared on while drool ran down his face. He looked none too bright, and I wondered why anyone had bothered to save a kid with such issues. I actually stared at him for a while and had a philosophical debate with myself. If he were changed, would he still be a zombie with mental retardation?

I tried to be useful. I went outside and checked over my SUV. It was in the process of being modified. A mechanic with a terrible face wound looked at me and mimed that he couldn’t talk. Then he stared at me. I assumed he was waiting to see if I would flinch or look away from his wound. Instead, I shook his hand and told him my name. He seemed to think that was okay. He shrugged and went back to work, welding a piece of metal in place.

There was some activity toward the front of the gate. Half a dozen men were gearing up, and a large flat bed truck was being moved near the entrance. The walk was brisk thanks to the early morning air. Most of the parking lot was wide open. On a normal day, back before the proverbial crap hit the fan, this place would have been buzzing with activity.

A burned out half strip mall was inside the perimeter. I made out a check cashing place and a coffee shop. My mouth flooded with saliva at the thought of a fresh cup. I could just about kill for one right about now.

A couple of men had guns at the ready. They were going over their load as I strolled up to them. I was impressed by their decorum. They were smiling, but they knew their way around their weapons.

One of the men, I was pretty sure his name was Daniel, nodded at me. He checked up on me when I was cleaning up the weapons inside. Asked a few questions about an automatic I was working on. I thought he was just checking me out and not really interested in my answer.

“Going hunting, guys?” I asked.

“We got a call—just a half message really. A few streets over, west of here. We think some survivors were trying to reach us and got trapped in a house.”

I was feeling pretty useless around the camp. Everyone seemed to have jobs but me. I wanted something to do. More importantly, I wanted to prove myself to them.

“Want some help?”

They looked back and forth, but not at me. I was probably intruding on a group that was used to working together. They didn’t know the first thing about me. I might get spooked at the first sight of blood. I might demand to go back. I could run off, for all they knew. All the training in the world might have been under my belt, but it meant nothing until I had proven myself.

“It’s nothing personal, man. We’re full up,” one of the men said.

Daniel looked me over then glanced at the other guys. Upon closer examination, I noticed one of the ‘guys’ was actually a woman. She turned, and with her short hair I thought it was Katherine at first. But she was younger, her face fairer. She was dressed from head to toes in full cammo gear. She popped a magazine into a large handgun, jacked the hammer back, and slammed it into a holster.

“Yep. No offense.” She smirked.

“Come on. Thomas said he was okay. It wouldn’t hurt to have another set of eyes, would it?” Daniel said.

One of the men shrugged, but the girl looked away from me.

An older man with a shaved head regarded me. His forehead had a nasty burn scar on it. Hair would never grow there again. I didn’t blame him for shaving the stubble off. He had a pair of pistols under his arms and a snub nose automatic machine gun under one arm.

“I’m O’Connell. I don’t care if you join us. Just do what I say, when I say, and we will all get along fine. Ain’t that right?” He looked among the squad. They all nodded assent, but the woman did not. She looked me over like I was a cockroach.

“Sure. I can do that.” I said. Taking orders wouldn’t be hard. I was just happy to be useful to these guys.

“What’s your poison?” Daniel opened up the top of a storage bin strapped down to the back of the truck. I glanced in and saw a few older guns. A hunting rifle was pushed against one end. The barrel was strapped to the side. I pulled the weapon out and set it aside to assemble on the way. Then I tugged a .45 ACP out. Daniel nodded at my choice and handed me a box of shells from another bin. I dug out a magazine that looked like it fit the handgun. After a bit of testing, I tucked it in my pocket to load later.

We piled into the back of the truck. They sat in a group that I wasn’t invited too. I tried to make small talk with Daniel, but he turned his attention back to one of the guys who was telling a story about facing off against a pair of zombies in an old apartment complex.

We left the safety of the compound. A couple of men came out and moved the gate aside. This involved shifting massive concrete barriers with a heavy lifter. After we drove away, they put them back into place.

“If we run into zombies, what’s the count?” One of the guys yelled over the hiss of air rushing past the truck bed.

