Feel free to edit it for me, just don't change anything major.
P.S. - This was written by Devin Strickland

The Day the Dead Walked

We're doing a good fifty down an easy stretch of road when we hit him. There's only a brief flash--a snapshot of a human shape bathed from his torso down in scorching hot headlights--and then there's that awful, wet thump, followed by shrieking tires as Jenny slams her foot on the brakes and brings *a ton ond a half* of metal to a skidding halt.
"Shit," she says.
"Relax," I tell her. "Just relax."
"Shit," she repeats, hands trembling on the wheel. "Shit, shit, shit. SHIT."
"No way you could have seen him. Isn't your fault. Just take it easy and breathe." I reach for my pack of smokes, eager to smooth out my own frayed nerves. "I'll take a look. You better go ahead and call the police on your cell."
"Shit," she mutters, staring out with glassy eyes towards the midnight-cloaked woods.
I get out of the car. Light up. Take a deep, long drag--drown my lungs in soothing, bitter smoke. Once I've gotten a hold on myself, I walk over to take a look.
It's pretty bad. For a second, I'm glad Jenny isn't with me to see this. Better to keep her in the car. His face is stretched across his cracked skull like a Halloween mask that doesn't quite fit. He's been nearly split in two; he must have hit the bumper and flew over us, miraculously missing the windshield.
From what I can tell, he's an older man--30s, maybe late 40s--with dark, stringy hair and a growing bald spot. He wrapped himself up snugly before venturing out into the frigid mid-November night. He's got a green Eagle's jersey on, splattered with flecks of rust-colored blood. Something looks wrong about him, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm no doctor, but I get the feeling that the corpse looks too neat.

Not juicy enough.

I shake off the odd, disturbing thought and head back to the car. I pop open the trunk, grab some flares, set myself up a perimeter around the corpse. Then I check on Jenny.
"God damn reception's out," she curses, snapping the phone shut.
"We'll pull into town. Use a phone at a gas-station or something," I tell her, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She smiles weakly.
"Guess I screwed this up."
"Jesus, Jen. It's not your fault."
"I know. Just--God. Is it bad? How old was he?"
"50s," I tell her. "And it's pretty bad. You're better off not looking."
"Okay."
"Let's drive into town."
"Okay."
"Ready?"
"Uh."
"What?"
She gives me a meek, sick look. Like the thought of turning the engine back on makes her stomach do somersaults.
"Could you drive?"

---

It's one of those little towns stretched out like a string of cheap, fake pearls along the length of a highway off ramp. We don't bother catching the town's name; we're just after a rest-stop that's still open.
We pull into some cheap gas-and-go with those old fashion pumps (the kind with spinning numbers instead of digital ones) and a storefront thick with the detritus of rural life. I tell Jenny to wait in the car while I peek in and ask to use their phone.
There's a big--and I mean big--deer head mounted just above the entrance. It eyes me with a disapproving glassy stare as I step into the dust-choked building, cow-bells clattering over the door. The floor's made out of timber boards, with old wooden barrels filled with snacks. The whole place is a mess--shelves in disarray, products on the floor... No one's behind the counter.
Something feels wrong. Almost downright unsettling. I search for the phone (one of those old rotaries with the big fat spokes) and pick it up. Dead.
WHUMP.
Something pounds against the side door of the freezer. That's when I notice that the door's been propped shut with a few kegs of beer.
Jesus. Is someone in there?
WHUMP.
"Hello?"
Silence. Then:
WHUMP.
It sounds like someone lurching their shoulder against that door, hitting it again and again. It sounds like someone trying to get out--but not someone desperate. No, this has a steady beat to it. Like the poor bastard's patient. Like he's biding his time.
WHUMP.
"Is there someone in there?" I'm nearly at the door, now, reaching up to brush it with my fingertips. Cold. "Say something and I'll let you out." I don't know why that's important to me--that the poor guy should ask me to let him out. But in some deep, dark, irrational part of my brain, I do know why.
Because if he asks for help, that would mean he's human.
Probably.
WHUMP.
"Screw this," I mutter, dashing out the door.
"What's going on?" Jenny asks as I slip into the car.
"Don't know. No one in there, and the phone's dead. Let's try the next one." I leave out the bit with the freezer. No reason to freak her out. Hell, maybe it was just booting up or something.

We come up to a Food-Lion next. The lights are still on inside; maybe someone's working the night shift. We can use a phone if they let us in. As I slip the car into idle, I start to tell Jenny to come with me--I see in her eyes that she wants to--but I suddenly think better of it. If something weird is going on, I'd rather have someone in the car ready to drive. Besides, she's still shaking like a leaf.

I hand the keys over to her.

"I'll be right back," I tell her, then I kiss her on the forehead. She flashes me one of her pretty little smiles, and I turn to go.

The first thing I notice as I saddle up to the sliding doors is that the lights are on, but apparently nobody's home. Inside, I can see long, sterile aisles--50% off OJ--but not a single soul. A lonely cart lays on its side in the center of one aisle, one of its wheels still swaying. The doors are off, but not locked. They slide open easily, and then I'm inside. There's that dull, thick air-conditioned smell--that mindless droning music--and nothing else. What the hell is going on?
"Hello?" Something clatters in the distance, like soda bottles falling to the floor. Slowly, I make my way up to the checkout, picking up the phone while watching the store's back-end.
I get a string of broken beeps.
"Shit. Is anyone here?" I drop the receiver. Something grabs my leg.
"Get down," a red-headed stock-boy hisses. "Get the fuck down!"
He's stuffed himself beneath the cashier counter, clutching a misshapen bat in one hand and my ankle in the other.
"Excuse me?"
"Get down before they see you!"
"Before who sees--"
Glass falls and shatters in the back. I look up. There's a person--it looks like a person--standing at the end of the aisle. He's dressed in the same smock and uniform as the kid beneath me, but the front if it is dark and slick, coated in an ichor that starts at the throat. I can't make out his face, but something about the way he stands, the way he holds himself, just the way he stares--everything about him screams out "wrong".
And then he's galloping.

There's nothing human about the way he moves. He throws limbs out with frantic, flopping lunges, as if dragging himself relentlessly forward by hand grips on air alone. His eyes are wide and glassy, clouded by something pale. His jaw is slack, hanging open to expose his wagging tongue.
I manage to take a step back. By then, he's leaping and toppling over the counter, a husky and wet snarl worming its way up from his throat. It's a sound I never imagined I'd hear from a human--couldn't imagine we were capable of making. The moment I hear it, every muscle in my body freezes.
The kid under the counter gets up, probably to run. Bad move.
That thing reaches him first.
It seizes him by the hair, dragging him back as he screams and writhes, dropping the bat. They squirm on the floor, twisting over each other as that thing spills wet, thick drops of ichor over him, shrieking and gurgling all the while. I'm still frozen, scarcely able to breathe.
And then there's a clap. A thunder stroke. A roar.
A gunshot.
The thing's skull pops open like a soda can, fizzing up something black. It drops limp, leaving the stock boy to scramble away, pushing himself back against the counter. His face is a bright red. He looks like he's on the verge of hyperventilating.

At last, I turn to the source of that dead-on shot. A woman stands at the entrance, holding the stock of a still-smoldering rifle. She's a dark-eyed bitch of a girl, with short black hair and camouflage fatigues. And army boots. Big ones.

"What the hell is happening?" I croak.

Never dropping the rifle's barrel, the girl speaks to the stock-boy with a voice that just seizes you by the throat and refuses to let go: "You all right?"

"I--I--yeah. Oh, God, thank God, I--"

"Any injuries?"

"I don't think--Christ, thank you, I thought I was going to--"

Her voice is quiet, now: "What's that on your arm?"

The stock-boy looks down. An oval-shaped wound seeps fresh blood. "Oh, shit. That thing must have--ugh, it must have bitten me. I need to get stitches. God. Rubbing alcohol, or someth--"

BAM.

The second gunshot is like a lightning bolt to my brain. At once, my muscles are free; now I'm grabbing the dead stock-boy's baseball bat and spinning on the bitch who just blew his brains out. And now she's got that barrel squarely trained on my face.

"You been bit?"

I grit my teeth. "No."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

That barrel doesn't waver. "In that case, the name's Cassidy. I'll be your tour-guide for the evening. Welcome to Hell."

"You got a car?"

"What."

"Car," she says. "You know. Four wheels, runs on gas, made of metal?"

"I don't--"

"Fucking Christ, man. If I want some pussy, I'll drop my trousers and look down. Get your shit together. Do. You. Have. A. Car?"

I'm gripping that baseball bat with stark white knuckles, staring at the woman who just blew away two people without even flinching. Staring, and thinking, and--

Jenny.

Shit.

"Yes. Yes, there's--I'm with someone. Are there more of those things--are those things outside?" I ask, my breath leaving me all at once.

"Yeah," she says, glancing over her shoulder. "A lot of them. They in the car?"

"Yes."

"Okay. What's your name?"

"Jack." I can barely speak, barely even think straight. My eyes keep wandering towards that door--keep moving past it to that parking lot. Where Jenny sits in the car. Alone. "My name's Jack."

"Okay, Jack. You play video-games?"

"Wha--what?"

Cassidy steps in front of me, leveling a stare at my face that can split rock. "Stay with me, Jack. Do you play video-games?"

"Y-yeah. Uh, a little."

"Okay. Good. This one's got three rules. You listening, Jack?"

"Y-yeah."

"Rule number 1. You get bit, game over. No continues, no extra lives. You'll turn into one of them. Maybe fast, maybe slow, but you *will* turn. No exceptions."

I slowly start to swallow.

"Rule number 2. Once someone's turned, fuck them. I don't care if it's your long-lost brother, your mother, or even the girl who sucked your cock at the prom. Once they're a zombie, it don't matter. You're meat to them. So fuck them. Fuck them with a shotgun."

My hands are trembling.

"Rule number 3. Last one. This is the *important* one, Jack. Are you listening, Jack?"

Numbly, I nod.

"Rule number 3: The only way to kill them is to shoot them in the head."

She steps forward, pressing the hilt of a revolver into my palm. And then she smiles.

"Now let's get out there and break the mother-fuckin' high-score."

There are zombies outside.

Am I allowed to call them that? Have we progressed to that point yet? Are things fucked up enough now for me to start talking like I'm in a god-damn zombie movie?

As if reading my mind, I hear Cassidy talking next to me. "I bet Romero's a zombie now. Fuck you, MTV. *That's* irony."

The parking lot's crawling with them. They seem to be emerging from the forest - they're shambling, stumbling about like drunkards in the night. They weave their way through the maze of cars, crawling forward in a mass of hungry meat. There must be at least fifteen or twenty.

How the hell did I not see them?

Cassidy sweeps her backpack off the ground, slinging it on. She plucks up a duffel bag and throws it over her shoulder. Then she levels the gun at the approaching group.

"They won't start running till they see us. Most of them can't see worth shit, so as long as we keep our distance, we got an edge. Where's your buddy?"

"Other side," I mutter, nodding towards the far end of the parking lot. Can Jenny see them? I can't make out her car; a van is blocking my view.

"All right. Take it slow. You got six shots with that thing. Use the bat after that. Anything but a head shot is a waste of time and ammo. Ready?"

Not at all.

"Yeah."

"Let's go."

We start circling around the cars, keeping our distance from the shufflers--our backs close to the store. One of them's stepping past a gold mini-van when she spots me.

Little girl. 14, maybe 15. Pigtails, spritz of glitter on her face, pink Pj's. The works.

A strip of flesh is gone from her cheek, exposing yellowed teeth--like rows of tic-tacs. It gives her a sort of eternally crooked grin. Her eyes are a puss-white, and when she catches sight of me they gleam in the street-lights.

