Zombies by the

Numbers
The Writer’s Cut

By Tim Sprague
PROLOGUE

So you want to know what it’s like to be crazy.

No, no, don’t try to deny it, it’s true. After all, dear reader, why would you
be wasting your eyeballs’ finite energy absorbing the words on this page if you
weren’t seeking some sort of answer? And if you’re looking for an answer,
doesn’t it stand to reason that you must have a question to attach that answer to?
Following that particular train of logic (assuming that it hasn’t derailed a few
stations back), there can only be a few questions that you are looking for answers
for when you come to me.

I suppose that the most common question I get is, “Why did you do it?” It’s a
simple one, one so short that even your typical cop can understand it (hiya Mr.
Police Officer Guys, I’m your biggest fan!). Unfortunately my usual even shorter
answer of “Why not?” doesn’t tend to go over so well with the donut dunkers.
They get all pissy, and the blood rushes to their faces and they scream and spit
and snort that they want the truth. Guess what, chief, I just gave it to you. I do
the things I do because they amuse me. They take away my boredom and fill me
with anti-boredom.

The question that the shrinks tend to vomit up at me is, “What occurred in
your life to make you this way?” They try to delve into my childhood in an effort
to find an abusive father, or a trip to the zoo where a kangaroo bent me over a
rock waterfall and nailed me up ze buttholz. You want to find someone that gets
really angry when you laugh at them, go find yourself a psychologist. I can’t help
but find them amusing. They try to shove my squirming brain into some category
that a dead German who wanted to sex up dear old mum came up with, all the
while holding notepads firmly in their grips so that they won’t miss the
opportunity to record their amazing brilliance for posterity. My particular type of
nuttiness (scientifically speaking) seems to elude their best attempts at
categorization, however.

Personally, I think that’s kind of cool.

It makes me unique. A lone wolf. A rebel without a cause. The Lone

Ranger without Tonto. A burrito without a colon.

Do me a favor, catch that analogy if it goes springing past you. I seem to

have let it get away from me.

Cops and shrinks, two peas in a pod constructed of stupidity and

misunderstanding. They try to understand what exactly it is that’s sitting across
from them and chained to a rather uncomfortable chair, bless their hearts they
really do try, but they just don’t get it. They just don’t get me.

I am. That’s all there is to it. I am. As far as I can tell, nothing made me this
way, I just am this way.

I’m a storm brewing over the dusty emptiness of the desert. I’m the seas
crashing into the rocks. I’m simply a part of nature that can’t quite bring itself to
be civilized, or hell, even to give a shit about being civilized. I’m the dog that bit
you when you were eight that makes you terrified to go near a miniature poodle.

Remember that time when you were in the kitchen and you burned your
hand while you were making spaghetti, something that you had done a hundred
times before, but somehow this time, this time that’s no different from any other,
you managed to burn a layer or two of precious skin off? I was the heat. More
than that, I was the coin God flipped when he was deciding whether or not to
teach you a lesson since you REALLY LOOKED LIKE YOU NEEDED A LESSON AND
DON’T YOU EVER DO WHAT YOU DID AGAIN AND I DON’T HAVE TO TELL YOU
WHAT YOU DID BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

I am a random act of violence in the night, the terrified shriek that echoes
off the alleyways, the drip drip drip of blood on the pavement. I am simply a part
of this universe with no rhyme or reason or definition. I simply am.

Why yes, I am a little off my rocker, thank you for noticing.

So back to your question that you may or may not have even known that
you had. What’s it like to be crazy?

It’s not bad.

There’s cake.

In all seriousness, or in as much seriousness as I can actually wrap my

thoughts around, I imagine that it’s quite a bit like how it feels for you to be
normal. Well, not you, but other people. Because you’re not really all that
normal, are you?

Oh, come on, you can be honest with me. You and I are going to be the
closest of chums, after all. Tell Uncle Screwloose all about how you don’t really
feel like your life’s thread fits all that perfectly into the world’s tapestry.
 It’s okay to feel that way, you know. It’s perfectly natural to not understand
what the hell your bio-donor parents got you into when Daddy convinced Mommy
that, since it was his birthday, the universe demanded that they dispense with the
condom and go rawhide for the evening. Or if you’re one of those test tube
babies that seem to be springing up more than Ryan Seacrest’s pants crotch
around an all men’s prison, say hello to both your mothers and/or fathers for me
before you sit back down and admit to me that, no, you’re really not all that
normal at all.

This is why you and I are destined to be the absolute best of friends. I’m
you. I’m you with the volume turned way up. My inner music is blaring so loudly
that when I sit back and pay attention to it, I can almost feel my teeth rattling in
their gummy container. The sound pushes my skin flat against my skull. It digs its
hooks into my muscles and pulls hard.

I guess being bonkers is a lot like sitting next to the speaker at a Korn
concert.

You know those self-help commercials that come on television around four
in the morning that preach about how they can help you become a better person
and show you how to like who you are? I take that to a whole new level, and it
didn’t even cost me twenty-six easy payments of $19.95. Admittedly I didn’t get
the free set of knives that cut broccoli into the shape of the White House, but hey,
what can I say. I didn’t call in before the commercial was over and thus I don’t
deserve to have those knives. Instead I have to solace myself with the fact that I
don’t just like who I am.

I enjoy being who I am. I love who I am. I would totally put out for who I
am.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be this free? No, what am I thinking,
of course you don’t. After all, you’re simply sitting here reading the ramblings of a
self-professed lunatic instead of, I dunno, kicking a male cheerleader in the
testicles or something. You still have all those restraints tied to you, weighing you
down, and the truly sad part of it is you put those chains on yourself, big fella.

You and I are such new acquaintances that I don’t want to risk what I’m sure
is going to be a beautiful friendship, but I feel that as someone that cares about
you, I must point out what I see to be the truth. You’re an asshole. There, I said
it. Whew, boy, I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel to get that off
of my chest.

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. It’s not my fault that you’re an asshole.
It’s your fault.

Don’t believe me? What kind of a person shackles his or herself (sorry,
from here I can’t really tell which you are, but that’s okay, I’m an equal
opportunist) to rules and regulations that he/she/it didn’t even come up with?
Society tells you what it takes to be normal; we’ve already established that you’re
not normal, however, so what kind of person would think that you have to be a
friend to society when you’re not really a part of it?

I’ll tell you what kind of person would do all that: an asshole. Thus,
mathematically speaking, you’re an asshole.

Oh, whoops, wait, I didn’t divide by pi in the equation.

 …..

Good news! You’re still an asshole.

Me, I’m a multitasker. I manage to be an asshole and not be an asshole all

at the exact same time. I’m an asshole in the sense that, yes, I would indeed find
it funny to pull down my pants and take a leak on the grave of your dead dog
Fluffy. I’m not an asshole in the sense that I realized early on that “society” is
merely a way for “the man” to keep “me” down. Society is racist towards my
people.

Society is racist towards insane people.

I don’t want to imply that I’ve turned my back on society and all of its
stupidly smiling population that seems to think that American Idol should be
termed “reality”. There wasn’t some point in my life when I came to the decision
that, boy howdy, I done had it up ta here with this Society varmit, and shoot, I’m
gonna jump on my horse and ride off into the sunset. Nothing of the sort. I just
blatantly ignore it and its supposed norms. Hey, if you want to be a sheep, that’s
your business.

Just understand that it makes you an asshole.

Like, a huge asshole.

Insert joke about huge assholes and fat people here. Maybe a little political
commentary by making it about a huge asshole and Bill O’Reilly. Oh my, what a
zinger that would be. I could even tell it to the guys at the water cooler when I go
into work.
 After all, it won’t offend them. They’re all Democrats and Libertarians and
other words you don’t use in polite conversations. Or was that Republicans? I can
never keep them straight. It’s the one whose party makes all these promises
during the campaigns then decides to fuck over all the people that voted for its
members while receiving a blow job from an underage male prostitute in a bus
station bathroom stall.

But fear not, my stalwart companion! As your bestest buddy I don’t want
you to be doomed to a life of assholiness. I want you to rise up from your
mundane life in which you, an asshole, current reside and become so much more
than you are! I will be your guide through the Land of Asshole, show you the way
through Asshole Tunnel, and hold your hand as you emerge into the complete and
total freedom that I so enjoy myself. Won’t that be great, pal? Just you and me
against the world. Amigos. Compatriots. So take those hands off the throttle of
your miserable asshole existence and let me take a stab at them.

I promise you won’t feel a thing.

P.S. You’re an asshole.

CHAPTER ONE

Ah, dear reader, I see that you have managed to find yourself a corner of
the world to hide in. What a very special corner indeed if you have managed to
pick up this document so that we may become such special friends! The
introduction thingamabob that I’m sure you’ve plowed through during your
descent to this, the first chapter, was of course written before our world’s little
“issue”. More specifically it was written in a wonderful little padded cell in a
wonderful little asylum mere months before IT happened. Ah, tears of longing fill
my eyes as I reminisce about the good old days when all that I needed to entertain
myself was small portion of dynamite and some scraps of imagination.

This not being a novel of the graphical persuasion you can’t see the tears.
How sad for you not to be able to see raw human emotion at its most sincere.
You also can’t see the rather large grin that has spread across my face since I
realized that nothing much has actually changed.

In a way I was tailor-made for this Brave New World that we live in. I loved
the act of snuffing the life from some poor sap that I happened to watch walk
down the street while in the right kind of mood, but I didn’t actually get any
enjoyment out of knowing that I had killed someone. In fact, if we’re being
completely honest with each other, pal o’ mine, and I know that I’m safe with
divulging my secrets to someone such as yourself, there were times that I even felt
a little guilty about it. It was the act of murder that made my pace quicken and
my day brighten ever so much. The results of the act, however, were always a
separate issue entirely.

See what I’m saying? Clear as mud? Excellent, let’s move on.

Oh, but this world that we live in now, how glorious it is! I can ply my craft
in so many ways, both oldie but goody ways and brand new innovative ways,
without the taking of a single human life! In fact, I’m often in the company of
honest-to-goodness real live human beings and they not only seem to usually
enjoy my company, but they also praise what I do. How mind-twistingly superb is
that? The people that I spend my time with appreciate the depth of my artistic
talents and even encourage me to expand my creative horizons. In return for
finally getting the respect and admiration that I so richly deserve (I say that in the
most self-deprecating and modest way that I can) I don’t even think about making
that special light fade from their eyes. It hasn’t even crossed my mind a single
time. There are times that, while lying in bed at night, I can almost convince
myself that this world was made by God specifically for me and no one else.

I bet that you haven’t run across many people that were actually thankful
for the undead hordes covering the surface of the planet, have you? Ah, see, that
makes me a rather special and unique acquaintance that you can be sure will give
you quite a few stories to tell your grandchildren someday when you’re old and
grey. Well, assuming that some pack of zombies hasn’t eaten your face off before
you have a chance to grow old. If you already happen to be old, hey,
congratulations, you’re doing better than about ninety-nine percent of the
population! Have a drink on me!

I wish that I had more answers for you about how all of this started, friend,
but just like everyone else I’m in the dark as to how this whole zombie apocalypse
shindig got started. Oh, there were those rumors on television about that secret
laboratory in Iran that was trying to create some sort of super soldier and
accidentally released the zombie virus into the public, and I’ve heard the whole
spiel from the religious sectors saying that this is God’s way of beginning the
Rapture like He warned us about somewhere in the back of the Bible (unless
you‘re Jewish, of course, in which case you won‘t find the Book of Revelations no
matter how hard you search your Bible). I suppose that either one of those are
possibilities. My personal opinion is that it’s something manmade; I base this on
the fact that I can’t believe that God would be cliché enough to send zombies of
all things to finish us off. It seems like He would have a tad more imagination than
that.

What is known is that the undead managed to bump off the world’s
governments in just under six months once they got started. They obviously
didn’t plan to do that since they don’t seem to be able to even plan to change
those rags of clothes they tend to wear, but when you have millions of friends
backing you up and the ability to make even more playmates simply by
transferring body fluid through biting or any other number of ways, you tend to
make bureaucrats get the hell out of your way by default. You probably know
more details about it than I do since I was locked away in the nuthouse while the
initial stages were taking place.

The only reason that I didn’t rot away in that comfy padded cell is because
the warden had a bit of a conscience. He let us go free when the wave of undead
suitors arrived to plant a nice toothy kiss on us. I had always rather liked the guy
although I was far too manly to tell him so; it really was a shame when he ended
up sprawled on the asylum’s entryway floor.

Well, if we’re being completely accurate, half of him ended up there, and
the other half ended up going the way of cheap sushi.

Most of the other patients attempted to run screaming and hollering out
the front gates of the asylum, where they of course came face to face with the
army of undead. It was like a scene out of 300. A small band of nutjobs, armed
only with their soft-soled shoes and a whole basket full of crazy, stood strong
against overwhelming odds.

For roughly four seconds.

I, only the other hand, was not really made of Spartan material and had
ignored the main gate. Instead, I opted to explore the private parking lot reserved
for asylum employees. There I found a car to hotwire (Hotwiring Cars 101 is a
required course during the first semester at the University of Psychopath) and
drove into the nearby town. The entire town was pretty much abandoned by the
time that I got there, and it was relatively easy to rummage around the
abandoned homes for new clothes and a modest stockpile of supplies to go with
my brand new 1976 Chevy.

My first real up close and personal encounter with someone of the zombie
persuasion was when I accidentally kind of sort of on purpose kicked in the
kitchen door of a house while in search of food. I came through the now-
splintered doorway and there he was, standing on the other side of the breakfast
table and looking right at me. A good portion of his skull was missing and his lone
remaining eye swiveled wildly in its socket. It was something of a shame, really,
because all that gore had ruined the rather expensive Armani suit that he was
wearing. Such a finely tailored garment adorning such an ill-mannered brute
bordered on being offensive.

Okay, fine, you dragged it out of me, I’ll fess up. I was indeed a bit
frightened at this point. Earlier that day I had been perfectly content leaning
against my cell’s soft walls and waiting for my daily mixture of blue and purple
pills. Now I was standing smack dab in the middle of the end of days and
surrounded by the living dead. To make matters worse there was one of these
fine folks not ten feet in front of me and he seemed to be taking far too much of
an interest in my admittedly tasty-looking flesh.

I really needed a hug. And not the kind of hug that this gentleman would
be only too happy to provide me with.

I set my jaw and stared this abomination right in the eyes, erm, eye. What
was there for me to be afraid of? He was a rotting corpse brought back to life to
devour human kind, sure. But I was a fucking serial killer! When I was arrested a
couple of years back all the papers said that I was ruthless and cold and twisted. I
had a reputation to maintain, dammit, and some undead freak wasn’t going to
show me up! This was my yard, and I’d be damned if some rotting puppy was
going to come in and get rid of me, the Big Dog.

As he began to lumber towards me, slowed a bit by the fact he was trying to
go through the table instead of simply around it, I looked around the kitchen and
got a sense of my surroundings. Hadn’t I always loved kitchens? So many sharp
objects to poke with, so many blunt objects to thump with, so many hot objects to
burn with. The average home’s kitchen was a playground for someone of my
particular brand of creativity.

In the time it took me to blink I had over a dozen different ways figured out
to make this zombie rue the day that he ever stepped foot into my kitchen
(although the odds were pretty good that I had probably stepped into his kitchen
since he was already inside the house, but who’s keeping track). None of these
options really called to me, however. They all seemed so…mundane. This was the
first time that I was going to be killing someone that had already been killed, and I
wanted to mark the occasion with something special.

Then my eyes fell on the cordless blender sitting on the counter within easy
reach and bingo, we had a winner.

The zombie didn’t seem to be able to move very fast. It propelled itself
with an odd cross between a walk and a shuffle, its arms stretched out towards
me and a constant moaning sound emanated from what used to be its lips. I
struggled to remember why I had felt threatened only moments before.

I allowed it to get almost within arms reach before I shattered the thin
plastic casing of the blender and jabbed the blades deep into the empty eye
socket. The moaning seemed to change almost from a statement to a question,
but then I flipped the On switch and the sound stopped completely as its brain
was puréed. I turned off the device and whistled a few bars of “You Spin Me
Around” while I went about my business of searching for food supplies to take
with me to…well, wherever the hell I was going.

The few newscasts about the Crisis (remember when the news stations
were calling the zombie apocalypse a “Crisis” like it was on par with a hurricane or
a stock market crash?) that I had been allowed to watch in the loony bin had
talked about how the undead didn’t seem to have any coherent thought process,
just a compulsion to kill and devour the living. The zombies didn’t seem to
communicate with one another and barely registered that others of their kind
were around them. The news anchors had also heavily emphasized that they
were rather slow and easy to outrun, and that a calm retreat was the best way to
handle an encounter.

Well that was all fine and dandy, but retreat to where? If the swarms were
all around, where was there left to flee towards while screaming like a three year
old girl? To complicate matters, even if I managed to find some semblance of a
safe shelter, the time would eventually come where I would have to emerge back
into this fun world of slaughter and carnage if for no other reason than to acquire
more supplies. Besides, was I really the kind of person that would just hunker
down in, say, a bomb shelter when there were so many opportunities to ply my
wonderful craft? As I navigated my Chevy over a series of speed bumps (read that
as “undead”) at the outskirts of town I put my always present but never dull mind
at work on the problem.

The first conclusion that my brain came to was that I would need to track
down other human survivors. There was safety in numbers and having a few
chums around would open up more opportunities for not only safety, but playtime
as well. This would mean that I would have to swear off the murdering that had
always come so easy to me, but that wasn’t a problem. I genuinely enjoyed the
company of other people even when I was known as the Raincoat Killer (point in
fact, it was a trench coat and not a raincoat, but leave it to terrified witnesses that
barely escaped with all their limbs attached to get such an important
differentiation incorrect). And besides, it’s not like I wouldn’t have a chance to
employ my skill set elsewhere.

My second conclusion was that I needed to be smart in how I went about

meeting folks. It’s not like I could hop on Facebook. I knew that the public’s
attention span was right up there with a fruit fly’s so I wasn’t really concerned
about someone recognizing me from my rather public trial. The end of civilization
as we know it can be a tad bit stressful, though, so I knew that most people
wouldn’t really be thinking straight and thus would make some bad choices. I
didn’t want to get accidentally shot by some Joe Schmoe who panicked and
thought I was a zombie, for example.

I also didn’t want to hook up with people that were, well, there’s no nice
way to say this, but people that were absolutely fucking retarded. Other people
being stupid and getting me killed wasn’t exactly high on my priority list. So I
needed to find people that I could count on and that could count on me. I’m
pretty sure that took the states of Alabama and Mississippi right out of
consideration.

Third, I would need to get my hands on some weapons more substantial

than those that I could find sitting around the kitchens of the world. Actually, I
corrected myself, I would need to find both weapons and equipment that would
allow me to survive on the move if necessary. I had no idea how long I would still
be able to find gas for my trusty car, but inevitably I would end up on foot. I would
need something to carry supplies and weapons and other odds and ends, like a
backpack or a duffel bag. The easiest place to find such a thing would be one of
the large superstores that seemed to dot America’s landscape like puss-filled boils.
I figured that those would be something of a buffet for zombies right now, though,
as people tried to stock up themselves, so that was out of the question.

Ah, but what was this! On the dashboard of my completely legally-obtained

Chevy sat a GPS unit, one of the fancy kinds that allowed you to search for
different kinds of restaurants and stores as well as get directions. Keeping one
hand on the wheel, I keyed in a search for the nearest sporting goods store and
was pleased to see that I was only a couple of miles away from one. As a bonus it
was located away from the main town roads. The streets were beginning to
become cluttered by abandoned vehicles and the shuffling forms of the undead,
meaning that it was probably a good idea to get off the busier streets sooner
rather than later.

I still hadn’t seen another living person since Leonitus led his men into
battle back at Shaded Grove Asylum and I began to wonder if anyone else had
actually managed to escape. If it turned out that I was the only person still alive, I
wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I would be proud of being better than the rest
of the population of the planet, of course, but I would also feel downright
embarrassed to be part of the human race.

I reached the sporting goods store, aptly titled John’s Sporting Goods, and
pulled into a space near the front of the parking lot. Notice that I made it a point
to park in a space as opposed to next to the curb, and also note that the space
was not reserved for the handicapped. Just because society had collapsed didn’t
mean that I should ignore proper driving etiquette.

I got out of the car and looked around. It was relatively silent in the parking
lot and the only zombies that I could see were quite a distance away and not
heading towards the store, but to be on the safe side I popped the car’s trunk and
rummaged around for a moment before producing a tire iron. I knew from
experience that a tire iron isn’t nearly as hardcore of a weapon as cop dramas
would have you believe. Better than nothing, though.

John’s Sporting Goods was abandoned; not even John himself walked the
aisles. The store had already been picked over by looters and fellow survivalists,
but I managed to find a large hiking backpack underneath a tipped over display
and a long length of rope that I figured might come in handy. I glanced longingly
at the display case that, according to the sign, had once housed any number of
guns, but those were of course all gone and the shelves were devoid of any boxes
of ammunition. On a whim I walked over to the door marked Office and eased it
open.

Ah, John, THERE you are. Apparently John wasn’t a Catholic since he had
put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I tell you, some people just aren’t
cut out for the undead rising from their graves and wiping mankind from the face
of the Earth. The pistol was still gripped in his hand and, since Johnny Boy would
have a hard time aiming it in his condition, I liberated it and checked the clip.

There were still five shots left. I rummaged around the office for a few
more minutes and managed to find a small carton containing bullets in his filing
cabinet. All in all it had been a fine shopping experience, and I’d like to take this
opportunity to thank the thoughtful staff of John’s Sporting Goods for really going
that extra mile and blowing off their heads to help me find exactly what I needed.

I returned to the car and found that some of those zombies that I had
spotted off in the distance were now a lot closer than they had been when I went
inside the store and were headed my way. Time to be going. I got back behind
the wheel, gunned the engine, and headed off in search of a good time.
CHAPTER TWO

Kill Counter- 1

I finally started encountering other survivors as I continued down the road.

At first it was just individuals and families that passed me (hey, I wasn’t going to
let something as silly as the zombie apocalypse make me break the speed limit),
but the further I went, the more I began to see people walking down the side of
the road or frantically inspecting broken down vehicles of all shapes and sizes.
Despite my new-found Don’t Kill the Nice People philosophy and my desire to find
companionship I didn’t really pay these folks any attention. I had no way of being
sure that they weren’t infected for one thing, but mostly it was because I didn’t
want to saddle myself with anyone that was whiny or panicky. Not so much for
my survival purposes as much as theirs, if you catch my meaning.

I had been driving for about four hours when I reached a ramp leading
down onto the freeway. Instead of turning onto it, I continued on for a few
hundred feet and brought the car to a halt. I was parked on a bridge that went
out over the highway itself, and I figured that getting an eagle’s eye view of the
situation down below couldn’t hurt. After all, if things weren’t completely
gridlocked I could get on it for a few exits. I wasn’t really heading to any place in
particular, but a part of me deep in the back of my rotten brain was insisting that I
had to get out of the general area soon or bad things would happen. I had
learned a long time ago not to ignore that little voice.

The moment that I opened the door I knew that getting on the freeway
wasn’t going to be a good idea. The air was full of screams that echoed across the
evening like a serial killer’s wet dream. Well, not my wet dream, I didn’t really
enjoy making someone scream and my personal wet dream involved Jessica Alba
holding a chainsaw, but you see where I’m going with that.

The sky was lit with the glow of fires and the occasional explosion. Any
number of other noises could be heard, everything from the shriek of metal on
metal to children crying, but above everything was a constant moaning that
seemed to almost shake the bridge with its force. Unless the troll living under the
bridge was having a massive orgasm, I couldn’t imagine that being a good sign.

I stepped to the guardrail and peered down. If I was to imagine a cross

between Hell and downtown Los Angeles after a Lakers title victory, it would look
something like what I saw. Cars and trucks were bumper to bumper as far as I
could see. Some people still sat in these vehicles, either because of sheer terror
or, in many cases, the inability to open the doors due to the close proximity, but
the majority of the former drivers had become current runners. Men, women,
and children were dashing between the cars and on the embankments in an
attempt to escape the horror that was behind them.

There must have been over a hundred thousand of the undead slowly
making their way down the freeway, stopping only to swarm under any motorist
that didn’t manage to get out of the way in time. Every so often a car’s fuel tank
would explode and send a plume of flame and smoke up into the sky; there was
more than a few zombies that were completely engulfed in flames. They just
continued their merry march like it was a Sunday stroll in the suburbs, though,
and it was only after basically every part of the body was incinerated would they
die (re-die?).

I heard a dull thumping in the distance and turned in time to see a news
helicopter rise up over a hill. For a moment I wondered if the news crew was
actually going to attempt to get an interview with the zombie horde, which would
probably sound about as coherent as a Ted Kennedy monologue there towards
the end. Then I realized that I was actually seeing an act of attempted heroism in
progress.

The helicopter’s pilot brought it in low over a small family that was trapped
on the roof of their minivan and opened the passenger side door to allow them to
get in. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was the sheer insanity of the crowd
at that point. I know a little something about insanity, and even I cringed at the
look of desperation that I saw in each and every face. Let me tell you, it’s a odd
experience for me as a convicted serial killer and certified nutcase to feel like the
only sane person left on Earth.

The family got in the chopper, sure enough, but twenty or so other people
lunged at the open door and landing skids. The pilot gave it everything he had at
the stick to attempt to get altitude, but the added weight was too much for the
craft and it slowly but surely fell from the sky. People screamed as the rotor blade
tore through the crowd, tossing life and limbs in all directions. Something must
have caught the fuel line because with a strange popping sound accompanied by
the much more expected roaring sound, the helicopter exploded.

I ducked behind the guardrail instinctively even though I knew logically that
the debris wouldn’t be able to reach where I was standing. A number of nearby
cars also went boom as their gas tanks ruptured. The only real positive of the
situation is that a few members of the undead persuasion were taken out by the
devastation.

All that scene lacked was Bruce Willis diving away in slow motion, I mused.

I glanced around to make sure that I was still alone on my little slice of
heaven. Confirming that this was indeed the case, I made my way across the
bridge to the other side. Now, I am not what most people would consider an
emotional man, but let me tell you friend to friend, mano et youo, what I saw
made bile rise in my throat.

Far off in the distance was a second mass of the undead that was at least as
large as the first one. The people down in the freeway were trapped between two
armies of zombies that were looking to make them all members of the human
race in the past tense only. The concrete walls of the highway were too high and
steep for most people to climb out of the way; there was going to be a massacre
and, even if the terrified crowd saw it coming, there was nothing they could do
about it.

There was nothing that I could do about it either, for that matter. I briefly
toyed with the idea of picking off a few of the zombies nearest my vantage point
just on principle, but really, what was the point? To up my zombie kill count (now
conveniently placed at the beginning of the chapters so that you, my dear friend,
don’t have to worry about doing the math yourself (which you should really thank
me for if you came up through the public educational system (inserting random
thought here so that I can see three parentheses In a row)))?

Behold my amazing grammatical prestidigitation skills! Marvel in

amazement as I bring you wonders that not even the Harvard English department
would dare release onto the public! But wait, the show is not over! Later, stare in
astonishment as I treat the bibliography like a three dollar hooker!

I turned back towards the car to continue on my journey to…wherever. I

came to the conclusion that I probably should figure out exactly where I was
driving to before I got much further. Obviously the sense of foreboding that I had
felt was due to about a gazillion undead arriving in the immediate vicinity and I
needed to get the hell out of Dodge (ironically in my Chevy) before any of them
realized that I was right above their heads like some rack of lamb in a butcher
shop window. I did need to actually have a actual destination in mind so that I
wasn‘t simply running around like a moron, however. A sociopathic moron, but a
moron nonetheless.

I snorted as I realized that the asylum that I had left earlier in the day would
actually have been perfect if it wasn’t for the patients-turned-zombies wandering
the halls at the moment. Heavy security doors, multiple layers of secured areas to
barricade, its own water supply, and enough food supplies to last for years, it
would have been both safe and moderately comfortable. Well, no use crying over
spilled prisoner blood. What was somewhat nearby that offered a similar degree
of safety?

A local prison? Probably not the best idea; I had enjoyed a small vacation at
both of the closest penitentiaries when my section of the asylum was being
renovated and there was always a chance that one of the guards would recognize
me. There was a military base a few hours away, wasn’t there? It was a thought,
but there was no guarantee that even if the base wasn’t overrun by now that it
wouldn’t be on total lockdown. Even if I did manage to somehow gain access to
the base, there was always the ugly possibility that they would run an identity
check on me. I had no idea if the military actually did that sort of thing in this kind
of crisis (assuming that they had a contingency plan for the dead rising to attempt
to consume the living in the first place; if they didn’t maybe they could just do the
exact opposite of the Afghanistan plan to be successful). There didn’t seem to be
any perfect options here.

Well, if there wasn’t a perfect place to take up residence, I would simply

have to make do with an imperfect one. Keeping my eyes peeled in a non-literal
way, I drove on and put the freeway behind me. Despite the noise of the road and
engine I could still hear the moaning of the zombie hordes for quite a distance.

I suppose that sound would have been terrifying or at the very least
intimidating to most people, but I found it a bit pitiful. It must suck to have such a
limited vocabulary. How are you today? Uhhhhhhhh. Where did you get that
new shirt? Uhhhhhhh. Would you like one lump or two in your tea? Uhhhhhhh.
You’re not going to tell my wife, right? Uhhhhhhhh.

Maybe the zombies didn’t actually hunger for human flesh. Maybe they
were just jealous of everyone that didn’t have their lack of communicating skills.
If that theory was correct one could only assume that most of Texas was free and
clear.

I would rather take refuge in a zombie infested house made out of more
zombies with even more zombies are coming in through the front door, the back
door, and the windows (which, of course, are all also made out of zombies) than
go to Texas, though, so that was out of the question.
 Perhaps it was the thought of needing something the exact opposite of
Texas that made me think of a museum. You may not notice when you walk into
one since odds are (unless you’re an art thief) that you aren’t paying attention to
these particular details, but many museums are built like fortresses. There are
thick steel gates and screens that can be dropped to cover the doors and
windows. Any number of objects can be used as weapons in a pinch. There are
multiple levels so even if one is compromised you can move onto the next one.
The cafeterias are stocked full of food and water, both perishable and non-
perishable.

Best of all, if there’s still power, the guard stations can be used to see every
nook and cranny of the place, meaning that it would be extremely difficult for you
to be caught with your pants down. If some other people in the building decided
to drop their pants, however, you’d be able to check out that action from multiple
angles.

Secure structure, plenty of supplies, the chance for naughty voyeurism…I’d

be stupid NOT to head for a museum.

Now, the downside to this entire plan was that I would be heading into a
heavily populated area, which meant that the undead swarms would be
everywhere. The safety of a museum wouldn’t mean anything if I got turned into
a tasty treat before I managed to reach it. If the freeway I had just left was any
indication, the streets of every major city would be almost impassible. So
unfortunately it appeared that my awesome idea was actually equal parts
awesome and stupidity.

Ah yes, awesome and stupid, the most bitter of all cocktails. Throw a little
vodka in there and you were guaranteed to get sloppy drunk and pay for it the
next morning. There’s no telling who you’d wake up next to the next day or what
doctors might find in your bloodstream afterward.

“Maybe the destination is wrong, but the features are right,” I muttered to
myself.

What, you’re surprised that I started talking to myself? I’m a certified

wackjob, remember? Just be glad that I wasn’t trying to spell messages out of my
alphabet soup or having sex with dead ducks to see the future.

“Where else has all of it?” I asked myself, not really expecting a response.
So imagine my surprise when I responded, “Basically any high school nowadays,
right?”

Ah, yes, the very public education system that I openly mocked in this very
same chapter did indeed provide an answer to my conundrum. A high school in a
low population town could be turned into my own personal Castle Greyskull. It
would probably be even more secure than Castle Greyskull since Skeletor
wouldn’t be attempting to get all up in my business. I would have the power (yes,
that also was a He-Man reference if you’re playing along) to shape my own destiny
in the place where so many lucky teenagers managed to flush their destinies
down the poorly-maintained urinals.

I opened the car’s glove compartment and dug out a map. A glance out the
windows told me that it would be a poor decision to stop the vehicle while I
worked it out; zombies were going from house to house on both sides of the road,
and being a stationary target right in the middle of things probably wouldn’t work
out well for me. It took a while, but eventually I managed to work out where I
was and find the sort of town that I was looking for without crashing into too
many objects.

Haven, Ohio, you were about to stock up on your quota of crazy.

No, wait, that sucked, let me try again.

Ready or not, Haven, Ohio, here I come.

Bah, that one sucked even more. One more go at it.

Haven, Ohio, wait until you get a load of me.

Okay, you know what? I can’t come up with a good line to use to close out
the chapter here. So I’m not even going to try. Those writers that spend hours
thinking about every single turn of phrase and which sequence of words sounds
the best out of all the possible iterations can bend over and accept the presence
of my boot heel deep within their now exposed cavity.

I was going to Haven, Ohio, and I was going to find a place to crash and kill
some shit. Lots of shit. Mountains of shit. I was going to enjoy every single
second of maiming and killing anything undead that either got in my way or I just
happened to spot and think, “Hey, you know what, I want to kill that one. Yeah,
that one right there. No, no, not that one, the one next to it. The one wearing
the thing. Not that thing. Yeah, that one right there. The one in the place doing
the stuff. I’m going to kill it just because I can.”

That’s the end of the chapter. Move along, nothing to see here.

Oh, wait, no, nothing got added to the Kill Counter this chapter. That can’t
be right.

Ah yes. As I turned down a side street I rolled down my window and saw a
pair of zombies, one a tall college-age girl with a chunk taken out of her side and
the other an old man that appeared to be relatively untouched, walking down the
middle of the street towards me. They seemed to simply be wandering around
until they spotted the lights of my car. They raised their arms slightly and that
familiar moan began to flow from their blood-covered mouths.

Running them over seemed like a good way to accidentally blow a tire or
crack an axle, so I stopped the car and stepped out into the road. Something in an
overturned trash can had caught my eye, and sure enough, when I walked over to
it at a brisk but hardly rushed pace I found what I had thought I would: a
discarded frying pan. It was old school Three Stooges time.

The girl reached me first, her neck twisting in anticipation of the gnawing
that, sadly for her but happily for me, would never come. I swung the frying pan
as hard as I could and was rewarded with a wet yet solid crunch sound. The
zombie went down hard and remained motionless.

I turned my attention to the old man. The frying pan was the kind made of
cast iron that was meant to live forever. There was barely a scratch on it from its
impromptu use as a Whack-a-Mole hammer. That’s why I wasn’t really all that
surprised when my blow actually caused his head to explode in a shower of blood
and gore. Quick, simple, and efficient, just like the Stooges would have wanted.

Okay, this is really the end of the chapter now.

CHAPTER THREE

Kill Counter- 3

I told you that really was the end of the chapter. You didn’t believe me,
though, did you? Even after all we’ve been through, dear reader, you still don’t
trust me to tell you when something is going to occur. That’s a shame, really,
because friendship is based in a foundation of trust. It takes the seeds of belief to
grow the tree of camaraderie.

Do you get the point? If not I can keep going. You have no idea how many
hours of Oprah they make you watch in a sanitarium. They seem to think that she
will have a positive impact instead of what she actually does: increases the urge to
go out and murder someone by at least tenfold. I can’t tell you how many other
patients confided in me that they wanted to either kill Oprah or themselves simply
to make the pain stop.

I drove on in my trusty Chevy while ignoring the need to eat, sleep, urinate,
and weird combinations of the three until around two in the morning. That’s
when necessity forced me to take a slight detour. Necessity and the light that had
started glowing orange on the dash; I was almost out of gas.

I was basically in the middle of nowhere. To my left was corn. To my right

was corn. If I tilted my head up and looked into the night sky I would probably see
corn. As much as Nebraska is associated with the stuff, Ohio has more than its fair
share of corn-based farmland. It took me about half an hour to find a gas station.
My streak of good luck continued as it was abandoned but not yet picked clean. I
was able to fill the car’s gas tank and empty my own pee tank in peace.

As I was making my way back to the car after presenting my golden offering to the
side of the building (I may be crazy, but I’m not insane enough to go into a gas
station bathroom), I made a quick U-turn and went into the convenience store
itself. The door was surprisingly unlocked, and, having been the person
responsible for a number of highly suspicious scenes myself, I knew better than to
chalk that up to pure dumb luck.

I pulled the pistol from my belt and checked to make sure that the safety was off.
I knew that I should really get back into my vehicle and continue onward, but I’ll
be damned if a Slushie didn’t sound extremely good at that particular moment, so
I moved forward out of the doorway.

I reached the counter where the cash register was mounted and stopped to listen.
The only sound that I heard was my own breathing. Despite my misgivings about
the situation I felt my pulse begin to quicken.

This sort of thing really got my blood going. I didn’t fell anything resembling fear;
au contraire, if anything I was feeling exhilaration. I was the hunter, the predator,
the non-accident prone Wile E. Coyote. If there was a road runner in this gas
station I was going to find it, and when I did, all the painted-on tunnels in the
world wouldn’t allow my prey to escape.

To my delight there was a sudden rustling from behind one of the aisles. Without
pausing I lunged around the corner and brought my gun’s barrel to bear on…

Wait, what the hell was I looking at exactly? A woman in her mid-twenties,
garbed in a police uniform and very much alive despite the amount of blood (none
of it hers; I could explain how I knew that to you, but it would be a long and
somewhat disturbing process for you and I certainly wouldn’t want to take away
from the events unfolding to go through it) covering her clothes, was hunched
down at the end of the aisle and brandishing what appeared to be a broken mop
handle. An open bag of chips and a half-consumed bottle of water were on the
floor at her feet.

“Oh, I apologize, I didn’t realize that I was interrupting your meal,” I said good-
humoredly. I made some show of putting on my gun’s safety and pointing it away
from her. “I hate it when people come calling when I’m eating. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait!” the woman nearly shouted as I began to turn away. “Wait, please,” she
continued in a much quieter tone as she peeked out over the aisle towards the
door. “You’re alive, aren’t you? I mean, you’re not one of them? You’re not
bitten or anything?”

I shook my head and gave her my most charming smile. “I’m very much alive,” I
assured her. “As alive as you are. Although from your clothes it looks like you’ve
been a lot closer to having that not be the case than I have, officer.”

She lowered the ever-so-threatening mop handle. “It’s been a fucking nightmare
of a day,” she answered. “Those…things are everywhere. All day it’s been one
long running fight, moving from place to place to save as many civilians as we
could.” She stared at the floor for a long moment before she whispered, “I’m the
only one left.”

“The only person in your squad left?”

“The only person period. The other cops, the civilians we were trying to save, the
National Guard troops that got called in…all of them are gone. Turned into one of
those fuckers out there or…or fucking eaten. I got away when they overturned
our SWAT van and I just started running. I ended up here. I was exhausted. I
needed to eat something or I was going to pass out.” She said this last part almost
defensively.

“Hey, officer, no need to worry about me turning you in for Grand Theft Gas
Station. It’s the end of the world, nobody is going to care about a bag of Doritos
and some bottled water. Where are you headed to when you leave here? Is there
some place that’s safe?”

She stared at me for a long moment, and I was surprised at how old her eyes
seemed. “I don’t think there’s anywhere safe. We lost all communication towards
the end. Nobody responded on the police or National Guard frequencies. Hell,
we couldn’t even pick up any military traffic or anything from the Emergency
Broadcast System. I…think the people that are left are on their own.”

In the old days, as in, you know, the day before, I probably would have taken
advantage of this unique opportunity to see exactly how many times this brave
officer’s body could take having a cooler door slammed on it before it decided to
shut down. I was a changed man, however. Completely and totally reformed.
Instead of using my powers for evil, I was now using them for good. Or at least
something marginally less evil.

I felt something welling up in my chest, something warm and inviting. Why, this
must be that compassion thing that I’ve always heard so much about! It had to be
that fuzzy feeling you get from helping out another human being in a time of
need. What other possible explanation could there be?
I belched.

Oh, never mind.

But hey, she was one of those kinds of people that I had realized that I needed to
try to hook up with, right? She was holding together pretty well for having just
gone through quite the massacre, and as a cop she would be at least passable
with a firearm. Hadn’t she tried to fend me off with a broken cleaning device
when she first saw me as well? That showed a bit of inventiveness and a keen
survival instinct. It wouldn’t have worked on a human unless there was some sort
of tripping incident that ended with impalement a la those poo-tipped stick traps
in Vietnam; it might have been enough to take down a zombie, though.

It didn’t hurt that she was easy to look at, too. That uniform was pretty tight
against a rather full chest and the pants were showing some pretty flattering
things. Her brown hair was tied up in an apparently quickly-assembled bun,
somewhat reminiscent of a librarian or 1800s school teacher, and that wasn’t
necessarily a bad thing depending on how your sexual fantasies swung.

Hey, why are you looking at me like that? Were you working under the
assumption that, just because I’m a cold blooded serial killer, I don’t have a sex
drive? Hey, you’ve got me confused with someone else if you’re thinking that. I
like the ladies just fine, thank you very much. It’s hard to see through the page to
confirm this no matter how hard I squint, but if you’re a guy I’m sure that you’re
nodding your head in agreement. If you’re a woman…how YOU doin’?

“I’ll tell you what, officer, why don’t you come with me?” I suggested. “I’ve got a
car outside with a full tank of gas, and we can load up on enough supplies for both
of us if we shove a bunch of the stuff from this store into the back seat. I’m told
there’s safety in numbers.”

The cop looked suddenly wary. “Why should I trust you?” she asked in a rather
flat tone.

I shrugged. “If I were in your place I wouldn’t trust me. I might be a homicidal
maniac or something. If you want to stay here I certainly won’t blame you for that
decision. It’s up to you. I’m going to go grab a box of Twinkies and a Slushie, and
then I’m going to head out. I’d decide fairly quickly if I were you.”

She immediately dropped the mop handle and nodded. “Okay, I’ll come,” she
said, rather unnecessarily if you ask me. “Where are we going?”

“Let’s talk about that when we’re on the road. You can be my navigator.
I’m not the safest driver in the world when I’m swerving all over the place while
I’m trying to read a map. You wouldn’t believe the look on this deer’s face earlier
when I almost plowed into it.”

We gathered up as much of the food as we could, focusing on non-

perishable products as opposed to things that would quickly go bad. Once
everything was tossed into the back seat, I made one last trip back inside the store
and finally poured myself a sweet, sweet Slushie. Cherry, of course. It’s a classic
and, truth be told, in my opinion the people that say they prefer the Blue
Raspberry are either living in a dream world or have fallen victim to the Blue
marketing machine. It’s true. It’s all part of a conspiracy engineered by the
people that invented the color Blue to take over the world. It started with putting
the Smurfs on television to corrupt our children and has now reached even into
our tasty frozen drinks. The Blue Slushie is right up there with the Grassy Knoll
and Roswell.

The cop was leaning against the passenger side of the car and was looking
around nervously. “Can we get going now?” she almost pleaded.

I’m a good judge of character and I knew right away that she would prove to
be a rather calm and brave individual, but she was clearly pushed past her limits
on this particular night. If I was something close to normal I probably would have
been, too.

“Sure,” I replied, taking a drink from the Godly nectar that is a cherry
Slushie. “I never did catch your name, officer. If we’re going to road trip together
we should probably know what to call each other.”

She opened her door. “My name is Heather Davenport.” She got in the car
and shut the door.

I walked over to my side and got in as well. “Well, Heather Davenport, my

name is James Pool.” A fake name, of course. James Pool was the name of one of
my classmates in high school. It didn’t seem prudent to give my real name to a
police officer even if the police didn’t seem to really exist anymore.

Besides, with my desire to make the lives of human beings go bye-bye gone,
it was kind of like I was starting a new life, right? From that line of reasoning it
only made sense that I would begin to do so by first removing everything from the
old life, and that included my name. So here I was, embarking on a new life in a
Brave New World with a brand spanking new name. Hello world, my name is
James Pool, and I’m a reformed serial killer. Well, not so much reformed as
refocused. The point still stands.

I pulled the car out onto the road and told Heather of my plan to become
King of the School in Haven. She almost immediately agreed with my train of
logic, which was nice since I was a bit afraid that my logic train might have
derailed three stations back without me knowing it. She disagreed with my actual
choice of location, though.

“Haven is a small town that is, well, was populated by mostly rich and
middle class families,” she explained as she poured over the map. “The high
school there isn’t set up to be locked down prison-style like you could with an
inner city school in a poor neighborhood. This part of Ohio is mostly farmland and
country folk. We won’t find any buildings designed to handle vandals and
gangbangers.”

I had to admit that she had a point. My old haunts were almost all in large
cities. The thought that some schools didn’t have to armor up at night had never
even occurred to me. It seemed that I had been right to bring her with me instead
of leaving her at the gas station to threaten undead tormentors with half a mop. I
thought about asking her what had happened to the other half, the part that was
not only a weapon but could even double up as a, gasp, cleaning device, but
decided that it was mostly irrelevant. It was something that I could bring up down
the line when we were old and sitting on a porch discussing how kids these days
didn’t know how to kill a zombie and, even if they did, they really needed to get
off our lawns.

“I’m open to suggestions, Heather,” I assured her. “If you know of a better
place, I’m all ears.”
 There was a long silence. “I’ll be honest, James, I can’t think of anywhere in
Ohio that’s going to be secure. I mean really secure. No matter where we go,
we’re going to have to restock supplies at some point. That‘s going to mean going
outside. It won’t do us any good if we fort up in a school or something but can’t
ever get back out again.”

Another silence. This time I was the one to break it. “I suppose you’re
right,” I agreed. “I’ll tell you what, turn on the radio and see if you can get a
signal. Maybe they‘ve got the Emergency Broadcast Station up and running again.
We need more information about what’s going on. If there’s a safe zone or
something I can drop you off there if you want.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to go to a safe zone if there is one?” she asked,

looking more than a little confused as she turned on the radio and began to slowly
turn the dial. “And why wouldn’t you stay?”

You’re probably asking yourself the same questions, aren’t you? Well, be
patient, because I’ll answer both of you…..

….

….

….now.

“Put yourself into the shoes of one of these undead things,” I told her. “If
there’s a place where humans are gathering en masse in an effort to protect
themselves, to find safety and security, what’s the one place that you’d want to
be? Where all the food has been conveniently been shoved into one spot, right?
Oh, but those humans are so very tricky, how would you know that such a place
existed, especially with your apparently limited mental faculties?”

Heather snorted. “By following the big groups of people fleeing right to the
safe zone.”

“Exactly. This whole thing started, what, a week ago? Maybe a week and a
half? And it’s been in this area of the country for a day or so? It would take an
awful lot to convince me that the government has managed to set up places that
can hold up against huge groups of zombies this quickly. Sure, they might be able
to stay safe for a little while, but only for a little while.”

“Not to mention the logistics of it. If you have every live man, woman, and
child for hundreds of miles around packed into one place, you’ll have to find
shelter for all of them and feed and clothe them.”

I glanced over at her. “I think Katrina proved that kind of logistics isn’t
exactly our government’s strong suit. Besides, we’re assuming that there’s
enough of a government left to do anything. You’re almost at the end of the radio
frequencies and there hasn’t been anything but static.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“That depends. You’ve been up close and personal with these things more
than I have, what can you tell me about them?”

Heather leaned back in her seat and rubbed her eyes wearily. For a
moment it seemed like she wasn’t going to respond, so I took another glorious sip
of my Slushie. She surprised me by opening her eyes and setting her expression in
a determined sort of way.

“They aren’t alive, which you already know,” she began. “That means that
they don’t function or even breathe the same way that we do. At first we tried
tear gas. That did exactly two things: jack and shit. They just kept coming. Even
worse, the smoke ended up making things even more difficult for us because it
made it hard to see them when the shooting started. Next we tried the
Shockwave. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s this…well, it’s kind of like this large series of boxes mounted on top of a
tripod. You press and button and the boxes each fire one taser dart. It’s used to
take down multiple targets at once with non-lethal force. You know, for crowd
control and prison riots and such. Anyway, it didn’t even slow them down, and
I’ve seen the voltage from just one of those darts take down a drunk guy that was
full of steroids. So I guess that means that electricity doesn’t work on them either.

“Destroying the brain seems like the only thing that’s a definite kill. I saw
one zombie get its chest torn off by a shotgun blast and it kept coming. If you take
out a leg it will just keep crawling after you. Even if you cut the damn thing in half
it just keeps coming.

“Once we figured out you had to aim for the head it made things a little
easier, but do you have any idea how hard it is to hit a headshot? It’s one thing to
do it at a practice range when you have all the time in the world and no pressure,
but in the real world, when it counts, it’s so goddamn hard.

“Most of us ran out of ammunition by the time our positions were overrun
and we had to resort to our nightsticks. It was easier to hit the head and the sticks
were pretty effective. It was a lot more tiring, though, and when you’re that up
close and personal with the bastards there’s not any room for error.”

“I see,” was all that I responded with.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” she continued. That seemed to be an awkward
thing to say since she had already told me quite a few more things than just one.
“They’re graceless bastards. They move pretty slow and they can’t really climb
over anything more than four or five feet tall. If there are enough of them they
can still get over walls and such simply because they pile up on each other trying
to get to you, but a single zombie isn’t hard to outmaneuver.”

I started to say something but was cut off when she kept talking. I thought
that was a bit rude, especially since she had just got done stating that she was
only going to tell me one thing. It’s not nice to lie like that. I’m sure that you, my
faithful reader, are above telling little white lies like that, but evidence would
indicate that Heather was not.

“Does any of this help?” she asked.

Oh, okay, I guess she wasn’t going to actually tell me anything else. She
was, in fact, asking an interrogatory. Well then, it appeared that I was wrong
about one Ms. Heather Davenport. Completely ignore what I said in that last
paragraph. I would cover it up with liquid paper if happened to have some, which
I don't, and crossing out a section just looks so ugly and amateurish. So I guess
you’ll just have to forget what I wrote.

Go ahead, forget. I’ll wait.

 Hiya! Welcome back. We now join our regularly scheduled program
already in progress.

I nodded. “Yeah, it definitely does,” I answered in the affirmative. “Them

not being able to climb means we’ve got a lot more options for places to stay,
even if the place is just temporary. If it comes down to it we could always destroy
the staircase in a house or something. We just need to-“

I slammed on the breaks. Heather cried out in surprise and gripped threw
her hands out onto the dashboard to keep herself from smacking into it. See, you
never know when the maniac at the steering wheel is going to bring the vehicle to
a sudden stop, that’s why you should always wear your seatbelt. The car swerved
slightly before coming to a halt.

“What the FUCK!” Heather demanded as she looked at me a bit wild-eyed.

Without saying a word I motioned with my chin towards the windshield.

Blocking the road completely was a large group of the undead. I did a quick count
and stopped at thirty; I estimated that the full number was at least a hundred.
Probably more than that since the headlights could only penetrate so far into their
ranks before the bodies blocked them entirely. For a moment we looked out at
zombies and they looked in at us. Then almost as one they began shuffling
towards us with that trademark moan.

“Let’s just turn around and head back,” Heather suggested quietly.

“I don’t think that’s going to be possible,” I informed her, opening my car

door and stepping out. “They’re coming out of the corn field behind us. We’re
cut off.”
 I popped the trunk and went around to the back of the car where she
joined me. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” she asked, obviously already knowing
the answer.

“Looks like it,” I confirmed, pulling my hiking pack out and putting it on. It
was fairly heavy at this point; I had put a number of supplies including food and
flashlights in it after pillaging the gas station clean. Still, I had made sure that I
would be able to carry it and still move at a brisk pace so the added weight wasn‘t
overwhelming.

“Oh, shit,” I swore suddenly.

“What? What is it?”

“I almost forgot my Slushie.”

I reached back into the car and snatched up my tasty drink. The zombies
were within a dozen yards of the front of the car now, and the ones coming up
from the rear weren’t much further back. There was clearly no communication or
even rudimentary cooperation going on between the two groups, but as (bad)
luck would have it, they had managed to cut off any good chance of escape. On a
whim I snatched up the tire iron that I hadn’t had a chance to use earlier and
shifted the pack a bit to allow it to rest more comfortably on my shoulders and
back.

“Well, no helping it, I suppose,” I muttered to myself. I turned to Heather.

“Into the corn we go.”

Running through a cornfield is nothing like it seems on movies or television.

The stalks are hard and don’t really bend easily, and there’s the always fun “Smack
the people in the face” game some of them seem to like to play. Holding hands so
that we didn’t become separated, we moved deep into the corn. There was an
almost deafening crashing sound behind us that said louder than words that the
undead were following pursuing. We pushed onward.

We had only been fleeing for a minute or so when the face of a zombie
suddenly appeared between the stalks to our left. Without breaking stride, I
swung the tire iron and connected with the side of that face, making it look almost
like a catcher’s mitt. It gurgled and fell out of view. I glanced back as we
continued on and saw a dark shape on the ground that wasn’t moving. Nice,
another one to add to the counter. Twice more this happened, and twice more
the tire iron came down with authority.

At last we reached the other side of the cornfield. We were standing near a
chain link fence that blocked us from going any further. In the bright moonlight I
saw that on the other side of the fence was an embankment leading down to a
highway. I thought back to my studying of the map (which we had conveniently
left inside the car, yay for us) and realized that it must be the turnpike. After what
I had seen happen on the freeway the day before, I was understandably skeptical
about our chances down there, but the load noises growing closer from behind us
made me even more skeptical about our chances if we stayed where we were.

“We’re going to have to climb the fence and cross the highway,” I whispered
to Heather. “We need to stay as quiet as we can so if there are any of our
playmates down there they won’t know we’re within hugging distance. Got it?”

