~*~
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 three-hundred dollar hair-cut. And as I watch him through the flickering monitor, he lurches and silently moans.

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

"Fifteen hundred," I say.

"Mmhmm."

"One floor beneath us."

"Yes."

"Right now."

"That is correct."

I stare down at him. "How?"

Doctor Rhodes takes a breath. "When the crisis began, government officials familiar with the existence of Hubs flocked to them with their families." Doctor Rhodes smiles wryly. "Some of them even invited their friends. Hubs were inundated with the rich and powerful, desperate to save their own hides."

"Some of them were infected."

"Indeed. And at this early stage, we were still so much in the dark as far as what to look for. I complained, of course. Some of my colleagues did as well. But the order came straight from the Master Hub--perhaps from the President, or perhaps one of the President's men. Lists of those who were to be allowed in. All senators, congressmen, their immediate family, and those with financial or political ties to the administration..."

"You're fucking with me."

"Don't be so quick to judge. In a crisis, humans are at their most absurd." Doctor Rhodes continues. "The idea was to preserve the infrastructure, you see--maintain the government's full functionality even at the height of the crisis. I believe one Senator went so far as to suggest we try to hold Congress electronically, in conjunction with the other hubs--"

"You're seriously fucking with me."

"The break outs were isolated at first. A child that had been bitten, hidden by their parents. A favorite maid on the staff of a pharmaceutical company executive who was inexplicably sick."

"Please tell me you are fucking with me."

"By the second day, the residential sector broke out in violence. Our military strike force went in to control and suppress the situation--guns are one thing we do not lack," Doctor Rhodes says. "Once they were overwhelmed, we called the Master Hub for advice. They sent a direct order. Every able-bodied staffer was handed a gun and given orders to suppress the epidemic." Doctor Rhodes smiles with a murderous serenity. "I was 'spared' from my civic duties thanks to my condition."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

"After most of the staffers were dead or lurching, we requested further advice from the Master Hub, but apparently the same drama we had experienced was now unfolding there. They told us to stand by for orders. That was their last transmission." Doctor Rhodes pauses here, searching through the monitor. Blood-soaked corridors with wandering shadows flicker past the screen as he switches from camera to camera. At last, he zooms in on an overweight nurse with gouges of skin torn from her face and her upper left eyesocket stripped bare. "Nurse Renolds. How I loathed her. I like to check up on her, now and then--sadistic curiousity, I suppose." He sighs. "Anyway. By then, there was only three of us. One turned out to have been bitten, the other committed suicide..." He trails off. "I sealed off the lower residential sector myself. Swept this floor for infected, finished them off. And that's it."

I stare at the monitor, rendered speechless.

"You musn't blame them," he repeats, his voice a thousand miles away. "You truly musn't. We're such an absurd species. We take such comfort in the familiar; we assume that civilization and government will go on forever. So rarely does anyone realize that stability is an anamoly, not a natural state. Anarchy--chaos--despair. That is life's natural state." He laughs at this, but the sound is dry; a habit, nothing more. "Really, I'm tempted to claim our situation as some sort of political allegory, but it's not even good for that. Perhaps if they had starved to death for lack of a farmer, or froze for lack of an engineer--but no. Just hundreds of lawyers, accountants, and bureaucrats screaming in the dark, eaten alive." He pauses again. "The worst part was watching the children."

Something occurs to me. Something I don't want to think about, something I don't want to talk about--but my mouth has never been very obedient. "They--they weren't all dead when you sealed the level, were they?"

"I couldn't have saved them, you know."

"I know--"

"There was no way," he repeats, his voice harsh and his eyes suddenly wet. "No way I could have saved them."

"I understand."

"No. You do not 'understand', Mr. Monday. I watched. Hundreds sealed up with those--those things--and I watched. Men. Women. Children. Cowering in the dark, praying they would not be found. Begging, pleading, screaming. And I watched it all."

"Jeremy..."

"I couldn't have--"

I seize him by the shoulders and turn him to face me. He's probably ten or twenty years older than I am, but I drop down and squeeze him like he's some little kid who just found out there's no Santa Claus.

"Doctor Rhodes. You're a biologist, right?"

"Wh--what?" He blinks, staring at me in confusion.

"You're some sort of big-wig biologist. That's why you're here, right?"

"That's--yes."

"So you know this shit's been going on since the beginning of life. Ever since the very first amoeba slid down and out of mother nature's ass-crack, it's been struggling to find a way to fuck over the one coming over right behind it. Life, unlife, whatever--it always fucks shit up. Kids die horribly every fucking day. Now, I can not even begin to fathom what horrors you saw, and I bet if I saw them I'd splatter my brains against the fucking wall right now. But you're a biologist--you know this shit is just business-as-usual. And besides, I need--we need men like you. People who know this is just business-as-usual. People who know how to stitch a wound, or heal someone, or figure out what the fuck is going on. People who can, when necessary, be emotionally unattached."

Her words, my mouth.

The softness in his eyes melts away. Rock is all that's left. "Don't speak to me like a child, Mr. Monday," he snaps, and then the wheelchair pulls back away from me. A moment passes, and he adds--reluctantly. "Nevertheless, you are correct. This is no time for weakness. Please, come with me."


~*~

We're watching Cassidy through a pane of glass. She's been laid out atop of a bed, an IV drip set next to her. The sheets are drawn up to the tops of her high breasts. Her skin is still ice-white, and she looks too much like a coma victim for comfort.

"Will she be okay?"

"For a time, yes," he responds. "The hypothermia actually saved her life. It slowed the process of the infection down considerably. If she hadn't been exposed to such extremes of cold--" He shrugs.

I press my forehead to the glass. "For a time?"

"There are so many things I've yet to understand about the way the infection works," Rhodes says. "So much to do. But--in the few days I've had, I've managed to create a sort of 'cocktail' that works to suppress the infection's most disasterous symptoms."

"A cure?"

"No. No wonder-drugs, no magic pill. Nothing like that, I'm afraid. However, it keeps the patient alive and functional."

"But she has to keep taking it."

"Precisely."

"And how much do you have?"

Doctor Rhodes smiles wryly. "Before you arrived, I had 2 weeks supply. But now that I have to share my supply between two patients--"

I do a double-take. "Two patients? I wasn't bitten."

"No, Mr. Monday. But I was," he states, touching his clothed arm. "I require doses of the medicine as well."

"So you need more medical supplies. Where is--"

I don't have to finish the sentence. The words have barely left my mouth when I realize precisely where they are. Because Fate is a two-dollar whore that slips a roofie in your drink when you're not looking. And then throws you to the zombies.

"Downstairs," I mutter.

Doctor Rhodes smiles.

"Three floors down," he nods.

"You need someone to--God," I turn away. I think of those camera shots, think of those images of indiscriminant horror. Entire rooms filled with that shit. "To go down there?"

"No. It would be suicide. You against fifteen hundred of those things? I've all ready watched them tear through entire platoons of well-trained military operatives. They'd smell you the moment you touched down and converge upon you at once. You wouldn't last half a minute."

"Then--then what can I do?"

"Most of the cocktail's ingredients are not unique. A standard pharmacy will carry them," he says. "You could pick them up in town."

"Sure. We should call ahead, though. I hear those pharmacies are fucking slow."

"Humor aside," he answers with a glare, "It's a viable alternative to plunging into an underground tomb."

"So you suit me up and I swing out there, snag some meds, then come back here." I think it over, rolling it back and forth in my brain. "What about the zombies up there?"

"Think, Mr. Hollins. What was happening when you arrived?"

"Snow," I blurt out, and then I see where he's going with this. "They'll all be frozen."

"Indeed. The perfect time for a quick raid," he says.

Inside the hospital room, Cassidy starts to mumble and stir. My eyes are glued to her; I watch every troubled breath, every worried sigh.

Doctor Rhodes attempts to be diplomatic. "Are you and her--"

"No. We met when all hell was going down. She saved my life. Several times."

"This is your chance to pay her back."

"I know. Can I--can I see her? Talk with her?"

I see Doctor Rhodes preparing to give me the old 'she needs her rest' spiel, but he takes one look at my face and thinks better of it.


~*~

"Cassidy."

"I feel like shit," she mutters. Her voice is a dry whisper. I have to lean forward just to hear her talk.

"Relax. You're okay now," I tell her.

"Why am I still alive?"

"Because there's a cure."

She glares at me as fiercely as she can. "Bull shit."

"Yeah. The only thing is, it's a suppository. A three foot long one."

That gets a snicker out of her, though it looks like every second of it hurts. "Jeremy's Dildo Factory?"

"Yeah." I smile down at her, settling in besides her on a chair. "Doc says he can keep you alive, but I need to go fetch more medicine."

"You're going back out there," she says, something chilled in her voice.

"Yeah. But the zombies are frozen right now. Doc's gonna lend me some gear. It'll be real fast, in and out. No problems."

She closes her eyes. "You dragged me through some serious shit, didn't you?"

"Just rest for now. I'll be back soon, Cass."

"Wait, Lucky."

Cassidy draws herself up against the headboard, dragging the sheets with her; she pins them to the top of her chest with one hand, staring off at the two-way glass. I can see her clearly, now--maybe for the first time. The pale peaks of her bare shoulders surge up, briefly pinched against her neck.

"Am I contagious?"

That catches me off guard. "--huh?"

She sighs, turning to face me. "If I were to, say, spit in your face, would you get sick?"

Doctor Rhodes went over this before he let me in. I shake my head. "No, the disease has some sort of--"

She musters every last fiber of her remaining strength and reaches for me, seizing me by my hair. Her fingers drag down into a savage fist, and then she's pulling my face to hers.

We kiss. It's fierce and awkward, but I don't want it to stop. We lean into one another; I feel the tips of her knuckles at her chest stabbing against my sternum. I cradle her jaw while she pours herself into me, inching closer, trying to drain every last ounce of her body into mine. We stay there for what feels like an hour--just holding each other, desperate to not let go.

When we finish at last, she slumps down to the pillow in exhaustion.

"Don't look too deeply into that," she murmurs, and then she passes out.


~*~

"I've located the nearest town with several pharmacies," Doctor Rhodes tells me. "You may need to hit them all in order to get all the necessary samples on the list."

The elevator hums around us. He's taking me to the arsenal--where my wheels are waiting.

"Fine. But I've got to warn you. I hardly know how to operate a gun without hurting myself."

"That's fine," Doctor Rhodes laughs. "You'll do a sight better than I would. And regardless, I doubt you'll need to discharge any firearms anyway."

"What if I encounter people?"

"That's why I want you to help me load some supplies into the vehicle," he says. "If you encounter a small group--say, five or ten--you can bring them back here. But if you encounter a large community... I'm including radio parts and a satellite transmitter, along with a manual on how to set them up. We can establish communication with them, maybe see about some sort of relief effort."

"All right. But what if they're hostile?"

"At this juncture? I think they'll be too busy trying to survive for hostility," he says.

"What town am I going to?"

