 
Kill-basa:

New Flavors in Zombie Fiction

By Sean E. Graham

Smashwords Edition

***

PUBLISHED BY:

Sean E. Graham on Smashwords

***

Kill-basa: New Flavors in Zombie Fiction

Copyright © 2011 by Sean E. Graham

***

Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the

copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for

commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage

your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also

discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

***

Cover image found on Flickr and attributed to We Love the Dark.

Complete cover created by Donna Casey.

*****

**Table of Contents**

They Rode Personal Transportation Vehicles

Lee's Decision

Ten Count

The Crick

*****

They Rode Personal Transportation Vehicles

Texas, 2018

A dog howled in the distance. Maybe it was a wolf.

Sam's stomach growled. He told himself it was a wolf.

He wanted it to be a wolf or a coyote or any damn thing that was not a dog because eating dogs was just wrong. Not wrong on any ethical or moral level, it was the apocalypse after all and he had given and received much worse. No, it was wrong the way a warm public toilet seat was wrong. It just wasn't cool. A good ole American boy who played baseball as a kid and won stuffed things at the county fair for his girlfriends wasn't supposed to eat dogs and public toilet seats weren't supposed to be warm. You wanted your dogs playing catch and your toilet seats nice and cold because you just didn't know whose strange, bare ass might have been on it only moments earlier, their shed pubics hiding just out of sight, yet no doubt touching you somewhere. But food was food and the whole world was a public toilet now and his stomach growled as the canine howled.

Sam stifled the pangs; food would have to wait. There were more pressing survival requirements at hand. He watched the walking dead guy in a suit work the door handle of a burnt-out hatchback twenty yards away that had been driven into the glass front of a mega-mall. The rusted door creaked on its hinges and the living corpse slid behind the wheel. He wasn't totally surprised by this and called it "regurgitated memory"—he'd seen it before. The brainless sack of meat would spend the next month trying to start the thing, turning an invisible key over and over, some distant part of his mind still clinging to the old life, the life before this one, before his first death. Sam once walked in on two undead dry humping in a supermarket, in the cereal aisle no less. He stood over them for a few seconds watching. They never noticed him. The woman moaned without emotion and clawed at the man's back tearing deep grooves in the man's rotting tissue. One shot from behind took them both in the head.

Sam watched. The undead guy did not try to start the car.

He reclined the seat, leaned back and closed his eyes. Brain hunting was hard work, no doubt, but a napping zombie? Sam crept around the other flash-fried vehicles, his bare feet screaming against the broken glass and blast-wrenched metal; the entire parking lot looked like a napalm testing ground. He stopped cold. The zombie's eyelid wiggled slightly, a jaundice yellow eye peered out, a crescent moon against the black decay of its flesh, and then it shut again. Disturbing.

It was playing dead.

Sam rushed the economy car, his naked manhood swaying with the effort. The most beautiful sound in the world echoed across the lot as he chambered a round in the Mossberg riot gun and leveled it as the dead suit, hearing Sam, spun on his hip and lunged from the car. The gun went off. The dead man died. His rotting Swiss cheese brains sprayed through the broken glass, across the tarmac and pale marble floors of the shopping mecca.

Normally he avoided places with mass appeal like this mall and stadiums and certainly hospitals, because they usually contained mass zombies, but daddy needed a new pair of shoes and a fresh banana hammock. Once on television he had seen that the Celtic barbarians fought in the nude to intimidate their foe. Glancing down, conscious of his vulnerability and the heavy presence of adrenaline in his system, he did not feel very intimidating and certainly didn't look it. He eyed the dead man's rags. Tempting, but he would rather be naked than undress this poor bastard. All it took was a single drop of infected blood or saliva in your system and you were a brainless moaner humping in a supermarket. Nakedness, although not his ideal state of being, was not deadly.

Staring at the dead thing before him Sam's shackles rose slightly as if a chill had blown through him; he had just witnessed cognizant, rational thought from the walking dead—not cool. It made eating Rover feel like you were wearing Robert Plant's shoes playing a gig at the Garden- only the coolest thing on earth. But insects, with their tiny minds, could manage predatory thought couldn't they? It didn't take much under the hood to manage that when you got right down to it. What he had seen wasn't much more than basic survival instinct; but, he argued with himself, on the zombie scale of intellect playing dead was far beyond instinct, it was rocket science. Unnerving indeed, but not worth much more thought. In the immortal words of his dead-twice dad, "It is what it is," and a twelve-gauge shell still put the smartest undead on their backs. When that stopped working, then he would worry.

He walked into the mall. His footfalls echoed throughout the cavernous structure. Two department stores and a specialty athletic shop later, he was still shoeless and dangling, with only his Army rucksack on his back, not surprisingly the place had been picked over thoroughly. Sam swallowed his pride and entered one of the trendier stores—the kind that sold fifty-dollar t-shirts and reeked of cologne so strong you could smell it from the damn Fruity Freeze two levels up—when he heard the whirring.

He quick-stepped behind a stand of broken mannequins with plastic hairdos so hip they could not possibly have been straight had they been real people and held his breath. Whirring generally meant machines, which excluded the undead but included his fellow survivors, some of whom were not so friendly, and absolutely and unfortunately _included_ the bloodthirsty Righteous Martinezes, who were definitely not friendly and wanted Sam's ass in a sling. The mental image made him shiver. He thought of Laura.

Sam waited behind the gay mannequins for the source of the noise.

His jaw dropped.

Rolling into view, weaving through the fake palms and abandoned kiosks, was a band of the walking dead, only they weren't walking. Still dressed in the shredded and bloodstained uniforms of mall security were half a dozen undead cruising two-wheeled personal transportation vehicles: Segways, eGOs, Tuvies and others. They were leaning forward, gray-white hands, without life but full of strength, wrapping the handlebars, gripping the go trigger, pushing the battery-powered vehicles hard in the direction Sam had come from, probably drawn by the gunfire. They buzzed by Sam, the lead mall zombie searching for motion, for food, panning one-hundred-eighty degrees in front of him. Half of his face was missing. Exposed ashen skull stood out in stark contrast to the blood caked flesh bearing side of his face like the man on the moon. As they passed the storefront, Sam slid in the opposite direction, staying close to the mannequins until they disappeared around the corner. A moment later they reappeared, gliding across the food court towards the east entrance and the sprayed brains of their recently fallen comrade.

"You've got to be shitting me," Sam whispered. It was time to get far away from this place, but the needs of his feet and other body parts came first. Ten minutes, no more. He was leaving naked or not. He darted into the store, ransacked the place and found a pair of retro canvas high-tops stuffed between a fitting bench and the wall, bloody fingerprints smeared across the soles, stashed for later by someone who wasn't coming back; unfortunately they were bright orange, but they looked like his size, so he pushed his shredded feet into them. Two steps later he was crying for his boots again, his perfectly worn and balanced steel-toes, but they were ancient history, spilled milk.

A curtain still hung from a dressing-room doorway; heavy canvas material sure to chafe the swinging nether regions, but what choice did he have. He yanked it down, cut a slit across the middle and dropped it over his head, ripped an inch-wide strip off it lengthwise and wrapped himself like a belt around the waist and slung his pack over his shoulders. He looked like a Roman centurion without the armor, which would have been cool if it had been the first century, but it wasn't so he just looked like an idiot in a homemade smock-dress ensemble. He pulled his service knife, his lucky knife from his pack, cut a slit in his new, shitty kimono and tucked the knife inside where it was nice and accessible. He left the store heading west away from the road warriors.

Sound immediately behind him. Whrrrrr.

Sam kicked into a trot.

WHRRRRR ...Louder. Closer.

Sam turned to see the PTV riders blazing a trail straight for him. Sam's trot vanished into a full sprint. Movement from his peripheral, to his right. Two more zombies riding electric vehicles. Sam cut to the left and was faced down by a muumuu-wearing double amputee in a handicap scooter. Two severed legs stuck out from the scooter's front-mounted shopping basket like loaves of French bread. The fat woman looked like a Weeble-Wobble on the seat. She tried to growl, but her jaw slipped from its hinge pulling a pulpy cheek with it. In a goopy mass it all plopped to the floor with a splat. Undeterred, she gunned the scooter, running over her own jaw as Sam leveled the shotgun and did her the favor of blowing the rest of her face off. The undead muumuu-wearer rolled off the back as the scooter veered right.

