~*~
I dedicate this story to a woman full of sass, class, and a whole lot of ass; a woman who has ceaselessly worked to motivate me--indeed, she's managed to motivate me nightly.

In short, I dedicate this story to your mom.


PS: Tell her to call me!

~*~

Ever since I can remember, fortune cookies have been telling me that I'm going to die.

They never get too specific. Just the basics: 'Your Lucky Numbers Are 3, 12, and 57. You Are Going to Die.' Or: 'Try the Spicy Pork Rolls! And Then Prepare to Die.' It used to freak me out, but I've gotten used to it. In a way, it's kind of flattering. How many people can say that the universe lets them know the score?

A scientist once told me that as you approach the impossibly dense center of a black hole, the axioms of physics stop functioning. Equations choke on the infinite and vomit up nonsense. Space bends. Time warps. Math breaks.

A black hole is a place where explanations and formulas stumble; where descriptions elude even the most elegant of minds. It is a place where our perception of reality meets reality itself--and shatters.

For me, it's a place where fortune cookies issue death notices and you always lose the coin flip. It's a place where cats hiss at you and dogs run away. It's a place where, no matter where you are or what you're doing, it always rains on Monday.

My name is Lucky Monday. And that place is where I live.

This is my story.

~*~

Of all the days God could have chosen to end the world, why did he have to pick a Monday?

Doctor Werner mused over this and other inexplicable whimsies of the divine. His guest was late, his coffee was getting cold, and he had just finished writing his report on a phenomenon which completely shattered every principle modern science took for granted.

No matter how hard he tried, he could never get a handle on Mondays.

The elevator opened. A grim-faced general stepped out, flanked on all sides by aides and advisors. Werner thought he recognized the man from TV, but he couldn't recall his name.

"This better be good."

"I assure you that this is everything but," Werner replied. "This way, please. And leave your entourage behind. It's prone to agitation in the presence of crowds."

Grumbles arose, but the general shrugged them away like water off a duck. With only a gesture, they were dismissed to the lobby. "Let's get this over with."

Doctor Werner took him down into Containment.

"The 'disease'--and I hasten to remind you that I use that term only for lack of a better one--causes rapid cellular decay. After infection, victims suffer a spectacularly fast form of necrosis starting from the entry vector. Within a few short hours of infection, the body simply shuts down--this can happen much faster, depending on where exposure first occurred."

"Is it airborne?"

"Not as far as we can tell. We believe it's spread through contact--specifically, biting."

"Biting? I thought you said victims die within hours. How can the disease be virulent enough to warrant an alert like this if the carriers die too fast to pass it on?"

Werner stopped once he reached the tinted mirror. "That's just it."

"What's just it?"

"They don't stay dead."

Silence.

The general turned to go. "If you think this was funny, think again, Werner. I'll have you out on your ass for this so fast you'll suffer from vertigo. I swear to God, I cannot believe you dragged me down here for this bull--"

Werner did not speak. He only reached forward and delicately flipped the switch, causing the mirror's tint to disappear.

Something slapped against the glass. And moaned.

The general stopped, turned, and stared.

"We've performed a biopsy on several, including one which was still--ahem--alive, so to speak. They apparently feel no pain and, as far as we can tell, possess no recollection of their former lives."

It pawed against the window, smearing something wet against the glass. Then it moaned again; the sound still gave Werner the shivers. It was unlike anything he had ever heard in his life.

"I said that I call this a 'disease' for lack of a better term, because what you are witnessing can not be classified as any disease, virus, or bacteria--not one known by us. There is no trace of known pathogens in its blood, no chemical agent beyond that which you would expect in a corpse, and absolutely no scientifically plausible explanation."

"Could this be--could this be some sort of nano-technology?" The general's voice was as weak as a kitten's mew.

"Incredibly unlikely. We were unable to isolate any particularly unique compound that would indicate as such. A colleague suggested nano-machines that use pre-existing biological compounds to accomplish reanimation and hide its work among the normal processes of decay, but that theory seems immensely unlikely. Besides, the level of technological sophistication required for that would be far beyond anything we could ever possibly imagine."

The general was moving towards the window now. Though old and gray, his expression was that of a child who had just discovered that the boogey-man exists. He reached out, fingers trembling as he touched the glass. "Is there a cure?"

"For what?" Werner snorted. He hated repeating himself. "This is not caused by any organic or chemical agent we know of. There is no source, no pathogen, no explanation. Every bit of data we glean from the infected only brings up a thousand more questions; questions without answers, mysteries without solutions. All the information we acquire is a singular piece of an entirely new, unique puzzle. A puzzle for which all other pieces are absent."

"What do they want?"

"You must understand. These things--they are not biological. Nothing they do makes sense; nothing about them makes sense. They feel no pain, possess no fear, and do not have a sense of self-preservation. They lack any and all emotions save one: Hunger."

The general pealed himself away to stare at Werner. "I assume they're not vegetarians."

Werner allowed himself a rare smile. "Meat. Living meat; they ignore anything that's dead. So long as it perceives a living target, it will attack. Take off its legs and it will crawl. Take its arms and it will wriggle. Remove its body and it will pull itself by its jaw. It will even bite at the very heel that descends to crush it." Werner stared through the glass, watching it.

"What in God's name are they?"

"Divine whimsy," Werner said, his voice low and wistfully. "A biological black hole."


~*~

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 its 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 3 tons of metal to a screaming halt.

For a moment, we're both silent. I'm gripping the dashboard hard enough to crease my nails; her face is as red as blood. Then, all at once, she's talking.