"Burbanks," he tells me. "It's fairly large--the atlas mentioned a population of six hundred thousand. I imagine there will be--Mr. Monday? Is there a problem?"

I'm staring at the doctor with a look of slack-jawed surprise.

Fate, you are such a mother-fucking slut.

"That's near my home-town," I tell him. "That's right next door to where I'm from."

"Really? How convenient. I assume you'll know your way around."

And then, staring ahead at the elevator, I distractedly mutter: "It's where my dad is buried."

He doesn't seem to hear. The elevator pings, the door swinging open. "Ah, here we are, Mr. Monday. The arsenal. And here," he states, sweeping his arm before him as he rolls into the room, breaking out into a savage grin, "are your 'wheels'."

My jaw drops.


~*~

I'm coming home, dad. I'm coming to save the girl.

And I'm bringing a mother-fucking tank.


~*~

PART 4: Business As Usual

This is me driving an M1 Abrams down I-95.

70 tons worth of primed high-tech military hardware roaring forward at a 30 mile per hour clip. Cars crinkle beneath it like tin-foil. Windowshields pop under the treads like light-bulbs under a semi. Aluminum twists, clinks, and crumples.

Now, I don't know jack-shit about tanks, but the Doc tells me that this is--or was--the tread-grinding steel-piercing car-ripping backbone of the U.S. calvary. It's got thermovision, night-vision, and three sets of periscopes to keep track of what's in front of me.

To top it off, the damn thing drives like a motorcycle.

It took me a good three hours to get a handle on it. At first, I was very meek about driving it; I swerved around rocks and trees, always stopping and backing up to slide back on the road. Around the seventh or eigth time, the Doctor radioed me to ask me what was wrong.

"These trees," I told him. "I keep almost hitting them."

"Trees?" He said. "Fuck trees."

I stopped worrying after that.

This son of a bitch rips those sorry weeds out by the roots. Rips them out and eats them.

Fuck trees.

Fuck cars.

Fuck zombies.

You can't understand this feeling, not unless you have been behind the wheels of a merciless car-eating machine like this. There is no way to describe it--after days spent wandering in Hell, terrified of shadows and darkness, I am now a diesel-gulping steel-wrapped God. If Zeus himself fell from Mount Olympus and turned into a zombie, I would rip his head off and use his blood to grease my treads.

I-95 is a graveyard--a maze of abandoned cars. Inside half of them are the remains of some tragic story--a family eaten by their youngest child, a hard-bitten cop who blew his own brains out, an elderly couple who died from the cold.

I rip through them all.

It's downright therapuetic. To know that beneath you, the violent and vicious history of days past is being grinded into a shattered pulp. To reclaim the road for your own--to wedge your way past all those who have died and barrel on to your destination. To know that whatever comes at you, it's fucked--because you're in a fucking TANK.

After about an hour, the adrenaline starts to wear off.

"How's Cassidy?"

It takes the doc a moment to respond.

"She's recuperating," he tells me. "She'll be fine. How are you holding up?"

"All right, I guess. Kind of want to plow through my house. With a tank."

"We don't have time for playing around. And if you throw a tread..."

"Yeah. I get the picture. Steel coffin."

"Practice extreme caution, Mr. Monday."

"Yeah."

I reach the off-ramp. The sign's still there--isn't that funny? Everything's gone to hell, but there are still signs. Signs pointing to things, signs giving you orders, signs telling you what to do--all of them completely oblivious to the fact that their purpose has come to an end. The mere thought makes me giggle a little.

"Funny shit, Lucky-Boy."

There's a glimmer of something behind me. Like rows of endless teeth.

I grimace. Keep it together, Lucky. This is no time to be thinking about your father--no time to start hallucinating. Fuck, I'm not even tired. Must be the stress.

Nothing behind me. Nothing at all.

I'm five miles away from Burbanks. Five miles away from the city I lived right next door to--five miles away from my father's corpse.

Let's keep it steady, Lucky. Let's keep it easy. In, out, and then happy days with Cassidy.

Nothing to it. Just Business-As-Usual.

~*~

Words like 'desolate' are mere place-holders fashioned together by a string of sounds; they never do the real thing justice.

You cannot begin to imagine what it is like to drive through a city alone.

Nothing. No one. Not a noise beyond the rumble of the tank's engine and the sound of my own hard, cold breath. Amidst a frozen landscape of snow-wrapped streets and ice-drenched cars, no life stirs.

In some ways, it's downright beautiful.

There are corpses--oh yes, there are corpses. Most of them are buried too deep to see, but I catch sight of a few as the tank rumbles down the street. A frozen hand extending from a mound of snow; a group of undead scratching at a car door, frozen in place--a corpse hanging by its legs from a shattered window three stories up. It's like witnessing a silent diorama--like passing through one of those museum exhibits where nothing moves, forever locked in presentation.

What's most terrifying for me is the fact that I recognize these streets--I know these intersections. I remember the way an errant traffic light hangs; I remember cursing its slowness in the past, or the tricky turn on my left. All of it is so familiar, and yet now so empty--frozen and strewn with the dead.

Cars litter the road. Some of them lay near the center, stopped in what may have been a last-minute swerve to avoid catastrophe; others are locked together in a crash, or lay collapsed on their sides and backs. All of them are thick with snow, which tells me that this city went down at least several days ago--what I'm witnessing is the remains of a battle that concluded before Cassidy and I escaped the funeral home--maybe even before I met Cassidy herself.

It seems like that was decades ago.

Well, I certainly didn't have a tank back then.

I avoid the urge to cut through the corner of a building here and there. It's a pretty hard urge to fight, honestly--I've always dreamed of just being able to devastate something with a tank--but like the doc said, if I throw a tread, I'm pretty much fucked. It would mean hiking the rest of the way back home with the meds on my back.

The first pharmacy I hit is a Rite-Aid. It's a big, beefy store on one of the corners; metal curtains have been dragged down over the door, but I'm prepared for this. I just mosey the tank up and deliver a polite 1500 horsepower knock.

Glass shatters. The metal curtains warp, crack, and snap back, coming apart at their very seams. Once I've got a few yards in, I stop and take a peek through the periscope.

Most of the place is dark. But as I watch, I see a few silhouettes moving, shuffling diligently towards my spot...

Fucking hell.

"Doc. Are you there, Doc?"

"Yes, Mr. Hollins."

"There are live ones in the pharmacy."

"Are you sure they're hostiles?"

I take another look. They're moving particularly slow--much slower than the other ones I've encountered. Some of them look like they're dragging their feet. There's still a good chunk of distance between me and them.

"Yeah, definitely. They're moving really slow."

"It's likely that they're partially frozen. They might have lived longer than the other denizens of the town."

"So what do I do?"

"What else, Mr. Hollins? Take them out."

I balk at this.

"With what, doc?"

"You've got a shotgun, don't you?"

I glance through the periscope again. There's probably--5, 6... 7 in all. Real slow thanks to the cold. Really, probably not a problem at all.

No, no problem at all.

I mutter something under my breath and get the shotgun. I've all ready shot a few rounds with it--got a bit of practice in the arsenal's shooting range. I'm shit for aiming, but with this thing, you really don't have to worry. Just get close, point high, and pull the trigger.

"Here goes," I mumble, reaching for the hatch.


~*~

I give the friction-powered flashlight a few hard shakes and flick it on.

I must look like something out of one of those post-apocalyptic movies--wrapped upo in a heavy camo and a sleek black riot helm with face guard. I swing the flashlight around, get a feel for the room, pocket it, then jump down behind the counter.

And scream.

I nearly blow the poor bastard's head off, but my brain catches up with me just in time. The guy crouched behind the counter (still in his clerk smock, no less) is long dead, and not the zombie kind. He's still clutching a garden hoe in his frosted grip. Hell of a weird way to go. Name-tag says 'Fred'.

Well, Fred. Let's handle our customers, shall we?

Back to business. I sweep the shotgun over the counter, keeping an eye on the shuffling arrivals. The lighting makes it all so eerie--reflecting through frost-coated windows, giving the room a dim blue glow, swallowed up into total blackness near the back.

Customer #1. Heavy-set lady in a frilly pink nightgown. Hair-curlers dangling in her iron-grey locks, her eyes a blank pupiless blue--frozen solid. Webs of frost cling in thick blankets to her face and dress.

Aim high--neck, upper torso--let the shotgun do the rest. I brace the shotgun to my shoulder, draw in a deep breath, and squeeze the trigger.

Everything from the upper shoulder up explodes--cracks, like a hard candy with a gooey interior. For a moment, the headless torso remains standing. And then, like an actor reluctantly remembering it's lines, it crumples to the floor.

Customer #2 (an old man with a ridiculous toupee and no jaw) and #3 (some teenage skater kid minus his right arm) go just the same. Soon, I'm moving shotgun shells like hotcakes. Everyone wants a piece; I can't keep them on the shelves. I deliver piping hot lead to the faces of every customer, always providing service with a smile.

Okay, I'm done with the retail puns.

No, really.

I'm finishing off an employee in her bib (she wears a tag that says 'Ask Me About Our Saving More Plan!', but I refrain) with a quick blast to the head right before I realize I spent my last shell. I pause and reload--this is what I practiced most, because I figured on it being so critical. Shell after shell fits into the chamber with steady, smooth clicks.

I fumble with one between my gloved fingers, dripping it ot the ground. I drop to snag it up.

Fred makes a strangled, icy moan.

Oh shit. It's barely a whisper, but it's enough to have every hair on my body stand up and do the macerena. Because while I've been providing relentless customer satisfaction, Fred's been crawling closer.

Just as I drop down for the shell, his hand drops on my arm. And with a sharp crack of brittle, breaking bone, he squeezes.

I swing the shotgun down in one hand and fire; the kick jerks my shoulder back like a puppet tugged on the strings. It was a panic shot--it only manages to clip the side of Fred's head, revealing a soft nougat interior.

Fred's head descends, his jaw cracking as his frozen mouth locks down and bites into my wrist.

His teeth break.

"Riot armor, asshole." I swing the shotgun down like a club. It takes three hits before I finally crack his skull open. He drops into a heap at my feet.

Another customer makes a raspy moan. Reloading the next shell, I get back to work.


~*~

Twelve zombies in all.

Quite a few frozen corpses litter the store, too. This time, I take no chances. If it's dead with an intact head, I crack it open. I've got time. No reason not to be thorough.

Once I've swept the aisles, I creep to the pharmacy in the back. But even in full riot gear--even with a shotgun!--I feel ill-at-ease. There's nothing but shadows here, and the thought that there could be something lurching in the cold darkness keeps me on semi-permanent edge.

I reach the back pharmacy. I leap back where I'm not supposed to be. I throw down my empty pack and call the doctor so he can tell me what he needs.

I load up on meds and head out.

But I make sure to snag a box of twinkies on the way.



~*~

One hour and three twinkies later, I get hit by the bull-dozer.