WHRRRRR ... From somewhere else and closing.

Scrambling, Sam ran towards the wide entrance to a department store, stumbled, fell, skidded across the tile and crawled several feet before diving behind a cash register station.

The whirring passed him like a swarm of bees.

Deep breath. Count to ten. Ammo check. Sitting back to the register, Sam opened his pack. Ten rounds left, which really meant nine because of the eater. The Mossberg held twelve rounds. Sam loaded the nine rounds and paused at the tenth. Across the red plastic casing the word EATER was written in black marker. When the rubber met the road he would not end up as the walking dead; he would eat the last round. He kissed the brass cap and slid it into the chamber.

*

The flies hung over Salvation Town like smog. From the overpass that encircled the still-life community like a concrete serpent, Manuel Martinez gazed through binoculars out across his gift to man and God. Men, women and children stood frozen in time in this decimated section of American suburbia. Playing in a yard of brown, brittle grass were several children, their lifeless limbs held in place by sticks and other random objects. One boy, decaying badly, bullet wounds across his chest, was helping another to his feet. A stick broken in a Y and stuck in the ground held one arm up. The other arm was pierced, run through by a second stick; the decaying muscle held on a knot in the wood. Two girls sat limp behind a lemonade stand—"five cents a cup," a sign said. Manuel had painted the sign himself. He thought it added a touch of sincerity. Their arms were wrapped around each other's shoulders, holding them in their seats. Several other kids played hopscotch along the sidewalk. Broomsticks and branches held them upright. Manuel frowned when he saw that a young man helping an elderly woman had lost his head. It lay on the asphalt a few feet away from its owner.

His smile returned, however, as he thought of the time that had passed since he'd first posed the boy, plenty of time for God to have seen the boy's good deed. The child had been caught stealing from their camp and had been shot by one of Manuel's many nephews. Like so many others, there had been no time to save his soul; his last act had been one of sin, and so the child would be sentenced to an eternity of damnation and suffering at the hands of demonic aberrations. Intolerable.

Manuel took it upon himself to save the world's heinous sinners by casting them in a final, eternal pose, one that reflected an act of righteousness so that God's last impression of these poor souls was one of good and not evil, innocence and peace with the world, thus allowing them to enter heaven. Manuel was a saint, not just in his own mind, but also in the minds of his family and their ever-growing clan. It didn't matter that many of these "saved" met their ends unnecessarily at the hands of the Martinez clan. The killing was justified and all in the name of the clan's survival, which God had ordained and revealed to Manuel in a vision not long after the dead began to rise and he had popped several pills and killed his wife with a hammer. What mattered was that, although their bodies were murderously sent back to the ashes from whence they'd come, their souls were saved. Deceased, both pure and undead alike, became residents of Salvation Town, hundreds now, all saved by Manuel's vision and righteousness... and ruthlessness.

"Tio, we should go. Losing light," Roberto said to his uncle. Behind him were twenty well-armed men on motorcycles and four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles. Manuel nodded to his nephew and pressed the ignition button on his off-road motorcycle. It roared to life. He took a final look through the binoculars at a beautiful girl in her twenties, her head hidden by a burlap hood. Dark, dried blood from beneath the hood stained her frilly white blouse. Black smudges, roaches and beetles Manuel knew, clung to the blouse, their tiny proboscis probing the blood.

Hanging by chains from a tree, she stood suspended in the act of baptizing a plastic baby doll; bolts through her palms and hooks in her back held her upright. Baptisms were sacred and reserved for family, blood. Baptisms were special, guaranteed to wash away any lingering sin the living may have carried into death. Six of Manuel's cousins, nieces and nephews, and now one daughter lived in Salvation Town, all performing baptisms on baby dolls and a few actual dead babies. Next to Laura, a pair of boots dangled from the tree as a placeholder for Salvation Town's next resident.

Manuel repressed tears for his daughter and channeled his loss into pain and that pain into anger, which inevitably led to thoughts of the coward and deflowering prick Sam Rogan. His anger would soon be satiated, however. Manuel had received word by carrier dog that Rogan was in Beaumont and doing a little shopping.

"To the mall!" he said.

The Righteous Martinezes sped down the expressway, winding through a chaos of ravaged vehicles amidst a buzz saw of engine noise, noise that ushered in the rumbling of a storm. Black clouds rolled over the sky behind them like a pool cover in a suburban fall, erasing the fading sun inch by inch.

Lightning danced amidst the dark billows.

The day before all that...

Laura stepped through the crumbling cinderblock wall and sat down next to the pump. Moonlight poured over the well house, casting everything in a pale green glow. The roof had caved in years ago; the walls that remained were stunted and begging to collapse. A bullet pocked sign read City of Beaumont- No Trespassing. That one always made her laugh. If the sign maker could see this place now.

In the event electrical power was not available, the City of Beaumont apparently maintained an emergency bleed off pump, which plumbed into the underground reservoir. She placed the plastic water jug under the spigot and began to work the pump by hand. She wasn't thirsty, didn't need water at all really. She was just fishing, fishing for a rise. Her father would be furious if he knew she had come alone to the water pump and at night adding insult to injury. She could have gone to any number of off limits and forbidden areas, but here within the patrolled parameter she was likely to be seen- caught red handed in the act of blatant disobedience.

The well house was a magnet for the walking dead. The early debate over whether or not the undead could smell was decided by the blood of the unwary. Over the years, the undead began to associate certain smells with the living. Burning flesh was the biggest draw, but after the Great Conflagration subsided, burning flesh was not found in the quantities necessary to draw the beasts in; there simply wasn't enough left to burn at this point.

Fresh water was next on the list. They could smell it like cattle and so it was not uncommon for a traveler to stumble upon herds of the walking dead meandering aimlessly around a water source, waiting for a living meal. The primary Martinez well, The Lord's Well, was back at the citadel. This well house, Michael's Well, named after the archangel and a smaller producer than The Lord's, was an outlier, a backup or supplementary source of water for the clan and was swept daily by armed men and was generally considered safe, but Papi would be angry none the less because he had forbade it and for no other reason.

She didn't know why, but she liked disobeying her father. Laura was twenty. The fact that she could openly defy a man who struck fear in the hearts of most others sparked her. She enjoyed manipulation, working men, especially her father like clay, the more public the better. If he said right, she went left. If he said jump, she said no. And got away with it. She thought she might tell him of her nighttime tryst to the well in front of the next clan council just to see him squirm. He would publicly threaten to beat her, make a show of it and then do nothing at all.

Sound behind her. Movement. Gravel sliding across sliding down the surrounding embankment of rubble.

She spun and drew her pistol in a single, clean motion. An ambling silhouette appeared through a gap in the wall and she fired. The trespasser screamed rather than moaned, stumbled backwards and fell into the brush outlying the well.

"Shit!"

Laura screamed herself, in shock, and ran towards her victim. Who the hell had she shot? She rushed past the wall and found ... nothing. She panned and ducked. Her eardrums exploded as a muzzle flash lit the night. Liquid sprayed her shoulders and head and behind her a body thumped to the ground. She froze, unsure of where the real attack was coming from, as two more blasts went off and the shooter stepped into the moonlight.

He was tall, handsome sort of, and bleeding from a groove across his jaw. He threw the shotgun over his shoulder by its strap and drew an aluminum bat from his back like Badass the Barbarian.

Somewhere in the distance engines revved. It registered distantly with both of them, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

"Oh, now no shooting?" he said, walking past her.

Laura turned and watched the man wade through three more zombies. They came at him, arms outstretched, moaning their hungry moan, and he cracked their skulls like melons. The gravity dial was pegged and the bone sacks dropped hard to the ground. Badass turned to Laura and held the bat up, black gore clinging to the metal.

"I enjoy bats a great deal." And he winked at her.

"Are you crazy!" she screamed at him. "I almost killed you." He was cute.

"You're welcome," he said, wiping his bat off on the torn trouser of the undead. She was cute.

"Welcome?" she was indignant, "I was only in danger because of you," she snapped, a thick-ish Latin accent tingeing her words.