"Move. Now," Cassidy says, and then she says something else but I can't hear her over the den of inhuman shrieks, over the sound of that gibbering, frothing chaos. I can't describe it--except to say that it's the sound dead things make. *Hungry* things.

The girl's launching herself at us both with a lopsided gait, nearly slapping her palms on the ground with the sheer fury of her exuberance. I don't even think. I just lift the six-shooter and start firing.

Bullets kick back the barrel as I start running. I think I fire four shots, maybe five; her shoulder opens up with a wet burst, but that doesn't even phase her. She's nearly on top of me when her temple explodes and she drops like a broken toy.

"MOVE!" Cassidy roars, and then we're nearly tripping over each other as every zombie on the lot turns to us at once. I fire again, and again, and then I'm getting nothing but dead clicks, the revolver dropping out of my numb hands. I hear Cassidy say something else behind me, something that sounds like a curse, but I can barely even comprehend it at this point. I reach for my bat--then I realize that I left it behind.

I am so not ready for this shit.

We get around the van just as an overweight lard-ass with his intestines scraping behind him like a length of extra rope begins grappling with it, his fingers crawling along the metal as he desperately tries to clamber over it--or maybe *eat* his way through. I can smell his stink: it's like rotten eggs mixed with festering meat boiled in vomit. I'm fighting off the urge to gag when I finally catch what Cassidy's been screaming her head off about.

"THE CAR! WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR CAR?!"

I turn. The car's gone.

Jenny.

In the distance, I see what looks like stationary headlights up ahead, reflecting back off something. In the woods.

"She drove," I gasp. "Woods."

Cassidy pauses to pump a round in fatty's skull, and then we're both turning and running, just *fleeing* from all those zombies as they scramble to follow.

They really don't know how to run. It's like they've got the basic premise nailed down, but all the details elude them. They just *throw* themselves in the direction they want to go, stumbling and scrambling over whatever is in front of them, as if they just can't wait to sink their teeth into you.

Cassidy and I charge towards the woods, towards those headlights. I hear her drawing out rounds and reloading that rifle with a steady *click* *click* *click* as we move.

The zombies probably spooked the shit out of Jenny. She just drove, didn't even think, just *drove* the hell away as fast as she could. Probably didn't even think to honk the horn, or drive the car into the grocery store, or anything like that.

She's probably okay. Probably crashed into a tree or something like that. Probably just dazed and confused and wondering what the hell happened, wondering if it was all just a bad dream.

Probably.

I thought the parking lot was terrifying. The woods are worse.

The most aggravating part of this is that while we're stumbling in the dark, shoving our way between trees and heading towards that shining glimmer of light, we're nearly blind. The distant street lights are at our back; the only other thing we've got for illumination is the car's still-working headlights and the stars in the sky.

A zombie could spring out at any moment. All I've got against him is my two fists.

Miraculously, we don't hit a single one of those fuckers on our way to the car. They're still behind us, stumbling like drunken idiots through the trees. Distance has bought us some time.

We're just about there. I notice that Cassidy's pointing the gun straight at the driver's seat. I start to say something, but then I notice.

No one's in it.

It drove straight off the road and slammed into a tree, its headlights reflecting off the bark and flashing back into the cracked and broken window shield. The driver's side window has been shattered--pieces of glass gleam like jewels scattered over the seat--but there's no one actually *in* the car.

There is, however, blood. It's a rich, healthy red, lacing the jagged teeth of glass that remains in the window, like a hungry drooling mouth.

Red blood.

Mixed with something black and ichorous.

"Oh shit. We--I have to find--"

"She's dead." Cassidy swings the rifle around to face the forest. I can hear the zombies coming up on us; they're shambling through the foliage, snapping branches, gibbering and gurgling, hurtling towards the only source of light they can see. "She's dead, Jack. Either that, or she's turned. Either way--she's dead."

They're getting closer. *Much* closer.

"Jenny!" I scream, hoping to hear her holler back.

Nothing.

"Jack. We need to go. Now," Cassidy says, grabbing my shoulder, pulling me away from the car. "Car's fucked, she's fucked, let's go before *we're* fucked."

"I can't--"

She hits me, either with her fist or the butt of the rifle--I'm not sure which. It isn't hard enough to pop a tooth, but I taste blood.

"Move, NOW!"

I stop thinking. I turn, and with Cassidy right besides me, I start running.

On our way out, I throw back one last forlorn glance at the car. As we slip past the next grotto of trees, it winks out of sight.

Chapter 2: Dead-Meat

There's this one commercial I've caught on TV a couple of times. I never get more than three seconds into it, though. That's all it takes before it not only *meets* my daily BS quota, but *exceeds* it in leaps and bounds.

It starts with the line--swear to God--"People are smart."

I wonder if it's possible, with the vast array of terms available to us in the English language, to chain three words together into a more ridiculous, blatant, insanely absurd lie.

"People are smart."

Right.

A person might be smart, sure. I don't know too many, but there's got to be a few. Why not? But people? That's some weapon-grade bull shit right there. That bull shit is downright *atomic*.

Case-in-point: Oh, look! Dead people are getting back up and eating the living! But don't worry, guys. There's a perfectly rational explanation for this. It isn't what it looks like--this is some sort of biological weapon, or a newly evolved super-rabies. And whatever you do, don't use the Z-word, guys. This isn't the Z-word! Listen to us, we're scientists! We have lab-coats to prove it! You can trust us! Totally not the Z-word. Woo, science rocks!

And people are eating this up.

We're all piled into one of our neighbor's apartments, watching the newscast on his big screen HD TV. Meanwhile, our host--this overweight smug bastard--is talking about rabies and hydrophobia and viral pathology like he's some sort of expert working on his doctorate. Fat fuck probably just finished reading an article on Wikipedia, and now he thinks he's going to earn his Ph.D.

But the worst part about all this is how no one will say it. No one will say the Z-word.

Well, I'll say it: They're ZOMBIES, you twits.

There's movies and books and all sorts of stuff about it, and now it's really happening. Like we're in the introduction of some post-apocalyptic horror flick, watching society start to break down. Hell, I'm even starting to pop people around me into their proper character stereotypes. Smug Bastard will either not last two minutes or get killed at the end in a really ironic way. Cowboy with a Truck will die in some awful blaze of glory provided by his own incompetence. And Sassy Britches over there will survive, supplying the sorrowful monologue over the closing credits.

And me? Miss Cynic? The cutesy Thelma of our little show?

Well, shit. I'm dead meat.

I'm ignoring Smug Bastard's arm-chair commentary, my eyes glued to that TV (I suspect that in the days to come it will become a very expensive paperweight). The newscaster--one of those generic ones fresh out of a 'Choose-Your-Own-Ethnicity' Kit--drones on and on about the military response, how the crisis is being 'contained', and how there's no need to worry. By now, they've stopped showing videos of the infected. I imagine they're afraid of inciting panic.

The newscaster does mention one important thing--bite-marks. "Anyone who has been bitten and shows signs of infection should immediately be physically restrained and escorted to the nearest hospital for their own safety and the safety of those around them."

That riles Smug Bastard a little. He feeds us some more BS about vaccinations and antibodies and Jesus Christ, why won't he shut up?

And that's when we hear the hollering.

We're on the sixth floor of a sprawling apartment complex with walls, ceilings, and floors built like paper. I swear you can hear a pin drop three floors down. So when the room beneath us erupts into a shouting match, we can hear just about every word.

"--damn it, it's a bite from a *dog*, Freddie! And it's like, three days old--"

"--not taking chances, don't make this harder on--"

"--fucking infected--"

"--put that down, you goddamn idiot--"

"--*not* taking me to one of those DEATH-TRAPS--"

"--oh shit, wait--"

Gun shot.

Silence.

Then another gun shot.

People are smart. Right.

I attain the barest molecule of satisfaction from seeing our fat host get nervous. Really, though, I'm thinking: This is just the beginning. This is just us getting started. You can take it easy, zombies--we got this whole killing business completely covered.

Other people in the complex probably didn't hear the conversation, but they sure as hell heard the gunshots. All of them glued to their TVs, hearing reports of infection. All of them probably thinking the same thing: They're here.

"We need to get out of here." It's the first thing I've said all night.

Smug Bastard looks up. "What? Why? We're perfectly safe."

"Things are going to get really bad here," Sassy Britches says, agreeing with me. "People are going to start panicking. Doing stupid things." She pauses, then adds: "Listen. I've got a mini-van downstairs in the parking lot. If you guys want to--"

"Stop being a dimwit," Smug says. "That gunshot--the police will be around soon. They'll figure it all out." God, how much more of a cliche can you be?

"My grand-mom has this cabin up north, in Pennsylvania," Sassy Britches continues, talking to me and Cowboy now. "It’s this huge place, really sprawling. Freezers full of venison, it's own generator--I was going to go on my own until this whole thing blows over, but--" She doesn't finish. She doesn't have to.

She's scared to try and go there alone.

Cowboy--I think him and her might be working on having a 'thing' with each other, hell if I know--touches her shoulder. "That's really generous of you. Are you sure we wouldn't be--"

"There isn't anyone else I could take," she admits, sounding almost bashful now.

Another gunshot.

God damn.

"We should go now," I say.

"Do whatever you want," Smug says. "I'm staying here. Jesus, a little violence and you all start panicking--it's like you've never lived in a city before." He turns to the TV. I notice that his hands are shaking.

For a moment, I get a little soft. Can't help it. My father's legacy.

"It's okay if you want to come," I tell him, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. "It'll be fun. Just a little vacation with your neighbors. C'mon, why not?"

He looks at me. I see something in those eyes--maybe just my imagination--like he's pleading with me to *make* him come. But then there's nothing there but that hard, dark glare and that snarky, better-than-thou smile.

"Do what you want," he says. "Be a bunch of panicky idiots. Hell if I care."

We turn and leave him to his big-screen TV and his droning, endless newscast.

I'm positive it's the last time we'll ever see him.

We're not the only ones with the big idea to take a vacation up north.

The roads are surprisingly easy. Nothing at all like I feared. I expected--well, I'm not sure what. A nightmarish landscape of rusting cars and trucks filled with a happy family of zombies, all wriggling to get out of their seat-belts? I don't know.

The roads are packed, sure, but they're *moving*, and at a decent clip at that.

We spike straight up I-95 without a hitch. We'll see a car pulled over now and then--a sign, maybe "NEED GAS"--but not a single hitch. As smooth as a greased fart.

We make it all the way to Baltimore and the toll-booth before we even hit any delays. Here we are--the three of us, just a pack of extra-friendly neighborly neighbors--sitting outside the toll-booth for the tunnel, waiting for our turn.

To pass the time, we eyeball some of the other cars and what they're packing.

I try not to laugh. I really, really try. But come on: TVs? Microwaves? I swear to God, no joke--I even see a sofa on the back of a flat-bed. A *couch*. What the fuck?!

Not that we're much better. I snagged what canned foods I could find, filled all the bottles in my apartment with tap water, and tossed them into a duffel bag---Christ, what a half-assed operation we're running. At least I brought my old trusty Louisville Slugger. Just in case.

Up ahead, I catch a glimpse of a Volkswagen--one of those older kinds, those hunched-back abominations from the 70s and 80s. It's got everything you can imagine strapped to the top, with all sorts of camping equipment crammed inside until the people all look like meat under glass. Through the rear-view window I can see a dark-haired little girl with glasses peering out at me.

I can't help but think that, all things considered, we're pretty much in the same boat.

As her car slips off into the next slot, I give her a little wave. Before she disappears between the next track of cars, I think I see her wave back.

Once we get tired of looking at other people's cars, we turn on the radio a little while to hear about updates. Not much--blah blah blah, problem is being contained, blah blah blah, experts suspect a unique type of biological agent, blah blah blah. More of the usual.