"Oh shit." She starts to hyperventilate. "Do you think he's dead? Oh, Christ. Oh Christ. Did I kill him?"

I drag my fingers out of the plastic, close my eyes, and try to stay level-headed. "I think so," I tell her, forcing myself to breathe slow. "We were going pretty fast--"

"Fuck. He came out of nowhere! Just--oh, Christ--"

"Relax," I tell her, despite the fact that my own heart's going a mile a minute and my nerves are rattling somewhere in the bottom of my stomach. "He shouldn't have been out here in the middle of the night. It isn't your fault."

"What are we supposed to do?"

"I guess we need to check on him. See if he's--" I struggle for the appropriate term. "--see if there's anything we can do."

Jenny throws me a pleading look. She doesn't have to say a thing; what she wants flashes by like a scrowling marquee rolling past her eyes. I sigh and unbuckle the seatbelt.

"Stay here. Try to call the police on your cell."

It's just finished raining, leaving the midnight air crisp and refreshing. I steal a moment to get a grip and stop shaking. Once I feel in control, I make my way over to the mishapen lump that's laying besides the road.

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 window-shield. From what I can tell, he's an older man. 30s, maybe early 40s, with dark stringy hair and a growing bald spot. He wrapped himself up snugly before venturing out in the frigid mid-November night. He's got a green Eagle's jersey on, splattered with flecks of rust-colored blood.

I shake off the odd, disturbing feeling and head back to the car. Pop open the trunk, grab some flares, set ourselves up a perimeter. Then I check on Jenny.

"Reception's out," she says, snapping the phone shut. She looks grim and distant.

"We'll pull into town. Use a phone at a gas-station or something," I tell her, dropping a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She smiles weakly.

"Guess I screwed up."

"It's not your fault, Jenny."

"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. "Could you drive?"

~*~

It's one of those little towns stretched out like a string of cheap plastic pearls along a highway off ramp. We didn't bother catching its name; we were just slipping through on our way back home. We pull into some stale gas-and-go with those old fashion pumps (the kind with the spinning numbers) 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 huge deer head mounted just above the entrance. It eyes me with a disapproving stare as I step into the dust-choked building, cow-bells clattering overhead.

The floor's made of old timber, with dirty wood barrels overflowing with cheap cheese-infused snacks. This whole place is a sprawling mess. Shelves lay in disarray, their products thrown across the floor. No one's behind the counter.

Something feels wrong. I try to throw off that unsettled sensation while reaching for the phone--one of those old rotaries with big fat spokes.

It's dead.

WHUMP.

Something pounds against the side door of the freezer. That's when I notice that it's been propped shut with a stack of beer kegs.

Jesus. Is someone in there?

WHUMP.

"Hello?"

Silence.

Then:

WHUMP.

It sounds like someone lurching their shoulder against the door, hitting it again and again. It sounds like someone trying to get out, but not in desperation. No, this has a steady beat to it. Like the poor bastard's being patient.

WHUMP.

"Is there someone in there?" I'm nearly there, now, reaching out 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. Why should the poor guy have to ask me to let him out? But in some deeply buried part of my brain that still belongs to my childhood, I know precisely why.

Because if he asks for help, that would mean he's human.

WHUMP.

"Screw this," I mutter, dashing out the door.

~*~

"What's going on?"

I climb back into the driver's seat. "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. Maybe it was just booting up or something.

Yeah, booting up. That's what it was doing.

We come to a Food-Lion next. The lights are still on inside, so maybe someone's working the night shift. We can get ahold of a phone if they let us in.

As I slip the car into idle, I start to open my mouth to tell Jen to come with me. I can see in her eyes that she wants to come. But then I think better of it. If something weird is going on, I'd rather have someone ready to drive.

I hand the keys over to her. "I'll be right back," I tell her, and then--on impulse--I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead. She gives me an odd look and makes a face.

The first thing I notice as I saddle up to the sliding doors is that the lights are on but nobody seems to be home. Inside, I can see long white aisles drenched in flourescent lighting (50% off OJ), but not a single soul. A lonely cart lays on its side in the center of one aisle, one wheel dangling like a flashing lure.

The doors are off, but not locked. They shove open easily and then I'm in. There's that wet store smell, accompanied by the mindless drone of music selected for its dull sterility. Nothing else.

What the hell is going on?

"Hello?"

Something clatters far ahead, like plastic soda bottles dropping to the floor. Slowly, I make my way to the checkout, picking up the phone while keeping an eye on the back.

Dead again.

"Damn it." I drop the receiver.

Something grabs my leg.

"Get down," a red-headed stockboy hisses. "Get the hell down!" He's stuffed himself beneath the cashier counter, clutching a mishapen bat in one hand and my ankle in the other.

"Excuse me?"

"Get down before it sees you!"

"Before what sees--"

Glass falls and shatters in the back. I look up. There's 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 of it is dark and slick, coated in wet 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--it's all wrong.

And then he breaks into a gallop.

There's nothing human about the way he moves. He throws limbs out with frantic, flopping lunges, as if dragging himself forward by fistfuls of air. His eyes are wide and glassy, clouded by something milky and pale. His jaw is slack, hanging open and exposing a wagging tongue.

I manage to step back. By then, he's toppling over the counter, a husky snarl worming its way up from his moist throat. It's a sound I never imagined I'd hear from a human; one I couldn't imagine we were capable of making. The moment I hear it, every muscle in my body seizes up.