Sam liked accents and reconsidered his position. The chick was actually more than cute. Before the dead started walking she would have been considered good looking; a six on Sam's hot scale, which was respectable, considering Heidi Klum was an eight and a nine was, let's be realistic, unobtainable without airbrushing and even then ... eh. And a ten? Forget about it. There was only one ten out there, one ten ever to walk the earth, a single woman by which all others were measured, but she was gone now. Radiation and a lack of running water had shifted his scale dramatically; this chick was definitely a high seven or maybe even an eight on the new measuring stick, and that would do just fine.

Sam holstered the bat over his back and held his hand out. "Listen, I'm sorry—just edgy. Mind if we start over?" He wiped blood off his jaw from where he had been etched by her gunfire.

He was a little more than cute, Laura thought, maybe a five on the prewar scale, but selfless, and that was an uncommon characteristic pre- or postwar. Brave too, but lots of people were brave...and stupid. She eyed him sternly, then stuck out a hand. "Laura." It sounded like Louh-r-r-r-ah, with four or five R's, and he liked that. Liked that a lot. "Sorry for the..." She motioned at the wound along his jaw, "Are you okay?"

"Sam. And yes. Merely a flesh wound," he joked, borrowing a line from his favorite movie of old, but she wasn't laughing. And he realized why as the distinct cold touch of steel pressed the back of his neck. Circular, not sharp. Not a blade. A gun barrel. His hands drifted into the air. "Easy ..." he said to the unseen gunman.

Laura pushed Sam aside with bravado and began spouting off something in Spanish. Sam was fluent in Spanish. Well, he had gotten shit-faced in Juarez a number of times, and so he could pick out about every fourth word. She was pissed. Sam turned, still easy like, and saw a troop of shabby but heavily armed men behind him and lingering in the trees like dark-skinned, mustached forest sprites packing heat. Laura was pushing back the rifle holder, who also looked pissed, but he retreated nonetheless.

She turned back to Sam. "This is _mi primo_ , Roberto." Again with the multiple R's. Sam's loins stirred despite the possibility of death in the very near term. Roberto nodded his chin sharply in the universal silent man greeting, then said something in Spanish to the boys, who laughed. Roberto's face looked like a square foot of earth at the bottom of Death Valley; dry, cracked and peeling. Large, quarter sized flakes of skin hung from his cheeks. Underneath them fresh, pink skin struggled to grow.

Laura jammed her hands to her hips with some attitude, rolled her eyes at the psoriasis victim that was her cousin and then looked at Sam. "You should stay with us tonight; eat, get cleaned up. It's safer." Then her eyebrows rose. "Then leave in the morning, yes."

Sam wasn't sure if that was a question or instruction, but it sounded good either way—some hot grub, a bath, maybe even a sponge bath; you had to keep dreaming, even in the apocalypse.

"Thanks." He did want to smash Roberto's nose in, though, for aiming a gun at him and on general principle, but Bobby was a big son of a bitch and Sam was outnumbered. The sprites would gang-whip his ass before Roberto's unconscious head hit the ground. Maybe later.

They walked for nearly a mile and into a clearing where half a dozen dirt bikes were parked. The men saddled up and Laura threw her leg over one of the rides and motioned with a jerk of her head for Sam to get on.

"How 'bout you let me drive, sweetheart. I'll go slow so you can hang on." He wasn't much for riding bitch, and behind a woman on top of it.

"Suit yourself." She pointed into the woods. "Hot food is ten miles that way. Tell the sentry Laura sent you." And she keyed the ignition.

He rode bitch.

But he refused to hold Laura around the waist, doing his best to grip the bike with his legs and almost paid for his pride with a face plant at thirty miles per hour more than once.

They drove into the woods following no road Sam could see, but it was apparent they knew the route. Gradually a shantytown began to emerge from the rubble and trees. Shelters built from whatever could be salvaged—tin, wood, brick, even tires—sprouted up from the earth. Sam felt eyes watching him from the dark doorways. The shantytown grew thicker until they came to a large, solid metal gate. The group pulled to a stop. Extending from the gate in both directions was a massive wall of rubble twenty feet high. Roberto whistled something that sounded like a bird, a similar-sounding response came from somewhere in the darkness and Roberto whistled again.

An engine cranked up and the gate, which was actually a bus sheathed in steel siding, rolled back. More swarthy gentlemen stood inside, weapons drawn, and the band drove in quickly. Sam was shoved, almost slipped from the bike, and a woman who was not part of their group bolted past them on foot.

"Please!" she shouted and ran at the men inside. They opened fire on her and she fell forward into the dirt like a ten-point buck. One of the sentries walked up to her and put one in her head before the others dragged her rag covered body away from the wall and off the road. It was rough and indifferent, the way nature is rough and indifferent, but nothing Sam had not seen before. The days of burying the dead were gone. Now only the loved were buried and this woman was getting none from these men. Sam shrugged inwardly. Even now in this hellish world there were tiers of society, a hierarchy and a distinct line had been drawn, by a steel-plated bus in this case, between the Haves and the Have-Nots. He pitied the woman, but Sam was glad to be sided with the Haves for a change. He needed a bath.

Laura, without turning, said, "It's a necessity; an iron fist. We'd be overrun otherwise." The bus rolled shut behind them as more people emerged from the darkness of the shantytown. More sporadic gunshots and the night was still again. They wound through an arrangement of walls that Sam realized was a light and sound baffle. Rounding the last wall in the miniature labyrinth was like flipping a switch. Gas torches spilled light across a courtyard reminiscent of Main Street America where people walked freely among the various buildings laughing and talking, buying and trading wares and ... drinking. The familiar scent of hooch filled the air and Sam's liquor vault, a beloved hidey-hole in his anatomy that stored the copious amounts of alcohol he drank before the elixir was all but gone, grumbled.

At the center of the bustle was a modern gas station, complete with great white awning and cardboard cutouts of models holding beer cans. The riders guided their bikes to the pumps as children appeared from the ether and began refueling the vehicles. A fleet of off-road vehicles, combat ready, rested behind the station. Generators hummed like crickets and strings of electric lighting lined the walkways and building fronts. Compact disc players played. DVD's and recorded video were watched on fractured televisions.

"Unbelievable," Sam said. "I haven't seen a working station in a long time, a real long time." Laura said nothing. "What is this place?" he said almost to himself. Laura answered.

"Father named it El Olympus. He says its humanity's last stand against Hell's ever-encroaching abominations."

"Ever encroaching abominations? Interesting," Sam said as a mariachi band wearing Mexican Death masks of elaborate skulls played traditional tunes heavy on the accordion.

"You need to meet Father, and then I will show you to your room," Laura said. "Everyone meets Father."

They walked through the crowd and the armed men began falling away one by one until it was only Laura and Sam and Roberto heading up a wide set of stairs towards the second floor of a dilapidated office building. The stairs ended at a landing where five men and women were kneeling. Burlap sacks covered their heads and their hands were bound behind them to their ankles.

"What the fuck?" Sam said, honestly confused over the spectacle and concerned for the hooded and bound, but for himself as well. He was concerned for their safety, their rights as fellow men, their...ahhh fuck it. He didn't want to end up bound and hooded himself, that was the short of it, because the next step in that process was never a good one. You never went from hooded to bound to happy unless you were paying good money for it.

" _Criminales_ ," Roberto said grinning and leaned towards Sam noticing his interest in the bound peoples. " _Intrusos_." A little bit of spit landed on Sam's lip. A flake of skin slipped from his face and drifted to earth like a fallen leaf.

"You dropped something, douche." He felt the comforting weight of his blade inside his dress. It called to him. It wanted blood.

Roberto lunged at Sam and the two spun. Sam bunched up the big boy's shirt, pulled him close, his fingertips brushed his blade handle.

"Stop it! _Parelo_!" Laura yelled and stepped between them. "He saved my life, Roberto."

Roberto stepped back as both men pushed off from each other. "Punkassbitch." For Roberto it was a single word.

"Douche bag," he said to Roberto. The two alphas puffed up again; fighting cocks just waiting to be set free to rip each other apart with steel spikes.

"Stop it!" Laura said.