“I’m good for five or six.” The girl smiled. She checked her pistols for what seemed the tenth time.

“What’s the bet for?” I asked.

“Just bragging rights. And someday, when we find a warehouse full of beer, a bunch of those” she said.

“Yeah man, Liz here owes me forty-seven cold ones.” One of the men grinned.

“That’s all she’s got, cold ones,” another guy said. The group cracked up until she drew, jacked a round into the chamber, and fingered the safety off in one smooth motion that ended with a gun leveled at the last guy. His eyes went wide.

“Cold enough for you?”

“Cool it,” Daniel said. “We have trouble up ahead.”

We had left the sight of the store and were speeding down a side road. There were a few cars pushed out of the way, with a few corpses that were little more than bones and skin inside them.

We were moving into a residential neighborhood, but it looked like a war zone. Houses were burned out, broken into. Shrubs grew out of control. Rhododendrons, the unofficial flower of the Pacific Northwest, covered entire home entryways. Discarded items and looted possessions were tossed all over yards.

“There!” Daniel stood up in the back of the truck and pointed at a pair of cars that were intact. They were station wagons, and they looked to be full of boxes.

I stood up, holding the hunting rifle to my shoulder as I tried to keep my focus everywhere at once. The driver slowed our vehicle, and I leaned forward to absorb the momentum. I caught sight of a familiar car tucked between two houses, but I wasn’t sure why it rang a bell. It was a newer make, and a deep shiny blue, like someone was taking care of it.

Birds called out to us as we passed. An entire murder of crows took off when Liz waved her gun in their directions.

“Good eating, crow,” she said without any expression in her voice.

“Help us!” A man called from one of the houses. A pair of our men jumped over the side of the truck as it came to a stop in the front yard. Two more went over the other side and spread around the truck, their backs to us so all angles were covered. I was impressed by their cohesiveness.

I jumped down and followed Liz, who seemed determined to lead the way. The two others fell in behind her. One was O’Connell. With four on guard duty and us advancing, I felt confident in my comrade’s ability to react to a threat. They were good.

“Remind me why we are baby sitting the neighborhood? Could just mean more mouths to feed,” the guy on her left said.

“Because they’re people, and we need more if we’re going to win this fight.” O’Connell kept pace with them and looked at the guy.

Another scream from inside made our group pick up the pace. I glanced around to check the position of our back up one more time. The driver of the truck was on the radio. He was probably assuring the compound that we were safe and sound.

I turned my attention back to the house. It was a huge three story that was probably built in the 70s. A grown over gutter draped the building. Vines had snaked their way up the side and given the place a genuinely creepy feel.

Windows were darkened from closed blinds or curtains. I thought I saw one slip aside ever so slightly, but when I studied it the material held firm.

“Help us!” a voice called. It sounded like a woman.

I moved over tall grass, crunching over some unidentified objects as I went. I didn’t want to think about those.

We reached the house, and Liz was the first through. One of the guys went with her, while Daniel and I set up a perimeter. They had some basic hand gesture down pat, so I played along like I understood what they were saying to each other.

There was a commotion from the inside, but no shots. We remained vigilant, but didn’t follow. After a few seconds, Liz called out.

“We found them.”

Daniel lowered his guard and weapon. The others nodded at each other and filed into the open door. I was the last in and the last to curse.

The room was a mess of overturned furniture and ruined floor. Someone had burned a hole in the hardwood and built a fire pit in the center of the room. A pile of burned wood lay around the sides, and empty cans of food were tossed in the corners. The walls were covered in spray painted words, but they looked like they were done by an illiterate hand. I couldn’t make them out to save my life.

The others were lowering their weapons to the ground. As my eyes adjusted to the room, I became aware of other figures. A couple huddled behind a sofa, and someone poked around a corner with a machine gun of some sort.

Ah hell!

We were surrounded. Someone had set a trap, and we had fallen right into it. I glanced up at the foyer, finding another guard hanging over the side of the railing on the second floor. He had a gun trained on us as well.

Dejected, I lowered my rifle. A few days back in the world of the living and I was already being subjected to the worst of human kind. Bad enough all those creatures trying to kill us, now we had rival humans after us as well.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Liz asked when we were all in the room.