She nodded, and we began the tiresome activity of climbing the fence. She
reached the top first and climbed down the other side. Burdened by the weight of
the pack I was slower going up, and I can’t begin to describe how thankful I was
that there wasn’t any barbed wire strung across the top. Finally I reached the
other side and we continued forward cautiously.

The turnpike was much like the freeway had been: abandoned vehicles ran
as far as the eye could see in both directions, and bodies (along with their various
parts) were everywhere. The car drivers and their passengers seemed to have put
up a better fight here, though, as for every human casualty there were three or
four deanimated (I assume that’s a real word as ‘un-reanimated’ just sounds so
clunky) zombies. Hey, good for them. If you’re going to go down, take as many of
them down with you as you can, give ‘em hell, cowboy up, all of that jazz.

We had just reached the first of the cars when a loud crash and the sound
of metal groaning in protest came from behind us. After running a multitude of
experiments for months in one of the finest laboratories in the country and
consulting with some of the top minds that humanity had to offer, along with God
only knows hour many hours of research and fundraising events, I came to the
conclusion that the zombies had more than likely reached the fence. Still, we
continued on at the same cautious pace, carefully making our way out onto the
highway.

That little voice in the back of my head was screaming a warning at me.
More than that, it had managed to find a tiny little megaphone somewhere to
amplify itself even further. I scowled and firmly told it that I got the point.

Heather spotted something on the ground and held up her hand to call a
halt. She reached down and picked up what appeared to be a revolver. She
quickly and professionally checked the rounds remaining and nodded her head in
approval.

I barely noticed this, however, as I was too busy exchanging my now oddly-
shaped tire iron for an aluminum baseball bat I had discovered in the back of a
pickup. Now this was more like it. Nice length, good solid weight, everything that
a would-be bludgeoner could ask for. I took a practice swing and licked my lips.
Oh yes, this would be just fine.

We continued on.

With all the moaning coming from the horde I barely heard the crunch of
glass being crushed, but apparently Heather had better hearing than I did. She
spun and fire a single shot into the forehead of a zombie that was trying to reach
us from between a Volkswagen and what appeared to be the remains of a
Mustang. There was movement from the other side, but with a swing of my
mighty beatstick and a satisfying explosion of undead skull and gore that
movement stopped rather abruptly.

Now the moaning was coming from all around us.

“Forget the subtle approach,” I told Heather. “We need to get out of here
now.”

She nodded as she put down another of our would-be suitors. “There’s
probably a fence on the other side,” she pointed out. “I think I see an off ramp
just west of us, though. We’ll have to make a break for it.”

Ah, our first carnage-filled race against time with each other. How well I
remember it. It was a magical evening. The moon was full, the stars dotted the
sky, and we were as one as we moved steadily towards our only hope of escape.

It seemed like they were coming from everywhere at once, marching

towards us from between cars and occasionally smashing their way out of a wide
assortment of vehicles. When Heather’s revolver was empty she flipped it around
in her hand and beat down one of our dance partners with the handle. She then
discarded the weapon and grabbed a piece of piping off the road to join me in my
brutal ballet of blunt object beatings. I’m pretty sure that if she had a way to pick
up the alliteration in that last sentence she would have assaulted them with that
as well. Truth be told, I hadn’t had that much fun in quite a while.

When we finally reached the off ramp we found it strangely absent of the
undead. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, however, we picked up the pace
and jogged up to higher ground. The top of the ramp was clear as well. I looked
back down towards where we had come from and realized that wasn’t going to be
the case for long. Between the group that had chased us out onto the turnpike in
the first place and the other smaller groups that had been milling around the
highway itself, we at least three hundred zombies begging for our attention.

It was Heather that spoke first. She looked strangely radiant in the
moonlight as she stood there covered in blood and whatever else. “Let’s go find a
car and get the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER FOUR

Kill Counter- 31

As we continued our night trek across the foreign and wild terrain of central
Ohio, I inspected my newly acquired weapon of not so mass destruction. The
aluminum bat had certainly seen better days; the metal almost resembled a
question mark at this point. Blood and bits of flesh and bone clung to it. If I didn’t
have the stomach for just this sort of thing I would probably be depositing its
contents all over the pavement.

I sighed and took the last drink from my Slushie. By some miracle I had
managed to keep hold of it during the pay-per-view-esque Trouble on the Turnpike
(live this Sunday for only $49.95, call your provider today), but now, alas, it had
come to an end. With a second sigh, one of longing and unspeakable loss, I
tossed the cup into a nearby trash can. After a moment’s thought I sent the bat in
to join it. I would have to find another toy before I waded into another killing pit
of doom, but until then I’d have to settle for my firearm.

No more thwack-thwack, only pew-pew. Ah well.

After leaving the off ramp behind us, we walked for just over a mile before
we came across a burger joint. I’m sure that it had a name, it would almost have
to have had one, but where the sign should have been on the roof there was
instead a gaping hole. I could only imagine what chain of events led to that
happening. I was fairly certain it involved a rocket launcher, a disgruntled IRS
agent, and a UFO piloted by a drunk Wookie. What else made sense?
 More important than the unexplained mysteries of the universe, however,
was the old pickup sitting in the restaurant’s parking lot. We cautiously
approached it; well, truth be told, Heather cautiously approached it. I sort of
sauntered over without any real sense of urgency. The undead didn’t seem to be
following us anymore, so why be in a hurry? That was a good way to accidentally
skin a knee.

Wait a second, hold up. Why wasn’t the pursuit continuing, anyway?
Zombies didn’t strike me as the type to simply admit defeat and give up. In fact,
they seemed rather tenacious and single-minded. Like a cat chasing after the red
dot of a laser pointer, they would keep going after their target even after it should
have been obvious that the would-be prey was out of reach.

So what had changed? As Heather opened the pickup’s door and

demonstrated her amazing thief skills by hotwiring the vehicle, I gave our
surroundings a once-over. There was the restaurant which, from the looks of
things, was almost guaranteed to land its customers in the bathroom in short
order. Just down the road was a gas station. Its power seemed to be out as not a
single light was lit. That was no way to run a business. Beyond that there was
only the road and some trees. Hardly anything threatening.

OR WAS THERE?!?

No, actually, there wasn’t.

OR WAS-

No, stop it. There wasn’t anything even remotely threatening in the
immediate area.
 “This isn’t working,” Heather called to me in obvious frustration. “I think
the battery is dead.”

“We should call AAA,” I suggested absently.

“I’ll get right on that just as soon as we find a phone.” It was a wonder she
didn’t slip on all that sarcasm she was dripping. She slammed the car door shut.
“It looks like we’re back to walking.”

“Looks like it.”

As we continued down the road I returned to my pondering about our

suddenly zombie-free environment. No matter how much I rewound the scene in
my head I couldn’t figure out why they had broken off their pursuit. Heather had
mentioned that they didn’t seem to be able to climb but the ramp had only sloped
gently towards the road above. It wouldn’t have presented much of a challenge.
If it wasn’t a terrain issue, there must have been a different reason. What would
be more important to brainless people eaters than two of the very people they
wanted to brainlessly eat?

Be sure to present your Final Jeopardy answers in the form of a question.

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo… doo doo doo doo DOO… da doo doo doo
doo…

Time’s up, contestants, put down your pens. Let’s see what you came up
with.

What are more people, Alex?

There must have still been a number of people, as in living, breathing

human beings, hiding inside cars on the turnpike. It was the only thing that made
sense. If Heather and I were the only buffet in town we would have been number
one on the eat list, but if there was more of a selection of already nicely wrapped
meat pies where they were, why bother to leave the house to eat out?

That made more sense in my head.

When we reached the gas station we briefly stopped to check for a possible
mode of transportation. There wasn’t one, unfortunately, but we did manage to
get our hands on some nifty parting gifts. I hefted my new crowbar a couple of
times. It didn’t feel as natural as the aluminum bat had, but I knew from personal
experience that one of these bad boys could do quite a bit of rather unique
damage. Blunt trauma from the main body, piercing capabilities from the hooked
end…the crowbar is a classic murder weapon for a reason.

I had never had the opportunity to end a life with one, so having one now
for the express purpose of killing was more than a little cool. It was kind of like an
homage to those brave murdering sociopath pioneers that had come before me.

“You know what I think freaks me out the most?” Heather asked as we
continued on our way. “How quiet it is. No birds, no crickets, no bugs, nothing.”

I nodded, belatedly realizing that she probably couldn’t see the gesture in
the darkness. “The animals know things,” I replied. “They sense something is
wrong and they’ve either hidden or fled.”

“All of them, though?” She sounded unconvinced.

I hesitated. “Only if the threat is nearby.”

 “Oh. Great.”

Almost on cue the now familiar moaning began. This time, though, it was
coming from somewhere in the distance and didn’t seem to be heading towards
us. A minute or so later there was the sound of gunfire. Not small arms fire, mind
you, but the unmistakable sound of heavy automatic weapons.

“That’s some serious ordinance,” Heather commented. “More than we use.

It has to be military.”

A red light suddenly illuminated the northern sky, almost immediately

followed by the boom of an explosion. The gunfire continued, only occasionally
silenced for a moment or two before resuming. During these breaks I could very
faintly hear people shouting. It was impossible to tell if the Army/Navy/Air
Force/Marines/National Guard/CIA/FBI/Homeland Security/Super Secret Ninja
Assault Task Force or the undead were winning the conflict.

“Maybe we should make our way towards that,” Heather suggested

hopefully. “If the military is there, we could help them or at least hitch a ride with
them.”

“We don’t know how many zombies are between us and them,” I disagreed.
“And I can guarantee that there’s a ton of them at the battle itself. All that noise
must be attracting them from miles away. The smart money wouldn’t be on us
making it through alive.”

“And even if we did we might get shot to death if they thought we were
undead. Goddammit, you’re probably right. So where do we go?”
 What did I look like, a travel agent? For someone that was supposed to be
a cop, she sure was wanting to follow my lead quite a bit. I had to remind myself
that this is what I wanted. I was always a bit of a control freak, and I would have
found not being in charge rather unacceptable. That sort of thing might have led
to an unfortunate (not for me) breaking of my new Leave the Nice Breathing
People Breathing oath.

Hey, I need you to do me a favor. Yes, you, reader. Walk over to your
computer and go to MapQuest. Then stick this book up against the screen for a
few minutes. If you’re reading this on a computer or reading device or some sort
of magical vision quest, open your browser and do so. Good to go? Excellent.
Okay, let’s see here. Zombies don’t function well in the cold, so maybe we could
head north to Canada. Gah, wait, no, I don’t know about the cold thing at this
point. Maybe we could go to Colorado. It’s pretty high up and the undead have
that bad climbing thing going on. No, no, that won’t work, most of Colorado was
overrun fairly early on. I don’t know that yet, either, but I’m not going to send
Past Me to his death or else Current Me won’t exist. Now where the hell could we
go…

Ah, there we go.

“California,” I told Heather. “We should go to California. From there we

head north into Oregon, or maybe Washington.”

“I don’t get it,” she admitted. “I get California because yesterday morning
the news said that there were only very minor outbreaks west of the Mississippi
River so far, but why Oregon?”
 “Oregon is sparsely populated, but not so much that supplies would be
impossible to find. There are a lot of places to hunt and the soil is fertile enough
to grow fruit and vegetables. The towns in some places are so far apart that we’ll
have plenty of warning before a swarm of zombies could reach us. Lots of places
to hide, lots of things to climb, it seems perfect.”

She looked at me with an expression that somehow managed to mix

incredulousness with awe. “How do you know all of that?”

“I checked out Wikipedia while MapQuest was loading.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I figure that if we find a better place on the way, we can
always call it a day there.”

We walked in silence for a while before Heather said anything. “Why go

through California instead of through the northern states?”

“It’s the most populated state in the country. If the United States is going to
stage some sort of offensive to try to stop this from getting worse it’s probably
going to be run from California. We might get there and find out that we don’t
have to move to the middle of nowhere after all. Besides, I’ve never been to
California before and I’ve heard good things.”

Despite herself, Heather laughed. “You are the strangest person that I’ve
ever met, James, you know that?”

I took a small bow. “That’s ever so kind of you to say, madam.”

“Alright, fine, you’ve convinced me. Let’s do it.”

 Whoo hoo, road trip!

My reasons for wanting to embark on a quest of epic proportions were a bit

more complicated than I had told Heather. Well, not complicated so much as
there were a couple of things that I oops kinda sorta left out. It was completely
unintentional, I assure you.

There was no doubt in my mind that it was only a matter of time before the
undead plague spread and took over the vast majority of the country. The United
States simply wasn’t prepared to fight such a battle of such magnitude on its own
soil, especially since the majority of our military resources were devoted to the so-
called War on Terror across the globe. Combine that with the ineffectiveness of so
many of the military’s usual tactics against something that couldn’t feel fear or be
killed except in very specific ways, and it all added up to spell doom (assuming
Math and Spelling were somehow related, which they might be given my
attention span in school). Things would be even worse in other countries that
didn’t have the weapons or personnel to really defend themselves. We were
looking at a snowball effect that would eventually lead to the fall of humanity as
the dominant species for a good long while if not forever.

That’s why getting ahead of the zombie hordes was so important to me: I
needed time to make preparations. My plan was to have as much time as possible
to set up my home turf somewhere remote. Once that was done, I could lure the
undead to me and fight them on my own terms. I wasn’t one of those sloppy
serial killers that did everything on emotion and adrenaline rushes; I liked to tilt
the odds in my favor before settling in for a nice killing spree. Given enough time I
could construct a home that could not only protect me and those I allowed inside,
but could also be a deathtrap for those attempting to barge in.

The word “time” is the important word here, though. It was impossible to
guess just how soon we’d be living in the United States of Uhhhhhhhhmerica, so
we needed to hurry so that we could give ourselves as much time as possible.
That meant getting ahead of the outbreak. After all, I wanted to do everything
that I could to become known as the greatest mass re-murderer (can’t really say
mass murderer since, you know, they’re already technically dead) in history. I was
already clearly behind the guy that had set off the explosion a few minutes ago.

Was that a weird goal, do you think? Do you think it’s any stranger than a
fat person making a New Year’s resolution to lose weight? Or how about a young
college student making a vow to become a millionaire within the next twenty
years? Everyone has to have goals. Otherwise they’d simply be floating through
life without any sort of purpose. Mine just happened to be to go down in the
record books as the guy that ended the un-life of the most flesh-devouring
reanimated bodies.

To achieve this modest goal, however, I would first have to insure my own
survival and the survival of those that could further my activities. If it seems to
you, dear reader, that I was leaving the place where all the action was or, worse,
making a break for it, let me assure you that I am no idiot and I’m certainly no
coward. I was going to make sure that I had fun on my own terms, not someone
else’s.

“Hey, do you hear that?” Heather asked, jerking me out of my silent

introspection. “The fighting has stopped.”
 I listened for a moment and learned that she was right. The gunfire and
shouting had fallen silent. We walked on in complete silence except for the sound
of the night breeze blowing through the trees.

“What do you think happened?” she finally asked in a voice barely above a
whisper. She was clearly feeling uneasy.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

More silence. We went about another two miles before I became aware of
faint humming coming from a side street. I motioned for Heather to stop and we
moved out of the road and into the grass. A minute or so later it clicked: it was
the sound of a car engine. It’s strange how it seemed like such a foreign sound on
this particular night. Eventually the glow of headlights became visible.

“We should flag the driver down and hitch a ride,” Heather murmured.

“We might as well,” I agreed. “Just be sure to make a lot of noise and
exaggerate your motions. We don’t want him to think that we’re zombies and run
us down.”

Thirty seconds later, we found ourselves back in the middle of the road,
yelling and waving like a couple of drooling idiots. The rather odd thought that I
now knew what it was like to be a Packers fan flittered across my brain. At first it
didn’t seem like the vehicle was going to stop, and I began to tense to fling myself
out of the way. Finally our gorilla-like dancing and screaming seemed to do the
trick, and it came to a stop about fifteen feet in front of us.

It didn’t take a car genius to see that it was the military. The Jeep looked
like it had driven right out of stock news footage of any number of desert conflicts.
A man dressed head to toe in camouflage fatigues jumped out of the driver’s side
and pointed a pistol at us. I heard a little voice in my head coo at the thought of
G.I. Joe wanting to play a game of Who Can Kill Who. I told the voice to be quite
and go back to sleep. We had other things to worry about.

“Who are you?” the man demanded in a gravely voice. I wondered if it

always sounded that way or if it was hoarse from shouting.

“Nobody here but us chickens, sir,” I answered brightly.

Heather shot me a look that made even me cringe slightly. “I’m Heather
Davenport. I’m a detective with the Canal Logan police department. My
companion is James Pool. He’s a civilian.”

‘Civilian’ didn’t really quite hit the mark, but I let it pass.

“We’re alive, obviously,” she continued. “Neither of us is infected. We’re

just trying to make our way west and get the hell out of this nightmare.”

This seemed to satisfy the soldier, or at least placated him enough to lower
the gun. “Sorry about that, detective,” he apologized in a much friendlier tone.
“We can’t be too careful with these NLCs running around. We’re headed west
ourselves. Why don’t you folks toss your gear in the back and hop in?”

“We’d really appreciate that, sir.”

Two minutes later Heather and I were sitting in the back seat of the Jeep as
it drove onward. The driver told us his name was Corporal Steven Banks of the US
Army. His passenger was Private First Class Martin Perkins, and he wasn’t doing
well at all. In the darkness it was hard to tell, but I sort of got the impression that
something wasn’t quite…right with Perkins. Every time we hit a bump he would
cry out ever so slightly, and more than once he gripped the door as if for support.

“Were you two with the group we heard to the north?” Heather asked as
she tried to find a comfortable sitting position on the hard seat.

“Yes ma’am,” Banks confirmed with a nod. “We were part of a joint military
operation designed to cut off the NLC advance towards Columbus. Perkins and I

are part of the 28th Infantry Division out of Pennsylvania. Technically we’re part
of the Pennsylvania National Guard, but when the armed forces withdrew from
the state, we were absorbed back into the Army itself.”

“How did the battle go?”

He surprised us with a vehement curse. “It went like shit, that’s how it
went. Our group took up positions in the Horseshoe. You know, the Ohio State
stadium where the football team plays. The plan was to form a loose perimeter
all around the city, kind of like a reverse siege, and just pick off the NLCs as they
came to us. No close contact with them, no need to worry about being infected
by the bastards.

“Everything was going all fine and dandy until some of us started realizing
that they kept coming. It was hard to see because the flood lights only reached so
far, you know? But I’ll be damned if for every one I shot the fucking head off of
three more didn’t take its place. They just kept coming and coming. No fucking
kidding, there had to have been at least a million NLCs coming towards us.”

“You keep saying NLC,” I observed.

 “Oh, yeah, sorry, it’s slang that the officers were using. It stands for Non-
Living Combatants. What a fucking name, right? Like they’re terrorists that just
happen to be dead and still walking around. Most of us grunts just called them
zombies. I mean, come on, that’s what they are, aren’t they? They can’t possibly
be anything else. God, to think I used to watch those George Romero flicks with
my buddies in school and we’d rag on them for being so stupid. Now, though…
Christ, real fucking zombies. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“The battle,” Heather nudged him gently.

“Let’s call it what it was: a massacre. It wasn’t a fucking battle, because that
sounds like we gave as good as we got. Fact of the matter is we had no way to
take down that many. They kept coming and coming. They just ignored the
exploding heads around them and kept pushing their way into the stadium. I’ll
never forget the sound of those huge metal gates crashing down. They actually
did a damn fine job, but there’s only so much of a beating a gate can take, and
with that many zombies they didn’t stay in place long.

“The zombies poured into the stadium like…well, have you ever seen a cave
on the beach when the ocean comes in? It’s all empty and dry, and suddenly
these waves fill it full of water? It was a lot like that. The officers tried to maintain
some order, but the boys knew that they were trapped like rats and weren’t
having any of it.

“I got lucky. I was able to slip through one of the exits that the assholes
weren’t assaulting. Perkins here got caught in the side with one of the metal
gates when they fell. We think it busted up some stuff inside of him, but he’s a
tough son of a bitch and he managed to get out with me. We found this Jeep
abandoned and, well, here we are.”

“We saw what happened to our unit commander,” Perkins unexpectedly put
in. His voice was weak and strangely slurred, almost like he was talking
underwater. “Four of the bastards got him pinned up against the wall. The first
one grabbed him by the shoulder and bit off his jaw. Just leaned right in and tore
off the bottom part of Wilkins’s face. The other three ripped him open and…”

He suddenly went into a coughing fit. When he regained control he

whispered, “Wilkins had a wife and kids, and the bastards ripped him to shreds.”

“Just be glad we didn’t see him come back, Private.” Banks glanced in the
rear view mirror at us. “That happens, you know. If they don’t eat or destroy the
brain, the person becomes one of them.”

“We know,” Heather confirmed, her jaw set. “I had to put down some good
friends yesterday.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.” There was an awkward silence before
Banks continued. “We’ve been in contact with a few other survivors over the
radio. It seems like the entire force was decimated. As far as we can tell, nobody
in charge made it out. Those of us that did make it out are making a break for Fort
Leavenworth in Kansas. The plan is to stay in small groups so we don’t attract any
more NLCs than we have to. I figure that we can cross the Mississippi somewhere
near St. Louis and head into Kansas from there.”

Heather nodded her approval. “Sounds like a plan. James and I are
headed,” I shot her a warning look, “further west, so if you don’t mind, we’d like
to bum a ride off you until St. Louis.”
 “That’s fine by me if it’s okay with you, Perkins.”

“I’m for anything that means I don’t have to look at your ugly mug all the
way there, Banks,” Perkins rasped out.

Even without being able to see their faces, I knew that they were both
smiling. Despite the insanity of the ordeal they had just gone through and the
obvious severity of Perkins’s injuries, they were clearly keeping things together. I
have to say that I was impressed. Most people would have been rendered useless
by the situation, little more than blubbering quavering gelatin molds weeping all
over themselves and begging for Mommy dearest to come save them. Just
because they were soldiers didn’t make it any less of an accomplishment. One of
my fellow inmates at the asylum, a charming fellow by the name of Elijah Turpin,
was known for making cops and military folks piss themselves before cutting out
their hearts and eating them. I never really got the point of the cardiac
cannibalism, but hey, to each his own. My point is there are weak willed people in
every walk of life. These two did not walk among them.
CHAPTER FIVE

Kill Counter- 31

Actually, I killed a zombie when we stopped for a bathroom break just

before dawn, but I figured you wouldn’t want to read about my exploits while
pissing. You should thank me for looking out for your best interests.

Kill Counter- 32

There we go. That’s much better. And you’re welcome.

We drove on steadily, only stopping for short breaks to stretch, relieve

ourselves, gas up, and forage random stores for food. Usually the stops involved
at least two of the above, sometimes as many as all four at once. We took turns
driving with the exception of Perkins, who could barely get out of his seat for the
breaks let alone attempt to operate a vehicle.

In fact, he seemed to be getting worse. Every so often he would go into

another fit of coughing, and during these attacks he was spitting up blood more
and more. I had seen these injuries before. Hell, I had caused them before. I
knew that without medical attention soon, this particular cowboy was going to be
riding off into the sunset.

Banks was back in the driver’s seat when we finally reached the Mississippi
River. Frankly I had begun to have some doubts that we were going to ever
actually find the thing, as we were going off of Banks’s memory (it left something
to be desired). Around hour ten, though, lo and behold, there it was in all its
glory. The large stone bridge directly in front of us was packed with cars trying to
make it to the other side ahead of what we all knew was coming and coming
soon.

Armed military guards were stationed on both sides, and they were
inspecting each car individually to presumably weed out any infected. There were
a group of men in biohazard suits that were waiting nearby. They stood next to a
number of what appeared to be medical tents. I was pretty sure I had seen this
same thing during an in-flight movie a few years ago, except it involved Dustin
Hoffman and a monkey.

It took us nearly an hour to go the half a mile or so to reach the bridge

itself. When we did, a rather burly man in combat gear ordered us to stop the
Jeep and pile out. Banks glanced over at Perkins and seemed about ready to
argue, but instead he nodded and we all stepped out to the side of the road.

“Where are you headed, soldier?” the man asked Banks as a doctor of some
sort walked over to us with a kit in his hand.

“Fort Leavenworth, sir,” Banks answered his apparently senior equivalent.

“We were part of the Columbus campaign. Now we’re heading to Leavenworth
for medical attention and to receive new orders.”

I saw the soldier’s grip visibly tighten on his rifle. “Part of the Columbus
campaign, you said? And you’re wounded?”
 “Not me, sir, no. Private Perkins here is.” Seeing the expression on the
soldier’s face, he hurriedly added, “He hasn’t been bitten, sir. A metal gate fell on
him.”

The soldier relaxed slightly as his gaze remained on Perkins. “Ah, sorry to
hear that, Private.” He looked at Heather and me. “You two aren’t military.” He
said it almost accusingly.

“Right in one,” I replied with a smile. “These two gentlemen were kind
enough to give us a lift out of Ohio and across this river.”

He nodded. “All right. Here’s how it works. Dr. Hampton here is going to
draw some blood from you. He’s going to use it determine if any of you is carrying
the Orpheus virus.”

The Orpheus virus. What a clever little name. I assumed that it referred to
the Greek myth of Orpheus, the man who had walked into Hades to retrieve his
wife Eurydice and managed to return to the world of the living (still without
Eurydice, though, so, yeah, sucks to be her). It didn’t necessarily role off the
tongue, but to be fair, there were a lot worse names that they could have gone
with. Something like, oh, say, the DeadMoFo virus wouldn’t have carried quite the
same amount of weight.

“How can you tell from a blood sample?” Heather asked curiously as she
rolled up her sleeve.

“It’s actually surprisingly easy,” the man known as Dr. Hampton assured her.
He dug through his kit and produced a small plastic-sealed syringe. He tore the
package open. “Infected blood clots extremely quickly once it leaves the body, so
all we have to do is take a blood sample and wait about a minute or so. If the
person is infected, the blood will blacken and begin to crust over.”

Ten minutes later we were all piling back in the Jeep and nursing small
puncture wounds. I knew it was irrational, but I had feared that the good doctor
might have taken things a step further and run a DNA test, which of course would
have sounded all sorts of bells and whistles for my particular sample. I had been
relieved to see that all the samples were incinerated after being checked for signs
of infection.

Banks, Pierce, and the soldier that had escorted us from the Jeep all
participated in some sort of salute orgy before we started out once again and
crossed the bridge. It seemed almost strange to see normal everyday life going on
around us, such as restaurants that were open and doing steady business and gas
stations that didn’t feature young female police detectives huddled behind display
racks with mop handles. We drove for about half an hour before we came to a
stop in a school parking lot.

“Perkins and I have to head southwest from here to reach the base,” Banks
told us. “If you still want to head directly west, this is where we part ways. You’re
welcome to come with us to Leavenworth, though, it’s about as safe of a place as
you’re going to find.”

I glanced over at Heather. “We appreciate the offer, but we’re going to have
to pass,” I replied. I really did appreciate the offer, too, but there was no way I
was going to find myself trapped on a military base and waiting to get overrun
instead of being out and about in the world waiting to get started on my Guinness
Book record. “We’ve got places to go and people to see. You know how it is.
Thanks for the ride, though.”

“Hey, don’t mention it.”

A few minutes later, I was once again burdened with the weight of my pack
as we walked down the street. We stopped for a bit while Heather purchased a
change of clothes from a clothing store before we continued onward.

“That’s basically all the money I had,” she said almost apologetically. “I kind
of live paycheck to paycheck. I couldn’t stand wearing that blood-soaked uniform
anymore, though.”

I grunted. “I know exactly what you mean,” I assured her. “Don’t worry
about it. I used to do a lot of survival training” -which I used to hide from the
authorities for long periods of time- “so we’ll get by. Besides, I have a feeling that
we’ll start running into abandoned homes and stores before long.”

“Oh?”

“I’m betting that all of these nice open establishments are still doing
business because of how close they are to where thousands of people are making
a run for it every day. I think we’re going to find that the businesses that aren’t
bringing in huge amounts of money have been shut down and the owners are
long gone.”

Heather sighed. “There isn’t anywhere that’s really safe, is there? There’s
nowhere for these people to escape to.”

I shifted the pack slightly. “I doubt it. You heard what Banks said about
how easily his group was overrun in Columbus. There are too many zombies out
there for us to stop them from taking over the country at this point. Maybe if the
government had stepped in sooner things would be different, but now…” I
shrugged.

“So you’re saying you think it’s hopeless.”

I think I surprised her as I laughed loudly. “Things are hardly hopeless,

Heather. The world might become completely infested with the undead, but that
doesn’t mean that we can’t still live in that world. It won’t be the same by any
stretch of the imagination. No more NFL playoffs, no more celebrity mug shots,
no more logging on to check Facebook at work, none of that sort of thing. We’ll
still have our lives, though, and we’ll still have joy and sorrow and pain and
pleasure. Things are always changing, and this is the biggest change I can possibly
think of, but it’s certainly not hopeless.”

Her face broke out into a grin. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a
disgustingly optimistic person?”

“It’s come up from time to time, yeah.”

It was sometime in the early afternoon that my prophesy began to come

true. Not the part about the world being totally consumed by the undead. That
part took a bit longer. I mean the part about finding large amounts of abandoned
property. We started passing homes and businesses that were completely
boarded up; I was reminded of pictures of people solidifying their homes against
coming hurricanes. By early evening, we found ourselves walking through a
virtual ghost town. Other pedestrians were a rarity, and even the amount of
motorists zooming by at high speeds began to dwindle to almost nothing.
 “’Welcome to Yorkshire’,” Heather read as we entered the city’s downtown
area, which there wasn’t much of. “I don’t think we’re going to find a lot of
people to welcome us here.”

She was quite right about that. We didn’t encounter another living (or un-
living) soul until we reached the other side downtown. What sounded like a
group of boys laughing came from behind a one hour photo shop, almost
immediately followed by an angry female voice saying, “The first one of you
fuckers that touches me loses his dick.”

“That can’t be good,” Heather muttered, her hand instinctively going to the
gun that was no longer at her side.

“Do you want to go check it out?” I suggested. “If your Cop Sense is tingling
we can see what’s going on.”

Without answering, she untied the pistol from the side of the pack I was
carrying and started towards the voices. I didn’t really have much of a choice, so I
followed behind her. She stopped at the side of the photo shop and cautiously
peered around the corner. The laughing was growing louder and more mocking
by the second. There was a brief shuffling sound, and the female voice gasped in
surprise or pain, I couldn’t tell which. With a curse, Heather stepped around the
corner and leveled the gun at presumably targets of the male persuasion.

“Get your hands off of her and step away,” she ordered as I dropped the
pack on the ground and moved to her side.

Four boys, no older than seventeen or eighteen, were surrounding a girl of

a similar age. She was dressed in jeans and a black hoodie despite the warm
evening, and the locks of hair that stuck out from under the raised hood were
clearly dyed red. One of her arms was pinned behind her by the tallest of the
boys, a charming fellow with a shaved head and multiple piercings around his rat-
like face. She looked concerned but not actually frightened. That certainly wasn’t
the normal response to being the main event of a would-be gang rape.

“I said let her go,” Heather repeated, cocking the hammer of the pistol back
to emphasize her point.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Mr. Piercings said in a voice that left no doubt in my
mind that he was currently on something. “Why don’t you wait your turn and
we’ll get to you after this dumb bitch?”

The other boys laughed. Yeah, there were definitely some drugs involved
here.

“Why don’t you let me handle this, Heather?” I suggested. I went back over
to the pack and untied the rope binding one of the crowbars to it. Whistling a
random tune (my whistling was quite flat, sadly, as I don’t possess much in the
way of musical skills), I stepped back into the gang’s line of sight and flashed them
a large smile. The grins were slowly slipping off of their faces as they stupidly
looked back and forth between me and the crowbar. Without saying a word, I
walked slowly over to Mr. Piercings and looked him over for a few moments.

“You see anything you like, homo?” he sneered at me.

“Not yet,” I admitted.

With no warning, I snatched up the crowbar in both hands and drove it into
the side of his leg as hard as I could. There was a satisfying crunch as it snapped
the bone like so many twigs. Mr. Piercing’s mouth opened in a silent scream, his
eyes bulging and the tendons in his neck going taunt, and he slowly crumpled to
the ground in a heap. Everyone else on the scene was shocked into complete
stillness. I noticed that one of his hands was grasping at the concrete in an odd
way. Probably just an involuntary spasm from the pain, I deduced. Still, it kind of
took away from the scene in my eyes, so for good measure and for the sake of the
artistic quality of the moment, I went ahead and brought the crowbar down on it
with enough force to basically turn the bones to powder.

“Now I see something I like,” I told him as he rolled around whimpering. I

turned to the other three boys. “Here’s the deal, gents. Either you leave now, or I
show you what a crowbar can do to other sensitive areas of the body.” I lowered
my eyelids dramatically to slits. “Maybe I’ll start with the eyes.”

Magicians can’t disappear as quickly as they did.

I leaned over Mr. Piercings and favored him with another smile. I brought
my mouth down close to his ear so that we could have a private conversation. To
be more precise, it was so that I could talk and he could listen.

“I’m going to tell you a little secret, my friend,” I whispered to him. “I’ve
done a lot of sick things in my time, things that would make you slit your wrists
just to get away from them. I have no problem with forcing the hooked end of my
little toy here up your nose and using your face as a flesh puppet. As it stands,
you’ll probably heal. If you ever come near this girl again I’ll make sure that you
won’t. Do we have an understanding?”
 Without waiting for an answer, I rapped him in the temple with the top of
the crowbar to knock him unconscious.

“I think we have an understanding. Thank you for your time, and have a
great day.”

“Was that really necessary?” Heather asked with a hint of disgust in her
voice. She flipped the safety back on the gun and put it in her pocket.

“Would you rather have shot him in the head?” I retorted with a shrug.
“There will be plenty of cops and army men coming through here in a couple of
days. He’ll be fine.”

“I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced, and I had to remind myself that not
everybody saw the word in my unique color-filled blends of black and white. She
turned to the girl. “Are you okay?”

I took a better look at our little hooded would-be rape victim. She was
actually slightly older than I had originally thought, right around eighteen or
nineteen. She had a slim face with pouty lips and ice-blue eyes that were fully
locked on me. A quick glance at her slender yet full figure made it obvious why a
group of teenage boys would have been interested in playing a game of Make the
Slut Moan Whether She Wants to Or Not.

I’m no rapist and frankly the thought of being one disgusts me, so don’t get
the wrong idea. I’m just saying that I could see why the idea of sex with her would
have entered their teensy weensy little brains. Her silent staring was a bit
unnerving, however.
 “Um, is there something I can help you with?” I queried.

“You just broke this guy’s leg and hand,” she answered.

Well, she certainly had a talent for stating the obvious. Yeah, well, two can
play at that game!

“Yes, yes I did. Is that a problem?”

She shook her head. “Not in the slightest. You should break a few ribs. You
know, just to make a point.”

Oh ho ho, what did we have here?

“Nobody is breaking any more bones,” Heather interjected firmly. “He

might already be crippled. Whatever point there was to make has been made.”

The girl’s eyes flicked to her. “You’re no fun.”

I liked her. “What’s your name?” I asked with genuine curiosity.

The eyes focused on me again. “Sarah Ross.”

“Well hello, Sarah Ross. I’m James Pool, and my gun-wielding sidekick is
Heather Davenport. I have to say, Sarah, that the four gentlemen you chose to
spend your time with don’t really seem like the kind of people that a proper
young lady should be associating herself with.”

A smile tugged at the edges of her lips. “I’m hardly a proper young lady.
Besides, I was just walking down the road when they dragged me back here.”

“Where are you headed?”

 “I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere. In case you haven’t heard, the
dead have decided to rise and are coming to eat us. I figured that wasn’t
something I was interested in having happen to me, so I started off in the opposite
direction.”

“What about your parents?” Heather asked.

“My family lives in Boston. Well, lived in Boston. I guess one way or
another they aren’t there anymore. I’m a student at the University of Missouri, so
here I am. I suppose I won’t have to finish that term paper after all.”

This, my friend, was a rare breed of human. While dealing with the
probable zombie consumption of her family and the very real fact that she was
heading into parts unknown with very little (if any) supplies, she was accosted by
four larger and stronger boys who made it very clear that they were going to rape
her and, if she resisted, hurt her. Then two complete strangers show up, one with
a gun pointed in her general vicinity, and she witnesses someone her age brutally
beaten and knocked unconscious by a someone that, for all she knew, was
completely psychotic (if she did guess that, Johnny, tell her what she’s won!).

Yet here she was, cracking jokes and completely calm. I don’t mean that
she was outwardly faking calmness, either. As someone that’s looked into the
eyes of many people that are terrified for their lives, I pride myself on being able
to spot false bravado. This Sarah Ross was the real deal.

“How would you like to walk with us for a bit?” I suggested. “While we walk
I can tell you all about the wonders and majesty of a little place I like to call
Oregon.”
CHAPTER SIX

Kill Counter- 32

I really do apologize for not adding to the Kill Counter during that last
chapter. It’s hard to kill the undead when there aren’t any undead, but hey, I’m
not the kind of guy that falls back on excuses instead of owning up to what he’s
done. So, from me to you, I give you my most sincere apology. I’m afraid to admit
that there may be at least a few more chapters written before this is all done that
will have the same lapse in (un)life snuffing. I promise that I’ll find some way to
make it up to you though. You’re an important person in my life, and I wouldn’t
want you to be discontent.

It’s not all bad, you now. Did you see what I did to that guy’s leg and hand?
That seemed like it would hurt, didn’t it? He was all like, “Look at me, I’m an
angst-filled teenager that doesn’t know that the world can hurt me yet.” And I
was all ninja like, “My Kung Fu is stronger.” Then he was all like, “Nu-uh!” Then I
went all, “Feel my wrath in heavy metal stick form! Wa cha! Kapow!” Then he
was all like, “Ow! Why ya be hatin’ on ma leg?” Then I was all like, “Kneel before
Zod!”

The views and event recollections in the preceding paragraph may or may
not have actually happened. It does not necessarily reflect the views and event
recollections of the author or book publicist. For more information, visit your
local library.

The sun had almost completely set when we decided that it was time to call
a halt for the day. We managed to procure adjoining rooms from a rather well
kept motel (and by that I mean we broke into a small motel we found abandoned
and boarded up just off the main road). There was a grocery store just across the
street, so we also procured access to it as well (replace the word “motel” with
“grocery store” in my previous clarification and you’re not far off from the truth).
We managed to scavenge for dinner and reloaded our supplies all in one trip. The
sign out front declared it ‘One Stop Shopping’, and I had no reason to decry it as
false advertising.

I had been lying in bed less than an hour when a knock came at my door. I’d
be lying if the interruption didn’t come as something of an annoyance; I hadn’t
slept for over two days at this point, and even the crappy motel mattress was
feeling amazing. Sure, I was probably bedding down with more than my fair share
of bed bugs and dust mites by sleeping on it, but having a few annoying itches was
a minor price for a quality rest.

“Who do I have to kill around here to get some shuteye?” I grumbled to

myself as I went to the door to answer it.

Standing on the other side, looking a whole lot more awake than I probably
did, was one Ms. Sarah Ross. Her hood was down now, revealing that her red
dyed hair was cut fairly short, but this rather trivial fact was secondary to the look
in her eyes. It was a look of nervousness and of burning curiosity. I motioned her
into the room and closed the door behind her before plopping back down on my
bed.

“I’m sorry for bothering you,” she said as she glanced at the rather ragged
chair in the room before apparently deciding that standing was preferable to
sitting. “I have to ask you something.”

“Something that couldn’t have waited until I got some sleep and a few
dozen pots of coffee into me?” I asked pointedly.

“Yeah, actually. I have to know something.”

“What’s that?”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she chewed on her bottom lip as she looked
everywhere but at me. I suppressed a smile as I watched her stew in her
nervousness.

I knew what she wanted, of course. I had known ever since she offhandedly
suggested that I break a few of that punk’s ribs ‘just to be sure’. Unless you’re
someone like myself, you may not understand this, but there’s a certain kinship
between those of us that have our particular outlook on life. More to the point,
there’s a connection between those of us that have our particular outlook on
ending life. It’s kind of a like a sixth sense, an internal radar that alerts us to the
presence of people like ourselves.

“You want to know how I could just walk up to a person and assault him like
I did,” I said finally. “You want to know what it felt like to feel the bones crushed
by the crowbar when I made contact. Most of all, though, you want to know if
I’ve ever gone further than that. If I’ve ever killed someone and if so how it felt to
end a life.”

Her eyes returned to mine, and she nodded silently.

“Then let’s go through them in order, shall we? I can walk up to someone
and assault him without a second thought because I’m not like your average
everyday run-of-the-mill person. I see the world just a little bit differently than
everyone else, and I feel that little sting of morality just a little bit less than
everyone else.

“It felt quite good, actually. There wasn’t much resistance from the bone
when I struck it. When you combine the weight of the crowbar with the power of
the swing, there isn’t a whole lot that the human body can bring to the table to
protect itself. If you’ve ever used one of those little mallets to break open a crab
or lobster shell, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what all is involved.

“The next part is where things get a bit complicated, of course. This is
where you get to make a choice, Sarah. Either I can keep going, or I can stop. If
you tell me to keep going, I’ll tell you everything and you may not like it. Most
people of good taste wouldn’t. If you tell me to stop, this all ends and we can
both go back to sleep and rest up for the busy day we’ve got ahead of us
tomorrow. It’s up to you.

“What I will say is this: the situation has changed dramatically from the time
when I may or may not have done things you might find…distasteful. For me the
focus is completely on the zombies we’ve got heading our way. I’d like to say
more than that, but I can’t because of that choice you’ve got to make.”

There was just the briefest of hesitations before she said, “I want you to tell
me everything.”

I nodded and laid back down with my hands clasped behind my head. “I
figured that’s the option you would go with. All right, here goes. As you may have
guessed, I have indeed taken a life before. You probably think I was in the military
or I was a cop or something like that and had to kill someone during the line of
duty. Or maybe you think that it was some sort of accident, something that I
regret deeply and have been forever changed by. Here’s the thing, though: I killed
someone simply because I wanted to. Several someones, truth be told.”

“How many?”

“Oh, really, who keeps track anymore? I really don’t remember. If I had to
take a guess I’d say it was around twenty-six or twenty-seven. That might not
sound like a lot, but keep in mind that the average amount of slayings performed
by a serial killer, not a bomber or a terrorist or anything like that, an actual serial
killer that gets up close and personal with each victim individually, is something
like three or four. The prosecutor was only able to prove a few of those killings to
a jury of what was laughably called my peers, but the actual amount was
somewhere in the mid to high twenties.

“I had no real MO. That drove the police crazy when they were trying to
track me down. Stabbings, shootings, decapitations, bleedings, electrocutions, I
dabbled in them all. The prosecutor called me ‘the true face of evil in America’
during his closing arguments; I think that’s rather flattering, don’t you? Since I
didn’t show any remorse and I took the whole court proceedings with such good
humor, I was ultimately sentenced to life in an asylum for the criminally insane
instead of some random prison that probably couldn’t have held me anyway.
They didn’t seem to understand the fact that, when I killed, it was just something
that I seemed to be programmed to do. There weren’t any underlying emotions,
no abuse or bad parenting on my family’s end. I just killed to kill, basically.”
 I sat back up and stared deep into her icy blue eyes. “Here’s the thing,
though. Now that I’m out and about in the world again, I don’t think that I’ll be
taking any more human lives. I could have easily tenderized that kid’s brain with a
crowbar today. I could have killed him in any of a dozen ways, and there would
have been nobody to stop me or hunt for me afterward. I didn’t, though, because
I realized something. This undead invasion, no matter what caused it or what it
will lead to, is a curse to most people and a blessing to me. I can do whatever I
want to these so-called zombies without consequence, and there are times that
I’ll probably even be praised for it. The world is becoming my own personal
playground, and if I can make some real live people safer and happier while I’m
enjoying myself, so much the better.

“So. Now you know.”

She was chewing her lip even harder now. She nodded slightly. “Now I
know.”

“Now that you know, what do you plan to do? There’s a cop, I guess former
cop now, sleeping two doors down that has no idea about any of this. You could
always run out the door and go wake her up to inform her about my colorful
past.”

I knew that she wouldn’t take me up on that particular suggestion, but I

certainly wasn’t expecting what happened next. Without a word, she took off her
hoodie to reveal that she was wearing a rather thin and tight white shirt that left it
quite obvious that her bra was lacey and black. She tossed the hoodie in the chair
(hopefully whatever was living in the furniture wouldn’t devour it), and laid down
next to me on the bed. She curled up tightly against me and slowly ran her hand
over my chest while her thigh rubbed against mine.

“Is this okay?” she asked almost shyly.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I managed to stutter out.

“Good.” She nuzzled her nose at my neck. “I don’t want you to think that
I’m some giant whore or a slut or something like that. I’m not. This is the first
time that I’ve ever gotten into bed with a guy that I just met. I want you to know
that.”

“If that’s true, why are you doing it now?”

“Because you’re just so damn real. Does that make any sense? You’re the
most real guy that I’ve ever met, and there’s this…this connection that I feel to
you. I’ve had thoughts, you know, thoughts about killing and death and blood. So
much blood. I never acted on them, of course, but I had them all the same. I’ve
always felt so trapped, like my skin was too tight for my body and my full potential
could never be reached. After watching you with that crowbar today, I got this
little thrill that went up my spine and I thought, ‘That’s what has been missing.’”

“You felt inhibited.”

“Exactly. But you’re right, you’re absolutely right. This whole thing with
zombies taking over the world is a chance for people like you and me to be free.
Teach me what it’s like to be free. Teach me how to be like you, to be as good as
you are.”

An apprentice? I had never really considered the possibility before. In

general, it was inviting disaster for someone in my line of work (or pleasure,
depending on how you saw things) to bring another person into his or her little
dark corner of the world. It made it easier to slip up and leave behind some scrap
of evidence that would allow law enforcement to move in and ruin your day.

The situation had certainly changed, though. It was amazing how

something as tiny as the end of civilization as we know it could shift the normal
way of things.

Well, hell, why not? I had seen that little spark of somethin’ somethin’ in
Sarah’s eyes when I had let my crowbar do the talking. If I was a betting man, I
would put odds on her being able to become quite the sexy little killer. From a
personal standpoint, it would be nice to have someone to carry on certain
conversations with that I couldn’t have with, say, Heather. Or 99.9999% of the
population, for that matter. Besides, there would be plenty of zombies to go
around. Two hands were better than one according to the old saying.

Well no shit two hands are better than one. Have you ever seen a guy
missing an arm try to lift a barbell?

“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll teach you what I know. Then we can brainstorm up
some new ways to have fun together.” I paused. “You don’t have to be all super
hot sexy with me to get me to show you the ropes, you know.”

“Don’t you like it?” she whispered.

“Um, I didn’t say that.”

She playfully nipped the side of my neck. “Good. This is…unrelated. It has
nothing to do with trying to convince you to teach me. This is something else
entirely.”

I turned my head to get a better look at her face. “Which is?”

“It’s something I want.” She rolled over on top of me and kissed me in a

rather serious way.

Somewhat out of breath, I gently pushed her away. “We can come back to
this later. And believe me, I definitely want to come back to it. There’s something
we need to do first, though.”

She nodded and stood up to allow me to get out of the bed. I went over to
the chair and I tossed her hoodie to her.

“What do we need to do?” she asked as she put back on the piece of
clothing.

“We need to go break into a few stores and get you some things that you’ll
need.”

“Supplies?”

“Among other things, yes.”

We crept out into the night with flashlights in hand and went back to the
grocery store that we had completely and legally thank you very much officer
acquired our dinner from. It was one of those newer styles of grocery stores that
seemed to combine being a food provider with being a mini-mall. You know, one
of the ones where you could pick up a roasted turkey and patio furniture all in the
same trip. We ignored the outdoor grills and inflatable pools, however, and went
to a section that was advertising Back to School merchandise. I searched through
the racks until I found one with backpacks and handed two to my fellow
accomplice.

“One each for you and Heather,” I explained. “I was going to wait until
morning to do this, but I think we’ll want to keep the exact contents of your
particular backpack private now that you’ve decided to learn the trade. The black
one is yours, and the red one is hers. Don’t get them confused. All right, let’s get
yours ready to go first.”

I continued talking as we scoured the aisles. “Heather is a rather strong

woman and she strikes me as a realist. She knows that there’s going to be times
in this Brave New World that savagery and brutality are going to be called for.
Knowing and doing are two very different things, though. I’m going to let her do
things at her own pace, sort of ease her into the realm that I inhabit and you’re
camped on the edges of. Until then, though, you and I will have to keep our
particular brand of thoughts to ourselves.

“If we were dealing with the typical victim, a nice living bag of flesh with
blood flowing through it and usually no tendency to try to eat your face, we’d be
focusing on things that pierce and stab. Things like knives, broken bottles, and so
forth. Anything with a sharp tip.

“That kind of thing won’t work very well when you have to destroy the
brain. Oh, sure, you might get a good shot in through the eye or ear canal, but
let’s face it, if there are a bunch of zombies trying to snack on you all at once,
that’s not a strong plan.

“That’s why we’re going to focus on weapons that can smash or cut through
a skull. Preferably the smashing route because cutting through bone can take a lot
of strength and usually more than one strike to do it. I’ve got a few other ideas
that I want to test out before I say definitively that they are going to work, so let’s
just go with what I know does.”

I led the way back to the grocery store’s meat department and walked
behind the counter. It took me a few moments of probing with my flashlight to
find what I was looking for. I produced the object of my search and handed it to
Sarah.

“That is a meat tenderizer,” I explained as she examined it. It had a long

wooded handle that ended in a rather wicked-looking metal head, one side with
small bumps and the other with larger protrusions. “They’ve kind of fallen out of
favor since there are machines that can tenderize meat now, but most butchers
keep one on hand just in case. It’s a fine bludgeoning weapon for when you have
to get up close and personal with someone. You can crack a skull like an egg
without a whole lot of effort.”

Without a word, Sarah slide the mallet into her backpack and followed me
as we continued on with our shopping (stealing). Along the way, we picked up
food supplies and distributed them between the backpacks. I made it a particular
point to get a few boxes of powdered milk; I doubted that dairy items were going
to be easy to come by in the rather near future. As we were walking to the next
Sarah-specific section, I made a slight detour back to the rack of backpacks and
picked up another one. We filled it with medical supplies and bottles of vitamins
from the pharmacy. Finally, we arrived at our destination: the small Home and
Garden display set up near the frozen food cases.
 No, I don’t have any idea why Home and Garden was next to Frozen Foods,
either.

“Pick out a shovel,” I instructed her. “Choose one that’s fairly long but you
can swing easily. A shovel isn’t as durable as the crowbars that Heather and I
have, but it will do until we can find you something a bit stronger. You don’t have
to do anything fancy to kill with one of these. Just bash your target over the head
or use the edges to cut into the skull.”

While Sarah was carefully selecting her instrument of death and destruction
much like a girl would try on dresses for prom, I took two small portable tanks of
propane off a shelf and put them into her backpack. I would make it a point to
transfer them to my own pack once we got back to the motel. You’d be surprised
how often a well-timed explosion could work to your benefit.

“I don’t see why Heather can’t know about what we’re putting in my pack,”
Sarah commented as she sent another shovel whistling through the air.
Apparently deciding that it wasn’t to her liking, she moved on to the next one.

“There’s nothing in there right now that she’d question,” I agreed. “She
would probably have an issue with this since she’s a cop, though.”

I showed her the item that I had just taken out of its packaging. It was a
brush knife, the kind used to cut down bushes and hedges. The blade was around
nine inches long with a razor-sharp hook at the end. I let the light of my flashlight
dance off of the metal for a moment before pushing it into the leather sheath that
it came with and putting it in her pack.

“A knife like that won’t do much good against the undead,” I said
thoughtfully. “It might be good for one or two kills, but it wouldn’t be long before
it would get stuck or would fail to make a kill. That would be the end of you.
When it comes to our situation, it’s good for one thing and one thing only: to kill
another human being. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but you never know. I
don’t think Heather is ready to accept that things like that might have to happen.
Not yet.”
CHAPTER SEVEN

Kill Counter- 32

We started out early the next morning. Heather was surprised at the
appearance of three new backpacks full of medical and food supplies, but I
explained it away by telling her that I had been restless during the night and had
figured that I might as well make myself useful. Despite my unplanned
preparation of my newfound apprentice, I had actually managed to get some
quality sleep when we had returned to the motel room. Sarah had curled up
against me and fallen quickly asleep, and I had found her rhythmic breathing to be
rather relaxing as I drifted off myself. I wasn’t sure how this whole relationship
with her was going to work out, of course, but so far I found myself growing rather
fond of her.

Don’t worry, reader, I haven’t forgotten about you. You and I have a
different sort of relationship, one based in both intimacy and intellectualism.
After all, I can write and you can read. We have so much in common! That’s the
sort of thing that leads to fulfilling long term relationships.

I had borrowed without the possibility of return a map from the grocery
store, and we poured over it while we walked. Heather and I had a good laugh
when we realized just how far north we were from St. Louis; Banks’ internal
guidance system appeared to have been on the fritz. We decided to keep heading
directly west and cross into southern Nebraska, and once there we would need to
find a new map to figure out where to go.
 The morning had dawned clear and bright, but as the day went on clouds
started building in the sky and it became obvious that there was rain in the
forecast. We picked up the pace a bit, Sarah and Heather carrying one backpack
each while I had the larger hiking backpack on my, well, back and the pack
containing the medical supplies tucked under one arm. As a little sprinkle of rain
began, I found myself questioning how I had become the small group’s designated
mule. Wasn’t a part of gender equality about having to do the same amount of
work?