Laura pushed through a section of wall next to the door and stepped in, followed by Roberto. Sam stared at the glass door that had once been the entrance to the floor from the elevator lobby. Squinting through the dark tint, he saw that it had been bricked over from the inside.

"Coming?" Laura snapped, poking her head around the hidden door. Sam stepped inside and heard Laura ask something in Spanish. A voice from the darkness said in English, "Studio." Thick incense filled the air, assaulted the air.

Sam took a last look at the criminals and questioned his sanity as he followed the cousins inside. At this point he was committed anyway. A dash for the gate now would only get him a bullet in the back. They walked through a maze of office cubicles, and again Sam was struck with the feeling of being watched from inside the tiny caves that once housed paisley-tied salarymen pounding away at keyboards searching for the bottom line. That was never his thing—even before the wars, before the Army, he liked working with his hands, liked getting dirty, liked the wet work and was good at it too.

They left the maze, passed through another hall and stepped into a giant open area that could have been a conference room once upon a time. An intense array of torches lit the center of the space, where a lean man, shirtless wearing something like a cloth diaper, was dancing. He held a palette of paints and periodically dabbed with a brush here and there across the face of a mannequin that stood in front of him. Sticks of sweet-smelling incense, like some flower or fresh laundry or some other crap Sam would usually have nowhere near him, circled the area.

"Aye Papi!" Laura shouted and ran to the dancing man. He stopped, staggered a little with the momentum shift, then dropped his palette and the two embraced. Roberto walked into the light and hugged the painter in turn. Sam followed hesitantly, truly feeling like an interloper, an _intrusos_ , as douche bag had put it. He hoped there wasn't a burlap sack somewhere with his name on it.

When Father saw him he disengaged abruptly from the family hug and stared daggers at Sam. He was old and lined, but had muscles like petrified oak. His long black hair was streaked with gray and had feathers and beads braided in. He looked like the love child of Sitting Bull and the lead singer of Aerosmith.

" _Quien es_?" he said. Sam knew that one.

"Rogan, Sam Rogan. Thank you for your hospitality." Sam stepped towards the man with an extended hand. Father looked at the hand and then at his children. Laura said something; judging by her hand gestures, she was explaining the episode at the water hole. Roberto jumped in, started ratting on his cousin in English, then switched to Spanish and probably made up some shit. The old man listened and they engaged in some sort of spat that Laura clearly won. When it was finished he walked around Sam, inspecting him. Sam dropped his unanswered hand.

"He is not one of us," he said in heavily accented English. Again, Sam wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement or whether it was directed at him or at one of the others. Laura stepped in before he could make a mistake, and for this he was glad. He had the distinct feeling that his future was on the line and his hours old relationship with Laura may not be enough to detour fate.

"No," Laura said.

"But is he a believer?" Father said. No one stepped in this time, and the man moved to meet Sam's eyes.

"Of course," Sam said, not knowing what he was a believer in, but knowing that he needed to be. His life depended on it. He searched Laura's eyes for direction. Roberto blew Sam a silent kiss and pulled his own knife from his belt. He pulled his thumb across the blade sideways, testing the sharpness, and smiled in anticipation. The big leper wanted to kill Sam, but Sam was pretty sure he wanted to kill him more. Having a gun to his neck wasn't something he took lightly. He'd taken life over less. Laura had pulled a gun on him, shot him even, but she enjoyed a chromosomal bonus that Sam had not partook of in a long time and hoped to eventually enjoy, and so could be forgiven. Roberto carried no such bonus.

"In the one true, almighty God?" Papi said. Sam hesitated. That was pretty damn vague. Gods, demigods and deities of every flavor sprouted like mushrooms in a dark shit storm after the wars, every one of them touted by a self-proclaimed prophet complete with visions and visitations. Sam crossed a holy man in Texas who ate babies in order to save them from the undead. Said God wanted him to do it and wanted Sam to help him. Sam did; helped him straight to Hell. With his service blade Sam slit him from hipbone to hipbone and helped his intestines onto the hardpan and left him in the Arizona desert to roast.

"Oh, Papi, your work looks better than ever," Laura said, stepping in again, temporarily halting the downhill slide. She motioned towards the mannequin. It wore a priest's robe and white collar its face was painted like a clown. Father looked at Sam for a moment longer before acknowledging Laura. His gaze was seeking, icy.

"Sí, it is coming along nicely. His soul will rest in heaven now," Papi said.

At that point Sam realized that it was not a mannequin Papi painted. It was the cold corpse of a man, his arms and body held upright by steel rods run through his limbs just under the skin and protruding from his flesh at the wrists, elbows, neck. Blood, not paint, pooled around his feet.

"The people you saw outside, they were not believers, Sam Rogan," Papi said, "but they will go to heaven despite themselves because of the good work we are doing here at Olympus. To think of them tormented in Hell pains me like an allergy of the soul."

Sam doubted that. This guy was allergic to other's pain and suffering like Sam had been allergic to heroin before the fall. Lucky for Sam nuclear holocaust proved to be one hell of an interventionist.

"They were interlopers like you," Roberto said.

"Yeah, you mentioned that already..." Sam started. The air bristled with their tension.

" _Cerrado_!" Father snapped and Roberto recoiled slightly. Sam saw where Laura and D-Bag got their hot blood. "So, I ask again Sam Rogan, are you a believer?"

"Of course I'm a believer. I believe....Sure, I believe." He sure as shit believed. He was a fanatic and would be until he could wipe the dust of this place from his shoes. "The one, true God." He would figure out who that was, who Papi's version of that was, as he went. There was a part of Sam that did believe in the God of his youth, but it was the child in him secluded and hidden away from the horrors of war and the hell of present day. Sam could not afford to let that part of him come out from hiding, not yet, maybe not ever. It would destroy him. This world would eat that Sam alive in seconds.

Laura walked over and put her arm around Sam's waist. "See, Papi, he is one of us. He saved my life." A shocked look appeared on her father's face. More Spanish, rapid and heated, then silence. Her father stared at her and she pursed her lips and dropped her head and looked at him from beneath her bangs. "Pleeeease ..."

Feeling like a homeless puppy, Sam looked at her, trying to place her shifts in persona. He saw something he had not seen earlier in the night when she appeared to be an independent, self-possessed woman. He remembered her eyes a moment ago when she saw the mannequin that had once been a living man, and then it hit Sam, dropped on him like a grand piano from the third floor. He looked to the ceiling and asked the heavens, why? Why couldn't there be a hot chick in his life who wasn't ape crazy, just once? Was that too much to ask? He thought of the others, the prewar "relationships," and shook his head: the Jennys, the Maggies, even Emily, all nuttier than chunky circus elephant shit. Could hot and sane not occupy the same space-time slot simultaneously when it came to Sam Rogan's love life? Did it violate some unspoken law of nature?

Laura's father eyed the couple and stuck out his hand. "Of course. How silly of me. You saved the life of my only daughter. I am in your debt. My name is Manuel. Welcome. We are the Righteous Martinezes, God's own. And while you are here, you are one of us." Laura ran to him and they hugged again. Roberto kicked a small can of paint across the floor. "But stay away from her—stay away, ah." He wagged his finger at Laura then pointed it solidly at Sam. "Touch her and I will gut you." Manuel poked Sam in the belly button and drew his finger slowly up his chest to his larynx, then tapped him on the nose and laughed. Sam didn't laugh.

" _Sí, sí_ , Papi." Laura was pulling Sam away by the hand back down the hall. It seemed hot Latin blood wasn't the only thing that ran in the family. Big ole, fat crazy apples didn't fall far from the tree either. Outside she skipped like a schoolgirl, her jet black hair bouncing like a horse's mane and Sam tried hard to follow, but he wasn't about to skip. Back down the steps and through the crowds to The Hacienda, the town hostel. A sweaty fat man wearing too few clothes sat behind the counter swatting flies with a rolled-up newspaper. His nipples looked like burnt silver dollar pancakes behind his sweat soaked wife-beater undershirt that he wore fashionably as an over shirt. His gut, nauseating considering its girth, slipped out from under the small shirt and hung over his waist line. His belly button was like an empty eye socket. Three long hairs grew from around his naval. They were stuck to his belly with sweat. Nasty.