The kid under the counter gets up, probably to run. Bad move. That thing reaches him first.

It snatches him by the hair, dragging him back as he screams and writhes. They squirm together on the floor like a set of fish caught on the same line, twisting around while that thing drenches him in clods of bloody drool, gurgling all the while. I'm locked in place, trying to remember exactly how it is I'm supposed to breathe.

And then there's a thunderclap. No--a gunshot.

The thing's skull pops open like a soda can, fizzing up a spurt of black. It drops back, leaving the stockboy to scramble away, shoving himself back against the counter. His face is a bright red. He wheezes for breath, raking the air for every last precious molecule of oxygen.

I turn to the source of that dead-on shot.

I've always liked girls who sent out warning signals, and this one is transmitting them clear enough to knock out satellites. Everything about her says 'Fuck-Off'--from the circles under her eyes to the smoldering rifle in her hands. She wears a name-badge that said 'Cassidy O'Hara' and 'ASK ME ABOUT YOUR MOM!' beneath it. Her jeans are a metal detector's nightmare and her crooked teeth a dentist's wet dream. She wears a honolulu shirt that's so bright it qualifies as a carcinogen.

"What the hell is happening?" I croak.

Never dropping the barrel, she speaks to the stockboy with a voice that seizes you by the throat and refuses to let go: "You all right?"

The thing that was trying to eat him is still alive--if you could ever describe it as living. But now that the front of it's face is nothing but pulp, it's left spasming on the floor, clawing at the air above it. The stockboy stares at it, chest heaving, not answering. She has to repeat the question before he finally looks her way.

"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 goes quiet. Like a knife sliding between the ribs. "What's that on your arm?"

The stockboy 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--"

The second gunshot is like a lightning bolt to my brain. At once, my muscles are free; now I'm grabbing the dead stockboy's baseball bat and spinning on the bitch who just blew his brains out. Except now she's walking away, striding past me like I'm not even there. She drops her duffel bag and heads toward the store freezer.

For a moment, I'm left speechless. After all that, she's just ignoring me. I let the baseball bat sag in my grip and find myself waiting for her to return. Nearby, the thing on the floor spasms again, a spurt of thick syrup surging out of the shattered remnants of its nose.

When she comes back, she's got a pack of caffiene pills and a noxious looking energy drink in one hand. She cracks open the bottle, throws a capsule in her mouth, then washes it down with the carbonated poison. She grimaces at the taste and shoves what pills are left in her pocket, then drags out a ten dollar bill and slaps it on the counter. Then she picks up the duffel bag and swings it back over her shoulder. And turns to me.

"You got a car?"

"What?"

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

"I--yeah, outside, with--"

Jenny.

Shit.

"Yes. Yes, there's--I'm with someone. Are there more of those things--are those things outside?"

"Sometimes," she says, glancing over her shoulder. "Your pal in the car?"

"Yes."

"Okay. What's your name?"

I try to keep it together. But my eyes and mind keep wandering back towards that door, venturing out into the darkness of that parking lot. Back to where Jenny's sitting in her car, waiting for me. Alone. "My name's Monday. Lucky Monday."

"Seriously?"

"Yes," I snap.

"Okay, Lucky. You ever see a Romero flick?"

"Wh--what?"

Cassidy steps up to me, leveling a stare that can split rock. "Stay with me, Lucky. Have you ever seen Night of the Living Dead?"

"Yeah. Uh, a long time ago."

"Okay. Good. Three rules. You listening?"

"Yeah."

"Rule number one: 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 swallow hard, sparing a glance back at the dead stockboy. Meanwhile, the thing on the floor makes a wet sucking noise, trying to scramble blindly to its feet.

"Rule number two: 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 dick at the prom. Once they're one of them, it doesn't matter. They see you as meat. So fuck them. With a baseball bat, if you've got one."

My hands start to tremble. The thing's managed to roll its way back to its hands and knees; a fountain of ichor drenches the floor as it pours out of its missing face, splattering across clean linoleum. It's beginning to claw its way across the slick floor towards the sound of our voices, trying to moan without its jaw.

"Rule number three. This is the important one. You still with me, Jack?"

Numbly, I nod, staring at the monster.

"Rule number 3: Shoot for the head."

She spins, turns, and levels the rifle. Something that looks like it might have once been an eye gleams from the mess of ruptured flesh; she pulls the trigger with another gun-shot. The lower portion of its head explodes, seperating the top half cleanly from the bottom. It falls back to the ground, going into spastic seizures.

She reaches into her duffel back, fishing something out. I feel the cool hilt of a revolver pressing against my palm. It feels a lot heavier than I'd expect.

"Let's go."

~*~

There are zombies outside.

Am I allowed to call them that? Have we progressed to that point yet? Are things screwed 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, Morisette. That's irony."

The parking lot is crawling with them. They're emerging from the forest, shambling about like drunkards into the night. They weave their way through the maze of cars, dissolving into a labyrinth of chrome. There must be at least fifteen or twenty.

How the hell did I not see them before?

Cassidy sweeps her duffel bag behind her and out of the way. Then she levels the gun at the shambling horde.

"They won't start running until they see us. Most of them can't see worth shit, so as long as we keep our distance, we got the 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 headshot 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. We keep our backs 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 PJs. A strip of flesh is gone from her cheek, exposing yellowed teeth--like rows of tic-tacs. It gives her a sort of funny, crooked grin. Her eyes are puss-white, and when she catches sight of me they gleam in the street-lights.