Still, we were making fairly good time, and the light rain felt pretty good in
the sweltering summer heat. I turned my face up towards the sky and closed my
eyes, enjoying the droplets splattering against my skin and the hint of a breeze
that ran through my hair. After nearly two years of being cooped up in an asylum,
even this small amount of communing with nature felt absolutely fantastic. I like
to think of myself as a strong-willed person, a person that can not only live with
any given situation but also thrive in it, but being cut off from the natural world
had been truly unpleasant.

When I was a little boy, my father used to take me camping at least once a
month. It didn’t matter if the temperature was over ninety degrees or if there
was three feet of snow on the ground. We would hop in the station wagon with
our sleeping bags and tents and head over to one of the three state parks that
were close to where we lived. It was during these trips that I learned to
appreciate the real world. Not the world that mankind has created for itself, a
world of concrete and glass and metal. I mean the real world. The world of trees
and open spaces and wilderness. I wasn’t a fanatic about it, and I certainly wasn’t
going to run off to join Greenpeace any time soon, but I really did love the
outdoors.

Imagine, dear reader, that you are placed inside of a small room with no
windows and stale recycled air. The walls and ceiling are a uniform gray, and there
is nobody to communicate or have any kind of human contact with. You are left
inside this room for months or maybe even years. How badly would you want to
be free again? Is it any wonder why I loved the rain so much? I mean, I didn’t
love it enough to make a commitment to it or even take my relationship with the
rain to the next level (I won’t give away my weather flower until AFTER the
wedding), but you can’t blame me for enjoying it.

I found myself repeatedly glancing over at Sarah, who despite the heat was
once again wearing her black hoodie. As a concession to the temperature she had
rolled up the sleeves. I supposed that was progress.

The thought of having an apprentice was an odd one, and yet I had to admit
that it kind of appealed to me. Forget the fact that she was hot (and holy crap she
was). Forget the fact that she was into me (for some inexplicable reason). Here
was an opportunity to personally indoctrinate another person into the League of
Extraordinary Killers, of which there were very few members, and have someone
to share the actual person that is me with. What would it be like slaughtering
legions of the undead side by side with someone that took the same joy in it as I
did? I could hardly wait to find out.

This line of thought, of course, brought up the interesting question of

whether or not to measure her kills as mine on the Kill Counter. After all, if I was
going to train her in the fine art of mass murder, didn’t that sort of make her a
weapon of mine, an extension of myself? I pondered it for couple of minutes
before I decided to not count any kills that she made. I wanted every death that
added to the total to be completely undisputed. No asterisk next to my record,
thank you very much. No steroids, no illegal betting on the outcome, no
potentially questionable murders.

Every so often a car would pass, and I would wonder if the passengers had
some sort of plan that they were following or if they were just fleeing in blind
panic. This so-called zombie apocalypse would be a sociologist’s nightmare. All
the habits and tendencies that the majority of society had were basically being
thrown out the window in favor of the rather basic desire for survival. Civilization
was collapsing all around us, and the undead hordes hadn’t even reached this part
of the country yet. A few of my now-eaten colleagues that subscribed to the
anarchist way of life would be thrilled with the way things were going.

You know, if they hadn’t been eaten and whatnot.

We walked in silence as the rain and wind picked up a bit. From inside one
of her hoodie pockets Sarah produced an iPhone. She tapped on the screen a few
times before shaking her head.

“I haven’t been able to get any of my online apps to work since yesterday,”
she explained. “And forget about making any calls. The circuits are all busy. So
much for checking the local weather report.”

“That’s okay, I already know it,” Heather said mischievously.

“You do?”
 “Yep. Today it’s going to rain.”

Sarah snorted and smiled slightly. “I’m not sure why I didn’t see that one
coming.”

Despite the worsening weather, it was a rather enjoyable day. I found

myself enjoying Heather and Sarah’s company quite a bit. They were polar
opposites in some ways: Heather was a somewhat conservative person that lived
in the here and now, and Sarah showed herself to be quite liberal in her views and
very creative in her thoughts. I would join in the conversation from time to time,
but for the most part I walked in silence and listened to them banter back and
forth. It really was a pleasant way to pass the time.

It was late afternoon when I began to notice that something was odd with
the sky. At first I couldn’t put my finger on it; everything certainly appeared to be
the same as it had been all day. As we walked steadily west, however, I realized
that there was a very slight red tint in the sky up ahead. It was barely noticeable
and I almost dismissed it as either my imagination or a trick of the light. Another
car passed by as I tried to silence my slowly growing worry.

“Guys, I think something is going,” Heather spoke up. “That car just passed
us.”

“We’ve had cars passing us all day,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but they were all headed west. That one was going east.”

I looked back over my shoulder and realized that she was right. The car was
headed toward the undead threat as opposed to away from it. I called a halt and
set my packs on the ground to think for a moment. The more I stared at the sky,
the less I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me. There really did seem
to be a red glow just above the horizon. No, scratch that, it was more of a reddish
orange than a red. I took the map from Heather and looked at it intently.

“There isn’t really much ahead,” I told my companions finally. “Mostly just
small towns and open country until you reach the city of Lincoln in Nebraska.”

Heather was staring off into the distance. “Does anyone else see kind of an
orange glow in the sky?”

I nodded. “I thought it was just me.”

“No, it’s definitely there.” She paused. “When I was six, I was on vacation
with my parents in California when the hotel we were staying in was evacuated
because of a wildfire nearby. You could see the fire reflected off the clouds. It
looked a hell of a lot like that up ahead.”

A second car went zooming by and disappeared behind us.

“I don’t like this,” Sarah stated, frowning.

When a third car, a late model convertible with the top up, approached us
from the east, I quickly stepped in the road and waved my arms for the driver to
stop. He had to swerve to avoid hitting me, and I’m sure he was rather relieved
that there wasn’t any oncoming traffic to speak of. The car finally came to a stop
right before it mounted the opposite sidewalk.

“What the FUCK!” the driver yelled. He was a balding man in his early
fifties, wearing thin glasses and a sweat-stained t-shirt. His passenger was a
blonde woman that was clearly a beneficiary of modern medicine and generous
applications of large amounts of money.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t see you coming down the road,” I told him brightly. “But hey,
since you’re stopped anyway, I was wondering if you could tell me what’s going on
up there?”

“It’s a fucking deathtrap, that’s what’s going on! Some retard in the military
thought it would be a good idea to napalm the shit out of the place, and all the
crops and farmland are on fire! They can’t stop it from spreading!”

“Why would they drop napalm?” Heather asked.

The man seemed to be calming down a bit as his blood pressure began to lower
back to a recommended level. “There’re zombies up ahead, little lady. Lots of
them. They say that California is completely overrun and they’re spreading this
way. You should get your asses out of here before either the fire or the zombies
get you.” With that, he turned the car back onto the road and sped away.

“We’re trapped between the two groups of undead,” Heather observed.

“Not to mention there’s apparently a giant fire headed our way now. Just fucking
great. What do we do now?” She collapsed to the sidewalk and leaned against
the building behind her.

I sat down across from her and spread out the map on the pavement.
“What we do is figure this out calmly and rationally,” I told her. “We can’t go west
and we can’t go east. That leaves north or south. Or we can find a place nearby
to fortify and stay put for a while.”
 “We’re too close to that glow to stay here,” Sarah said. “We’ll have to find
somewhere else to go.”

I nodded in agreement. “Let’s see here… Ah, here we go. Perfect. We’re
just south of the Rebel’s Cove Conservation Area. It’s a designated hunting area
according to the map legend. The Chariton River runs through it and there are a
bunch of smaller ponds there as well. That sort of environment means that a lot
of it is going to be wetlands, which should help if the fires get that far north. That
glow seems to be more to the southwest, though, so I don’t think we’ll have a
problem with it at Rebel’s Cove.”

“That’s great for burning to death, but what about being eaten?” Heather
asked.

“I can’t imagine the area is heavily populated, so why would the undead pay
much attention to it? Besides, it’s a designated hunting area. That means there’s
got to be hunting cabins and ranger stations. We can probably find guns and
ammunition if we dig around enough. There will be deer and fish that we can use
to supplement any supplies that we find, and there will always be water available.
I think this is our best choice given the circumstances.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I guess Oregon is kind of out of the question at this
point.”

“Unless you want to single-handedly take on millions of zombies with

nothing but a crowbar and your wits, yeah, I think we have to abandon that
particular plan.” I stood and folded the map back up. “We’re going to have to
hurry if we do this. I doubt we have much time before those two hordes meet
up.”

The somewhat leisurely pace we had been keeping up was now gone; we
turned north and walked hurriedly through the streets. Sometime in the next few
days it was really going to happen. Those two swarms of zombies, one from the
East Coast and one from the West Coast, were going to converge and that was
going to be the end of the United States for the foreseeable future. The vast
majority of the country’s population was either going to be killed or, worse,
turned into the undead and join their ranks. Things such as tax increases and the
national deficit were going to become meaningless, as the only thing that would
be important would be survival. The weak would be slaughtered and the strong
wouldn’t have much better odds.

Ignoring the painful protests of my feet, I marched onward with the ladies.
I reflected on what things from the old way of life I would actually miss. The
Slushie that I had managed to obtain back in Ohio was likely to be my last. That
kind of sucked. No more corny horror movies to go see on a lazy Saturday
afternoon. I would be basically living in one, of course, but that didn’t count. I
had always enjoyed touring museums and science centers; even if some of those
managed to survive being destroyed by what was happening to the world, they
would probably be filled with the undead and thus not accessible. Sure, human
civilization could be cruel and barbaric at times, but there had been also been a
lot of good things that had come from it.

Instead of stopping for the night, we rested for an hour or so, ate a small
meal, and continued on. We could be reasonably certain that the zombie horde
from the east was still at least a few days away, if not more. We had no idea how
close the western horde was, though, and it wasn’t something that we wanted to
learn while caught out in the open. At daybreak we did the same. The glow of
the raging fires was now firmly to our south and didn’t seem to be coming any
close. By noon we couldn’t even see the faint reddening of the clouds anymore.
The sky continued to pelt us with rain, and by this time I was no longer
considering it a blessing.

That afternoon, we began to see signs of the undead. At first there was
nothing more than a small smear of blood on a mailbox or a smashed in door, but
it wasn’t long before we came across four zombies wandering across the front
yard of a house. When they spotted us they began their trademark moan and
stumbled towards us. These were much more decayed and rancid than the ones
that Heather and I had encountered in Ohio. They had clearly been dead for a
while now.

I dropped the packs I was carrying to the ground and motioned to the
others to do the same. Armed with my trusty crowbar, I moved forward quickly
and struck the lead zombie, a man with only a stub of flesh and bone for a right
arm dressed in overalls, right between the eyes. The impact caused blood and
tissue to spray out from his ears and eyes, and he stumbled backward but did not
fall. I swung the crowbar again, and this time the entire side of his head caved in
before he dropped to the ground in a heap.

I turned to the next closest zombie. It was a woman in what appeared to be

a bridesmaid’s gown. At least that was the only thing I could think of to explain
the gaudy (yet poofy) lavender dress she was wearing. It was the kind of dress
that a woman will never pick out for herself but seems to want to always inflict on
others at her wedding. I readied my crowbar for another little bop on the head.

Sarah stepped in front of me with her shovel and smoothly sliced through
the top of the undead woman’s head before I could take my swing. The zombie
kind of flopped around for a moment before coming to a rest in a puddle of her
own brain matter. I was about to protest this rather impolite kill steal when I saw
the look on her face.

It was radiant. It was the face of someone that had finally found that
something that made him or her special. How could I stay mad when she was
having a reaction like that? I thought back to my own first kill and remembered
how magical it had been. Ah, what the heck, let her have her moment.

I did, however, take the next one. The man had apparently been a priest in
life, as he was wearing a black shirt and pants and one of those white collar things
that men of the cloth wear. I smashed the crowbar’s hooked top into his temple
and managed to tear the head clear off of his body. The head got stuck, and I had
to strike it on the ground like I was splitting a log to get it to release. The last of
the undead met a rather painful end as Heather repeatedly struck it with her own
crowbar until everything above the shoulder area was a pile of pink and black
mush.

“That was incredible,” Sarah whispered to me, her eyes alight as she
struggled to fight back a wide grin.

“Later,” I muttered back warningly. Speaking up so that Heather could hear

me, I said, “I think this means the main group is getting closer. We need to leave
right now. We don’t know if all that moaning got the attention of more of them.”
 We gathered back up our belongings and picked up the pace to a near jog.
We were hearing the telltale moaning from all directions, although none of it was
directly in our path. Every so often a scream of fright or pain would rise up before
quickly falling silent. Once we heard a series of gunshots, and we instinctively
ducked down. When nothing else happened after a moment, we got back to our
feet and started off again. Finally, just when I thought that my legs were either
going to fall off or spontaneously combust from exhaustion, we reached a sign
that said, “Welcome to Rebel’s Cove Conservation Area”.

“Oh thank God,” Heather gasped as we stopped to catch our breath.

“We have to keep going,” I urged. “We need to find shelter and do what we
can to fortify it. It’s going to be dark soon, and I get the feeling we’re going to
have a busy night on our hands.”

A few hundred yards from the sign, the road went from concrete to gravel
and wound its way back into the woods. We hurried along as we kept our eyes
open for a place to stay. We passed a few cabins but continued on after quickly
inspecting them and finding that they wouldn’t hold up to any sort of assault
without reinforcement that we simply couldn’t provide. When we came to a sign
pointing down a side path marked “Ranger Station”, we looked at each other and
immediately went in the direction that it indicated. A mile and a half or so down
the path, we reached the station and I immediately nodded in approval.

The station was actually two buildings, the main office building and a
lookout station that was built on a tall platform a good forty feet off of the ground.
The only way up to the lookout station was a metal ladder that was bolted to the
side of the platform and was set it a concrete slab at the bottom. Since the
undead seemed incapable of climbing, it would be almost impossible for them to
reach us up there.

I instructed the ladies to take the packs up to the lookout station while I
went over to the door of the office building. The door was locked, of course, but I
kicked it hard below the bolt and the frame splintered. A second kick made the
lock break free of the wood casing, and I stepped inside. The rangers that worked
here had apparently left in quite a hurry as papers and file folders were thrown all
over the place. I wasn’t interested in a hunting or fishing license, though. The
only object of my attention was the large metal cabinet at the back of the room,
clasped shut by a large padlock.

A quick application of my crowbar to the padlock gained me entry, and sure

enough, my suspicions were proven true. It was the gun closet. Four well-
maintained hunting rifles with leather shoulder straps stood in a rack with boxes
of ammunition and cleaning supplies on a shelf above them. I slung two of the
rifles over my shoulder and loaded as many boxes of ammunition as I could into
an empty wastepaper basket. I hurried back outside and set down the rifles and
wastepaper basket on the concrete slab. I went back inside and repeated the
process. This time, I also tossed some of the rifle cleaning supplies into the
basket.

We managed to get everything up onto the suspended platform, and I told

Heather and Sarah to rest for a few minutes while I checked out the lookout
station. This door was not locked; a twist of the handle was all it took to gain
access. It was obvious that it would work out perfectly. There was a main room
with a couch, two chairs, and a large CB and shortwave radio. Wires ran out of
the radio and through a hole in the wall, which I assumed led to a generator. A
quick look out a nearby window confirmed that there was indeed a gas-powered
generator situated on the platform outside. Three doors led off of the main room:
one led to a small bathroom, the second to a large storage closet, and the final
door opened into a sleeping area with two cots. It would be cramped, but doable.

I was turning around to leave when I noticed a small table with two sets of
binoculars on it. I picked up one of sets and was surprised at the weight. A quick
test showed that they were of very good quality. I was confident that we had
found the perfect place to go to ground (so to speak) for a while.

We brought in the packs, and Sarah plopped down on the couch while I put
away the supplies and ammunition and Heather inspected the rifles. “Well, I have
to admit, this was a good idea, James,” she said, taking off her hood and shaking
the water out of her hair.

“You say that like you had some doubt,” I teased her. Truth be told, coming
here had been a risky proposition and we were lucky that it had worked out so
well. Better than I would have ever dared hope for, actually.

“I never had any doubts,” she corrected. “I just didn’t think we would find a
nice cozy place like this to be trapped in.”

“Well, enjoy the good life while you can, Sarah. I’m going back down to the
office and see if there’s anything else we can use before it gets too dark out.”
After a moment of consideration, I pulled the pistol out of my pack and put it in
my waistband before returning to the ladder.

There wasn’t much else of use in the office building. I couldn’t see myself
needing, say, a stapler any time soon, and while I’m sure that hanging file folders
are great for separating office paperwork, I had some serious doubts on their
effectiveness as weapons. Maybe we could use them to deliver a serious paper
cut.

The large copier brought a rather amusing image into my head of me

dropping it off of the roof like a cartoon anvil, but I reluctantly filed the idea under
the “Unrealistic” label. I glanced back at the file folders. If I was going to start
mentally filing away ideas, I might be able to use them after all. Not knowing
where my mental file cabinet was located, I continued on.

I noticed a small glint of metal on one of the desks and went over to it
curiously. To my surprise, I discovered a set of keys…complete with a car key. I
scooped up the keys and went back outside. If a key was here, it was possible that
there was a working vehicle somewhere nearby. There was always the possibility
that this was an extra set of keys, of course, but it didn’t hurt to check. I went
around to the back of the office building and found what appeared to be either a
garage or storage shed. Like had been the case with the office, there was a heavy
padlock protecting the contents. This time, though, I didn’t have to resort to
human-on-lock violence, as I simply popped it open with one of the keys. I
reached down and pulled up the metal door.

Inside was a Jeep Cherokee; it appeared to have seen its share of use, but it
had obviously been maintained. It was painted black with a green Rebel’s Cove
Conservation Area logo on the driver and passenger doors. I got in and was
pleased to see that the gas tank was full. Things were getting better and better all
the time. I would have to remember to recommend Rebel’s Cove to my friends
and family for all their zombie apocalypse outings.

I locked the garage down again and went back into the office one final time.
I set the keys back where I had found them and took another good look through
the building. After rummaging around, I dug up a couple of walkie-talkies with
rechargeable batteries and not much else. That was slightly disappointing until I
reminded myself of just how much we had managed to find up to this point. It
really wouldn’t do to become ungrateful at this stage.

Heather appeared in the doorway. “You need to get back up to the lookout
station,” she said hurriedly. “Now.”

I tossed her one of the walkie-talkies. “What’s going on?” I queried as I

joined her outside.

“That’s what’s going on.” She pointed towards the far side of the clearing.

I looked in the direction that she was indicating and saw something moving.
It was difficult to see in the failing light and it took me a few moments to figure
out exactly what I was looking at. When my eyes adjusted, I immediately
understood: we were out of preparation time. The first of the undead were here.
CHAPTER EIGHT

Kill Counter- 34

You know, I just realized that I’ve been completely hogging the
conversation. Just because this is my book, it doesn’t give me the right to be a
poor listener. What sort of friend would I be if I didn’t take an interest in what you
have to say?

So tell me, what’s your story? What twists and turns has your life taken to
bring you to the here and now? What led up to you picking up this particular
piece of writing? I’m serious, I want to know everything that there is to know
about you, dear reader. You know so much about me, and I feel like I hardly know
you. Open up to me and spill your guts. Don’t worry, I mean that figuratively, not
literally.

Huh, I never would have guessed that would be your life story. I’m not sure
what I really expected, to be honest, just not that. You know how you sometimes
form opinions about a person without knowing the facts? I’m ashamed to say
that I did that when it came to you. Can you ever forgive me, pal o’ mine? Pretty
please with sugar on top?

While you consider our possible and most likely probable reconciliation
after my inexcusable faux pas, why don’t I continue on with my story?

The first group of zombies that stumbled out of the woods towards our little
slice of heaven was a baker’s dozen strong. They followed the standard undead
procedure of heading directly towards us as they spotted Heather and I, raising
their arms in a silent plea and opening their mouths with a not-so-silent moaning.
I noticed that they seemed to be rather coordinated in their appearance, and as
they drew closer I found that they were all men and dressed in hardhats and
safety vests. Either we were being stalked by an infected group of construction
workers, or the Village People had finally begun to exact their revenge upon the
Earth.

“Let’s see how hard those hats really are,” I said as I walked directly towards
the undead. I pulled the pistol out of my waistband (that sounds kind of dirty,
doesn’t it?), planted my feet, and waited patiently.

When the first zombie was less than ten feet away, I pulled the trigger and
felt the gun kick as it sent a bullet on its merry way towards the target. The bullet
not only penetrated the front of the hardhat, but it also went out the other side of
the head and struck the zombie behind my target in the arm. That one kept
coming after regaining its balance, but the first gunshot victim was quite dead
(erm, again). I turned and jogged back over to Heather, who was now standing at
the base of the ladder leading up to the lookout post.

“You would think the designer of those hardhats would have taken
something like this into account and made them bulletproof,” I commented as we
climbed.

“I’m guessing that they aren’t really intended to be used as protection in

warzones,” she replied dryly. “I take it we’re going to get the rifles and clear these
things out?”
 “That would be my vote. We’ll have to hurry before it gets totally dark out.
We won’t have much success shooting blindly at the ground.”

Sarah had already set the rifles down near the edge of the platform and was
bringing out a few boxes of bullets when we reached the top of the ladder. I
nodded my thanks and quickly loaded one of the rifles. The park rangers had
certainly kept the weapons in excellent shape. I sighted down the barrel for a
moment to get a feel for the sight and weight. Satisfied, I pointed downward,
aimed, and pulled the trigger. One of the approaching zombies was flung off his
feet as the round impacted with its face. After a brief pause it tried to climb to its
feet once again, paying no attention to the fact that it was now without a cheek,
so I fired once more and this time it laid still.

“How does it perform?” Heather asked as she loaded one for herself.

“Extremely well,” I assured her. “There’s more kick to it than I expected, but
other than that it works great.”

Done loading, she chose a target and took aim. She fired the rifle and
struck a zombie for a kill on the first shot. “I wish it had a scope,” she admitted,
“but you’re right, it’s a smooth shot.”

The remaining nine undead reached the bottom of the ladder and milled
around it, unable to climb up. Hell, they seemed incapable of even considering
the possibility of climbing. They just kind of stared up at us with their arms raised
and continued to moan. I thought back to the copy machine that I had
entertained a Looney Tunes fantasy with, and once again I regretted that there
was no way to bring it up to the lookout station. I was quite sure that hilarity
would have ensued if there had been.

“This is great for you guys, but I don’t know how to shoot a gun,” Sarah
complained as she leaned against the station’s doorway.

“There’s no better time to learn,” Heather told her.

While the zombies congregated at the bottom of the enigmatic and

impossible to operate entity known as the ladder, Heather showed the younger
woman how to load and fire a rifle. Sarah quickly mastered reloading the
weapon, but she had a harder time get used to actually firing it. She seemed to
have a hard time accounting for the recoil properly. As she started loosening up
and stopped trying to fight it, she began to make contact with the undead. None
of the shots were kills, but she was having a great time blowing chunks out of
their bodies. When the first zombie went down with a bullet in its brain, she let
out a little cheer and hugged Heather.

“You’re a good teacher,” Sarah told her.

“I thought about becoming a high school teacher when I was little,” Heather
admitted. “My father, mother, and brother were all cops, though, so I ended up
going into the family business.”

“That seems like it was a lucky break when you consider what‘s going on
now.”

We quickly dispatched the remaining zombies. Heather proved to be a

superb marksman and killed more than Sarah and I combined (still, adding a total
of four kills to the Kill Counter in one engagement was good progress). I told the
ladies to keep a watch out and I hurried down the ladder to move the bodies. In
addition to making it easier for us to go up and down the ladder, it also quieted
one of the fears in the back of my mind: the possible health hazard of having to
walk through rotting corpses. I dragged them fifty yards or so away and climbed
back up to the platform before collapsing in exhaustion. If you’re wondering why I
was so tired, why don’t you go attempt to move the dead weight (pun intended)
of ten human bodies fifty yards and see how you feel. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Oh, who are we kidding. You and I both know you won’t. Just take my word
that it’s not as easy as you might think.

“This might be the last chance we have to go back down safely,” Heather
observed. Her demeanor was all business. “We’ve got enough food to last for a
while, but we’ve only got enough water for a couple of days. How long do we
think we’ll be stuck up here?”

“This isn’t an urban area,” I pointed out. “There isn’t much reason for the
zombies to come this way. I think we’ll just get small groups like this one was, at
least in the beginning. Once they main hordes have had a chance to clear out the
survivors in the surrounding towns we’ll probably have a much bigger problem on
our hands.”

She nodded. “We’re not going to be able to stay here forever. This lookout
station will be great for a while, but if you’re right and eventually the hordes, as
you call them, come calling, we’re going to be trapped up here to starve to death.”

“There’s a Jeep in the shed behind the office building. The gas tank is full.
When the time comes for us to move, we’ll at least have some transportation. We
shouldn’t move for at least a couple of weeks, though.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“I don’t get it, why do need to wait a couple of weeks?” Sarah asked.

Heather glanced uncomfortably at me. It was obvious what was running

through her head: she was trying to figure out how to tell a young woman a very
morbid truth without upsetting her. Of course, if she knew the kind of person that
Sarah was currently and would become with time, she wouldn’t have seen any
need to be gentle. Still, it really did show how compassionate of a person Heather
really was, and that humanity was something our little group would probably
need some day. God knows I had a hard time faking it sometimes.

“When the horde coming from the east and the horde coming from the
west meet, it’s going to get ugly,” I told her. “The people that were trying to
evacuate to the opposite coast are going to be trapped between them, and it’s
going to be a slaughter. There won’t be many survivors. The undead will be
concentrated on the places where the living are until everyone is dead or escapes.
Then they’ll probably disperse a bit.”

“Although the major cities will probably always been packed with them,”
Heather added.

“Yeah, most likely. Anyway, we don’t want to accidentally run into the
hordes when they’re combined like that. We’d be facing millions of zombies at
once. It would be suicide to try to go through them. Even worse, if we retreated
and they followed us back here, we’d be in the exact situation that we’re trying to
avoid.”
 “I hadn’t thought of that,” Sarah admitted. “How do you two always have
this stuff figured out?”

“I don’t know about James, but my dad was kind of a war history buff,”
Heather said. “He used to talk to my brother and me for hours about battle tactics
and famous strategies and stuff like that.”

“And I simply read ahead in the book and found out what would happen if
we didn’t stay put for a while,” I supplied.

Heather rolled her eyes. “That’s an awful joke, James.”

Yeah, right, joke.

Wink.

The rain began to fall again, this time skipping the whole concept of
sprinkling in favor of the more dramatic torrential downpour. We headed back
inside the lookout station and watched the lightning play across the blackening
sky and listened to the thunder rumble. For a while I scanned the clearing and
nearby lake for signs of any undead callers, but within an hour it was simply too
dark to see any significant distance and I gave it up as futile. Heather had begun
to fiddle with the radio, and to everyone’s surprise she managed to find a
frequency that someone was actually broadcasting on.

“-peat, we are under attack and suffering heavy losses,” a male voice was
saying. The static was annoying, but it was still possible to make out the words.
“Alpha and Bravo teams are both gone. As far as I can tell, there’s only myself and
Private Criken left from Delta team. We have taken shelter in a farmhouse and are
requesting immediate evacuation. Repeat, we require immediate evacuation. We
are…”

The man was cut off by the sound of automatic weapon fire. The static
became more pronounced, and I suddenly realized that it wasn’t static at all. It
was the noise of countless zombies moaning. There was a shrill scream of, “JESUS
CHRIST, GET THE FUCK OUT HERE, CRIKEN!” before the moans became too loud to
hear anything else. The blood had drained from Heather’s face, and she looked
physically ill as she quickly changed the frequency.

For a few minutes there was nothing but dead air (no pun intended, thus
completing the set). Eventually we began to hear very faint voices, so Heather
adjusted the dial with excruciating slowness until we were able to make out what
they were saying. The actual voices sounded strangely metallic, almost like they
were echoing down a pipe.

“Please,” a woman’s voice begged, “if anyone is out there, please respond.
My husband and I are stuck inside our mobile home on Bassett Road. I think it’s
Basset Road. These things came out of nowhere and we tried to drive away, but
there were more coming from every side and now we’re surrounded. They’re
breaking through the doors, we don’t have much time, please, for the love of God,
if anyone can hear my voice, respond! Please, we don’t know what to do and
we’re going to die!”

I put my hand on Heather’s shoulder. Tears were welling up in her eyes, and
she had the microphone in her hand as if to respond to the woman’s pleadings. I
shook my head and took it from her, placing it gently on the desk before turning
the frequency knob slightly to cut off the voice.
 “We can’t do anything for them,” I told her gently. “Even if we were able to
talk them out of their situation and get them here, the zombies that are attacking
them would follow.”

Heather sniffed loudly. “I know,” she said in a choked voice. “It’s just
that…”

“I know. Listen, why don’t we just turn off the radio for a while and you can
collect yourself before we start again.”

She shook her head and wiped fiercely at her watering eyes. “No. No, it’s
okay, I can keep going. We have to know what’s going on.”

The next communication only took a few seconds to find. There was the
loud roar of an engine in the background, and the constant bumping sounds made
it seem as if the radio user was driving rather fast. That wasn’t exactly a surprise
given the circumstances. I was willing to bet that there were two kinds of drivers
in the world at the moment: those that were driving fast, and those that were
dead.

“-an pick up,” a man was saying as we joined our regularly scheduled
programming already in progress. “I’m at the main entrance. Where the hell are
you? Okay, look, if you can hear this but can’t answer for some reason, I’m
headed into the park and up to the lookout station. There are a lot of these
zombie bastards out here, so be careful if you’re not already at Rebel’s Cove.”

“That person is coming here?” Sarah asked in surprise.

Heather scratched her arm. “I think we need to radio back,” she said. “If
he’s armed and we’re armed, there’s a lot of potential for misunderstanding here.
We don’t want anyone to accidentally get shot.”

“What if he doesn’t want us here?”

“He doesn’t have a say in the matter,” I told her firmly.

Heather picked up the microphone. “This is Heather Davenport,” she said

into it. “I am receiving your transmission at Rebel’s Cove Conservation Area in the
ranger lookout station.”

“Heather Davenport?” the man repeated. “Is Stan Underwood there with
you?”

“Nobody is here except for myself and my two companions.”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. “My name is Jonathan Calloway,” he

replied finally. “I’m a ranger with the Parks and Recreation Service. I’m en route
to your location with my wife and two children. I was supposed to meet up with a
guy that I work with and his family, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
Is the path clear to where you are?”

I motioned to Heather that I was going outside. She picked up the cue.
“One second, we’re checking now,” she told him.

Taking one of the loaded rifles that were leaned against one wall, I opened
the door and stepped out into the storm. It seemed to have picked up in
intensity; I was uncomfortably reminded that we were in a part of the country
that was known for having tornados. Being careful not to slip on the wet wood I
crept out to the edge of the platform and peered down. A crack of lightning
showed me all that I needed to see.

There were a hundred or so zombies milling around the clearing. They

weren’t focused on the lookout station or the office building or anything else for
that matter. It appeared as if they had simply wandered into the general area and
hadn’t found a reason to leave.

“There are a lot of them down there,” I reported when I got back inside. “I
think they’re just passing through, but he’s going to have to go through them to
get to us.”

Heather took a deep breath. “It’s not good news,” she said as she pressed
the microphone’s broadcast button. “There’s a lot of undead between you and
us.”

There was a pause. “I’m open to any suggestions,” came the reply.

“If we want to get them here alive, I can make an opening for them,” I said
confidently.

“What do you mean, if we want to?” Heather asked suspiciously.

“We don’t have all that much in the way of supplies,” I pointed out. “It’s
going to tax our resources to have a family of four here.”

“We can’t just let them die, James. We can’t.”

There was simply no logically arguing with some people. “Okay, then. Tell
him to come to the edge of the clearing and to let you know when he’s there. I’ll
distract the zombies down there and signal him when to make a break for the
ladder.”
 “How will he know what the signal is?”

I grinned. “Oh, don’t worry, he’ll know.” I turned to Sarah. “Grab your pack
and come with me."

“Why are we doing this?” Sarah asked once we were alone outside. Well,
alone except for the raging storm and a bunch of undead fiends that wanted to
hug us until we stopped moving. “We should just let the zombies kill this guy and
his family off. It’s like you said, we don’t have the supplies for four more people.”

I took her pack and began to rummage through it. “Well, you have to keep
in mind not everyone thinks as rationally as you and I do,” I reminded her. “As
much as some people would call us crazy, we’re a lot more logical than most so-
called sane people. Heather is a member of our group and she wants to save
these folks. At the end of the day, she’s a cop, remember. They have this
unhealthy desire to save lives. Let’s just humor her this time. There will be plenty
of opportunities to ignore her morality later.”

From the pack I produced the two propane canisters that I had taken at the
grocery store. They were surprisingly heavy for their small size. “Okay, here’s
what I need you to do,” I instructed her. “Go over to the far side of the platform
and make as much noise as you can. Do whatever it takes to get the attention of
every zombie you possibly can. I’m going to go down to the office. Try to keep
them off of me the best that you can.”

Sarah nodded before breaking into a wide grin. “Is it weird that this is
turning me on?” she asked impishly.

“It absolutely does make you weird. Never change.”

 She went around the lookout post and disappeared from view. As I waited
for my opening, I slung my rifle over my shoulder and looked down into the mass
of undead bodies. A few of them were passing extremely close to the ladder, but
they simply ignored it and never once looked up. I wondered if this was because
of the storm or if they simply weren’t aware that we were above them.

Barely audible through the driving rain, I heard Sarah’s voice yelling on the
other side of the platform. A few of the zombies began the almost ritualistic
moaning and headed towards the sound. There weren’t enough moving away for
me to attempt to descend the ladder, however; she was going to have to try
something else.

A flash of light flickered from around the corner. At first I thought that it
had been lightning, but as the flashing continued I realized that Sarah was shining
a flashlight at the ground and was flicking it on and off. This worked much better
than the shouting, and soon the majority of the undead were shambling towards
the impromptu light show.

The few that remained were far enough away to not present an immediate
danger. I grasped the ladder and began my descent with one hand on the rungs
and the other holding the propane tanks. The metal was slippery from the rain,
and I took my time to ensure that there wouldn’t be a meeting of the minds
between my head and the muddy ground.

I reached the bottom and immediately headed for the office building. My
actions had attracted the interest of a few zombies, and my trigger finger was
itching to show them that I preferred my privacy, but there was no way for me to
undo the rifle and fire with the propane in one hand. Hopefully they would be
patient and allow me to do my chores before I came out for playtime.

Once I was inside the office, I closed the door as much as possible. I had
been a bit too enthusiastic with my breaking and entering earlier, and the door
wouldn’t latch. After a moment I gave up and set the propane tanks down on one
of the desks. Cursing my stupidity for not bringing my own flashlight, I groped
around in the dark for what I was looking for. Finally my hand fell on the set of
keys, and I quickly snatched them up.

Reclaiming the propane, I opened the door only to find myself face to face
with a newly arriving zombie. I backed up and gently set down the tanks. Now I
was able to use both my hands, which meant that I was free to play Cowboys and
Indians with my rotting friend here. Sadly, he wasn’t up for games today as the
very first shot brought him down.

Leaving the Office Building, Take Two. Aaaaaaand…action! This time there
wasn’t the ugly mug of a recently deceased and yet somehow walking person to
block my path, so I ran around the back of the structure to the garage behind it.
Unlocking the door was nowhere near as easy as it had been earlier in the day.
The padlock was covered in mud and as the rain splattered down on the keys it
made them slippery. I got the door open and stepped inside. The Jeep had not
somehow magically flown away, so it was sitting there just the way that I had
found it.

I got inside the Jeep and tried to start the engine. Nothing happened. I
tried again. Same result. Well this certainly wasn’t good. I popped the hood and
got back out. I knew very little about how a car or truck worked, but hey, I was a
guy. When a car doesn’t start, we pop the hood and take a look even if we have
no idea what exactly we’re looking at.

Luckily, it turned out to be something simple as the battery had been

unplugged. It made sense since the Jeep was in storage and it probably should
have occurred to me sooner. I got it reattached and closed the hood before
jumping back into the driver’s seat. This time the engine turned over on the first
try, and I pulled out of the garage.

I had been worried that driving would be difficult because of the storm, but
the Jeep seemed tailor made for this sort of driving condition. The tires almost
instantly found traction, and I headed to the farthest side of the clearing. Along
the way, a brave zombie attempted to bar my path in an almost grotesque parody
of a traffic cop, but when animated corpse met three tons of Jeep Cherokee, there
wasn’t any doubt who won the fight. It actually made such a satisfying crunch
followed by a somewhat humorous popping sound that I went out of my way to
squish another one before reaching my destination. I brought the vehicle to a
stop and jumped out.

I ran with the propane tanks about twenty yards before stopping and
setting them down on the ground. I placed them right up against each other, and
then I headed back to the Jeep. Retrieving the rifle from the seat, I turned around
and waited for a flash of lightning to show me where I had put the tanks.
Apparently Zeus had my back, as I didn’t have to wait long for the illumination.

I took aim and fired the rifle. The first shot missed and I guessed that I had
probably undershot my target. The second shot also was a whiff. After the third
shot, though, there was an audible clang right before the propane tanks exploded.
 The explosion wasn’t overly spectacular since the tanks hadn’t been very
large, but in the dark it looked bigger than it really was. It also had the desired
effect, as the zombies in the immediate area started heading for it. The blinking
of Sarah’s flashlight also stopped, which I took to mean that the group she had
been distracting was coming my way as well.

I counted to a hundred to allow the undead time to get a decent distance

from the lookout station. When I reached the big one-oh-oh, I jumped back into
the Jeep and headed back. In the distance, I could see a pair of headlights making
for the same place I was and I knew that must be the park ranger and his family.

Their minivan was already at the base of the ladder when I reached it, and
they had begun their ascent. I couldn’t make out any features in the darkness, but
I assumed that the two smaller black shapes almost at the top were the children,
the slender blob just below them was the mother, and the large outline standing
protectively at the bottom was the father.

That last part was proven correct when I got out of the Jeep and hurried up
to him. He was a man of about forty wearing pair of jeans, a leather jacket, and a
wide-brimmed park ranger hat on his head. The rain running off of it made the
hat bear an uncanny resemblance to a waterspout. He shook my hand in a rather
strong grip.

“I’m Jonathan Calloway,” he told me. I’m not sure who else he thought I
might have believed him to be. “I don’t know how we can ever thank you enough
for this, Mr…?”

“James Pool,” I answered. “We can talk about payment and make
introductions later. Let’s get up to the lookout post. The fire is already almost
completely died down, and they’ll be coming back once it is.”

He nodded and started up the ladder. I started to follow when I noticed a

straggler zombie coming around the family’s van. I raised the rifle and emptied
the last of my rounds into its head before beginning to climb.

At the sound of the weapon firing, the ranger looked back down at me, but I
simply shrugged and said, “I didn’t want it to scratch your van’s paint.”
CHAPTER NINE

Kill Counter- 42

The Calloway family was a study in contrasts. Jonathan (or John, as he

preferred to be called) was a mountain of man that I was sure would have been
intimidating to most people. In fact, he looked a lot like Michael Clarke Duncan,
except not quite as tall and not quite as bald. His wife Melissa had apparently
decided to go the exact opposite route. She was short and slender with a pair of
thin glasses perched on her face. Their children, David and Malcolm, were twin
boys that seemed absolutely terrified. That was understandable under the
circumstances.

“We can’t thank you enough for what you folks did for us,” John said as they
stripped off their soaked jackets. “There’s no way we could have gotten through
those things without your help.”

“Think of it as paying our rent,” Heather told him with a smile. “We
probably wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t taken shelter here.”

He smiled back. “Fair enough.”

Melissa took the twins’ jackets and hung them up in the storage closet
before collapsing into one of the chairs. “What a day,” she muttered in a barely
audible voice. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“We’ll figure out something,” John assured his wife. He didn’t look all that
convinced, however.
 “How, John? There are zombies out there, zombies, for God’s sake. How do
we figure something like that out?”

“I don’t know, honey. We have to have faith, though. Isn’t that what you’re
always telling me?”

She watched her sons for a moment as they peered out one of the windows
into the stormy night. “You’re right,” she conceded finally. “We have to stay
strong. Things have a way of working themselves out. We just have to stay calm
and come up with a plan.”

“That’s why we’re here, dear. We’re safe up here for the moment.”

Heather was scanning through the radio channels once again. This time, as
a concession to the children in the room, she had put on the headset. She had
produced a pad of paper and a pen seemingly from thin air and was frantically
writing. I reloaded the rifle so that it was ready to go when I needed it next and
walked over to the desk to see what she was working on. On the paper was
written a number of small notes and what appeared to be a series of random
numbers.

“There are three or four people transmitting at a time on the public

shortwave stations,” she explained as she continued to write. “I figured that if I
can work out where they are and what’s going on around them, we might be able
to track some of the horde moments.”

“What have you found out so far?” I asked, more than a little impressed.

“Not a whole lot,” she admitted. “Almost everyone that I’ve come across is
panicking and not really making a lot of sense. The two undead hordes have
almost come together, though, that much is obvious. If I’m interpreting what I’m
hearing right, the highways and main roads have become total deathtraps. The
military has been forced to pull out of the area completely.” She paused and took
a deep breath. “We’re alone out here, James.”

“There’s no resistance whatsoever?”

She hesitated. “Well, not exactly. There are a few groups, mostly local law
enforcement, that are trying to set up safe areas for people to gather at. It’s not
going well, though. Most of them have already been overrun, and the ones that
haven’t been are in a lot of trouble.”

“Is there any word out of Mills Creek?” Michelle asked suddenly.

Heather turned to her and shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard of, no.
Why?”

“I’m a physicist at the nuclear power plant there. There were a lot of
people planning to barricade themselves in at the plant when I left with John and
the kids.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” Heather promised.

Michelle turned to her husband. “I think the kids should lie down and get
some sleep if they can,” she suggested.

John nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, kids, bed time. You can
sleep on the cots in the bedroom tonight.”

As the family went into the sleeping area and closed the door, I picked up a
pair of binoculars and stepped to the window. This brilliant plan was foiled by the
obvious-in-hindsight fact that there was a severe storm raging outside in the pitch
black night, which meant that visibility was zero. I tried the same trick I had used
earlier by waiting for a lightning flash to provide some much-needed illumination
(both literally and metaphorically), but the reflection on the glass thwarted this
attempt at improved vision.

“I’m going outside again to take a look around the platform,” I informed my
two original companions. “I want to see how the zombies out there are
responding to our presence here.”

“I’ll come with you,” Sarah offered, picking up two of the rifles.

“All right.”

When I got outside I found that all the zombies were gone, the rain had
stopped, and there was a parade driving through the clearing declaring me the
winner of the zombie apocalypse.

Nah, I’m just fucking with you. I’m sure you realized that about halfway
through the sentence. Incidentally, if you did not, in fact, realize that I was joking,
I would suggest that you set this book aside for a bit and pick up the works of
Theodor Geisel. His classic works will teach you so many life skills that are
applicable to understanding the world around you. You’ll marvel as he describes
the feeling of joy and love as a Grinch learns the true meaning of Christmas. You’ll
stare in wonder as a cat prances about a house wearing a hat. You’ll feel the
desolation and unbearable rejection as one man tries to expand the horizons of
another, only to be cruelly told that his green eggs and ham will not, under any
circumstances, be consumed.

Translation: if you didn’t know that I was joking, go pick up some Dr. Fucking
Seuss and come back when you have some fucking reading comprehension.

Random thought for the day: a zombie Horton would probably be an

unstoppable killing machine. The name of the book would probably have to be
rewritten to Horton Hears You Scream.

The rain had turned a bit colder, but let’s face it, I was so soaked at this
point that it didn’t really matter. I wondered briefly if there were any parkas or
ponchos in the lookout station’s storage closet, wondered a bit longer about why
my brain hadn’t decided to ask that particular question before I had become a
human sponge, and then dismissed both of these wonderings as more than a little
irrelevant now. I leaned over the side of the platform and found that not only was
there no celebration parade going on, there also seemed to be more zombies than
before. Not a whole lot more, mind you, maybe about fifteen or twenty, but it
was significant enough to be noticeable. They were all gathered around at the
bottom of the ladder with their arms stretched upwards and moaning as only the
undead can.

Sarah handed me one of the rifles.

“Do you want to start taking care of them now, or do you want to wait until
morning?” she asked as she gripped her own weapon.

“It would be smarter to wait until morning,” I answered after a moment’s

thought. “We can be more sure of the kills when we can see better. We’d also
have at least two more people helping us, so the job would go a lot faster.”

“I guess you’re right.” She pouted a bit.

I grinned wolfishly at her. “Hey, I said that would be the smart thing. I
didn’t say that’s what we’re going to do. Be a dear and run inside to grab us a
couple of flashlights and some duct tape, along with as much ammunition as you
can fit in the trash can.”

She let out a little squeal and threw herself into my arms. We kissed rather
passionately for a minute before she hurried into the lookout station to get what I
had requested. It really was amazing how the little things in life like slaughtering
large amounts of the undead could bring people together.

I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. This was the first time in a while
that I was alone (with the exception of the grasping denizens of Bottom of
Ladderland) and able to collect my thoughts. I looked at the zombie social going
on down below. I had seen quite a few of them at this point, of course, but this
time I really looked.

Some of them would have still been able to pass for humans if it wasn’t for
their telltale actions, but most were sporting at least some wounds that would
have been a dead giveaway (see what I did there?). They were killing machines
that would, over time, become more disturbing in appearance as flesh decayed or
they suffered damage from encounters with survivors. I was reasonably sure that
those encounters would become less and less frequent as time went on, however.

In a strange moment of clarity, I realized that these creatures were like

flawed recreations of me. Driven by forces that they didn’t seem to have the
capacity to understand, they sought to devour the living. While I certainly didn’t
eat my victims the way these fine folks did, the actual act of killing was the same.
There was a very real school of thought that said that they were what I would
have become if it wasn’t for my vaunted intellect and the shreds of humanity that
I still had clinging to me. It was a sobering thought.

It was strange, but this hostile takeover by the undead seemed to be

making me a better person. Well, maybe not a better person, but maybe more of
a person. I found myself actually liking my two companions, and it made me
proud that I was able to use my unique skills to assist them. That sort of human
connection had never been important to me before. Now that I wasn’t looking at
every living thing and mentally running scenarios of how I would make them non-
living things, I found that I was enjoying the company of others quite a bit more
than I used to. Was this growth as a human being, or was I regressing to
something less evolved?

I smiled as I peered down at the zombies. I still have you as a pleasurable

hobby, my friends, I thought. Indeed, while the act of killing other people was
now becoming slightly distasteful, the re-killing of the undead was still quite the
happy thought. So happy, in fact, that if I needed a happy thought to be able to
fly to Neverland, that would be the one that I would choose.

When Sarah returned with the goodies, I went about duct taping the
flashlights to the rifles. This way whatever direction we were pointing in would be
illuminated enough for us to get a good bead on the target. It wasn’t perfect, but
it was good enough for a little night hunting.

“I used to watch zombie movies when I was younger,” Sarah commented as

we fired our first shots into the crowd. “It was kind of an addiction, really. I
wasn’t into the newer stuff so much, but the classic George Romero movies were
some of my favorite films ever. Did you ever watch any of those?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I saw Night of the Living Dead when I was
a kid,” I answered. “It was pretty good.”

“Yeah, it was. Did you ever see the sequel, Dawn of the Dead?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

She stopped firing to reload. “The main characters hide in a mall to try to
ride out the zombies. They barricade the doors and kill all the zombies that are
still inside the mall. Then they just kind of enjoy themselves in all the stores.
They have access to everything they’ve ever wanted to buy, after all. After a
while, though, they get bored of it and get depressed and whatnot. Some people
think it’s a metaphor for the pointlessness of materialism and that Romero was
trying to make a point about society.”

“I’ve never heard that,” I confessed.

“Do you think there’s a lesson in all of this that’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

She thought about it for a moment as she raised her now reloaded rifle and
sighted her next target. Before answering, she pulled the trigger and brought
down a zombie with a clean shot through the forehead. “I think the lesson is if
you’re going to become the undead, be sure to wear protective headgear.”

I nodded in agreement. “That’s pretty deep.”

 “I’m a very deep woman.” She fired another round. “I thought it was a joke
when the news starting telling us that zombies were coming to kill us all. I mean,
come on, zombies? Terrorists, sure, I could see that. I could have bought another
country invading us. But zombies? Those were just fake monsters in books and B-
movies.”

“Really? I wasn’t all that surprised that, if something like this happened, it
would involve zombies.”

Sarah looked at me in surprise. “You weren’t?”

I shook my head. “Nope, I sure wasn’t.” I collected my thoughts as I

dropped another willing participant in the Rebel’s Cove Ladder Shooting Gallery
Contest (you can’t win if you don’t enter!). “Look at what’s been going on over
the last couple of decades. There’s been this huge push in bioengineering.
Everything from stem cell research to designer biological weapons has been at
least looked into. Is it really so hard to believe that, with everything that science
has been doing, a virus may have been created to reanimate dead tissue? Our
bodies are biological machines, after all. Does it really seem so impossible that
the machine could be restarted somehow?”

“I guess I never really thought about it like that.”

“That’s assuming that this really is some virus, of course. The doctors and
soldiers stationed at the Mississippi River said that it was; they called it the
Orpheus virus. They could have been wrong or misinformed, though. It’s not like
the military has shown itself to be infallible in the past.”

For a while we were silent as we simply enjoyed each other’s company (and
the act of putting bullets in the heads of swarming zombies). The entire
experience of killing with someone besides the victim present was still a bit new
to me, but I found that it wasn’t as uncomfortable or embarrassing as I would
have thought it would be. On the contrary, it was rather enjoyable. I had been a
bit busy to assess my feelings back when Heather and I had crossed the turnpike
full of undead; however, looking back on it, I was sure that I had felt the same way
then. Apparently mass murder was doable individually but was really intended to
be a team sport.

“You’ve been kind of quiet during the times Heather and I are making
plans,” I said during a reload. “What are your ideas for what you think we should
be doing?”

Sarah lowered her rifle and rubbed at her trigger finger. “What do you
mean?”

I shrugged. “You’re a smart person that isn’t afraid to speak her mind.
What do you think our next move should be?”

She pursed her lips slightly. Once again she looked rather adorable. “I don’t
really know,” she confessed. “I think you’re right about things being a lot more
dangerous outside of Rebel’s Cove. The undead that have come here are probably
stragglers from the large hordes. Ones that weren’t drawn towards higher
population areas for some reason, like they didn’t come across humans to chase
or something. I don’t think we can stay here nearly as long as the two of you were
talking about, though.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, curious.

 “With this new family here, we don’t have the supplies to last long, for one
thing. We might be able to hunt game or something, but with these zombies
roaming around killing anything that moves I don’t think we can count on that. I
also keep thinking about what Melissa said about people taking shelter in the
nuclear power plant.”

“What about it?”

She shook her head as if to clear it. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I just
keep thinking that if there’s some sort of fight there, actually inside the plant, I
mean, it could cause a lot of trouble. What if the reactor is breached, or some key
system is damaged or something? There could be radiation leaking from it, or
even a meltdown. I don’t know how close we are to it, but if we’re close
enough…” She left it hanging.

“We should ask Melissa about that when we get back inside.”

Over the next hour, the storm finally started to wind down. At this point
the ground was a slushy mess and was hindering the movements of the zombies.
A few even seemed to be unable to pull their feet out of the mud, and they simply
extended their arms and continued moaning up at us. The bottom of the ladder
disappeared into a rather large pile of bodies. This pile was high enough to form a
kind of natural wall that kept the undead back near the Jeep and van. By the time
we were done, silence had once against returned to our corner of Rebel’s Cove.
The clouds parted, and for the first time that night the moon was able to shine
down on the clearing. We turned off our flashlights and gazed out upon our
handiwork.
 “I could really use a towel and a change of clothes right about now,” I
eventually said. “I’m also kind of hungry.”

Sarah smiled as she looped her arm through mine. “Then let’s go inside
and eat,” she suggested.
CHAPTER TEN

Kill Counter- 116

I like to think of myself as a fairly reasonable guy. In the short time that you
and I have known each other, I believe that I’ve proven to be someone that likes
to gather all the information that he can and then make a decision based on these
facts. I don’t like to jump to conclusions or make snap judgment calls. Some
people would probably classify this as indecisiveness, but I call it prudent.

This isn’t to say that I can’t make immediate decisions when the situation
calls for it. I had to make such a call back in Ohio when Heather and I found
ourselves trapped between a mass of zombies and the deathtrap known as the
turnpike (I’m not really sure that it didn’t qualify as a deathtrap before the undead
walked the Earth). It’s just that, given the choice, I will always prefer to sit back
and really think through a situation. Once I’ve got all the angles figured out, I will
then make the most logical choice.

Both Heather and Sarah were cut from this same mold. Oh, sure, Heather
was prone to sudden emotion at times and Sarah was a bit impetuous, but they
both possessed strong deductive reasoning skills that they put to use. John
Calloway seemed to be a man that had this sort of mindset as well.

Melissa Calloway, however, most certainly did not have the same mindset.
Over the next few days, she proved herself to be something of a hothead, taking
offense at remarks where no slight was intended and often storming out of the
lookout station when a conversation wasn’t going her way. She didn’t dare go
down the ladder so it wasn’t like she stormed off far, but having to listen to her
ho-humming and not-so-muttered curses wasn’t exactly good for morale. Right
around the fourth time this happened I began to think that maybe, just maybe, my
decision to stop killing living people had come a bit prematurely.