Something is going on up ahead and to the side. I see police cars, flashing, oscillating lights, a few vehicles lead off the road--the newscaster conveniently takes this moment to say something about checkpoints and again asking people not to panic and stay in their homes.

"Finally," Cowboy mutters from the driver's seat as a spot opens up. He punches the gas, slipping next into line for the toll. "This is ridiculous."

"A lot of people heading up north," Sassy says.

The radio drones on: "We've just received a report that the governor of Louisiana has declared a state of emergency--"

"South, too," I add. "We saw just as many cars passing us as we did coming with us. People are just moving wherever they think they'll be safe."

"--again, advise all those affected by these events to stay at home, unless there is evidence of having been recently bitten--"

"You think we'll be safer in the north?" Sassy asks.

"--do not attempt to reason with victims of the infection, instead seeking immediate assistance to restrain them--"

"Dunno. But I think we should probably hang out somewhere where there aren't a lot of people for a while," I say.

Cowboy unbuckles his seat-belt to fish in his pocket for the five dollar bill, palming it off to the girl at the tollbooth.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Cowboy mutters, sliding towards the Baltimore tunnel.

"--just been told that the city of Baltim--"

We slip into the tunnel, cutting the radio off.

"Wait, what?" I'm nearly springing into the front seat. "What was that?"

"Huh? What was what?" Cowboy asks.

"The radio just said something about Baltimore--"

"Well, we're just passing through it," Cowboy says. "Shouldn't be a problem."

We're in the pipeline, now--two-lane traffic surrounded by a tunnel made of pearly-white tile, glittering like scales overhead. We get about 50 yards before the traffic stops--just locks down. Ahead, in the distance, we can see what look like flashing, oscillating lights.

I look back through the rear-view mirror. More cars are settling in behind us. Trapping us.

"I don't like this," I mumble. My gut's doing calisthenics, trying desperately to grapple its way up my throat and into my mouth.

"Just another goddamn delay," Cowboy says, muttering. "Nothing but fucking delays. Je-zus H. *Christ*."

"I really, really don't like this," I begin saying. "I mean, I *seriously* do not like this."

"Relax. It's fine," Cowboy says.

And that's when we hear the distant pop of gun-fire.

Everyone in the car goes silent.

There's the sound of yelling, up ahead--distant and garbled, channeled through the tunnel and distorted from a thousand echoes. More pops, and then what sounds like an unintelligible voice with a bullhorn.

And then, straight ahead--maybe only a hundred yards away--we hear a woman screaming.

And that's when the lights shut off.

Most of us in the civilized world--snuggled in our illuminated houses, nestled away in our well-lit neighborhoods--are not acquainted with true darkness. Pitch black is constrained to the fictions of movies; a medium of suspense and terror to tantalize us before we return to the brightly lit safety of our streets and homes.

But when all the lights go out and you can't even see the nose in front of your face--when you're hit with *real* blindness, trapped in a subterranean tunnel with *God* knows what locked in with you--that's when you find out what it's truly like to be in the dark.

Throughout the tunnel, there is nothing but dead silence. Even our car engines seem to quiet down.

And then we hear the moan.

It's--Jesus. Nothing like the movies, nothing at all. No human can make this sound; this twisted, gurgling noise that all at once contains the patience of a machine and a voracious, boundless appetite.

Not a sound from anyone. Not a god-damn *peep*. Frankly, I'm surprised.

Then I hear a thump on the left passenger door.

"Oh shit, oh shit," Sassy whispers, face red.

"Zombies," Cowboy mutters.

And that's how I know we've officially left Kansas. That's how I know when we've entered the Twilight Zone. When confronted with it--when cornered, watching it crawl hungrily towards you--all the bull shit just melts away and you know what it is you're up against. Not rabies, not sick people, not the fucking 'infected'.

Zombies.

There's another thump, then scratching. I will never forget that sound so long as I live--that scratching. Like a pet at the door, begging to come in.

And then, muffled under layers of metal and glass, someone starts to scream.

And then--and *then*, how fucking stupid can you get--some moron ahead of us turns on his headlights.

"Oh shit."

Not sure who said that. Not sure it matters.

Those pearly white reflective tiles do their work. In a flash, the cars ahead of us are painted in an eerie golden light that dissolves into the tunnel as a shadowy, muddy glow.

Several figures are shuffling between the parked cars. More people start screaming.

Everything happens at once. A car behind us blares its horn and slams forward, smashing the line upwards by a few inches. We all jerk up as more horns start honking, more headlights flicking on. Some people are getting out of their cars and running. Others are getting out with weapons.

It's a nightmare of panic and confusion, of deep impenetrable shadow interrupted by occasional swathes of light reflected off of chrome and plastic. Of screams and engines and crashes and those Godforsaken *moans*.

Something lurches against the glass of my window. I see a face--its nose and upper lip have been gnawed away, baring sharp teeth and bone. It slaps its bloody palms against the glass, moaning and rubbing and *drooling* over the sight of fresh meat.

Cowboy curses. Sassy starts screaming. I hold Louie close.

Up ahead, there's a flash and a pop along with the crack of breaking glass. One poor stupid son of a bitch in one of those giant SUVs shoots straight out of his window-shield at a zombie, hitting it in the head. It tumbles off, only to be replaced by three more.

I try not to watch what happens next. He fires more rounds, but by now they're pushing through the shattered glass and reaching in. I hear him scream as one of them tumbles inside--him and someone else. It sounds like a woman, or maybe a kid.

Everywhere I look, flashes of chaos and death. Some heavy-set woman with a hockey stick is fighting a horde of them off a car behind us. I glance away just as one of them snags her by the hair, dragging her into a cruel shrieking arch. Six of them have clambered on top of a car way ahead of us, scrambling and clawing to get in at the family hunched together inside.

"This is bad," Cowboy says.

"Oh, you think?" I can't help it. I was born a snapper.

"We've got to--we've got to--" Sassy stammers, staring at the tableau of horror and drama.

I swallow back the rising bile. "We've got to get out and run for the exit," I say, doing my best to keep my voice from shaking. "After we beat in nosey, here." I jerk a thumb at the zombie pawing and mewling hungrily at my window.

"Are you crazy?!" Cowboy asks.

"This tunnel is a deathtrap. It's a goddamn zombie buffet," I tell them. "And if the people outside get desperate enough, they may collapse it."

Stony silence. Punctuated by screams, gunshots, and moans. Someone ahead is running back down the tunnel, beating on rooftops, begging for help. I can see he's sporting a fresh bite-wound on his throat.

"Which way do we go?" Cowboy asks.

"There's gunshots ahead. Maybe police," Sassy says. "If we can reach--"

"Bad idea. We should go the other way," I tell her. "Shorter distance."

"They might be able to help us!"

"Yeah, we can get with the cops," Cowboy agrees.

Jesus, have these people never seen *one* zombie movie in their life? "We have no idea how nasty it's gotten--" I start to say, but then the bitten guy is at our car, banging on the side of the window, screaming for help. No-nose lurches for him with a strangled moan, and the guy starts to scream, slamming his elbow hard against Cowboy's window--

Glass explodes. I imagine the elbow must be broken.

No-nose grabs the poor guy by his collar and drags him back, sinking a mouthful of broken teeth into the unbitten side of his throat. He releases a wet, choked shriek, and then more of them are rushing the car, nearly stumbling as they come to either join the feast or reach for Cowboy.

"Shit! Shit shit SHIT!" Cowboy roars as an arm lurches out for him. He smashes his open palm into its face, knocking it back.

"Out the other side!" I yell, sliding the door open and getting Louie ready. "Run back to the entrance!"

Sassy springs out. Cowboy moves to follow, but another one's got him by his shoulder. We watch as they drag him back--they're not that strong, but with two or three together they pull half his torso out that window--and then there's nothing but his screams, his horrible screams as they swarm him, dagger-like teeth penetrating that wet, yielding meat and chewing on bone.

Now we're out in the headlight illuminated maze, this underground hell of chrome and shadow and blood.

"This way," I tell Sassy, yelling over Cowboy's choking shrieks (God he won't stop screaming, they're eating him alive) and reaching for her, but--I see that look in her eyes--she's lost it. She just starts screaming too, and then she's running forward into that yawning abyss of death and chaos.

I wish I could save her. I really do.

I turn and bolt for the entrance. It's not far. I start jogging on top of cars, this crazy girl with glasses and a bat, and I see others flocking the same way--some people, some zombies.

One of the latter gets close. A police officer with part of her skull exposed. I don't even hesitate; I bring the Slugger down in a hook right on top of that open wound, feel it crack and shatter as she tumbles down beneath that labyrinth of metal and rubber.

I make it to the entrance. Before me is the germinating seed of the nightmare I had envisioned before; a sea of cars and trucks as far as the eye can see, writhing like a slow-moving serpent--some overturned, jack-knifed, and even abandoned.

Waves of panic are traveling from the tunnel down the road, flooding out like a broken dam. I'm riding the crest of the chaos--surfing on the top of the wave. Behind me, Hell follows.

I turn for one last glimpse into the tunnel. And then I see it--the Volkswagen I noticed earlier. A temptation seizes my heart--to charge it, to break that glass, to grab the little girl and run away with her as far as my feet can carry me.

As I watch, I see her head pop up from the back of the seat. Calmly, she turns to face me.

Half her face is missing.

I turn and run as fast as I can.

I never stop.


"Such sorry sons of bitches."

That's what I say to the thing bound up in my basement.

It snaps at me with its foam-flecked mouth, shards of teeth gleaming in its mouths like broken glass. It struggles and writhes against its bindings, chomping at the bit just to get a piece of me.

They're an ornery lot, these ones. They'll rip their own arm off just to get a bite out of yours.

Trust me, I know.

I've been observing them for a while, now. Learning their ways, puzzling out their nature--know your enemy. All that good Sun Tzu shit. And what I've learned, well--if I were the same man I was yesterday, it might have scared the piss out of me.

It's a simple matter of will. Our will to survive versus their will to feed. But in this arena, they have all the advantages. No fear. No hesitation. No sense of self. Just an absolute, unquenchable, irresistible desire to consume the flesh of the living.

They. Will. Never. Stop.

Blow off their legs? They'll crawl. Blow off their arms? They'll wriggle. Blow off their torsos? They'll drag themselves to you by their teeth. They'll even try to bite through the heel of your boot as you press it down on their skull.

That's why I call them bastards. Magnificent bastards. Magnificent bastards of the highest caliber.

And us?

"We're all such sorry sons of bitches," I tell it.

One day into the infestation. 24 hours after the first reports of the 'plague'--and what happens? We collapse like a house of cards.

The elevator hums as it lifts me up out of the basement to the floor above. It's a shame to burn the electricity--I know I'll need every gallon, every *ounce* of precious petroleum for the generator in the days to come--but I just don't have the strength to walk up out of the basement. Not right now.

Not since I was bitten.

Oh, I know what might happen. I've been listening, see. Not to the newscasts--those worthless fucking newscasts--God, no.

To radios. Short-wave, CB's. To the Internet. To satellites. Shutting the hell up, pressing my ear to the ground, and just *listening*. To the world.

And let me tell you: The prognosis is grim.

These *things*--zombies, corpses, deaders, whatever you want to call them--don't make sense by any simple scientific rationale. They're dead in every feasible measure of the word except the one that includes not walking around. Their organs are barely vestigial, their cognitive abilities nearly Nil. And yet something as arbitrary as a head-shot--a blow to an organ that's all ready shut down, experiencing not so much as a twitch of activity--is the only thing that can take them down.

Their bite transmits a disease so hellishly effective that the mortality rate after incubation is 100%. No exceptions. I've heard of a few; they're either hoaxes or misunderstandings. I'm sure of it. But, see, it isn't the bite that makes you come back to life--that's one misconception I've seen blown away firsthand.

No, the zombies aren't the product of a disease. The disease is a product of them being zombies. Or something.