"Move. Now," Cassidy says, and then she adds 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, slapping her palms on the ground with her sheer exuberance for meat. I don't even think. I just lift the six-shooter and start firing.

Bullets kick back the barrel while I start running. I think I fire four shots, maybe five. Her shoulder pops open in a moist burst, but that doesn't even phase her. She's nearly on top of me when her temple explodes and she collapses 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 clicks. The revolver drops 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 English 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 chrome as he desperately tries to clambor over it. Or maybe he's trying to eat his way through. I can smell his stink; it's like rotten eggs mixed with festering meat boiled in a bucket of vomit. I'm fighting off the urge to gag when I finally catch what Cassidy's been shouting 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 yell, pointing. "Trees!"

Cassidy pauses to pump a round in fatty's face, 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, scrambling over whatever is in front of them like crazy drunks. Like they just can't be bothered to take time out of their busy schedules of eating people to figure out how to properly put one leg in front of the other.

Cassidy and I charge towards those headlights. I hear her drawing out rounds and reloading that rifle with a steady series of clicks.

The zombies probably spooked the hell out of Jenny. She probably just drove away as fast as she could. Probably didn't even think to honk the horn or drive the car into the grocery store. She's probably okay. Probably crashed into a tree or something like that. She's probably just dazed and confused and wondering what the hell happened, wondering if it was all just a bad dream.

Probably.

The most aggravating part of this is that while we're fumbling our way between trees and heading towards that shimmering glimmer of light, we're blind. The distant street lights are at our back; the only other thing we've got for illumination is the car's distant headlights and the stars in the sky. A zombie could spring out at any moment. All I've got against him are my fists.

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

We're just about there. I notice that Cassidy's pointing the rifle 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 windowshield. 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 drooling mouth.

Mixed with something black and ichorous.

"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. Or she's turned. Either way--she's dead."

They're getting closer.

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

Nothing.

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

"I can't--"

She hits me, either with her fist or the butt of the rifle. 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.

~*~

We've gotten a bit of distance between us and them. We're leaning up against a tree in a wide clearing; the only light is from the moon. The cold is nibbling at our extremities and our breath comes out in thick, icy whorls.

"I know what you're thinking," she says, snapping another round in the rifle.

"Then tell me," I say, trying to keep my voice from straining. "Tell me what I'm thinking."

"You're thinking that this is the end. That the whole world's like this. You're thinking about everything you know coming crashing down. You're wondering if everyone you love is now dead or turned."

"Are they?"

"How the fuck should I know?"

I swallow back the bile and sink down to the ground, still trying to catch my breath. "So, what are you thinking?"

Cassidy glances back the way we came. "I'm thinking--'fuck, is it Tuesday all ready?'"


~*~

The general was gone. He had taken copies of all of Werner's reports, and then demanded that the originals be immediately destroyed. He had stressed the immense importance of discretion and the length to which Doctor Werner would be prosecuted if he ever spoke a word of this outside the proper channels. The general assured him that there were places he could be put where things like the Bill of Rights or habeas corpus were mere trifling footnotes at best.

Werner tried very hard not to laugh in the man's face.

The doctor cleaned up what was left of his work, plucking a fresh pack of cigarettes from a colleague's desk and bringing one up to his lips. It had been a decade since he had smoked; he quit on behalf of Sylvia, his wife. She was dead now--a stroke three years ago. He just hadn't picked the habit back up.

"Mr. Werner?"

One of the interns was still here. A pretty blonde-haired girl by the name of Amelia. Smart as a whip, too. Werner smiled to her. "Yes?"

"I thought--" She hesitated, obviously nervous at the idea of questioning one of her employers. "I thought we weren't allowed to smoke on this level?"

Werner laughed. "No, we're not," he said, and then he winked. "I won't tell anyone if you don't." He offered her a cigarette from the pack.

Amelia blushed. "I don't--ah, I don't smoke, sir."

"Oh, that's a shame," he mentioned idly. "Tell me, Amelia. Have you ever been to the Galapagos islands?"

"Huh? Oh, no. Why?"

"I've got a seat for a private jet ready to leave in about--" He checked his watch. "Half an hour. Want to go instead?"

Amelia blanched. "Sir?"

She really was quite pretty. And smart as a whip, too. The world could use a few more bright young people. There were certainly enough old codgers.

"Do me a favor, Amelia. I've always been straightforward and pleasant with you, yes?"

"I--yes, sir, but--"

He pressed his receipt stub into her hand. "Go to the top level. There's a jet there, fueled up and ready to take off. Hurry. Tell them Doctor Werner sent you. If they put up a fuss, tell them to call me on my cell phone. Get on the plane. Just do it. Don't ask questions; just go. Do it. Do it now."

Amelia stared down at the receipt. She was obviously distressed, and wanted to ask questions--but she must have seen something in Doctor Werner's eyes that made her think twice. Reluctantly, she took a slow step backwards, and then she turned--her high heels clicking in a quickening rhythm as she moved down the hall.

Yes, the world could certainly do with more bright young people, Werner thought. He savored the cigarette, dropping back into his chair and watching the smoke as it drifted towards the ceiling.

He thought of Sylvia. He thought of the world. He thought of what was coming.

He laughed. "I really could never get a handle on Mondays," he said. And then he reached into his desk for his revolver, carefully loading one bullet.