Two things were obvious almost from the get-go: she didn’t like having zero
control over her current situation, and she thought that the non-family members
of our little group were idiots. That includes me, if you’re keeping track. This was
no more apparent than the morning of the fourth day together.

Heather had become our little group’s official radio user…uh…listener…um…

person, and around five that morning she picked up a transmission from Melissa’s
old place of employment, the Mills Creek Nuclear Power and Research Center (I
guess that brought up less terror from the nearby occupants than calling it what it
really was, a nuclear power plant). The plant had been surrounded by a huge
number of undead, and apparently some of them were actually able to gain
access inside the walls by breaking through a security checkpoint. The survivors
seemed to be safe for the moment, but the fact that zombies were now
wandering around a facility that had the potential to make a very big boom that
would do bad things for a very large number of miles reminded me of Sarah’s
concern.

“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Melissa dismissed when I brought up that

particular line of thought. “There’s no way they could reach the core, and even if
they did, there are safety measures in place.”

“There are safety measures in place for an assault by the living dead?” I
asked mildly.
 Her eyes narrowed. “Of course not. However, there are a number of safety
measures and protocols that have been developed over the years for use in the
event of a terrorist attack or takeover. Those safeties can certainly stop something
as brainless as a zombie.”

“We’re not talking about a single zombie here,” Heather pointed out.
“According to the last transmission I received, the remaining people at Mills Creek
think that there are almost a hundred thousand of them at the power plant.”

Melissa sniffed. “It doesn’t matter. The core will be perfectly safe, and we’ll
be perfectly safe here.”

I could already feel a headache coming on. “Okay, hypothetically speaking,

let’s say that something goes horribly wrong.” She appeared to be ready with a
comeback, but I pointed a finger at her to make her remain silent. I had picked up
the trick from my fourth grade teacher. “I said hypothetically speaking. If the
plant did suffer a meltdown, would we be far enough away to survive it?”

Her mask of certainly seemed to slip. It was just a bit, but it was noticeable.
“Well, no, hypothetically speaking, any explosion wouldn’t reach us but the
radiation would.” She seemed to collect herself. “That won’t happen, though.
I’m not sure how many ways I can assure you of that. We are going to be fine.”

Later that morning, Heather, Sarah, and I went outside with the excuse that
we were going to have a look around. The sun was brightly shining, and the day
was on its way to becoming hot and muggy. By now all the bodies from Sarah and
me’s nighttime rampage had been moved out of sight behind the trees at the edge
of the clearing, but there was still a rather large red stain on the trampled grass
and earth at the bottom of the ladder. There hadn’t been more than the
occasional one or two zombies since, which was probably part of the reason that
Melissa was feeling so confidant about our overall safety. Personally, I believed
that it was a false sense of security.

“So what do you think?” Heather asked no one in particular.

“I think she’s full of crap,” Sarah replied bluntly. “You can’t tell me that you
think that a hundred thousand zombies in a nuclear power plant is a situation that
is going to end well.”

“I completely agree. James?”

“Well, to be fair Melissa is the physicist that worked there, not us,” I pointed
out. “She’d know better than us what the odds of something going wrong are.” I
shook my head. “With that being said, the problem I see is that she wants to be
right more than she knows she’s going to be. When she says that everything is
going to be all right, it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.”

“So what do we do? Your instincts have been good so far, James, what do
you think our next move should be?” Both she and Sarah stared at me
expectantly.

I considered the matter for a moment before responding. “We can’t stay
here,” I answered finally. “If Melissa is right, we’re leaving a very safe place, but if
she’s wrong we’re absolutely positively dead. I don’t think that’s a coin flip that
we want to even make, let alone lose.”

“What about them?” Sarah queried, meaning the Calloway family.

 “They’ll stay here,” Heather said confidently. “John is a good man, but he
defaults to whatever Melissa wants if there’s a difference of opinion. They’ll keep
the kids and stay here because she’s being stubborn.”

“But if the plant does have a meltdown…”

“They’ll have the radio,” I finished for her. “It might give them enough
warning. Probably not, but at least they’ll have a chance. We can’t force them to
do something that they don’t want to.” I paused while I thought things through.
“We’ll take two of the rifles, half the ammunition, the rest of the supplies that we
brought, and one of the two binocular sets. We can load everything up in the
Jeep and head out in an hour or so.”

Heather blinked. “So soon?”

“If those zombies are already swarming around the power plant, we want
to be out of this general area as soon as possible. We can hope that the roads are
somewhat clear by now. I think we have a good chance of that since there are so
many of them at the power plant itself.”

Forty-five minutes later we were loading the last pack into the back of the
Jeep while the Calloway family saw us off. When we had told them of our
intentions, Melissa had tried to make an issue of us taking the weapons and the
Jeep itself since they were technically park property. John had stepped in and told
her that they owed us at least that for saving their lives on that stormy night.
Now, as I opened the driver’s side door, he shook my hand and nodded.

“Good luck, James,” he said sincerely. “You too, Heather and Sarah. I’m
sorry that we have to part ways so soon after meeting. You’ve got a CB radio on
the dash there. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything or if you’re heading
back this way.”

“Good luck to you too, John,” I told him. I surprised myself by actually
meaning it. “Hopefully we’ll meet again somewhere down the road.”

“God willing, James. God willing.”

The trail leading away from the clearing was empty, as was the gravel path
leading back to the main road. As we were packing up, we had decided to
continue our original trek west. Now that the two hordes had come together
there wasn’t really any direction that was safer than the other. We had briefly
discussed the possibility of heading north to Canada but had dismissed it as being
impractical. None of us knew anything about the country let alone the areas that
we would be crossing through; there was no way to know where shelter might be
found or supplies obtained. The areas that we were heading into might be more
populated with the undead than our neighbor to the north, but at least it was
somewhat familiar territory.

Okay, okay, you got me, I really didn’t want to go to Canada because, well,
it’s Canada. This isn’t some sort of verbal (written?) attack on the country. I just
couldn’t fathom the possibility of encountering a zombie Mountie riding a zombie
moose. Sure, I had no idea if zombies could turn a moose into one of them. In
fact I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be able. Could we really take that
chance, though? Just the thought of having one approach with its telltale
“Uhhhhhhhhh, eh?” moan…it was a terror beyond comprehension.

Okay, okay, you got me again, that really was a barely veiled shot at Canada.
Hey, Canada, you’ve got someone else’s queen on your money, you hosers!
Hockey is for people that can’t play football! Free health care? Who the hell do
you think you are? And what the fuck is up with that Bonhomme snowman thing
in Quebec? He scares the bejeesus out of me, and I’m a serial killer!

Who am I to judge, though? My country was screwed up enough to

produce me.

“I noticed a few gas cans in the back while we were packing up,” Heather
said as she searched the Jeep’s glove compartment for something. “They were
both filled to the top, so we should have enough gas to get a pretty good distance
before we have to find more.”

“Good,” I said with a nod. “We should make as few stops as possible before
we get to…wherever it is that we’re going.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Sarah said from the back seat. “My uncle
owns a bar in northern Montana. Wouldn’t that be just about perfect? I
remember reading that Montana has less than a million people total in the state,
so we should be able to find a place away from any populated areas. With all the
ranches and farms up there, we could probably track down any supplies that we
needed.”

We mulled it over. “That really does sound like it’s what we’re looking for,”
Heather said thoughtfully. “It’s kind of like Rebel’s Cove on a larger scale.”

“If we decide to do it, we’ll have to get some things beforehand,” I

mentioned. “Montana is a lot farther north than we are now. We’ll need to get
our hands on winter clothes and gear. That kind of stuff will be easier to find
before we get there. I doubt many people would have thought to take that sort of
thing with them while they were busy fleeing in terror.”

She finally found what she was looking for, a road map, and opened it.
“Thinking long term is a good idea. We can’t afford to put ourselves into a
situation where we escape the zombies only to die to the elements.” She pored
over the map for a bit. “There’s a small town just up ahead called Lewiston. We
might be able to find what we need there.”

“I don’t like the idea of going into a town, to be honest, but I guess we’ll
have to. We have to pick up more food supplies anyway.”

Ah, ‘to be honest’, what a wonderful phrase. It really does make the
listener believe that you’re speaking the truth when you say it. It kind of feels like
the speaker doesn’t really want to admit the reality of the situation, but is forced
to do so because you’re just so dang special.

You want the actual honest truth, not the so-called honest truth that I had
just given Heather? I most definitely did want to go into a slightly populated area
to scavenge around. I had certainly upped the ol’ Kill Counter during our stay at
Rebel’s Cove, but it felt so…cheap. The zombies at the base of the ladder hadn’t
had a chance. There was no thrill in the kill, no feeling that I had bested a worthy
adversary on a level playing field. I couldn’t wait to see some real action.

Now, don’t go thinking that I would risk my companions just for the sake of
some excitement, friend. If there weren’t other valid reasons I never would have
agreed to go into Lewiston, or any other town or city for that matter. We really
did need supplies, however, and we really did need gear that we hadn’t previously
picked up. Those needs just happened to happily coincide with my unique brand
of bloodlust.

“I think our first order of business should be to swing by the town’s police
station,” Heather continued. “We might be able to find some weapons and
ammunition there if it hasn’t all been picked over by now.”

“The rifles and boxes of ammo in the back aren’t enough for you?” Sarah
teased.

Heather laughed. “They’re fine. I’m a cop, though, I feel naked without a
standard issue sidearm on me. Besides, I’m a better shot with a pistol than I am
with a rifle.”

“Heather, I don’t think I saw you miss at all while we were at the lookout
post.”

Her smile broadened. “You should see me with a Glock 22 or a Colt .45.”

“I have some experience with Colt 45, too, but I doubt it’s the same kind of
experience as yours.”

It wasn’t long before we arrived at the outskirts of Lewiston. It was

obviously a family-based town. We passed quite a few houses that showed
evidence of children having lived there, everything from swing sets to above
ground pools. There was even one house that still had a small trampoline set up
in the front yard that was I highly tempted to go jump on. I hadn’t been on a
trampoline in years, not since I had landed awkwardly on one and fractured my
leg.
 On second thought, maybe using one now wasn’t a great idea.

Some of the homes and businesses were on fire or showed evidence of

having recently been in such a condition. We caught glimpses of a number of
undead wandering the buildings and streets, but there were fewer than I would
have expected. A large portion of them must have followed survivors that had
fled the town. When I caught sight of the police station, I pulled over and stopped
the Jeep. A few zombies began to head towards us. They were far enough away
that we would have plenty of time to prepare for them, however, so it wasn’t like
they were all that threatening.

We stepped out of the Jeep and I opened the back door. Both Heather and
Sarah picked up a rifle each. I, on the other hand, lovingly extracted my precious
crowbar from its place under the packs. If I wasn’t going to be invited to the
firearm party, I would just have to start my own bludgeoning soiree. To be honest
(for real this time!), even if we had a third rifle I probably would have gone with
the crowbar anyway. Being indoors meant the possibility of close-quarter fighting,
and if that should happen I would rather have a weapon that didn’t require me to
reload.

“I count six targets approaching us,” Heather said professionally.

Apparently the close proximity to a police station brought out the inner cop that
resided in her. “Let’s get inside before they have a chance to get closer. If we fired
our guns now, it would probably just attract more of them.”

There had obviously been a fight at this location. One of the large front
doors was broken off the hinges, no small feat when you realized just how heavy
the things were. The glass on both it and the still standing door had been
shattered. Judging by the blood mixed in with the glass shards, it was obvious
that the act had come with a price, although it was impossible to tell if the price
had been paid by humans or zombies. As we entered, I noticed that the
receptionist’s desk was missing large chunks of wood; I attributed the damage to
shotgun blasts. Smaller caliber weapons would have left multiple holes, but these
were large areas that had been blown off.

To the right of the desk was another glass door that had been
unceremoniously ripped from its frame. It led into a hallway that contained quite
a few corpses, some of which were wearing police uniforms. I began to mentally
piece together what had happened: the zombies had come knocking at the police
station’s front door, and the cops had pulled back into the hallway to create a
chokepoint so that they could take on their attackers one or two at a time rather
than all at once. The destroyed receptionist desk was more than likely the result
of missed or panicked shots. It had been a good plan, probably one that I would
have employed myself, so what had gone wrong?

We continued on down the hallway with Heather in the lead, Sarah in the
middle, and me watching our rear. We proceeded slowly and methodically,
making sure to check each of the rooms that we came to before moving on. The
first two offices appeared to have escaped the obviously violent struggle
completely, but the third one was a much more grizzly sight. The desk had been
turned over in a sort of makeshift barricade, and the tipped over filing cabinet
near the door was evidence of an attempt to fortify the room.

These observations were completely secondary to the scene going on in the

far corner. Two zombies, one a woman who appeared to have been a
businesswoman of some sort and the other wearing the distinctive uniform of a
police officer, were hunched over a body that was missing most of its head. The
gun still grasped in one hand made it likely that the head wound was self-inflicted.
The zombies were tearing chunks of flesh from the body’s stomach area with their
teeth and ravenously consuming them. As we watched, one of them ripped a hole
in what appeared to be an exposed liver.

I motioned for my companions to be quiet and I crept into the room. The
zombies had their backs turned towards me and their attention was completely
focused on their feast. With a sudden burst of movement, I swung the crowbar at
the female and pierced both the skull and brain with the hooked end. Even before
it had a chance to topple over, I had the weapon free and smashed the blunt end
into the nasal cavity of the former-cop-turned-zombie. The impact smashed its
head into the wall hard, but it seemed to ignore the blow and attempted to stand.
With the front of its face now ruined, however, the second strike from the
crowbar hit home, and that was the end of that.

I retrieved the pistol from the remains of the zombie meal and handed it to
Heather. She took it and gave it a quick inspection. Apparently satisfied with her
findings, she flicked on the safety and stuck it through her belt. We resumed our
walk down the hallway and soon came to a much larger room than the offices that
we had passed. A number of metal desks were shoved up against each other. All
of them had a computer and phone set on top of it.

“We’re in the bullpen,” Heather explained quietly. “This is where the police
take calls and file reports. I’m surprised that a town this small has one of these.
Usually they just have one or two officers on duty at any given time.” She took a
moment to orient herself. “The weapon storage area should be somewhere
between here and the locker rooms.”

“Isn’t that sort of thing usually kept locked?” I asked.

“Do you really think they took the time to lock things back up while they
were being assaulted by zombies?” she retorted.

“Good point.”

We found the cage-like section that contained the weapons and other
equipment just past the bullpen. It had obviously been quite a bit fuller at one
point, but there were still a number of things that any survivor of the zombie
apocalypse could find useful.

Heather was particularly happy that her apparent pistol of choice, the Glock
22, was available. She took a pair of them down from the rack and tossed the
magazines that were left into a black duffel bag that was sitting on the floor. She
then began to gather up a number of other items and shoved them in as well.
This was more her area of expertise than mine, so I sat back and allowed her to
take charge.

“Sarah, I’m putting a compact 9mm in here for you,” she said quietly. “It
doesn’t have as much of a punch as some pistols, but it’s easier to carry and a hell
of a lot easier to shoot straight than anything else in here. I’ll teach you how to
fire it properly when we get a chance. You seem to know your way around guns,
James, what’s your preference?”

I gave the storage area a quick once-over. “I saw the shotgun blasts out in
the entryway,” I said. “Are there any of those left?”

“Yes indeed.” She sounded almost like a kid in a candy store. She handed
me a black pump action shotgun from a bottom rack. “You can get seven rounds
in there standard, and it features a two shot extension. I once saw my
commanding officer blow his way through a wall with one of these things.” She
tossed a couple of large white boxes into the duffel bag. “Plenty of ammunition
for it, too.”

“We should take a few of these, too,” Sarah suggested, pointing at a series
of police batons. “We can carry those a lot easier than something like a crowbar.”

Hey, was that a shot at my crowbar? Them’s fightin’ words!

Unfortunately, she was actually right. I certainly wouldn’t be able to

operate a shotgun while fumbling around with a large metal crowbar. The police
batons wouldn’t be nearly as lethal in close quarters, but they were easier to
transport and weren’t as taxing on the muscles to swing. I reluctantly set my
lovely crowbar down on a shelf and said my goodbyes. Oh well, we’d always have
Ohio.

Apparently I was once again the designated pack mule because Heather
handed me the duffel bag to carry. I had assumed that we were going to head
back outside, but she led us down another hallway into the locker room area. She
went to the back of the room and opened a wooden closet door. After a moment,
she produced a police duty belt that she strapped around her waist. She slid one
of the Glocks into the gun holster and loaded up the magazine pouches.

“This is the only belt in here,” she informed us. “We can pick up a couple
more from the dead officers out in the main hallway if you two want one.”

Sarah and I glanced at each other. “We’ll pass,” I informed her.

“Suit yourself.” She pulled three plastic bags containing something black off
of the top shelf of the closet. “These are rain ponchos. Why be uncomfortable or
get sick if we don’t have to, right?”

We made our way back to the first hallway and found that our zombie
amigos from outside had now become our zombie amigos from inside. They were
approaching the first office door when we saw them. For a moment our group
stared at their group and there was silence. They began to moan and shamble
towards us, though, which ruined the somewhat comedic staring contest.

I raised the shotgun in preparation to turn the undead into some sort of
fine mist, but Heather’s hand suddenly pushed down the barrel. I turned to
protest, but stopped when I saw the expression on her face. This was her home
turf, we were in her element, and we needed to let her take the lead for now.

“If we fire in here, the noise will just attract more of them,” she explained.
“I think that’s what happened to the officers here. Every time they fired a gun,
more and more of the zombies converged on the building.”

“What’s the call, then?” I asked, reluctantly lowering my big shiny toy.

“I saw an exit back by the locker rooms. It probably leads out to the parking
lot. We can go out there and walk around the building to get back to the Jeep.”

I nodded. “Aye aye, captain. Lead the way.”

Let me tell you, going from the hallway through the bullpen was the hardest
two minutes of my life. Do you have any idea, any whatsoever, what it’s like for a
guy like me to not be able to kill who or what I want to kill? If there were only a
couple of zombies I probably could have reclaimed the crowbar I had left behind
and made a mess of their heads, but with at least half a dozen all tightly packed
together it would be suicide. So instead I found myself holding a high-powered
shotgun, fully loaded and ready to unleash its fury, but I had to simply walk away
from the fun. I felt like a little kid at Christmas that was given the biggest present
from under the tree and told that he couldn’t unwrap it until New Year’s.

Still, as I said before, it was Heather’s call, so I kept my mouth shut and my
frustration bottled up.

We retreated past the bullpen and back past the weapon storage area.
Sarah reached the exit door first and turned the doorknob. It didn’t budge. She
tried again, this time more fervently, but it the door remained closed. I looked out
into the bullpen and saw that it wasn’t just six or seven zombies that we were
dealing with; a good two dozen had come into the room and were making their
way towards us. I moved Sarah out of the way and gave the door a solid kick right
below the lock. All that it accomplished was making a dull thunk sound and
sending a painful jolt up my leg.

“I think we’re in trouble,” I announced, rather calmly I thought given the

circumstances.

“Shoot off the lock with the shotgun,” Heather instructed as she drew her
Glock and took up a shooting stance. There wasn’t much point in holding down
the noise at this juncture as the moaning was loud enough to, pardon the pun,
wake the dead.
 I put the shotgun mere inches from the lock and pull the trigger. There was
a thunderous boom as the weapon fired, and the section of the door I had been
pointing at basically dissolved. The door swung open and…

…came to a stop suddenly as it struck a zombie that was standing only a few
feet from it. The exit did indeed lead to the fenced in parking lot where the squad
cars were parked. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was
infested with quite a few undead. So many, in fact, that there was no way that we
would be able to make it through the gate or up and over the fence before we
were swarmed under.

“Get into the locker room!” Heather shouted as she emptied an entire clip
into the approaching zombies.

We dashed through the locker room door and immediately closed and
locked it behind us. There was no way that the door was going hold for long,
though, not with that many bodies trying to break through. The wood was
already starting to splinter near the hinges.

“So now what?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

Except for the undead pounding on the door and that groaning we had
come to know so well, there was silence.
CHAPTER 11

Kill Counter- 118

There are quite a few downsides to being trapped in a locker room while a
large group of zombies try to break in to devour you. In fact, I would go so far as
to say there aren’t a whole lot of upsides to that particular situation. I know, I
know, it’s a shocking revelation and one that I’m sure you’re prone to dismiss on
principle, but let me state my case before you set your beliefs in stone.

Take, for example, the inability to barricade the door. The only thing we
had to place against it was a lightweight plastic trash can that had zero chance of
having any effect whatsoever. What’s that? Oh, yeah, sure, there were plenty of
lockers. They actually would have been great at acting as a second line of
defense. Unfortunately, they were bolted to the ground. The benches were the
same way. We did manage to drag the wooden closet in front of the door to buy
ourselves a bit more time.

Emphasis on the “a bit” part.

Next up on the list of reasons why you should never trap yourself in a locker
room is the issue of the windows. There were indeed windows on one side of this
particular locker room. The sunlight coming through them illuminated the room
in a soft yellowish glow that really was quite soothing. Of course, it was streaming
through incredibly thick glass that was treated to not allow someone to see in or
out, the windows were only about a foot and a half tall and located roughly fifteen
feet off the ground, and a black metal mesh was bolted between us and the glass.
Not exactly a path to freedom.

Last but not least, your average locker room has a total of two scents. The
first is that smell of bleach and chlorine right after the room has been cleaned. It
is often overpowering for hours after the chemical products have been applied.
The second is harder to describe, but it’s kind of like if you mixed the smell of old
sweat socks and rotting fish.

The latter is what we got.

“I need the shotgun,” Heather suddenly said to me.

Wordlessly, I handed it over to her. She pumped another round into the
chamber and, to my surprise, pointed it at the ceiling above the nearest set of
lockers. It roared as she fired, blasting a fair-sized hole in the roof. I threw a hand
up protectively to shield my eyes as bits of ceiling rained down. Another pump,
another hole, this one overlapping with the first one. She was shooting us a way
out.

When the gap was maybe four feet wide, she lowered the weapon and
turned to me. “Okay, James, you’re the strongest. Sarah and I are going to boost
you up on top of the lockers then hand you up the duffel bag. You can pull us up
and we can repeat the process up there to get onto the roof.”

There was a loud crack as the door began to split away from the frame. The
ladies quickly boosted me up onto the lockers and I hauled up the bag of goodies
and the shotgun. I tossed the weapon into the duffel bag and zipped it back up.

I reached down and grasped Sarah’s hand, and with a few choice curses and
a scratch on her elbow she managed to climb up next to me. She had slung the
hunting rifle over her shoulder without tightening down the shoulder strap, and it
swung painfully into my knee.

With a sound not unlike a sheet of paper tearing, the door splintered
inward and the sheer weight of the bodies pressing against it sent the closet
sliding away. Heather took a deep breath and jumped with her arms extended
upward. We caught her and half pulled, half dragged her up with us.

They boosted me up through the hole in the roof and I violently swore as I
cut my hand on the sharp edge. The duffel bag came next; it was a trickier task
this time because the roof wasn’t flat. There was a gentle slant that made the bag
want to slide down and off. I solved the problem by tossing the shoulder strap
over a vent. I reached down for Sarah and carefully helped her up. The blood on
my palm was really flowing and it made it difficult to get a firm grip, but after two
tries we managed to get it right.

Heather let out a surprised cry and I looked down to find that the lockers
were swaying slightly. The undead had surrounded the bank of lockers and were
pressing up against it as they futilely grasped towards her. The force of the assault
was enough that it was rocking back and forth, and the bolts were slowly working
their way out of the floor.

“We’ve only got one try at this,” I called down to her. “Make it good.”

She nodded and quickly readied herself. She took a deep breath and flexed
her knees in preparation. Her eyes closed briefly and her mouth worked silently in
what could only have been a prayer. Then, without opening her eyes, she jumped
just as the bolts on the lockers came loose on one side and the entire section
tumbled over into the wall with a deafening crash.

I caught her just below the wrist with the hand that was bleeding. Almost
immediately I could feel her starting to slip. Sarah attempted to grab her other
hand, but her arms weren’t long enough to reach. I glanced over my shoulder to
see where the duffel bag was and stuck my foot through the loop. I flattened
myself on the roof and grabbed her with both hands. Down below, the zombies
were in a frenzy as they filled the room from wall to wall. Grinding my teeth
together so hard that they hurt, I pulled with every ounce of strength that I had in
me. Slowly, miraculously, she began to rise. When she was high enough, Sarah
caught her other arm and together we heaved her onto the roof. I collapsed flat
on my back with exhaustion.

“Holy shit,” Heather gasped out as she rubbed her arm. There were bruises where
my fingers had gripped her. “Holy motherfucking shit.”

Sarah carefully inched towards the edge of the roof and looked down. “I
hate to be the bearer of bad news,” she called back up, “but we’re not out of the
woods yet. The entire building is surrounded.”

I painfully rolled over and got to my feet. This simple action made me feel
like I was going to vomit, but the roof was painfully hot from the sun and I didn’t
want to get burned. Even though I couldn’t see the area immediately around the
police station from my vantage point, what I could see told the story well enough.

Zombies of all shapes and sizes were coming out of houses and businesses
and heading in our direction. I remembered how I had been surprised at just how
few of the things we had seen as we drove into town. Obviously, that had been
because they had been busy with other things, such as wandering through
buildings. Now, though, the noise of either the moaning of other zombies or the
shotgun blasts (or, more likely, a combination of both) had alerted them to the
presence of living beings, and they were approaching our position en masse.

When my breathing began to return to a regular rate and my stomach

apparently came to the decision that it was going to bogart all the bile and
stomach acid (it’s kind of a stingy bastard like that), I unhooked the duffel bag
from the vent and put the strap over my shoulder. It was fairly heavy and I knew
the spot where most of the weight rested was going to be raw the next day, but
after adjusting it a bit I was able to carry it without too much trouble.

After a brief pause I set it back down again. I thought about getting the
shotgun out of the bag, but rejected the idea when I realized that it would be
almost impossible to aim it properly with one of my arms weighed down. Instead
I opted for one of the pistols and slid a couple of extra magazines into the pockets
of my pants. I picked the bag up once again and got it back into place.

Heather had regained her composure by now and had joined Sarah at the
edge of the roof. “It’s too high for us to jump down safely,” she concluded,
pushing her sweat-soaked hair out of her face. “Even if it wasn’t, they’re three or
four bodies deep down there. We’d never make it.”

“We’re on the opposite side of the building from the Jeep,” Sarah pointed
out. “Let’s head over and see if that side is the same way.”

They seemed to have little trouble traversing the roof, but with the added
weight of the duffel bag I found myself having to concentrate on every step to
avoid plummeting off the building. Imagine my relief when the roof flattened out
over the bullpen and entryway areas. Now that there was no risk of our entire
cache of weapons falling into the hands of the enemy (who, admittedly, would
have no idea how to open the bag, let alone use the guns) I set it down with a sigh
of relief. I worked a sudden crick out of my neck with a satisfying pop and went to
join the ladies at the edge.

If anything, this side of the building was even worse. We hadn’t exactly
been able to use ninja-like stealth to get across the roof, and the noise of our
walking had worked up the zombies below. They reached up at us and moaned in
anticipation. To make matters worse, a number of them were packed together
near the Jeep. Even if we were able to get to the ground somehow, we’d never be
able to reach our only means of transportation without being swarmed under.

Quite the predicament, wouldn’t you agree? It was sort of like being
trapped on the roof of your house when a local dam breaks and floods the streets.
There were two major differences between that scenario and what was
happening to us, of course. First of all, we were perfectly dry. Second, during a
flood the water doesn’t try to eat the people. Beyond those two minor snafus, I
think it’s a fairly good analogy and I’m kind of proud of it.

You’ll notice that I’m starting to wander away from the situation a bit. I’ve
noticed that if I actually focus on a problem I tend to reach a sort of mental wall,
but if I allow my mind to wander a bit, to run around the backyard of my
consciousness yipping and wagging its tail in excitement instead, it tends to find
an answer and bring it back to me. My mind is a good boy like that. Yes, mind,
you’re a good boy. Yes you are! Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy? Who
wants its tummy rubbed?

“The only way out of this is for one of us to go down there and distract
them,” I suddenly burst out. There, see? My mind dog had returned my mental
Frisbee to me along with an answer. And a bit of drool.

“James, that’s suicide,” Heather said, shocked.

I shrugged. “Possibly,” I acknowledged. “That doesn’t change the fact that

it’s the only way. We have to give these zombies a reason to leave the general
area of the police station, and the only thing I can think of that will do the trick is
to dangle some fresh meat in front of them.”

There was a long moment of silence. A nice summer breeze was flowing
through the air, and the sky was clear with the exception of a few white puffy
clouds that drifted lazily across the heavens. If it wasn’t for the possibility of being
torn to pieces and devoured by a large crowd of reanimated corpses, it would
have been a rather pleasant afternoon.

“Let’s say that we went along with this insane notion of yours,” Heather said
slowly. “How would one of us get down there without being killed instantly?”

“We have a giant bag of guns and ammunition,” Sarah pointed out. “Why
don’t we just kill them all off and be on our way? It’s not like we’re on some sort
of schedule we have to keep.”

“There’s not that much ammo in the bag. Most of it had been used by the
cops that died in the station by the time we got to it. The bag has mostly things
like flares and plastique.”

“Plastique?”

“Plastic explosives. The S.W.A.T. teams sometimes use it to gain entry into
areas where a battering ram won’t do the job. Don’t ask me why a town this small
has so much S.W.A.T. level gear, but it does.”

Oh ho ho ho, plastic explosives! Just the sound the words make when you
say them out loud makes me smile. Oh, sure, to some people it may seem like a
brute force weapon, something that requires little skill or finesse. To a point this
is true. Even an amateur could do a lot of damage with plastic explosives after
simply reading the instruction manual. Like many things, though, it may be easy
to use, but it’s highly difficult to master. If you want to make the explosions work
for you, to make them dance to your tune and do just the exact right amount of
damage for the job, you have to spend time perfecting your technique.

I love me some plastic explosives.

That had absolutely nothing to do with the current issue, of course.

“What we do have enough ammunition for is to clear out the fenced-in

parking lot,” Heather continued thoughtfully. “We’d have to be fast, though.
James really did a number on the door leading into the station. The zombies
inside could simply come out into the parking lot if they realized something was
going on.”

“You told me to shoot the lock off that door,” I reminded her.

She ignored that. “You’ll have to climb the fence at the back to get out of
the parking lot. If you go any other way, there will be zombies waiting for you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Me?”

“Hey, it was your idea. Besides, you’re the only one that makes sense. I’m
the best shot, so it makes sense for me to cover you from the roof, and Sarah’s
never shot a pistol before so she wouldn’t be able to defend herself very well. You
don’t expect to be able to climb that fence with one of the rifles or the shotgun,
do you?”

Well, I had wanted a challenge when I agreed to come to Lewiston in the

first place. Two minutes later, I found myself standing at the edge of the roof
overlooking the private parking lot and looking down at quite a few zombies that
were looking right back up at me. The gate was too close to the building for that
to be a viable escape route; unfortunately Heather had been right and the only
realistic chance of survival was to go up and over the fence at the back of the lot.

Heather and Sarah gathered at one side of the parking lot, Heather wielding
the shotgun and Sarah sticking with her rifle, and I stepped back out of view on
the other. They began to fire down into the crowd. I counted to ten before
Heather waved at me, the signal that my side of the lot was as empty as it was
going to get. Gritting my teeth I rushed to the edge of the roof and, seeing that
the nearest zombie was ten feet away and not paying any attention to me,
lowered myself gently down and made a break for the back fence.

“We’re out!” Heather called as the distinctive sounds of gunfire ended.

“They’re heading your way, James!”

I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw that she was right. The door
leading into the police station had been flung open, and the mass of zombies that
had previously infested the locker room were now dragging themselves outside
with all their attention focused squarely on me. I turned back to the task at hand
and hit the fence at a run.

It was hard to get a grip with my injured hand, and the blood started to flow
out of it again as the metal bit into the cut. I also found that my feet were too big
to gain purchase in the gaps, which meant that I had to haul myself up with just
my arms. They were already tired from pulling Heather out of the hole in the roof
and they didn’t seem to want to respond now. I forced myself to forget the pain
and just get up the fucking fence before my bottom half became indigestion for
the undead.

The fence itself was about fifteen feet tall, but it might as well have been
Mt. Everest at the rate I was climbing. Finally, though, I reached the top just as
the first of the zombies reached the base. I swung my leg over the top, being
careful not to literally tear myself a new one on the barbed wire that ran across,
and started to lower myself down when my arms finally gave up on me.

I fell the rest of the way and hit hard at the base of the fence. The wind was
knocked out of me, and I could feel hands grasping at my back and side through
the links. I quickly rolled away and forced myself to my feet. All it took was one
step to inform me of something rather unfortunate and potentially dangerous: my
leg was hurt. Not so much that I couldn’t walk on it, but there was a definite limp
and I doubted that running any real distance was in the cards at this point.

I pulled the Glock out of my waistband. It was a good thing that the Glock
22 had a couple of internal safeties, or that fall might have ensured that I would
never be able to procreate. I proceeded according to the plan, gimping my way
around the building and making a lot of noise to draw the undead away from the
police department’s walls. At first they seemed hesitant to follow, but finally their
base instincts kicked in and they lurched towards me. More and more of them
were coming out of the surrounding buildings, and at one point there was a giant
crash that said louder than words that the parking lot fence had been brought
down. I reached the front of the building, maintaining at least twenty feet from
the zombies at all times, and slowly walked down the street like some sort of
parade conductor.

This was the really dangerous part, I knew. Between the zombies following
me from the police station and those that were slowly making their way out of the
houses and places of businesses, I had to make sure that I wasn’t caught between
them. Blocking my path was an undead specimen that had been a nurse in life (or
perhaps was just into some really kinky stuff), and I raised the gun and fired. The
first shot was low but had the interesting result of stopping the moaning as it
shredded its throat. I was rather impressed that it wasn’t knocked off its feet by a
shot like that. I wasn’t so impressed that I didn’t finish it off with two more shots,
though. For that level of impressed, it would have had to do a backflip and break
into a selection from The Music Man.

I risked a look back at the roof. Heather and Sarah were lowering the duffel
bag to the ground in preparation of soon joining it. This momentary distraction
allowed a zombie fireman to almost grab me as he came out from behind a car,
but at the last second I saw its reflection in a car window and jerked away. I had
nothing but the utmost respect for the men and woman that risked their lives as
firefighters, but again, not enough to stop me from putting it down with a hole
through the face.

Things were starting to get out of hand. Slowly but surely, I was being
forced into the center of a ring of not-so-living fellows looking to give me a rather
lethal embrace. The sheer number of bodies made it impossible to break through
one of the masses. There was still a gap on the other side of the street, so I began
to head towards it as quickly as I could. My leg throbbed in protest and nearly
collapsed when I stepped up on the curb. I told my body to stop being suck a
fucking pussy and continued on at a near jog.

There was no room to make it back to the police station at this point. I
couldn’t even see far enough to make out the Jeep; I could only hope that the
ladies had managed to get off the roof without incident. Deciding that there
wasn’t anything I could do about it either way, I brought my full focus back to the
problem at hand.

I hurried up a walkway and painfully mounted the porch steps of a two-

story house. A zombie was stuck on the remains of the screen door, so I helped it
out with three squeezes of my gun’s trigger. I stepped over the body and into the
house’s entryway. Almost immediately there was movement to my right. I turned
and emptied the weapon into the undead remains of a businessman. Its female
equivalent shambled out of the kitchen. I ejected the empty clip and for no
apparent reason I flung it at my assailant. It didn’t do anything as it smacked the
zombie in the face, of course, but I was running on adrenaline and it just seemed
like the thing to do at the time.

I pulled another magazine out of my pocket, but the zombie was too close
for me to have time to load the gun. Ducking under its grasp, I stumbled into the
kitchen behind it and jammed the clip home. I turned back to my playmate and
made its brain turn from barely functioning to an unusable pile of mush.

At the back of the kitchen was a door leading to the backyard. I flung it
open and stepped outside. The yard was surrounded by a short brown picket
fence, and there was a metal swing set that spoke louder than words that a child
had once lived here. My leg felt like it was on fire, and it protested the abuse as I
walked down the steps and rushed over to the gate. The only undead I could see
were a few yards over. I had finally found some breathing room.

From behind me came the sound of glass shattering and wood breaking as
the zombie horde began to flood into the house.

So much for that breathing room.

I opened the gate and politely closed it again (the complete and total
collapse of society isn’t an excuse for bad manners) before surveying my options.
I was standing in a gravel driveway that led out into the street where zombies
were still swarming like locusts of Biblical proportions, and the end closest to me
terminated at a detached garage. There was always the option of hiding in the
garage. Of course, that particular option would inevitably lead to the same result
as if I ran back into the kitchen, doused myself with barbecue sauce from the
fridge, and proceeded to simply lie down on the tile floor. Modern garages were
designed to house the family’s grocery getter, not put up resistance against the
undead. It was clearly a design flaw, and I would have to put a suggestion note in
the appropriate box when this was all over.
 I felt a tug at the cuff of my pants and looked down. There was a zombie,
completely missing anything below the belt line except for a few straggling
internal organs, that had crawled unnoticed up to me and was pulling itself
towards my leg. I knelt down and shot it point blank in the eye. Kicking the still-
clutching hand off of me, I shook my head in disgust. Some people were just so
rude. Couldn’t he see that I was trying to concentrate?

The first of the zombies appeared at the kitchen door, and just like that my
personal thinking time was over. I hurried around the side of the garage and
found that there was only another small section of picket fence separating it from
the neighbor’s yard behind it. My leg had apparently decided that it wasn’t worth
the effort of informing me that it was hurt anymore and had simply gone numb
with an odd throbbing sensation. This was great for me not feeling like I had to
scream with every step, but it was bad for boosting myself over the fence. I took
extra care not to accidentally neuter myself on one of the boards, but eventually I
was over and headed through the grass towards the next street.

There were certainly quite a few undead populating this road, but it wasn’t
nearly as condensed as the street I had just come from. I stumped along as
quickly as I could manage, making sure to leave any zombies in my path with a
wonderful parting gift of a lifetime supply of 100% all natural death, and came to
an intersection. One way led back towards the police station, the other led into
parts unknown. From somewhere smoke was billowing out in thick black clouds,
making it difficult to see, but from what I could make out both ways seemed to be
fairly clear. I chose the path back towards the Jeep and its promise of four-wheel
drive freedom.
 As I limped in the general direction of my destination I found the source of
the smoke: what appeared to have once been a ranch-style house was on fire. I
was no expert on the subject, but it seemed to me that the fire hadn’t yet reached
the stage where it couldn’t be controlled. If firefighters arrived on the scene in
the somewhat immediate future, the home could probably be saved with only
moderate damage. There weren’t any professionals coming, of course, so this
currently tame fire would more than likely become a blaze that would consume
most of the neighborhood before it burned itself out. Remembering the
firefighter zombie that I had shot minutes earlier, I idly wondered if it would have
attempted to put out the flames if it had been aware of what was happening just
a block away.

A zombie attempting to save property instead of destroying it to get at a

meal. Now that kind of thinking could get a guy committed.

Or committed again, depending on who’s doing the thinking.

But hey, being locked up inside of a padded cell couldn’t really happen in
this Brave New World. There weren’t any organized police to handle the manhunt
for an individual of the crazy persuasion, there weren’t any orderlies to keep, well,
order, and there weren’t any psychiatrists to be called in to evaluate and “cure”
the patient. It wasn’t just the world’s social system that had failed. The entire
justice system had jumped off the same bridge, too. It was kind of funny that
even though a person now had more personal freedom than ever before,
exercising this newfound freedom would probably get that individual eaten alive
by the living dead.

Just before I reached the street that I was heading for, I came across a giant
blood smear that ran from the front door of one house all the way to the front
yard of another on the other side of the road. The blood couldn’t have been from
a single person. There was simply too much of it; the human body didn’t contain
enough of the red stuff to make something this long and wide. Trust me, I am
something of an expert on the subject, after all. Using my amazing detective skills
garnered from my days of chasing Moriarty through the streets of turn of the
century London, I determined that a group of people, bleeding heavily from
multiple wounds, had made their way into the house and closed the door. By
jove, Holmes, I think you’ve cracked the code!

What made this so interesting was that the blood was fresh. It was still wet
and had barely begun to soak into the pavement. Depending on how many
people were in the group to begin with and how series the wounds were, there
was a good chance that somebody might still be alive in that house.

I shrugged and kept walking. It wasn’t my problem, after all. I needed to

concentrate on my own survival so that I could hopefully meet back up with
Heather and Sarah and get the hell out of here. My body needed time to rest, and
I could already feel the adrenaline wearing off. I knew from experience that, once
it was completely gone, I wouldn’t have enough energy to do anyone any good. If
there really were any survivors inside, they would need to fend for themselves.

Okay, if I figured this all out logically, why did my body turn towards the
house in question? Why exactly had my feet and legs rebelled to start me moving
towards it? For God’s sake, why was I pulling my last magazine out of my pocket
in preparation for reloading if my gun ran out of bullets while I was inside?

Who was in charge here, my brain or my body?

 Apparently my body was. I heard my brain sigh in resignation as it began to
ready itself for another possible combat situation.

The irony that the zombie apocalypse was making me more human while it made
pretty much everyone else less of one was not lost on me.
CHAPTER TWELVE

Kill Counter- 129

The house was a two story home done in a style that was reminiscent of the
early 1980s. The porch roof was supported by four white pillars, which were
matched in color by the house’s siding. A screen door was fixed in place in front
of the actual front door. There was a wooden porch swing set off to the side of
the doorway; it wasn’t until I had climbed the stairs that I noticed that there was a
body lying on the seat. Its left arm was torn in half and the right leg was missing
completely. A large piece of metal piping was lodged firmly in its head, almost as
if someone had planted a flag claiming it as property of his or her sovereign
nation.

Human or zombie, that had to have hurt.

I cautiously opened the screen door. It made a rather hideous screeching

noise and popped right off of the hinges in my hand. Wasn’t there a single door in
this town that wasn’t constructed with shoddy craftsmanship? I gently set it down
on top of Pipehead and considered the front door for a moment. I had no idea
what was on the other side. There could be an entire house full of zombies, or
aliens, or zombie aliens for all I knew.

More importantly and more likely than zombie aliens, there could be
survivors in there that were guarding the door against undead intrusion. If I just
opened it and burst into the room, I ran the risk of being mistaken for a zombie
and shot to death before having a chance to get a word out. There were any
number of awesome action movie-esque options that came to mind, but I went
with the simplest and most effective that I could come up with.

I knocked on the door.

“Hello?” I called to any unseen listeners.

For a moment there was nothing. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the door
began to swing open. I gripped my gun tightly but kept it lowered so as not to
provoke any potential humans inside.

“Who are you?” a deep male voice said from the other side of the door.

I briefly considered telling him that I was a Jehovah’s Witness, but then I
remembered that I was trying not to get shot. “My name is James Pool,” I said
instead. “I was headed back to my car and saw the blood in the street. I wanted
to make sure that everyone was okay.”

There was a slight pause. The door opened all the way and I found myself
face to chest with an absolute monster of a man. He was nearly seven feet tall
and covered in muscles that were bigger than my head. He was dressed in jeans
and a T-shirt that, like his dark skin, were covered in sweat and blood. Most
striking, though, was the strip of cloth tied across his bald head and over his left
eye.

“Come on inside and have a seat,” he told me in a surprisingly refined voice.

I would usually have associated that almost genteel tone with eighty-year-old men
sitting in front of a fireplace drinking brandy from a snifter. “Whoever lived here
had rather poor taste in décor, but it’s comfortable.”
 “Thanks, I appreciate that.” Extreme politeness seemed to be called for.

He closed the door behind me and locked it. When he saw me watching, he
smiled. “Locks won’t really keep the undead out for long, but every little bit
counts, right?”

I smiled back and nodded. We headed down a short hallway into the
house’s living room. Lying on the couch was a woman covered in layers of
blankets and coats. Her face was twisted in agony and her breathing was labored.
Kneeling next to her was a clean cut man wearing glasses, his face full of concern.
Judging from the wedding ring on his finger, I assumed that he was her husband.
Beyond them, sitting in a chair with a doll in her lap and her hands clasped in front
of her, was a little girl no older than five. She was watching the adults gravely.

“This is the Watson family,” my guide informed me. “Her name is Janice,
and his is Mark. And that little angel over in the recliner is their daughter
Margaret.” He smiled slightly. “She prefers to be called Maggie, however. Isn’t
that right, Miss Maggie?”

The girl smiled and nodded, her blonde ponytail bouncing in time with her
bobbing head.

“My name is Matthew Ducard,” he continued, shaking my hand. Once again

he surprised me as his grip was surprisingly gentle. “The Watsons and I are
refugees from Kansas City. We barely escaped with our lives, but when we arrived
here to search for supplies we found the town completely overrun with the
undead.”

He put an arm around me and led me into the dining room. “Mrs. Watson
was gravely injured in an attack we suffered about half an hour ago. We managed
to make it inside this house, but the zombies were everywhere. We certainly
would have been killed if they didn’t leave on their own for some unknown
reason.”

A reason like a stupid injured man that had jumped off a roof and was
making a spectacle to draw attention to himself, perhaps?

“There was more blood out there than could have come from one person,” I
pointed out.

Matthew nodded. “You saw the gentleman out on the porch swing?” I
nodded. “That is the remains of Carl Worthington. He took the brunt of the
attack from the group of undead. I managed to drag him to the house, but his
wounds were too serious and he died. I…I had to do what I did to his head to
keep him from…coming back.”

“How bad is Mrs. Watson?”

He scratched his chin. “Bad enough. She was bitten multiple times and her
side was torn open. She lost a lot of blood.”

“If she was bitten…” I left it hanging.

He looked back into the living room for a long moment. “She’s going to
die,” he finished finally. “She’s going to die and reanimate. She’ll be one of them.
I know. Mark knows, too, but he’s trying to stay strong for his daughter.” He
sighed heavily. “These are good people. They don’t deserve this.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I remained silent.

 “You said that you have a car, didn’t you?” Matthew asked after a moment.
“Is there room enough in it for all of us? Our car ran out of gas before we made it
into Lewiston.”

My first instinct was to say no, that there wouldn’t be enough room and
that neither he nor the Watsons were welcome to come along for the ride.
Instead I found myself nodding and saying, “It’s a Jeep Cherokee. I’ve got two
companions that I hope were able to make their way back to it, so it will be tight,
but if someone rides in the back we can all squeeze in.”

“Thank you. I know you’ve just met us and you have to be a bit wary about
helping strangers with the way the world is.”

I hesitated. “We have to hurry. If we don’t get back to the Jeep soon, my
friends might decide that I didn’t make it and leave for safer pastures. We have
to-“

“Leave my wife behind,” a voice finished from behind me. I turned and
found that Mark had left his wife’s side and had come into the dining room to join
us. “It’s okay,” he assured me. “I…I know what’s going to happen to her. We…I
have to do what’s best for my daughter. Let us say goodbye and we can leave.”

Matthew and I waited outside while the Watsons said their final farewells.
Maggie came out first, her blue eyes filled with tears and her Raggedy Anne doll
clutched against her chest. Without a word, the huge man knelt down and
scooped her up into his arms. She sniffed loudly.

“My mommy has to go to sleep now,” she said in a tiny voice. “Then she’s
going to be with God.”
 “That’s right, little angel,” Matthew told her, his own eyes quivering. “Your
momma is going to be with God in Heaven and she’ll be watching over you.”

From inside the house came the crack of a gun firing. A minute late, the
door opened and Mark joined us on the porch. In his hand was a revolver, which
he slid into his belt. His eyes met mine, and I knew that I was looking at a man
that had just made the hardest decision of his life. His face spoke of unimaginable
emotional pain, but at the same time it reflected the knowledge that he had made
the right choice. I nodded gravely at him in understanding, and he nodded
without a word. He took his daughter from Matthew and held her tight.

We headed towards the police station quickly but cautiously. Most of the
undead seemed to be preoccupied somewhere else; I hoped that they were still
following my now-cold trail and not going after Heather and/or Sarah. When we
reached the street corner, I was immediately relieved to see that the Jeep was still
right where I had parked it. I belatedly realized that this could be a bad thing: if
they hadn’t moved the vehicle, it might mean that they didn’t actually make it
into the vehicle. My fears were allayed when the Jeep’s engine suddenly started
and the two front doors opened.

Heather stepped out of the driver’s door and immediately went around the
car to open the other doors while Sarah took up a defensive position with a rifle
clutched in her hands. We reached the Jeep and I flashed Heather a smile.

“Did you miss me?” I asked roguishly. I was suddenly in a great mood for
some reason.

“Not as much as those zombies that were chasing you did,” she replied with
an answering grin. “Who are they?” She indicated the group of refugees that I
had brought along.

“We can do the introductions later. Let’s get everyone inside and put some
miles between us and this town. There are a lot of zombies out there.”

While Heather helped the others into the Jeep, I limped around to the other
side and smiled at Sarah. “How about you, did you miss me?” I asked.

She embraced me fiercely. “I was desolate,” she teased. “Don’t you go

getting yourself killed before you’re done teaching me what I need to know.”

“I don’t plan to. Were there any problems?”

Sarah shook her head. “Nothing that we couldn’t deal with. A few of them
didn’t leave when you led the others off, but we got rid of them easily enough.
We thought you were a goner when you disappeared behind a wall of zombies.”

I shook my head. “You can’t get rid of me that easily. I’ll admit that I
started having doubts when my leg gave out on me, though. I think it’s just a mild
sprain since I was still able to move around on it okay. Someone else is going to
have to drive.”

“You’re such a wuss.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kill Counter- 129

If there’s one thing that I take pride in (besides my absolutely astounding

William Shatner impression), it is being the kind of guy that doesn’t just sit around
watching life pass him by. I absolutely detest not having anything to do; whenever
the creeping death of boredom begins to make itself know, I go out and find
something to keep me occupied. Some people are perfectly content with relaxing
and letting furniture discolor under their never-moving asses, which is fine. To
each his own and all that. Because of my personal philosophy, however, I’m going
to do you a favor.

I’m going to skip ahead.

When I started writing this, I made a conscious decision to gloss over the
boring parts and bring you, my literate stalker, only the good parts of my story.
Sure, I could have gone into a long description of my stay at the asylum for a bit
more backstory, but would you really like to read about long days that were
exactly the same as the one before, mostly filled sitting around and waiting for the
next meal, medication, or chit chat with a therapist? Of course not, that would be
atrocious. If you want nothing but excruciating boredom out of your books, go
read Wuthering Heights.

The truth about the zombie apocalypse is that, while the exciting parts tend
to get really exciting, there’s a lot of time-consuming planning, hiding, and, yes,
waiting involved. You’re not under attack every second of every day. Someone
like myself might prefer that, but hey, the theory of survival of the fittest never
claimed to apply to everyone.

So I figure instead of boring you with all the tedious details of the next year,
I’ll simply summarize so that we can get back to the good stuff. You can thank me
later, preferably with flowers or those little tiny chocolates that come in a heart-
shaped box. Nah, I’m just kidding, if you want to get me a gift you can’t go wrong
with, buy me something that explodes.

On the long drive from Kansas to Montana, I learned quite a bit about our
new companions. The now-widowed Mark was an agricultural engineer that
specialized in the design of farming machinery and equipment. He had been
pitching a new tractor motor to a potential client in Kansas City when the world
had decided to go insane. For the first few days he kept mostly to himself, only
breaking his silence when his daughter would ask a question or he absolutely
needed to. Usually the latter happened when he needed to use the potty.

His daughter Maggie was, quite possibly, the cutest little girl in the whole
wide world. I was informed of this fact by Heather, who seemed to take to her
immediately. Even my dark accomplice Sarah didn’t seem fully immune to her
unstoppable powers of cute. Maggie’s occupation wasn’t nearly as impressive as
her father’s. In fact, as far as I could tell she was unemployed. See, that sort of
thing is what brought our great country to its knees. Just another five-year-old
that couldn’t hold down a job, making the rest of us taxpayers foot the bill for her
through the Welfare system.

Matthew was the biggest surprise. I don’t mean that literally, of course,
although with his massive size I might be inclined to change my mind on that.
Matthew, all six foot ten and three hundred pounds of him, was an English
Literature professor at the University of Kansas. No, seriously, he really was. I
could only imagine how intimidating of a teacher he had made. If he told a
student to read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that student had damn sure have
read A Midsummer Night’s Dream or there was going to be a world on pain
coming down the pike. You wouldn’t be able to hide from him, either, because his
minor was in some form of Geography that I had never heard of before. He would
track you down with his amazing map-reading skills and fuck you up with the
complete works of Charles Dickens if you ever crossed him. The fact that he had
lost an eye in a hand-to-hand skirmish with a zombie and had not only walked
away from that fight alive after bludgeoning it to death with his bare hands, but
had also simply tied a bandage around that ruined eye and led the Watsons out of
the mayhem of undead-filled Kansas City, proved he was a giant badass in
scholar’s clothing.

Our Jeep was fine for a family trip down to the local carnival or the
occasional emergency escape from walking corpses looking to munch on our
faces, but it wasn’t really large enough to carry all six of us and adequate supplies.
Luckily the answer to this vexing problem was only a few miles away from
Lewiston. We happened upon a used car lot conveniently located across the
street from a gas station. A couple of crossed wires and some filled gas canisters
later, and we had a little caravan going with the girls and Mark in the Jeep and
Matthew and I bringing up the rear in our brand new pre-owned van. The good
luck kept on coming as we found a strip mall a bit further down the road, which
allowed us to not only pick up food supplies, but also get our hands on the heavier
clothing that we had surmised that we’d need in Montana. All in all, things were
really coming together.