It happens just as I'm pulling up to the next pharmacy. I hear this sound, this rumbling--and suddenly I realize I'm not alone. I peek out the left periscope, and low-and-behold, there's a bull-dozer swinging around the corner. Except it looks like it's been attacked by a pack of roaving engineers suffering from creative differences. Iron plates have been welded all around it, turning it into a smoke-spewing metal box with a shovel out front. It's just this wall of fused metal.

For a second, I think about popping the hatch and waving him down. And that's when I notice that he's coming my way awfully fast.

In fact, it looks like he's speeding up.

Am I imagining things? I experience temporary brain-freeze. "Hey Doc," I say into the radio. "Doc? There's something really weird--"

He slams into me.

70 tons of metal growls and starts to slide over ice and snow.

I panic. I seize hold of the radio as I'm pushed up against the side of the pharmacy with a crash, crumpling cheap stone facade and plywood beneath me like paper in the way of a fist.

"Doc! Shit, Doc!"

"What is it, Mr. Monday?"

"Shit! Some--some sort of bull-dozer is ramming me!"

The radio goes silent. All I can hear is the rapid pling of the dozer's shovel as it tries to lift and push me in the air.

Doctor Rhodes' voice is calm, direct, and withering.

"A bull-dozer, Mr. Monday?"

"Yes!"

"Mr. Monday, are you aware that you are, in fact, driving a tank?"

Oh.

Right.

I grab the controls, rev her up, and plow out from the dozer's grip. I feel the other vehicle spin around--see it through the periscope as the tank bats it aside like a cat with a toy. And then I start swinging about in a wide turn, intent on returning the favor.

And that's when I hear it, just above the rumble of the engine. Swear to God, someone is playing Ride of the Valkyrie.

What the hell?

The tank finishes its turn. I'm in the center of the road--across from me is the armored bull-dozer, snarling like a junkyard dog defending its turf. Megaphones attached to its sides are blasting out the music.

This is absurd. I am going to tear right through this mother-fucker.

The bull-dozer roars.

Fuck this shit.

I turn the engine off, pop open the hatch, and stand up--shotgun still in hand. I start waving my other hand to the crazy bull-dozer driver. It's not a white flag, but it'll have to do.

The bull-dozer shudders with another snarl, then falls idle. The music dies down--and a voice emerges in a harsh crackle of static. Husky, dark, angry--it's the voice of a woman who's smoked too many cigarettes.

"Who the hell are you?"

I wait to see if anyone's going to take a shot at me. The street is empty save for me and Miss Dozer.

Slowly, reluctantly, I get out of the tank. I've still got my shotgun, but it won't do me much good against that thing. Abandoning the reassurance that only a tank can bring is not something I'm happy about, but if I'm going to make good with survivors, I have to give them a reason to trust me.

"Lucky!" I yell, continuing to wave--I even set the shotgun down at my feet for good measure. IF she tries a charge, I can still dart back into the tank; if someone shoots me, the flak jacket underneath the coat can probably take it. Or the helmet, if they go for the head.

I hope.

The megaphones let loose with an awful, shrieking ring. "Why are you here?"

"Medicine!" I shout. "Supplies!"

There's a long, uncomfortable silence--one where I imagine she's debating between trusting me or just running me over and taking the tank.

Around me, I spot emerging figures--cruious faces peeking around corners, scowling glares, stolen glances. I lift the visor off my face, trying to get a better look.

There's at least half a dozen of them. And they're all just middle-school kids.

What the hell is going on?

The bull-dozer's megaphones click back to life: "If you'll be kind enough to walk away from the tank, I think we can have ourselves a friendly little chat."


~*~

There are five children in all; four boys and one girl. Their ages range from 12 to 16, and they're all wrapped up snug in a collage of jackets, mufflers, and hats. The oldest boy (a toffee-skinned stern-looking kid who goes by Miguel) carries a long-nosed rifle. Judging by the way the other children creep behind him whenever I look their way (and the murderous, suspicious looks he keeps throwing me), I figure he must be the leader of the pack.

Well. Maybe second-in-command.

Sybil Greenwood is every lunch-lady and bus-driver I ever had. She's a brick of a woman--a gray-haired hard-nosed creature who's natural expression is a perpetual scowl. All that heavy broad-shouldered thickness is smothered beneath a long brown coat and a wooly muffler around her neck--but her most distinguishing feature is a wide-brimmed straw hat.

When I find out that she actually was a bus-lady, I'm not at all surprised.

"I don't have too much time to talk," she tells me. "We need to keep moving." But I can tell by the agitated look she keeps giving me--and that tank--that she wants to talk anyway. Like me, she's curious as hell.

They're all sitting on top of Nessie--the name the kids gave the bull-dozer--nestled against it like it was their mother. No, that's not right. Like it's their nest, and Sybil--sitting at the very top with a cup of steaming cocoa in her hands--was their mother.

I stand at the foot of it all. My shotgun's at my feet, just in case. I'm not worried about her attacking me, not anymore, but I'm quickly learning that being unwary is a one-way ticket to Deadsville.

"What the fu--Excuse me," I mumble, actually finding myself blushing under Sybil's glare. Like I'm in god-damn kindergarden. "What the heck are you doing out here?"

"What in the world is anyone doing, these days?" She shoots right back. "Trying to survive. But specifically, we're after the rest of my kids. They were kidnapped." She pauses. "That's why I attacked you. I thought you were with him. Them."

"Who?"

She sighs. "A group of a dozen or so men. They've got four or so campers, RVs. They hit us yesterday. Stole some of our children. Most of them," she adds, her face darkening.

"What--what do you mean, stole? What the f--" This time I don't even need a glare. "--what the heck would they want with a bunch of kids?"

She just stares at me. I stare back, puzzled. And then I gawk.

"No. Come on. You can't mean--they wouldn't seriously--"

"I don't know. In case you haven't noticed, people have gone a bit mad in the past week or so." She smiles slyly, taking a sip of the cocoa. She passes it down to Miguel, who proceeds to pass it down the line--each child taking a sip. "Maybe they just want to have families again. I doubt it, though, judging by the way they acted. Maybe they think they can sell them for gas--it's become quite the commodity," she adds, throwing another glance towards my tank. "Maybe they want slaves."

Jesus Christ. Since when did I step into a rejected Mad Max script marathon?

"How will you be able to find them?"

She points straight ahead. "I've dealt with them once before. I know where they're going. A hub where they refuel. They won't be expecting me to come this fast, though. I'm pretty sure after the raid they figured me for dead."

"So you're going off to get them back. These kids, I mean."

"Yeah."

We stare at each other for a long time. I can only imagine what she's thinking in her head--that maybe, just maybe, a tank would even her chances. That maybe, just maybe, she could figure out how to drive it on her own.

She doesn't ask for help. She probably figures that if I wouldn't offer it, I wouldn't give it. She doesn't even ask where I got it from. She just stares down at me, scrutinizing me--spearing me on eyes that could make the President feel like a 7 year old in time-out.

I reach into my pocket, feeling for my pack of smokes. Maybe a week or so ago (can't be sure how long, I've lost track of the days) the pack was half-full. Now I'm down to three. Just when I need them most, too.

Something's been changing in me over the past few days. The wiry little bastard who quietly took shit and just tried his best to make everything okay is disappearing beneath one seriously crazy mother-fucker.

Maybe it's the zombies. Maybe it's losing Jenny. Maybe it's Cassidy. Maybe it's the tank.

Maybe it's just the smokes.

"That's it, then?"

"That's it," she says.

I drag the cigarette up to my lips and light it with a clink. One down, two to go.

I look that hard woman straight in the eye and give her a wide, shit-eating grin.

"Want help?"

~*~

"Absolutely not," Doctor Rhodes says over the radio. "Completely out of the question."

"It's not like I'm asking for permission, doctor." I try to stay patient, but it isn't easy.

"Their predicament is deplorable, yes, but we require the antibiotics. What if you were to fail, Mr. Monday? What if you were to die? Where would we be then? Let me remind you that this facility remains one of the best chances we have for maintaining civilization--"

"Doctor Rhodes."

"--and I will not stand idly by while you--"

I could make a nasty joke there. But I don't.

"Doctor Rhodes, listen to me."

"--you, you--"

"Shut the fuck up and listen to me." The other end goes silent. I start talking.

"Since day 1 of this shit-storm, I have done nothing but fight to survive. Even when I saved Cassidy, I only did it because I was pretty damn sure I couldn't live with myself if she died. And you know what? I'm sick and tired of it. Fuck that shit. I've got a mother-fucking tank, I've got a mother-fucking gun, and so help me God if I don't have some limp-dicked mother-fuckers who are in desperate need for an introduction with both. Doctor Rhodes, I am sick and tired of running around like a dog. I want to fuck some evil shit up. I want to do some good for somebody other than myself."

The other end remains silent for a long while.

And then I hear her.

"Lucky?"

Cassidy.

"Hey, Cass. You up and about?"

"Yeah. Feeling a lot better, now. Not a hundred percent, not yet, but I'm getting there."

"Good."

"Doctor Rhodes wants me to talk some sense into you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

"So."

"So, yeah. Fuck some shit up, Lucky."

Now I hear Doctor Rhodes yelling something in the background, followed by Cassidy's laughter. There's a heated argument for a few moments. Cassidy comes back on.

"He's right, though. This isn't exactly smart. Do you even have a plan?"

"Not really. But listen, Cass. I want you to get Doctor Rhodes to help you gas up the other tank. Get it ready, learn how to use it--figure out how to operate it and everything. If something does go wrong, or I can't get back in time--you can just make the same run I did. Easy as pie."

"All right, Lucky. That's a good plan for our end, but what about your end? Seriously, you need to sit down and plan this shit out. You can't just go in there half-assed, you know? You'll get your head blown off."

"I'll think of something."

"Like you thought of burning the house down?"

"That was practice," I say, smiling around my lit cigarette. "Just practice."

"Right."

"I'll talk to you in a bit. Give you an update and everything."

"Jesus, Lucky. You don't even know how to properly fire a gun."

"I'll be fine, Cassidy. Just make sure you get that tank gassed up and ready," I tell her, and then I flick the radio off.

~*~

PART 5: Hell Hath No Fury

I want to know her story, of course. About as much as she wants to know mine. She's got a radio in the dozer; it takes a little work, but eventually Sybil fills me in over the static crackle of the receiver.

"I was a bus driver," she tells me. I hear Miguel saying something to one of the other kids behind her. The thought of all those children packed into the truck with her makes me snicker. Like some sort of god-damn field trip.

"I was just making my rounds when it started. I dropped a few children off before I realized what was going on." She stops, here--it takes her a few seconds to continue. "I didn't know anything about the attacks, or how fast it was spreading. I let six kids off before I even saw any of them."

"When I first saw them--I didn't know what to think. Half a dozen people in tattered, blood-soaked clothes, moaning and banging on the sides of the bus? I thought there must have been some sort of accident. I thought that they might be hurt or in shock. I thought--Lord. I almost opened those doors. My hand was on the lever, I was opening them--not even half a second away from letting those things in. In with the children. But then I saw one of them against the door--I saw its eyes."