~*~

PART 1: DEAD MEAT

I'm in the backseat of an off-white 1984 Chrysler Fifth Avenue with my dead father's corpse beside me. We're speeding down I-95, and he's wearing the same suit we buried him in ten years ago. Pieces of gravedirt cling to it in heavy, moist clods. His cheeks have rotted away, exposing the reddish grey muscle beneath; all his teeth are visible, turning his face into one giant hideous over-extended grin.

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

He and I never got along. Now that he's dead, I can't imagine it's going to improve our relationship.

"Fuck you," I croak.

"We're all fucked now, Lucky-boy. Every blessed one of us," he tells me. "Me and your mother, we're both dead. Best thing in the world, really. All the meat you'd ever want to fuck or eat."

"I said fuck you."

"And soon you'll be dead 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 it's all you can get. Then that wrinkly ass starts to look like some seriously hot shit."

"You're not real." Jesus Christ. I am arguing with some sort of hallucination. "Fuck off, dad."

"See you soon, Lucky-boy."

And then I wake up.


~*~

"Wake up."

I open my eyes.

I'm in the backseat of an off-white 1984 Chrysler Fifth Avenue with Cassidy next to me and a couple up front. Morning light streams in; we've been driving up I-95 all night. Cassidy looks pissed, and the driver--I call him Cowboy, on account of him looking kind of like a young Clint Eastwood--isn't much happier.

That's when I notice we've stopped. I sit up and look out the window. Traffic jam as far as the eye can see.

"Isn't that just typical," Sassy Britches, Cowboy's damsel-in-waiting, says.

They picked up us last night on the road. Good thing, too--the frigid air wasn't far from killing us. They figure we're a couple, lost and scared. They're right about the last part, but only as far as it applies to me; after seeing Cassidy in action, I'm not sure if anything really scares her.

"How long have we been stuck here?" I ask, stretching my arms over my head.

"An hour, maybe two," Cassidy says. "Been listening to the radio."

Right on cue, Cowboy turns up the volume and lets us listen in to the newscast.

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 by 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, and insanely absurd lie.

'People are smart.'

Right.

A person might be smart, sure. I've never met one, but there's got to be a few. Why not? But people? That's some weapon-grade bull shit right there. That BS is downright radioactive.

Case-in-point: Oh, look! Dead people are getting back up and eating the living! But don't worry, guys. There's a perfectly sensible explanation for all of 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 news anchors! We have coats and ties to prove it! You can trust us! Totally not the Z-word. Woo, life rocks!

At least no one in this car seems to be buying it.

"Rabies?" Cowboy says. "The shit that ate my sister's face off wasn't no fuckin' rabies."

I pat myself down for a smoke and pull out the pack. Sassy Britches looks over her shoulder at me and makes a face. I swallow my immediate urge to tell her to piss off, then slip the pack back into my coat pocket.

Only a few left. Might as well save them.

"If you two are hungry," Sassy Britches says, "There's some leftover rice and stuff wrapped up on the floor. It's probably cold, but it's better than nothing."

Cassidy fetches it, unwraps it, sniffs it, then nods. As soon as she puts the paper box in my hands, I suddenly realize I'm *starving*. I start eating white rice with my hand, but Cassidy growls something and suddenly shoves a plastic fork in my palm.

"Show some goddamn manners, huh?"

I start shoveling with the fork; for the moment, that's enough to satisfy Cassidy. She has a little herself, but she only picks at it--woman must survive off oxygen molecules and sunshine. Like a plant or something. Come to think of it, I don't recall her ever taking a nap, either. Hell, she doesn't look like she's slept for *days*.

"You going to get some sleep?" I ask her.

"I don't," she replies, and before I can push her on it, she suddenly plucks a fortune cookie out of the bag and unwraps it with a crinkle of plastic. I wrinkle my nose and turn away.

"Huh. Well, apparently I should treat my friends well. Guess I won't be zombie chow today," she says. And then she reaches down into the bag and picks another one out, throwing it to my lap.

"I'd rather not," I tell her.

"Huh? Th'fuck that's supposed to mean?"

"What's going on?" Cowboy asks.

Sassy Britches, who's been watching, raises an eyebrow and snickers. "The guy doesn't want to open his fortune cookie."

"It's fine," I tell Cassidy, pushing it towards her. "You can have it."

"It's yours, Lucky," she replies. "Go ahead. Open it."

"I'd really rather not."

"Jesus Christ, Lucky. Be a team player, huh? I wanna know if you're going to get eaten by the zombies," she says.

I sigh, shake my head, rip the fortune cookie out of its wrapper and crack it open. Then I throw the remains on the floor and hand her the note without even reading it.

Cassidy lifts her eyebrow at me then looks down at the note. She's amused, but that fades fast as she reads it. She looks back at me with an expression of shock.

"Well fuck me," she says. "That's brutal. That's just brutal, man."

"What is it?" Sassy Britches says, and then she reaches for the note. Cassidy doesn't hand it off to her, but she doesn't jerk it away, either; Sassy Britches reads it, coughs, and mutters. "That's kind of--Jesus. Why would someone write something like that in a fortune cookie?"

"What's it say?" Cowboy asks. Sassy Britches paws it off to him, and he reads it; he nearly chokes on his bottled water. "Oh, fuck man, what the hell? What kind of sick shit is that to put into a fortune cookie?"

All the time, Cassidy's just looking at me. That initial shock has faded away to a curious stare; her head's tilted to the side and she almost looks like she's smiling.

"What?" I ask.

"You knew."

"It's always something like that," I tell her. "Some sort of bull shit."

"Really. Is that why they call you Lucky?"