That was until we actually reached Montana, of course. When we arrived at

the bar that Sarah’s uncle was the proprietor of, we found that it had certainly
seen better days. The obvious joke response to that statement is “Haven’t we
all?” if you’re searching for one. While this is certainly true, I’m pretty sure that
most of us doesn’t have zombies crawling around inside of us and, worse yet, have
precious beer spilled all over the place. I’ll admit that at first I didn’t see much of
an issue when we walked into the establishment. It was only after I realized that
the bodies ambling towards Heather with their mouths open and guttural moans
escaping from their mouths were, in fact, not just your typical mid-day bar
patrons and were in actuality the living dead that I knew we had an issue.

Gather round, children, and hear the tale of six mighty warriors (or five, if
you don’t classify a five-year-old girl with pigtails a mighty warrior) who stood
against the endless legions of the underworld. That day, the sun scorched the
world with its heat. Truly it was hell on Earth as these warriors gathered to do
battle with the accursed undead. Long the war was waged, and many fell upon
the field that day before the sun set behind the hills. With a great cry the warriors
stood triumphant upon a mountain of slain enemies, and the legend of their
deeds shall live until the final days.

That sounds so much more impressive than what actually happened. In

reality, we simply left the bar and drove away. See what I mean about a bunch of
boring stuff happening and there being a need to simply move ahead in the
timeline? This is why I’m always right, even when I’m wrong.

Especially when I’m wrong.

 We drove around aimlessly for a while before we found a safe place to stay.
On our third day in the great state of Montana (assuming that there were still
“states” without a federal government in place), we found an abandoned cattle
ranch. No, there wasn’t any actual cattle there anymore, but it was what the
facility had been used for previously so the name still stands. The house was large
enough to accommodate us all comfortably, and there was a nearby barn that we
used to house our vehicles. Even better, there was a river within walking distance
that we could use for both clean water and fishing.

The nearest town was almost fifty miles down the road, meaning that it was
close enough to drive to if we needed to forage for supplies, yet far enough away
that we weren’t likely to have much zombie foot traffic trampling down our lawn.
Our first couple of trips to the town, which we learned was named Parkersburg,
made it clear that there wasn’t nearly the overwhelming undead population that
we had encountered in Lewiston. Between the town’s police station, convenience
stores, sporting goods stores, and a number of houses, we managed to build up a
wonderfully large supply of guns and ammunition.

There were two main orders of business that took precedent over all
others: fortify the ranch in case of a large-scale zombie attack, and do what was
necessary to ensure our survival in the long term. The first goal was actually fairly
easy to accomplish. It appeared as if the previous owner of the home had been
one of those militia nutjobs that cropped up from time to time on the news; not
only were the walls reinforced and the windows made from bulletproof glass,
there was even a bomb shelter in the backyard and some sort of cross between a
tree house and hunting blind near the river. All of this was obviously constructed
by a paranoid and potentially dangerous individual. In other words, I approved
wholeheartedly.

Creating an environment that we could survive in was a much bigger chore.

Sure, we could make a life for ourselves relatively easy during the summer, but
what would happen when fall and inevitably winter came? How would we be able
to sustain a food supply if the vehicles broke down or if we were unable to secure
nonperishable goods from Parkersburg? Also, since the power was now out
everywhere, how could we, six people that had always lived with modern day
conveniences, find a way to live without them?

It was when these questions popped up that Mark proved to be something

of a genius. He deduced that the first step towards solving the problem was for us
to acquire a working generator. A generator would be able to provide power for
the house and act as a power supply to charge rechargeable batteries, thus
allowing us to use power tools and the CB radio that was taken out of the Jeep.
He made it a point to go with Matthew and I into Parkersburg on our first trip
there and managed to find a one that he deemed suitable. We loaded it up on a
small trailer that we located in parking lot. We then attached the trailer to the
back of the van and took it back to the ranch with us.

“This won’t really do us any good if we’re not able to secure fuel for it,”
Matthew had pointed out on the trip back.

Mark had simply nodded slowly and stared off into space. “I know,” he had
admitted. “I’m working on it.”

What he came up with was morbid even by my standards. I was awoken

one morning to the sound of pounding and something breaking. Quickly throwing
on some clothes, I meandered towards the source of the noise and found Mark
and Matthew removing the bathtub from one of the spare bathrooms. When
they saw me standing there in the doorway staring at them blurry-eyed, they
stopped for a moment.

“We’re sorry if we woke you,” Matthew apologized. “We just wanted to get
started on this early. It looks like there’s going to be rain later on today and we
don’t want to have to walk this through mud.”

“Get started on what exactly?” I asked. “Are you thinking of installing an

outdoor hot tub or something?”

“I worked out the fuel problem,” Mark said with the first genuine smile I
had ever seen on his face. “The bathtub is part of the solution.”

“You lost me.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay, so, you know how we got that generator
while we were in town and hooked it up to the house? It works on a diesel
engine. That might not seem like it is important, but in this case it’s absolutely
necessary. Diesel engines work better with oil-based products as fuel than
standard engines.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“So we‘ve got an engine that can run off of mostly oil, but where do we get
the oil, right? Well, I was at a conference last year where one of my clients
mentioned that his wife worked for a major beauty products manufacturer. Her
company was looking into using oil from pig fat for a few of their products. You
see, if you heat up fat enough, the oil will separate and it can be drained out of
the container. We can melt down fat, run the liquid through a strainer, and use it
to power the generator.”

The idea was certainly unique. “Where are we going to get that much pig
fat?” I asked dubiously.

Mark’s grin broadened. “Oh, I doubt that we’ll be able to find any pigs to
harvest their fat. The same goes for cows and horses and whatever else. Luckily
we have a readily available source of fat at our disposal.”

I stared at him blankly.

“The zombies,” Matthew supplied. “We can harvest the fat from the bodies
of dead zombies to make the oil we need.”

“So let me get this straight,” I said slowly. “You want us to go kill zombies so
that we can harvest their body fat and turn it into fuel for our generator. And
we’ll need to do this ever time we start running low on fuel.”

They looked at each other. “That’s pretty much what I’m saying, yes,” Mark
confirmed.

Without hesitation, I blurted out, “I’m in.”

It was this simple little conversation that gave new purpose to my personal
goal of becoming the world’s foremost expert on zombie slaying. Instead of
simply being for fun, it was now for fun and profit! It was something akin to
playing a sport professionally. That’s right, I was now an amateur serial undead
killer turned pro. It was like I had been drafted out of college after a strong senior
season of murder. The only things missing were the labor disputes and the hot
groupies.

Wait a minute, I forgot about Sarah. I did indeed have a groupie! Now
then, where was my multi-million dollar signing bonus?

Not that money really has any relevance in a post-zombie apocalypse world.
There isn’t anywhere to spend it, after all, and at the end of the day the only thing
it’s good for is wiping your ass or using it to make a fire. Sometimes when you’re
desperate you can use it for both. If you do, however, I would recommend using it
to remove the filth from your bum first, and then use it as kindling. Doing those
two things in the opposite order might result in the universe proving to you that
your buttocks are indeed flammable.

As summer came to an end, the inevitable cool temperatures and mass

botanical death of fall began to settle in. I was willing to bet that we were one of
the few groups of survivors in the world that had access to such luxuries as
working lights and central heating. We had to be very frugal with the heating
since we were trying to build up a surplus of zombie oil for the winter, but we did
run it enough to keep the pipes (and us) from freezing. We took to wearing layers
of clothing and partaking of the occasional mug of hot cocoa to keep warm. At
the risk of losing most of my street cred as a killer, it really was quite pleasant.

The now six-year-old Maggie really started coming into her own that fall.
While most children would have been terrified at the horrible events going on in
the world, she seemed to be made of stronger stuff and simply took the whole
thing in stride. Granted, we shielded her from as much actual contact with the
zombie populace as we could, but when one would wander onto the ranch and
she spotted it first, she would calmly sound the alarm and even make suggestions
as to how to deal with it.

Okay, yes, I admit it, she was growing on me. So sue me. Good luck finding
a lawyer that hasn’t been converted into the living dead, though.

It was during this same time period when the physical aspects of my
relationship with Sarah came to an end. The occasion visits to Parkersburg had
given me a chance to show her some of my tricks of the trade, and she was really
blossoming as a killer. What we found, though, is that outside of our love of the
murder game we actually had very little in common. We began to drift apart until
one day we had a nice calm talk about our relationship and decided that while we
made an excellent student/teacher pairing and valued each other’s friendship, we
just weren’t clicking as a couple. It was a somewhat strange experience, as usually
there are at least some hard feelings after a relationship ends, but we barely
seemed to miss a beat as we moved on.

Winter rolled around, and suddenly we were facing our first Christmas
together. After much discussion it was decided that yes, we were indeed going to
celebrate the holiday, and yes, there would indeed be gifts. Snow had already
been falling by the ton for a couple of months, so I wasn’t really sure how feasible
this would all be, but we attached snow chains to the Jeep and managed to make
it back into Parkersburg to forage for presents.

As I trudged through the snowdrifts, I noticed an odd lump leaning against one of
the storefronts. Closer inspection revealed that it was a zombie that had frozen
solid. It was cold outside, certainly, but not cold enough that a human would have
become physically hard from it. That implied that for some reason zombies had a
higher freezing point than use regular folks. It was good to know that during the
winter months there would be less chance of an attack, and it would be good to
know for the rest of the year if I ever invented some kind of freeze ray. I really
should get to work on that freeze ray, as you never know when a British secret
agent is going to drop in unexpectedly.

Since this was such a rare opportunity to study a presumably living specimen, I got
up close and examined the popsicle demon. The level of decay was much more
advanced than the ones we had been turning into power for our blender: much of
the facial tissue was gone, including the lips. This left it with a rather grotesque
grin-like expression that displayed the rotting teeth. Apparently dentistry was a
lost art to the undead.

There was something else that just seemed off about the face, but I was unable to
figure out exactly what it was. After a long moment’s consideration I realized
what was bothering me. The eye sockets seemed more sunken into the skull. Not
a whole lot more, mind you, but enough to be noticeable. The eyelids were
completely missing, but the eyes…well, the eyes were still there. They were
completely clouded over and resembled silver orbs. If I was a normal person, I
would have shuddered. Since I wasn’t, though, I mustered up a manly shake of
my head. This particular zombie looked a lot less like a reanimated corpse and a
lot more like a true undead predator. I didn’t have a frame of reference for this
observation, of course. That didn’t make it any less true.

I managed to finish my Christmas shopping after some blatant breaking and

entering. To my surprise, I even found some seasonal wrapping paper to go with
the presents. As I loaded my gifts into the back of the Jeep I felt my heart grow
three sizes. Now, I didn’t have a sled led by a dog in antlers or a warm roast beast
to celebrate Christmas with, but I certainly had a frozen zombie on which to
demonstrate my turning over a new leaf to Cindy Lou Who. When the others
were done with their shopping/scavenging, they returned to the Jeep only to find
a member of the undead sporting a Santa hat and fake beard nearby. It was
enough to make one want to burst into Christmas carols and throw another Yule
log on the fire.

Pointless rant incoming in 3…2…1…

You know what I never understood about Christmas? The song It’s the Most
Wonderful Time of the Year. Yeah, yeah, Andy Williams, blah blah blah. The part
that I don’t get is the line that states, “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of
the glories of Christmases long, long ago.” What “scary ghost stories” is the song
referring to, exactly? Let’s see, let me get out my Common Themes of Christmas
checklist. The birth of Jesus, check. Santa magically flying around the world on a
sleigh pulled by airborne reindeer that apparently don’t poop all over the
populace below, check. Families getting together for the holidays and inevitably
wanting to kill each other, check. Nope, sorry, I went through the entire list and
there’s nothing about ghost stories.

Oh, but wait, what about the classic Charles Dickens novel A Christmas
Carol? That’s got ghosts in it, right? You have a point there, my worthy debating
adversary, but the contention in the song is ‘scary’ ghost stories. Do you really
consider A Christmas Carol to be frightening in any way, shape, or form? I would
submit that any story, no matter how ghastly, that is made into a movie by Disney
doesn’t qualify as scary. You could have a tale of a bear that tore the head off a
hunter then proceeded to use the entrails to strange the hunter’s wife while
sexually molesting their dog, and it still wouldn’t be horrific if it was turned into an
animated movie. Hell, the bear would probably tap dance and sing a song about
canine molestation before performing the act and it would make millions.

Admit it, dear reader, where else in literature, modern day or from volumes
past, would you be able to find a mention of a bear having forced sex with a dog
after committing a double homicide? I guess I’m just a trailblazer like that.

Spring eventually came around, as is the custom, and the snow began to
melt. We made it a point to procure a number of bicycles and bring them back to
the ranch. Our gas supplies were beginning to run out, and because neither
vehicle possessed a diesel engine we couldn’t use our patent pending zombie oil
as a substitute. Besides, while Mark was extremely handy with machinery, he was
the first to admit that he wasn’t a car mechanic and he wouldn’t be able to do
much if the Jeep or van broke down. Bicycles would provide us with a means of
transportation that wasn’t reliant on gas. Unfortunately, this also meant that our
travel distance and cargo capacity would be greatly reduced. We were going to
have to become more self-sufficient.

On one of our last trips into Parkersburg, we loaded up both the van and
jeep with all the farming tools and fruit and vegetable seeds that we could. There
was some game to hunt and fish in the river to catch, so the meat portion of our
diet would be taken care of, but we would have to figure out how to be successful
farmers in a hurry if we wanted the necessary vitamins they provided. I, however,
was not a part of this process. It turned out that I and my lovely assistant
Matthew had another job ahead of us.

Without being able to drive into Parkersburg much (if at all) anymore, we
were faced with the issue of not having nearly as many zombies to harvest for
their fat. If we wanted to keep our supply of oil going, we were going to have to
find a way to get our hands on more undead victims.

This is where we hop back into things.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kill Counter- 313

Admit it, you think it’s sexy how the kill counter got so high. That’s what
happens when you’re asked to murder a bunch of zombies so that you can cook
the oil out of their fat.

I’d like to say that I had thought long and hard about how to acquire more
zombies for this activity without being able to go into town, but in reality I just
simply ignored the problem and allowed my subconscious to do all the work.
When you broke the problem down enough, it became apparent that there were
only two ways to go about things: go to where zombies were, or lure them to us.
At first I dismissed the first possibility completely since there wasn’t a way to
transport the corpses back, but I eventually realized that we wouldn’t have to. All
that we really needed to do was carry the fat back.

Luring the undead to us carried the risk that more might show up than we
could handle, so the whole “take the harvest to them” scenario was looking better
and better. Two things were necessary to make this happen. One, we would have
to find a way to bring back our hard earned fat, and two, we needed a place that
would be full of zombies. I went looking for Mark.

I found him in the living room reading a book about farming that he had
taken from Parkersburg’s small library. He had a legal pad in his lap and was
scribbling down notes, but he set the book and pad aside as I laid out the issue of
fat transportation. When I finished, he nodded thoughtfully.
 “I think I remember seeing a bunch of plastic containers down in the
basement,” he said slowly. “You know, like those plastic buckets that rock salt
comes in. You could probably use those to store the fat. But how are you going to
carry all those?”

He stood up and started pacing, something that I had come to associate

with him being in deep thought. In fact, he had been doing it so often in the last
few months that I was surprised that there wasn’t a trench in the carpet formed
by his going back and forth. I knew that if I gave him enough time he would come
up with the answer, though, so I sat down in a chair and picked up an old copy of
Sports Illustrated I had found in my room.

Huh, would you look at that, according to analyst Peter Shaw, the Royals
had a shot at the pennant this year. I raised an eyebrow. Even before the whole
zombie apocalypse thing more than likely resulted in the Royals team being eaten
and turned into the undead, the Royals had never had much of a chance at
winning anything. I checked the date on the magazine cover. Ah, that explained
it, George Brett was still on the team when it was published.

“The river,” Mark suddenly exclaimed as he came to a halt.

“You’re going to have to expand on that,” I told him as I continued to thumb

through my magazine.

“We can build a boat or raft so that you can go up and down the river with
the fat. Something small enough that one or two people can sail it, but large
enough to carry what we need.”

Enlisting Matthew’s help, we began to craft a rather crude but seaworthy

(riverworthy?) vessel. Our finished product ended up being a medium-sized raft
that two people could comfortably stand or sit on. We first tried to craft paddles
to move the raft, but they turned out to not be feasible. Since the river was so
shallow, only about eight or nine feet deep, we instead made poles that allowed
us to push it along. This worked out much better, and by sunset we had
everything working smoothly.

The next morning dawned cool and clear with the promise of a return to my
killing ways. I felt like Huckleberry Finn preparing to head down a mighty river in
search of adventure. I was almost whistling as I collected the white plastic buckets
from the house’s basement and brought them outside to the riverbank. Matthew
had volunteered to join me on my quest for zombie fat, and while he wasn’t my
usual partner in crime I certainly welcomed the extra muscle when it came to
poling the raft. We didn’t have an actual destination in mind; this was more of a
scouting mission than anything else. Still, we took the rifles just in case.

We pointed our craft upstream. We had decided that this made the most
sense. The raft was fairly light and easy to move when it contained just the two of
us, but once it was loaded down with the additional weight of zombie fat it would
be much easier to deal with if we were headed downstream. We kept an eye out
for anything that might have an abundant supply of undead. A potpourri of
zombies, if you will. A bonanza of the living dead. An assload of reanimated
corpses.

Hey, I wrote this haiku for you while we were busy poling.

We needed zombies
 To melt their fat into oil

The moon ate some rice

Notice that it’s a traditional haiku. You know, the old ones that you read in
grade school English textbooks that don’t make any sense. Bears raping dogs,
haikus discussing the very real overeating problem that the moon has tried to hide
from the public, I really am trying to shine a light on society’s biggest problems
with this book.

I am, of course, allowing this to drift a bit away from the journey upstream
because it was so damn boring. Painfully boring. Excruciatingly boring. Matthew
and I kept up a steady stream of chitchat, but there’s only so much you can talk
about when you’re not getting any topic help from the surrounding area. I even
had enough free time to create Japanese poetry just for you. You’re welcome.

About four hours into our excursion, we found that our poles were no
longer touching the bottom of the river and the current was becoming quite a bit
stronger. We pushed the raft up onto the east bank and continued on foot. We
could have simply gone back, of course, but we had come this far so we figured
that we might as well have a look around. I slowly became aware of what almost
sounded like a constant rushing of air, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. When
we came to the top of a small hill, though, I no longer had to guess.

From our vantage point, we could see that the river terminated (or began,
depending on which way you were looking) at a lake blocked on one end by a
huge granite dam. Three large waterfalls poured out at a tremendous rate. With
the amount of water being put out, it was easy to see why we couldn’t hit the
riverbed with our poles. Three rivers intersected at the lake, each going off in a
different direction.

“I don’t hear any humming that I would associate with machinery,”

Matthew observed calmly. “The turbines have probably been shut off or have
broken down. That’s why we don’t have any electricity at the ranch.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re at the bottom of a hydroelectric power plant,” he explained. “Those

waterfalls are used to spin turbines, which in turn generate electricity. I’ve read
about them, but I’ve never seen one up close before.” He paused. “I don’t think
it’s likely that we’ll find any undead wandering around here. I doubt that there’s
much in the way of food to keep them here.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I disagreed. “It’s extremely noisy here,

and they seem to be attracted at least in part by noise. Let’s take a look.”

We walked on. When we reached the dam wall, we began to follow it away
from the river. We eventually reached a ladder that went from the ground all the
way up to the top of the dam. Being careful not to slip, we climbed towards the
heavens and the promise of…whatever the hell was at the top of a dam.

After what seemed like forever but was probably only a couple of minutes,
we made it to the top and looked around. The top of the dam was about forty
feet thick and, to my amazement, it was actually a road. I don’t know why it
surprised me that it was designed for cars to drive over top, but it did. When I
brought this up to Matthew, he simply nodded.
 “It definitely seems odd that traffic would drive over something like a dam,”
he agreed. “It’s not unheard of, though. Hoover Dam is constructed the same
way.”

While the general area seemed clear of both zombies and vehicles, I knew
that we had found what we were looking for. A road meant traffic, and if I had
learned anything from the highways that I had seen since this whole thing had
begun, it was that traffic meant a large population of undead. A scheme was
beginning to form as we cautiously walked down the street. By the time we
reached the inevitable traffic jam that I knew was coming, the entire plan had
been worked out.

“We can use these zombies,” I said confidently as pointed at the undead
wandering aimlessly through the abandoned vehicles.

“How do you propose that we get them back to the raft so that we can
harvest the fat?”

I grinned viciously. “We’ll use gravity. We can kill them one at a time and
push them off the dam. Someone will be at the bottom to remove the fat, and
when the buckets are full we can take them back to the ranch. If we ever find
ourselves running low on zombies, we’ll simply set off a car alarm or blow up a
car’s gas tank to attract more.”

“You really think that will work?” he asked dubiously.

“Trust me, it’ll work.”

Our talking had apparently drawn the attention of the closest zombies, and
they turned towards us with the usual moaning and outstretching of arms.
Judging from the scraps of clothes that remained on their bodies and the
generally deteriorated look that they had about them, I guessed that winter must
have been harsh for them. Still, they were alive (so to speak) and moving, so
apparently even after being frozen they could keep going like some demonic
Energizer bunny.

“Let’s just head back,” I suggested. “We don’t want to kill any of them now,
not until we’re ready to scrape any fat they have left off of them.”

I had just gotten the words out of my mouth when the universe decided,
“Hey, you know what? Let’s go ahead and shake things up a bit. These
motherfuckers are getting a bit too comfortable for my taste.”

It all started with a hissing sound. At first I thought it was a car tire losing
air, but it quickly defined itself into a shriek. All the alarm bells in my head started
going off at once, and I raised the rifle instinctively. A zombie, female in life with
long black hair and what had probably been an attractive figure, jumped onto the
hood of a station wagon. Its facial skin was so tight and torn off in so many places
that it almost appeared to be a mask. Like the zombie that I had dubbed Kris
Kringle in Parkersburg, this one was missing its lips, and its eyes were that same
eerie silver color.

Wait a second, rewind the tape, brain. I missed something back there,
something important. I’m not sure what, but…

Oh hell.

It had jumped up onto the car.

 “James…” Matthew whispered warningly.

“I see it,” I responded shortly.

The zombie regarded us for a moment while the more commonplace ones
began to head towards us. It turned its head from side to side in an almost
human gesture of uncertainty. Its mouth opened wide, and that shriek came out
again right before it jumped back off the car and came at us at a run. It didn’t
shamble, it didn’t stumble forward in that slow gait that others of its kind did. It
actually ran at us as fast as any human that I had ever seen.

I opened fire with the rifle. Firing at this particular target was much more
difficult than I was accustomed to. It wasn’t moving slowly enough to take the
time to carefully line up a kill shot. The first shot missed completely. The second
struck the zombie in the shoulder and knocked it off of its feet, but even before I
could squeeze the trigger again it was back up and charging once again. The third
shot buried itself in its neck, and suddenly it was too late to fire the weapon again
because the undead sprinter had closed the distance and was right on top of us.

Matthew had been slower bringing his weapon to bear, but he managed to
fire one round before friendly fire became an issue. Perhaps perceiving him as the
biggest threat or simply the biggest meal, the zombie went after him with mouth
open and claw-like hands reaching. He turned his weapon sideways and pushed
out with it to once again knock down our assailant. Just like before, though, it was
back up in an instant and continuing the assault. I swung my rifle like a club and
caught it in the side of the head, and it shrieked as it stumbled backwards.
Matthew’s rifle fired again, and this time the round hit right between the eyes.
The nightmare slumped to the ground and did not move.
 “Go!” I ordered. “Get back to the ladder!”

We turned and ran as fast as we could. What the hell was going on? How
the hell had that zombie jumped and run like some sort of Olympic athlete?
Never before had we encountered undead that didn’t move at a snail’s pace. We
reached the ladder and climbed down for all we were worth. Once I felt my foot
slip off of a rung and had to physically slow myself down. It didn’t matter what
new abomination the world had spit out if I plunged to my death. Eventually, we
reached the bottom without incident and craned our necks upward to view the
top of the dam. Unfortunately, from our vantage point we couldn’t see anything,
and after a few minutes we began the hike back to our raft.

“Did you see its eyes?” Matthew asked quietly. “They were shining in the
light, almost like silver or pearls.”

“I saw,” I confirmed.

“And when it came after us…” He shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs,
and he adjusted the eye patch that covered his missing eye. “It was like a wild
animal, James. Its behavior was completely different from the undead that we’ve
come across. The normal zombies are only really dangerous when they’re in
groups or in extremely close quarters. That one, though…” He trailed off.

“It wasn’t just that one. Remember Santa Zombie back in Parkersburg? It
had the same eyes. We have to assume that there are more of them out there.”

“What do we do about it?”

“What can we do about it?” I countered. “Until we know more about

what’s going on and how many of them are out there, there’s nothing that we can
do. You saw the regular slack-jawed yokel zombies back there. If they’re still
around, I would guess that Wonder Zombie isn’t the new status quo, at least not
yet. She was definitely a step up the food chain, though.”

Matthew considered things for a moment. “Do you think it might have
been some change in the virus that’s creating the zombies? That the virus is
possibly evolving?”

“If it really is a virus, it’s possible,” I conceded. “The only thing we know for
sure is that if we start seeing these new zombies in packs as large as the ones we
saw in Lewiston, we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Kill Counter- 313

That evening, Matthew and I told the rest of the group about our encounter
as we were eating dinner. The news that there were now zombies out there that
weren’t limited to simply shambling towards us like a senior citizen approaching a
pharmacy was met with more than a little chagrin. All of the tactics that we had
come up with, all of the instincts that we had developed, were appearing as if
we’d have to chuck them right out the window. I let the others continue the
discussion while I sat back and consulted someone that I hadn’t had a good long
conversation with in a while: myself. Not just me, but that little part of me that
sits quietly in the back of my mind until some killing needed done.

I had mostly been working on autopilot ever since the so-called zombie
apocalypse had begun. Truth be told, there wasn’t much difficulty in bringing
down an average zombie. Oh, sure, in large groups they were formidable, but a
single member of the undead species was hardly a cause for alarm. There wasn’t
much reason to flex the murdering muscles.

This new kind of zombie, this… Huh, what was I going to call it, anyway?
There had to be some way to differentiate it from the average Joe Schmoe
zombie. I finally settled on “apex zombie”, not only because it inferred that it was
at the top of the undead food chain, but also because it sounded kind of badass.
Back when the Discovery Channel hadn’t gone off the air with all the rest of the
stations, I had watched a documentary that declared the great white shark the
apex predator of the ocean. So, yeah, apex zombie. Now that I had a name, I
could restart the paragraph.

This new kind of zombie, this apex zombie, was a whole other kettle of fish.
These things came right at you with all cylinders pumping in an effort to do a lot of
damage in a short amount of time. Unhesitating action and reaction speed were
going to mean everything. If I was honest with myself, I was a bit out of shape.
That was going to have to change. I wasn’t going to give up my title of alpha dog
without a fight.

Does it seem vain when I say something like that? When I imply or outright
state that I’m the best, I mean? Just because it’s coming from the horse’s mouth
doesn’t mean that it’s not true. If you want to be in the upper echelons of any
sport you have to have some swagger. You have to possess the confidence that
you’re better than your opponents at what you do. Besides, I have facts to back
up my ego.

Fact One: During my trial, the district attorney, a man that had been
working prosecution law for over three decades, called me the single most
disturbing individual he had ever come across.

Fact Two: Also during my trial, a retired FBI agent that had been on
countless task forces designed specifically to hunt down serial killers referred to
me as, and I quote, “the most efficient and dangerous murderer in the history of
the United States”.

Fact Three: This one is my personal favorite. During one of my sessions with
my assigned psychiatrist at the asylum, the officer that had arrested me, one
Detective Daryl Coffman, was asked to sit in. According to the shrink, it was so
that I could confront what I had done and the consequences of these actions. This
was ridiculous, of course, since I knew full well that ending someone’s life had
repercussions, but the doctor seemed so excited about the whole thing that I
didn’t have the heart to tell him he was an idiot.

I was actually quite fond of Detective Coffman. Even though his face
betrayed his horror at the atrocities that I had committed, he was always cordial
and respectful towards me (and everyone else, for that matter). What little
relationship we had was almost like two worthy adversaries that, now that the
game was over, treated each other like colleagues. He had even sought out my
advice on a few cases he was working on; he was kind of the Clarice Starling to my
Hannibal Lector. Unlike the Anthony Hopkins-portrayed cannibal, however, I
hadn’t really had much insight to share with him on those occasions. Serial killers,
real ones, never really fit into nicely defined parameters like entertainment
sources would have you believe.

Coffman was sitting in a chair on the opposite side of my table. He was

dressed in a black suit and tie, and when I was brought into the room dressed in
my equally snazzy white cotton uniform, he politely nodded at me. I returned the
gesture and sat down, waiting patiently as my restraints were locked into place on
my chair. The psychiatrist launched into a longwinded explanation of why he
believed that I felt the need to kill and how my almost random methods reflected
an internal need to rage against society.

No, seriously, that was his ‘professional’ diagnosis. That all the killings that I
had performed were simply me crying out against society.
 To his credit, Coffman was silent during this, and he even managed not to
crack a smile somehow. He just listened to what the doctor had to say while
staring directly at me. At one point I raised an eyebrow at a particularly stupid
observation. I saw the miniscule movement duplicated on the police officer’s
face. When the doctor had finished, he asked Coffman’s opinion on his findings.

“Well, it’s certainly an interesting theory,” Coffman began, his eyes still on
me. “I have to say that, while I respect your credentials and I don’t claim to be an
expert on the matter, I disagree with your findings. This gentleman is many
things, and he’s certainly committed some heinous acts, but I don’t believe that
he’s nearly as crazy as you or the courts make him out to be.”

“Oh?” the shrink asked with genuine curiosity. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I believe that he knows full well what he’s done and the chain of
events that those actions have caused. I just don’t think that he cares. That’s evil,
certainly, but it’s not insane.”

“There’s been no indication since he’s been a resident here that he’s ‘evil’,
as you put it, Detective,” the doctor said in a superior tone. “He hasn’t shown
himself to even be a threat to himself or others since he came under my care.”

Coffman’s eyes finally left my face and turned to look firmly at the
psychiatrist. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Doctor, man to man. Don’t ever
make the mistake of thinking that he isn’t a threat. He is incredibly intelligent and
an incredibly effective killer. I don’t claim to know his motives, but if he wanted
you dead, you’d be dead.”

Ah, there’s nothing better than high praise from a person you greatly
respect.

Well dammit, to show that Coffman’s trust in my l33t murdering skillz

wasn’t misplaced, I needed to show this apex zombie scum who was boss.

Before I forget, I’d like to give a shout out to Detective Daryl Coffman. If
you’re still alive, buddy, great job. If you’re dead, you’re not reading this, so it
doesn’t really matter what I put here.

Back to the matter at hand we go. In the past I had hunted both humans
and zombies, but the apex zombie didn’t seem to fit snuggly into either category
in terms of killing methods. It had the speed and dexterity of a human, but it had
the thought process and incredible durability of a zombie. The only silver lining
that I could see was that it was still completely enslaved by its desire to kill and
consume living beings. That might sound like a rather odd silver lining, but
consider how much more dangerous the apex zombie would have been if it had
the need to kill AND the patience and rationality to create plans and traps. It
basically would have been nearly unstoppable at that point.

Okay, so, let’s not put the cart before the horse here. What did I know
about these so-called apex zombies, which had recently been given that name by
one amazingly sexy guy? They had the typical zombie hunger for the living. They
were far faster than usual, and things like climbing and jumping that would
normally perplex a zombie were well within its level of understanding. Both
specimens that I had seen had the same oddly silver eyes, almost mirror-like in
their constitution. The lips had been missing from both of them, but I had the
feeling that was something of a coincidence, or maybe a product of biting down
too fast and hard (accidentally biting off your own lips while eating someone…that
has got to hurt).

The female apex zombie that Matthew and I had encountered hadn’t
moaned, either. There had been some kind of shriek instead, a high-pitched
sound that had been louder than any individual zombie’s moan. I had no idea why
it had done that, but what worried me was that the louder sound would draw the
attention of more zombies from a larger radius. Theoretically it would be possible
to take out an apex zombie rather quickly only to find yourself surrounded by a
bunch of regular ones. It was something to keep in mind.

Now the brain wheels were turning. Firearms wouldn’t be nearly as

effective at a distance against this new breed of zombie since it was able to close
the gap much faster, and quicker targets were more difficult to shoot in specific
body parts anyway. There was always the option to take them out from extremely
far away before they even knew what was happening, but this was dependent on
knowing where they were, and besides, I didn’t have a sniper rifle hidden up my
ass that I could just fart into my hand on command. No, it made more sense to go
with weapons that allowed me to fight at range while still having the ability to kill
in close quarters.

The bigger problem was figuring out what to do if apex zombies attacked in
groups as opposed to individually. Matthew and I had been lucky that there had
only been a single apex zombie on the road that ran over the dam, but I had to
assume that wouldn’t always be the case. Having to fight off four or five of these
things would be more difficult than going up against twenty of the regular kind.
At least against large amounts of standard zombies you could usually maintain
distance and make a run for it if things weren’t going well. There was no running
from Zombie Premium, though.

Hrmm, quite the conundrum. I gradually began to realize that while, yes,
there were certain precautions that could be taken and specific gear that could be
used, going up against apex zombies with a group as small as ours wouldn’t come
down to tactics or even luck. We would have to rely on our instincts. If our
survival instincts were strong we’d have a decent chance of survival. If we had
lousy ones we shouldn’t have been in the fight to begin with.

I mentally ran through the attack one more time. My gun had been raised
and ready to fire before the true nature of the threat had revealed itself, and I had
switched from shooting the rifle to swinging it like a club without hesitation.
Matthew had been a bit slower but had still adjusted fairly quickly. It was safe to
say that our instinctive reactions to new and unique threats were quite strong.

Would the others be the same way? I looked at each of my housemates in

turn. They had all survived through any number of dire situations and stayed alive
in circumstances in which most people would have become zombie chow (now
with more liver!). They had even begun to thrive in this Brave New World. I
nodded to myself. We had a better shot against the apex zombies than most
people would have.

We would have to fortify the ranch more, of course, especially the house
itself. We had gone through the motions of boarding up the windows and turning
the attic into a fallback shelter, but apex zombies might be able to accomplish
previously impossible things such as climbing onto the porch roof to gain access to
the second floor, and they could certainly hammer down lines of defense faster
than usual. With the increased chance of a home invasion, it would be prudent to
leave weapons in different places as well. Not necessarily firearms, but things
that would work well for close quarter combat.

My eyes fell on Maggie. Heather had been teaching her the ins and outs of
firing a gun for a few months now. What, you have a problem with a six-year-old
owning and operating a firearm? Get with the times. This isn’t a world where the
biggest threat to your safety is an armed burglar breaking into your house in the
night. Nowadays, almost anything that walks upright is attempting to tear you to
pieces for its dining pleasure. The choice was to either teach Maggie how to
defend herself with lethal force, or have her be helpless if the worst case scenario
happened. As you can see, there wasn’t really much of a choice there at all.

All the training in the world wouldn’t help her if she was confronted by a
group of apex zombies. She was actually becoming a fair shot with a light pistol,
but when they closed the gap she would be defenseless. At such a young age she
wasn’t physically equipped to bludgeon or stab with any real force behind it.
Mark would fight to the death for her, and so would the rest of the group for that
matter. That kind of conviction would mean, to steal a Heather phrase, exactly
jack and shit once we were gone or if we were somehow separated from her. We
would have to play this smart for all our sakes in general and her sake in particular.

The responsibility for that would be on my shoulders, I realized. When you

got to the heart of the matter, these people were good people. They had come
together during a crisis the likes of which had never been seen before in history
and had thrived as a unit. I considered each and every one of them a friend,
which something that I couldn’t say about many people in my life. Even thinking
that might have damaged my sterling reputation as a psychopath, but so what, it
was the truth. This was my new family now.

What they didn’t possess, not even Sarah, was my talent for sheer brutality
when the situation called for it. The reason that I was so well equipped to survive
in the post-apocalyptic world was that I was willing to mentally go to places that
others were not. Not only did I not mind extreme amounts of violence, I excelled
in that particular field of work. If I was a religious man, I might have made the
claim that I was created the way that I was so that I could help these people that I
regarded as family during this trying time.

I am not, however, a religious man, so I won’t make that particular claim. It

might have been comforting to feel that there was a purpose behind everything
that happened. From my perspective, though, the smart money was on sheer
dumb luck.

Over the past year, I had become almost docile (at least by my standards).
The introduction of the apex zombies demanded that I shed this domestication
and bring a little of the old fire back. It was time to stop thinking like a survivor
and go back to thinking like a cold-blooded predator.

“I’m going back to the dam,” I announced suddenly, interrupting whatever it

was that Heather was in the middle of saying.

“You’re what?” Sarah asked, shocked.

“I’m going back to the dam,” I repeated. “Tomorrow I’m going to pack up
enough supplies to last me for two or three days and make the trip on foot. Don’t
worry, I won’t be taking any of the guns or ammunition.”
 “Are you fucking insane?” Heather demanded.

“That’s a bad word!” Maggie chided her.

“I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to use a bad word. Now answer the
question, James.”

“Maybe a little,” I conceded in that way that made people think I was joking
when I really wasn’t. “We need more information about what’s going on out in
the world, especially what’s happening nearby. Matthew and I were taken
completely off-guard by one apex zombie. What would have happened if there
had been more? It was a brand new threat that we never saw coming. We got
lucky. It’s that simple. We got lucky.”

“Apex zombie,” Matthew said thoughtfully. “That’s a good term for them.
Also, I happen to agree with what you’re saying, but I don’t understand why you
feel like you need to go alone. There’s strength in numbers.”

“Usually, yes. I’m going to be blunt here, though. Having someone else
with me would only slow me down. It would also double the risk of being seen or
heard by the undead. I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, but I should be able to
find enough supplies to keep me going while I’m out and about.”

They argued with me, of course. I was fairly sure that they would. My mind
was made up, however, and when I made up my mind, it stayed made up. I’m
pretty sure that last sentence made sense. Whether it did or not, there was no
question that I heading out the next morning.

The reasons that I had given were all valid ones, but they weren’t the only
ones. One of my greatest assets as a serial killer had been the ability to predict
what a potential victim was going to do and how it would react to certain
circumstances. Zombies were completely different from humans, though, and I
needed to start learning all there was to know about them. Their habits, how
exactly they find and stalk their prey, that sort of thing. I particularly had to find
out everything I could about the apex zombies. They were the real threats to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of not being eaten alive.

There was one small issue, however.

“Okay, fine, your reasons make sense,” Heather said at one point. “We’ll
both pack up some supplies tomorrow morning and I’ll go with you.”

“I’m pretty sure that we’ve been over this already,” I answered stubbornly.

“Yes, we have. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m coming with you.
There will be a better chance of gathering information and staying alive at the
same time if there’s someone watching your back.”

“You’re needed here, Heather.”

“For what? We’ve already established that I’m piss poor as a farmer, so I
can’t do much to help with the attempts to grow food. It wouldn’t be safe to go
hunt zombies for fat without finding out what’s going on with these, what did you
call them, apex zombies, so I couldn’t do that. It just makes sense.”

I was going to argue further, but she gave me a look that said volumes.
There was something else going on here that I either wasn’t aware of or wasn’t
understanding. I gave her a questioning look but said, “All right, you came come
along. You’re the only one, though. Any more and the work that needs to get
done here won’t get done.”

With that settled, we retired to our respective bedrooms. I didn’t have a

chance to speak privately with Heather about that strange look she had given me,
but I figured that we would have plenty of time to talk when we left the ranch at
daybreak. I had a hard time falling asleep that night. It wasn’t because of
nervousness, although I admit that there was a bit of that. I was actually excited
to be getting back out into the world again instead of sitting around the ranch
waiting for something to happen. I was a very proactive person, and while I had
come to truly care for my housemates, I had begun to feel a bit confined. The
next day that would change, though. With that happy thought, I snuggled down
into my warm pillow and drifted off.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kill Counter- 313

The sky was a bit overcast when I woke up the next morning. There was a
promise of rain in the air, and I was reminded of the storm back in Kansas that
Heather, Sarah, and I endured at Rebel’s Cove. This time Sarah wouldn’t be joining
us for the potentially wet trek into the great unknown, but the stir of memories
came just the same.

I went downstairs and found that I was the first one up. This wasn’t an
uncommon occurrence, as I tended to keep strange hours. Being careful not to
make too much noise, I dug around inside the closets until I found one of the
black backpacks that we had procured way back when. I probably could have
taken the larger hiking pack, but I wanted to have as much freedom of movement
as I could. Being weighed down during an up close and personal conflict with an
Apex hardly seemed like a winning formula.

Notice that I shortened “apex zombie” to “Apex”. “Apex zombie” was just
becoming annoying to write. Remember what I always say, work smarter, not
harder. I came up with that saying all by myself. I invented it. It was all me.
Nobody else. Me. I also decided at some point to capitalize “Apex” since, quite
frankly, a predator of that stature deserves the respect. I tip my hat to you, super
crazy kamikaze zombies. Kudos.

I loaded up the backpack with supplies, including a couple of flares just in

case. I wasn’t sure who I’d potentially be able to signal with them, but that would
be where the “just in case” part would come in. You never knew what would
happen in the future.

As I was about to descend into the daunting depths of the basement,

Heather came down the stairs with an already-packed backpack slung over one
shoulder. She wore the jeans, black t-shirt, and baseball cap that she jokingly
referred to as her ‘working clothes’, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail.

“Morning,” she greeted me. “Are you ready to go?”

“Almost,” I assured her. “I’m just going to grab something from the
basement and I’ll be all set. I’ll meet you out on the porch.”

The item that was the subject of my search was located in a far corner of
the basement. Leaning up against the wall was a long-handled axe. It was a
pulaski, a tool used by the fire department, most commonly in the case of a forest
fire. One side of the head had a broad axe blade, and the other featured an adze.
I had taken it from the Parkersburg fire station back in the fall but I had never had
a chance to use it. Now, though, it fit my needs perfectly. Both sides of the head
could be used to kill, and the length of the handle meant that I could shove an
assailant back with it in a pinch. It never needed to be reloaded, either, which was
a huge plus.

I picked up the vicious-looking tool and gave it a few practice swings. It

made a pleasant whistling sound as the blade passed through the air. Even
though it wasn’t actually designed for killing, the potential for a lot of damage was
certainly there. There was no safe way to attach the axe to my person, meaning
that I would be obliged to carry it the entire trip, but that was such a minor issue
that I dismissed it as being a problem entirely.

“That thing looks hideous,” Heather commented with a shudder when I

joined her on the porch. She had brought one of the rifles outside with her and
was wearing her police duty belt complete with a Glock in the holster. She
apparently didn’t share my philosophy on weapon choices.

“It could be pink and fluffy all over as far as I care,” I told her. “All I care
about is that it gets the job done.”

“I suddenly have the mental image of you assaulting a zombie with cotton
candy. It’s quite the image.”

We didn’t bother to wake the others before we started out; we weren’t

going to be gone all that long, and besides, I found drawn-out goodbyes tedious.
Since there was no real rush, we walked at a leisurely pace along the bank of the
river. For the first couple of hours we proceeded in near silence. It wasn’t
because of any tension or awkwardness, mind you, there just wasn’t a whole lot
to say.

I had gone on a lot of wilderness hikes in the Boy Scouts as a kid. What, you
think that serial killers couldn’t have been in the Boy Scouts? I’ll have you know
that I had a sash full of badges. There was one for tying knots, one for rifle
shooting, one for shotgun shooting (I kid you not, look it up if you don’t believe
me), one for archery, and one for crime prevention. Do you see a pattern
emerging there? Before you start thinking that the Crime Prevention badge was
earned due to research on how to avoid law enforcement, I actually took the time
to earn it because, as a child, I considered a career as a police officer. There’s so
much irony there that you’d have to rent out an entire warehouse to contain it all.

Sadly, despite my amazing badge-earning capabilities, I never progressed

passed the First Class rank. As I recall, that was because my scout (unnecessary
dirty joke incoming) master(bater) wasn’t convinced that I showed enough ability
to succeed. So, Mr. Jenkins, do you think that I’m showing it enough now? I
survived the fucking zombie apocalypse. The zombie motherfucking apocalypse!
Ooh, oh God, no, I can’t get this latch to work correctly on this tent pole. Guess I’d
better just survive the zombie apocalypse! Whoops, I didn’t serve barely edible
soup to enough old people. There’s nothing else to do now but SURVIVE THE
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!

On the off chance that Mr. Jenkins is alive and reading this (which there’s no
way he did, as he’d be too busy trying to tie his little neckerchief and zipping up
his feces-colored scout shorts to run from approaching death), I hope that you get
tetanus from the corkscrew on your pathetically tiny pocketknife.

I had gone on a lot of wilderness hikes in the Boy Scouts as a kid. My

current Montana surroundings reminded me a lot of a place called Wolf’s Run
Park where we camped every few months. It was quite the misnaming as there
hadn’t been a wolf spotted in the area since around the time Andrew Jackson was
having his turn in the White House, but anything more accurate would have just
been boring. Annoyingly Loud Chirping Bird Park just doesn’t have the same ring
to it.

Wolf’s Run Park had a long stream that tended to flood in the spring. The
adults always warned us kids to stay away from it, but it goes without saying that
we simply ignored them. It wasn’t a very deep or fast moving stream even during
the flooding season, but to us it seemed like the raging Mississippi River that had
been forced down our throats from reading school-required Mark Twain novels.
We used to carve small boats from twigs and sail them on the water.

What? You expected that to have more significance with current events?
Hey, look, I said that it reminded me of Wolf’s Run Park. I never once implied that
the story would be applicable in some way. I was giving you a look into my
childhood, the precious years when I was shaped and molded into the man I am
today. Growing up is both painful and difficult, and yet I still let you in to catch a
glimpse of my own personal experiences. You can be such an ungrateful bastard
at times.

Aww, I can’t stay mad at you, reader. I forgive you. Hug?

You know what we should do as sort of a makeup date? Let’s go bowling.

Oh, wait, no, how about mini-golf instead? A nice relaxing round of putt-putt
sounds like just the thing to renew the flame of our friendship. If you’re a guy,
that would make us bros again and we can go grab a beer afterward. If you’re a
woman, I know this great out of the way motel that we could hang out at for a few
hours, if you catch my meaning. If you’re a kid of either the male or female
persuasion, stop reading this book and go home and find Jesus!

Seriously, if you’re a chick, I can have a room ready to go in like twenty

minutes. Just let me know.

In a slightly longer amount of time than it had taken Matthew and me via
raft, we arrived at the hill overlooking the lake at the base of the hydroelectric
power plant. So far the weather had held, but it didn’t seem like that was going to
be the case for much longer. We were on the opposite bank from I had been the
last time, so unless we wanted to go for a swim, we were going to have to find
another way up the dam. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Matthew and I climbed up a ladder to reach the top yesterday,” I told

Heather. “I’m pretty sure we don’t want to do that in the rain, though. We should
find shelter to wait out the storm.”

She pointed towards the dam. “I think I see a door at the base of the wall,”
she said. “We might be able to go inside the dam itself.”

“If there are undead inside, we might have some issues.”

She shrugged. “If there are undead inside, we’ll just come back out, shut
the door, and look for shelter elsewhere.”

“Fair enough.”

It took us about ten minutes to reach the door that she had seen.
Apparently she had amazing vision because it almost totally blended in with the
wall. I couldn’t spot it until we were almost right on top of it. The door was
chained shut, which was actually a good thing as it meant that this particular
entrance to the plant had been penetrated by zombies.

Heh. I said penetrate.

The bad thing about a chained door, of course, was that it made it difficult
for us to get inside ourselves. Heather surprised me by pulling two twisted metal
pieces that appeared to have once been a part of a coat hanger out of her duty
belt and went to work on the lock with them. A few minutes passed, and I was
just about to offer to open the door my way (it was a very complicated and
involved process, but the short version was that I would take my axe and hit the
lock as hard as I could) when there was an audible click as the lock released.

“I had a roommate at the police academy that showed me how to pick

locks,” she explained as she pulled off the heavy chain. “I asked her to after I
watched her do it one night when we snuck into a public pool and…” She trailed
off with a sheepish smile.

“And?” I prompted.

“Let’s just say that I was experimenting a bit back then.”

Oh.

My.

God.

“Heather,” I said after a moment of speechlessness, “you are quite possibly

the hottest woman that I have ever known.”

She blushed. She actually blushed. “Let’s get inside before the rain starts.”

When we stepped inside I was shocked to find that the lights were on. The
power at the ranch and Parkersburg had been off almost since we had arrived.
Then I thought about it for a minute and realized that it wasn’t so strange after all.
It made sense that there would be an emergency power system in place, and it
made sense that it would be powered by some of the turbines that Matthew had
mentioned the previous day.
 We were apparently in some sort of maintenance room. There were
countless pipes running in every direction imaginable, and a closer inspection of
the floor revealed that it wasn’t actually a floor at all, but was instead a catwalk.
The lights themselves were large bulbs hanging from the ceiling inside of black
cage-like holders. It wasn’t hard to imagine that we had somehow wandered into
the bowels of a ship. After satisfying ourselves that we weren’t surrounded by
rampaging undead wielding chainsaws and wearing masks made of human skin,
we sat down on the catwalk and rested our aching legs.

“I’m almost disappointed that there aren’t any zombies,” Heather told me
as she massaged her neck. “I’m morbidly curious as to what you can do with that
monstrosity of an axe.”

“I am myself, actually,” I replied with a smile. “Theory is one thing, but

putting it into practice is quite another.”

“It certainly looks like it can do some damage.”

“Yes, yes it does.”

The rain continued for several hours. More out of boredom than any real
need, we wandered through the maintenance room and began to look at things
more closely. You don’t really have to go over things with a fine-tooth comb when
you’re looking for undead; they tend to stand out pretty well from the
surrounding environment. Now, though, what the hell, right? It was better than
sitting around doing nothing.

There wasn’t much to see. On one wall was a series of gauges that I’m sure
would have made sense to someone that was actually familiar with the dam, but
they could have been complicated thermostats for all I knew. Each one of them
could have been round little meters counting down to the end of the world, and I
would have simply stared at them blankly. I could only hope that doomsday
meter technology had not been invented yet and, if it had, that the world’s fate
was hinging on my ability to decipher such a device. The odds were good that it
wasn’t, but hey, what were the odds of the zombie apocalypse happening?

What did interest me, however, was the door we found on the opposite
wall. It was locked, although this one didn’t have a padlock and chain like the
outside door did. There was a simple keyhole in the doorknob and that was it.

“Someone’s opened this door recently,” Heather observed.

I raised an eyebrow. “How can you tell?”

She pointed down at the floor. “Look at the dust. There’s a trail left from
the door brushing against the floor. The rest of the area is undisturbed except
where we’ve been stepping.”

“I can definitely see how you made detective,” I told her, genuinely
impressed. At the same time I was mentally kicking myself. I should have made
the same observation. I really was out of shape, and not just physically. “So
someone opened the door, but didn’t actually step out onto the walkway.”

“I don’t think it was necessary. You can see the door leading outside from
here. The person probably just opened this door, glanced over to make sure that
the other one was still closed, and moved on.” She paused. “Do you think we
should check it out?”
 “You mean open this door and go inside?” I thought about it. “We don’t
know what’s inside, you know. We could open the door and find the room behind
it packed full of zombies.”

“Zombies that open and close doors?” she asked pointedly. “I think it’s
more likely that we’ll find other survivors inside that have barricaded themselves
into the power plant.”

“I’ll tell you what, let’s make it your decision. If you’re right about there
being people inside, we might be able to get some information, and if you’re
wrong I’ll get a chance to try out my spiffy new axe. It’s all the same to me. So,
yeah, your choice.”

Heather thought about it for a moment before shaking her head. “No, let’s
just leave it alone. You’re right, there might be undead swarming the place for all
we know, and even if there are survivors, they might not be inclined to be friendly
towards us. There’s no sense in taking chances.” She glanced over my shoulder.
“Besides, it looks like the rain is finally stopping.”

We waited a few minutes to make sure that the rain actually was abating
and it wasn’t just a pause in the action. Once we were satisfied that we wouldn’t
get soaked, we continued our search for a way to the top of the wall. It took
nearly an hour, but finally we came to a bolted-on ladder identical to the one that
Matthew and I had climbed the day before.

The climb was quite a bit more difficult this time around, and I was glad that
we had waited until the storm had passed to attempt it. I was only able to use
one arm as the other was busy holding the axe, and since the rungs were still a bit
slick I had to go excruciatingly slow. Meanwhile, Heather, who had started up first,
climbed like a squirrel and reached the top well ahead of me. She took a look
around and, apparently satisfied that the legions of the dead weren’t close
enough to cause problems, started looking down at me impatiently. Finally, after
an amount of time that would have made a thousand-year-old oak tree cringe at
the length, I arrived at the top of the dam and caught my breath.

Not only were the legions of the dead not close enough to cause problems,
there weren’t any. I reflected that it was a probably a good thing that they
weren’t here to greet us, as my arms and legs were fairly sore at this point. As I
leaned against the safety railing, though, I felt the strength start to flow back into
them, and my chest stopped heaving as I returned to a more normal breathing
rate. I stood up straight and took a better look around.