"I didn't let anyone in after that. Or any more children off. I couldn't. Our obligation ends at the bus-door; that's what they tell us. You can't protect the kid from a broken home or an abusive father or crazy, stupid teachers. That's the world's job. You just get 'em from point A to point B, safe and sound. But what do you do when point A and B have gone mad? What do you do when sending them home means letting them get torn apart?"

"If I could find their parents, I'd fork them over. I still would. But--until that time--they're my responsibility. I have to make sure they get to wherever they're going. Safe and sound."

"And the bull-dozer?"

"Oh, that?" I can feel the force of her grin through the radio. "I built it. Been working on her for little over a year. One of my hobbies. I'm actually a retired engineer."

"You're an engineer and you thought you could take on a tank with that thing?"

"I thought I could pin you in the rubble. I could tell you weren't much of a tank driver."

Okay. That shuts me up.

"Me and a girl ended up finding a military bunker. We've got a doctor, too," I tell her. "Maybe when we get your kids, you can come back with me. I'm sure there's room--"

"We're here."

We've rolled past the battlegrounds of the city and through the unseen horrors of the snow-draped suburbs--with their boarded up homes and quiet deaths. Now, at last, we arrive at our destination.

The high-school.

It's nothing but a giant birckhouse, possessing all the architecture elegance of a cinderblock with windows. A complicated jigsaw puzzle of wrecked steel lurks in the parking lot outside of it.

"They use the diesel pump in the bus-yard," she says. "It's besides the lot."

I swing the tank about for a look--no trucks, no RVs. Overturned buses have grown thick with snow and ice. "Nobody home. Is it possible they all ready--"

"No," she snaps, hard and sharp. I know better than to argue.

And besides, one moment later I'm agreeing. "No tracks in the snow. We must have beat them here."

"Yes," she says, relief pouring into her voice.

"Let's circle around behind the school. Try not to leave any tracks in the lot," I tell her. We sweep the long way through the suburbs, making our way through the detritus of a once-healthy neighborhood. When we make it to the back, we slip out of our vehicles and head to the back end of the school. It's locked, but a quick introduction to the business end of my shotgun persuades it to be otherwise.

The lights are off, but the air is warm--or at least a good deal warmer than it is outside. Miguel has the rifle, I've got the shotgun, and Sybil has a pistol. The children follow behind Sybil and Miguel, locked together in a tight little knot--they're all armed with melee weapons, holding an array of lead pipes, wrenches, and baseball bats. None of them look scared--all their faces are grim and ready, like a whole pack of action hero carictures.

"Remember, children," she tells them. "Don't wander off. And if one attacks you--"

"--aim for the head," they all say in perfect pitch.

God-damn. This *is* a field trip.

I can't help but grin.

We give the building a quick sweep. No zombies in the halls, but as soon as we reach the cafeteria we can smell the stink. Flies buzz around the doors in a hungry cloud. They've been locked with a length of chain. When I peek through the door window, I quickly find out why.

Zombie city.

They're stumbling over each other in there. Rotting students still in their uniforms mull side-by-side with stern, jawless teachers and various other members of the neighborhood. It's been days since they've died, with pealing skin hanging from their bones like ice-cream melting off a cone. A girl shuffles past, patches of maggots wriggling greedily into her torn cheek. The flies gather so thickly around them that they'd be choking on them if they still breathed. The buzz is like a bee-hive.

I turn from the window, pushing a rag against my mouth. This CAN'T be sanitary.

Sybil keeps the children away. I tell her what I saw.

"Why would they keep them?" I ask outloud.

"Experiments," she answers. "To understand them, maybe. Or use them."

That last thought gives me the shivers. Or maybe they trapped them and they haven't figured out what to do with them yet. I'd much prefer that explanation.

"What will we do when they come back?" Sybil asks.

"I've got an idea." I crouch down in front of Miguel. "Can you aim that well?"

He gives me a dead-eye stare, still clutching the rifle. "Yes."

"His father taught him. He's a dead shot with it," Sybil says. I think I even detect a hint of pride.

"Do you think you could kill someone with it? Not an undead someone?" I keep my eyes level with his.

I feel Sybil stiffening behind me. Miguel looks to her, a moment of perplexion on his face. Then he looks to me. Slowly, he nods.

"Are you sure?"

"Will it bring the others back?" He asks, his voice delicate and small.

"I wouldn't ask you to do this if it wouldn't," I tell him.

"Then yes," he says, his voice now firm.

"Good." I look up to Sybil. "We're going to need a ladder, chains, and a hell of a lot of luck."

Luckily, Lucky is my name.


~*~

It isn't easy. For starters, Sybil isn't the sort of woman who's used to taking orders. Especially when those orders involve putting one of her kids in danger's way. And Jesus, I'm asking a sixteen year old kid to commit murder.

But regardless of her thoughts, I think it's one hell of a damn fine plan. Pretty good for thinking it up off the top of my head.

We sweep upstairs for zombies--sweep it twice just to be sure--then we bash in a window at the back-end and set up the ladder. Then we lock all the stairwells with several lengths of chains.

Miguel goes up to the 2nd floor with all the other kids. I let the zombies loose on the first floor.

It's one hell of a fine plan. So why is my stomach practicing calistenics?

While we're waiting for them to arrive, I try to bring up Doctor Rhodes or Cassidy on the radio. Neither answers. It gets me a bit worried, but what can you do? It's getting late. They might have turned in early.

I roll the last two cigarettes about in the pack. I've started to give them near-mythical significance; the last pack from a sane world. As if those two cigarettes are all that stands between me and insanity--me and death.

As if they were my fuse.

I check the periscope. No sign of anything. It's nearly night, now, and I can't imagine them driving in the darkness. No streetlights or other cars to lead the way. It would be far too easy to get completely lost.

I pop open the hatch to get a breath of fresh night air. I review the plan, thinking over the steps until they've crystalized into my head. And then I reach for my second-to-last smoke.

"Fuck it," I say.

And that's when the butt of a rifle slams into the back of my head.


~*~

"It was a damn fine plan, Lucky-boy. Damn fine."

Back in the back seat with my dad.

"But even the best laid plans of mice and men inevitably end up in the shitter," he tells me. "The truth of it, Lucky-boy? The God-honest truth?"

I try to speak, try to croak, try to scream. But my mouth is full of cigarette ashes.

"The truth of it is that you were fucked the very day you were born," my dad says. "The truth of it is that you don't get to fuck life, son. Life fucks you."

"See you soon, boy. See you real soon."


~*~

There's the distant sound of a woman screaming. Groans. Shotgun blasts.

An hour passes. I wake up.

A foam-flecked mouth is trying to eat my face.

It snarls and moans--what's left of it, anyway. Pearly white teeth emerge from its blackened gums like the edges of a chipped, serrated saw. It's face is a skinless horror; just bone and dried blood with a tangle of twisted sinew rendering it unidentifiable. Its eyes have been scooped out and its arms hacked away at the shoulders. It fights and strains against its collar, writhing like a leashed pitbull inches from its prey.

I'm tied to a wooden chair. Everything hurts--it's the crash-site all over again. And as I come to, I realize with a slow and calm horror that I'm inside a gutted RV.

Someone's sitting next to me. Smoking. Not my brand, I realize with a dull sense of relief. My last two smokes are still in their pack, pressed in my front pocket.

His hair has been shaved and his skin is a pale, crisp white. He wears a wife-beater black with old, dried blood. His shoulders are broad, almost wolfish--and a tattoo glimmers on one full, heavy bicep. I strain to read it in the light.

'Let God Sort Them Out'

"You think you've seen the Shit," he asks, not looking at me. "Don't you?"

"Where's Sybil?" I turn back to the zombie. It's a scrawny, vicious thing--it can smell my meat. It growls in a sound living things are not meant to make, fighting to gain another inch. Instinctively, I lean back.

He takes another long drag, letting it seep from his nostrils in long, whipping lashes. "Answer my question."

"What the hell do you think this is, a casting call for the broadway production of Platoon? Fuck your question." I'm pretty proud of that one. I just thought of it.

He grabs me by the hair. And then he pushes, leaning me forward. I struggle to resist, but my arms are bound to the chair and there isn't much I can do. My nose looms closer towards that snapping, frothing face--closer. God, I can smell its stink--smell what it had for dinner.

Meat.

"Do you think you've seen some serious shit?" His voice is soft, but it cuts through the zombie's sound like a knife.

"Y-yeah," I grunt, leaning back hard. "Yeah."

"Fuck you. You saw the Brady Bunch. You saw some fuckin' Andy Griffith." He lets go. I snap back, panting. "What? You saw your parents get eaten? You saw some piece of pussy you like get her ass bit? You ain't seen the Shit, kid."

Great. Fan-fucking-tastic. I'm dealing with a Grade-A piece of primo American psychopath. "Where's Sybil? Where are the kids?"

"You had a fine plan, I'll give you that," he says. "Put that kid upstairs with a rifle, flood the bottom floor with deaders, then wait and scare us with the tank." The tip of his cigarette glows a scorching red. "We go in for cover from the tank while your boy snipes us, then we get our asses eaten by deaders. Nice."

My throat is dry. "Where are the kids?" I ask again.

"Of course, it don't help you much when we're watching the whole thing three blocks away. I figured the bitch would follow us, see," he says. "I figured she'd think there's hell to pay." He takes another drag. "Hell hath no fury. Shit like that. So we sat our asses down and waited."

It occurs to me that I'm dealing with a man who has finished his last pack long ago.

"Where are the kids," I croak, staring at the gnashing armless zombie in front of me. Details are starting to filter into my exhausted brain. Details that make my insides churn. Details like--that zombie looks pretty small.

"But putting all the kids upstairs? Not so smart. Just a chain between them and the deaders," he says. "And chains are easy to cut."

Oh, God.

Please, God. No.

The faceless, armless, eyeless zombie groans, shoulders writhing. He's still wearing the jacket he wore in life, bound nice and snug. I've seen it before.

It's like getting staked in the guts with a pike made out of solid ice. And then having someone twist it, twist it hard, ripping open my belly with frigid cold.

"Miguel," I whimper.

"You think you've seen shit, boy?" He laughs, flicking his cigarette aside. "You been watching the Andy Griffith show."

"I'll kill you." It's not even a whisper. I can't breathe. I'm going to vomit.

"It's evolution, Griffith. Plain evolution. There are those of us who got it and those of us who don't." He stands up. "Now--onto business. I just finished sticking a hot poker through that bitch's eye, but she wouldn't talk. I hope you'll be a little more fucking cooperative, because frankly, I'm tired of being such a nice fucking guy." He stares down at me. "So make my day. Tell me. Where did you get the tank?"

I meet him, eye-to-eye. I stare into the gaze of an absolute sociopath. And while nearly pissing my guts out, I manage to smile.

"Your mom's house."

He smiles back. "Funny."

"That's what she said!"

He starts grinning. I struggle not to piss, shit, and vomit at the same time.

"You're a funny guy, Griffith," he says. "I like you."