Anyone who dies--*anyone*--rises from the dead in minutes, sometimes seconds. The only exception is when the body has suffered severe head trauma.

And it makes. No. Fucking. Sense.

I suppose that should bother me. After all, I'm a scientist at heart. I seek to understand the universe through observation and experimentation. But in some ways, it just *excites* me.

Everything I thought I knew--everything I thought I understood--blown away in a day. Fuck *me*, an entire century, maybe even a *millenium* of thought--all crumbling to dust in a matter of hours.

But now isn't the time to blow my load. Now is the time to plot, to plan--to prepare.

This is a battle of wills. The will to Survive versus the will to Consume. And in the arena of the will, they have all the advantages.

All of them except one.

Ingenuity.

Since the dawn of life when cells formed in the bubbling morass of that chemical soup--since the day when the first chimp scooped up a heavy rock and used it to bash open another chimp's skull--since the invention of the club, or as I like to call it 'Heavy Rock 2.0'--life has proven itself exceptionally well-suited when it comes to the will to survive.

For instance: a zombie has no sense of self-preservation. It would never think to chop its own arm off at the elbow to prevent the spread of a deadly infection.

The wound has stopped bleeding; I've sealed it as carefully as I can manage with one hand. The stitches itch something awful--I want to tear them off, to plunge my fingers into the skin and just scratch, scratch it raw and red until there's no skin left to scratch. But I don't, because I know that the risk of casual infection (along with the possibility that the zombie rot has all ready gotten to me) is all ready far too great. My will to survive is strong.

Maybe not as strong as their will to consume, but--we can be such ingenious bastards when we need to be.

I step into my makeshift operating room, leaning heavily on my crutch. One of them writhes on the slab; a frightful parody of a cadaver patient. Its chest has been opened, the skin pulled back to reveal the rotting organs. It squirms, straining against the tight bindings I've locked it in as I move close. It feels no pain--no shriek escaped its lips when I made the first incision with my scalpel. Only that all-too-familiar moan, that throaty expression of *hunger*.

Fighting off the exhaustion, I lift my tools and get to work.

We will find a way to destroy them. Our will shall triumph.

*****


Frigid, withering cold has set into our limbs, dragging them down with exhaustion and hunger.

I am so sick of these woods.

"Safer here for now," Cassidy says, huffing. "They're drawn to light. So long as the street lights are still up, it'll suck 'em right out of the forest."

We shove ourselves up against opposite ends of a tree trunk, scanning the woods. The truth is that we're entirely lost. The truth is that we will likely starve, freeze, or die of thirst. The truth is that right now, zombies are the least of our worries.

"We're in trouble," I tell her, suppressing a bout of shivers.

"I know."

We let the silence speak for us. When I get tired of what it has to say, I end it.

"You from around here?"

"No. South. Been hitching and running up north along the east coast," Cassidy says. "Ever since it began."

"How long ago was that?"

"You been in a cave the past week?"

"Sort of. We were vacationing in the woods. In a cabin," I tell her, and immediately think of Jenny. Then I just shut that shit down. Not right now; I've got enough drama. I'll deal with those ghosts later.

"Hell of a time. Yeah, I guess it's been building for a while, but all Hell didn't 'officially' break loose till about three days ago," she says.

"And now we've got zombies."

"Yeah. Really makes you think, huh?"

"Not really."

She laughs. "Me neither."

We sit there under that tree, bark-to-bark, shivering beneath the sky. The stars are crawling out from their hiding places among the clouds to shine. There isn't a corpse--or even an animal--in sight.

"We got to find shelter, Cassidy."

"I know."

"We're going to--"

"What's that?"

I start to tense up, but there's no agitation in her voice. Just a distracted curiosity. I slink my way to her side of the tree, straining to see in the dark.

"There. Way back in the tree line."

I squint. The moon is coming out at last, shedding its dull light across the tree-tops. Far back in the distance, I see it--a mile or maybe half a mile away.

The very tip of a building's roof, nestled away in the trees.

The trek is a rough one. A mile is a mile--twice that on an empty stomach. But soon we've hit a little road leading up to the facility. From then on it's all cake. Right up to the front door.

That's when we find out the cake's made of shit.

"Oh, *fuck* no. No fucking way. God is plain fucking with us."

Cassidy just laughs and laughs. She laughs so hard I'm worried she's finally lost it, assuming she had any of it to begin with. I haven't known her very long, but somehow I just know--it isn't often she gets a chance to laugh like this. Not anymore.

Above us, the dark and gothically morbid facade looms. And next to it, a tastefully elegant sign:

CRADLEWELL FUNERAL HOME

"You must be *shitting* me," I mumble, and Cassidy is nearly on her knees with the laughter.

The lights are off. Either the folks inside don't want to attract the wrong sort of attention, or...

I don't want to think about that 'or'.

"We gotta go in," Cassidy says, snorting back the last of her giggles. "Ain't got much choice. Only going to get colder, and we need sleep."

"Yeah," I mutter absently. "Just give me a minute."

She does.

Then: "Jack."

"Just a second."

"Jack. Come on."

"God fucking damn it."

The front doors are open. They're big, heavy things made of metal and plastic. Cassidy gives them an approving nod as we step in, snapping them locked a moment after we get inside.

Well, at least it's warmer.

It's one of those ancient funeral homes where everything has to be extravagant and comfortable for the recently departeds' loved ones. The front room is like a sprawling hotel, complete with twin spiral staircases, second floor balcony, a sign-in desk, and even expensive looking paintings of gardens and ships.

The whole place is pretty dark, too. The only light comes from outside--the second floor windows let it in.

"Hm..." Cassidy looks around. "We'll have to look for any windows on the bottom floor, board 'em up."

"What if there are people here?"

Cassidy shrugs. "Probably not. Or they might be dead."

"Or zombies."

Cassidy grins. "Or zombies."

"This place looks like a death-trap in the making."

"I don't think so. Too neat. Not sure what happened here, though," she admits. "Warmer than the outside, at least."

"So we sweep the place?"

"Top to bottom," she agrees. "Let's split up."

I stare. "What? Are you *nuts*?"

"Awww... What? Baby scared?"

She's still grinning, but I can't tell if she's teasing me or not. "Hell *yes* I'm scared. I was scared *before* I found out there are undead cannibals crawling around, and now I'm twice as scared as before. We do this together. Nice and slow."

"Does this count as our first fight, dear?"

"Fuck you."

"Relax, Jack. I'm just teasing you."

Sighing, I shake my head. "Fine. Just--let's just get this over with. I need sleep, food, and a hot shower."

"Right."

We do the ground-floor first. Cassidy pulls out a splintered baseball bat and hands it over to me; then we're on the prowl, checking for low windows or undead stragglers. We don't find either, but I nearly lose it when we stumble into a kitchen.

"What kind of funeral home has a fully-stocked larder?" Cassidy asks in between bites of an apple.

"Hell if I know. I'd steer clear of the steaks, though," I tell her, working on a box of granola bars. "Maybe the owner lived here too."

Cassidy pulls out a few bottles of water from her duffel bag. We sit down and have ourselves a half-decent cold dinner. We're still alert--my hand always rests near the handle of my bat, hers near the gun--but for the first time in a while, we get a chance to relax.

Our conversation gets a little weird.

"Celebrity zombies," I say.

"Hell yeah. If there's one thing I can appreciate about the undead, it's that they're not bigots. In their eyes, we're all equally delicious."

"So. Jessica Alba?"

"Zombie."

"Well, damn. Edward Norton?"

"Who?"

"Fight Club," I say.

"Oh, yeah. I liked him," Cassidy nods. "Zombie."

"William Shatner."

"Crazy zombie."

I pull out a cigarette, cradling it between my lips and thinking. "Clooney."

"Zombie."

"Hell, we're on a roll. DeNeiro?"

"Zombie," Cassidy answers, then pauses: "A really hot zombie."

I stop to think a moment, rolling the cigarette back and forth in my mouth.

"Samuel L. Jackson."

Cassidy doesn't flinch. "When zombies bite Samuel Mother-Fucking Jackson, he doesn't turn into one of them. They turn into *him*."

I try not to laugh, but it's just too absurd.

"Bruce Campbell."

"Off fighting a secret war against Zombie-Elvis, back from the dead."

For some reason, that image sends me over the edge. I start laughing so hard I can't even see. Tears bleed into the corner of my eyes. Once I caught my breath, I light my cigarette and think up another one.

"Chuck Norris."

"Oh, Christ, don't start that shit--"

Something crashes to the floor downstairs.

Both of us freeze, gazes locked. Both of us are thinking the same thing.

Funeral homes have to have places to store bodies, right? Bodies in transit. Some place to do their work.

And I bet you the entire stock of this kitchen that they do that business downstairs.

In the basement.

"Wait, Jack."

Cassidy's voice catches me by surprise. It's got a certain weak edge to it; a nervous tension that I've yet to hear before.

I managed to scavenge a set of flashlights with pretty decent batteries. I've got the bat, she's got the rifle. We're at the entrance to the stairwell, ready to make the plunge into that dark and seedy abyss.

"What is it?"

"Just forget it. Let's just lock the door."

This is not the Cassidy I have become familiar with over the past 12 hours.

"What?"

"Give me one good reason why we should go down there."

"Zombies," I tell her.

"So? Let them rot."

"They could moan and make noise and bring more zombies. There could be a way up here we don't know about. There might be a generator down there we could use, or supplies, or something we'll need. And finally, I'm not sleeping in a house with zombies in it."

She looks away. Something is *very* wrong. The look on her face--that distant, edgy look--I haven't seen her this way. Again, I haven't known her for long, but the impression I've gotten is that there isn't much out there that scares her anymore. But right now, right at this instant, she looks like a terrified little girl.

"I can't go down there," she mumbles.

"Why the hell not?"

"I just can't, all right?"

If I wanted to, I could throw some shit right back into her face. Part of me wants to, in fact. But being a petty little bastard isn't going to get us anywhere.

"Are you afraid of the dark?"

"No," she snaps, and now it's rage and fire all over again, eyes gleaming like scorching lanterns. "I'm not afraid of the dark," she repeats.

"But you're afraid of being in closed spaces."

She swallows once, then looks away.

"It's fine," I tell her. "I'll go down there myself."

"What?! Are *you* fucking nuts, now?!"

"I can handle it," I tell her. "I'll keep near the entryway. Lure them out or whatever. It'll be easy."

"Don't go in there, Jack."

"Why not?"

Dead silence hangs between us. And then, finally, as if admitting to some deep and secret shame:

"If you get in trouble, I don't think I'll be able to come after you."

"That bad, huh?"

A shiver runs through her.

"I'll be okay, Cassidy."

"Jesus Christ. I'm whining like a baby."

"It's fine, Cassidy."

"Just--I'll wait for you up here, Jack. But if shit gets crazy, run up here. I'll slam the door and we'll lock it. We'll bolt it. Fuck, we'll drag the refrigerator in here and dump it in the way."

"Relax, Cassidy." I throw her my best grin. She throws me her rifle.

As I step down the stairway, I hear her voice behind me: "Don't get your adorable little ass bit."

And then I am in the basement. Alone in the dark.

Chapter 4 Ruin

Civilization hinges on lies.

Nothing prevents one man from killing another beyond knowledge of the consequences and the agreed-upon deceit that it is wrong. Beneath this silent contract and sense of self-preservation lurks the heart of a sociopath.

Back when I was in College--two days ago, back when there were still such things as classes--I read about an incident in Poland concerning a group of reserve Police Officers from Nazi Germany sent in to continue the work of the Einsatzgruppen, the group responsible for the slaughter of Polish Jews. They were Nazis, but really only in name; they weren't military personnel or hardcore Nazis. Just normal Joes in a shit-storm of purely epic proportion.