"You can stay here." She glared at him and rolled her eyes; daddy's little girl was gone again and the hard bitch, the ball buster, the sexy one if he was being honest, that shot first and asked questions later, was back. Sam exhaled deeply while the man broke from fly-killing to watch Laura leave. Fatty McNipples shook his head and made a tisk-tisk sound with his tongue and teeth that told Sam he had screwed the pooch again and not in a good way this time.

*

Laura saw the dislike for the gringo in her father's eyes; it sat like a stagnant cesspool just behind the iris and made her want the asshole white boy mucho bad. She was surprised that Papi caved so quickly, but she had turned it on thick, even pursed her lips, so the old man had little chance. She knew he would crater in the end. But his nature would not be thwarted so easily. Papi had to have the last word, had to issue the dramatic warning. He said stay away and so here she was; it was that simple. If Rogan were gutted because of it, so be it. Laura's guts would remain firmly in place and she would carve another notch in the win column.

She knocked on the strange _guero's_ door and waited. Downstairs, Nipples the clerk pretended to be asleep; the two cans of beer she'd placed behind the counter as payment would guarantee that he stayed that way for a while, but it wasn't enough to keep him quiet forever. He would cave, fearing for his own life, and tell one of Roberto's thugs. She hoped they would catch them in an unspeakable act of passion. She wanted to see the anger and disappointment in her father's eyes and the shamed arousal in the others who would undoubtedly accompany him, guns drawn.

The unmistakable slide-click of a shotgun chambering a round reverberated through the thin walls from inside the room.

"Who is it?" said the _gringo_.

"Laura," she said, with eighteen R's this time. The door opened as if propelled by the rolling letters, and Sam stood in the doorway in his boxers and boots, his comfortable, perfectly worn boots. Behind him the rat-trap of a room was aglow in the light of a single, bare bulb swinging from the ceiling.

"Your daddy's going to kill me ... and you too probably." He said it, but he didn't care. He wanted it and knew she did too. He'd worry about the consequences later. Why change a lifelong strategy now?

Their eyes entangled and she pushed him inside and they began to kiss. He let her drive him back into the room and they fell onto the horrifyingly filthy mattress. She pushed off his boots with her feet and they hit the floor like the starting gun at the Preakness and it was on. They went at it like dirty animals, daddy be damned, Sam taking full advantage of their chromosomal differences. She cooed and purred so continuously that he thought for a second she might be making love while he was just having him some sex and he was scared, but it had been a long time for Sam and in minutes they were finished and it didn't matter. She pulled a plastic ringed sixer of beers from somewhere within her crumpled clothes. He hadn't seen a beer in years. They drank, talked a bit about nothing much and went at it again, and this time, the beer on his brain, Sam thought he was making love. He might have even cooed once although he'd never cop to it. After finishing the second round in a crescendo of ecstasy that Nipples downstairs could not ignore, they slept.

When the door kicked in some time in the early morning, wood shattering like a burst of firecrackers, Sam woke, his training took over and he rolled instinctively to his right behind Laura who, not honed by years of military service, sat straight up, wide-eyed like a deer blinking her eyes at a pair of on-coming headlights. On Darwin's list she would not have been high. The invader, just a dark silhouette backlit by the flickering lights of hallway sconces, emptied a revolver into the room. Half a dozen rounds peppered the room missing all flesh. Two rounds however, struck Laura in the chest and she fell back over Sam with a grunt. He had his shotgun now and pumped a round into the gunman, who rapidly exited the doorway, leaving his viscera on the floor as a parting gift.

More shadows in the hall, another person in the door, and another. More bullets, the room was alive with lead and smoke and fragments of everything as the place was pulverized. Sam rolled to his feet firing. Bodies dropped in the hall as he grabbed his pack and dove out the window with a school of swimming, seeking lead chasing him like semen. His clothes, boots and bat lay in a heap behind him, material casualties of war.

He hit the ground hard, his pack between him and the ground, rolled and took to his feet running. He was between the hostel's back wall and the outer wall of the compound running towards the front of the hostel. A pile of tires cascaded partially up the wall, and he climbed them and leapt upward, catching the edge of the wall with his fingers. He pulled himself up, scraping his exposed junk, and threw himself over the outer barrier of rubble, then hauled ass through the surrounding shantytown and into the woods.

Manuel "Papi" Martinez stood over his daughter's lifeless body and white-knuckled a large-caliber pistol. Lackeys stood behind him not saying a word. He would have killed the idiot who had shot her, but he was already dead. His last act in life was the murder of an innocent, the innocent, and it would stay that way. There was no room in Salvation Town for the killer of daughters. He was bound for Hell, family or not.

"We'll get 'em, _tio_ ," Roberto said and left the man to do his terrible work. He ushered the other men out and they saddled up and sped off through the bus gate on their iron horses.

Manuel cocked the hammer on the pistol, knelt next to his little girl and aimed the pistol. He screamed. The shot rang out across the god-fearing citadel like the trumpets of angels.

Meanwhile, back at the mall...

He had fallen asleep.

A hushed electrical hum woke him, washed over him. Whirrrr ... Stop. Whirr. Crash. An empty clothes rack toppled to the floor. Whirr ... the high pitch of squeaking brakes. A slow moan escalating to a frustrated growl.

Sam wasn't sure how long he had been behind the register station. Over the years he had taught himself to sleep anywhere; in the rain, in trenches while enemy fire rained over him, and directly under noses. He had once napped, while awaiting his cue to unleash all sorts of Hell, less than ten feet from Taliban sentries. Their sour body odor seeped into his mind giving him fitful dreams as he slept.

All he knew now was that he hadn't peed in an eternity and his back teeth were floating. The ceaseless whirring again, and he was pretty sure it was louder; not louder as in a single motor was closer to him or off in the mall pushing more RPMs. Louder as in there were more of them.

How could they operate machines? The undead walked into walls, fell up stairs, even bit themselves in the confusion of a frenzied feed. They didn't drive personal transportation vehicles.

Something had to give. Nature was calling and the zombies clearly were not leaving. Sam risked a peek over the counter, looked for the department store exit and ducked back down. Not good. The door he had spied before resigning to a sit-in had been clear before he fell asleep. The plan was to wait them out and walk on out of here, but that wasn't going to work for two reasons: one, these undead weren't going to be waited out; and two, the damn door was barricaded ... from the outside. There wasn't a house or business in the world that was still standing that wasn't barricaded from the inside—survivors' desperate attempts to keep the undead and living marauders alike outside—but these doors were blocked with debris from the outside. Automotive and other wreckage were pressed against the doors. Sam was caged.

Another peek. Four zombies were running figure eights in the food court outside of the department store. Another group was riding in V formation—the mall's very own Blue Angels; two- and three-wheeled personal transportation vehicles all blazing a hot trail across the glossy floors. He rotated in a low three-sixty and, seeing a few slow walkers lumbering throughout the store but no riders in his immediate vicinity, he decided the time was now. New plan: first, he needed not to die. Without executing that perfectly the rest of the plan would not progress smoothly. Second, while he was not dying he would combat-crawl to the escalators and slip downstairs. The riders would have a hard time with that one and the walkers wouldn't fare much better. From there he would split skulls until he saw daylight. It was a good plan, solid.

Eh, it sucked, but he had nothing else.

He got to his knees, whipped his manhood out from the curtain smock and urinated onto the floor, then repackaged himself and began crawling at pace. Already he could hear the grunts of awareness; the undead did love the sweet, sweet smell of fresh piss.

From the ground Sam could see the rotting feet heading toward the register as he headed away towards the escalator. Cries of angry frustration echoed through the cavernous store as the zombies tried to eat the urine-soaked carpet and Sam hit the motionless escalator and started to belly-slide down it like Dali's idea of a slip-n-slide. He was halfway to the bottom when he heard the humming of small motors again.

Sam looked back and saw the V-formation troop at the top, lined up, salivating, conscious, seething anger in their eyes. They teetered on the edge of the first step, contemplating their chances of success. Sam had seen a zombie trip six times on a single step before. His escape plan was based on the inability of the undead to navigate the complexity of stair technology. Sam's rectum tightened when the lead vehicle dropped off the first step, wobbled, then righted itself and dropped to the second. The two-wheeled personal transportation vehicles were perfectly suited for step travel, it seemed, and the undead began dropping easily from step to step one after another.