This section of the dam’s top had also been turned into a road, although
there weren’t more than a few abandoned cars nearby. Unlike the section that
Matthew and I had briefly explored, however, this part was cut even with the
surrounding countryside. Heather and I stepped over the guardrail on the
opposite side of the street and walked parallel to the road. The ground was soggy
and squished under our feet, but we both remembered our stroll through the
turnpike back in Ohio and wanted to keep our distance from the vehicles
themselves.

After walking for a bit, we came to a town that, according to the wooden
sign standing next to the road, was named Aurora Falls. The sign itself was tilted
backward as if something had struck it, and whatever it was had left a bloody
smear across the white paint. There was no body to be seen, however, so either
someone had collected it or it had simply gotten up and walked away. Come to
think of it, both of those possibilities were valid in this day and age.

“Well, no point in standing around here,” I told my companion. “Let’s go

see the sights of scenic Aurora Falls.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kill Counter- 313

“Scenic” might have been the wrong word to use. As it turned out, Aurora
Falls didn’t have all that much to see. It was a small town that seemed like it
would have been more appropriate somewhere in New England than in Montana.
The homes and shops all appeared to have been transported from the late 1700s,
although they were all still in fairly good shape. The rain from earlier was gone,
but a light fog had begun to cover the ground.

“I feel like I’m in a M. Night Shyamalan movie,” Heather commented as we

moved deeper into the city.

“Is it because sometimes you see dead people?” I asked innocently.

She snorted. “Yeah, sometimes I see dead people that are trying to eat me.
I mean because of the way this town looks. It just seems so…out of place.”

“I know what you mean. I keep expecting to run into undead lobster
fishermen. There are towns like this all over the place, though. When I was a kid,
I visited a place that looked kind of like this in Utah. Besides, we’re not here for
the architecture. Let’s keep looking.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Heather asked suddenly. “You don’t
really expect me to buy that bullshit about needing more information, do you?”

I shook my head with a smile. “Always the detective,” I replied ruefully.

“We actually should get some information about the surrounding areas and these
new Apexes, but no, that wasn’t my real reason.”

What was my real reason, anyway? The old way of thinking screamed at me
that it was because I needed to become a more effective killer, and for that I
needed to know everything there was to know about my prey. But was that the
real reason, the bottom line reason? If I was honest with myself…no, no it wasn’t.
Ah hell, I really was going soft.

“It’s a matter of our little group’s survival,” I told Heather truthfully. “If we
start finding Apexes in greater numbers than one or two at a time, we won’t
survive. Not if we’re living the way that we are now. The people back at the
ranch…they aren’t trained fighters. They don’t have that killer instinct that you
have to have when something is coming at you with murder in its eyes. Don’t get
me wrong, they’re good people, and I consider them all to be family, but the only
possible outcome in an encounter with a large group of Apexes would be death.”

She regarded me with an unreadable expression on her face. “So we’re

here…?”

“We’re here to find other survivors, people that can help protect them.” As
I said it, I realized that it was the truth. Damn this zombie apocalypse, it was
turning me into a caring human being! I sighed internally. Oh well, there were
worse things in life. I could have turned into a lawyer. “At this point there’s a lot
of truth in the old saying that there’s safety in numbers.”

“Why didn’t you just say this in the first place at the ranch?”

“I didn’t have the heart to tell everyone that they were potentially fucked.”
 I turned to continue walking, but she reached out and took my hand.

“James, you said that they don’t have a killer instinct,” she said with that
same indecipherable look. “That implies that you and I do. I do because of my
police training. Why do you?”

Uh oh, this wasn’t good. I couldn’t just tell her the truth, now could I? I
couldn’t tell her, “Well, you see, before all these zombies came and I put them at
the top of my priority list, I was a notorious serial killer, but don’t worry, I don’t
want to kill people anymore.” I would imagine that would be a bit off-putting, to
say the least. How should I respond?

She took the need for a lie away from me. “Okay, you don’t have to answer
that,” she said, perhaps noticing my hesitation. “I…I get the feeling that you did
some bad things before all this happened, or you had some bad things done to
you, or maybe both. You don’t have to tell me about it. But I know the person
that you are now, James, and you’re a good person. You could have just left me at
that gas station, but you didn’t. You could have told Sarah that she couldn’t come
with us, but you didn’t. You could have left Matthew, Mark, and Maggie to fend
for themselves in Lewiston, but you didn’t. What you did in the past doesn’t
matter. All that matters is that you’re here for us now.”

I stared at her for a long moment, not able to find my voice. Finally I said,
“They were some really bad things.”

Heather nodded slowly. “I figured. It doesn’t matter now, though. You’re

using the experience from those…things to help people that you care about.
We’re all grateful for that.” She made a face. “Even if you’re kind of fucked up in
the head sometimes.” She was teasing, I knew.

I wasn’t sure what to think as we made our way into Aurora Falls’
downtown area. There had never been any doubt in my mind that Heather was
rather intelligent and highly observant, but for her to put the pieces together as
tightly as she had made me realize that I had been underestimating her. I had
focused so much of my attention on Sarah while trying to craft her in my own
image (which I now realized would never really happen) that I hadn’t noticed
anything amiss with Heather. Score one for the ex-cop.

Even more mindboggling was that, after coming to the conclusions that she
did, she wasn’t repulsed by them. She simply dismissed all of it as old information
and chose to focus on the current data streaming into her brain computer. She
even took it a step further and chose to tell me all of this. She could have kept her
thoughts and opinions to herself, but instead she had gone out of her way to tell
me that she was fond of me and grateful for the things that I did for her and the
others. I had no idea how to feel about that kind of reaction.

Aurora Falls’ main road ended at the steps of a large church that was easily
the largest building in town. Like the other structures, it was distinctly
reminiscent of New England-style architecture, right down to the tall steeple
complete with bell. The large wooden doors were closed and locked, but through
the stained glass windows we could see some sort of flickering light much like a
candle would give off. Knocking on the door didn’t produce any results. I
examined the sign next to the right door.

“’The Church of the Undying Spirit’,” I read quietly. “How cheerful.”

 “I’ve never heard of it before,” Heather commented as she glanced
nervously over her shoulder. “Does it say which denomination it is?”

“No. It just lists the name.” I looked closer. “This sign is actually carved out
of wood.”

“Why is that important?”

“I think it means that this isn’t the original sign. The original was probably
manufactured like most church signs are.”

We walked back down the stone path to the street and backtracked to the
nearest intersection. There was only one way to turn, left, so we continued in that
direction. There was evidence of a massive attack from the undead all around us.
There were more of the same kind of bloody smears we had seen on the welcome
sign on the outskirts of town, and almost every ground floor window seemed to
be broken. More than a few doors had been broken off the hinges and were lying
wherever they happened to fall. Five or six cars had been flipped onto their sides
or roofs. They were like silent statues lining the street.

As was the case at the church, the road dead ended at a building, only this
time it was a public library. Its doors had been reduced to twisted heaps of metal
and glass. We climbed the steps and found that just inside the entryway were a
number of bookcases that had been pushed over and nearly broken in half. It
appeared as if someone had attempted to barricade themselves inside the library,
but clearly the defenses hadn’t worked. Wordlessly, I climbed over the wreckage
and stepped inside before turning and helping Heather to do the same.

There was blood everywhere. Bookcases and the tomes that they
contained were covered in the red stuff, although it was old enough to have
turned black at this point. The desk that the librarian would have used to check
out books for people was particularly nasty. It was almost as if someone had
decided that the local paint store didn’t offer quite the right color, so they decided
to simply redecorate with buckets of blood instead. There were no bodies to go
with the gore, however. We searched the entire library from front to back, but
besides more blood we didn’t find anything.

“There’s something very wrong with this place,” Heather commented

nervously as we returned to the library’s lobby area. “You realized that there are
no bodies, right?”

I nodded my confirmation.

“Do you think that the Apexes did this?” she followed up, unconsciously
using my term.

“If they did,” I answered slowly, “we’re in more trouble than we thought.
All this blood…there were a lot of people in here.” I looked out the remains of the
library’s front door and I felt my eyes widen slightly. “Maybe they can tell us what
happened.”

Standing just at the top of the stairs leading down to the sidewalk were six
men, all of whom were dressed in long black coats and black wide-brimmed hats.
They weren’t moving at all, just standing there looking in at us. At least I thought
that they were looking at us. The hats that they were wearing completely covered
their faces in shadow. For what seemed like hours we simply stared back at them,
neither group apparently wanting to make the first move, when finally one of the
mystery men stepped forward and removed his hat to reveal a face of about sixty
with a short white beard.

“Greetings, friends,” he said in an oddly formal tone. “We’re sorry if we

startled you. We saw you go into the library and wanted to be sure that you were
truly alive before we approached you.” He smiled wryly. “These are troubled
times, after all. Very troubled indeed.”

“We can understand your hesitation,” Heather replied diplomatically. She

shot me a look that said something along the lines of, There’s six of them and two
of us, we have to be careful. “May I ask who you are?”

The old man motioned towards his companions. “We are members of the
Church of the Undying Spirit. My name is Father Ezekiel, and I’m the reverend of
our branch of the Church. And you are…?”

She looked at me again, and I gave her a small nod. “My name is Heather,
and his name is James. It’s good to meet you, Father.”

“What brings you folks to our little town?”

The tone he used was nothing more than a mixture of politeness and
curiosity, but I caught a whiff of something else in the brew as well.

“We’re just refugees, Father,” I answered with a shrug. “We were separated
from the rest of our group by a pack of undead and have been wandering around
ever since. We just came in here to find a place to rest, but it looks like this isn’t
as safe of a building as we thought.”

He smiled at us again. “Oh, well then, please, come back with us to the
church. We have food and water to share, and warm beds for you to rest in. It
isn’t far.”

Heather and I exchanged yet another look. All this non-verbal

communication was starting to become something of a habit. I suppose that it
was more convenient than, say, smoke signals. What my psychic mindreading
powers were telling me this time was that neither of us felt like we had much
choice in the matter.

“We would be glad to,” Heather told our would-be host. “Thank you for the
hospitality. It’s rare these days.”

He motioned for us to follow as he put back on his hat. “As I said, my dear,
these are troubled times. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t give charity where
it’s needed, however.”

As we all made our way back to the church that Heather and I had visited
previously, the five men accompanying Father Ezekiel remained silent. The good
reverend, however, didn’t seem to be bothered by the prospect of zombies
overhearing the noise and continued talking as we walked.

“We just recently came to Aurora Falls ourselves,” he stated as we moved

through the silent fog. “The Church of the Undying Spirit is mostly based out of
the southeast, but when the dead began to rise, a number of us were sent out on
missionary assignments. It’s in times of crisis that the word of God must be made
loudest, after all.” He looked at me and smiled, and I returned the sentiment just
to keep him talking.

“Anyway,” he continued, “we arrived here a month or so ago and found that
most of the townspeople had already left or been consumed by the undead. The
church was relatively undamaged, so we took up residence there and have been
performing our missionary duties from there ever since.” He shook his head with
a chuckle. “Not that there have been many poor souls to help yet. I’ve sent
people into the surrounding towns to pass along word that we’re here. News
travels rather slowly without the assistance of electronic devices, I’m afraid.”

We reached the church and walked up the stairs to the locked doors. One
of the silent men reached into the folds of his coat and produced a key, which he
turned in the lock with a loud click. He pushed the door open and held it for the
rest of us. We stepped into the entryway, and he closed the door behind him.

Father Ezekiel seemed to notice the axe I was carrying for the first time.
“I’m afraid that we don’t allow weapons past this point,” he told me
apologetically. “Don’t misunderstand me, I completely understand the need for
them in the outside world, but here this is still a house of the Lord. You can put it
in one of the coat closets if you like.” His gaze moved to Heather. “The same goes
for your rifle and sidearm, my dear.

I actually didn’t like it at all, thank you very much, but I was careful to keep
my face neutral as I set the weapons just inside the door one of the indicated
closets. Normally I would feel naked without the presence of a weapon, but
unbeknownst to Father Ezekiel and his followers (and Heather, for that matter), I
wasn’t totally unarmed. Tucked away safely in my pack was the brush knife that I
had borrowed from Sarah. Well, borrowed might be misrepresenting things just a
tad. “Blatantly stole” is probably closer to the mark. She had never used it
anyway, and I doubted that she even remembered that she still had the thing.
 A pair of wooden doors stood open in front of us, and I looked inside. The
sanctuary looked like pretty much every other sanctuary that I had ever been in.
There was a long carpet that ran from the door to the foot of the pulpit. A small
series of raised benches sat on one side, most likely for a choir, and in the center
stood a wooden podium. Rows of stained glass windows lined the walls, and
twenty pews, ten on each side of the isle, faced towards the podium like they
were eagerly awaiting a sermon. Tucked into slots on the back of each of the
pews were copies of the Bible and red-covered books that I assumed were
hymnals.

“We have a service every morning just after dawn if you would like to
attend,” Father Ezekiel told me as I looked into the room. “Attendance isn’t
mandatory, of course, but it’s there if you need it. I find it can be rather
comforting to look to your soul for answers when the world has gone topsy turvy.”

That was a unique way of putting it.

“We’ve got sleep areas set up in the basement,” he continued, waving a

hand towards the stairs to our right. “If you’d like to go down and relax for a bit,
maybe freshen up in the bathrooms, feel free. We don’t have electricity, of
course, but we’ve set up some water basins in the bathrooms that we change
daily and there are candles lit downstairs that you can take in with you.” He took
off his hat once again. “I’ve got some church business to attend to for a bit, but I’ll
be down in about an hour to join you for dinner.”

The six coat-wearing men went into the sanctuary and closed the doors. I
immediately darted over to them and pressed my ear up against the hard wood,
but it was thick enough that I couldn’t hear anything through it. Ah well, it was
worth a try. Before we started down the stairs, I opened the coat closet door and
withdrew my axe from its extremely temporary place of storage.

“I’ll feel better if it’s hidden somewhere nearby,” I muttered to Heather as

we descended the stairs into the church basement. “I don’t want to have to
coming running all the way upstairs for it if there’s a problem.”

“Father Ezekiel won’t like it if he finds out,” she warned me.

“I can always apologize later. He’s a man of God, he’s required to forgive
me.”

We reached the bottom of the stairs and found ourselves in a long hallway
lined with doors. Candles had been set up in holders down the length of the
corridor, providing enough light to see and enough shadows to give off that creepy
horror movie vibe. I walked around the side of the stairs and found nothing but a
brick wall. I opened the men’s room door and took a look inside. When I didn’t
see what I was looking for, I moved on to the ladies’ room. Perfect. There was a
small couch that had been placed inside for whatever reason women needed a
couch in the bathroom. I slid the axe under the couch and went back out into the
hall.

I felt a burning need to know something. “Heather, why is there a couch in

the women’s bathroom?” I asked. “I mean, in places like churches and office
buildings there always seems to be furniture in them. Why is that?”

She shrugged and half-smiled. “Sometimes we need a comfortable place to

sit while we bitch about guys,” she stated matter-of-factly.
 She was kidding. Wasn’t she? I looked closer at her face as it was
illuminated in the candlelight. Yeah, okay, she was joking…wasn’t she? Once
again I felt like being born with a penis meant that men were left out of some
universal joke.

The sleeping areas appeared to have been small classrooms that were
converted into what could loosely be termed bedrooms. They each contained
four cots with pillows and blanks neatly folded on top; we chose one that
appeared to have been used primarily for toddlers. The sun and white puffy
clouds were drawn on the walls, and there were handprints painted on the back
of the door. There were even a few pairs of tiny shoes in some of the cubby holes.

“It’s hard sometimes,” Heather stated in a weary voice.

I set down my backpack and plopped down onto one of the cots. “What
is?” I asked.

“Knowing that so many lives have been ended during this nightmare.” She
walked over to one of the cubbies and removed a small tennis shoe. She held it
almost tenderly. “There were children here for Sunday school. They painted their
handprints on that door.” Her lower lip began to quiver slightly. “They must have
loved doing that. Every day they were told by their parents not to draw on the
wall, but this time they were actually allowed to paint on one.”

I remained silent. This was a side of Heather that I hadn’t really had many
glimpses of. Most of the time, she exuded that aura of strength that you only felt
when in the presence of a soldier or officer of the law. She was a woman, yes, and
an attractive one at that, but the first thing that came to mind when your eyes
landed on her was that she wasn’t a person that you wanted to mess with.

Every so often, though, her emotions showed through the armor, and it was
at those times that I most appreciated her humanity. In fact, I was extremely glad
for it. She proved that just because I was becoming more of a human being, it
didn’t mean that I was going to turn into a pussy.

“If there are shoes on the shelves, it that means that they were here, in this
room, when something happened that made them leave,” she said quietly as she
closed her eyes. She wasn’t crying, and I knew that she wouldn‘t fully break
down, but she was close. “Made them leave or…they didn’t leave. They might
have…”

She never finished the sentence, but she didn’t have to. The implications
were there: a very real possibility existed that small children had been killed inside
this very room. I lowered my eyes to stare at the floor. Even when I had been
rather open-minded about the people I selected for my jollies, I had never chosen
a child. The thought of ending the life of a child was…well, it was unthinkable. It
was probably one of the reasons that I had found myself growing protective of
Maggie over the last nine months or so.

Heather gently put the shoe back in the cubby. “Let’s go find another room
to stay in, okay?” She glared at me with sudden heat, like she was challenging me
to say anything about her emotional state.

“Yeah, absolutely,” I replied, picking up the backpack and standing. As we

were leaving, I turned to take one last look at the room. If there was such a thing
as ghosts, I knew, this would be the kind of place that they would haunt. I closed
the door gently. What I hadn’t told her, and I never would, was that I could tell
that the handprints on the door hadn’t been made with red paint.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kill Counter- 313

Just under an hour later, after we had taken up temporary residence in what
had once been an office, there was a knock at our door. I opened it to find one of
the men that had escorted us from the library to the church. He was no longer
wearing his long black coat and hat; instead, he was garbed in a simple black robe.
His blond hair was cropped in a short military-style crew cut, and his face was
shockingly pale.

“Father Ezekiel asked me to inform you that dinner has been prepared for
you both and will be brought down to you shortly,” he said respectfully. “He also
wanted me to pass on that he regrets that he will not be able to join you this
evening. A group of pilgrims arrived moments ago. He promises that you’ll be
able to speak with him again tomorrow morning at breakfast after services.”

“We look forward to it,” I replied politely. I closed the door as he returned to the
upstairs area.

“It looks like we’re not his new best friends anymore,” Heather commented
as I returned to my cot. She was idly examining the contents of a filing cabinet
that had been shoved into one corner to make room.

“Apparently not,” I agreed.

She closed the cabinet drawer and crossed her arms as she turned to face
me. “What do you think about all of this, James? What’s your gut instinct on
Father Ezekiel and his Church of the Undying Spirit?”

“I’m not sure what to think,” I admitted with a shrug. “From all outward
appearances, they seem to be legit. The story Father Ezekiel told us about coming
to Montana in a missionary capacity makes sense. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit
that religion isn’t my strong point, but is it really all that different from, say, the
Vatican sending missionaries to third world countries after a natural disaster?”

“No, I suppose not.” She shook her head. “There’s just something about
this place that doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not sure what it is.” She shook her
head again, this time harder than before as if she was trying to clear it. “Maybe
it’s just the way the downstairs area looks with all the candles and whatnot. It
reminds me of those old vampire movies that took place in castles.”

I looked at her thoughtfully. “First Sarah with the zombie movies, now you
with the vampire ones. If the world ever gets back on track, I’m taking you both
to see some quality films.” I licked my lips thoughtfully. “Don’t dismiss that
paranoia just yet, though. I said that their story makes sense, not that I believe it.”

“So you don’t think these guys are on the up and up?”

“Let’s just say that I’m keeping my options open.” I stood up and walked
over to the door. Being careful to move slowly, I opened it a crack and looked out
into the hall. When I was satisfied that we were still alone, I closed it and
retrieved my backpack. “I’ve got something here that you’re not going to like,
Heather, but I want you to find some way to hide it on you without announcing
that you’ve got it.”

I withdrew the brush knife from my pack and unsheathed it. Heather’s eyes
widened as the blade caught the candlelight. Then they narrowed as the gears
started turning in her mind.

“I see that your cop senses are tingling,” I commented wryly. “Let’s get the
easy questions out of the way first. No, this isn’t for killing zombies. It would suck
for that. Yes, it’s for killing people. It would be rather good at that. No, I haven’t
had the occasion to take it for a test drive.” I paused. “The next question isn’t so
easy, is it? It’s one of the harder ones.

“Why would I be carrying around a large knife for the sole purpose of killing
living people? You told me earlier today that you believed that I had done some
bad things in my life.” I drew a deep breath. “I confirmed that, and I’m confirming
it again. The thing is, I wasn’t exactly the only bad person running around in this
crazy little world. You were a cop, you know what I mean. If our little group ran
into some of those people…well, hence the need for a knife.”

“I don’t like the idea of packing a deadly weapon for the express purpose of
killing someone,” Heather admonished.

“It’s the world we live in now,” I countered. “You, me, Sarah, Matthew,
Mark, even Maggie…we’ve all seen the big picture. We realize that working
together is the best way to ride out this whole zombie apocalypse bullshit. There
are other people out in the world that won’t see it that way. They will take what
we’ve worked for by force and not give a shit about the consequences. We have
to be ready to defend ourselves from anything that threatens us, even other living
breathing human beings.”

Her face grew hard and it looked for a moment like she was going to
protest, but she just shook her head in frustration instead. “Okay, fine, whatever.
Why do I have to be the one to carry the knife, though? Why can’t you?”

“Three reasons.” I ticked them off on my fingers as I went down the list.
“First, you’re a woman. I know that’s a shocking revelation, but it makes you less
likely to be searched thoroughly out of a sense of propriety. At least by these
Church of the Undying Spirit guys. You being a rather shapely woman might give
others an incentive.”

“Why thank you. That was almost flattering.”

“Second, people seem to take more of a liking to you than me. With my
charming wit and stunning personality, I think you’ll agree that it’s strange that’s
the case, but it is. People might be expecting me to be packing a few surprises,
but I doubt they’ll think you will be.

“Last but certainly not least, I’m guessing that you were trained in hand-to-
hand combat at the police academy, right?”

The question seemed to catch her off-guard. “Well, yes, I was,” she
answered.

“And that was the only formal training that you had? No self-defense
training, karate classes when you were young, anything like that?”

“No, nothing like that. What’s your point?”

I crossed my arms and laid back on the cot. “My point is that I’ve had more
training in close-quarter combat than you have. From the time I was ten up until I
was eighteen, I took jujitsu classes, and I have quite a bit of real life experience
being up close and personal with people that want to rearrange my body in
various ways. I’ll be able to concentrate on what I’m doing more if I know you’re
covered.”

“Aww, see? You do care.”

The meal that was brought to us consisted completely of water and

vegetables. The same man that had informed us of Father Ezekiel’s inability to
join us was our waiter for the evening, and he told us that all the food had been
grown on the church grounds. There apparently wasn’t much game in the area,
so meat was hard to come by. I was most definitely a carnivore and would have
given quite a bit for a nice juicy steak, but alas, it was not to be. Still, I had to
admit that the glorified salad had been prepared quite well, and my tray was soon
empty. Heather, who, unlike myself, actually had some dignity at the dinner table,
was a few minutes more finishing up.

I told her that I was heading to the bathroom when I slipped out the door.
That was a blatant lie. I realized that I was changing for what most people would
consider the better, but let’s face it, I was never going to be a full-fledged good
little Catholic schoolboy. Heck, the whole “I’m a jujitsu master, fear my ninja
powers!” had been a complete falsehood. If I had to weave a few little white lies,
then so-

Oh, hey, whoa, hold that thought. I guess that I really did need to use the
bathroom.

Ever tried to pee in a public bathroom with only a candle lighting the stall? I
was lucky that I didn’t step out of the bathroom looking like someone had blasted
my jeans with a fire hose.

Now then, with the biological portion of my expedition into the bowels of
the church over, where was I?

Ah, yes, I was saying that I didn’t actually have to use the bathroom, that it
was just a lie to get me out…of the…

Oh.

Well, in any case, the urination made my bladder happy. Now it was time to
make my rather curious squirming brain feel satisfied. It wouldn’t look good to
the other organs if I showed favoritism towards one simply because it could
control if I would make an oopsie. It was now to the point where I needed to
remember what the dormouse said. It was time to feed my head.

I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. It was more of a general

snooping session. This meant, of course, that I wouldn’t be staying in the
basement area. If this so-called Church of the Undying Spirit was hiding anything,
it wouldn’t be located in the same place they had us sleeping. It would be
upstairs, possibly in the sanctuary or the adjoining rooms. Maybe I would find a
thousand murdered virgins inside the baptismal font. Or perhaps I would uncover
a giant conspiracy to turn all the Communion wafers into atomic weapons.

This is the Body of Christ, spreading dangerous levels of radiation for you.

I paused to listen at the base of the stairs. For a long moment there was
nothing, but just as I was about to head up to the next floor, I heard the sound of
a heavy door banging open. I thought about hurrying back to the room where
Heather and I were staying. I realized that this was too good of an opportunity,
though, so I pulled back as far as I could into the shadows.

“Are our guests settled in?” a voice said from near the top of the stairwell.

“Yes, Father Ezekiel,” a second man assured him. I recognized it as the voice
of the gentleman who had brought us dinner.

“Excellent. Hopefully they’ll get a good night’s sleep and join us at morning
service.” Yeah, right, like that had a chance of happening. “And our newest
pilgrims?”

“They are with Brother Kevin, being prepared for their ascension.”

Prepared for their ascension? The carnival sideshow in me immediately

offered up an image of a Plymouth Rock pilgrim being loaded up into a cannon.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages! Behold the amazing
Flying Puritan as he is shot across the big top! And be sure to stay afterward for
the always impressive Bearded Jew Lady!

“Good,” Brother Ezekiel continued. “Gather up the others. It’s time for
evening observances. Meet me outside in five minutes.” There was a pause.
“You’d best go lock our guests into their room.”

“They might not like that, Father,” the other man replied dubiously.

“They might not, no. Still, it’s for safety reasons, so I’m sure that they’ll
understand.”

“Yes, Father.”
 I turned and darted back down the hallway as fast as I could without
allowing my footfalls to make a huge amount of noise. Heather jumped as I flew
into the office-turned-bedroom and quickly closed the door behind me. I raised a
finger to my lips to silence the inevitable question and sat down on my cot. A
moment later there was a knock, and I calmly stood up again to answer it.

“Yes?” I asked smoothly.

“I’ve come to tell you that I’ll be locking you into your room now,” the man
said. I noticed that he had donned his wide-brimmed hat and black coat once
more. “It’s for your own safety. The undead in this area are more active at night.
If one gets into the church, this will at least provide you with some defense.”

That was the best that he could come up with? The undead might
somehow get past the large and heavy doors of the church, wander into the
basement, and somehow be stymied by a much flimsier office door that even had
a glass window in it? Perhaps the thin shade that blocked the view into the room
was somehow amazing anti-zombie technology that I hadn’t even considered. If
Superman’s weakness was a glowing green rock, maybe that wasn’t such a
ludicrous claim.

“Oh, sure, absolutely,” I answered with a forced smile. My eyes, however,

flicked warningly towards Heather. Her mouth was already partly open, but she
quickly shut it as she caught my look.

Mere mortals were powerless in the presence of our psychic

communication, so Hat Man merely smiled back and nodded. “I’ll be back in the
morning before services to unlock the door and bring you breakfast. Have a good
night.”

There was a loud click as the door was locked from the outside. I waited for
the sounds of his footsteps to fade away. I counted to fifty before finally nodding.

“I’m going to give it ten minutes, and then I’m going back out to have a look
around,” I told her. “I need you to do that voodoo you do to the door’s lock.”

Heather nodded and began to rummage around inside her duty belt for her
lock picks. “I take it you didn’t find anything out while you were skulking around
in the hallway when you told me that you were going to the bathroom?” she
asked with a tug of a smile at the edge of her lips.

“I was that transparent?”

“You’re a good liar, James, but I was a police detective, remember? I’m
good at weeding out the bullshit.”

“Okay, fine, I bow to your superior deductive skills.”

“I’m glad that you admit the superiority of women. I don’t care if that’s not
what you said, it’s what I heard.” She produced the picks and strapped the belt
around her waist. “You realize that I’m only picking this lock if I’m coming with
you.”

I sighed heavily. “Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that, but I figured
it was worth a shot. First thing we’ll do is pick up my axe and your guns. You
never know when we might have to put down rampaging elderly bingo player.”

“What are we looking for?”

 “Anything and everything. Any sort of evidence that there’s something else
going on here than what the Padre has told us.”

The candles had burned down significantly by the time we finally emerged
from the office. Despite myself, I felt a bit of that old charge running through my
system. When I extracted my little toy from underneath the women‘s room
couch, that charge switched over into straight-up déjà vu. Skulking around in dark
hallways was certainly something that I was familiar with. Give me a mask and a
twisty mustache and I could have passed for a cartoon villain.

We hit our first snag after we ascended the stairs and went to the closet
where we had stored the firearms. The weapons weren’t there anymore.
Apparently, the choir boys either didn’t trust us not to follow their strict no-
dangerous-objects-in-the-church policy (not exactly an unfounded fear given the
circumstances), or there was some other reason they didn’t want us armed. It
was a good thing that I had moved the axe downstairs when I had. The deducting
part of my brain pointed out that whoever had taken the weapons hadn’t been
present when we placed them in the closet. Otherwise, my firefighting tool would
have been missed.

That, in turn, meant that there were at least, what, seven members of this
particular branch of the Church of the Undying Spirit. The six that had we had first
encountered at the library, and the one that had taken the guns. Hopefully it
wouldn’t come down to a fight because those weren’t the best odds in the world.

“Oh, sure, you get the giant axe and all I’ve got is a gardening tool and my
fingernails,” Heather said with one of her trademark snorts.
 “Maybe you can cut them with your razor-sharp wit,” I said without a trace
of a smile. “Okay, so, let’s check the sanctuary first. I didn’t see anything out of
the ordinary when I peeked earlier, but let’s take a closer look just to be sure.”

The heavy wooden doors leading into the sanctuary were closed. This
might have presented a problem to a mere mortal, but I had acquired the unique
and almost superhuman ability to turn a doorknob. Summoning all of my power, I
reached out with my mighty hand and twisted the knob. This was only the first
step, however, and it wasn’t until I applied all of my craftiness to the problem that
I came to the conclusion that I also had to pull. I gave a godlike heave, and the
door swung open. I was victorious once again.

“What was that look you just made as you were opening the door?”
Heather asked, an odd expression on her face.

“Oh, uh, nothing. Just a stray thought.”

The sanctuary looked just as it had when I had stuck my head in earlier. We
cautiously made our way up the center aisle, keeping our eyes open so that some
crazed parishioner wouldn’t be able to jump out from under a pew and maul us.
That happens, you know. You’re at church and minding your own business when
WHAM, an insane guy wearing his Sunday best comes out of nowhere and
assaults you with the Old Testament. It’s always the Old Testament, too, never the
New Testament. That’s because the vengeful “Do what I say or I’ll smite your
punk ass” God resides in that set of books, while the New Testament only sports
the happy-go-lucky “Love thy neighbor or I’ll wag this finger disapprovingly at
you” God.
 As we approached the altar, I got the feeling that something wasn’t right. I
had no idea what that something was, but I had the sensation nonetheless.
Nothing seemed to be out of place or even the slightest bit out of the ordinary.
It’s maddening when that happens, isn’t it? I thought about saying something to
Heather, but what would I say exactly? “Hey, something’s wrong. Or maybe not.
But I think so. I just don’t know what exactly. Okay?”

We reached the stairs leading up to the altar and ascended them. There
was nothing that stood out about the pulpit, yet that same warning bell kept
dinging in the back of my head. On the top of the podium was an open Bible.
Clearly this wasn’t what had me on edge because I hadn’t been able to actually
see the thing until I was standing next to it. Still, my curiosity demanded that I
take a closer look, so I leaned over and began to read a section that was marked
with yellow highlighter.

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom;
and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and
many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his
resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

It was Matthew 28:50-53, if you’re keeping score at home. How absolutely…well,

relevant. There was a bookmark, so naturally I flipped to it. Once again there was
a highlighted section, this time Zechariah 14:12, and once again I exercised my
reading muscles.

Now this will be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the peoples who
have gone to war against Jerusalem; their flesh will rot while they stand on their
feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their
mouth. On that day a large-scale panic from the LORD will spread among them.
One person will grab the hand of another, and one will attack the other.

It wasn’t hard to see where this was going. Another bookmark, and suddenly we
were back in the book of Matthew for the wonderful Matthew 8:28.

When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two
demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that
no one could pass that way.

Oh, look, a third Matthew quote. Matthew 10:8, to be precise.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out
demons. Freely you have received, freely give.

The “raise the dead” part was underlined in addition to being highlighted.
That was like being super emphasized. One last bookmark to go. I’m still not sure
to this day if it actually meant anything, but the highlighter that had marked this
particular passage was green. From Revelation 20:13:

The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And
all were judged according to their deeds.

I had rather quickly learned two things: Matthew (the Biblical figure, not the
one-eyed giant) had seen a few too many late night movies, and whoever had
marked these passages had a rather unique interpretation of what was
happening. Since it was sitting on the pulpit, it wasn’t too hard to guess who the
mystery marker was. The sense of unease grew within me.

“James, come take a look at this,” Heather said from behind me.
 I turned away from my light reading and joined her in front of the large
cross at the rear of the altar. It was one of those crosses that featured the image
of Jesus, garbed in torn cloth and a crown of thorns placed on his head, hanging
from it. I had never really been this close to one before, and I was amazed at how
lifelike it was. I shook my head. And people called me warped and morbid.

“Does this look right to you?” she asked.

“You’re asking me if the central figure of the largest religion in the world
nailed to a lowercase T looks right to me?” I responded, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, hilarious. Something doesn’t look right here, but I can’t put my
finger on it. Am I right or am I crazy?”

“Something didn’t seem right about this area of the sanctuary when we
were approaching it,” I admitted.

For a moment we stood there, staring. She got it an instant before I did.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” she whispered as she quickly turned away and covered
her mouth.

“I don’t think that’s right,” I disagreed. “This is a real dead body, but I can’t
imagine that it’s actually Jesus.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kill Counter- 313

In the Bible that I had just flipped through, somewhere towards the
beginning it spoke about how man was created in God’s image. First there was
Adam, whose rib was used to create Eve. They had some romping adventures
around a place called the Garden of Eden until finally they were kicked out for
eating an apple. The important part of that, though, was that God took time out
of his busy schedule to craft human beings to be like him in some small way.

This was the first instance of man trying to shape man like God that I could recall
hearing about.

“What does this mean?” Heather asked rhetorically.

I’ve never been one to let a little rhetoric stand in my way, however, so I
went ahead and answered her anyway. “I’m pretty sure it means that Father
Ezekiel and his Church of the Undying Spirit are a bunch of sick fucks,” I stated
matter-of-factly.

“Why would they do this, though?” She looked back at the crucified corpse,
but she quickly looked away again. “What’s the point of it?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. Besides the part about them being sick fucks, I
mean.”

I glanced back at the sanctuary. It was clearly night outside as the stained
glass windows were darkened; the only light came from the rows of candles
flickering in their holders. With the shadows dancing in every direction and the
corners of the room dim, it didn’t really look like a place that worshipped the Lord
anymore. It appeared almost alive.

“We’ve got three choices,” I told her quietly. For some reason, hushed
tones seemed to be called for. “We can go back to our room in the basement, we
can leave the church now before they get back, or we can keep looking around.”

“We have to keep going,” Heather responded immediately. “We’re less

than a day away from the ranch. If we don’t figure out exactly what’s going on
here, it could mean trouble for everyone down the line if they find out that we
live so close to them.”

“I hadn’t even considered that. Good thinking. Let’s keep going.”

Behind the altar and Life Size Jesus with Kung-Fu Grip, a set of stairs led
down a few feet and ended at a door. Opening it and walking through, we found
ourselves in what appeared to be some sort of parlor. If I had to take a guess, I
would say that it was probably intended for post-service gatherings. You know,
mingling with other church members while sucking down cheap fruit punch and
munching on stale cookies, that sort of thing. My suspicion was somewhat
confirmed when we found a door leading into a small kitchen a moment later.
Only a few candles burned in this room, all of which were placed in brass
candleholders.

Unless you consider pea-green throw pillows sitting on uncomfortable-

looking chairs important, there wasn’t really anything of consequence to see, so
we picked a door at random and moved on. It led into a hallway, but there were
no candles burning here and it was pitch black. Heather retrieved one of the
candles from the parlor, and we continued down the hallway at a snail’s pace.
Doors lined the passage, but they were all locked and showed signs of not having
been used for quite some time. At the end of the hallway, we came to a set of
stairs that led up. Without hesitation we began to ascend.

We reached the second floor and paused to listen. There was nothing but
the sound of our own breathing. The hallway was wider in this section of the
church, and the wider spacing of the doors seemed to indicate that the rooms
were larger as well. We headed down the hall at the same cautious speed until
we reached the end. A side passageway went to both the left and right, but sadly
for those of the left persuasion our attention was focused down the right side.

There was a light coming from underneath one of the doors.

Heather quickly shielded the candle’s flame with her hand. I crept right up
next to the door and, being careful not to block the light with my body, I pressed
my ear up against it. At first I couldn’t hear anything. After a moment, though, I
started to detect some sort of high-pitched whining sound. I couldn’t place it;
maybe it was some kind of handheld power tool. It went on for about a minute
before it stopped and was replaced by the rumble of a deep voice. It was
impossible to make out the words through the door. With exquisite care born of
countless unauthorized entries, I twisted the doorknob and found that it was
unlocked. I returned it to its original position, being careful not to allow it to
creak.

Setting down the candle, Heather pointed at herself, then the door, then
me. I stared at her blankly. She repeated the motions, this time with stabbing
jabs of her index finger instead of the gentle pointing. Apparently my brain just
needed the added violence because this time I got it. I nodded my understanding
and we swapped places, her at the door and me standing in front of it with my axe
in hand. She reached out and grasped the doorknob. Taking a deep breath, she
turned the knob and threw the door open, and I burst into the room beyond it
with my weapon at the ready.

The room was lit by a number of gas lanterns, the kind that you could find
at most hardware stores. Two card tables were pushed up against one wall. On
top of them were dozens of various sharp instruments, everything from tiny
scalpels to a hacksaw. There was even what appeared to be a pair of pruning
shears. Mounted on the opposite wall were curved hooks of every shape and size.
There was a time that I would have felt right at home in a place like this. It was all
a bit out of place in a church, though.

At the far end of the room, a man dressed in light green hospital scrubs was
leaning over a woman strapped to a reclining chair covered in plastic. His body
was blocking most of my view, but his gloves were covered in blood and the
woman, while still breathing, was extremely pale and covered in her own gore. I
took a step to the right to get a better look and found that her chest and stomach
were completely open, the ribs spread by two metal clamps. The man took no
notice of me and continued with his work. As I watched, he dipped a pair of small
scissors into the gaping hole. With the grace of a surgeon, he made a series of
quick snips and removed the gall bladder. He gently placed it in a plastic container
on the floor next to the recliner.
 “And now, my dear,” he said in a clinical tone, “it is time that we move onto
more important organs. We shall start with the large intestine.”

He turned, presumably to claim a different tool from one of the tables, but
he jerked visibly as he saw me standing before him. His jaw dropped, and he held
his scissors out like they would somehow protect him.

“Who are you?” he stammered out.

“Who, little old me?” I asked innocently. “I’m nobody special. I’m just the
guy that’s going to plant the blade of this axe in your forehead if you don’t tell me
what you’re doing.” I favored him with a half-smile. “Actually, I’ll probably do it
even if you tell me, but hey, it’s your only shot, right?”

“Do you really think that you can scare me?” he scoffed. “I’m one of God’s
chosen, you imbecile!”

Them was fightin’ words! “Oh my, I didn’t realize that you have God’s stamp
of approval. That changes everything.”

His confidence seemed to waiver a bit. “Really?”

I dropped the levity that I was exuding. “Of course not fucking really,” I
growled as I took a step towards him. “I’m threatening a person with a fucking
axe in a church, do you really think that I give a shit about your self-delusion?” I
took another step, and I was gratified to see him instinctively take one back. “If
you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to sever every appendage from
your body before I shove the handle down through your eye socket and into your
brain. The last things you’ll feel before you die is the blood spurting from your
stumps and the pain of your eye orbit being crushed. Do we fucking understand
each other, Chosen One?”

“How…how dare you interrupt this woman’s ascension,” the man replied,
the hand holding the scissors shaking in either fear or rage. “She has already
consumed the Blood of Unlife. It will only be a few moments until she comes into
her birthright. I must complete the preparation.”

“The Blood of Unlife?” Heather asked from behind me. “Oh my God. Do
you mean that she drank zombie blood?”

“Zombie?” he spit out. “That is the name that the unenlightened have
given God’s chosen people. She has consumed the essence of the Sainted Ones,
and soon she shall walk among them in God’s grace.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I exclaimed with a short laugh.
“Are you actually telling me that you crackpots believe that zombies, fucking
zombies, are God’s chosen people?”

“Blasphemy!” he cried, raising the scissors once more. “They have come in
the image of God’s only son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus rose from the
tomb, the Sainted Ones have defied death itself to assume their proper place as
this world’s rulers. They have come to show the faithful the true path.”

“All right. And you’re removing this woman’s organs because…?”

He snorted derisively. “The organs of the unpurified are prayed over and
given for Communion, of course.”

“You…eat the organs of people that you purposely turn into the undead.
You remove the body parts before the blood has time to work its way into them, I
assume.”

“Of course. It is not yet our time to join the cleansed. The consumption of
the unfaithful in memory of the sacrifice that Jesus made is as close as we are
allowed to come until we have completed the work God has set before us.”

He said all of this with such fanaticism that I was momentarily speechless.
Me, the guy who never shuts up, couldn’t think of anything to say. I was crazy, but
this guy was taking insanity to heights it had never seen before.

Correction, I thought, not just this guy. If we believed the wild-eyed

nutcase, these were beliefs held by the entire Church of the Undying Spirit. I must
be slipping. I had known Father Ezekiel for hours now and I never would have
guessed he was a cannibal.

I realized that the reason I wasn’t saying anything was simple: there wasn’t
anything further that needed saying. I advanced slowly on the would-be surgeon,
being careful to keep my body between him and the door at all times. He must
have seen his imminent death in my eyes because the blood drained from his
face. Without warning, he twisted around and released the leather strap that was
holding the woman down on the recliner. He turned back to me with a grin
completely devoid of human thought.

“As I said, you cannot harm me, heathen,” he told me in a voice usually
reserved for adults attempting to explain something to children. “This woman,
one of God’s chosen people, will protect me.”

The woman was indeed beginning to come around. A groan escaped from
her lips as she rolled over onto her side so that she was facing the wall. I heard a
wet snap as one of her ribs broke. The groaning continued for a moment, and her
body began to convulse wildly. Suddenly, the sound of her voice cut off, and for a
moment there was nothing but silence in the makeshift chamber of horrors.
Then, ever so faintly, I heard a soft hiss coming from the woman. Almost
gracefully, she turned over to face us, her chest still open and exposing her guts to
the world. Her eyelids fluttered open.

The eyes reflected the flickering light back at us. They were silver.

“Oh shit,” Heather swore.

The Apex opened its mouth and released a bloodcurdling shriek. The man
took a long step to the side so that he wasn’t in the zombie’s line of sight, and he
smiled at me. It stood up from the chair, and some detached corner of my brain
noticed that none of the exposed organs in its chest seemed to be functioning.
The heart certainly wasn’t pumping and the lungs weren’t expanding or
contracting.

It shrieked again, but it seemed oddly hesitant to attack. I guessed that this
was because it was adjusting to its new surroundings. Hell, for all I knew it was
adjusting to its new undeadness.

I didn’t plan on giving it time to figure out the intricacies of its new
existence, however. Quickly closing the distance between us, I raised the axe in
preparation to put an end to the zombie before it truly became a threat. The
man, whom I had at some point dubbed Dr. Scissors, stepped between us and
thrust out with his rather pathetic-looking weapon. I neatly dodged to the left,
and the blade went whistling harmlessly through empty air. Okay, fine, you
wanted to play, little man? Let’s play.

Adjusting my aim, I swung the axe downward in a controlled arc. The

sharpened end of the head buried itself deep in his shoulder. Blood exploded into
the air as Dr. Scissors gave a shriek completely unlike the kind the zombie has
issued moments earlier. He fell to his knees and stared up at me in total disbelief.
I saw that all that talk about being protected by God hadn’t just been talk; he had
actually believed that he couldn’t be harmed. Now that I had disproved that
particular notion, he didn’t seem to know exactly what to think anymore.

Taking pity on the man (nah, I’m just kidding, I don’t really do pity), I pulled
the axe out of his gaping wound. The act splattered blood and tissue all over the
place, and he squealed in pain as his eyes began to roll up into the back of his
head. He was on the verge of passing out. I wasn’t about to give him time to do
so, though, and I brought the axe down again, this time right in the center of his
face. It doesn’t matter how strong your faith is, nobody survives that kind of
damage. Good night, sweet prince.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and just as Heather began
to shout a warning I spun around and was taken off my feet by the suddenly active
zombie. The air whooshed out of my lungs as I hit the ground hard. I gripped the
axe with both hands and managed to get the handle up just in time to stop the
zombie from taking a nice big bite out of my tender juicy head. The woman who
had spawned this abomination couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and
twenty pounds, but this thing seemed to possess ridiculous strength as it pinned
me down and repeatedly thrust its gnashing teeth at me. It was all I could do to
fend it off, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do so for long.

Heather, dear sweet Heather, attempted to come to my rescue. She came

into view standing over us, a pair of modern-day gladiators struggling in glorious
combat. The pruning knife was in her hand, and she thrust it as hard as she could
into the back of the Apex’s skull. The point of the blade must have struck at an
odd angle or she simply wasn’t strong enough to pierce through, as it did not
penetrate the bone. Instead, it deflected downward and neatly sliced off a rather
large chunk of flesh. The zombie didn’t even seem to feel the ghastly wound and
remained committed to its goal of turning my face into so much raw hamburger.

Still fighting to draw air back into my lungs, I pushed upward and managed
to create a small amount of separation. This allowed me to raise my knee to keep
the snapping jaws at bay. Heather disappeared from view only to return a few
seconds later with aserrated instrument that had been previously sitting on the
table. It looked like the unholy love child of a saw and a butcher knife. I’m sure
that it had some real-world application and wasn’t just a twisted device used for
pain and torture, but no such application came readily to mind.

This weapon came closer to ending the fight. There was a sharp crack as it
partially penetrated the skull. The Apex, apparently realizing the danger that it
was in, shrieked in rage and spun around with amazing speed. Its arm lashed out
and sent the saw/knife thingy flying. I took advantage of the momentary lapse in
concentration to shove it off of me with a hard push of the axe and scrambled to
my feet.

The Apex was back up in a flash. I immediately realized that my axe wasn’t
going to be nearly as effective as I had originally hoped. The zombie wasn’t going
to stay back long enough to allow me a proper swing. I choked up my grip and
used the butt of the handle to shove my open-chest suitor back a few steps. I
needed only a moment to deliver the killing blow, but it wasn’t going to give me
the time that I needed. It charged me again with its claw-like hands extended
eagerly. Instinctively, I ducked down and thrust the point of my shoulder into its
legs, sending it flipping over my head and to the floor in a rather ungraceful
cartwheel. Holy crap, things learned in Bruce Willis movies actually worked.

Despite my amazing ninja skills, it was obvious that we either needed to

end this fight now or get the hell out of there. It would only take one mistake, and
Heather and I would both be done for. Remember, the Apex didn’t have to
actually kill us to scratch a notch in the win column. One little bite would put us
on the road to becoming moaning undead cannibals. For all we knew, we could
be put into that state from even something as small as a scratch from a fingernail.
One poke from those ribs jutting out of its open chest might be enough to do the
trick. There was still so much that we didn’t know about the zombie plague. I
didn’t really feel like being a guinea pig to find out the mysteries of the undead
world, either.

Heather had apparently come to the same conclusion, and she had chosen
flight over fight. All things considered, it was probably the right idea; the Apex
was simply too wild and vicious at close range to go for a clean kill. She took a
step out into the hallway and I moved to follow.

To my astonishment, Heather jumped back and slammed the door shut.

“There’s another one in the hall!” she yelled in explanation. Oh, and terror.
There was definitely a pinch of terror mixed in with explanation.
 It made sense that my sparring partner wasn’t the only Apex on the prowl.
The gentleman that had brought us our rather bland dinner had mentioned that
Father Ezekiel was busy with newly-arrived pilgrims. Pilgrims. As in plural.
Apparently Dr. Scissors had been a very busy boy.

Since it was taking every move in my playbook to avoid being masticated by

a single super zombie, logic dictated that two of them would be, as they say in the
old country, bad. Well hell, I had wanted a challenge, right?

“Try the window!” I ordered as I took a half-swing at the currently lunging

Apex.

I finally scored a hit on this particular swing. The blade sank deep into its
side. Between that wound and the exposed chest cavity, it almost seemed like I
was fighting a casualty in a horrible train wreck. It was barely slowed by the new
damage to its body, though, and as it twisted away from the force of the blow I
lost my grip on the axe. It went spinning away to the far corner of the room.
Weaponless, I did the only thing that I could think of. I kicked the thing as hard as
I could.

Let me make it clear that this was a completely graceless kick. We’re not
talking about the fluid spinning roundhouse kick you see in martial arts movies. I
didn’t achieve a little Sweet Chin Music. I simply thrust out my leg with as much
power as I could put behind it. The impact almost knocked me flat on my ass.

To my amazement, it worked. The Apex seemed to be caught completely

off-guard and stumbled back a few feet. It worked so well that I went ahead and
did it again, and again I achieved the same result. One last kick and it hit hard
against the wall.

The wall with all those lovely hooks attached to it.

The sharp edges pierced through the zombie’s back and neck. Because the
ends of the hooks were turned upward, the Apex found itself unable to extract
itself from their clutches, and it stood almost completely upright on the tips of its
toes as it struggled and shrieked. Since it had no qualms with tearing its own
body to shreds, I knew that we only had a few moments before we would be right
back where we started.

“You’ll need this,” Heather said as she stepped forward with my blood-
soaked axe. She presented the weapon to me like a squire offering a knight his
lance.

A quick swing of the axe and the deed was done. Most of the zombie
remained pinned to the wall, but the top half of its head had somehow managed
to break free and mount an escape attempt by jumping to the floor. Oh, and look,
it had decided to bring along a good portion of the Apex’s brain as well. It was like
two prisoners sticking together to try to beat Alcatraz.

There was a series of loud bangs, and the door shuddered in its frame.
Heather had been wrong. There was obviously more than one zombie out there.

“There’s a window on the far wall,” she told me as she pointed at the spot
in question. “It’s boarded up. We’ll have to hurry.”

Now, I know that this may come as something of a shock to you, my literary
Peeping Tom, but apparently an axe has a number of applications other than
murder. That’s pretty fucking weird, isn’t it? It’s like finding out that a tasty
chocolate cupcake can also double as a Cold War-era spy satellite. A spy satellite
with delicious frosting.

One of these previously unknown uses of an axe, one that I invented on the
spot thanks to my enormous intellectual powers (this had never been previously
attempted in the history of humanity, I was sure), was chopping wood. I kid you
not, you can use an axe to chop wood. In a matter of minutes, I had reduced the
wood blocking the window to splinters. Once it was cleared, Heather flipped the
latches and opened the window. Apparently happy with what she saw, she
quickly scrambled out through the opening.

“There’s a ledge out here,” she called from outside. “It looks like we can get
to the bell tower if we go across it.”

Without hesitation I followed her. It was an extremely thin ledge, less than
two feet wide and rather slippery. It looked out over a courtyard of some sort.
There had once been a rather pleasant garden down there as evidenced by the
benches and small gazebo, but a year of not being tended had made everything
brown and dead.

Speaking of dead, how about all those zombies down there, huh?

There were at least thirty zombies roaming around the moonlit courtyard.
They were almost all the regular variety, listlessly wandering around and
occasionally bumping into each other. They were all clothed in suits and dresses.
It was obvious that they were part of a wedding that had been taking place, most
likely with the main event couple standing hand and hand in the gazebo, when
they had met their untimely demise. Or undemise. Or whatever the right term
would be.

But wait, you ask, how did I come to the “obvious” conclusion that it was a
wedding? This was a church, after all. Perhaps the zombies had once been
people that were simply attending church when things got ugly. How could I rule
out such a possibility?

That’s easy. I knew it had been a wedding because the only Apex
wandering around the courtyard was still dressed in a bridal gown. It must have
seen us moving along our little perch because it shrieked up at as, the tattered
remains of its veil flapping in the wind. This caused the other zombies to take
notice of us, and they raised their arms and began to moan.

“It must have been a hell of a reception,” I commented to Heather as we

continued to move towards the ominous shape of the bell tower.

“I guess that blows my theory out of the water,” Heather answered

cryptically.

“What theory?”

“That the Apex zombies were being created by the Church of the Undying
Spirit. It’s not like they could have done it to that woman in the middle of her
wedding, and she’s clearly an Apex.”

The second time that I almost fell, I realized that I needed both hands to
grip along the brick wall or something unpleasant was going to happen.
Reluctantly, I opened my hand and allowed the axe to fall into the courtyard
below. It bounced off of a bench with a bright spark and imbedded itself into a
nearby zombie’s skull. The zombie stood there stupidly for a moment before
toppling over and going still. It was a shame to lose what could have become a
trademark weapon, but at least its last act was to do something cool.