Someone had a pistol pointed at her head. He was standing close to her, but with the sunlight pouring in from the window behind him, I couldn’t make out any features.

“The meaning of this? Oh. You fell for our pretty little trap. Ain’t that a bitch?” That voice was familiar.

“We came to help!” Liz looked furious, with her mouth set in a hard line, eyes daring the gun to waver from her forehead.

“And help you did, darling. You helped us to some shiny new weapons, a new truck, and whatever supplies you have in said vehicle. I bet you have food out there, don’t ya. Never enough food to feed all us hungry men that are just trying to keep the peace in the new world.”

That voice!

“Son of a bitch!” Daniel said.

“Now now. Just call your friends in; don’t give us a way. I would hate to paint the walls with this one’s brains.” The man gestured at Liz with his gun.

“We aren’t going to hurt you. Just fuck you over. If you run back really fast, you may be able to avoid any creepers in these parts.”

A couple guys holstered their guns and patted down our crew. They took their time going over Liz with their hands. She was stiff as a board as they handled her, but her eyes were livid.

The speaker shifted to one side, and I caught a flash of brown that didn’t look like military boots to me. Snakeskin. That’s when it hit me.

“Lee! What the hell!” I said before I could help myself.

He turned to regard me. His eyes were tired, red rimmed. They sat in sockets that were almost skeletal. I nearly took a step back when I saw the change. What happened to the man that was planning to guard his post? To protect the innocent? His motivation may have been mixed up when we first met, but this was insane.

“I know you?” He squinted his eyes as he considered me. He kept the gun in a steady grip, though.

“You were setting up a road block months ago. I thought you were one of the good guys.”

“Good guys. No such thing anymore.”

“Come on, Lee, we’re both ex-military. Why don’t you let us go, and we can just forget this happened. We’ll leave, and you can slink back to your shit hole.” Damn my mouth.

“Ex-military. Let me tell you something about this world, son. I left my family in the care of the military, and do you know what they did?”

I stared back, waiting for the answer to his rhetorical question. One of the men shifted, lowered his guard as we went through the motions of dropping our gear on the floor. I set my rifle down then slowly lay my pistol next to it.

“They left. They didn’t even bother to stick around and protect them. They just up and left. Now I don’t know about you, but is that any way to treat women and children? They left fifteen families in a big school gym. Deserted them. When I found my wife, my Margaret, she was dead. Eaten away. But she wasn’t. See, I had to watch her get up and stagger toward me.”

Lee stepped toward me. The space between us was only a few feet, but he made it seem immense as his enflamed eyes bore into me. He took a step, mimicking one of the dead. His gun was leveled at my forehead. I was pretty sure he was completely unbalanced and about to splatter my brains all over the entryway.

“I just watched her walk up to me. I let her into my guard, felt her arm around my neck. She didn’t smell like my Margaret any more. Not by a long stretch.” He stopped right in front of me, gun leveled at the space between my eyes. I didn’t stare into it. Instead I used my peripheral vision to study his men. The rest had lowered their guard as we dropped our guns. Even the man on the floor above was no longer pointing his weapon at us.

“I held her back. Kept my hand on her neck so she couldn’t bite me. I looked into her undead eyes and wanted to see some spark of life. You know what I saw instead?”

His eyes were huge as he cocked the gun.

“Nothing. I didn’t see a damn thing.”

On the word ‘thing,’ I flowed. I kept my eye on the weapon even as I moved to the right. If he fired, it would go past my forehead. My left hand was already moving. I slammed the barrel away from my face, wrapped my hand around it, and wrenched it toward his chest.

My foot swept around his legs, so we looked like we were in a weird half-embrace. If I wanted to, I could have swept his legs out from under him with a sharp twist of my hip, but that would get me nowhere. Lee was at my mercy. I wrenched the gun up and put my finger over the trigger guard. I might not have been able to force a shot, but I did twist the gun so the barrel was under his chin. I pressed up, just so he was aware that I was a few foot-pounds of pressure away from putting a bullet through his brain.