Drop. Wobble. Groan. Drop.

Sam pushed up and tried to run, but when he stopped his rucksack strap had slid into the groove between the steps and the escalator wall and was now caught by its buckle.

Drop. Wobble. Whir.

The lead zombie, the half-skeletal faced mall cop he had seen earlier, with a chest of medals for god only knew what mall bravery and a blood stained name tag that said Archie, was feeling cocky and pressed the accelerator. He started taking two steps at a time, catching small air between them. The others, learning from example, gunned their machines and soon they were all traveling fast towards Sam. He tried to roll out of his pack, but only succeeded in tightening the curtain dress like a Chinese finger trap around his body and pulling himself closer to the wall. He tried for the shotgun, but could not pull it free. The holster and shoulder strap was wrapped among the pack and his dress. He thought of the Eater. So much for good intentions.

A loud hiss-bang sounded overhead. Sparks flew. The lights came on.

The escalator kicked on as the rotting mall cop dropped down the remaining steps that separated him from Sam and the movement threw the wheels of the PTV forward, dropping the dead thing backwards onto his fat mall cop ass. Sam's pack was let go in the movement, and he rolled, stood and ran as the other riders crashed down the moving stairs and into their leader.

He took the steps in leaps and hit the floor running. More shamblers in the corner of his eye to his right. He was bolting for the mall's main south entrance opposite where he'd entered the consumer death trap when he saw it. This entrance was the same wall of glass as the north end, but this side was still intact, virtually unblemished. There were kiosks, empty and wrecked, and a kid's mini-carousel that was also running now, the horses and dragons and unicorns all spinning and bobbing, and to one side was a row of electric rental scooters locked in place along a guide rail.

A horde of undead milled around the machines, and near the base where coins were deposited one zombie in Bermuda shorts had an arm jammed in the transformer box that kept the scooters charged and pushed them down the guide rail as they were rented. Smoke was chugging from his ears and his eyes bulged. Just when it looked like his head was going to explode, he wrenched his arm free and staggered from the crowd. Immediately another thrust an arm inside the box and another, and soon a swarm of undead began vibrating with the current, moving like rednecks dancing to the latest hip-hop beat.

This place still had electricity, but how? The grid was down hard, everywhere, worldwide as far as he knew, but places like this would have a generator, wouldn't they? Sure, a few thousand mothers toting screaming kids dropping serious coin and the power goes out because of a lightning strike or some damn idiot drunk driver takes out a pole down the block—not happening. A revenue cow like this would be backed up every bit as much as a hospital. Every minute in the dark was thousands of dollars lost. Most generators had been damaged in the war or been stolen or destroyed postwar out of spite by those who couldn't get them working again, but this one had gone unnoticed.

Bermuda Shorts' eyes settled back in his skull and he walked in circles for a moment then pulled a scooter from the rack and throttled it. It whirred like Hell's piglet and he shot from the pen, a clear awareness in his eyes that had not been there before.

Electricity. The electricity, Sam thought, it's changed them.

One of the dancers slipped and fell and started flopping as the current coursed through her body. A leg, rotten and maggot infested, swung around and hit the metal base of a kid's coin-operated rocket ship; it stuck fast, her flesh the glue that bonded her to the metal of the rocket stand. Smoke erupted from her mouth and in seconds her head exploded. The mall lights flickered and died as the corpse shorted the current to ground through the kid's ride, casting the room in a twilight haze. The whole building seemed to groan as the power left its copper bones. The woman twitched and cooked into a black, charred jelly.

Dark clouds blackened the glass wall, and Sam heard another sound rise above the cacophony of whirring PTVs. A terrible sound, the sound of real engines, old-school, hard-ass, gas-guzzling man-machines. Sam saw the riders of the Righteous Martinezes cutting through the parking lot, their vehicles pushing a wave of sound before them like a wall. There was no whirring, only piston-pounding, spark-plug-firing death on wheels.

Guns fired and the great wall of glass exploded inward. The Martinezes were crashing as glass showered over them. More gunfire, and the zombies, however smart, fell like ragdolls as the Martinez gang circled like Indians on a wagon train, taking down the walking dead with relative ease.

Behind Sam the zombie cavalry closed, and they were pissed. They screeched and cried out with a fervor that went beyond simple, primal hunger; they were angry and mall cops. Maybe they were all on duty when it went down, or maybe they had come here to their 9-5 home to make their last stand—who knew the mind of the mall cop, its depth and intricacy. All Sam knew was that they wanted brains on a platter. The Righteous Martinezes saw them and broke formation. Sam and Roberto locked eyes, Roberto yelled to his uncle and Manuel followed the sound and then it was all over but the dying; Martinezes closing from the south, the undead from the north, and Sam in the middle unclear of who to shoot first, a Martinez, an undead or himself.

*

Manuel took Laura's body to Salvation Town himself and spent the rest of the night arranging her in his most special position, one that would guarantee her salvation in the afterlife despite her childish insolence and whorish ways. He found himself hoping she would turn right there in his arms, her filmy-yellow eyes opening to meet his. Her teeth probing for his life's blood. Then he would follow his only daughter into the never-after of undeadness and they could be together forever.

But her eyes did not open; she had not turned and come back from the dead as a meat machine, and maybe she wouldn't—not everyone did.

The inconsistency of the walking-dead phenomenon had caused a lot of unnecessary deaths, especially in the early days before all the rules had been laid out. Some, the easy ones, would turn quickly. They were shot dead again, usually in the heat of the ongoing conflict that killed them in the first place. The tricky ones, the ones that got you walking down the street out of nowhere, were the ones that turned days later after digging themselves out of shallow mass graves. These late bloomers were the reason head shots or decapitation became the law of the land for everyone; sons, wives, daughters—it didn't matter. They all got a bullet or blunt to the skull while loved ones wept.

Manuel could not bear to see the death on her face, so he covered it with one of the burlap sacks reserved for non-believers. He hated to do it, bag his daughter—it was a disgrace—but he could not look into her lifeless eyes. But more than that he could not have others looking into her lifeless eyes, her unscathed head, the total absence of the mandatory, post-mortem head shot. Didn't he shoot her in the head?

There in the hotel room, alone, his men off on the chase, cradling his baby, the barrel had touched her flesh, the hammer was cocked, but he couldn't do it. He could not put a bullet in the head of his baby girl, regardless of the consequences. And he could not have one of his ape-brained _Dios de Solderos_ do it. No, if Laura were going to be shot in the head, given the Final Death, it would be by her father and her father alone. Only problem was that her father just didn't have what it took; the courage and sacrifice, the _juevos_ he demanded of so many others. So she didn't get shot in the head. Manuel fired out the window instead and bagged her beautiful face in a burlap potato sack like a common criminal.

That was hours ago.

Laura's eyes popped open to the sound of a dozen engines ripping through the night and thunder rolling overhead. A dry moan escaped her mouth as her jaw creaked open and her fat, swollen tongue lolled out. Bugs scampered across her chest, darted in and out of her open mouth. She was distantly aware of the insects. A far away voice, the girly-girl, screamed in disgust, but there wasn't enough oomph behind. That voice was long ago and far away and dying by the second. The new Laura didn't mind bugs, didn't mind the things of death and decay. She wanted them close to her; wanted death and torn flesh close to her. Wanted to feel the final pump of a dying heart in her hands, in her mouth.

She tried to walk, took two steps and was pulled backwards by something. Her arms weren't responding, so she pulled harder because that's all she could reason to do; basic motor control and insatiable hunger was her world now. All she would ever know again. If something was in the way you just pushed harder.

There was a wet ripping sound as her arms began to slip free, then a massive crack of lightning split the sky and hammer-fisted the tree above her, sending six figures of current through the chains that bound her to an eternal baptism. She went rigid and fell forward, the weight of her body tearing the rest of the binding meat in her hands and the hooks from her back. Her arms fell to her sides and she stumbled forward. Far back in her smoking brain, something tickled and a deep, dark part of her conscious awakened, awakened by Heaven's electricity; it was cognizant, and deadly primal and could produce some semblance of thought and rationality, however primitive its focus. She managed to pull the bag from her head, saw the world from a new perspective and liked it.