"Other things, too," I tell her. "Listen, it's just stupid, all right? I don't want to talk about it--"

"Zombies roamin' the earth and I end up saddling with the unluckiest mother-fucker in the universe," Cassidy says, and then she starts to laugh.

"We're moving," Cowboy announces.

The car lurches forward; the line's starting to slip forward steadily, trickling down the road mile by mile. I can see a tunnel up ahead; it only occurs to me now to ask where we're going.

"Philadelphia," Cowboy announces. "Got family who live up in the country past there. We'll drop you off anywhere along the way."

I eye the other cars that surround us. No one's panicking. I think most folks are just treating it like a big vacation. But seriously, when I look at what some of them are taking--I try not to laugh. Really, I try. But come on.

TVs? Microwaves? I swear to God, no joke, I even see a sofa strapped to the back of a flat-bed truck. What the fuck?

Up ahead, I catch a glimpse of a Volkswagon. It's 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 rearview window I can see a dark-haired little girl with spectacles 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's going on up ahead and to the side. I see police cars along with flashing, oscilliating lights, and 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 you should probably hang out somewhere where there aren't a lot of people for a while," I say.

Cowboy unbuckles his seatbelt 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," he 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."

Cassidy laughs; somehow, that disturbs me more than anything. Not that she would laugh, but the fact that she *is* laughing. I get the feeling that the sort of stuff that prompts Cassidy to laugh is always bad.

We're in the pipeline, now. Two-lane traffic enclosed in a tunnel made of pearly-white tile, glittering like snake scales. We get about 50 yards before the traffic just locks down again. Way ahead in the distance we can see the glittering red and blue reflection of a police officer's spinning lights.

I look back through the rearview mirror. More cars are settling in behind us. Trapping us. "I don't like this," I mumble. My gut's doing calistenics, trying 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 come, 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 scream.

And that's when all the lights go out.


~*~

Most of us in the civilized world, snuggled away in our illuminated houses, 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 darkness, trapped in a subterrenean tunnel with only 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 subdued.

And then there is a moan.

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

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 when I know we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. That's when I know we've just blasted off straight into the heart of the Twilight Zone. 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. Like a pet at the door, begging to be let 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 stabs forward, slamming the line upwards by a few inches. We all get jerked as more horns start honking and more headlights flicking on. Some people are getting out of their cars and running. Others are getting out with whatever weapons are immediately on hand. 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 with its nose and upper lip gnawed away, baring sharp teeth and bone. It slaps its bloody palms against the glass, moaning, rubbing, and drooling over the sight of fresh meat.

Cowboy curses. Sassy starts screaming. I swallow. Cassidy is stone quiet.

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 windowshield 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 clambored 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'm sorry, I can't help it. Snideness is in my blood.

"We've got to--we've got to--" Sassy stammers, staring at the tableau of unfolding 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." Stoney 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 the side of his neck.

"Lucky's right," Cassidy finally says, and somehow that makes me feel a lot better. I don't know why it should; being validated by the craziest mother-fucker in the car should not be a surprise, especially considering that I'm probably in line for the second craziest. But for some reason, it makes me feel less like a bull-shitter. "We need to get out. Now."

"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 guy who's been bitten has arrived 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. The elbow breaks.

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.

*We're all fucked now, Lucky-boy.*

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

"Other side!" I yell. "Run for the entrance!"

Sassy and Cassidy spring out, the latter with her duffelbag and rifle. 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 manage to pull half his torso out that window. Then there's nothing but his screams, his horrible screams as they swarm him, dagger-like teeth penetrating that wet, yielding meat and chewing down to the hard bone.

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

"This way," Cassidy shouts, yelling over Cowboy's choking shrieks (God he won't stop screaming, they're eating him alive, why won't they just kill him) and reaching for her, but we both 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.

Cassidy turns and grabs my arm, and together, we bolt for the entrance. It's not far. We start jogging on top of cars; just another crazy couple. I see others flocking the same way. Some of them are people, some of them aren't.

One of the latter gets close. A police officer with part of her skull exposed. I don't even hesitate. I bring the baseball I snatched out of Cowboy's car down in a hook right on top of that open wound. I feel it crack and shatter as she tumbles down beneath that labyrinth of smoke and metal.

We make it to the entrance. Before us is the germinating seed of a fresh nightmare; a sea of cars and trucks as far as the eye can see, writhing like a slow-moving serpent. Some are overturned, jack-knifed, and even abandoned. Waves of panic are traveling from the tunnel down the road, flooding out like a breach in a dam. We're riding the crest of the chaos, surfing on the top of the wave. Behind us, Hell follows.

I turn for one last glimpse into the tunnel. And then I see it--the volkswagon I noticed earlier. A temptation seizes my heart. I want 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. I want to get her somewhere safe and warm where we can both hide underneath the bed and tell each other funny stories.

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

Half her face is missing.

"Run," Cassidy says.

I do.

And I never stop.


~*~

PART 2: Cradlewell

Every year, my parents would take me to the beach. Some of my fondest memories are of bright and sunny days spent with the feel of sand between my toes and the swelling crash of waves lapping at my ankles.

On my thirteenth birthday, my parents rented a cabin close to the shoreline and spent the weekend there. My father spent half the time teaching me stupid coin tricks and the other half drinking himself into a coma, but I didn't care. So long as I had the beach, I was happy.

I remember the last day of our trip--it was a clear, gorgeous day, and I was combing the beach for seashells. I recall catching the brief glimmer of something winking at me from far out in the ocean; I even remember that thrill of discovery that surged up in my chest as I realized there was something floating out there.