“Hey, HEY!” one of his men shouted.

“Tell them to back off or I put a bullet through your head!” My voice came out raw and broken. I was mad, and adrenaline was making me even more volatile. I had always trained to remain calm under pressure. Keep my head down, assess the situation, and then react. I had tossed the first two rules out, and if I kept up on this path, I was likely to get us all killed.

“You think this is some kind of television show? Huh? Think I’m going to just say the word and my men will back down? It ain’t that easy, son. My boys are hungry and trigger happy, so why don’t you just drop the hard-ass act and lower the gun.”

“Out! Everyone out! Get to the truck. If any of the others follow I WILL kill him!” I didn’t look around. I didn’t meet anyone else’s eyes. I didn’t wait for confirmation. With Lee still bent, back arched, I marched us to the door. He didn’t struggle; he seemed to take it in stride, and even smiled at me.

The gaping spot where he was missing a tooth showed in his skeletal grin.

The rest of the crew filed out as I stood in front of the door. Liz tried to meet my gaze, but I had it firmly on Lee. I didn’t want any mistakes. If any of them flinched, I was going to kill him.

O’Connell snatched his handgun off the floor, but kept it low as he went out. I backed out last. It was awkward to hold him like this and walk to the truck. Words were whispered back and forth between the folks we had left outside and the reconnaissance team, as I now thought of them.

“It’s not personal.” I said as I hauled him into the cab with me.

The others dropped down low in the truck bed and scrambled for weapons. I didn’t know the drivers name but he nodded at me once then started the truck.

It groaned as he shifted into reverse. He gunned the engine and we shot backward. Lee was half hanging out of the truck and I didn’t have any choice but to let him go. He fell to the ground as we went around the corner. I slammed the door shut, but not before I got a full dose of hate from Lee. If looks could kill, I would have been six feet under.

We returned with less than we had left with, but we were alive. The driver had radioed ahead, and when we pulled into the compound it was to a small army. The men and women came out in force and looked ready for war. I saw every kind of weapon, including long blades. A couple even sported what looked like Asian swords.

Thomas met us as we came through the gate.

When folks simmered down and went back inside, I was left with just the crew that had gone out on the “rescue mission.” Thomas listened to the story again and thanked me with a handshake.

As we headed home, Liz turned to confront me. Her eyes were angry, and I could understand a reprimand. I could have played it cool, given our weapons over, and maybe they would have let us go just like they said. Maybe they would have used us as hostages or even tried to get info on our forces.

“Christ, Tragger.” She sighed loudly. “I’m not going to say that was a stupid fucking thing to do.”

“You don’t have to.”

We walked in silence for a few feet. Daniel turned and winked at me, then sped off into the Walmart. The others kept pace. I guess he had a hot date.

“You know you just made an enemy, right?” she said. “Lee isn’t going to forget that nor forgive you.”

“I know.”

I would like to report that was the end of Lee, that I never saw him again. That, sadly, is not what happened in the coming weeks.

I went to the gym again that night, but she didn’t show. I worked away some of the tension I had built up during the stand off in town. There was no way I would be able to sleep, as amped up as I still was, so I worked out until I was beyond exhausted.

I planned to ask Thomas about Katherine, but it seemed prudent to mind my own business. I’m sure she had her reasons, and they were none of my concern.

The next day, Thomas showed me the communication room where they were picking up a signal from Portland on a low band radio. There had been communication for a few weeks, although sporadically, about the work on the city to keep out the undead and the ghouls. I listened intently, because Allison might be there, if she was still alive.

They had been formulating a way to leave the compound.

I was taken aback at first. They had shelter, a way to protect themselves, and they had food and water.

“This won’t last forever. We have held out pretty well, but the supplies you see are all that’s left for miles around. A lot of people in the store don’t want to be isolated anymore. So many rumors out there about the cities being free of the dead. About the government being in control. They just want a chance at a normal life.”

Plans based on rumors. I wished I had a better idea on how to proceed.