And then he leaves. But not before he turns out the lights.

Leaving me alone in the dark with Miguel.

~*~

The lights switch on about an hour later.

He comes back in, smoking a fresh cigarette. An older balding man follows, wearing an overcoat and carrying what looks like a med-kit.

Miguel is still trying to eat my face.

"You kids getting along?" He asks.

"Yeah," I say, voice hoarse. "We were just talking about what we had in common. Like your mom."

He grins. Baldy produces a syringe.

"I gave this some thought, you know," he says. "Some real thought. Torturing you--well, you could lie. Killing the kids in front of you--well, that means losing the product. But then our physician here came up with a great idea."

"Let me go so I can get back to fucking your mom?"

Baldy swabs my arm with alcohol. Probably just a habit from his old life. He slips the tip into my arm.

"What I'm trying to imply here is that your mom is a total slut," I say. "Just in case, y'know, you're not catching that part."

"We'll get you so high you won't give a fuck what you say. You'll tell me everything. From that time you swiped your dad's skin-mags to your first sniff of pussy, to the place where you got that tank. Everything."

I grimace. Painful warmth is spreading up my arm. Baldy looks to Crazy-man. "It'll take about an hour to fully kick in," he says.

"Well. Let's leave you two lovebirds some time alone," he responds.

They leave, but not before shutting off the lights.

~*~

"You done fucked up, Lucky-boy."

"Fuck off."

I've never been high in my life, but here I am. It's as if everything has been surgically detached from my body. Like my brain is floating in a miasma of pleasant smoke. I don't even mind Miguel's snarling anymore.

"C'mon, Jackie-boy. This is our big chance to spend some quality time together. Have a little father-to-son chat, you know? Maybe give you that talk about the birds and the bees."

"I said fuck off."

I know I'm just hallucinating, but I swear I see a flicker of light shining across rows of endless teeth as my dad strikes a match. And then:

"You gonna tell 'em, Jack? You gonna tell them where you got that tastey bitch of yours stowed?"

"No. Never. And fuck you."

"C'mon, Jackie-boy. Don't be like that. I'm on your side. This guy's crazy. He's fucking all our shit up. Why don't you join my team, huh? He won't get shit out of you then. Just moans. Lean forward, Jackie-boy. Let poor Miguel have a bite. Lord knows he earned it."

And you know what? For a second, for a god-damn second, it makes sense. If I die, he'll never find out where Cassidy is. And Miguel. God, Miguel. It's my fault he died. Shouldn't I give him something for his trouble?

I think I feel my father's hand on the back of the chair. Pushing.

The thought makes me jerk with fear. My arms twist, snapping up. And then I feel it--something gives. Just a little bit, but my fist slides up, and I realize that the arm I'm tied to is loose.

I start pulling and pulling. Harder. Harder. HARDER.

"What are you up to, Lucky-boy?" Dad asks. I feel the arm pop off, and then I cradle it to my chest. I feel the rusty points from a row of nails. "What do y'got there?"

I wriggle my arm till I can hold one nail like a pencil. Then I get to work on the leather buckle around my other wrist. It takes a little work, maybe thirty minutes worth, but at last it snaps free.

I reach down and unbuckle my feet. Careful, now--Miguel is right in front of me, and I still can't see him.

Turning on the lights is the trickiest part. My body aches, but it's like I don't mind the pain; the thought of Miguel still keeps me pressed to the wall, though. When I flick them on, I see my dad sitting on the chair, grinning like always.

"Soon, boy," he says.

"I still got two smokes left," I croak.

Miguel snarls. Turning, I bring the nailed post down through his head.

~*~

I'm smoking my second-to-last smoke.

I drag it out of my pocket and shove it between my numb lips. I pull out my lighter and flash it with a clink. And then I just pull it all in, just suck on that thing so hard that if it could speak, it would be suing my ass for sexual harassment. And then, at last, I turn to the door.

It opens.

Baldy stares at me, blinking with confusion, the doorknob still in his hand.

"You should be--you're not supposed to be--"

"Surprise!" I say. "It's your birthday! I got you a nail!"

I thrust the blood-soaked plank of wood forward, sinking every inch of that nail straight down into his eye. He screams like a noisy little bitch, dropping to the floor and clutching at the bleeding heap of his eye. I lean down and pluck out the revolver hung in the hem of his pants.

"Do you like it?" I ask him. "If not, you can take it back to the store."

I am so fucking stoned right now.

"'Scuse me," I say, stepping over him. My father's right behind me, grinning at every second of it--urging me on.

The night is cool and crisp; a bright orange fire burns in between the circle of RVs. Two silhouettes stand out against the flame, standing up at the sound of the screaming doctor. They turn to me, momentarily caught in shock at the sight--and then I'm lifting the gun to point at them.

Everything's moving so god-damn slow. I realize, dimly, that I should be panicking. Hell, I should be shitting my pants. But I feel so utterly calm and placid--like I've got all the time in the world. I smile to the two of them and just start pulling the trigger.

I dish out gunshots like they were candy. The one on the right jerks sharp, a pink mist rising out of his throat; he stumbles back into the fire, managing to make a gurgling scream. His friend dives for his rifle, spins up to take aim--and man, I don't even flinch. He manages to squeeze off a shot, I feel it whiz by my cheek, but I don't even care. I just smile and fire some more.

I think I hit him in the head. His face snaps back and then he slumps to the ground.

I hear shouts, now. Someone shouting 'He's got a gun!' followed by someone else screaming 'Don't kill him! Don't kill him!'. I hardly notice, though. I'm just looking around, boredly searching for someone else to shoot. I feel something smack into my shoulder, like someone just punched me--there's a sharp, stinging pain, followed by an ebbing warmth spreading down my arm. Dimly, I realize I've been shot. It's no big deal, though. I hardly even mind the pain. It's like I'm watching someone else experience it.

And then I see that crazy bastard again, the one with the shaved head who killed Miguel. I feel a dull sense of duty, there. I'm supposed to kill him, aren't I? I lift the gun to point at him and pull the trigger, but I get nothing but clicks. I tilt the gun in my hand, peering at it with puzzlement. Isn't it supposed to make a bang?

"Andy-fucking-Griffith," he says, grinning and marching towards me with a machete.

And then I hear someone else scream, from a bit away: "Tank!"

Crazy-man stops, glancing over his shoulder with a scowl. "Yeah, I know. We got a tank, what about it?"

And then the man screams louder. "No! ANOTHER TANK, BOSS!"

And then there is an awful, terrible crash.

And then he looks at me. And I look at him. And my smile turns into a grin.

It's like the man said: Hell hath no fury, mother-fucker.


~*~

PART 6: One Last Smoke

An RV flies, rolls, and tumbles as the Abrams proceeds to cleave its remains in twain.

I hear a few screams. Someone gets tossed off the roof. He quickly disappears beneath the tank's emerging treads.

Both sides of the RV briefly swell around the intruding tank as it tears through, rolling up and over the frame. I hear gunshots going off everywhere, but they might as well be drops of rain. The crazy man with the machete just stares at the scene, transfixed. The chaos is absolutely gorgeous--the rising crest of that thundering tank rolling forward into the glow of firelight, gunshots flicking about in the shadows of night--and all of it while I'm high as hell.

It looks like god-damn poetry.

"Hey!" I shout.

Crazy machete man turns, his eyes blank.

"Did I mention that I had sex with your mom?!"

He stares a moment longer. Then he runs.

"Because I totally did!" I yell after him.

"Betcha his mom is a zombie," dad says.

"Probably."

The tank swings into another RV, tackling it with a fresh set of screams and the sickening crunch of metal. I start striding forward, wading into the turbulent sea of chaos--feeling like the eye of the storm. Nothing can touch me. I am invisible. Invulnerable. Invincible.

The tank rumbles off. The hatch pops open, just as three men with rifles and shotguns start crawling up the back-end.

Cassidy stands up.

God, I've missed that woman. Maybe it's just the drugs talking, but I want to tell her how much I love her. Hell, I love everyone. Even that son of a bitch who killed Miguel. I'm going to gouge his eyes out and skull-fuck him, but I'll play some soothing music while I do it. With candle-light and wine and everything. It'll be so romantic.

Jesus. I'm so god-damn high right now I probably qualify as a satellite.

She's strapped to the nines in a flak jacket and helm, but with the visor pulled up. And as those gentlemen leap atop of the turret, she twists about at an uncomfortable angle and levels her gun at them.

It looks like what would happen if a tommy-gun had wild and noisy sex with a shotgun and weaned the result of their forbidden union on a steady diet of steroids.

There is a sound not far removed from rapid-fire lightning. And then the three gentlemen aren't gentlemen anymore; they're corpses, split at the seams and torn asunder. They come apart like Raggedy Anne dolls that have been unraveled--blood and guts splattering out like lengths of loose thread.

She turns--steps up out of her perch with a calm, graceful gesture--like a ballroom dancer moving from one partner to the next. And then she brings the barrel to point at me.

I take a pleasant puff on my cigarette. Two men behind me scream out curses, dropping low.

Watching her work is like witnessing living poetry. Tufts of dark hair flutter past those scalding eyes, smothered beneath her dark, lush lashes. Her face wears a serene expression of intentful focus; the automatic shotgun belches a tongue of languid flame, each boom a beat, each rumble a serenade. There is music in the distinct clatter of spent, smoldering shells as they fall to the tank--and the wet *thump* *thump* *thump* as buckshot slams into the men on either side of me. Their chests pop like the swelling crescendo of cymbals.

She's a god-damn surgeon with that thing. She's Dougie-fucking-Houser. She didn't so much as graze me--and if that's not love, what is?

The RV behind me rumbles to life just as I reach her. Cassidy fires 3 more rounds, then she's out. The spent drum drops from the gun just as she reaches for the clip. By the time she's snapped it into place and drawn the slide back, the RV is pealing rubber--kicking up smoke and clods of dirt as it does its best to get the fuck out of Dodge.

She aims for the tires just as it reaches the gate.

Three shots. One of the back tires explodes. The whole thing tilts crazily to the side, sparks flying in the air. But it keeps going, busting through the chain link fence and scraping its way through the padded snow.

Cassidy curses, looking to me as I clambor up on the tank with her. "We can still catch them if--"

I reach forward, seize her by the collar, and pull her into a ferocious kiss.

She stiffens at first; then she melts. We clutch each other as if we're adrift at sea. We devour each other. And when I can't stand it anymore, I pull away and look her straight in the eye.

"Don't look too deep into that," I tell her.

And then I pass out.


~*~

After Cassidy wakes me up and binds my wound, she takes me to see Sybil.

She's still wearing that ridiculous coat and muffler. Both are stained with blood--hers. The hat's been thrown into the corner of the RV.

Her eye is--I really don't want to talk about it. Cassidy did what she could and wrapped a bandage around what's left, but it quickly gets sopped with blood. At least she can still talk.

"Kids," she asks hoarsely. "Are the kids--"

Cassidy opens her mouth. I cut in.