After what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, we reached
the end of the ledge. The wall leading up to the area that housed the giant bell
was impossible to scale, however, and we found ourselves looking for other
options. Standing on a thin ledge above a large pack of zombies while being
unable to go back the way you came wasn’t exactly a great position to be in. We
finally decided that we would have to re-enter the church through one of the
windows lining the ledge and hope to find an escape route that wasn’t completely
overrun with the undead. Once more raising my mighty foot to deliver one of my
devastating kicks, I broke through the glass on the nearest window and we
carefully stepped inside.

As luck would have it, we found ourselves in a stairwell. Visions of freedom

and sugarplums danced through our heads, and we headed down the stairs at a
brisk pace. When we found that it only led down to a door that opened into the
courtyard, however, we rethought our plan and headed back upstairs before any
of the zombies saw us through the glass. I reflected that the stairs were almost
like those you would find in a lighthouse as opposed to inside of a church.

We reached the top of the stairs and came to a heavy wooden door.
Beyond it was a short carpeted hallway that led to another identical door. I
cautiously opened that one and stepped through.

We were in the bell tower itself. About fifteen feet above us was the bell,
its metal tarnished from the elements that had easy access to it through the large
openings surrounding it. A short series of stairs wound up from the platform we
were standing on to it. In the center of the room was a wide round shaft that
appeared to lead all the way to the bottom of the tower; there was a ladder
leading downward into the darkness. The moonlight coming from the top of the
tower wasn’t enough to illuminate the view to the bottom.

“What now?” Heather asked as she closed the door behind us.

“I’m open to suggestions,” I replied. “I actually have no idea what our next
move should be.”

She circled around the shaft on the floor. When she was done, she shook
her head in disgust. “There’s a place where a ladder used to be bolted on, but the
ladder itself is gone.”

I jogged up the stairs leading to the bell and looked out one of the
openings. Despite the exciting events happening in the church, the rest of Aurora
Falls seemed to be quite peaceful. The fog that had covered the streets earlier in
the day was gone, and the moon bathed the town in a silver glow. I shivered a bit
as the cool night breeze blew across the sweat I was covered in from my earlier
exertion. Besides being a few degrees colder than I would have liked, it really was
quite breathtaking.

I wasn’t up here for sightseeing, however. Just below the opening, the dark
roof of the church sloped gently down for about twenty feet before dropping off. I
climbed out onto the roof and crept to the edge. Looking down, I found that
there was another overhang just below. We would have to be careful, but it
seemed like we would be able to make our way down to that level and find
another window to smash so that we could head back into the building and find a
way down to the ground level.

Returning inside, I called down to Heather and explained my plan. Minutes

later, we were sliding down the roof on our butts, stopping ourselves just before
we went over the edge. The drop to the next level wasn’t very high, maybe about
six or seven feet, and we managed to lower ourselves onto it without breaking
anything. To our dismay, there weren’t actually any windows on this section of
the church. It had been impossible to tell from the level above because of the
roof’s overhang, but I had just assumed that there would be. Well, there I went
again, making an ass of me and, by extension, you.

To her credit, Heather didn’t comment on my little snafu. Being the

cultured and mature woman that she was, she let it pass and moved right on to
figuring a way out of our present situation.

“Nice one, genius,” she growled as she glared a hole in me.

What, you really that I was telling the truth there?

“At least we’re not stuck in the bell tower anymore,” I said defensively,
trying to put a positive spin on things. “That’s the important part.”

“So what’s your plan now, jump headfirst the rest of the distance?”

I raised an eyebrow at that one. “When did you become so testy?”

“Right about the time we became trapped in a church by zombies and

insane cannibals.”
 Right on cue, the sound of an approaching vehicle came to us from the
surrounding night. A few seconds later, the headlights of a car appeared on a
nearby street and approached the church. We pressed ourselves low to the roof
and went as still as statues. The car parked at the sidewalk, and four men stepped
out as the engine and lights were turned off.

“The pilgrims should be in the final stages of ascension by now,” the familiar
voice of Father Ezekiel said as the men approached. They were all covered in
shadows cast by the building, but I recognized the wide-brimmed hats and long
coats as part of the standard Church of the Undying Spirit garb. “Go retrieve the
items needed for Communion and meet back in the sanctuary in fifteen minutes."

The men entered the church below. I waited for the sound of the heavy
wooden door being closed before I stood back up.

“We need to get down from here sooner rather than later,” I said. “When
they find the body of the Apex and Dr. Scissors in there and find us gone, they’re
going to put two and two together.”

“You’re right, of course, but we’ll…” Heather paused. “Dr. Scissors?”

“I couldn’t just refer to him as ‘that guy’ all the time, could I? He was doing
medical procedures and he came at me with a pair of scissors. Hence, Dr.
Scissors.”

She stared at me a moment before saying, “You are the strangest person I
have ever met, James.” It was back to business from there. “There’s one more
level of roof below us. It’s kind of a far drop, but if we can make it down there we
should be able to reach the ground level without too much trouble.”
 I looked down and surveyed the situation. The drop to the next section of
roof was about fifteen feet. Assuming that I went down first so that I could help
catch the lighter Heather, I could hang off the side before I let go, making it a bit
under a nine foot drop. That height was doable but dangerous. The section
below us had a much steeper slant, however, so it would be much more difficult
to land safely when I let go. There was also a much higher risk of injury upon
impact because I wouldn’t be able to roll with the landing.

I glanced back up at the roof above us. We hadn’t been able to see that
there weren’t any windows on this level because of the overhang. That meant
that it was possible that there were windows on the level below us, but we
couldn’t tell they were down there because our view was blocked by the overhang
of the roof that we were on. I crept out to the edge and carefully lowered myself
head-first to take a peek. There were indeed windows down there. A plan began
to form.

“Okay,” I said slowly as I pulled myself back up, “here’s my suggestion. I’m
going to lower you down to the next level. Take a look around down there. Let
me know if there’s some way for me to get down safely. If there isn’t, get the hell
out of here and I’ll figure something else out.”

“I’m not going to leave you behind,” she said stubbornly. “Lower me down
and I’ll figure out how to get you down, too.”

Heather had dropped some weight since I had pulled her up through the
locker room ceiling of the police station back in the day, so lowering her down
now was much easier than that previous feat of strength. It didn’t hurt that I
wasn’t attempting to deadlift her from an awkward position, either. With my arm
length and her height, she only had a few feet to drop, and she landed on the
lower level with minimum difficulty. She slid a couple of inches on the steep roof
and for a moment I thought she was going to lose her footing and tumble off the
side, but she quickly regained her balance.

She disappeared under the overhang for a few moments. In the distance, I
heard a wolf howl. I tried to remember the last time I had heard such a sound,
and I was fairly sure that it was before the zombies had come. Even though we
were in the heart of Montana, it had been so long since I had been around when
an animal dared to make a noise that it seemed almost alien. Just the thought of
another living predator being out there brought a smile to my face. It was a good
feeling to know that the natural order of things was still going on in its own way.

Heather reappeared down below. “I don’t see anything to help you down,”
she reported with a frustrated shake of her head. I can’t get in through the
windows, either. They’re boarded up the same way that they were upstairs.” She
pursed her lips in concern. “I’m sorry, James, but I think you’re going to have to
jump down and hope for the best.”

“That isn’t exactly what I had hoped to be hearing,” I informed her as I

reassessed the distance between my level and the next one down. The math
wasn’t any better this time around.

Still, it wasn’t like we had any other options, so a minute later I found
myself hanging off the side of the roof, my feet dangling in empty space. Heather
had stepped back far enough that I wouldn’t land on her, but she was still close
enough to theoretically help if need be. She wouldn’t be any good if I hit the
lower tier and immediately fell off due to the steep incline, of course, but it was
better than nothing. Taking a deep breath, I let go.

When I impacted with the roof, my first thought was, “Hey, I’m okay.” This
was followed up by my second thought, which was, “Hey, I’m about to fall off the
damn thing.” My legs buckled as I struck the shingles. Despite a jarring jolt that
went up my spine I seemed to be uninjured, but my weight and momentum
immediately began to slide me quickly towards the edge. Heather lunged for me
and caught my arm. All that succeeded in doing was to knock her off balance as
well, and we both went plunging over the side.

This is a highly stupid way to die, I thought as we fell.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kill Counter- 316

Oh, don’t be absurd. Of course we didn’t die. Did you really think that
something as mundane as falling off a building would be enough to do me in?
Please, give me some credit here. Besides, if I died, how would I be here to be
passing on this wonderful tale of drama, suspense, and non-stop action? All of
which is sprinkled with just a tiny hint of romance?

Unless I’m currently in the act of falling, and somehow I’ve composed this
entire novel in my head while I’m plummeting to certain doom. Maybe talking
with you, my closest confidant, is only my mind creating a hallucination so that I
don’t have to mentally deal with the fact that I’m going to soon be dead. The
brain’s synapses fire at truly breathtaking speeds; is it possible that all of this has
been some sort of elaborate split-second fantasy?

Whoa, I think I just blew my mind.

Let’s pretend that we never had that conversation and work under the
assumption that I did indeed survived my attempt at skydiving with a parachute.
The feeling of my body impacting with the thick bushes that were growing below
the edge of the roof certainly was real enough. I felt the leafy branches of life
cradle around me, and once again it was indeed better to be lucky than good. The
world needs balance, however, and the joy of still breathing was quickly replaced
by the pain of Heather landing on top of me. For the second time in one evening,
the air was flung from my lungs, but hey, who cares, we were alive.
 We managed to extract ourselves from the bushes. We had both suffered
some bruises and minor scrapes, but it could easily have been worse. We counted
ourselves fortunate.

“We need to get back to the ranch,” Heather whispered to me as we quickly

made our way back towards the outskirts of Aurora Falls. “We have to warn the
others that we’re less than a day’s trip away from a bunch of psychopaths.”

She was right, of course, so despite our physical exhaustion we pushed on.
We were less than a mile away from the church when we heard shouting coming
from that direction. Either our absence had been discovered or Dr. Scissors and
his patients had; either way, it meant that the Church of the Undying Spirit would
be looking for us. With any luck they would assume that we were still inside the
building and concentrate their search there. It was also possible that they would
run into the Apexes that were inexplicably wandering around the upper floors and
become an entrée.

Wait a second, why were there zombies roaming free in there? I pondered
the question as we picked up our pace. It was strange that they would be allowed
free reign of the place when there was the likelihood of some poor priest being
mauled. Were the churchmen somehow safe from harm when they were around
the undead? Or had the good Doctor created Apexes that night without realizing
it, and they had broken free of whatever restraints were placed on them?

That seemed like the most likely scenario. I thought back to the moment
that Heather and I had burst into the room he was working in. The woman had
been tied to the chair, but would one strap have really been enough to restrain an
Apex? It was doubtful. Dr. Scissors had probably been expecting to create one of
the more docile standard zombies rather than the ‘roid raging kind. If I hadn’t
stuck an axe in his face, the Apex probably would have done the job for me.

The group of zombies in the courtyard were even more interesting to

consider. There was no way that the churchmen could have inhabited the building
for as long as they had been without being aware that there was an undead
wedding going on under their noses. The doors leading inside from the courtyard
must have been barricaded just like the windows were, but why? Did they simply
just not have a way to kill them off, or were they keeping them penned up for a
reason?

Deep in thought, I almost missed the zombies coming out of a side street as
we approached the town limits. They made it abundantly clear that there weren’t
any Apexes in the group when they all raised their arms and started moaning, so
because we were in a fairly open area we weren’t in all that much danger. We
hurried right along just in case, though, and we had forced ourselves into a jog by
the time was passed the blood-smeared sign that had first welcomed us to Aurora
Falls.

“Where did they come from?” Heather asked as we slowed our pace once
we were out of the zombies’ view. “There wasn’t any sign of the undead when we
arrived in town.”

I thought back. She was right, the streets had been deserted when we had
first gotten there. We didn’t encounter a single person, alive or dead, until after
we had searched the library.

“That is odd,” I agreed. “In fact, it’s more than odd. The library was
covered in blood. The town itself was a wreck. We should have seen at least a
few zombies wandering around. Something is going on here that we don’t
understand.”

We took a short break when we reached the stretch of road that ran over
the dam. My throat was parched, but my water bottle was in the pack that I had
left back in the church. The lack of supplies wouldn’t really be a problem since the
ranch was only about six hours away. Still, it sucked that I had been forced to give
up both my spiffy axe and my item-filled backpack at the same time. I hoped
those religious nuts choked on the beefy jerky I had tucked away in one of the
side pockets.

Once we had regained our wind, we made our way over to the guardrail
that ran alongside the road and searched for the ladder that went down to the
bottom of the dam. Looking back, we probably should have marked where it was
before we started wandering around up top, but hindsight is, as they say, 20/20.
Finally, though, we found the place and climbed down. I prided myself on having
quite a bit of stamina, but the events of the past day were beginning to take their
toll, and by the time we reached the bottom my arms and legs were sore.

As we began the long march back to the ranch, Heather stumbled over a
rock and barely caught herself before she fell on her face. The fatigue was clearly
setting in for her as well. She normally walked with purpose, but now her back
was bent slightly and it seemed to take a huge amount of effort simply to put one
foot in front of the other. If things kept going like this, she was going to fall into
the river before long.

“Let’s stop for a while, Heather,” I suggested gently. “I think the adrenaline
is starting to wear off for both of us and we’re beginning to crash. Let’s keep
going until we find a place to stay for a few hours and get some sleep.”

She nodded gratefully. “If we keep going like this, I think I’m going to fall
into the water,” she said wearily.

Huh. It was good to know that we were on the same wavelength about the whole
thing.

A mile or so downstream, we came across a small clump of trees and

bushes that would provide adequate camouflage from anyone passing by. We
settled down in the center and got as comfortable as we could given that we were
laying on the ground with nothing but rocks and shrubbery for pillows. There was
an opening in the trees directly above me, and for a long time I simply laid there
enjoying the chance to rest and watching the stars flicker as clouds passed
between me and them. I’m not sure how long I continued my silent
contemplation, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up with soreness in my
back and the pink and orange of pre-dawn filling the sky.

There was a strange pressure on my arm. I looked down to find that,

sometime during the night, Heather had rolled over and was pressed up against
my side with her head resting on my upper arm. I smiled slightly. Anyone passing
by that had the X-ray vision to see through the trees probably would have
mistaken it for a romantic gesture. My relationship with her wasn’t anything like
that, however, so those superpowered people would have been wrong. It was
nice to know that she found my presence comforting, though.

She started slightly as she woke up. Her eyes opened, and she blinked them
a few times to clear them. She tilted her head upward to look at me.

“Sorry I invaded your personal space,” she apologized with a tired grin. “I
must have rolled over while I was asleep.”

“What, you think that I’m complaining that a hot chick’s body is pressed up
against me?” I asked playfully with an answering grin. “Maybe you hadn’t
noticed, but I’m male and straight. Feel free to invade my space anytime.”

“Keep that up and I might let you invade mine,” she said with a suggestive
expression. After a moment of stunned silence, we both broke out laughing.

The sleep had done us both good. We made much better time as we
continued on our journey back to the Ponderosa to meet up with Pa, Hoss, and
Little Joe (I guess that would put Maggie in the role of Hop Sing in that particular
reference). Around the time that the arches of my feet started to throb, however,
I looked wistfully at the river and wished that we had the raft that Matthew and I
had used…God, was it really only two days before? It felt like it had been months
earlier.

Still, being the hardcore badass that I am, I sucked it up and kept on
walking. The thing I miss most in the post-zombie apocalypse world, I thought to
myself, was arch supports for my shoes. I glanced down at my footgear. They had
certainly seen better days; when I got a chance, I would have to hunt down a new
pair to cover my precious tootsies. It wouldn’t be a long and difficult search since
I had stocked up on shoes in my size during previous visits to Parkersburg. I had
gotten some strange stares from my housemates when I had walked through the
shoe store door with twelve pairs of the exact same shoes, but now we’d see who
would have the last laugh.

I estimated that we had been walking roughly sixty-four bajillion hours, give
or take twenty minutes, when we finally reached home sweet home. Matthew
was outside fishing, and when he saw us approaching his face broke out in a wide
grin. He carefully set the fishing rod down and stood up, brushing the dirt off of
his jeans as he came to meet us.

“Well look what the cat dragged in,” he said good-humoredly. “I’m
surprised that you two are back so soon.” The grin suddenly vanished from his
face, and his remaining eye squinted slightly at us. “Where are you packs and
weapons? Does it have something to do with the chatter Mark has been picking
up on the CB radio all morning?”

Heather and I looked at each other.

“What has the chatter been saying?” she asked slowly.

Matthew shrugged his massive shoulders. “There’s been a lot of static so

we’re not exactly sure. It’s something about a couple of thieves and murderers
that attacked a church mission.”

I think the suddenness of my laugh caught him off-guard as he started

visibly. “That is the story that they’re giving out?” I said incredulously. “That
we’re the ones that caused problems?”

“I’m more interested in the fact that they have a working communication
system,” Heather said as she scratched a bug bite on her upper arm. “Plus we saw
that they have at least one working vehicle and fuel for it.”
 “Would someone mind telling me exactly what’s going on?” Matthew asked
as he crossed his arms in annoyance.

“Let’s get everyone together first.”

Ten minutes later, Heather and I found ourselves recounting the events of
the past twenty-four hours to our housemates. Both Matthew and Mark sat
silently through the entire tale, but Sarah occasionally interjected with questions
or requests to go into more detail about certain things. Maggie just seemed to
ignore the entire proceeding and sat on the floor playing with the dolls that she
had received for Christmas. When we finished, there was a long silence as we
retreated into our thoughts.

“These Church of the Undying Spirit folks sound charming,” Matthew said,
finally breaking the silent contemplation. “What are we going to do about it?”

“Why do we need to do anything about them?” Sarah countered. “As long

as they stay in their little town and away from us, why do we even care about
what they’re up to?”

“She has a point,” Mark agreed. “From what the two of you told us and
from what I’ve been picking up on the CB, they don’t seem interested in our neck
of the woods. We could just ignore them and move on with our lives.”

“They’re killing innocent people,” Matthew disagreed stubbornly. “Killing

them and making a mockery of a sacred act designed to honor God. We can’t let
that stand.”

“There are zombies out there killing people every single day.”
 “This is completely different. People are coming to the Church of the
Undying Spirit because of a promise of help and aid and comfort. These monsters
are taking advantage of those people to fuel their own perversions. No matter
how horrible the zombies are, at least they don’t use lies and deceit.”

Mark shook his head. He was clearly becoming frustrated. “So killing and
eating someone is okay just as long as you aren’t lying beforehand?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“Hey, whoa, let’s not get into a huge fight here,” Heather interjected.
“Debates on comparative morality aside, the first thing we need to figure out is if
we’re safe on the ranch in the short term. Once we know that for sure, we can
work on whether we need to take a proactive approach to the Church of the
Undying Spirit or not.”

If we did end up taking that approach, I was fairly sure how we should go
about it. A lifetime ago in Lewiston, Heather had loaded up a duffel bag with a
variety of things from the police station armory. Among these items was quite a
bit of plastic explosives. It wouldn’t be hard to rig up a permanent solution for
both the church and its inhabitants. Even if something survived, alive or undead, I
couldn't imagine that it would still be much of a threat buried underneath the
ruins.

To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure where I stood on the matter. On the one
hand, Sarah was quite possibly right: as long as we didn’t stray back into their
territory, the unorthodox churchmen would probably leave us alone. In fact, they
probably would never become aware of our existence, or if they did it would
probably take quite some time for that to happen. More than likely, we were safe
for now.

On the other hand, though, I found myself feeling uneasy at the thought of
them being located so close to where we called home. It wasn’t necessarily
because I feared that Father Ezekiel and his men would become a threat to us. I
couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was just something about the entire
situation that put me on edge. Call it a sixth sense or a premonition or whatever,
but I had the distinct feeling that something very bad was going to happen very
soon.

Perhaps seeing my unease, Maggie set down her dolls and came over to
me. Even though she was now six, she still had an insatiable need to be held from
time to time, and this moment was no different. She silently held out her arms to
me, and almost without realizing it I scooped her up and deposited her in my lap.
For a moment she stared gravely up at me, a look in her eyes far more adult than
someone her age should have been able to muster up. It occurred to me just how
much she had been forced to give up when the zombies had come. She had lost
her mother, her friends, and, worse still, any semblance of a normal childhood.

“What’s wrong, Uncle James?” she whispered to me with a glance at the

other adults. She was a very respectful little girl when she wanted to be, and it
was clear that she didn’t want to accidentally disturb the conversation that was
already going on.

I smiled slightly. “What makes you think that something is wrong, kiddo?” I
asked in just as quiet of a tone.
 “You’ve got your worried face on,” she replied with a hint of a shrug.

“I suppose I do at that. I’m sure it’s nothing, honey. I was just thinking
about some bad men that Heather and I ran into while we were gone.”

“The bad men at the church?”

I was a little surprised that she had been paying attention. It certainly
hadn’t appeared like she cared one way or another about what the adults were
discussing. “Yeah, those bad men. I was just trying to figure out what to do about
them.”

“You can’t let the bad men keep being bad.” She said it with such firmness
that I could almost swear that I was talking to either Heather or Sarah. “Mr.
Matthew says that if good people let the bad people do bad things, the bad guys
will always win. I don’t want the bad guys to win, Uncle James.”

I smiled at her young sense of justice. “I’ll see what I can do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY

Kill Counter- 316

The decision of what our next step would be was taken out of our hands the
next morning. That wouldn’t have necessarily have been a bad thing since we
hadn’t really gotten anywhere with our discussions the day before, but in this case
it didn’t call for a celebration.

Matthew was on watch as dawn broke, and I found myself muttering a

number of choice words in his general direction when a loud ringing sound woke
me. Early on in our stay at the ranch, we had decided that banging on one of the
cowbells we had discovered in the barn would be the alarm we would sound if
there was immediate danger. Our stalwart guardian was now wailing on one of
the damn things for all he was worth.

Who did a guy have to murder to get some sleep around here?

Mark, Heather, and I almost collided in a three-way accident as we all burst

into the hallway at the same time. Luckily, we avoided each other at the last
possible second; otherwise, we would have had to waste precious time
exchanging insurance information and waiting for the police to arrive to file a
report. Then there would be the inevitable fight with the insurance company
when one of its representatives told me that they wanted me to go to a low-rated
body shop because it had the lowest quote…it would have been a nightmare.

One of my first victims when I was in the murdering game (which was a
much more complex game than, say, Monopoly) was an insurance adjustor. No, it
was not a random act of violence. It was quite premeditated, thank you very
much.

Sarah was already in the living room by the time the three of us managed to
navigate our way down the staircase. Without a word, she opened the cabinet
containing the firearms. I patiently waited for the others to make their selections
before reaching in and drawing out the shotgun.

I had sawed off the end of the shotgun one lazy Sunday during the winter.
Originally I had done it simply because I was used to firing a shorter barrel
weapon, but I had lovingly smoothed and perfected the edges for a completely
different reason: I looked so damn badass holding the thing. I’m not ashamed to
admit that I stood in front of the mirror for a good twenty minutes posing with the
shotgun. Sure, it was silly, but everyone is entitled to a bit of silliness from time to
time.

I grabbed a long black trench coat out of the front closet and put it on. I
filled the pockets with shells for my kickass weapon. Wearing a coat so similar to
my old serial killer garb (“Raincoat” Killer my ass) brought up some odd feelings. I
didn’t regret my old life so much as I didn’t really see it as being relevant anymore.
And yet…I couldn’t put the feeling into words, but a return to the old habits, even
in such a small way, felt somehow right.

Of course, I looked far more intimidating when I had the coat on over
something more substantial than boxers and a t-shirt, but give me a break, I had
just woken up.
 “Nice outfit,” Sarah commented to me with a crooked smile as I opened the
front door.

“Nice legs,” Heather countered with a matching grin.

“Did you want to take a shot at me, too?” I asked Mark mildly.

He shook his head. “I’ve got no room to talk,” he assured me. “I’m in a
bathrobe, for God’s sake.”

We stepped outside to find…nothing. No rampaging zombies, no frothing

churchmen looking to turn me into tasty treats, nothing. A false alarm, maybe?
No, that didn’t make any sense, Matthew wasn’t the kind of person to start
panicking without a good reason.

Motioning for the others to stay put, I stepped off the porch and listened
intently. The acoustic cowbell solo was coming from around the side of the house,
so I headed towards it with my shotgun not raised but certainly ready for action. I
turned the corner and found myself not face-to-face with the huge Matthew, but
rather waist-to-head with the diminutive Maggie.

“What are you doing outside, midget?” I asked her as I knelt down.

“Uncle Matthew told me to bang on the alarm bell,” she answered with a
great deal of self-importance. “He told me to hit it as hard as I could to wake
everyone up, so I did.”

“And you did a great job, too, little angel,” Matthew assured her as he
walked into view from around the back of the house. “Now why don’t you run
along and ask your daddy to make you some of those pancakes we’ve got in the
cupboard?”

He waited for her to be out of earshot before turning a much more serious
look on me. “I think we’ve got trouble,” he said in his deep baritone voice. “I was
walking around the property to stay awake and I happened to look inside the
barn. It’s…well, why don’t you have a look for yourself.”

As we walked over to the barn in question, the cold damp grass underfoot
reminded me that I hadn’t actually taken the time to put on any shoes. Hopefully
there weren’t any tools scattered about the lawn; Mark had gotten better about
cleaning up after one project before moving onto the next, but there was still the
occasional stubbed toe or skinned knee caused by an escaped toolbox dweller.
They say that all geniuses are scatterbrained. I would be hard-pressed to argue
against that logic based on personal experience.

We reached the barn and Matthew pulled the door open with a grunt. I
mentally noted that it was just about time that we re-oiled the track. Squinting
into the dim light, I looked inside.

“What the fuck?” I exclaimed, not sure what my eyes were showing me.

Both the van and the Jeep were lying in ruins. They weren’t just a little
banged up. They had been systematically destroyed. Everything from the engines
to the rear view mirrors were wrecked. Even the fuzzy dice that Sarah had placed
in the Jeep as a joke were shredded, the white stuffing thrown all about as if
Christopher Robin had finally put an end to Winnie the Pooh’s reign of terror.
There was no way that we would be able to repair the damage.

“I noticed that the door was cracked a bit when I came out this way,”
Matthew said. “I thought that whoever got a can of oil out for the generator last
forgot to close it. When I looked inside, I found this.”

I stepped inside and leaned down to examine one of the engines, its parts
gutted like a fish. “I don’t…What the hell could have caused this much damage?
And why?”

He shook his head slowly. “I have no idea, James. I think we have to

assume that whoever did this was human, though. The undead don’t care one
way or another about machinery. They just care about the living.”

I stood up and ran my hand through the tangles and gnarls of my hair.
“Maybe Heather and I were followed when we escaped from the Church of the
Undying Spirit.”

“It’s possible.” Matthew didn’t sound convinced. “But why, though? Why
would they destroy two perfectly good vehicles when they could have stolen them
instead?”

“I can’t answer that,” I admitted. For a long moment I just stared at the
wreckage. Finally, I sighed and turned away. “Let’s go tell the others what’s
happened.”

As I moved to leave the barn, something on one of the walls caught my eye.
It had been hidden in the dim light, but the sun shining through the windows had
struck it just enough that it was now visible. Squinting, I moved closer and
inspected the scratch marks that covered the wall.

THREE DAYS.
 Someone had carved the words “THREE DAYS” into the wall of the barn.
Presumably it was the same person or persons that had made our vehicles into
scrap metal. Three days until what, though? Three days until I received my mail
order bride? Three days before the second coming of Christ (who would,
according to the Church of the Undying Spirit, proceed to make me into a snack)?
Three Days Grace? Oh God, please no, don’t let it be Three Days Grace.

I turned back around and took a closer look at the pile of metal. It took me
a moment, but finally I spotted what I was looking for: the hint of a handlebar
sticking out. The bikes had been destroyed, too.

Someone was going to a lot of trouble to keep us here. Presumably for

three days.

When I pointed out the message and the loss of the bikes, Matthew
nodded. “I hadn’t noticed that, but it makes sense,” he said thoughtfully. “When I
was around the back of the house, I found the raft destroyed, too.” He stared at
the message for a moment. “I don’t like this. Something very bad is going to go
down, I can feel it.”

“I don’t think this is the work of the Church of the Undying Spirit,” I told him
as we walked back towards the house. “A group like that…they would have tried
to take us, or just simply kill us rather than fuck with us.”

“Do you think that’s what is going on?” he asked, sounding surprised. “You
think that someone is just messing around with us for some reason, that this
whole thing is just a joke?”

I shook my head. “Whatever happened to the van and Jeep wasn’t a joke.
Someone’s being very, very serious. I just have no idea what he or she wants.”

“I believe that we’ll want to figure that out just as soon as we possibly can.”

An hour later, our little family gathered in the living room for a war council
of sorts. I couldn’t remember the last time that we had all been in the same place
and there hadn’t been an avalanche of conversation, but the violation of our
home’s borders had us all deep in silent contemplation. As I looked from face to
face, the faces of the only people in the world that I considered friends, I found
myself thinking back to the events that had brought us to this point.

Somewhere in the memories of our time together was the answer to the
question of what was going on; I was sure of it. Someone out there was toying
with us, trying to make us feel a looming sense of dread for some unknown
purpose. It was textbook psychological warfare, and you didn’t play those kinds of
games with someone unless you wanted to torment him. It was far more personal
of a tactic than something as detached as simple killing.

We hadn’t run into many other human beings over the last year, so the list
of people that might be holding a grudge against us was rather small. In fact, I
couldn’t think of a single person that we had even interacted with since we had all
come together. The only other survivors that we had encountered were seen
from afar a couple of times in Parkersburg; they had obviously seen us just as we
had seen them, but they had chosen not to come any closer and we had
respected their decision. The last time we had spotted them had been before
winter had set in, so they weren’t likely suspects.

I had dismissed the Church of the Undying Spirit as the culprits when
speaking with Matthew, but had I been too quick to come to that conclusion? I
had to admit that it was quite a coincidence that all of this was happening less
than two days after Heather and I had so rudely rebuffed their hospitality without
so much as a goodbye. My instincts were telling me that, if they had discovered
our little slice of heaven, they wouldn’t have warned us that they knew where we
lived. They simply would have stayed under the radar until they were ready to
seek retribution. Still, there was so much that I didn’t know about their
organization that it would be foolish to set my mind in stone.

“We should repair the raft and get the hell out of here,” Mark said suddenly,
breaking the silence. “There’s no sense in putting ourselves in danger that we
don’t have to.”

“I agree,” Heather, um, agreed. “Which is why I think we should stay right
where we are.”

“You’ve lost me.”

She blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. “We can barricade the house and
take up defensive positions. We’ve got enough food and water in here to last for
weeks, and we’ve stockpiled enough weapons and ammunition that we can hold
out against a small army, at least for a little while. We have no idea what’s waiting
for us if we try to leave home in a blind panic. I say we hunker down and wait
things out.” She paused. “Besides, there’s no way for us to know if this ‘three
days’ thing is legitimate or not. I think it is, personally, but it could be a hoax of
some kind.”

Mark looked unconvinced. “A hoax for what purpose?”

 She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“I think you’re both right,” Sarah commented as she crossed her arms over
her chest and sat back in her chair. “I say that one of us takes Maggie and leaves
to keep her safe, and the rest of us do what Heather suggested and stay behind to
give whoever this is hell.”

“We should run and not take the chance,” Matthew interjected his opinion.
“That’s what we should do. This is our home, though. I, for one, don’t want to
give it up without a fight.” He turned his gaze on me. “We’ve given our opinions,
James. What about you?”

I was silent for a moment as I collected my thoughts.

“It seems like all we’ve been doing since this whole thing began is running,”
I finally said. “We’ve constantly been retreating. I’ve been running ever since the
undead broke into the…where I was living.” Whoops, almost slipped up there. “I
know it’s been the same for everyone else, too.”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t like running away. I never have. It leaves a
bad taste in my mouth. I’m so completely sick of running at this point.” I looked
right into Matthew’s eyes. “I say we stay and fight. Sarah’s right, someone will
have to make a break for it with Maggie, but that person won’t be me. I’m going
to stay right here and teach whoever this asshole is that he shouldn’t have fucked
with us.”

“We don’t know that whoever left that message is coming to hurt us,” Mark
pointed out.
 “Oh yes we do,” I disagreed. “He or she made that crystal clear by
destroying our means of transportation. The kind of message that was sent only
has one meaning. He or she is coming for blood, and I’m going to give it to him.”

I was actually angry. My pulse throbbed in my forehead, and I could feel

the heat creeping up my neck to my face. How dare this asshole come into my
home and make threats? Didn’t he know just who the fuck I was? He wanted
violence? This was one of those cases of being careful what you wished for. I
would bring him a level of violence that would cause Satan himself to turn away in
shock.

I pulled myself up short. What the hell had gotten into me?

The answer wasn’t hard to find. I had been domesticated. A domesticated

killer that was now only unleashed to protect those he cared about, like a
Rottweiler being raised by a middle-class family living in the suburbs.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Domestication didn’t explain the anger. If
anything, it would have blunted any rage that I would have felt. This was more a…
protectiveness. Of course, that explained it. In my previous life, I had simply
killed for…what? Why had I done what I had, anyway? Was it for a reason that I
had never really come to grips with, or was it something as simple as sheer
boredom with the staleness of a mundane life? Now that I actually tried to bring
my rationale into the light to examine it closely, I found that I couldn’t bring it into
focus.

What was coming through clear as day, however, was why I felt such a fiery
rage now. It was that protectiveness I mentioned a few sentences ago. There was
actually something in my life, a number of somethings, actually, that I valued and,
yes, I’m man enough to declare that I held them dear. Heather, Sarah, Maggie,
Mark and Matthew; this was my family now. I hadn’t shed a single tear at either
my father’s nor my mother’s funerals, but I was willing to die for these people that
I had known less than a year.

They had made me human, and for them and only them I would become
something less to defend them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Kill Counter- 316

Defend them from what was where things were up in the air. After all, I
could get as pissed off as I wanted to and puff out my chest while snorting fire and
thinking about the unholy vengeance I would wreak upon my foes, but if I didn’t
know where to point my ferocity I wouldn’t be effective in the slightest. I’m sure
you can see, dear reader, what my-

Hey, wait, there’s something different about you.

You’re…distant. I don’t mean that as you’re keeping yourself cut off from
me emotionally (if you are, don’t worry, I always have a shoulder for you to cry
on). I mean that you appear to be farther away than you were when we started
this journey together. You’re less distinct as well, almost like I’m viewing you
through dense fog. I’m sure that if I was paying more attention to you I would
have noticed this odd phenomenon sooner, but I confess that I was occupied
elsewhere and wasn’t giving you the attention that you so richly deserve.

Perhaps the answer to why this sudden change is occurring lies in the
nature of our relationship. Have you noticed that our little chats tend to come
more frequently when I am…oh, how to put this…more out of my mind? I
suppose that means that it’s quite possible that you are a figment of my
imagination that I latch onto whenever my grip on sanity begins to slip a little
more than usual. Is that all that your existence is, the mad visions of a man that
truly should be on some heavy-duty medication? If I were to someday overcome
this swirling cocktail of psychosis, would you simply cease to exist?

Nah, I can’t believe that about you, chum. You’re more real than anyone
else that I have ever met. Heck, in some ways you’re even more real than I am
(somebody stop me, I’m breaking through the Fourth Wall!). We’re two people
who really exist, and something as absurd as the zombie apocalypse actually
happened, and we’ve both managed to somehow live through it to this point. I
mean, that’s the only point of view that makes any sense, right?

Wink.

Until the evening of Day Two on our Countdown to…Whatever clock,

nothing really all that exciting happened. Most of our time was spent making
preparations such as barricading the house’s windows and doors, setting up
weapons caches around the ranch, looking at each other with brooding and deep
expressions, etc. There was also the little pet project that Mark and I had
concocted while slightly inebriated, but you’ll hear more about that (code named
Project Kill Some Shit) in just a bit.

As the sun was setting, however, we noticed that the orange glow wasn’t
fading with it. In fact, it was coming from every direction. It wasn’t until the stars
began to pop up in the night sky that I realized exactly what it was that we were
looking at: there were fires burning miles away all around us. We were at the
center of a ring of flaming death. The fires were far enough way that we couldn’t
even smell the smoke, but just the fact that they were out there made things
seem more ominous. You know, because clearly the situation needed to seem
more ominous than it already did.
 “Okay, God, we get it,” Sarah said with a crooked smile on her face. “Don’t
you think this is kind of overkill?”

Having been apparently magically transported to the Inner Circle of Hell, we

could no longer send one person away with Maggie to protect her from whatever
was coming. Sure, there might have been a gap between the fires that they could
have slipped through, but there was also the possibility of running into the
benevolent folks that had started the burnings in the first place. One fire could
have been an accident or natural occurrence, or maybe even two, but coincidence
could only be stretched so far. For all we knew, the glow in the sky was being
caused by hundreds of bonfires built by Viking barbarians who were coming to
pillage the women and rape the ranch.

Or something like that.

In any case, there wasn’t enough time to send out a search party to find out
what was going on.

As I lay in my bed that night, not getting a lot of sleep but certainly catching
up on my Stare at the Ceiling quota, I could find no answers in the ceiling fan that
my eyes were glued to, only more questions and uncertainties. Day Three was
certainly shaping up to be an interesting one. First, the cryptic note in the barn
that accompanied the destroyed vehicles. Now the ring of flames that encircled
the ranch, not close enough to be a threat themselves but certainly enough to
keep us on the property to ensure that we would be home for our mystery guest’s
appearance. This all seemed so overly dramatic.

Which it was, of course. Sure, the fire was a convenient way to keep the
dogs in the yard, so to speak, but it was also a piece to a strategy built on mind
games. The van and Jeep could have simply been stolen. Instead, they were
destroyed and left in mangled piles for us to find. The leaving of the “THREE
DAYS” message in the barn. Fires burning just close enough for us to see the glow
caused by the flames. Hell, even giving us time to make preparations. It was all
mind games. We were simply marionettes dancing along while the puppet master
pulled the strings.

Giving us a warning and allowing using the opportunity to fortify our home
and prepare for what was coming is what disturbed me the most. It meant that
whoever had started this little game felt that no matter what we did, it wouldn’t
be enough.

What a cheery thought.

Okay, yeah, this wasn’t working. I got back out of bed and dressed in jeans
and a sweatshirt. From my closet, I retrieved a pair of work boots and laced them
up (while they were on my feet, of course, I’m not obsessive compulsive about
tying shoes). I left my room and crept downstairs, being careful not to alert the
others that I was out on the prowl. Taking my shotgun out of the cabinet and
putting on my formerly trademark trench coat, which was still weighed down by
as much ammunition as I could jam into the pockets, I quietly opened the door
and stepped outside, making sure not to let it slam as it swung shut. I
immediately saw that the telltale glow of the fires was still present.

“You’re up awfully late for someone that doesn’t have guard duty tonight,”
an amused female voice said from the far side of the porch.
 “I seem to have pre-performance jitters,” I informed Sarah as I turned to
face her. She had blended in with the shadows so well that I hadn’t seen or even
sensed her presence, but I had known that she would be lurking around
somewhere. She had the first watch that night, after all.

“Really?” she asked, and even though I couldn’t see her face in the dark I
knew that she had raised at least one eyebrow in surprise. “You?”

“I know, it’s hard to believe.”

“Well, if it helps, I have no doubt in my mind that whatever happens

tomorrow, you’re going to be brilliant. You always are when it’s time for killing to
be done.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

We were silent for a moment. Finally Sarah said, “I’m more worried about
me letting everyone down, to be honest.”

I waived a hand dismissively, only realizing after the fact that there was only
a minute chance that she could see the motion. “You’ll be fine,” I assured her.
“After all, you had an amazing teacher.”

She stepped out of the shadows of the porch. Her face was dimly lit by the
moon and starlight, and there was an unreadable expression on it. “You know as
well as I do that things didn’t pan out the way that we both thought they would
when you began my…education,” she said seriously. “Things started out right, but
somewhere along the way I found that I didn’t have the passion I thought I did for
the whole thing.” She smiled slightly. “I guess at heart I’m not really a cold-
blooded killer, just, I dunno, murder-curious.”

There was another moment of silence before I walked over to her and took
her hand in mine. Some corner of my mind screamed that this was it, that I had
officially become a compassionate human being and all was lost. Game over,
man, game over. The rest of my brain told that section to shut up and to stop
being emo.

“There’s not going to be a single person out there tomorrow that I trust
more than you,” I told her sincerely. “You’re right, you’re not like me. You’re not
the same breed as I am. Well, guess what? That’s not a bad thing. You’re going
to see things that I won’t, have a perspective that I can’t. We need to be working
together out there, or we’re in a lot of trouble.”

“We’re already in a lot of trouble,” she pointed out. “Thanks for the pep
talk though, Daddy.”

“You haven’t called me Daddy since we stopped sleeping together,” I replied

mischievously.

Apparently this was the wrong (or very right) thing to say. “That’s true.”
Her hand suddenly wasn’t in mine anymore. It was holding something much more
inappropriate. “You know,” she almost purred, “since tomorrow might be the last
day that one or both of us is breathing…And since I really miss that thing that you
do with your tongue…”

Is there any question about what happened next? Of course we had sex.
Amazingly hot sex considering that we had to keep things quiet for the benefit of
those sleeping inside the house. We just stripped each other’s clothes off and I
bent her over the porch railing. Were we back together? Nope. The relationship
boat had sailed a long time ago and struck an iceberg on the journey from New
York to London.

Or some place in England where ships dock. Do they dock in London? Bah,
never mind, it’s not worth looking up.

I’m not going to go into more details than that. After all, a gentleman never
tells. Well, okay, since you begged, one last thing. Sarah had amazing breasts,
and she always demanded that I give them the proper attention. There you go,
my dear reader with a perverted side, that’s all that you’re going to get.

Once we were done playing Ride the Salami, we reclothed (suck it, English
language) and stood at the railing that we had just made a little less innocent, no
longer passionate lovers but now two predators surveying their domain.
Everything seemed quiet on the home front for the moment. That would most
likely change in a matter of hours, of course, but at that particular time we were
living in a moment of respite. Finally, knowing that there was a big day ahead of
us, I said goodnight and shuffled back up to my room. The physical exercise
proved to be enough to allow me to drift off to sleep.

The sun was in the sky again when I was awoken by entirely too much
shaking. I had been having a rather odd dream about being the primary suspect
in the shooting death of Foghorn Leghorn, so I really didn’t appreciate such a rude
awakening adding to the understandable state of confusion my mind was in. I
can’t be sure, but I believe that I said something rather rude about the mother of
the person ending my state of unconsciousness.
 “Dammit James, wake up,” Heather demanded as she shook me even
harder. “Mark is missing.”

Gah wha? I forced my eyes open and sat up in bed, swinging my legs over
the side and standing up before I actually realized what my body was doing. Over
the years I had found that often it was best just to allow yourself to work on
autopilot, and apparently this was one of those times. I rubbed the crust out of
the corners of my eyes and pushed my bangs out of my face.

“What happened?” I asked as I put back on my boots. Luckily, I had simply

fallen asleep with my clothes on, or else Heather would have been getting a very
nice view of Little James.

“We’re not sure,” she said, glancing out the window. “Mark relieved Sarah
on watch at about three in the morning. He didn’t come in for breakfast, and
Matthew says that he can’t find him anywhere on the ranch.”

“Great,” I muttered darkly, “like we really needed a game of Hide and Seek
to start the day off right. He probably had one of those brilliant flashes of genius
he’s always getting and fell asleep building some monstrosity. Let’s go take a
look.”

I changed my mind as to the most likely scenario about twenty minutes

later. Heather, Sarah, and I spread out to search for Mark while Matthew stayed
with Maggie inside the house, and I decided to check out the barn. Matthew had
already reported that he hadn’t found anything there, but I decided to see for
myself. Mark was an ubermechanic and an amateur inventor, after all, so I figured
that the giant pile of scrap metal must have been of interest to him. I slid the barn
door open and stepped inside.

The chunks of what used to be automobiles were still there, and they didn’t
appear to have been disturbed. Beyond that, the building was pretty much empty
except for a few bales of old hay and a rusted-over milking machine. When we
had first discovered the machine, I had come to the conclusion that this place
must have been quite the house of horrors for some very startled bovines.

My eyes went back to the bales of hay on their own accord. What had you
seen that was so interesting, my roving peepers? There, on the top of the closest
bale. There was a piece of paper stuck underneath the thin rope that held it
together. I walked over and pulled it out. It looked like a schematic of some kind,
and there was scrawling in Mark’s handwriting along the margins. By all
appearances I had been correct; he must have wandered in here to work on some
invention after he had taken over the watch. I wasn’t able to actually make out
what the project had been, however, as I wasn‘t very fluent in Geek.

Plus itt was hard to read anything with the word “UP” written in blood over
top of everything.

Being the master detective that I am, I deduced that the note wanted me to
look above me, which happened to be the direction that the ceiling was located.
Craning my neck, I did as instructed. Written in more blood (apparently ink was
out of someone’s budget), were the words “TODAY’S THE DAY”.

Some poor sucker had certainly bled a lot so that someone could pass on a
message telling me something that I already knew. I winced slightly at my brain’s
choice of words, since that poor sucker was probably Mark. There was no body,
though, and no sign of a blood trail entering or leaving the barn. More mind
games, perhaps? Wouldn’t leaving a message with Mark’s actual body have been
more effective than some scrawling on the ceiling?

And how in God’s name was I going to tell Maggie that her father was most
likely dead?

The sound of a cowbell cut through my thoughts. I glanced up at the

message one last time before turning away and heading back towards the house.
It was show time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Kill Counter- 316

The moment that I stepped out of the barn I knew that we were in a lot of
trouble.

The glow of the fires was still present in the sky; it was harder to see in the
daylight, of course, but the sky was somewhat overcast and I could see it
reflecting off the clouds. If I had to take a guess, I would say that it wasn’t as
strong as it had been the previous evening, but then again, it didn’t need to be.
We had a whole new reason for not leaving the ranch now.

The sound began as a sort of low throbbing noise, kind of like the sound
your heart makes when it pounds in your ears. As I approached the porch,
however, it began to resolve into something much worse: it was the moaning of
many, many zombies. More than I had ever heard in once place up until this
point. The sound was all around us, surrounding our ranch in a ring of death. No
matter which way I turned, however, I couldn’t see any of them.

If they were this loud and not even in sight yet, exactly how many of them
were there?

Sarah had abandoned the cowbell she had been ringing and had begun to
drag a large bag filled with ammunition out onto the porch. She looked up briefly
at me as I approached before going back to her work. I knew what she was
thinking: we weren’t prepared for this. The destruction of the vehicles and the
message that was left behind (two messages now, I corrected myself) pointed
towards a human enemy. In fact, it almost demanded that be the case. Not even
the Apexes seemed capable of advanced communication, so it was unthinkable
that anything undead could be the culprit.

As I went around the side of the house and grabbed the ladder, I concluded
that there had to be something else out there besides the zombies. This was
either a giant coincidence (and I was the Sugar Plum Faerie, here in Montana to
bring good tidings and cheer to all things living and dead), or someone had
somehow gathered this mass of undead for his or her own purposes. Forget
trying to figure out why someone do that, I didn’t even have a clue how it could
be done.

I set the ladder up and used it to climb onto the roof. Matthew came out of
the house and helped Sarah lift the heavy bag, and using the powers granted to
me as the last son of Krypton I managed to drag it up beside me. I moved it over
to a mostly flat section of the roof and set it against the chimney. This was part of
our standard Defense Against the Undead plan. There were weapons and
ammunition stashes all over the property just in case we found ourselves in need
of them.

I climbed back down and headed inside the house to get ready. The
moaning was getting louder with each passing minute; it was so loud at this point
that I could hear it through the walls. I retrieved the shotgun and trench coat,
naturally, but I also ran upstairs and pulled another item out of my nightstand. I
hoped that I wouldn’t actually have to use it. It was prudent to cover all the
angles, though. I raced back downstairs and, after a moment’s though, pulled out
two of the Molotov cocktails that we had rigged up using some of our zombie-
based oil, dish soap, old bottles, and strips of cloth soaked in alcohol. I carefully
set them in different pockets and fished a lighter out of one of the kitchen
drawers. Considerably weighed down by my coat-based weapons locker, I started
to head back outside when I saw Heather coming downstairs.

“I’ve got Maggie locked in the attic,” she told me as she adjusted the police
utility belt she was wearing around her waist. She was dressed in jeans and a tank
top, somehow managing to look both dangerous and sexy at the same time. The
belt’s holster was home to the remaining Glock, naturally, and one of the two
hunting rifles was in her hand. I spotted at least three knives on her, one in her
belt and one in each of her boots, but I was almost sure that she had a number of
weapons that I wasn’t aware of on her. If not, she certainly was packing more
heat in the backpack that she picked up and slung over her shoulders.

“Did you show her how to get out the window and onto the roof?” I asked
as we walked out onto the porch.

“Of course.” She paused, waiting as Matthew and Sarah went past us and
into the house to arm themselves. “Is there any hope for Mark?” she whispered.

I hesitated. Deciding that the truth was best in this case, I shook my head.
“There’s a lot of blood in the barn, and he’s nowhere to be seen.”

“Shit. What are we going to tell Maggie?”

“I don’t know. First things first, though. We’re facing what sounds like a
legion of zombies, and we’re down a man before we can even get started. The
house is barricaded except for the front door and we’ve got the tools to do that
quickly sitting on the couch in the living room, but from the sound of it…”

“…There are too many zombies for a few boards and some nails to make
any difference,” she finished for me. “What the hell is going on, James? This
doesn’t make any fucking sense!”

“You’re asking the wrong guy. I’m just as confused as you are.”

“What the hell is that?” Matthew exclaimed as he came back outside,

sporting more firearms than most armies had been equipped with pre-
apocalypse.

I looked in the direction that his stupefied expression indicated and

immediately saw why the normally squeaky-clean in the language department
giant had chosen to insert a mild profanity into his exclamation. Coming up the
ranch’s driveway were three figures, the middle of which was holding up what
appeared to be a white flag. The small group immediately reminded me of old
pictures from the Revolutionary War depicting an army’s general seeking to
conference with his opposing counterpart.

It was difficult to make out any details at this range, but two things were for
certain: all of them were undead, and the figure on the right was wearing a
wedding dress.

“What do we do?” Heather asked quietly, a very strange hitch in her voice.

“We go meet them,” I answered with a bravado I wasn’t really feeling. “You
and me. Matthew, you and Sarah stay here. Keep a gun on our guests at all times.
If I raise my left hand in a fist, shoot them.”
 “But that one on the right-“

“Yeah,” I interrupted, feeling my jaw clench slightly. “Yeah, I know.”

We stepped off the porch and began to walk slowly towards our visitors.
Upon seeing our approach, the figure in the middle, dressed in what had once
been a white suit but was now slightly grey with flecks of brown and black, waved
his free hand in greeting. For her part, the bride-turned-undead just kept walking
as if she didn’t even realize we were there. The gentleman on the left was just a
complete mess, and I wasn’t sure how he was even still standing.

Heather and I stopped when we were about twenty feet from them. The
Bride was pretty much as I had remembered her, with the exception that she
looked a lot more rotted when viewed close up. I marveled at the fact that her
veil was still somehow sitting atop her head; you would have thought that at the
very least an errant breeze would have knocked it off. Something seemed
different about her, though, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Ah, of course, her
mangled face wasn’t contorted in rage, and her mouth wasn’t open in one of
those bloodcurdling shrieks.

Heather nudged me and indicated the zombie on the left with a tilt of her
chin. The face was absolutely shredded, the skin torn off to expose the muscles
and bone underneath. Multiple teeth were missing, and one eye had a bloody
hole where the pupil should have been. The other eye, however, didn’t display
the silver coloring of an Apex. Instead, it was a rusty brown.

I glanced down and saw that it was clutching an axe in its hands. Not just any axe,
but the same axe that I had left behind at the home of the Church of the Undying
Spirit. On its left hand was a platinum wedding band.

“God help us,” Heather muttered under her breath. “That’s him. That’s Mark.”

Taking a closer look at the zombie’s clothes, I realized that she was right. The
remains of a man that was standing before us was indeed Mark, father of an
adorable daughter, widower of a woman he had mercy killed, unwitting friend to a
serial killer. He stared blankly ahead, giving no indication that he recognized us.

The figure in the center hissed at us. I turned to face it, forcing myself to remain
calm and collected. His face was also ruined, but it was done so in a way that I
could almost believe that it had been intentional. The skin and tissue around the
mouth and eye sockets were gone, revealing the browned bone. The effect was to
make the zombie look evil, almost demonic. Adding to the image were the eyes.
There was no silver here, or even the rust-like color that Mark’s was displaying.
These were red, bright red, the color of steel when it has been heated by a forge.
They almost seemed to glow within the prison of their skull.

The hissing came again. No, not hissing. That wasn’t quite right, was it?

It was laughing at us. This undead asshole was laughing at us.

And then one of the most shocking things that I had ever witnessed
occurred. Yes, you read that correctly. This mind-blowing event was so amazing
that it caused someone with as much worldly experience as I possessed to be
completely stupefied by what was happening.

The zombie in the white suit spoke.

“Well well well,” he said, offering his disfigured hand to me. His voice was
raspy and dry, but it was still quite understandable. “I’ve been looking forward to
making the acquaintance of you folks for quite some time now. Put ‘er there,
partner!”

Heather and I stared blankly at him. I forced my mouth to close to deny any
bugs access.