I was never a good swimmer. The salt water was bitter on my tongues and it wasn't long before my arms ached; but I'd be damned if I let this opportunity pass by. As I got closer, I felt the initial buzz of excitement blossom into ecstasy as I recognized the shape of a bobbing bottle. There was something in it--my mind hummed with the possibilities. A treasure map? A desperate cry for help?

It was hard to resist the urge to pop the bottle open as soon as my fingers closed around its neck. But I knew if I tried to inspect the contents here, they'd get wet; whatever missive was contained within would be damaged, maybe irrevocably. Holding it tightly in my fist, I ferried it to safety, kicking and splashing as hard as I could. When I finally reached the shore again, I flopped atop of it with a gasp, my well-earned reward in hand.

The cork was hard to get off; my fingers trembled, my teeth chattering as the water evaporated from my skin. There was a curled roll of notebook paper inside, yellow with age; I shook it until a crisp edge came close to the bottle's mouth, then seized and dragged it out. Eager to reap the fruits of my labor, I inspected the document.

Its message had been scribbled down in a thick marker, left faded with age. It consisted of only two words:

FUCK YOU

I don't go to the beach anymore.


~*~

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 we 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 that ghost later.

"Hell of a time. Yeah, there's been mention in the news for a week or so. Shit about break outs of riots, folks thinking it had something to do with the flu or some sort of biological terrorism. But the shit did not get this surreal until just the last two nights," 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, back-to-back, shivering beneath the sky. The stars are crawling out from their hiding places among the clouds to shine. And there isn't a corpse 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 curiousity. 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. It's a mile or maybe half a mile away.

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


~*~

We walk for what feels like hours, following only the dim glow of city lights on the horizon. When we finally stumble across a building that isn't stuffed full of the hungry dead, I figure it's all going to be cake from here.

A moment later, I find out the cake's made of shit and zombies.

"Oh, fuck no. No way. God is fucking with us. Fuck you, God."

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 for very long, but somehow I figure that it isn't often she gets a chance to laugh like this. Not anymore.

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

CRADLEWELL FUNERAL HOME

"You must be shitting me," I say, and Cassidy laughs again.

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're going in," Cassidy says, walking up toward the front door. "Ain't got much choice. Only going to get colder, and we need a place to shack up for the night."

"Yeah," I mutter absently. "Just give me a few seconds."

She does.

Then: "Lucky."

"Just a second."

"Lucky. Come on."

"God fucking damn it."

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

The interior is one of those ancient funeral lobbies where everything has to be extravagant and comfortable for the recently departed's loved ones. It looks like a sprawling hotel, complete with two sets of spiral staircases, second floor balcony, a sign-in desk, and expensive looking paintings of gardens and ships. The whole place is pretty dark, too. The only light comes from outside--the second floor window lets a silver beam of moonlight flood in.

"Find any bottom floor windows," Cassidy says. "And furniture to block them with."

"What if there are people here?"

"Doubt it. Aside from dead people."

"You mean zombies."

Cassidy smiles. "Maybe."

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

"For tonight, it's our death-trap. Come on."

We do the ground-floor first. Cassidy hands me the baseball bat I stole from Cowboy's car; 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 the kitchen.

"What kind of funeral home has a fully-stocked larder?" I ask between hungry bites into the apple.

"Don't know. Steer clear of the steaks," she tells me, ripping open a can of nuts. After that, she pulls a few bottles of water out 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."

"Zombie."

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

"Zombie."

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

"Zombie," Cassidy answers, then pauses: "Maybe a hot one."

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--"

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, Cassidy."

We've scavenged a set of flashlights with 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 lock the door."

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

"Zombies," she tells me.

"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 that we could use, or supplies, or something we'll need. And finally, I'm not sleeping in a house with zombies in the basement," she tells me.

"This is crazy," I reply. "Look. Let's just slam the door, lock it, bolt it, drag a refridgerator over here and shove it in the way. We don't need to go down there."

"Relax, Lucky. This ain't a horror movie," she tells me. "We're just going to have ourselves a peek. See what the situation is."

"God fucking damn it."

We step down the stairway.


~*~

We must be crazy.

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

Drop it. Stay sharp. A hundred and one reasons to do this. 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.

To keep my mind off Jenny, 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 is two or three feet deep; not enough to hide a zombie, but still freezing. I'm tempted to ask Cassidy if we can head back up to get some baggies for our feet, but--fuck it. I need to do this.

"Take it easy," Cassidy says. "Relax. Watch the water. Ain't moving. Nothing under there."

"Right," I mumble.

We go down the stairs. The water is much deeper than I thought. It gets almost up to our waist. The thought of a zombie crawling on its arms and legs beneath the surface sends a frosted lightning bolt up my spine, but I take a deep breath and force my nerves to be calm. 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 the light over the brackish water, painting floating boxes of cleaning supplies and random flotsam in a sharp glow. There's a generator in the corner, but I'm guessing 3 feet of water have managed to ruin it beyond all repair.

The door to the next room is open. Cassidy sludges her way forward, kicking with every step. Maybe if there is a sunken corpse, she'll bash its teeth out before it can bite.

The next room is storage. Three guesses for storing what.