They were shipped to Poland and charged with rounding up the Jews onto trains, and if there wasn't enough room, killing them. And they did their job. *Viciously*.

They were slow to take to it, but once they got started they were on a roll. They played games with the prisoners--they'd make the elderly dance for their amusement, or set some of them on fire, or throw a bottle out into the crowd and kill whoever it landed on.

Normal men became savage, murdering lunatics. Why? Because they were told it was okay. The consequences were removed and the lie was dissolved.

We're all capable of murder.

It's only two days since I ran out from that smoke-choked underground hell, ran away from that little girl with her half-eaten face--and I've all ready killed a man. For his truck.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't do it in cold-blood; the twit was out to kidnap me. Who the fuck knows why. But I didn't *have* to kill him. After the first two hits with Louie, he was out cold. And then I had a choice.

I chose to bash his fucking brains out.

The blood-smeared and splintered rim of the bat sits in the seat next to me with an unfolded blood-splattered atlas on my lap. I'm doing my best to keep to small, underground roads, but even those are congested. I've had to swing around and rumble off road more than a few times.

Every few miles is another snap-shot of some human drama playing out before me. Heaps of cars have congealed into settlement camps where families who ran out of gas struggle to figure out what they'll do next. Signs and placards litter the road, begging for help--some for gas, some for food, and some just for somebody to take their children with them. I've even seen some desperate girls baring legs and breasts to try and get picked up.

But I don't stop. Not for any of it. Maybe that's cruel, but I don't have a lot of water, and I certainly don't have a lot of food. Surviving on my own is going to be hard enough--helping others might make it impossible.

I continue to head north. I've got enough gas to make it as far as Pennsylvania, but after that I'm going to have to either find an active pump or another car. I figure we're right on the fringe of Winter--a few more weeks, maybe a month, and we'll have snow. If these things are really dead, they won't produce heat beyond a little friction--which means they'll freeze solid.

Of course, I'll need food and shelter to survive myself. But I'll handle one crisis at a time.

The worst part is that little girl. Sometimes--especially at night, when I'm alone in the car--I'll glance back in the rear-view mirror and see that half-eaten face staring back at me from the back-seat. I know it's just anxiety bull shit, the body's way of dealing with stress, but--it's still freaking me the fuck out.

I keep thinking she's waiting for me. Waiting for me to go somewhere deep, and dark, and underground. Waiting to grab me, to pin me--to ask me why I didn't save her.

When I can't figure out a good enough answer, she'll probably rip my throat out.

Turns out the fucker who was aiming to kidnap me was getting ready for World War III or something. He's got a couple of sets of army clothes in the back and even a few guns. It isn't much, but it sure as hell beats nothing.

Under the right circumstances, anyone can become capable of anything. There was a time that this realization scared the shit out of me.

But now? It actually makes me feel a little safe.

The gas-tank ebbs just below empty. I feel the truck give its last few desperate splutters. It's dying in the middle of no where--some wart on the ass-end of God-knows where. I can catch the flickering lights of a town up ahead--gas-station, grocery store. The works.

I shove what I've got into a duffel bag and snatch up the guns. I've used a rifle before--my father was a big hunting fan. Check the stock, make sure the safety's off, load up, move out.

"Let's go, Cass," I mumble, leaping out of the car and throwing on a grin.

****

I must be crazy.

I must be absolutely insane. Ed Gein? Dahmer? Whoever came up with the Time Cube? Amateurs. Crackpots. Harmless eccentrics.

I am in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, descending down into the pitch black basement of a mortuary. With a rifle and a flashlight. Because I heard some *noises*.

I thought Cassidy was acting crazy, but now I see that for the first time since we met she was actually perfectly sane. 'Let's go into the dark underground crypt because I heard some noises! It might be a zombie!' I said.

'Fuck you,' she said.

Drop it. Stay sharp. A hundred and one reasons to do this, and number one is proving you're carrying more than loose change in those pants. Cassidy's dragged me through this nightmare every inch of the way so far, and this is my chance to prove I'm not dead weight. To prove I can survive.
<br>To keep my mind off Jenny, shambling and moaning in the dark.

I swivel the light through the darkness, flashing over outlines and shapes. I hear a gentle dripping; something that sounds like water lapping.

I shine the light at the floor.

Fuck.

A water-main must have burst. I'm guessing the water's a foot or two deep; not enough to hide a zombie, but still fucking freezing. I'm tempted to head back up to get some baggies for my feet, but--fuck it. I need to do this. Now.

The water is much deeper. Almost up to my thigh. The thought of a zombie crawling on its arms and legs beneath the surface, seizing my ankle and biting--it sends a frosted lightning bolt up my spine. The water's frigid and I'm trembling with fear.

I take a deep breath. Fuck you, water. Fuck you, zombies. Fuck you, mind-shitting terror. Fuck you all very much.

This was some sort of supply room. I sweep over the brackish, shining water, painting floating boxes of cleaning supplies and random flotsam in a gold glow. There's a generator in the corner, but I'm guessing 3 feet of water have managed to ruin its shit up beyond all hope.

The door to the next room is open. I sludge my way forward, kicking with every step--hoping that if there *is* a sunken corpse, I'll bash its teeth out before it can bite.

The next room is storage.

3 coffins float in silence, bobbing their way through the shadows. They glitter briefly as I slash the beam across them--I notice one has a length of chain wrapped around it. Not a good sign.

This was probably the mortician's work room. I see shelves with scattered tools, floating surgical detritus, and a metal slab near the center.

With a corpse on it.

I nearly drop a load in my pants. I force myself to remain calm, leveling the shotgun at it. The corpse isn't moving--and this prick looks ancient anyway. His skin is a sallow yellow green, hanging to bone like sagging cobwebs; rips in the skin expose gray-brown ligaments beneath. His jaw is open, exposing a shattered graveyard of razorblades that gleam a coffee-yellow in the flashlight's glow. A series of tubes are attached to his wrists, poking out like an IV. Probably embalming.

I swing the flashlight around. Nothing else in here.

The noise was probably something falling down on account of the rising water-level. Chances are there's nothing under here at all. So--fuck it.

I turn away for a second Just a second, to check my way back upstairs.

That's when I hear the splash.

I swing the flashlight back into the room, sweeping it around. When I finally find the source of the sound, my blood turns to frost and I start shitting ice-cubes.

The slab is bare.

FUCK.

Fuckity fuck fuck *FUCK*.

FUCK.

"FUCK YOU!" I roar, and then I point at the water and fire.

I'd like to dedicate my acceptance of the Darwin Award to my family and friends...

The gun belches out flame and hate and jerks so suddenly that I nearly drop it in my shock. And then the noise, rattling through the room, draws every thing's attention.

The chained casket thumps and rattles. Croaking moans emerge from the casket behind me. I hear something splash and moan in the supply room.

I try to fire the rifle where I guess the one under the water might be now, but I get nothing. Not even a click. That's when I remember you've got to pull the lever; I fumble with it for five seconds while backing up to the exit.

My back hits a coffin. It starts to shake and moan.

The chained coffin floated behind me when I was freaking out, sealing me into the room. This means I've got one way out of here--go underwater.

I suck in a breath and drop down on my hands and knees.

For a few terrifying moments, I'm completely blind. I don't dare open my eyes for fear of the shit and muck that might get into them. Instead, I grope and drag myself forward in the dark, fully aware that there might be half a dozen or more sunken horrors after me--their clawed hands reaching for me, their mouths full of teeth searching for a stretch of skin to sink into.

When I come up, I'm swinging. The butt of the rifle hits something soft and brittle. I squeeze an eye open and realize with mute horror that my flashlight has gone out.

I'm trapped in the dark with the undead.

Something grabs my ankle. I kick back hard, feel something squeeze *sharp* around the heel of my shoe, trying to penetrate--then I lift and stomp. Whatever it was, it breaks. I drop the flashlight and lunge forward, swinging the rifle--flailing and roaring, screaming as loud as I can.

"Come and get it, mother-fuckers! Come and get it while it's fresh! Fresh meat, fresh meat!"

Jesus. I have no clue what the fuck I'm saying. I'm just screaming anything so I don't just scream.

And then--then there is a light.

A shining beam of white illuminates the sunken gray face of the toothless abomination about to bite into my throat.

"Piss off, wanker!" Cassidy snarls, bringing the bat across its forehead. The weapon cracks again, snapping cleanly in half. Sloshing through the water, she seizes me by the shoulder and starts to drag me up.

I see her face, dimly--pale as a ghost, shivering with terror, but with a wild look in her eyes. Dragging me out of the muck and slime with all the fury of a lioness guarding her cubs. I'd kiss her if I wasn't sure she'd bite out my tongue.

We're shambling up the stairs, now--exhausted, freezing, shivering--when I catch sight of it. There, floating, right in my reach. It's insanely stupid, but I make a grab for it, yanking out of Cassidy's grip long enough to seize it and drag it up into the dim light at the top of the stairs.

We slam the door shut and lean against it, panting. We don't say anything. We really don't have to.

I don't know why we're both grinning like school-kids who just pulled the greatest prank in the world, or why I have to fight to suppress the giddy giggles that want to swell up out of my throat like the rising foam of a rich beer. Like I said before, it's all just so fucking absurd.

I shake what I snagged to confirm the contents, then set it down. Cassidy opens it to take a whiff, grimaces, closes it, then pats me on the back.

We nearly died, but we got ourselves a tank full of gasoline.

Fair trade.

After we block the *shit* out of that door, we head upstairs.

This was one seriously fucked up mortician.

We find another morgue. This one's a lot more sterile, although it's hard to compare since this one isn't flooded. There's an inoperative elevator that leads downstairs, along with all the sort of crazy-looking equipment you'd expect to see in one of those CSI shows on TV.

And there's another zombie on a slab.

He's ashen gray, writhing beneath enough bindings to even make *me* feel comfortable. He's been opened up and dissected--folds of his chest pulled back and pinned like paper napkins, with a yawning cavity inside his torso. Surprisingly, there aren't any flies buzzing around. And the smell isn't really that awful.

This guy yanked out all the organs and stacked them to the side. Probably to see if it would remain functional. And god-damn if it hasn't--it moans as soon as it sees us (or smells us--the mortician plucked out the eyes, apparently) and starts trying to flail its arms and pull itself up.

Hungry little fuckers.

Cassidy finishes it off with a hammer to the skull. We continue our search.

She's got the rifle. She says the water probably fucked the ammo, but she took it apart, dried some bits off, then said it's fine. She brought rounds for it in that duffel of hers. She holds it out in front of us as we sweep through each room, always taking a step back as I open the door and step aside.

We find one locked door, a room full of laboratory hardware, and a closet with fresh clothes. We switch out our pants, through Cassidy complains that the bitch who lived here must have been rail-thin. That comment makes me do a double-take; I check the closet again. This crazy guy was actually a crazy girl. Well, that doesn't change much. Except I'm starting to wonder if the crazy gene isn't carried on the X chromosomes.

When I switch out my shoes, Cassidy pauses a moment and looks at the heel that got bit. Apparently, it's teeth got through. I'm dizzy with nausea and fear for a moment as she helps me strip off my sock and checks the ankle--and then I feel nothing but a flood of relief when she tells me that it's just a bruise and it never broke the skin.

It prompts me to ask, though:

"Would you have shot me if I had been bit?"

Cassidy stops and thinks about this for a while as we finish changing.

"Before I drove up here, I was with a bunch of refugees. I saw what happens when people realize you've been bit." Cassidy pauses, zipping up the jeans with a painful grimace. "Some people go ape-shit before they even turn. Do some crazy shit. One fella just started killing people."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Fine. Do you want me to shoot you if you turn?" She snaps back.

"No," I tell her.

She peers at me, as if silently demanding an explanation. Then, as if coming to the realization: "You want every minute before you turn."