"They're okay," I tell her. "Cassidy found them in the bus outside camp, locked up. Snug as rugs. Unharmed." That much is true, anyway--Cassidy saw the bus with the kids in it first and did a little recon. I was surprised to find out she didn't just roll in blind. Apparently, she managed to figure out which RVs we were in by watching who went where from a distance.

Sybil nods with silent relief. Her iron-grey hair clings to her sweat-soaked brow; her nose looks like it's been broken and dark pouffy bruises are swelling all over her face. She'll probably heal ugly--assuming she heals at all. "But--Miguel?" She asks. "The others?"

"Fine and dandy. Locked up in the bus."

She closes her one good eye and sighs with wheezy relief. She leans back on the couch we draped her over, breathing slowly.

"You did it," I tell her. "You got the kids from point A to point B. We're going to take you all the way back to the base. You got them home, Sybil. Safe and sound."

She starts to laugh. It's this wet, greasy sound that stumbles out of her mouth like a drunk at 3 am. "Lord," she says. "Oh, Lord. You want to know something funny? I mean, something laugh-till-you-cry funny?"

"Sure, Sybil. I could use a laugh right about now."

She stares me down with that one good eye, spearing me like a fish on her gaze. And then she flashes me an exhausted, bloody grin.

"I loathe children."

Lord, do we ever laugh.

And then Sybil slips into a sleep from which she may never wake.

~*~

We bury Miguel and the others. We leave the killers to rot.

We hitch the bus and children to Cassidy's tank. It breaks the children's hearts, but we have to leave Nessie behind. None of them know how to operate it, and I'd rather not take a chance with letting a kid try anyway.

We make Sybil as comfortable as we can in Cassidy's tank. I'd rather not have her alone with the kids--not looking like that. And besides, there's always the chance she might turn. We really don't know.

I'm still high as a kite, but the drugs are starting to melt away. I haven't seen my father in hours--not since Cassidy showed up. Will I ever see him again? I don't think so. I think he's done.

And even if he does show up, I still have one last smoke.

It's a long way back home. Cassidy and I get to talking over the radio. It's easier, now. Maybe we've seen the Shit together. I feel like I'm talking to a friend who fought besides me in some great and terrifying war.

A bit into our conversation, and I begin talking about my hallucinations.

"Sometimes, I see my father."

"Huh?"

I take a deep breath. "My dad. He was an asshole. Treated us all like shit half the time. Blew his brains out on my tenth birthday. I found his corpse upstairs."

"...seriously?"

"Yeah."

"What a dipshit."

"Yeah. But--I still see him. Ever since this shit started, I keep seeing him. As a zombie, talking to me. Now, I know he's dead and buried, I know even if he came back he'd just moan--not talk--and he'd be six feet under in a coffin anyway. But it doesn't matter. I keep seeing him anyway, and he keeps talking to me."

"About what?"

"Promise not to laugh."

"Sure."

"Being a zombie. And zombie sex."

Silence.

"...you're shitting me."

"Nope."

Cassidy tries not to laugh. "Zombie sex?"

I give up and laugh for her. "Like he wants me to join a club. I tell him to fuck off, of course. But back there in the RV camp, I was--he managed to tempt me. For just a second."

"What? Why?" She almost sounds angry.

"I was worried that the crazy guy would get the location of the base out of me. I thought maybe I should do it. Rather then--"

"Fuck it. It's history, Lucky. Ancient history."

"Yeah," I say, smiling. "Fuck it."

Cassidy curses. "God. What are we going to do with all these kids, Lucky? I'm not good with kids. And I know Doctor Rhodes sure as hell isn't."

"Dunno. Teach 'em, I guess."

"Teach them what?"

"How to hunt. How to fight. How to survive."

Cassidy goes quiet again. Then she laughs, that lovely sound filling up the receiver. "I'm glad I found you, Lucky."

"I'm glad I was found."

We reach the base with a busload of kids dragged by a tank. Jesus, isn't this absurd? A bus full of snot-nosed brats pulled by a tank into a military bunker. We're setting up some pretty fucked up foundations for the next civilization, aren't we? I wonder if we should even bother, what with the way this all panned out. Maybe zombies are better.

I shake the thought off. That's dad talking. Fuck him.

And frankly, I don't care. Civilization? Fuck you. I'm just here to survive.

The school bus won't fit on the elevator--too long. So we'll take the kids off of it and take them down on foot. Cassidy and Sybil go first, though. The tank rumbles over the elevator and sinks slowly into the earth.

I roll the last cigarette around between my fingers. I'm debating whether or not to throw it away. A man can do without a fuse in a world like this, I think. A man can do without much of anything at all.

I pop into the battered bus. Over thirty faces peer up at me, all bundled up in the cold. "Okay, kids," I tell them. "Time to go home. We're going to all get out now."

They're remarkably well behaved. I remember Miguel and his friends in that perfect sing-song pitch and orderly pack. These are children of adversity--they've learned more in the past week than most people learned in their entire lives. They've probably figured out what happens if you act like an idiot. In the old world, it meant you got a desk-job. In this world, it means you're zombie-chow.

Besides, I have no doubt that Sybil took any shit from them.

One of them, though--she has her face glued to the window. It's like she doesn't see me, doesn't even hear me. And then, just as the kids start to stand up, she goes absolutely nuts.

"Nessie!" She squeals. "It's Nessie! She's coming back!"

All the kids charge to the windows. Some start cheering. I turn to look.

My blood freezes.

Kill-Dozer. 200 yards out. Ramming speed.

"EVERYONE OUT NOW!" I roar. Suddenly, every child snaps into obedience. They charge for the front and back doors, scrabbling over seats and even each other. It's probably something they've practiced time and time again--something Sybil trained them to do. God bless you, you one-eyed bitch.

One kid trips and starts to scream. I move to help her up, but another boy's all ready plucked her up by the shoulders and started escorting her to the back door. They're all tumbling out the exits, rushing in a chaotic-yet-orderly fashion.

I do a quick scan--a jacket here, a back-pack there--but everyone is out.

Wait.

What about me?

Oh fuck.

THe bus flies. Kill-Dozer hits it hard enough to flip it, and God, does it ever flip. The whole thing somer-saults--my entire world goes topsy turvy as I roll over like a log. And then there's a crash, followed by windows popping--and then everything stands still.

I'm laying on the ceiling with what feels like a dislocated shoulder. The bus is tilted at a crazy angle, with the front half crumpled inwards. Dimly, I realize that he's rolled the bus on top of the tank.

Smart move.

Well, fuck.

THe back door snaps open. The asshole with the shaved head steps in, shotgun in hand. He grins down at me.

"Howdy, Griffith."

"Hey, fucktard," I groan, struggling to sit up. "I was just thinking about your m--"

The shotgun levels down at me. "My mother was a saint, and if you say one more thing about her I'll ventilate your fucking skull."

Right.

~*~

There's three of them left. They must have trailed after us in the dozer.

It's my fault, really. I didn't rush. I thought we were safe. I thought everything would be fine. I thought I could throw away my last smoke.

They've got all the kids lined up on their knees. Two of the asshole's cohorts flank them, shotguns ready. Asshole #1 has his shotgun on me.

The computer hums. Doctor Rhodes' voice breaks free. "Mr. Monday? Are you ready to be brought down?"

Shotgun to my head. Shotgun to a little kid's head. That asshole's wide, vicious grin.

I get the picture.

"Yeah," I tell him. "Everything's peachy."

We get on the elevator. Him, his friends, and me. The kids stay up here.

Not much chance, really. I don't have a gun, Cassidy isn't expecting them, and Doc isn't much of a Rambo. Three assholes with shotguns is enough. More than enough, really.

Maybe.

"Going down," he says.

A thought occurs to me. I didn't throw that cigarette away, did I? I fish it out of my pocket and light it with my good arm. Then I throw the lighter away.

I've come to a decision.

"We've never gotten along, I know," my father says, watching as I press the button. "Always thought you were a dickless pussy. But I've got to say, Lucky-boy--I'm so damn proud of you right now. You've finally made the right choice."

"Didn't do half-bad, kid," Asshole #1 says. "Really, you didn't. But this ain't TV. Any Griffith don't win shit. He certainly don't get to fuck the prom queen."

I savor that last smoke like a fine wine. I remember the last one I had before the world went mad--back when Jenny was alive, back before I knew what had happened. I close my eyes, letting the smoke flow from me.

We're going down.

"It's a beautiful way to end the story, Lucky-boy. Bra-vo. Bra-fucking-o," dad says. "You're going to be so happy on my team. Really, you are."

"It's the assholes who win, kid. It's always been that way. Back before the deaders, the assholes were slick--they wore suits, carried suitcases, shit like that. Only thing that's changed is the uniform," he tells me. "Now we just need shotguns and gas. And the will to do whatever it takes."

I look up, watching the coils of smoke unravel towards the dwindling lights.

"You're gonna love it down here, son. Ha! Muslims and their 72 virgins? Fuck that! Give me three undead sluts! And down here? You'll be up to your ears in undead pussy, m'boy!"

"You gave it a shot, kid." I feel the barrel press between my shoulderblades. "But this just ain't your kind of world."

"Ain't that the god-damn truth," I say.

There is an awful, indescribable stench. Asshole #1 scowls. He says: "What the fuck is that smell?"

The elevator stops. Slowly, I turn towards him. I turn right into that barrel. And then I tell him:

"Oh, that?"

Ding. Elevator doors open.

"That's your mom."

Undead assholes in suits step in.


~*~

PART 7: When Hell Freezes Over


Something's wrong.

Lucky doesn't arrive behind me with a tank and a crapload of middle-schoolers. Lucky doesn't arrive behind me at all. There's the whirr of the elevator rumbling to life, but the doors never open. And as I mwatch, staring with slack-jawed horror, I realize what's happening.

Lucky's taking the elevator down too far. He's taking it down to the residential district.

I grab the AA-12 while fishing for a drum from my duffel bag. Meanwhile, I'm pulling Doctor Rhodes up on the radio.

"He's going down too far!" I shout. "Bring him back up!"

I hear the gentle pop of gunfire one level down. Doctor Rhodes speaks, his voice desperate and confused.

"I--I don't understand. This is all wrong, Miss O'Hara--"

"What?!"

"The camera--I just turned on the camera upstairs, and--the children are all still there--"

More gunfire.

I snap the drum in. "Bring the elevator up here. Now," I tell him.

The elevator hums. I watch those doors, my finger primed and on the trigger. When it dings open, I get ready for anything.

A half-a-dozen zombie lawyers moan, stumbling forward.

A quick spray of roaring gunfire splits their heads open like overripe melons. A few more behind them are crouched down over something, their heads bowed as their shoulders writhe and twist. I hear something whimpering.

Three shots later and their headless corpses are smoldering around the still-gurgling victim.

The elevator is a complete blood-bath. At least a dozen corpses, and that's not counting the ones I just mowed down. Most of them are dessicated and rotting. The stench is absolutely incredible. But at least two look relatively fresh.