The strategic exit was pretty basic—they didn’t need something with a million steps to get out. The hard part would be the distraction. Someone was going to drive a small tanker to the end of town, near the barricade through which I had blasted, and detonate the truck’s gas supply. The gas station in the parking lot meant we had a good bit of fuel for all the trucks, so we could spare a few hundred gallons to light up the day. When the ghouls went to investigate, the convoy would leave and head for Portland.

The problem was that someone had to be the bait to set off the distraction.

“Who might that be?” I wondered out loud. The other men in the room turned as one and looked at a form that had slipped into the room.

“That would be me.”

I turned and met Katherine’s eyes. She didn’t offer a smile, just a stony wall of non-emotion, just like her voice when she said she was going to create the distraction. I don’t know what was more surprising, her speaking up or my next words.

“I’ll go with her.”

“Not necessary. We have a capable guy. In fact, it’s Pat here, the guy who spoke up for you the other day.”

Pat was nervous, and looked away when I met his eyes. He nodded once to Katherine, and then crossed his arms, staring at the map laid out before the planners. They had a crude drawing of the Walmart compound as well as the street leading out of Vesper Lake. There was a line of cars and trucks drawn over it in red, with stick men manning guns on the back of trucks and SUVs. I saw some of the innovative things that the engineers in the group had created for the cars. Sunroofs turned into gun ports and one pump truck with a nozzle that spat gas. Probably a flamethrower, but it would also work well to lay down a stream of gas that could be lit.

“I have no doubt that Pat is a good guy, but don’t you need someone with some combat experience?”

“You are looking at a roomful of men with combat experience,” Thomas said.

“He can go if he likes. The more the merrier,” Katherine spoke up. “Besides, I hear he did good things yesterday.”

“The jury is still out on that one.” I whispered.

“Fine. We’ve run this place from the start with the help of volunteers. You want to go with, be my guest. But I want to say that a guy like you is very valuable, and I would prefer if you stayed with us. We may need your expertise later on.”

“You make it sound like a suicide mission.”

“What else would it sound like?” Katherine asked.

That night, we met and went over the plan. Then Katherine and I worked out in the gym. She told me she had been ‘busy’ the last few nights and unable to make it. I took her at her word. After we were covered in sweat and walking toward the shower room, she thanked me for volunteering to go along.

“I know you’ll be a big help.”

“Why do you want to be the one?” I asked her, looking out the corner of my eye to see her expression. It didn’t change.

“Someone had to do it. I have nothing left to live for. My children were …”

I let her trail off and didn’t say a word. I escaped relatively unscathed. Sure, I lost things, but I didn’t know the fate of Allison, so I assumed she was alive and safe in Portland. My own reason for going was the inescapable feeling that my fate was somehow tied up with Katherine’s. I’ve never been one to believe in a god or a destiny, but somehow it felt right when I was with her. Emotionless or not, she was the first woman to whom I had been attracted in years.

“I wish I could say I understand, but I don’t. I didn’t really have anyone before the event, and I don’t have anyone now. If I die, then it won’t be a great loss. Who will look for me years from now when the world is right again?”

“Is that why you agreed to go? Some gesture of futility against an insane world?”

“No. I volunteered because I wanted to be with you.”

She stopped walking and turned to stare at me.

“I’m not good at this kind of thing. I don’t know how to feel, anymore, so just …” She paused and looked past me for a few seconds. “Just watch my back and I’ll watch yours.”

I nodded, and we moved on down the hallway. At the shower room, we parted, and I went into the quiet space and shut myself into a stall. I tossed my clothes in a heap and wondered where I could get them washed. There was an abundance of pants and shirts, thanks to the store’s supplies, and people took from it freely when they needed items. I would raid it tomorrow and find something else to wear.

I splashed lukewarm water over my skin and shivered in the cold. A little soap went a long way toward making me feel human again after the brutal workout I’d had. I was washing the last of the water away when there was a tentative knock at the door. I turned to look, and a pair of slim calves was all I could see under the door.

“Huh?”

Katherine opened the door and gave me the first smile I had seen from her. It was tentative at best, and then it fell. She was dressed in a towel that covered her body from chest to thigh. She was pale, and goose bumps stood out on her skin. Her nipples poked out behind the light cover.