"Every second," I tell her, and then I nod her way. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"If you get bit, what do you want me to do?"

"Nothing," she says.

"Nothing?"

"If I get bit, Johnny-boy, I'll blow my *own* brains out."

We get excited when we find the bathroom, and doubly so when we notice the spare generator in the laboratory. I gas that bitch up, and in a few minutes the whole place has power. Cassidy and I take turns using the facilities and taking our first real hot showers in God knows how long. Then we switch out *all* of our clothes for new ones. None of it fits well, but damn if it doesn't feel fantastic.

After we're feeling fresh and fit, we scope out the makeshift lab. Lady had a laptop with Internet access, but the service is down. I don't imagine many zombies keep blogs anyway.

We're checking things out when we hear the thump. It makes both of us jump, but we know where it came from--the locked room. We head back there, bust down the door, then get ready to kill ourselves a zombie.

Nothing. Just a bedroom--a really, *really* girly one. With a pink bedspread and stuffed animals and everything. And a note on the desk.

Cassidy looks around the room, checking under the bed and behind the mirror. I go for the note.

It's written in a steady neat hand, but slowly degenerates into a sloven scrawl before becoming illegible. It reads:

"Dying. Cognitive abilities shutting down. Amputation did not work. Rot spreading to the brain. I will be dead soon."

"If you are reading this do not go into the basement, it is lost. DO NOT GO INTO THE BASEMENT. I will be dead soon so please listen."

"Research. I've done research on them for days it's on my laptop and on my recorder in the morgue and you must take it to Jeremy. Directions to his address are in my address book in the lab and maybe he can fix this and DONT GO INTO BASEMENT"

"Scared so scared god please"

"My will is strong don't want to"

The rest was unreadable gibberish.

"Don't see anything in here," Cassidy mutters.

I set the paper down, looking over the room. I'm thinking: If I was scared and dying, where would I go? If my brain was shutting down, where would I hide?

My eyes settle on a spot. I fight for control of my voice.

"Cassidy, when you were little, where did you hide from monsters?"

She looks at me with confusion, but then she follows my eyes and realization dawns on her face.

She turns and opens the closet.

A one-armed zombie moans, shambling forward.

Cassidy brings the stock of the rifle down with a sharp, bone-breaking thump.

"Sorry, doc," I say.

"He's probably dead," Cassidy says.

"Maybe. Maybe not. I think the mortician was talking to him online. I think he might be a scientist, or something. Maybe they were working on a cure or--"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Cassidy says. "For all we know, Jeremy was her *pimp*."

"So what do you want to do?" I ask her. "Stay here and rot?"

Cassidy leans back in a chair, thinking. I keep going.

"Generator won't last another day. We have food, but only maybe for a week or two. We can load it up--she's got a car outside. The keys are probably downstairs--"

Cassidy gets up and throws open the curtains to the window. "Let me provide you with an update to our current situation, Johnny-boy."

I get up and look down. Shambling figures are clawing at the house, shuffling between us and the truck. At least forty.

"Lights must have sucked 'em out of the woods," Cassidy says, tapping a lamp.

"So we shut the lights off."

"Won't matter. Buggers can smell us. And if we get through--what if the wheels don't have gas?"

"Then we're fucked," I say.

"Right. So let's review the plan." She says, dropping to a chair. "Two of us power our way through forty zombies with one gun and a pack-load of supplies, leap into a truck we *think* we might have the keys for, pray there's enough gas to get to Richard's house, then give him a bunch of research notes from some crazy mortician lady that will help him miraculously cure the world. And Jeremy's probably a zombie anyway."

"You got a better idea?"

"Fuck no. Actually, I kind of like this one," Cassidy says, grinning.

"Can you just snipe the zombies from upstairs?"

"Only got around 50 rounds. That many gunshots will pull even more," she says. "Better to shut off the lights and sleep on it. We can see how it looks in the morning."

I agree. We shut off the generator, grab a set of fresh sheets and pillows, and camp out in the lab.

With the door firmly locked.

---

After another cold breakfast and some brief checks on our gear, I'm feeling pretty confident we can pull this crazy thing off.

I found the keys hanging over the kitchen counter. Cassidy found an atlas; we've mapped out the route and committed it to memory. It's off-road, not a real address--which makes me think it's some sort of military operation. Cassidy just laughed and said it's probably a dildo factory or something.

We've gathered up all the supplies we can carry--fresh clothes, water, a first aid kit--and rolled them up into comforters secured on either end with leather belts or duck-tape. They'll double as beds and pillows, and Cassidy says a loop of leather is always useful.

The zombies outside have gotten to around fifty or sixty. Cassidy could probably thin the herd before we leave, but it would seriously eat into our ammo reserve. I've been thinking about it all morning, and I've got what may be a better idea.

"Burn 'em?" Cassidy asks, suspicious.

"We don't need the gas anymore. If we end up in a situation where we need more, we can siphon it off the truck."

"If the truck has any," she adds.

"It will."

"Just dumping gas no their heads won't be too effective," she adds. "You really need to turn up the heat before flesh will burn on its own."

This is the part of my plan that's one part genius, one part insanity.

"I know. We're going to use the house for fuel."

She stares. "Explain."

"Zombies are stupid fuckers, right?"

"Right."

"We set up a barricade on the bottom of the stairs so they can't climb up. Soak the rug with gas and lighter fluid in the main lobby, throw open the doors, run back o the barricade, wait for them to all pile in--then, whoosh," I say, mimicking the striking of a match.

"Brilliant," she laughs. "Great job, Einstein. And how do *we* not burn?"

Now I grin rather sheepishly. "We jump. Out the window."

"Out a second story window." Dry.

"Yeah. There's a big compost heap outside one of the windows in the back. We can throw a blanket over it, leap down, run around, slam the door shut--"

"And let the mother-fuckers burn," she finishes.

"That's the idea, yeah."

"We'll break our ankles."

"Not if we hit the heap."

"And what if there's cinder blocks in it? What if we miss? What if the fire spreads way too fast? What if they get past the barricades?"

"Well, I guess we'll just have to spend our last few minutes together fucking like rabbits."

She smacks me upside the head--hard--but laughs. "This plan is crazy. I like it! Let's do it."

So we do.

It's hard goddamn work, but we pull through it.

We upend cabinets and shelves for everything mildly combustible. We go through the lab and try lighting fire to every substance we can find. And when we've got ourselves enough fuel for the fire, we start work on the barricades.

Every piece of furniture we can find downstairs is dragged out and slapped down until we've got a god-damn *wall* of wood set up around the stairs. By the time we finish the first side, neither Cassidy or I can scrabble up it. We nail it down just to make double-sure (the zombies outside moan at the sound--we take that as encouragement). We move the supplies upstairs, lose a few blankets trying to throw one over the compost heap (Cassidy manages to land one by stapling heavy Christmas ornaments to all four corners of a sheet), then toss the supply wraps down. Just like we expected; the few shambles circling the house ignore them.

It's nearly mid-day when we prepare phase 2.

We dump everything--and I mean *everything*--on the lobby carpet. When we're finished, the stench is so bad that we have to work in five minute shifts, and even then we can smell that stink in every room. We soak a T-shirt rolled up into a rat's tail as our fuse, lock up the second stairwell until only one hole remains--a hole we'll plug up with a table and reinforce with a file cabinet poised to fall behind it--and then take a good 10 minute break upstairs to dull the edge off our nerves.

I smoke the whole time, much to Cassidy's chagrin.

"You're crazy," she tells me. "Fumes could light up."

"Can't deny a man the simple pleasures."

She laughs, then suddenly gets somber. "Hey."

"What?"

She looks up--stares at me with those burning, *scorching* eyes. "If shit meets fan and you get bit--"

"Cass."

"If you get bit," she fights me off. "Did you mean it? About wanting every second?"

I suck that cigarette dry. "Yeah."

"Even if--even if they got you?"

I hesitate at that, thinking it over. I glance at the window--through it, I can still hear their moans.

"You make that call. If my last minute on earth is going to be spent screaming while I'm eaten alive, I'd rather skip it. But if there's a chance I can get out of there--"

"I understand."

I look at her. "What about you?"

"You all ready know."

"What if you can't?"

"If I can't?" She says, looking at me with a strange, pleased little smile. "If I can't blow my own brains out? Then don't waste the bullet."

We're ready to go.

Cassidy's upstairs, rifle in hand. She'll pick off any stragglers who get too close. It's up to me to open the door, run to the stairs, slam the table in place, reinforce it with the metal cabinet, then get up on the balcony and wait.

If shit meets fan and they get through, we fall back into the hall, slam the door, then wait an hour. Then we jump, run around, throw the fuse in, slam the odor, and run like hell.

We got it all planned. Even practiced it a few times.

But damn if I can't stop thinking of that old phrase: No plan survives the first encounter with the enemy.

I look up to Cass. She nods. I turn to the door. I unlock it with a click. Then I fling it open.

"ATTENTION, FUCK-WITS! DINNER IS SERVED!"

I turn and run as hard as I can for the stairs. I don't look back--no reason to look back. Knowing how close they are won't help me one bit.

I'm on the steps, now, crouching down and rolling through that hole. I feel something touch my collar--*grab* it--then I hear a gun-shot and whatever it is lets go. Then I'm through the barricade, nearly tripping over myself as I slam that table into place and kick the cabinet down with a metal *WHUMP*.

Something snarls on the other side. I hear claw-like fingers scrabbling for purpose.

So far, so good.

I run up to the top, peeking over the balcony. Our first customers are shambling in, eager for a taste of our delightfully delicious menu. I start to count. Ten, fifteen, twenty... They're pouring through that door, stumbling over one another--lurching across the wet, squishy carpet.

Cassidy fires off one more shot, then tosses me a knowing grin. We make ourselves comfortable while she reloads. The fumes are dizzying, but we need to stay at our posts--bait for our guests.

We wait, putting on the hospital masks we found in the lab. It helps a little, but we're both flushed and spinning from the chemical stink. When at last they're all in--the room's swarmed with them, a sea of moaning, writhing flesh--I lift the fuse.

It goes up in a flash. Much faster than I expected; in an instant, I've nearly scorched off my palm.

I hurl the flaming tail to the back of the room, where it tumbles into the masses. For a moment, I'm worried it didn't take--that it'll burn up on top of some fat fucker's shoes.

And then I see Hell rush up to meet us.

There is a gentle, almost reassuring FWUMPF, and then a ball of flame--a *blossom* of rich, rising red, swelling up and blooming right into our faces. The entire room is devoured in a fire that reaches up to the very ceiling, licking at our faces and scorching the tips of our eyebrows. We both fly backwards, simultaneously screaming; and then *everything* is on fire. The curtains, the floor, the walls, even our fucking clothes.

The fucking *fumes* caught fire.

We stumble out and slam the door, smacking ourselves until the stubborn, clinging flames begin to dwindle. Cassidy gives me a look.

"It worked, didn't it?"

"We nearly blew ourselves up!"

"But we didn't."

Cassidy laughs. "Let's get the fuck out of here, Einstein."

We run to the back room. I snag the laptop and head to the window.

One straggler shuffles below.

Cassidy takes him out after two shots. I go first--Cassidy covers me.I draw in a deep breath, cradle the laptop and recorder to my belly, then spring down.

Air rushes past me. I hit something--something soft. Lightning flashes up my spine.

"Fuck," I mumble, rolling off the heap and looking around the forest, illuminated by the waning evening sun.

Cassiddy pauses to reload, then comes after me. The mound's gotten a bit more compact--I can tell by her grimace and limp that she's hurt.

"Let's go," she mutters between clenched teeth.

We heap the supply wraps up over our shoulders--four in all--with the laptop and recorder in Cassidy's duffel bag. With Cassidy limping the whole while, we lurch our way around the house.