Then there's the victim.

He makes a moist, wet sound, staring up at me. His shaved head, slick with blood, glistens in the elevator's lights.

"I--I've been--Please, help m--"

I blow his head off. And then I blow the heads off of his friends. Just to be sure.

"Cassidy," Doctor Rhodes says. "You must come here. Quickly."

I close the elevator door and high-tail it to the control room.


~*~

Lucky smokes his cigarette, back propped up to the wall. He holds a torn bit of cloth to the side of his throat to staunch the bleeding.

He's barricaded the door to the bedroom with the bed and dresser, but by the way the door bulges with every hit, I can tell it's only a matter of time. Till they get in or he bleeds out.

He looks to the camera. His face splits into a weak smile. He starts to talk, but I can't hear a word of it.

"Can we--"

"No sound, Miss O'Hara," Doctor Rhodes reluctantly points out.

I watch him while he talks. He doesn't stop; I'm not sure if he understands that we can't hear him. He could be talking about anything. He could be giving his Last Will and Testament. He could be telling me how everything's going to be all right. He could be saying 'I like dicks!', over and over again.

"The runts are still upstairs," I tell Doctor Rhodes. "Elevator is a mess, but I imagine they've seen worse. Go get them--pull them down here."

"Miss O'Hara--"

"I need to find out what that stupid jackass is saying."

"Cassidy."

Something in his voice gives me pause.

"I couldn't stop Lucky from helping that woman. I couldn't stop you from going after him in that tank. And I certainly can't stop you from going down there now. But please, just listen to me."

I turn. And I listen.

"If that poor woman you brought here dies under my care, and you die, and Lucky dies--that means raising those children will be a duty squarely set upon my shoulders. And that is not a burden I am prepared to bare."

I try not to laugh at the image.

"I can't handle 30 children on my own. I can't teach them to use guns, or hunt. I don't know how. You do."

"Doctor--"

"I watched a team of specialists get torn apart by them. I watched men trained to kill get eaten alive. And that was before there were over a thousand."

"I can't--"

"Miss O'Hara. Are you prepared to put everyone here in jeopardy for one person's life?"

I look to the camera. Lucky's still talking, just running his mouth off. He's probably telling me not to come down. He's probably telling me to be sensible about all this. He's probably telling me to save myself the trouble of saving his ass.

I think of what lies beneath our feet--a sprawling complex of tunnels upon tunnels devoured in the dark--filled with dead little children. And worse.

I look Doctor Rhodes in the eye.

"Yes."

"Then I have no choice. I will help you. We have some advantages over our predecessors," he says begrudgingly. "Hindsight--we know to shoot for the head. Also, you have all ready been infected--"

"Lucky will need a shot of the serum too."

"Yes. And soon. He'll turn in only a few hours."

"I lasted at least a day--"

"Hypothermia insulated you." He points out. "The cold slowed the process down considerably. It's certainly cold down there, but not nearly enough to--"

"Turn down the temperature," I say suddenly. "Can you do that?"

"--what?"

"Freeze the bastards," I say.

"I--" He blinks. "I think I can drop the temperature, yes--if I were to vent out the heat..."

"Do it," I tell him, heading to the door. "Do it and get the kids."

"Where are you going?"

I throw on a reckless grin. "Ammo."

~*~

It pains me to admit it, but the AA-12--that magnificent bastard, that King of New England--is unsuited for the task ahead. It's just too damn loud. One shot and I'll have every walking corpse in a mile on me like fatties on doughnuts. Daddy and mommy didn't raise no fucking doughnut.

An assault rifle with a silencer will have to do.

As far as the rest--it's a cornucopia of right-wing wet-dreams. Kevlar up the ass, all the clips of ammo a duffel bag can hold, crowbar, flares, med-kit (to patch up Lucky), 2 shots of Rhodes' serum, night-vision goggles, three thermal blankets, and a riot shield. I don't plan on holding onto that last one for long, but I might need it to get in.

But the last and most important tool in my arsenal is the one I see on my way out. I catch a glimpse of it just as I'm passing by--a gleam of glass on the wall. When I step up to take a closer look, all the breath just rushes out of my lungs.

It's sitting quietly in its glass case, as if waiting. Sleek wood, sanded and lacquered to perfection. And best of all, signed by Pete Rose--Charlie Hustle himself.

Hello, Louie. Mommy missed you.

I break the glass with my crowbar, quickly offer praise to the God of Baseball (often Cruel, but alway Just), and retrieve the mighty bat.

Time to break heads.


~*~

Kids are tucked safely away into the compound. Rhodes has vented the heat and is dropping the temperature. Lucky is bleeding and rotting to death with a hundred or more zombies beating down the door. I'm in the elevator with a Louisville Slugger and enough ammo to kill Zeus, Jesus, Buddha, and all their friends.

Everything is right with the world.

I press the button. Elevator goes down.

Ding.


~*~

"Ruh," lawyer #1 says.

I pretend he was that Senator a while back who said women can't get pregnant from rape. Or was that a congressman? Fuck, I don't know. I hate politics.

WHUMP. His head caves around the width of the bat.

Six of his buddies charge. I swing the riot shield like a battering ram, crashing into them and sending them reeling back to the floor. I drop it, holster the bat, and brace the rifle up against my shoulder.

Easy, now. Just like deer-hunting with dear old dad. Except the deer have gotten really ugly.

The silencer isn't whisper soft like in the movies. It makes a racket--just considerably less. There's the muffled, smothered sounds of gunfire, and then ichorous chunks start flying. Their heads pop open, spilling out a wealth of Harvard-educated brain goo.

I'm pretty lucky. Most of them have been drawn off by Lucky into God knows where. A few scragglers are coming to meet me, but the stink of fresh meat has dragged most of them away.

And God, talk about stink--it's nearly impossible to breathe. The venting helps, but it's like pouring a bottle of water on a grease-fire.

Wait.

Smell.

I look at the corpses around me. Deer urine is used to obscure a hunter's scent, making them invisible to their prey. Could the same thing work here? It might be worth a try.

Ugh. I can't believe I'm actually thinking about doing this.

I crouch down besides a corpse--oh, shit, the stench is like a wall, a fucking wall--and reach in. I start smearing it over me, sliding that greasy disease-rich muck all over the kevlar. Over the pads, over the arms, over the back--I think I'm going to be sick.

Lucky is going to seriously owe me after I save his ass.

I'm careful not to get any on my face or under my gloves. I'll need to treat Lucky's wounds, after all. I take a second to roll around in that wretched stench, and when I am smeared with the most god-awful shit you can imagine, I stand up and look into the dark--gun drawn and ready.

The hall ahead is pitch black. I can see lights in the distance, the shapes of silhouettes darting by--attracted by the hungry sounds of their friends. Friends after Lucky.

Drawing in a deep, troubled breath, I plunge forward.


~*~

Lost in the darkness, I hear the snarl a moment too late--just as the zombie emerges from around the corner.

A young woman, once pretty. Short bob-weave hair, with suit that's torn open and a massive chunk of flesh missing out of her side. Blackened ribs portrude from the rotting hole. Her skin is a fish-white speckled with decay. Career girl.

She bares her teeth at me, white eyes staring like a blind horror at the bottom of the sea.

The lights flicker and shut off.

I hear her emit a strangled moan in the dark.

Stay calm. Don't panic. People who panic get killed. Easy, now--just drop those goggles down over your eyes--that's right. Easy-peezy. Flip the switch on. Nothing to it. Easy as one, two--

Black gums lined with harrowing lines of needle-like teeth fill my view.

Oh shit.

Oh, shit. Shit.

Easy. Take it easy. She isn't biting. Relax. When you're afraid, you probably release all sorts of interesting smells. So no fear. No fear at all.

She lingers there a moment, as if waiting. For me to respond? For me to scream, or run, or attack? I stay perfectly still.

Slowly, that wretched razor-lined abyss slips closed. She turns and shambles back down the hall. I watch her back in the florescent glow of emerald monochrome.

Okay. So it works. Kind of.

I keep moving up the tunnel. When I turn the next corner, the lights snap back on, briefly blinding the goggles. Once they readjust, I nearly gag--at the sight and the smell.

I'm in a large and spacious lobby. Potted plants (dead and withered), comfortable chairs (most of them thrown aside), and elevator music (muffled and distorted, turning off and restarting sporatically) fill the room. As do the dead.

Corpses are everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Dozens--maybe hundreds. Draped over a desk, dried blood staining the rotting hand that clutches a useless phone receiver. Torn in half, moaning and crawling over the floor in search of meat. A man in a suit sitting comfortably in his chair, bottle of half-finished cognac in one hand, pistol in the other--wearing a long-dead smile and a hole in his head.

And the stink. Oh, shit. The stink. It's too much.

I drop to my knees and vomit.

There are a dozen or more shamblers here, but most aren't interested in me. They're searching for a morsel of fresh meat, or maybe a trace of their former lives. When I start puking, one or two approach. I level the rifle at them, but they soon move on their way--indifferent to my presence.

If you aren't food, you don't exist.

Reluctantly, I press on to the next horror.

~*~

I don't have to look hard to find Lucky. There's a whole line of zombies waiting to join the buffet.

Hundreds. Maybe more--they form a wall of writhing, miserable meat, producing a collective stench so daunting I have to fight off the urge to vomit all over again.

Zombie kids with zombie dads and moms, zombie office workers, zombie soldiers (sometimes with guns still in hand). All of them undulating together, wriggling and pushing to get at the door that's a hundred or so yards in. From both sides of the hall.

I marvel at the sight. Then I hear a hissing moan and step aside, letting a zombie stumble by. I squeeze myself into a distant corner, making myself as small as possible. I am sitting a stone's throw away from assured death, and the only thing keeping me alive is zombie stink. I seriously don't want to test the limits of this trick.

By now, I can see my breath--it emerges as a swirling mist from my lips. The temperature has dropped drastically, but it still not enough. Meanwhile, Lucky's still bleeding.

I breathe slow, closing my eyes and preparing myself. Because the move I'm about to make may redefine the definition of stupid mother-fucker. I drag the flare out from my duffel, weighing it in my hand.

I pull the spare clips out. I start shoving them in my pockets, putting as many as I can in easy, immediate reach. I double-check where the baseball bat is holstered.

Okay. If this doesn't work, at least I'll make a damn sexy zombie.

I kneel. I brace the rifle. And then I pop the flare.

It fizzles and hisses, bathing me in a brilliant tangerine glow. I throw it hard and watch it float over the sea of corpses, briefly illuminating their features as it flies past. A hundred dead lawyers, a hundred dead parents, a hundred dead children, a hundred dead grand-children.

It clatters to the floor, still hissing. Can they see it? Do they see it? Can they hear it, smell it?

A few heads turn. Some stumble away from the crowd, moaning. I hold my breath.

Slowly, attention shifts. It's like watching a crowd of birds give flight--one moves and moans, the sound dragging the others with it. As a crowd, they start to push forward down the hall.