I rose and took her hand in mine and drew her to me. Her towel fell aside, and we kissed for a long time.

Morning was quite a shock compared to the last few. I woke to a dimly lit tent and the touch of a woman’s body against mine in the sleeping bag we had zipped together the night before. She stirred against me, her hand over my chest, her body curled against my back. Her hand slipped down and found that I had the typical guy’s reaction to waking up in the morning, so we made the best of it. Why not. We were probably going to die in a few hours.

We had a huge breakfast of pancakes, powdered eggs and powdered milk mixed with metallic water. Thomas felt that we deserved it, since we were going to have a strenuous day. At least fifty gathered to eat the fine meal. There was laughter and a hint of excitement that rippled all along the group. They were ready to move on, to get away from the constant danger, and head to town.

For my part, I felt a big goofy grin keep touching my lips whenever I caught Katherine’s eye and she smiled in return. Thomas looked between us a couple of times, but just shook his head as if he had seen something beyond his ability to comprehend.

The caravan assembled behind the giant store. Some had spent all night loading the trucks, which comprised some eighteen wheelers and a few UPS delivery trucks.

The tanker itself looked ridiculous. It was covered in flowers on one side. Someone’s weird sense of humor at work. The Walmart must have had a lot of cans of paint. This seemed as good a use for it as any. It had a lot of weight, and they had welded on a scoop like you see on the front of a train engine to move things off the tracks.

There was a lot of activity behind me. I was more concerned with inspecting my newly tricked out Honda. It now had a set of galvanized metal plates over the windows with holes cut in so I could see out the front and sides. The sunroof had part of a big oil barrel on top of it that latched from the inside. I could stand up and use a handgun, but a rifle would never fit. The windows had been removed on either side, and the slots would provide good firing ports.

Pat would ride with Katherine, and I would follow close behind. If we ran into trouble, I would slow the car and take out any threats. Thomas produced a couple of hand grenades, one of which was phosphorous—nasty stuff. Got into the skin and kept burning, because it didn’t need oxygen. Two were frags, and there were a couple of smoke grenades. I was leery of the last, because it would just confuse the field of battle.

A pair of ‘tanks’ would escort us to the end of the street and provide covering fire as we ran with the horde behind us. One had a fire nozzle on top, and the other had a couple of hard-looking men armed with hunting rifles. Our snipers.

A side gate was opened, and Katherine roared out of it, into the icy morning in the souped-up wrecking truck. On the back was a large gas tank filled to the rim with a mixture of premium fuel and soap flakes. There was a canister of compressed air under it that would inject the mixture with enough oxygen to make the explosion count. It would all come down to timing.

I followed close behind as she made the first turn then got onto the 322. The horde of zombies was on us before we were half a mile away. I put the car in park, slipped the metal cover off the sunroof, and popped up with one of the AR-15s from the back seat. I aimed down the scope and loosed a magazine of shots at the wave of dead coming my way. A few dropped, but at this range it was hard to get all headshots. Some took shots in their appendages and chests. One was shot through the neck, and fell sputtering a black blood that oozed more than flowed.

I dropped into the seat and roared off with a fresh ocean of the things behind. After another half mile, I stopped the car and tossed a fragmentation grenade at the onrushing creatures to make sure I had the attention of every one of them. It exploded in their midst as they screamed toward me, tossing bodies and parts of bodies into the air. A small puff of smoke and asphalt rose behind me as I sped off again.

The wrecker was approaching the barrier, so I took the opportunity to apply more damage. One more frag grenade joined the fray, and then I emptied another magazine.

I roared up to the wrecker. It was stopped near the barricade. She had to maneuver around the rusted hulks of trucks and cars I cursed just a few days ago. In one case, she barreled through one because it was sitting catty-corner, blocking the road. She came to a halt, and Pat was already moving. He slithered out of the door and shut it hard. He moved on top of the cab and went to the giant white tank. Maneuvering the air hose into position, he fastened it to the bottom.

I screeched to a stop and came out of the cover shooting. They were still a ways off, but I dropped them one after another by taking careful aim and stroking the trigger gently. I set a box of magazines next to me and burned through them until the assault rifle jammed. I tossed it in the back, grabbed another one, and kept shooting.