Three coffins float in silence, bobbing their way through the shadows. They glitter briefly as I drag the beam across them. I notice one has a length of chain wrapped around it. That doesn't strike me as 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; Cassidy levels the rifle at it. The corpse isn't moving, and it looks absolutely ancient anyway. Its skin is a sallow yellow green, hanging to bone like sagging cobwebs; rips in the flesh expose gray-brown ligaments beneath. Its jaw is open, exposing a shattered graveyard of razorblades that gleam a coffee-brown in the flashlight's glow. A series of tubes are attached to its wrists, poking out like an IV. Probably just an embalming setup.

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.

"Looks like jack shit," Cassidy finally announces. Thank God.

"Let's get out of here," I say.

"Yeah."

We turn away for a second. Just a second, to begin heading back.

There's a 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.


~*~

"Relax," Cassidy whispers in the dark. She's close now, pressing up against my shoulder while aiming the rifle down at the water. "Breath easy. Don't freak out on me, Lucky."

I'm hyperventilating. The flashlight is bobbing in my grip; I'm almost tripping over myself on my way to the door. And Cassidy is right there all the while, backtreading with me, urging me to slow down and stay calm.

"Fucker probably can't move for shit," she says. "Might have just slid off when we opened the door, made some waves. Just relax, all right? Just breathe. Don't lose it."

My back hits something solid.

The chained coffin floating through the room has made its way behind us and against the door, sealing us into the room. This means we've got one way out of here.

"Fuck," Cassidy hisses. At once, we both suck in our breath and drop down on our 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 out for me, their mouths full of teeth searching for a stretch of warm, pink skin to sink into.

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

I'm trapped in the dark with the undead.

Something grabs my ankle.

I kick back hard and then feel something squeeze sharp around the heel of my shoe, trying to penetrate. I lift and stomp. Whatever it was, I feel it snapping beneath my foot. I lunge forward, swinging the Louisville Slugger--flailing and screaming as loud as I can.

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

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

And then, Amen, there is 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 rifle's stock across its forehead. The weapon cracks against its skull, splitting it with a pop. 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 the cold, 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.

We're shambling up the stairs, now--exhausted, freezing, shaking--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 snatch 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. 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 five gallon tank 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, with folds of his chest pulled back and pinned like paper napkins. 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 buggers.

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

We find one locked door, a room full of laboratory hardware, and a closet with fresh clothes. We switch out our pants, though Cassidy complains that the woman who lived here isn't her size. 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. 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.

"I saw what happens when people realize they've been bit." Cassidy pauses, zipping up the jeans with a painful grimace. "Some people go nuts 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?"

"No," I tell her.

She peers at me, as if silently demanding an explanation. Then she shrugs. "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, Lucky-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 the undead 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 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 initially written in a steady and 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."

"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 BASMENT"

The rest is 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, Lucky-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 packload of supplies, leap into a truck we think we might have the keys for, pray there's enough gas to get to Jeremy'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 15 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.

We've gather up all the supplies we can carry. Fresh clothes, food, water, and a first aid kit. We roll them up into comforters secured on either end with leather belts or ducktape. 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 to 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 screwing 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.

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 shamblers circling the house ignore them.

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

We dump 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 another one of my cigarettes, 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 and 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 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 and serene 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, slap 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 door, and run like hell.

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

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 grab my collar, 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. They lurch 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 and serve as the 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 the room's swarmed with a sea of moaning and writhing flesh, I light the fuse.

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

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 blossoms into a rich rising flower, swelling up and bursting right into our faces. The entire room is devoured in a fire that reaches up to the very ceiling, licking at our skin and scorching off the tips of our eyebrows. We both jump backwards simultaneously, screaming like little girls. And then everything is on fire. The curtains, the floor, the walls, even our clothes.

The fumes caught.

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, Lucky."

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

One scraggler shuffles below.

Cassidy takes him out after two shots. I go first, with Cassidy covering 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 soft. Lightning flashes up my spine.

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

Cassidy 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 packed 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. It doesn't do anything but piss the bastard 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. Instead, I just swing the heel of my boot down again and again, 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 running after 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. 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 cracks open like a confetti popper. It drops to the ground, smoke emerging from its hollowed 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 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, rolling flames sprawling up from them, licking at their faces and melting their skin like wax. And yet they just don't care. They're trudging forward like it's another day at work, pouring in a 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 walking 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 ceases to exist. 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 and snarls. 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 the stock as a battering ram. I swing straight at her head.

I feel the gun jerk in my grip. She spasms backwards, arms briefly flailing. That 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 in with me. 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 reached the threshold of madness.

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

With only a half-tank of gas, no supplies, and a girl who's soon to become a zombie, I leave the burning ruins of Cradlewell Funeral Home behind.


~*~

PART 3: Save the Girl

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 in some deep shit, Lucky-boy."

I look in the rearview mirror. My father's there, watching me--grinning with that wretched, horrible 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, Lucky-boy."

"Fuck you."

Dad keeps grinning at me from the rearview mirror. "So why'd you do it, Lucky-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.

"Fuck you."

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

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

"Oh yes, she will."

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

"Rule number 1, Lucky-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, but 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 doesn't know about that 100."

"So you're aiming for a snowball's chance in Hell?"

"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. And then I look out the windowshield.

This is me going 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.

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 now.

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 duffel-bag. 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 really 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.

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


~*~

We've burned out the last of our daylight.

Cassidy's still breathing and I've piled an extra jacket on 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, Lucky-boy. Being dead's all the new rage," my father says. "You really should 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 complain. Well, I think we cleared that 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 and a 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 very real 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 my head off.

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 that points to 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 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.


~*~

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. Monday," 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. Monday, 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.

"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 th