Wait for it. Wait--

Now.

I squeeze the trigger and start clearing a path.

~*~

Confusion. Chaos. Heads exploding.

There's the steady pop of muffled gunfire on one end and the hissing light of a flare--with the groan of zombies--on the other. Some turn to me, but those are always first on my shitlist. Besides, I'm not out to kill them all--that's impossible. I just want to thin the herd.

I work like a machine. Like a living automaton. I can't help but think my dad would be proud--shot after headshot. Ammo out, drop clip, pop in another. Soon I'm on my feet, walking slowly forward--moving to the door.

I have one brief scare. My ammo runs out, I go to switch, and one of them snarls and moves to pounce. I don't flinch--I shove him back with the stock of the gun, pull out Louie, and bring her down with a solid satisfying crack. One more zom drops.

Keep moving.

I switch to Louie after that. Some are turning now, and I'm in too close for a gun. I bring the bat down again and again until it's soaked in black ichor. I am a death machine. I kill men, women, and children. Even little girls.

Especially little girls.

I reach the door. I scarcely believe it when I do--I feel the knob with one hand even as I crack another zombie's skull with the other. Hoarse, trying to keep low but still be heard, I growl: "Lucky!"

Nothing.

He might be unconscious. He might be dead. He might be a zombie, stumbling and moaning in that room, barricaded inside for all time. In short, I might be fucked.

"Lucky!" I repeat.

A zombie reaches from behind, hands gripping my breasts as he sinks his teeth into my shoulder, catching a mouthful of kevlar.

"Oh, fuck you," I hiss, smashing its nose in with a jerk of the elbow.

Seriously. Some people.

I hear something clank against the door followed by metal sliding. And then I hear a shitload of moaning. The zombie herd mentality bought me time, but now the herd's switching directions. And the smell managed to confuse them, but it's not going to hold up this time.

"Lucky! Now, you fuck! Now!" More sliding metal, something tunmbling--I bring Louie down hard, again and again, and now one's got me by the arm, another by the leg, teeth digging deep into kevlar, hands seizing the helm, pulling me back, trying to drag me into a crowd of snarling, drooling mouths--

The door opens. Something grabs me, pulling me in. I bring Louie down one last time, breaking some mink-wearing bitch's face right before I tumble inside and kick the battered door shut.

Lucky stands over me, pale as a ghost. The wrap is soaked through and his eyes are blank.

Oh, shit. Oh, please.

"Don't moan," I beg.

"Okay," he says, then passes out.

~*~

The first thing I do is barricade those doors.

I've got the duffel and I've got the ammo but I dropped the rifle when I switched it out for Louie. Smart move. Might as well throw bullets at them.

But actually, I've got a better idea.

Lucky's wound is pretty nasty. The bite missed the jugular, but the rot has all ready set in. Dark tendrils of ugly brown stretch deep under his skin, covetously claiming flesh like a hungry spider web. He's sweating like hell and breathing irregularly. But he's still alive.

I give him the shot of the serum, patch him up, then proceed to strip down. Nothing kinky about this--I'm covered in foul-smelling diseased muck. And besides, if this is going to work, we need all the heat we can get.

Once I'm down to my skivvies, I do my best to ignore the creeping chill and proceed to strip Lucky down too.

I break out the thermal blankets and drag Lucky into the corner. And then I make us a fucking heap of blankets--out of the blankets, the clothes, and even the god-damn duffel bag. I pull Lucky up against me--skin against skin, sheathed in layers upon layers of cloth--and cradle his head against my throat, snuggling up into an insulated heap.

If Doctor Rhodes is watching, I hope he figures out what I'm up to--and keeps turning down the heat.

I can feel the beat of Lucky's heart against mine. He's still unconscious, he's still sick, he's still bleeding a little--and the zombies are still beating against that door. All in all, our chances aren't very good.

The zombies could break in. Lucky could die and end up ripping my throat out with his teeth. We could freeze before the zombies do. When the zombies do freeze, we could be trapped behind several tons of frozen undead meat.

I close my eyes and nestle against Lucky in the dark. The thump of the zombies is our lullaby, the warmth of skin our blanket. I cannot see him in the dark, but I can feel him--and for now, he is still alive.

He makes a sound. I lean down and kiss him.

"Look as deep into that as you want," I tell him.

I fight the urge to sleep as long as I can.

~*~

I'm in the back seat again. The radio is playing 'I'll Be Home For Christmas'. Bing Crosby croons his heart out over soothing, melancholy violins.

Outside the windows, I see the snow is melting. Frozen zombies twitch and spasm, coming back to life. Survivors huddle together in the dark, staying close and warm.

"It's been a blast, Lucky-boy, but you're out of smokes and I'm out of time," dad says.

"Am I dying?"

"Probably."

Somehow, this doesn't bother me. I more or less expected it.

"Cassidy?"

"She'll be fine. Assuming you don't eat her once you go."

"No," I say. "Please--"

"Oh, stop whining, you twit. She's not stupid. Assuming she's awake when you go, she'll bash your head in. Maybe shell cry a little," he adds. "Women do that a lot. Cry, I mean."

"You're such a fucking asshole."

"I know, Lucky-boy. I know," he laughs.

The car is fading. The world is melting. I want to see who's driving--Cassidy? Jenny? Me?--but I'm so tired and my body is so heavy.

"Dad."

"What?"

"Why did you kill yourself? Really."

I know he can't tell me the truth. I know he's the product of my own raving psychosis. But I still want to know. Maybe I want to hear what I think. Maybe that's the only answer that really matters.

"Honestly?"

"Please."

"I mean, you want the real God honest truth here?"

"Come on."

"Serious, now?"

"Just fucking tell me."

He takes a drag. Smoke flows out from the cracks of his exposed teeth. "I did it because of your mom," he says, then adds: "I totally fucked her, you know. Your mom, I mean."

There is a long, wretched silence.

And then we both laugh like hell straight into oblivion.

~*~

PART 8: Epilogue

Grass pokes up from between patches of thawing snow. Deer are beginning to move about in the woods. Birds sing, dogs bark, squirrels gather acorns. All that good shit.

"Sam! Don't muzzle-sweep!" I snatch the gun by the barrel and gently draw it up. The girl blushes brilliantly beneath her copper red curls, looking sheepishly to the ground.

"Sorry, Miss O'Hara."

"It's fine. Just remember--"

"Never let your gun point at someone unless you intend to fire it," she recites. "Even if you're absolutely sure it's not loaded."

Several other children are gathered round, sitting about on their knees and watching intently. I show them everything: How to take a rifle apart, how to reassemble it, how to clean it, how to load it. And when I feel they're ready, how to fire it.

It's getting warmer, now, which is why we're doing this outside. As I talk, a few get distracted by the birds or the buzz of insects. I always lead them firmly back to the matter at hand. After all, this could save their life some day. In fact, I'm absolutely sure it will.

"The zombies are starting to thaw," I tell them. "Do you remember what that means?"

They nod. All at once, they pick up the chime, their voices matched in perfect unison: "If it's dead, aim for the head!"

I like that one. It rhymes.

Guns aren't the only thing I'm teaching them, of course. Eventually, bullets will run out; so they'll have to learn how to hunt with bows and arrows. Which means I have to learn how to hunt with bows and arrows. Have you ever tried to make your own arrows? Let me give you a tip: It's a pain in the ass.

Once we're done, the children pause to put flowers on the markers. Well, not quite--there aren't any flowers, not yet, so dandelions will have to do. But I'm sure their loved ones wouldn't mind.

There's one for every person who died that they want to remember. It was Doctor Rhodes' idea, actually. Surprised the hell out of me. Never figured him for much of a sentimentalist. But I think it really helps; it sure beats bottling it all up inside. There are no actual bodies beneath the graves, but that doesn't matter. We don't honor the dead for their sake; we do it for ours.

I have eleven. I'll spare the details, but there's one for just about everyone I can remember who helped get me here.

Every child stops to put a dandelion on one grave in particular. It's unique among the markers, because it's the only grave here that actually has a real body under it. Beneath this rock rests the body of a hero. A hero without whom none of this would ever have been possible. I drop down to my knees to add my own dandelion to the growing pile and pay my respects.

"I'm sorry."

I lower my head.

Then I sigh.

"Lucky..."

"What?"

I look up.

"I thought you said you were going to quit smoking."

Jack grins down at me, cradling the cigarette between his lips like it's a long lost lover. "Doc found a carton in one of his colleague's offices. I think I've earned myself one vice."

"What if you get lung cancer or something?"

"Oh, shit. Lung cancer? Oh, shit!" He flicks the cigarette out of his mouth, stamping on it frantically. "Die, you bastard! You dastardly little fucker! LUNG cancer?! I should have known!"

I stand up and smack him across the back of the head. "Wise-ass."

We get quiet for a little bit, looking down at Sybil's grave. She went quietly into the night, not long after Doctor Rhodes managed to blast us out of the room. You have not seen horrors until you have seen frozen zombie meat-chunks incinerated in a high-yield explosion.

"It's gonna get rough," Jack says. "Zoms'll be back this spring. Survivors too, maybe. Desperate ones."

"So we let them in."

"What if they're nasty?"

"Then we don't."

He grins. "That easy, huh?"

I grin back and take his hand into mine. "That easy."

We both know better. The world's a nasty place. It always was that way, but before shit met fan, you could always pretend otherwise. Now there's no pretending, no hiding. The nastiness is in your house, in your room, in your face--eating you while you scream.

That means some folks might get mean.

Jack and I have talked. About the future, about what we want, about what we plan to do. And, surprisingly enough, we both agree: We don't want to try and rebuild things. We don't want to reclaim the world we lost--if it was ever really ours to begin with.

It isn't that we're rejecting the old civilization. What is there to reject? All that's left are ashes and the undead. And it's not like this happened because civilization was ill-prepared. This isn't a cautionary tale. I mean, Jesus. Zombies? Who the hell could have seen that coming? Nuclear war, maybe. Global warming, sure. But zombies? What the fuck? Was God on acid or something?

No. We just want to bury our dead and move on. And society is dead. We don't want to try and dig up its corpse. Give it a headshot and lay the ghosts of human ambition to rest.

If you're looking for a moral to all this, look elsewhere. There are no catchy truths, no pithy phrases, no lessons learned. Shit met fan and the only thing we figured out was how to survive. And that's enough.

Because in the end, that's all you need to do. That's all you can do. Live a good, happy life, and look after those who matter to you. What else is there?

If we must learn something, let it be this: Life is nasty, so don't make it nastier. Also, if it's dead, aim for the head. There you go. There's your god-damn slogan. Go chisel it on a slab. Maybe someone will find it in a thousand years and give a flying fuck.

But otherwise? We'll learn to hunt. We'll learn to farm. We'll learn to be happy. We'll watch old movies in the projection room back in the bunker. We'll tell funny stories around a campfire. We'll welcome other survivors, so long as they don't make trouble.

We'll learn to live.

And if someone tries to stop us?

That's what the tanks are for.



~*~

fin