I glanced behind me and saw that Katherine was also on top of the truck, and they were feeding hoses into the tank. She was yelling, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I fell into the seat and spun the car around and backed into the truck, touching my rear bumper so they would be able to get in when the thing was armed. I popped back out of the turret and opened up with the gun, calling to them between shots.

“What’s wrong?”

“Goddamn thing won’t start. Everything is working, but I can’t arm the explosive.”

“Fine, we do it by hand.” I pulled a grenade out of my stash. “Catch!”

Katherine looked at me like I was insane, but I mimed throwing it to her twice, then threw it for real. She leaned over and caught it in both hands and shot me a dirty look. The grenade still had its pin in. There was no way it would explode.

They were close, so close that I could pick out their faces from this distance. Rotted filth, demented demons. Most wore the visage of tortured humans, but some seemed to revel in their new state and wore bones woven into their hair. There were hundreds of them, just as we suspected, and they were still pouring out of the buildings and side streets.

“We don’t have much time!” I yelled.

“Are we supposed to blow ourselves up?” She should be hysterical, but she sounded mad that I didn’t explain the plan. Well, it wasn’t much of one.

“Just pull the pin. You have about seven seconds to get clear. You’ll both jump on top of the car and hold the fuck on for dear life!”

I watched as Pat took the grenade and studied the side of the tank, probably looking for a place to put it. “Dropping it in the tank would be best. It’ll spray gas everywhere!” I yelled.

I saw faces appear out of the trees to the right of the truck, and then saw their owners run down the hill toward the wrecker. I kept my eyes on Katherine and wondered if they had a chance now. I couldn’t let her go like that, and in a quick decision, I determined that I would either save her and Pat or go out with them in a massive explosion. If I ran back to the caravan without them, how would it look? Besides, what did this new world have to offer me? I had seen its best, and its best wasn’t much to look at. Survivors huddling together waiting for something to happen. Well, this was something.

I popped off a few more rounds, got back into the driver’s seat, and took out the machine gun I had been saving. I closed the turret, so none of them would crawl on top of the car and fall inside.

The M249 was a machine gun that sprayed an impressive amount of ammo. The older, belt-fed version, could burn through a thousand rounds per minute. I had a box of ammo magazines for it and one loaded. This was a modified version, similar to the PARA that the paratroopers carried into Iraq.

I ran to the truck and clambered up the side, banging both knees in the process. Adrenaline was pumping, and I felt alive for the first time in half a year.

The things were closing in all around, screaming, slathering, and snarling. A few zombies joined them, but for the most part, it was the faster ghouls I had to contend with.

I opened up with the machine gun and obliterated the first line of creatures. They fell under withering fire. Blood, sinew, and chunks of flesh exploded out their backs, like in a bad B movie. I spun to the right and dropped more of them then changed magazines.

“What is the holdup?”

“Damn pipe won’t budge. I can’t get the oxygen to come out.”

Without the air being force fed into the tank, we would never have our explosion. All that gas in one place was a terrific chance at a bomb, but without air, it was likely to fizzle until it reached 750 degrees. We had rigged a couple of hoses into water nozzles designed to give a wide spread of the air. When it bubbled into the gas, we would have our accelerant.

“So the grenade won’t do what we want?”

“It’ll accelerate the explosion, but we need to get the gas moving to get the full effect.”

“Shit!” I said and emptied another magazine.

They were at the truck, and Katherine pulled a handgun and popped a pair in the center of their foreheads. I shot at them in earnest as they clawed up the side. She got on top of the cab so she would have a wider view of the field of battle. The problem was that the things were closing in on the front as well.

“Ah fuck!” I said, staring at Pat.

He kicked out as one clawed up the side, but it caught his leg and bit at it. He was wearing double jeans like the rest of us, and a pair of thermals under that. There was no way the things could get through that much fabric. He kicked out again, and it fell back into the crowd. Then he drew his gun and shot the next one in the face, but there were dozens more coming. We had about three seconds before the rush arrived.