We're feeling pretty smug and good about ourselves about the time we hit the other six or seven stragglers still outside the burning house.

"Oh hell," Cassidy says.

Poor planning. We'd practiced and thought about a lot of things that could happen, but somehow the simple possibility that they wouldn't *all* go in didn't even occur to us. And now we're in trouble.

Cassidy's rifle is over a shoulder with the wrap, out of range. The trusty bat's been tossed, it's valued service at an end. And these little rotting snot-nosed brats, too *good* for our delicious barbecue, are nearly on top of us once we step out into the open.

I hurl the supply wrap right into their moaning faces, sending several sprawling beneath the enormous weight. Then I swing the other around in a half-circle, clobbering the nearest one to me with a solid *THWAP*.

"Go!" I roar to Cassidy. "Just fucking GO!"

She charges towards the truck. One comes after her; she throws a supply wrap at it, then arms herself with the rifle and takes clumsy aim with one hand. She fires, but it's a wide shot that just clips its shoulder; doesn't do anything but piss the fucker off.

Meanwhile, I'm breaking skulls with my heel. It's my first real zombie kill, but I don't take a moment to savor it--just swing the heel of my boot down like a club, breaking their skulls like eggs. I get two of them before they even realize what's happening, then I've got the third one getting up and two more reaching out for me.

I turn and run. They aren't very fast--the poor fuckers can't keep up with me, though I can tell they desperately want to. There's another gunshot as Cassidy drops the last wrap and blows her zombie's brains out; it drops like a sack of shit--and then she's taking aim at the ones after me.

BLAM. One goes down. I'm a good 30 yards away, those things right behind me.

BLAM. Second one goes down. 15 yards. I'm nearly at the home stretch.

BLAM. Third one takes a hit to the shoulder; I watch Cassidy calmly reload, going through those motions with the clear-cut grace of an automaton. I reach the car, spin around, and watch as the third one tumbles closer and closer.

BLAM. The top of its head plops open like a Christmas present. It drops to the ground, smoke emerging from its hollowed out skull.

"Supply wraps," I mumble, moving to grab one.

That's when Cassidy grabs my shoulder and points.

Drawn by the noise, more of them are emerging from the burning house.

My fucking God, these things are *impossible*.

The fact that they're on fire clearly does not bother them one bit. Their flesh and clothing is burning--great, rolling flames sprawling up from them, licking at their faces and melting their skin like wax. And they simply DO NOT CARE. They're just trudging forward like it's another day at work, moaning and pouring like a god-damn FOUNTAIN of burning death, all ready overtaking the first and second supply wraps.

"Car," Cassidy grunts, her voice scarcely a whisper.

I fumble for the keys, turning and opening the front door. Cassidy throws the rifle in, throws the duffel bag in, then suddenly shoves me into the driver's seat.

"Go," she says, voice hoarse.

"What?"

The fire is burning behind us, flames spilling out of the windows. It's being devoured by heat, burning corpses stumbling out of it like a flood of rats deserting a sinking ship.

Cassidy holds up her arm. Bloody teeth-mark lay on her forearm.

"Go," she repeats.

My heart stops. Everything--just stops. I don't even see the zombies anymore.

"Go."

"Get in," I tell her. My voice is hoarse.

"Get the fuck out of here. Now."

"Get in or I swear to God we're both dying here right here, right now."

She grabs me by the collar and nearly drags me out of that car. She bares her teeth at me, *snarls* at me. For a moment I'm sure she's all ready turned; the rage in her eyes is inhuman. For a moment, I'm sure she's going to bite my face off.

"GO."

And that's when I do the bravest, stupidest, craziest thing yet.

I grab the rifle in the seat next to me, drag it into my lap, then use it as a god-damn battering ram--aimed straight at her head.

I feel the gun jerk in my grip, feel her spasm backwards, arms flailing--feel her grip on me become nothing but a dead, leadened weight. And then I leap out of that car, pulling her up into my arms and *dragging* her into it. I do this as the undead are descending upon me in a flaming horde, their hungry moans dragging them inexorably closer. I do it calmly, smoothly, and with the logical grace of a man who has finally gone mad.

I slam the door shut just as the first smoldering fingers are reaching for me. I turn the car on with a rumble, and then I hit the pedal.

With only a half-tank of gas, no supplies, and an infected girl, I leave the burning ruins of Cradlewell Funeral Home behind.


It's 1 am and I'm driving in the dark with a cute unconscious girl tied up in the seat next to me. I think I'm going crazy.

The gas needle is snuggling up with the E and I feel so sleepy that I've caught myself dozing off three times, now. I've opened up the window to let the cold, bitter air rush across my face. It helps take the edge off but I feel that need to sleep gnawing at the back of my eyes, rushing forward like a blanket of oblivion whenever I let my guard down. It's just a matter of time.

I can't stop and sleep. I'm terrified that I'll wake up to the sound of windows shattering and the sight of clawed, hungry hands reaching for me--or worse yet, never wake up at all. And then there's Cassidy.

She's going to turn soon.

I'm wondering why I did it. Why I saved her. Why the fuck did I not just leave her behind? Why did I not take her advice? Because I don't want to lose her.

I all ready lost Jenny. I lost *everyone*. All I've got left is a beat up rifle and an insane girl who saved my life. Fuck the rifle, but I'm not losing the girl.

"Looks like you're fucked, Johnny-boy."

I look in the rearview mirror. My father's there, watching me--wearing the same suit we buried him in ten years ago, pieces of gravedirt clinging to it in heavy wet clods. His entire face has rotted away, exposing the reddish muscle beneath; all his teeth are visible, turning his face into one giant hideous over-extended grin.

But he's not there. I'm dreaming.

I snap my head out of the trance. No one in the back-seat. No voices chastising me. Just me and the girl on our way to a sleepover at Jeremy's house. Yeah.

Maybe it *is* a dildo factory. Wouldn't that be funny?

"Downright hilarious, Johnny-boy."

"Fuck you."

Dad keeps grinning at me from the rearview mirror. "So why'd you do it, Johnny-boy? Why'd you save the girl?"

"Fuck you."

"Trying to make up for previous mistakes? Feel like shit over Jenny? Well don't. I've seen her. She's never looked better." His grin seems to get *bigger*. "We're all dead, Johnny-boy. Best thing in the world, really. All the meat you'd ever want to eat or fuck."

"Fuck you."

"And soon that hot little piece of ass next to you will be too. Really, it's fucking fantastic. I cannot begin to tell you how much tail you'll get once you're dead. Zombie sex is seriously primo shit. I know, I know--you think it sounds gross. But hey, it's just like old people sex--you don't want to hear about it until you *are* one. Then that wrinkly ass starts to look like some seriously hot shit."

"You're not real." Jesus Christ. I am arguing with my hallucination.

"You can't save her, Johnny-boy. She's fucked. She's *ours*."

"You can't have her," I croak. "She won't turn."

"Oh yes she will you little snot-nosed shit. Did I ever tell you that you're a snot-nosed shit? That's why I blew my brains out, because I could not *stand* you being such a snot-nosed shit. You are such a fucking snot-nosed shit, Johnny-boy. God, you should hear yourself whine--"

"She won't turn," I repeat. Like a Buddhist's mantra.

"Rule number 1, Johnny-boy. Rule number fucking 1."

"Bull shit." And now I've got a bit more force behind it. "Bull *shit*! She can't be sure! No one can be sure! She saw that shit in movies! Real life ain't movies! Maybe people survive--she couldn't know for sure! No one could know for sure! Maybe 99 times out of a 100, everyone turns. But she don't know about that 100!"

"So you're aiming for a snowball's chance in Hell, eh Johnny-boy?"

"Sometimes, even Hell freezes over," I snap back.

And then I realize I'm talking to nothing. No one's there--the back seat is empty again. I've woken up from a dream. And then I look out the window-shield.

This is me going at 45 straight into a tree.

Snowflakes linger on the skin, lavishing my nose with tiny, icy kisses.

I'm not dead. That's the first thing that comes to me, firing like a bolt of lightning through the brain--I'm not dead. It's a bloody miracle. A mother-fucking Christmas miracle. Holy shit, I'm not dead.

The other details start to roll over my brain with a slow, steady exhaustion: There's daylight. I'm in the truck. There's pain, and broken glass, and the dull smell of burnt powder. A partially deflated airbag is nuzzling up against my chest--and God, everything hurts. My neck and back feel like they've been wrung out by a team of acne-ridden jocks, then twirled into rat-tails and cracked over a series of steel rods. My forehead is bleeding profusely, and I've got a jagged, wet cut in my forearm with bits of glass clinging to it.

Cassidy. Shit, Cassidy. I twist in the grip of that seatbelt and instantly pray for death--the pain that scorches its way up and down my spine is utterly indescribable. For a moment, I just want to seize that battered rifle and jam it against my jaw and pull the trigger just to stop this pain, this impossible *pain*, but then I get ahold of myself and look over my surroundings.

Cassidy's buckled in the seat across me. The airbag snapped out and caught her; I watch her intently for half a minute until I see the tell-tale sign of her chest rising and falling. Okay. She's alive. For now.

I focus on my surroundings. We're in the woods, off the road by about 20 feet or so. The truck's front end is wrapped around a tree--I can see the splintered and pealed trunk lurking right in the center of the truck's front. The engine block--jesus. I can see where it nearly slammed right through the dashboard, even see where the plastic melted and pooled on the floor--but apparently it decided to go down under the car at the last possible moment.

We are insanely lucky.

With painstaking care, I unbuckle myself and search my surroundings. Duffelbag was on the backseat floor--it was pinned, but the contents look okay. The rifle's got a few extra notches on it, but it still looks servicable.

The woods are clear of any zombies. And best of all, no sign of my father.

Okay. We're alive, the rifle's working, the duffel bag's good, and I'm apparently not crazy. For the moment.

The only thing I've got to worry about now is Cassidy. The truck's fucked beyond all repair, which means I'm going to have to carry her *and* the supplies. I'm in excruciating pain right now, but I'm pretty sure nothing's broken--the space beneath me has crumpled down, but I slide both my legs out slowly and don't feel any lightning bolts of agony up along the bone. Just a rich, throbbing ache that permeates every pore of my skin.

It takes a while to extract myself from the truck. The doors are fucked, so I have to go through the window; managing not to cut myself myself requires a feat and a half. And then when I'm done, I have to pull Cassidy out too--it takes about ten minutes total, and every single second of exertion is absolute torture.

I notice her breathing is irregular and her skin is chilled to the touch. A tiny voice in the back of my skull tells me--Leave her. Leave her in this wreck and just get the fuck out of here. And if that makes you feel miserable, just put a bullet in her skull before you go.

I tell that voice to go eat a dick.

I try pulling Cassidy up on top of my shoulder; bad idea. I nearly drop to the ground screaming, and I have to burn another ten minutes of daylight just trying to catch my breath all over again. I spend it with my back pressed to a tree and Cassidy on my lap, the rifle clutched in my hands.

We're going to die here.

It's such a stupid end to such a stupid story. We got pretty far but now we're fucked because I couldn't drive worth shit. I can't carry her, and I'm too stubborn to leave her, which means I'm just going to sit here panting like a fucking idiot until she turns or I freeze--whichever comes first.

So I wait. And wait. And wait.

And then I wait some more.

The snow's real pretty. It reminds me of way back when I was a little kid, and my father would take us out to the hills. Before he went crazy and pumped a shotgun round through the back of his head. He'd take us--

Wait.

What did I tie Cassidy up with?

It's almost painful to drag my brain back to those first few frantic minutes on the road, but I don't give it much choice. She was out, I was afraid she'd go berzerk if she woke up, and then I pulled over and clambored into the space behind the back-seat, where there was rope and--

Grimacing at the pain, I drag myself up and head back to the truck. I break the back window with a rock and reach in.