Scents drifted to her like a restaurant's menu for the blind; she knew the dominant smell and discarded it—death all around her and in all its stages, but all the same inedible. More scents riding on the coming rain: metallic brine, exhaust, sweat, beer and incense. Ahhh, incense and beer. She would follow these, she knew them well and it sparked something inside her, reminded her of a man.

Gunfire in the distance. The awakened part of her mind, drawn back from death like Lazarus, recognized the sound. She followed it. Walking through the dead suburb of Salvation Town past the posed bodies, she rounded a row of identical houses and saw a man crouched behind a motorcycle using the seat to steady a rifle. Further down the street were half a dozen shambling forms headed his way. Her kin. The shooter was the nightshift, the watchman of Salvation Town and the edge of the Olympus encampment. The gunman calmly picked the shamblers off one by one with neat head shots.

Laura walked up the street behind him. He turned and waved, her stride not that of a shambling undead, but of the living, of someone in control of their muscle tissue.

" _Hola, señora_ ," he shouted and smiled, thinking of the _nuevas virgenes,_ the renewed virgins given their purity back by the prick of Manuel himself. They would give themselves to the righteous upon Manuel's request. Tonight was his lucky night. He must have been particularly righteous.

He turned back to the undead to finish them off without waiting for a response from the new virgin. Laura walked up behind him, gripped his shoulders with her ravaged hands.

"Ahh, _sí, señorita_ ," he said and let the rifle go.

She tore into his neck with her teeth and he screamed and tried to turn, but she wrapped him up in a tight hug and threw her legs around him and let her weight pull him backwards to the ground. The two remaining shamblers covered the ground and fell on the lone sentry, black teeth bared and gnashing.

When they finished there was nothing that a virgin, new or old, would have wanted from the righteous watchman. The two shamblers did what they do and shambled on. Laura took a few steps with them then stopped. Something was nagging the deep, awakened part of her brain. Why walk when you could ride. She remembered that. She turned, walked to the motorcycle and straddled it. She pushed off with her legs and the machine rolled a few feet and toppled over, dumping Laura to the ground and trapping her foot under the bike.

Trying to get up, Laura heard a sharp snap and was brought to the ground again. Her ankle was bent under the frame of the motorcycle. She worked the exposed bone back and forth, and after some minutes the anklebone and tendons broke completely free of her leg. She hopped up, leaving her foot under the machine, and, limping on one foot and a stump, walked back to the watchman's carcass. She fished out his keys and returned to the bike, leaving circular stains of blood where her ruined leg touched the asphalt.

She lifted the bike, straddled it again, and in one motion stabbed and turned the key. Foot on the ground, she kick-started the cycle with her stub, causing more shards of bone to splinter off. Bone fragments floated in a pool of blood like an undercooked fruitcake.

The engine roared.

Incense and beer still hung in the air and she followed it like a dog.

*

The mechanized zombies bore down on the attacking Martinezes and their undead brethren who were getting blasted to bits. They shifted into a single-line pattern twelve undead long, then into an inverted wedge, the outer zombies on the wedge tips flanking the Martinez band with two-wheeled precision. Mall Cop Shift Supervisor howled something and the V formation closed and the bloody dogfight ensued.

Sam pumped a round into an undead, speeding mall cop who had zeroed in on him, then turned and took down a Martinez who was beheading zombies left and right with a homemade pipe-axe. Then he dove into a decorative plant stand and lay low. Eight rounds and the eater left. Not enough to go for broke.

Time for a new plan. He popped in the last two shells. He would wait in the flower box. Let the blood spill according to fate and then bug out. Very similar to his original plan behind the register, not very original, but his creativity was tapped at the moment.

Manuel Martinez saw the gringo bastard's cowardly leap into the fake hedges and throttled his dirt bike. He signaled to Roberto, who spun his four-wheeler in several donuts, rubber squealing against the marble, then fell in behind his uncle. Beelining through the melee, Manuel took down the undead with random but deadly shots to clear their path. Then a pair of zombie scooter pilots split them with a gutsy, all-in kamikaze maneuver and the Mexicans had to break off or die.

Manuel veered right and Roberto left, and as Manuel reloaded his revolver one-handed, he was t-boned by an unseen scooter. It knocked the wheels out from under the bike and he went down, skidding across the slick floor and crashing into a bench. Hungry moans followed the fading roar of broken metal on marble.

*

Laura hit the handicap ramp outside the mall at over seventy miles an hour, caught air through the shattered mall entrance and sailed into the chaos. She raked one of her cousins in life across the neck with her long feminine nails and leapt from the bike, letting it crash into a four-wheeler, knocking the driver off and into a swarm of the undead. She landed on the back of another motorcycle and ripped the driver's ear off with her teeth; he laid the bike over and skidded into the wall. She rolled and bit into his cheek and didn't stop chewing until the screams stopped. Incense wafted through the air on a jet stream of exhaust and visceral gases, making her nose twitch.

Papi.

It was her father. The defiance she had felt towards him in life had grown in her electro-powered death and now occupied wholly the small part of her mind that was active. She was consumed with it, could think of nothing else. The man needed eating.

*

Sam saw a shadow behind him and rolled on his back just as Roberto threw himself into the planter.

" _Puta_!" he shouted and thrust his forearm up, knocking the barrel of the shotgun upward, and Sam blew a hole in the ceiling. A flash of blade-steel here then there, and Sam was bleeding from somewhere new. Hot pain registered, but there was no time to worry or wonder what was cut. He struggled to parry the blows that were too damn fast and managed to grab Roberto's wrists as the blade, a thin ghetto-switch, dropped towards his face like a guillotine. Roberto leaned on the handle with all his weight, the tip of the blade etching abstract art into Sam's nose.

Sam rolled, shifting Roberto's momentum to the side, and the large Hispanic face-planted into the dirt, the knife blade disappearing into the dry planter soil. Sam drove a knee into Roberto's crotch, pulled his own blade from inside his dress and jammed it up Roberto's sternum twisting and ripping the serrated edge of the blade down in a single choreographed motion Sam had performed many times over. Roberto's innards dumped into the garden with a push of air like someone gagging, blood oozed from his mouth and his eyes rolled back into his skull. He gasped, spraying Sam with a drizzle of blood, and then died.

Sam pulled his blade out, tucked it away. He wanted to gloat, had been waiting for this moment, but there was no time. He made a mental note to revisit this moment in his mind's eye later, if there was a later, and spit in Roberto's jacked-up face. He grabbed the shotgun. Two rounds and the eater left. On one knee, he peered over the edge of the stone planter.

The battle between crazy and evil raged on, but the outcome was clear. The speed and power of the Righteous Martinezes was completely nullified by the mall's slick tile floor and tight quarters. The zombies' two-wheeled personal transportation vehicles were designed for this environment, minus the post-apocalyptic combat piece, and could turn on a dime. Their undead prowess on the machines was unbelievable. They zigged and zagged, spun and whirled and changed direction so quickly the Martinez gang could not corral them as they could most undead prey in the cities and open roads.

A bleeding, swollen face appeared over the edge of the planter, blocking Sam's view. Sam jumped back and the face grew into the haggard body of Papi Martinez. His eyes were glazed and milky white, his black blood already coagulating into the thick molasses of the diseased.

" _Gringo_ ..." he droned, and clarity flashed through his eyes for an instant. He held a one-way ticket to Undead Land and didn't even know it. Another hour, maybe two, and he would be a brain-dead flesh eater, one hundred percent.

Sam pumped a round into the chamber and fired. Papi's chest exploded in a shower of blood; light shined through from the shattered wall beyond, but the man kept coming.

"Daughter killer ... Heathen fucker," he growled, and the cataract film washed over his eyes again. He charged in. Sam chambered another round. A shape appeared from his left and he pivoted and fired. Fluids spewed, but the object continued on its path.

Sam watched Laura, what had been Laura, fly over him and tackle her father head-on. The two toppled over the side of the planter and disappeared from view. Sam stood and ran to the edge and saw Papi's daughter tearing out her father's spine like the pull-tab on a stick of string cheese.