“No takers?” he asked mildly. He withdrew the hand. “All right then. I have
to say that I’m a tad disappointed. Just because I’m going to murder you all in
terribly painful ways doesn’t mean that we can’t be friends. Mark here
understands that, don’t you, Mark?”

What was left of Maggie’s father made an odd gurgling sound.

The talkative zombie smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh,
right, silly me. I forgot that I tore out his throat. Let me assure you that if he
could speak, he’d be absolutely gushing about my many superb qualities.”

“You can talk,” Heather blurted out.

“And you can be perceptive!” He laughed another of those hissing laughs.

It reminded me of a breeze rustling through dried leaves. “It’s actually incredibly
hard to shut me up once I’ve gotten started, girlie. There’s nothing that I enjoy as
much as the sound of my own voice.”

He slowly looked her up and down. “Then again, I can think of one other
thing that ranks right up there,” he corrected himself.

Heather somehow managed to roll shock, disgust, fear, and confusion all
into one expression. That, my friend, takes talent.
 The white-suited zombie raised his hands and shook his head quickly. “I
think that we’ve got a misunderstanding happening here, miss. I’m not some sort
of sexual deviant. I assure you that isn’t the case. I’m a firm believer in equal
rights and the women’s movement and all of that.” He lowered his hands. “I
promise that the only thing that I was implying was that I find the idea of tearing
the flesh off of your body and eating it while you watch to be stimulating.”

“This is fascinating,” I interjected, finally finding my voice, “but I’m guessing

this isn’t a social call.”

“Quite right,” he agreed after a slight but noticeable pause. “I’m afraid that
I’m here on business. Or pleasure. I’m kind of lucky that way, since I take a lot of
pleasure in my business.”

“I assume that we’re coming to the point.”

The zombie regarded me closely for a moment. “Most people in your

position would be soiling their underpants right now. False bravado to hide your
fear, perhaps?”

I smiled slightly. “Whatever helps you sleep, chuckles. I believe that you
were just about to tell us why you’re gracing our presence.”

He clapped his hands together, the white flag still clenched between his
thumb and index finger. “Ah yes. First off, my name is Mitch, and secondly, I want
to eat your brains.”

He pointed at his chest. Stuck to one side of his suit jacket was a “Hi, My
Name Is” tag with the word “Mitch” scrawled on it in what appeared to be dried
blood.

“Don’t worry, though,” he continued. “I’m a professional when it comes to

this sort of thing, so you won’t be consumed by some rank amateur. Your average
zombie would simply crack open your skull and start taking big sloppy bites.
That’s so undignified and definitely indicative of an unrefined palette.

“A true connoisseur such as myself knows to begin the brain course of a

meal with the cerebellum. It’s a rather light portion, and it truly prepares the
taste buds for what is to come. If you forced me to make a comparison, I’d say it’s
akin to a crisp salad before a steak.

“The backbone of the experience is the consuming of the hemispheres of

the brain, of course. It can be rather filling if eaten all at one sitting, but I take it as
a point of pride that I’ve never failed to finish a cranium-based meal. In case you
were wondering, the hemispheres taste a lot like veal to the undead. That’s a fun
fact that might come in handy if the question should pop up during a game of
Trivial Pursuit.

“Ah, but what would a complete dinner be without a dessert to cap it all
off? There are a few different ways to go with it. A warm glass of spinal fluid is
nice on a cold winter night, for example. My personal favorite, though, is chilled
cerebral cortex over ice. It’s just so refreshing. Don’t you agree, Mark?”

Undead Matt gurgled at him.

“See?” Mitch asked triumphantly. “Thank you for your valuable insight, my
boy.”
 Another answering gurgle.

There was a loud click beside me. I turned my head slightly to find that
Heather was pointing her Glock directly at Mitch’s face.

“If you want a fight, we’ll give you one,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Oh my, aren’t you the feisty one!” Mitch waved the white flag that he was
carrying. “Hey now, I’m here in peace. Haven’t you watched any old war
movies?”

Her cheek muscle tightened slightly. “You just said that-”

“That I want to eat your brains,” he finished for her. “And I do, along with
the rest of your bodies. Not for another hour, though.”

“What happens in an hour?” I asked suspiciously.

“Well, you see, I kind of made a booboo,” Mitch replied, sounding almost
embarrassed. “When I heard how many undead your group had killed, I just
assumed that there were more of you. I hope you don’t mind, but I invited a few
of my friends over.” He chuckled. “Okay, you got me, more than few friends.”

“How many are we talking here?”

“Oh, I don’t know, somewhere in the neighborhood of a million or so. I lost

count around six hundred thousand.” He pointed at the Bride with his thumb.
“She lost the guest list; if she hadn’t, I could give you a more accurate number.”
He shrugged. “Chicks, huh?”

For her part, the Bride simply stared ahead into space and was silent.
 “Anyway, it would be rude of me to get the party started without waiting for
my friends. They’ll be here in just about an hour, so that’s how long I’m giving you
folks to get ready.”

Mitch paused and glanced over at Undead Mark. “I confess that I was a bit
anxious to begin, so I went ahead and murdered Marky-boy here last night. I
know, I know, I should have been more patient, but I’m afraid that impatience is
one of my failings. I promise not to let it happen again.” He held out his arms to
Heather. “Want to hug and make up?”

She declined by pulling the hammer back on her gun.

“That’s a nice weapon that you have there,” he commented. “Mind if I take
a look at it?”

I didn’t even see him begin to move. In a blur of motion, he snatched the
gun from Heather’s hands. I brought the shotgun up to bare, but he merely
examined the pistol with apparent interest.

“A Glock 22, I believe?” he mused out loud. “I’m not much of a gun nut, but
a friend of mine was a cop and he used to carry one of these. In fact, he tried to
kill me with it while I was chewing on his leg.”

Without warning, he raised the barrel of the gun to his temple and emptied
the clip into his own skull. Skin and blood flew out in all directions. The bullets
didn’t penetrate the bone, however, and they ricocheted off to God knows where.

“It didn’t work, of course, but he shot me with it just the same,” Mitch
noted as he handed the gun back to a visibly shaken Heather.
 Without any sort of signal that I could see, the three zombies turned and
walked back the way that they had come. What used to be Mark dropped the axe
to the ground with a dull thump. With another burst of that hissing laughter,
Mitch tossed the white flag away and merrily slapped the Bride on the ass as they
strolled up the driveway. For some reason, the human-like gesture seemed to
make the situation even worse.

“What just happened?” Heather demanded as we turned and went back to

the house. “What the hell was that, and what does it mean?”

I glanced back over my shoulder at the retreating zombies. “It means that
we’re in a fuckload of trouble,” I replied as I watched Mitch stroll out of sight with
his cohorts. “A metric fuckton of trouble.”

“Colorful,” she murmured. “How bad is it?”

I turned my attention back to her. “You heard the man. Zombie. Thing.
Whatever the hell he was. He claimed that he’s got around a million zombies with
him.”

“Do you think he was lying?” She sounded hopeful.

I shook my head in the negative. “I don’t think he has any reason to.
Besides, listen to how loud that moaning is. Even if it’s not a million, there’s a hell
of a lot of them out there.”

I filled Matthew and Sarah in on the details of the surreal conversation and
the peculiar behavior of our zombie admirer Mitch. When I finished, we all stared
out at the driveway for a good five minutes. There was nothing there to see, but
we all knew that something very nasty was out there just out of sight.

I mean, what the fuck, right? An intelligent zombie? Who the hell had told them
that they were allowed to think? It certainly hadn’t been me.

Sarah, her face a bit pale, was the first to speak. She was wearing a black hoodie
with the hood raised, but I had no problem identifying the restrained fear in her
eyes. I suddenly felt immensely proud of her. Your average college student would
have been a blubbering mess by now. Somehow, though, she was keeping the
terror in check.

“So what do we do?” she asked. It was a simple question with no simple
answer.

“I only see one option,” Matthew answered. “We barricade the front door,
lock down the house as tight as we can, and you, James, and I do what we can to
keep the place from being overrun while Heather gets on the CB and tries to find
us some help.”

“But we haven’t picked up anyone on the CB except for little snippets from
the Church of the Undying Spirit,” she protested. “If there was anyone out there
transmitting, we would know it by now.”

“He’s right,” I told her with what I could only assume was a grim expression
on my face. “It’s a long shot, but it’s the only option we have.”

“Even if someone is listening, how could they possibly get to us through all
those zombies?”

I sighed. “You know I don’t have an answer to that, Sarah. We have to try,
though. The only other option is to fight to the death with no hope in sight.”

“Why am I the one using the radio?” Heather protested. “I’m a better shot
than the rest of you.”

“With Mark gone, you’re the only one that actually knows how to use the
thing,” Matthew said patiently. “The rest of us can barely figure out how to turn it
on. It has to be you.”

“We’re wasting time,” I said impatiently, proving myself to be the antithesis

of the man standing next to me. “Heather, work the CB for all you’re worth.
Matthew, Sarah…let’s show this Mitch fellow why he should have brought more
zombies.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Kill Counter- 316

You had better believe that Ye Ol’ Kill Counter is going to go up during this
chapter.

Since the CB radio was a portable unit, we moved it up into the attic where
we had stored Maggie like luggage on a plane’s overhead compartment. While
Heather was getting it hooked back up again, the little girl went over to Matthew
and tugged on his pant leg. He gave her a sad smile and knelt down.

“Yes, little angel?” he asked.

She looked up at the towering man and asked very seriously, “Is my Daddy
okay, Uncle Matthew?”

He looked over at the rest of us helplessly. “Your Daddy had to go away for
a while,” he finally answered. “He loves you very much, though, and he promises
that you’ll be together again before you know it.”

“Your Daddy needs you to be brave, Maggie,” Heather told her in a

somewhat shaky voice. I noticed that she refused to look up from the radio as she
spoke. “No matter what happens, he needs you to be brave and strong. Can you
do that, honey?”

Maggie sighed deeply. “Daddy is dead, isn’t he.” It wasn’t a question.

I surprised myself by being the one to speak. “Yes, Daddy is dead,” I told
her gently. “He died protecting all of us. He was a very brave man.” I went over
and picked her up in my arms. “The best way that we can honor his memory is to
make sure that we all live long and happy lives. You especially, Maggie. You were
everything to him. It’s okay to be sad, Maggie, but we have to get through today.
Then we can all be sad together. Okay?”

She sniffed loudly as she nodded. “Okay, Uncle James.”

I set her back down and went back to where I had been standing. Heather
looked up at me as she finished attaching the antenna to the radio. There were
unshed tears in her eyes.

“You amaze me sometimes, James,” she said before going back to her work.

The only ways into the attic were via a trapdoor in the second floor ceiling,
which we had closed after pulling the ladder up with us, and the window leading
out onto the roof. Just between you and me, I was starting to get sick of roofs and
high heights in general. Things never seemed to work out well for me when I was
more than ten feet off the ground. Tough times called for sacrifices to made,
however, so I opened the window and stepped out onto the gently sloping roof.

I could now see the approaching zombie horde, the swarm of undead
bodies heading towards our position from all sides. It was difficult to make out
individual zombies as the sky had begun to cloud over, casting shadows over the
ranch. With the fires burning in the distance and the shrouded mass of zombies
coming closer, it wasn’t hard to imagine that I was standing in pre-apocalypse New
Jersey.

The trench coat was beginning to get a bit warm, so I took it off and tossed
it over next to the bag of goodies I had hauled up earlier. Sarah climbed out the
window and stared off into the distance for a moment before silently reaching
back into the house and pulling out a hunting rifle. She went over to the bag and
rummaged around for a moment, finally producing a box of ammunition. Still
without speaking, she began to load the weapon. When she was viewed in the
dim light, the hoodie made her resemble the popular cloaked image of Death.

“How long do you think we can hold out?” I asked, more out of some
obscure need to have a conversation than thinking that she might have an answer.

“Not very,” she answered shortly.

“Nice to know that we’re on the same page.” I took my cue from her and
checked to make sure that my shotgun was loaded to capacity. It was, in case you
were wondering. “Even if they can’t get up onto the roof to get us, with that
many bodies trying to get in at once they might just bring the house down.”

“I’m the only one that hasn’t seen the Apexes in action,” she stated,
changing the subject. “Well, unless you count Maggie. Can they get up here?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“And this Mitch thing? What about him, do you think he’s going to be a
problem?”

“Honestly?” I squinted as I looked up at the sky and remembered the shots

the rather unique zombie had fired into his own head. “I get the feeling that
Mitch doesn’t even need an army.”

She tested the rifle’s sight for a moment. “What was he like? We couldn’t
hear anything from the house.”

I hesitated slightly before saying, “He’s insane. I don’t know what

constitutes insanity for a zombie, but by human standards, he’s nuts. Completely
psychopathic and very, very dangerous. I think he’s been toying with us just to
amuse himself. He wants to kill us, but he wants to play with his food first.”

She lowered the weapon and looked over at me. “So what you’re saying is
he’s a lot like you.”

I shook my head. “He’s even worse than I used to be. I was never
purposefully cruel to my victims, and I didn’t make things go on longer than they
had to. Mitch wants to torture us. Make us suffer.”

“He might just get his wish.”

“It’s certainly looking like it.”

“Any theories on how a zombie with a high IQ is possible?”

I chuckled. “Sarah, I don’t even know how a regular zombie is possible. I

couldn’t even begin to explain our new friend Mitch. I’m going to go get Matthew.
It’s almost time for the fun to begin.”

The three of us spread out across the roof. With the sheer number of
approaching zombies, there wasn’t really much point in a more sophisticated
strategy. To buy Heather’s frantic transmissions as much time as possible, we
would have to keep the undead away from the house’s first floor doors and
windows for as long as we could. It was inevitable that they would break into the
domicile, of course, but every minute that we delayed them was another minute
we bought for a potential rescue. After some very intense mathematical
computations, I estimated our possibility of survival right around the 0% mark.

But hey, what did math know? If it was really all that great, it would be
called “alwaysrightics” instead of “mathematics”.

“Conserve ammunition,” I warned the others, having to raise my voice over

the suddenly gusting wind. Ah, spring in Montana, what a wonderful time of year.
For surprise storms and flash floods, I mean. “When we’re out of bullets we’re
going to have to fight hand-to-hand, and they’ve got a lot more hands than we
do.”

Sarah swung her head towards me, a vicious smile on her face. “Maybe,”
she replied, “but I bet our hands fuck a lot of zombies up by the end of the day.”

I laughed. “That’s the spirit.”

The first of the zombies were now within a hundred yards of the house. I
forced myself to look at the horde as individual targets instead of one huge mass.
Trying to take down a million zombies was absolute insanity (even by my
standards), but I could certainly take down one. Then I could move onto the next
one. And then the next one. Sure, it was simply a coping mechanism and it didn’t
change our situation in the slightest. I wasn’t above using such methods from
time to time, however, so I went right on ahead with convincing myself it wasn’t
as bad as it seemed.

I scanned the incoming crowd. There didn’t appear to be any Apexes in this
first wave of undead, which was, as they say, a good thing. Just simple, mindless,
human-eating regular American zombies to kick things off. I raised my shotgun
and took aim, waiting for the first target to come into range.

I’m not normally one to deride someone based on his or her weight, but
this zombie was absolutely huge. It was at least five hundred pounds on a less
than six foot tall frame. I had a hard time figuring out if it had been a man or
woman in life. Some mysteries are best left unsolved, I thought to myself. I
certainly wasn’t going to go down there and check.

Come on, you fat bastard, just a little closer…

The shotgun roared as I squeeze the trigger. A split second later, the
zombie’s head exploded in a fireworks display of blood and gore. The body
staggered backwards a few feet before falling to the ground like a chopped-down
redwood. It trapped a zombie that had been walking behind it underneath its
massive bulk, and the poor guy struggled for all he was worth to break free. It
was simply too much girth to escape.

Why, dear reader, there you are! You’re back in all of your glory, completely
in focus and close to my side. We’ll figure out why this is later, but first, I’ve got a
bit of work that I have to get back to for a while. Why don’t you pour yourself a
cup of coffee while you wait? There’s also some soda in the fridge if you don’t like
java. I know that when I’m watching the murdering of countless undead
individuals, I prefer a lower caffeine drink, so just root around in there until you
find something that you like.

We were off to the races. I could hear Sarah and Matthew dishing out their
own brand of justice (I enjoy old Clint Eastwood movies, can you tell?) from their
positions, but I concentrated on my own work and trusted them to do theirs.
Overhead the sky was growing darker, and the rumble of distant thunder brought
the promise of a storm.

Why did the universe seem to think that rain and zombies went together? It had
happened way back at Rebel’s Cove the night that I had used shiny objects to
distract the undead so that the Calloway family could scamper from their car and
up to the lookout station. It had rained when Heather and I were on our way to
the dam where Matthew and I had encountered the first Apex. Now, as we were
surrounded by seven digits worth of zombies, it was threatening to rain again.
Was fighting zombies on a bright clear day really too much to ask?

Oh, hey, wow, was that Marcus Washington? I squinted down at a zombie
that was shambling towards the front door of the house. Hey, it was Marcus
Washington. He had been one hell of cornerback out of Alabama a few years
earlier, and if memory served he had been drafted in the first round by the
Cleveland Browns. I had never actually met a celebrity before.

I shot his face off. The asshole should have found a way to sign with the
Vikings anyway. His style would have worked better with their defensive schemes.

Hey, was that the shitty actress from that even shittier teen drama
television show?

BLAM!

“We’ve got an Apex incoming!” Sarah called out.

Matthew and I immediately turned from our positions and went over to
assist. We had discussed this beforehand: the regular zombies were to be ignored
whenever an Apex showed up. As things stood, we were relatively safe from your
garden variety undead while on the roof, but your decidedly not garden variety
superzombies might be able to climb up to our level and present an immediate
threat.

This is exactly what happened. Before Matthew and I could reach her
section of the roof, a shrieking Apex, completely naked and covered in marks that I
would have sworn could only have been made by something like a lion,
scampered up the side of the back porch and hauled itself up to face us. It issued
another shriek and immediately charged at Sarah. She calmly stepped to one side
and stuck her foot out, causing it to lose its balance momentarily. A shot from
Matthew snapped its head upward, and Sarah quickly finished it off with a round
into the back of its skull. The body fell off the side of the roof and disappeared
into the crowd below.

There was a thump behind me, and I turned just in time to see another
Apex coming right at me. I thought about trying to replicate Sarah’s neat tripping
trick, but I knew that I couldn’t pull it off as gracefully as she had. Instead, I simply
pointed the shotgun at it and fired. The blast caught it in the chest, and it went
spinning into the chimney like some kind of insane ballet dancer. It tried to get
back to its feet, but a second shot turned its head into mush.

There didn’t seem to be any more Apexes looking to join the party at the
moment, so I went back to my original position and looked down. During the brief
intermission, a number of zombies had managed to reach the house and were
clawing at the barricaded door and windows. There were even a few that seemed
to think that they could tunnel through the siding with their hands (unsurprisingly,
they weren’t having much success with that plan). I took care of the would-be
home invaders that I could get a good angle on, but there were a few that I
couldn’t get a clean shot at.

As I reloaded the shotgun once again, I made it a point to count the number
of shells I had remaining. I didn’t like the final number; the shotgun had the most
power out of all the weapons that we had, so it made sense to save it for an
emergency. Sarah and Matthew were using the hunting rifles, so I dug around in
the canvas bag until I found a revolver that we had, ahem, liberated from a pawn
shop during one of our trips to Parkersburg. Compared to the shotgun, it didn’t
pack nearly as much of a punch, but we had quite a bit of ammunition for it so it
would have to do.

Twenty minutes later, things had reached the point where the dead zombie
bodies around the house were starting to form a sort of natural barrier. In the
short term this was a good thing, as it helped to keep the number of (kind of)
living zombies reaching the house’s entry points at manageable numbers. Long
term, though, the piles of corpses were going to get large enough that the
swarming undead would be able to climb their way up to us.

I glanced back at the bag holding the remaining guns and ammunition. This
was assuming that we didn’t run out of bullets before then, of course. As soon as
that happened, it would only be a matter of time before we all wound up very
dead.

I wiped the sweat off of my brow. Just in case you’ve never experienced it,
fighting off the legions of the undead while preparing for the inevitable devouring
of your body can be hard work. I went to raise the revolver again but thought
better of it and wiped the moisture from my hands as well. It wouldn’t do anyone
any good if my perspiration caused me to drop my gun off the roof. With the
maintenance taken care of, I turned back to the matter at hand.

Something caught my eye in the distance. Near the barn, Mitch was leaning
up against a fence. He was holding what appeared to be a squirrel clenched in his
fist, and he was seemingly content to observe the proceedings without getting
personally involved. As I watched, he casually bit the head off the squirrel and
chewed it like a child eating a candy bar. He must have noticed my attention
because he raised a hand and waved pleasantly.

I was really starting to hate that guy.

The Bride came out of the barn and stood at Mitch’s side. There was no
hint of the intelligence that he and, to a lesser degree, Undead Mark possessed,
but she seemed to be completely docile and obedient around him. The
relationship reminded me of a dog waiting for its master’s command to attack and
maul somebody. Mitch regarded her for a moment. Finally, he shrugged and
pointed at me. She turned and opened her mouth wide. I couldn’t hear the
shriek over the moaning of the zombie horde, but I’m sure that there was one.
She began to fight her way through the crowd and towards the house.

“Apex incoming!” I called out. “It’s Mitch’s undead bridal whore. We’ve got
about two minutes before she’s on us.”

Despite the huge crowd around her, it wasn’t hard to watch the Bride’s
progress. Every so often she would disappear from sight behind clumps of
zombies, but seconds later the white lace of her dress would once again pop into
view. More than once, she paused to open her mouth and presumably scream at
me. I stuck the revolver in my belt and picked up the shotgun. A special visitor
demanded a special welcoming gift.

The Bride finally reached the house and climbed over the body pile. She
attempted to leap up onto the roof from the top of Mount St. Corpse, but she
wasn’t quite able to reach the overhang. I fired the shotgun. She twisted slightly,
however, and the blast merely drilled a hole in the body she was standing on.
Enraged, she darted off around the side of the house to look for another way up.

“Where is the bitch?” Sarah demanded as she and Matthew joined me.

“She couldn’t get up from here,” I explained. “She’s trying to find a place to
climb.”

We scrambled about the edge of the roof trying to track her progress.
Sarah was the one who finally spotted her as she came around into the backyard
area. The Bride, much as the other Apex had earlier, lifted herself up onto the
back porch. Instead of coming up to our level, however, she smashed her way
through a window and into the house before any of us could fire a shot.

“Shit, she’s on the floor below Heather and Maggie,” Sarah said angrily.

“She can’t get into the attic from there,” I said confidently, preparing to go
back to my spot. “They’ll be fine.”

“She can if she gets into one of the back room closets,” Matthew disagreed.
“There’s only some plywood and insulation between the ceilings and the attic in
them.”
 “Oh, come on, the odds of that are-“

“More than the odds of Heather and Maggie surviving if that Apex does
manage to get to them?” he countered.

I really hated it when I was wrong and somebody else was right. This was
turning into quite the hate-filled day for me.

“Okay, you’re right,” I conceded graciously. “The two of you keep going up
here, I’ll handle the bitch.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you think? I’m going in after her.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Kill Counter- 451

Before stupidly pursuing the Bride into the confined spaces of the house, I
snatched up my trench coat and put it back on. While it wasn’t exactly a suit of
armor, its thick material would at least make it slightly more difficult for her to
claw or bite most of my body. I wanted to be weighed down as little as possible,
however, so I removed the Molotov cocktails (setting fire to the house didn’t seem
like the smartest idea) and much of the ammunition from the coat.

With a nod towards Sarah and Matthew, I walked over to the edge of the
roof. So far the Apexes that had managed to get up to our level had not seemed
to notice the window leading into the attic, and I didn’t want to draw attention to
it by using it to access the house. Instead, I lowered myself down onto the porch
roof that the Bride had been standing on moments earlier.

The second my feet touched the shingles, I raised the shotgun and pointed it at
the remains of the window. She hadn’t just taken out the glass; the entire frame
was shattered and there were small cracks running along the wall around it. I
raised an eyebrow at my own apparently suicidal tendencies. Did I really want to
be in an enclosed area with something that could do that with its bare hands?

Being careful not to cut myself on the shards of glass, I climbed through the
window and into the house.

I was in Maggie’s room. I believe that I previously mentioned that we all

tended to dote on her and spoil her rotten, and her room was proof of that. It
was completely covered in pink and purple; everything from the bed sheets to the
chair in the corner was one or both of these colors. A giant poster of Tinkerbell
smiled at me from one wall, and my own ugly mug was reflected back at me by a
unicorn-shaped mirror on the other.

I imagined that this was what Hell was like.

The door leading out into the hallway was lying on the floor underneath a
pile of wood shards and splinters. While the Bride might have been one of the
most vicious and efficient killing machines the world had ever seen, apparently
the concept of using a doorknob was completely foreign to her. Mitch really
should have sent her to some sort of zombie finishing school. At the very least
such a school could have taught her better speaking skills and enunciation.

The brains in Spain lie strewn across the lane.

I moved to the door, being as quiet as I could on the off-chance that the
sounds of my movements wouldn‘t be masked by the deafening moaning coming
from outside. Poking my head out the door, I took a quick peek down the hallway.
The trapdoor leading up to the attic was still pulled up and closed. That was the
good news. The bad news was the Bride was nowhere to be seen. None of the
bedroom and bathroom doors were closed, either, meaning that she could be
anywhere. If they had been closed, I could have simply followed the trail of
broken doors.

Maggie’s room was the last door in the hallway before you reached a dead
end (well, not exactly a dead end, but I doubted that a zombie would hide in the
linen closet). It was located directly across from Sarah’s room and next to
Heather’s; we had jokingly referred to it as the Chick Section. I took two long
strides into Sarah’s room and did a quick search. Everything seemed to be in
order, which meant that it was total chaos. Sarah wasn’t the best housekeeper in
the world.

I went back out into the hallway and moved to Heather’s door. Pressing
myself flat to the wall, I tried to listen for a minute but was foiled by the sounds
coming from outside. I counted to three and stepped through the doorway, the
shotgun raised and ready. I’m sure that my precision military-style skills would
have impressed the Bride terribly if she had actually been in the room, but alas,
she was not. Back out into the hall I went.

A glance into the bathroom told me that she wasn’t relieving herself or
taking a pre-killing shower (I didn’t blame her, as I always preferred to shower
after murdering instead of before). That left only one more room, which was
mine. Matthew and Mark’s rooms were located downstairs just off of the living
room. I swore that if this undead cunt was fucking with my stuff she was going to
live to regret it. Or unlive to regret it. Whatever, you get the point.

If there’s one thing that I dislike the most about the post-zombie apocalypse
world, it’s that in some ways it kicked grammar right in the junk.

Luckily for my awesome stuff, the Bride was not in my room. Everything
appeared to be in order and untouched. That meant that she had to have gone
downstairs. Before I approached the staircase, I went back and shut all the doors
leading into the bedrooms and bathroom. If she somehow got back upstairs, I
would know exactly which room she chose.
 With that done, I began to cautiously descend the staircase. The moaning
grew even louder as I went down. I forced myself to loosen my grip on the
shotgun. I needed to be careful, of course, but all the caution in the world
wouldn’t do me any good if my trigger finger went numb. I reached the bottom of
the stairs and put my back to the wall, my weapon pointed in front of me.

Because of all of the barricading and boarding up that we had done, the
downstairs area was extremely dim, almost dark. I stood still for a couple of
minutes to allow my eyes to adjust to light (or lack thereof). Without the ability to
hear and the reduced ability to see, I was supposed to rely on, what, my amazing
sense of smell? Was I going to sniff out the Bride like a police dog, or perhaps like
Scooby Doo on the trail of a thief dressed like a ghostly scuba diver? I supposed
that I could default to my sense of touch. The downside to that was if I did find
her like that, I probably wouldn’t get the hand back.

For obvious reasons, taste was out of the question.

There was movement over towards the front door. I took three quick steps
into the living room and ducked behind the couch, waiting a moment before I
peeked up over top of it. The Bride was systematically destroying the barricade
blocking the door, making a lot of very expensive furniture into very expensive
junk. With a rather vehement curse I got up from my place of concealment.
Mitch hadn’t sent her to kill someone. He had sent her to let the rest of the
zombie horde in.

I aimed the shotgun for a moment before lowering it again. From this
angle, I had just as much of a chance of blowing a hole in the door as I did putting
one in the Bride’s skull. I was going to have to find a different place to deliver the
kill shot.

As if sensing the sudden danger that she was in, the Bride stopped
assaulting innocent furniture and turned around to face me. Even in the darkness
I could see the glow of her silver eyes, and it was obvious that she certainly didn’t
have a problem seeing me standing there. Her jaw lowered slowly as her face
contorted into a mask of rage and twisted hunger. She took a step towards me
and paused. The eyes swiveled back towards the door before returning to me.
Despite being a zombie, she certainly looked confused about whether or not she
should attempt to eat my sweet, sweet human flesh. It was as if her basic
instincts were fighting against Mitch’s command to open the floodgates.

I wasn’t going to give her time to puzzle her way out of this conundrum
with her (*cough*) superior mental capabilities. In a fairly athletic move, I vaulted
over the back of the couch and grabbed one of the throw pillows. I then allowed
the pillow to truly live up to its name as I chucked it at the Bride’s face. It was a
completely non-threatening act and there was no reason that she should have
even blinked because of it.

The Bride struck at the pillow, grabbing it with both hands and tearing it in
half.

In the heartbeat that it took her to de-stuff her fluffy assailant, I crossed the
distance between us and brought up the shotgun. I approached at an angle that
wouldn’t damage the remaining barricade material or the boards nailed in front of
the door.

I was fast, but apparently not fast enough. The Bride tossed the remains of
the pillow aside and lunged for me. She was too quick for me to avoid, and we
went crashing to the floor.

The shotgun bucked in my hand as I fired it. The shot impacted with her
shoulder and tore the majority of her arm off. The force of the blast flung her off
of me, and I rolled off to the side and to my feet. I immediately regretted it as a
sharp pain flared in my side. At least one rib was either bruised or broken. I
probed at the sensitive spot tentatively. Most likely just bruised, but it certainly
hurt like a bitch.

Speaking of a bitch, the Bride had a much more grievous wound that I did,
but she wasn’t letting that stop her. She had regained her footing and once more
came at me. Instead of colliding with me, however, she swiped downward with
her remaining claw-like hand. I instinctively raised an arm to shield my face, and
her nails bit deeply into my coat’s sleeve. It didn’t penetrate, though, and I was
thankful that I had had the foresight to put it on before entering the house.

I fired the shotgun again, but a split second before I pulled the trigger she
knocked my hand off to the side and the shot went wide. For only having one
arm, she was certainly getting her money’s worth from it. I lined it back up and
attempted to fire again, but the gun clicked empty. Not having anything else to do
with it, I swung the shotgun in an arch and smashed it into the Bride’s skull. The
satisfying crunch was accompanied by a spray of blood, tissue, and bone chips.

Still the Apex refused to die. She shoved her shoulder into me, pushing me
away. My momentum made my body do a pretty cool flip over the chair that I
collided with, and my head hit the floor hard. Bright spots appeared before my
eyes as everything else beyond them went slightly out of focus. I groped clumsily
inside one of my coat pockets for shotgun shells to reload my weapon, but my
fingers didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Well, I thought to myself, at least I had
given it the old college try.

The death that I had expected didn’t come. After a minute, my vision
cleared and I managed to close my hand around the shells. Before getting up, I
quickly reloaded the shotgun. My rib(s) protested as I sat up and looked around.

The Bride was back at the barricade and using her one remaining arm to
finish the job that she had started. She had almost accomplished her goal; even
now the door was starting to bulge inward from the zombies assaulting it from the
outside. At this point our defenses were going to be broken through in a matter of
minutes no matter what I did, so there was no reason to continue my fight with
the Bride.

Except that now she had pissed me off. I got to me feet and casually
strolled over to the one-armed Apex attempting to pry a board off of the door.
She was so intent on what she was doing that she didn’t even realize I was
approaching. I tapped her on the shoulder with the barrel of the gun, and she
looked over her shoulder, her silver eyes wide.

“Say ‘Ah’, bitch,” I told her as I slid the end of the barrel into her mouth and
pulled the trigger.

Even as the remainder of the Bride’s body was sliding to the floor, I saw a
section of the door crack. It was time for me to beat a hasty retreat back upstairs
before things got ugly. Well, you know, uglier. As if to emphasize the point my
internal monologue was attempting to get across, one of the kitchen windows
exploded in a shower of wood and glass as the zombies broke through. A hand
forced its way through the crack in the door, and it groped towards me eagerly.

So yeah, about that hasty retreat.

I’m not sure how many stairs my feet actually touched as I vaulted up the
staircase, but I’m pretty sure you could count the amount on one hand. Perhaps
on the hand sticking through the front door if you were in need one. I fully
intended to run right back through Maggie’s window and head back onto the roof,
but I stopped suddenly at the top of the stairs.

I had closed all the doors before going downstairs. Now, though, two of
them stood open, the doors leading to Maggie and Heather’s rooms. I slid
another shell into the shotgun to replace the one that had turned the Bride’s head
into a gory fireworks display and slowly advanced. I came to a complete standstill
when I saw that the door to Heather’s room hadn’t been opened so much as it
had been forced inward. It was barely still on its hinges.

I retreated to the staircase to come up with a plan. It was a good idea in

theory to quickly collect my thoughts before entering into yet another potentially
dangerous situation, but in practice it wasn’t going to happen. The zombie horde
had apparently broken down the last of our defenses in short order, as a large
number of them were beginning to climb the stairs. When they saw me put in an
appearance above them, they seemed to grow excited and stretched their arms
out towards me as they climbed.

I looked back at the open doors. You know what? Strategy smategy.
Sometimes life favored the brave over the intelligent. Sometimes a person just
needed to make a bold move rather than plan out every single detail. I was going
to be a man of action.

Does that sound very convincing to you? I certainly didn’t find it very
convincing. Still, there wasn’t really anything else I could, so I took a deep breath
and made a run for Maggie’s room.

As I ran past Heather’s door, an Apex flung itself out into the hallway at me.
Luckily, I had a bit too much speed going, and it ran headfirst into the wall. I
turned quickly into Maggie’s room and plowed right into another one. It lost its
balance and fell onto its ass, and as I trampled over it I fired a shot into its face at
pointblank range. Once more minding the broken glass, I climbed out the window
and onto the back porch’s roof.

Or at least I would have if my foot hadn’t caught when I was most of the
way out. I looked over my shoulder and found that the first Apex had apparently
recovered from it’s meeting of the minds with its wallpapered opponent and was
clutching at my leg. Its teeth were actually sunk into the rubber sole of my right
shoe. I lashed out with my free foot and caught it square in the nose, breaking it
with an odd squishing sensation that made me think of stepping on a banana. Its
mouth opened either from the pain (assuming they felt pain) or the impact, and I
pulled myself all the way out the window before it could recover.

After sending a shotgun blast through the window simply to buy some time,
I tossed the weapon up onto the roof above me and hoisted myself up after it.
Matthew rushed over and pulled me up the rest of the way like I was a rag doll.
He smiled and patted me on the back to congratulate me on getting back out of
the house alive. I tried to tell him that there was an Apex right behind me, but he
shook his head in incomprehension. There were so many zombies surrounding
and invading the house that the moaning was deafening; oral communication was
impossible at this point.

“Get back!” I yelled, making sure to exaggerate the words in case his lip reading
skills weren’t up to snuff.

He gave me a puzzled look, but before I could say or do anything else, I was
knocked aside by a hard hit to my already injured rib. The undead seemed to have
a hard on for taking me off of my feet. The Apex that had gnawed on my footwear
threw itself at Matthew, who was caught completely off-guard. It wrapped its
arms and legs around him, and they both went tumbling over the edge of the roof.
They hit the top of the porch and rolled off into the horde of zombies below. I
regained my footing and rushed over to where they had fallen, but there was
nothing to be done. I couldn’t even see them through the mass of undead.

Damn it. God fucking damn it.

I wasn’t a religious man, but I knew that Matthew was and I offered a silent
prayer for him. We had all survived for nearly a year in a world ruled by hungry
zombies, and in the space of one day we had already lost two of us. They had
both been good men, and now they were gone. I sighed heavily. What a waste.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find Heather standing next to

me. Her eyes were filled with suppressed tears, but her Glock was in her hand
and the expression on her face said louder than words that she was ready to get
some use out of it. Maggie was standing near the chimney watching Sarah reload
her rifle. They hadn’t seen what had happened, and upon reflection I realized
that was probably for the best.

Wait, why were Maggie and Heather on the roof? I looked at Heather
questioningly and she mouthed the words, “No power.” The generator must have
become a victim of the assault against the residence. That meant that the CB
radio was now a glorified paperweight, and there was no point in staying inside.
Hope for survival was starting to drop ever closer to that zero mark.

Mitch was no longer standing by the barn. In fact, he had disappeared from
sight entirely. For some reason that made me feel uneasy.

I made my way over to Sarah and waved at her to get her attention. I
pointed first at the gun and then at the zombies gathered below and shook my
head. She got the message and followed me back to the chimney, which I guess
was sort of our unofficial meeting place. There was no point in trying to hold back
the flood of zombies at this point, so it made more sense to conserve ammunition
than to keep firing into the crowd.

For five minutes or so the four of us simply sat there, our eyes alert for any
Apex attacks but otherwise not really doing anything. I was not one who usually
suffered from depression or fatalism, but even I had to admit that things were
looking grim. It was only a matter of time before either the silver-eyed
superzombies had us churning in their stomach acid or the house simply collapsed
from the slack-jawed regular zombies’ assault. We had fought valiantly and lasted
longer than anyone could have possibly expected. The odds were just impossible
to surmount.

Heather nudged my arm with her elbow, and I turned lazily to look at where
she was pointing. Didn’t she know that I was trying to sulk and didn’t want to be
interrupted? I felt my defeatism slowly drain away as I focused on what had
caught her attention, though. In the distance, high above the trees, there was a
black spec in the sky. I watched it for a moment, trying to figure out what it was.
It grew larger as it approached, and the way it bobbed up and down made it
seem-

I flung myself to my feet. Holy shit, it was a helicopter. And it was coming
towards us. Somebody had been listening to Heather’s cries for help after all. We
were still in this as long as we could survive until it arrived.

That last part was going to prove to be tricky. Sarah nudged me in the hurt
rib quite a bit harder than Heather had (to be fair, she had no way of knowing that
it was injured, so I gave her a pass). I felt my heart sink as I discovered that her
news was not the super happy fun kind that Heather’s had been.

Standing on the edge of the roof, his white suit sporting a new red smudge
from his native wildlife treat, was Mitch. He was watching the helicopter as it
rapidly approached. He lowered his gaze and dropped it on me, and although
hearing the sound of hissing was impossible, I knew that he was laughing at me.
He pointed at the helicopter with his chin before slowly shaking his head.

If he had his way, we weren’t going anywhere.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Kill Counter- 452

Despite the danger of the situation and the very real possibility of ending
up as a menu item, I realized that I wanted this fight.

You couldn’t really blame your typical zombie for what it did. It was in its
nature to attack and kill living things. There wasn’t any underhanded plot or
purpose going on behind the scenes; it was simply a product of overwhelming
desire to feed. The Apexes were the same way. Sure, they were more advanced
in terms of speed and efficiency, but there still wasn’t much higher brain function
going on.

Mitch, though, was another matter entirely. He was at least as intelligent as

a human (probably about twice as smart as the majority of dimwits that
wandered through life pre-apocalypse), and with wisdom came the ability to
suppress or at least contain base instincts. He chose to be a killer, and he chose to
be a sadistic bastard. It was like going up against a sick and twisted human.

And I knew a little something about sadism against fellow human beings.

I think, in a way, he knew what I was thinking, because he tilted his head
curiously as his red eyes stared at me. When his head straightened back up,
however, they flicked to a spot just over my shoulder. He raised his hand and
traced a salute with his index and middle fingers. I had no idea what he was doing
since Heather and Sarah were both standing to the opposite side and Maggie was
hiding behind the chimney.

Then it hit me. He was saluting you. Somehow, someway, he had realized
that you were watching, my faithful and dear reader, and he was showing you a
bit of respect. Tell me, have you perhaps met him before? Is that why he knew
that you existed? Or do I not truly understand who and what you are and how
you are able to perform your brand of peepery?

Don’t worry, friend, I’m not the jealous type. I know that, at the end of the
day, you’ll always come back to stalking me even if you’ve strayed for a bit. I’m
secure enough in our relationship to not become an emotional wreck if you have
the occasion other dance partner.

Mitch put those rather evil-looking eyes back on me and smiled. At least I
think he was smiling, since he didn’t have any skin in the usual places that would
denote that he was doing so. The air of mirth that surrounded him certainly
suggested that he was finding something amusing. He lifted his hand once again,
but this time instead of giving you the respect that you deserved, he simply gave
me the finger.

The hand was suddenly knocked sideways at an awkward angle as Heather

landed a precision shot with her Glock. The bullet managed to cause a small
wound to open, but it was nowhere near the level of damage that should have
been created by a gunshot. Mitch looked at his hand in what seemed like genuine
surprise before turning his head upward as his chest heaved. He was laughing.
He had just been shot in the hand and he was laughing. Oh my, what a
wonderfully twisted playmate we had here.
 Apparently laughter was the universal signal to open fire. Both Sarah and
Heather began to pump round after round into Mitch’s body. He flinched slightly
from the impacts, but otherwise he just kept on laughing gleefully. I took the
opportunity to fully load the shotgun. I had certainly been putting it to good use
that day, and I wanted to be ready to continue the trend. I remembered the
revolver that I had stuck in my belt for the first time since I had done so, but I
must have lost it during the melee against the Bride because it was no longer
there. This meant that the shotgun was going to have to work overtime.

I risked a look towards the helicopter. It was much closer than it had been,
and I could actually make out its shape now. We needed to end this fight fast or
we wouldn’t be able to safely board it, or worse, Mitch might do something about
it if it got too close. I took a page out of the Apex playbook and threw myself
bodily into the self-proclaimed Alpha zombie.

It was like running into a concrete wall. In addition to my rib wondering just
what the hell I was doing, my shoulder decided to join in on the protesting. Mitch
didn’t really move; he just looked down at me like I was some kind of moron. I
suppose that I kind of was at that if that was the best idea I could come up with.
Luckily for my sense of self-appreciation, it was only part one of a two part plan. I
initiated part two flawlessly by flipping the shotgun upward and firing right into
his face.

Blood and skin were thrown free from Mitch’s head, but still the bone
refused to be penetrated. He swung one of his legs back and delivered the
hardest kick that I ever had the displeasure of being on the receiving end of. I
must have been flung ten feet across the roof, and although I managed to get back
to my feet, I was spitting blood as I stood up. Heather, having put a fresh clip in
her gun, stepped in front of me protectively and once again began to fire shot
after shot into our undead assailant.

With each passing second, the helicopter was getting closer. It was our
flying promise of salvation, and if we missed out on this opportunity we were
going to die. There was no maybe about it. We would die if we weren’t on that
helicopter when it went back to where it had come from.

A strange shudder seemed to run through the roof under our feet. The
structural integrity of the house was starting to become a thing of the past thanks
to the zombie horde roaming around both inside and outside of it. That gave me
an idea.

As Heather ejected the empty clip from her Glock and reached for another
one from her belt, I moved past her and emptied my shotgun at Mitch. I didn’t
aim for his body, however. Instead, I aimed for the roof below him.

The section of roof he was standing on, already weakened by the abuse that
the house was taking, collapsed underneath him, and he fell through the hole.
There was no way that was going to buy us more than a minute, however, so I
reloaded the shotgun and quickly moved to the edge of the hole. Zombies filled
the room below us from wall to wall (my room, I noted irritably, and the assholes
were touching my stuff), and Mitch was having difficulty getting to his feet with so
many bodies in the way. I glanced over my shoulder at the helicopter. It was
three, maybe four minutes away. We’d have to hold him back until it arrived.

I ran back over to the place where I had set down the two Molotov cocktails
earlier. When I had entered the house in my pursuit of the Bride, I had reflected
that it wouldn’t be a good idea to burn down the house with me inside. Now,
though, I had no problems with burning down the house with Mitch inside. I
hurried back over to the hole in the roof and found that he had still not managed
to stand back up. He had gotten a grip on the bed’s headboard, though, so he
would be back up and mobile in a matter of seconds.

For a horrible moment, I couldn’t find the lighter. My hand finally closed
around it and pulled it out of one of my coat pockets, and I used it to light the first
Molotov’s alcohol-soaked rag. Mitch triumphantly got his feet back under him
and looked up at me through the gap he had fallen through. I favored him with
the same kind of wave that he had given me earlier before hurling the Molotov
down at him. It struck him in the shoulder, and almost immediately all hell broke
loose.

Most of the clothes that the zombies were wearing had been worn down by
the time and weather they had endured. The liquid fire happily consumed the
garments and began to work on the skin underneath as it jumped from one
undead to the next, turning the entire room into an incinerator within seconds.
The zombies continued to reach up towards me even as they burned, making the
entire scene resemble a rave that had gone terribly wrong. Mitch’s white suit was
apparently not fireproof, as it burst into flames like everything else had. Just for
good measure, I tossed the second Molotov cocktail down as well. He
disappeared under the mass of writing bodies and the dancing flames.

The house would inevitably burn down because of my actions, but since we
would probably never come back to the ranch, it’s not like I cared.
 I kept my shotgun pointed down at the bonfire until a large gust of wind
signaled the helicopter’s arrival. It was just in time, too, as some of the flames
were starting to make their way up the bedroom walls and towards the roof. I
hustled over towards the chopper, which appeared to be a hospital rescue
helicopter. The side door slid open, and two men wearing military fatigues waved
their arms to signal us to hurry.

Maggie had already been lifted inside the helicopter and Heather was
climbing onboard when Mitch suddenly came bursting out of the inferno and onto
the roof. He didn’t claw his way out, mind you. He simply jumped up through the
opening and landed with an impact strong enough to shake the house even more
than it already was. His suit jacket was completely gone, revealing a burned dress
shirt and patches of blackened skin. For the most part, the pants had managed to
avoid a fiery doom. I had no way of explaining how that was possible, but hey, it’s
not like the zombie apocalypse should have been possible, either, so miracles do
happen.

He took one look at the helicopter before coming right at us. His speed was
incredible; I wouldn’t have put down any bets on if he or a Ferrari would win in a
race. I struck him in the chest with a squeeze of the shotgun’s trigger, but he
didn’t even slow down. So close, I thought to myself. We had been so close to
escaping.

The glint in his eye was one of cunning and dastardly deeds. I realized a
split second before it happened that neither myself nor the helicopter were the
intended targets. Instead, he shattered Sarah’s rifle with an almost casual flick of
his wrist and sank his teeth into her shoulder. She opened her mouth and
screamed, but I couldn’t hear it as the zombies were making too much noise.
Whether there was pain or terror or frustration in it, I would never know. Mitch
jumped around behind her and wrapped his arm around her neck in a vise-like
grip.

Sarah was dead. Yes, the blood still flowed through her veins and she was
still conscious, but we all knew what that bite meant. Understanding and a
profound sadness filled her eyes, and for the first time since I had known her,
tears slid down her cheeks. Slowly, determination replaced the other emotions,
and she bit her lower lip. Her legs were still free, and she pushed off with them as
hard as she could. Mitch obviously hadn’t been expecting any sort of fight to be
left in his victim. He lost his balance, and they both slid off the side of the roof
and out of sight.

I couldn’t process what just happened. If I did, I would be lost in a river of

rage and blood the likes of which I had never attempted to swim through.
Heather and Maggie were still counting on me to be there for them. We didn’t
know the people that had become our saviors, and the world was still going
through that little thing that we called the zombie apocalypse. It wouldn’t do to
lose my head and jump off the roof after them to attempt to bludgeon Mitch to
death with my bare hands.

But…it was Sarah.

I turned and climbed into the waiting helicopter. It lifted off almost before I
was seated. I couldn’t blame the pilot for this lack of etiquette, as I could only
imagine what close to a million zombies looked like when you were hovering
above it. I didn’t look out the window to find out for myself.
 I mentioned earlier something that Mark and I had jokingly dubbed Project
Kill Some Shit. It was time to put that into action. From an inside pocket of my
coat, I pulled out a small silver object about the weight and size of a pen. On one
side was a toggle switch that Mark had scavenged from a curling iron, and I
pressed it with my thumb. The object was a small handheld transmitter that he
had rigged up and given to me for safekeeping. Since he was now a member of
the undead class, it was a good thing that he hadn’t kept it for himself.

A transmitter must have something to transmit to, of course, and this one
did indeed have a receiver that it communicated with. Mark and I had placed the
plastic explosives that Heather had gathered way back in Lewiston all around the
house, using the house’s electrical wiring to hook them all together. Next to each
of the bundles, we had put bottles of the oil that we had collected from zombie
corpses, and there was even a good amount of the liquid strapped to the
generator.

A small red light went on as the transmitter did its thing. From down below
and behind us came a deep rumbling sound as the house exploded. It had been a
good home. In fact, it was the first place that I had ever actually thought of as
“home”, and even in the end it managed to give me some comfort. I wanted it to
take every damn zombie with it, although I knew logically that wasn’t possible. It
had been rigged with plastic explosives, not a thermonuclear warhead.

I doubted that it would finish off Mitch.

I hoped that it finished off Sarah.

Sarah…
I’m sorry.
EPILOGUE

Kill Counter- Infinite

It turns out that the United States government isn’t quite as defunct as I
first believed.

To be fair, there aren’t really any noticeable borders between what used to
be states anymore, but the name is something of a tradition and it has managed
to endure. I’m hardly America’s favorite son, but I have to say that I find myself
glad that my country has managed to stick around through the greatest threat the
world has ever known. For all that we know, we’re the only country that can make
that claim. Global communications have ceased at this point, so there’s no way to
find out for sure.

What remains of the United States has been set up in small secure
compounds in various strategic locations around the country. Most of these
compounds, which have been dubbed ‘habitats’ (yes, exactly like the places
monkeys used to be kept in zoos, except that we humans tend not to fling our poo
quite so much), are just inside the Canadian border. I assume that this is because
of the apparent vulnerability that the zombies exhibit to cold. Sure, this brand of
natural defense won’t be present for half of the year, but it’s certainly better than
nothing.

Not all of the habitats are in the north, of course. God only knows how the
compounds in places like Louisiana and Texas are managing to stay in operation.
 The helicopter that came to our rescue was running supplies from habitat
to habitat when it picked up Heather’s frantic call for help. I was recently told that
there had been a brief argument between the crew members about whether or
not to risk helping us. At the end of the day, compassion for fellow human beings
had won out, and thus we had been saved.

We were dropped off at the closest habitat, located somewhere in

Wisconsin, where we were processed. Have you gone through the experience of
being processed at a habitat, friend? If not, I humbly recommend that you
endeavor to keep it that way. Way back when Heather and I had crossed the
Mississippi River, we had been required to give blood samples to prove that we
weren’t in the process of becoming undead. The habitats take things to a whole
new level. The three of us (yes, that includes Maggie) were required to allow
doctors to retrieve bone marrow for testing. I can see how that is more accurate
than a drop of blood, but come on, does the needle have to be that big?

We were placed into isolation tents on the outskirts of the habitat, and we
were constantly monitored by the watchful eyes of a dozen armed guards. Once
the test results came back, I was pleased to hear that a zombie had not managed
to shove itself into my bloodstream.

With our shiny new clean bills of heath in hand, we were loaded into the
back of a van and transported inside the habitat itself. The entire area had been
leveled with bulldozers to create an unobstructed view for the nearby guard
towards. Three layers of concrete walls ran along the outskirts of the compound
to form a barrier between the shanty-like hovels that the citizens of this fine town
lived in and the rest of the world.
 Our assigned shack is where I’m writing this now. The irony that six people,
one of which was a little girl under the age of seven, had managed to create a
better life for themselves than an entire government could provide is not lost on
me.

I won’t be staying here long, of course. I’m fairly certain that the explosion I
triggered as we were flying away from the ranch barely slowed Mitch down, and I
don’t want to put too fine of a point on it, but I’m going to kill Mitch. Because of
him, three people that I cared about died. Then I’m going to kill Zombie Mark
and, if necessary, put an end to Sarah’s walking the Earth. There wasn’t enough
left of Matthew to reanimate so I don’t need to worry about him, but I want to
make sure that the others are put down by my hand.

I owe them that much.

You’re welcome to come along, of course. Who knows, Heather might want
to as well. I’m not sure, as I haven’t actually discussed any of this with her yet.
It’s her call as to whether or not she wants to stay with our newfound segment of
humanity or if she wants to come kill some zombies with me. You, however, are
an integral piece of the puzzle. How could I think about going off for some good
old-fashioned murder and mayhem without you? Those things are much more
fun when there are two instead of one.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that now is one of
the more dangerous times to be planning a road trip. Besides the usual zombie
menace and unexpected Apex attacks, a few of our neighbors have been telling us
about roving bands of humans that are waylaying other living folks and stealing
their things. That’s right, dear reader, there are actually pirates among us. Yo ho
ho and shiver me timbers, matey. Still, you have to believe that if you and I are
accosted by these ruffians, we’re probably not the ones that will regret the
meeting.

Oh, come on, admit it. You know you want to. Admit that your own little
dark tendencies are starting to come through a bit more now than they were
before. Don’t worry, I’m not looking for a convert to the Church of the Undying
Serial Killer. I just want you to admit privately to yourself and me that maybe, just
maybe, you can kind of see where I’m coming from. It won’t hurt, I promise.

Two predators in a pod, that’s what you and I are.

Except that you’re still an asshole.

THE END