Crossword puzzle. Number five down. 7 letter word. 'What you did with your father in the winter.' Begins with an S.

I pull out the battered sled and throw it out in front of Cassidy's unconscious form.

"Let's go sledding," I croak.

We've burned out the last of our daylight.

Cassidy's still breathing and I've piled an extra jacket oin top of her, but she's shivering like a leaf and her skin is ice-cold in some spots.

The weather is getting worse. The earth and road are coated in a fresh layer of snow, crisp and clean. Flakes cut into my face with every step. Sometimes the wind will pick up into a savage howl, dredging blades of ice and flinging them at my eyes. There's nothing I can do but pull Cassidy behind a tree and wait the worst of it out.

I have never been this cold before. Never in my entire life. I can't feel my legs, my hands are like fists of ice--I feel like frost is creeping under my skin, biting and tearing its way down to my heart. I take breaks to warm us up--clutch Cassidy to me, try to generate some heat--but it's nothing beyond a fleeting spark against an inexorable glacier. More than once, I just want to give it up and die.

When it gets really bad, I sometimes think I hear my father laughing.

Somewhere along the way, we come across a car that's jack-knifed into the middle of the road. For an instant, I get excited--even if there's no gas, it might mean shelter against the worst of the night.

Then I look inside the frost-rimmed glass.

The mother--older, short-haired, attractive, sensibly dressed--had her throat torn out. Her head is lulled back against the seat, eyes glassy and wide. Like she's constantly surprised that they chose *that* color for the ceiling upholstery.

The father--younger, olive skin, mid-eastern--is missing a good chunk of his lower jaw. Chewed off, I'd wager. A cube of flesh from his jugular has been almost surgically gouged out, dried arteries and skin dangling like loose threads from an unraveling sweater.

It's funny that my first reaction isn't horror but to wonder why they haven't turned.

I check the back seat. Nothing. I tap the glass.

The little boy moans, slapping his blood-soaked palms against the glass.

His eyes are a faded pearl. His blood-mopped chin has gathered a frosty stubble. It's probably ice-cold in there--no body-heat to store. Not anymore.

I lift the rifle and check the door. Lucky me, it's unlocked. I swing it wide, smash the boy's face in before he can moan again, then jam the barrel straight into his eye and pull the trigger.

I drag the corpses out and ditch them in the snow, but not before snagging the wife and husband's jackets. I put Cassidy on the back seat floor and slip in with her, slamming the door shut and locking it. Then I use the extra jackets to try and keep us both warm.

There's a little food, but nothing to write home about. The car's got gas but won't start--I figure the battery's dead. I make myself comfortable and fall asleep to the sound of howling wind.

I'm in the back seat of a cherry-red 1967 Pontiac Firebird with my father's corpse buckled in next to me. He grins a lipless grin, every tooth visible from the incisors on back to the molars--a cigarette dangling between his cuspids.

I look out the window. We're passing scenes of devastation--families screaming in the dark as the dead come for them, an airplane compartment filled with shrieks as a zombified stewardess stumbles through the lanes, madness and death in an underwater lab now cut off from civilization--

"Business as usual," he says. "Standard operating procedure."

Dimly, I know I'm dreaming--but only in the distant way that doesn't let you change a thing.

"The living are fucked, Johnny-boy. Being dead's all the new rage," my father says. "You really need to give it a try."

I lean forward to look at the driver while my father just talks on and on.

"Oh, there were doubters at first, sure--there always are when these things start out. 'It's just a fad!' they said. Well, I think we cleared *that* business up pretty well, didn't we? Being dead ain't a god-damn fashion statement, not anymore. It's a way of life--unlife. Whatever."

The driver looks back at me.

"Boy meets girl. Girl dies. Girl eats boy," my father says.

It's Cassidy, grinning back at me. Her chin is dripping with my blood.

"Standard narrative operating procedure."

I wake up to the sound of a moan.

Cassidy.

She's on the floor of the back seat, twisting and moaning in her bindings. She's as pale as a ghost.

I swallow hard when her eyes flutter open.

"Water," she moans.

Thank God.

I drag out the last bottle of clean water we have and pour it between her lips, helping her nurse on it with a steady trickle. When I'm done, she slumps back into unconsciousness.

I look out the glass.

It's nearly snowed a foot. The whole road is covered, along with the surrounding forest; it all sparkles in the morning sun like a shimmering sea. Under different circumstances, it'd be absolutely gorgeous. Like something out of a Robert Frost poem.

That gets a snicker out of me. When we have electric blankets and hot cocoa, snow inspires poetry. But when you're in the thick of it? *Fuck* snow.

I've got four cigarettes left. I light one up and savor that bitter scalding tang.

I figure Jeremy's dildo factory is coming up any minute. Well, any hour. If I remember right--and I'm not sure I do--this road ought to split off. Left heads back to the highway, and right--just a hop skip to Jeremy's place from there.

I bind Cassidy up tight in her brand new extra coat and throw the spare one on myself. I spend a few minutes pressing up against her and trying to generate some warmth. No time for modesty right now--freezing to death is a real mother-fucking possibility. Once I feel we're good, I throw the door open and go sledding again.

The husband and wife are waiting for us. One frozen arm has reached out from the snow, clawing motionlessly at the driver side door. The wife's face, colored a pale blue, portrudes from an icy bank. Her jaw is open in a frosty, silent moan.

The sight gives me a little shiver, but I throw it off. They probably took a while to re-animate, and by then they were frozen stiff.

We keep going.

The wind has died down a bit, which makes the going considerably easier. I'm still stomping through snow, though--in just ten minutes it feels like my legs from the shins down are encased in solid blocks of ice. I'm pretty sure that if I somehow survive this, I'm going to lose my toes.

An hour in and we hit the fork in the road. I cannot tell you how ecstatic this makes me. If I was not marching through a foot of ice and shit while dragging my only friend behind me in a funeral sled, I would be dancing and singing like one crazy mother-fucker.

Three hours later and we hit the perimeter fence. It's part of this small, compact facility--just a length of barbed fence with a few guard towers surrounding a one-story outpost that looks like an over-glorified backyard shed. No lights, no smoke, and the front gates are torn down, buried in the snow.

Some dildo factory.

Cassidy whimpers on the sled. I trudge forward towards the building. Even if it's nothing, it's still shelter, and there might be food--or a map somewhere better.

The whole thing is made of concrete and surrounded by those 3-foot cylinder pillars they use to stop cars from crashing into malls. The front door--the *only* door--is unlocked.

We slip in.

I've grown so used to darkness, to horror, to being without the pleasures of 'civilized' life--it's only been a few days, but they've been enough to open my eyes. But I'm still so accustom to the amenities of society that, for a moment, the oddness of a well-lit interior with warm heating getting piped in fails to impress me. But when I see the computer humming in the corner, everything about this place hits me like a thunderbolt.

This place has power.

There's a massive elevator near the center of the room, designed for what might be vehicles. A locked hatch next to it stabs down into the interior, with a computer console and a digital camera set up besides it.

And as I stand there, slack-jawed and amazed, the computer starts to *talk*.

"Jilliane? Is that you?"

"You're--you're talking."

"Yes. All right. So you're *not* Jilliane."

I suddenly experience a fit of mad, impossible giggles. The thought of this place, this entire *facility* being one giant government-sponsored dildo factory--it's just too much. I fall to my knees, laughing and crying all at once.

And then, exhausted beyond all rational reasoning, I collapse into unconsciousness.

"Don't you worry, Johnny-boy," my father says. "We'll get you on our team yet."

Warm.

There is a dull, warming ache spreading through me. It starts in my chest and spreads with each beat of my heart, reclaiming lost territory. Slowly, I come to grips with the fact that I am alive.

I am in a hospital--no, there are no hospitals, not anymore. But it looks like a room in a hospital. Sterile and white, without even a trace of artificial warmth; designed purely for function and physical comfort. I am in a bed, an IV attached to my wrists.

There is a button next to me, bright red and shiny. I press it once, find nothing happens, then struggle to sit up.

All the pain from the crash that I put away for surviving the cold and dragging Cassidy through a blizzard surges through my spine and floods every nerve with shrieking, agonizing rage. I manage a strangled moan, then fall back to the bed. My *fingernails* hurt. I was unaware that fingernails were capable of hurting.

For a few minutes, I start to doze off in the haze of throbbing aches and exhaustion. And then I hear a soft electric purr.

The man in the electric wheel-chair looks like an MIT Professor, bushy beard and all. I'm guessing he's in his late 30s or early 40s. He's got the grimmest look on his face in the history of man--the zombies could all suddenly don top-hats and start singing show-tunes and he wouldn't crack a smile.

"Mr. Rollins," he says. Like the flavor of the name was irksome. "Good morning."

"Cassidy." My voice feels and sounds like I'm talking through acid mixed with burning charcoal. "Is Cassidy okay?"

"The girl? For now," he states flatly. "Her ankle was badly sprained. I've managed to stabilize her infection and put her under quarantine."

I don't understand one thing he just said beyond that she's okay. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I have many questions, Mr. Rollins, and time is of the essence. Are you well enough to speak?"

I try to sit up again. Big mistake. "How do you know my name?"

*That* gets a smile. A nasty one. "Your wallet. You'll find it on the dresser next to you. I assure you that none of its contents have been removed." He seems to get a kick out of the notion that everything in it is probably useless, now.

That's when I realize that I'm naked under the covers. He seems to sense my surprise.

"Do not be alarmed. Though I may not look it, I am a medical doctor. I had to search you for bite marks and other critical injuries."

For some reason, the thought that he must have done the same to Cassidy fills me with a seething, irrational rage. I swallow it back and close my eyes. "Where are we?"

"Hub 5. What's left of the U.S. government's emergency crisis reaction plan."

"You mean--the government is--"

"Operational? Hardly. The Hub facilities were built as a response to biological or thermonuclear terrorism; several dozen fully staffed and supplied underground 'hubs' working as command and relief centers, all capable of receiving orders from the Master Hub while operating independently from it. However, all lines of communication have broken down. I haven't heard from any of the other hubs since two days ago."

This is a bit confusing to be laying out all at once. "So this is--we're in some sort of underground city?"

"Something like that. The girl--the one you called Cassidy. I assume she is not Jilliane DeCanto." His tone is flat, but I pick up a tiny creak of desperation.

"No. Not that I know, anyway. Who's that?"

"The owner of the laptop and recorder in your possession."

"You're Jeremy," I say.

His eyes narrow. It's one thing for him to know *my* name, but he doesn't like having things turned round.

"Jill--she was the mortician? At Cradlewell?"

"Assistant mortician."

I nod. "She's dead. I'm sorry."

That hard, dead face briefly softens with a flutter of emotion. He looks away. When he speaks again, his voice nearly cracks: "I see. How did you find this facility?"

"She left a note. Directions. Told us to bring the laptop and recorder here," I tell him.

He smiles again, but now there's a hint of something genuine behind it. "Did she." I can hear the words he wants to say, but won't: Smart girl.

"Why do you need her notes?"

"Experiments that I'm unable to perform," he says, gesturing to his paralyzed legs. "She could handle and bind the infected for dissection. I can't."

I remember how she died--probably bit by a 'subject'. Maybe one of the ones she was researching for him. I decide to leave that part out.

"Why couldn't you get someone else to do it?" I ask.

"You mean a member of my esteemed staff?" Jeremy asks, that bitter smile rushing back in to fill the void. "If you feel well enough to walk, I'll introduce you."

He wears a sharp thousand dollar suit with a three-hundred dollar hair-cut. And as I watch him through the flickering monitor, he lurches and silently moans.

"I have no way to make a completely accurate estimate," Doctor Jeremy Rhodes explains, "but my best guess would put them at somewhere around fifteen hundred thousand."

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