They locked eyes as they had the first night at the watering hole and again at the hotel. Something twinkled in her eye just beyond the film of infection, but for some reason the spark just wasn't there anymore for Sam. She slurped up the dripping ooze and looked up at Sam like a dog that knew it had done something good and was awaiting praise from its master. A fat roach scrambled out of her mouth and dropped onto the floor with a click of carapace on marble.

He leveled the shotgun.

"Something bugging you, sweat heart? I really liked the way you rolled your Rs." And her head vaporized in a mist of infected head matter.

The remaining Martinez gang, seeing what had happened to their leader, was already bugging out. They hammered their throttles, leaving a cloud of smoke in the air and a smear of rubber on the tile turning the high consumer gloss into a gleaming dookie-streaked diaper before disappearing through the shattered wall.

The undead gave chase, but in the open expanse of the parking lot the personal transportation vehicles were no match for the raw power of the road machines. Quickly losing the Martinez' to the horizon they gave up and headed back towards the mall.

Sam took his cue and hopped out of the planter, his Alamo, almost shot a shambler that was too close for comfort before realizing he only had the eater left and caved its head in with the butt of the weapon instead. He found a motorcycle lying on its side still running and headed out the broken wall, his bike casting a reverberating echo throughout the now quiet mall, flashing harmlessly past the rolling undead on their way back in from the Martinez chase. He caught Archie the mall cop's eye as he was cruising in on a busted up Segway and saluted the consumer safety trooper. Maybe next time, friend.

The wind in his hair was refreshing. It washed the stink of goo and death from his dress. He thought about Laura, about Manuel and the damn shame of it all. They had something good going, a little crazy...absolutely crazy, but good. Fuel, electricity, booze and a complete lack of walking dead; the makings of civilization. Sam wondered if things would be different without Papi Manuel, the mad monk, behind the wheel and cousin D-Bag-Leper and his goons raising the collective testosterone to dangerous levels. He might have to pay Olympus a visit.

And besides, he wanted his boots back.

The End

*****

Lee's Decision

(Originally published by Pill Hill Press in Gone with the Dirt)

Today

Washington, D.C.

The flag of the Confederate States of America flapped in the breeze over the National Mall. An elderly man and a boy stood holding hands at the foot of the massive, seated statue of the sixteenth president of the United States, Robert E. Lee. A zombie, whose shelf-life, judging by the smell, was near expiration, ambled by the pair. From its neck hung a covered tray containing tour options, programs and the like. The mind probe—a cylindrical can sticking from the skull and controlling the creature—blinked and hummed. A man walked up to the creature and inserted a five-dollar bill depicting President Lee into a metal slot embedded in the zombie's neck. The tray's lid opened and the man withdrew two tickets for the Mall tour. The zombie's jaw dropped and a recorded voice thanked the patron and asked him to come again. In the distance the weekly slave train cut through town, horn blaring, gears churning down the tracks that ran along Constitution Avenue.

The boy looked out across the grounds at a rising spire. It pointed into space, broken, incomplete, like a severed finger skinned to the bone, white and radiant. "Paw-paw, what is that?"

Paw-paw turned and pondered his answer. "That, my boy, is the Washington Monument."

There was a scuffle as two federal police officers stopped a woman and her daughter. Paw-paw heard her say something about not having her papers ... left them at home ... she was so absentminded ... she was sorry. The officers whisked them away in an unmarked black van.

"What is it?" the boy continued, unperturbed by the scene.

The old man adjusted his coat, suddenly cold. "It's a symbol."

"A symbol of what? It looks like a broken stick."

"A man. A turning point. A nation that could have been," he said, remembering the history books.

"It looks broken. When will they finish it?"

"Never."

July 2, 1863

Gettysburg, PA

The second day of battle ...

Lee sat in his tent in the glow of a shrinking candle. For the hundredth time he pored over maps and figures of head count—able-bodied, dead and soon to be dead—ammo and stores and on and on. He leaned back in his chair and tossed his spectacles onto the table and rubbed his exhausted eyes. They needed a miracle.

The tent flap pulled back and Captain Rutgers' head appeared. Dried blood stained his cheek and his eyes were sunken deep in his head. "General, you wanted to know if anything out of the ordinary popped up."

Lee pushed back and stood, straightened his immaculate uniform and exhaled deeply. "Yes."

"Well, sir, this is certainly out of the ordinary."

Outside, the path between tents was lined with the wounded. Corpsmen scurried like rats tending to the dying. Lee followed the captain past the perimeter of the camp into the Pennsylvania woods beyond the reach of the torchlight and campfires.

A wagon sat in the darkness. A canvas shroud covered its bulky cargo. The mules hitched to the transport were uneasy and shifted constantly. Captain Rutgers approached the two men standing at the wagon's open rear tailgate.

"Sentries spotted them. They said you wanted to see them. That you've been waiting for them. They would not give me their names."

"We ain't got..."

"...no names," Lee said, speaking in unison with the man. He had heard that before. The man chuckled and spat something black onto the forest floor. His head was covered in long thin hair that hardly covered his scalp, and he had a fierce underbite. He was short, but the man standing behind was a giant by any standard. The big man's eyes were small and too close together. They went cross and wide again as he continuously refocused on the two soldiers in silence. The pair smelled like wet dogs.

"Let's see it," said Lee in his customary way of cutting to the chase. Despite his bravado his palms were sweating. He fought back the urge to check the shadows for what might lie in hiding.

The smaller man with no name grinned and let out a giggle and shuffled to the other side of the wagon. The two men grabbed the canvas from each side and pulled it back, the smaller man having to step onto the wheel to pull the cover over the top edge of the cargo.

"My God," Rutgers breathed, and he stepped backwards before he could stop himself.

The covered cargo was a cage, and inside the cage was a woman. Chains held her arms and ankles to rings at the top of the cage and at the floor. She was naked ... and rotting. Her eyes were solid white; the color of her irises, brown possibly, swam in the background. Her skin was pale greenish gray and covered with festering wounds. Black, gelatinous fluid dripped from a slash in her arm into a pickling jar. A dozen other jars already filled with the goo lined the wagon bed next to the cage.

"You wanted proof, ay, Generahl," said the smaller man, and he hopped from the wheel. "Now you t'ink dat not such a good idea?" He laughed, and the giant joined him in laughter. "You dream of dis night fo'evah." He tapped the side of his head with a filthy finger. "Always here now."

Lee didn't hear them. He stepped to the cage in silent awe. In the splintered moonlight that leaked through the trees he looked a hundred years old. "She's ... dead, not just ... maimed?"

Shorty motioned to the larger man, who reached inside the cage and grabbed the woman by her hair and yanked her head back, exposing an ear-to-ear tear across her neck. The back of her throat could be seen glistening pink and wet in the darkness. He moved her head back and forth, making the half-moon gash open and close like a clown's painted mouth. "Tend the horses. Make more money," he said in a false soprano, and they laughed again. The woman hissed and fought the chains and tried to bite the man, but he only laughed louder, tossed her head down and away from him and removed his arm from the cage.

"Soldiers that never die," Lee muttered to himself.

"You heathen bastards!" Rutgers said and drew his pistol and cocked the hammer.

"Captain!" Lee said and pulled his own pistol on the captain.

Rutgers looked at his commanding officer in shock. "Sir, have you gone mad? This is an abomination." He shook the weapon at the smaller man with each word.

Lee turned to his executive officer. "Captain, lower your weapon or I will shoot you myself on grounds of treason."

Stunned, Rutgers lowered his weapon haltingly. He did not holster it, only let it hang loosely at his side. Shorty cackled again and winked at Rutgers.

From his uniform Lee pulled a pouch that he had been carrying for almost a year now. He looked at, let its weight be felt in his hand then handed it to the smaller man. The big man began unloading the full jars as the money exchanged hands.

"Pleasure doin' business wit ya, General. Give dim Yanks 'ell," Shorty said and made a saluting gesture that Lee did not return.

Lee and Rutgers watched the wagon disappear into the woods. Without taking his eyes off the vanishing cage, Lee said, "Have the mess cooks pick this up." He motioned to the jars of black fluid. "Every man on the line—I mean every man, healthy or not, dying or not, from Devil's Den to Culp's Hill—drinks tonight. Do you understand me?"

Rutgers did not look at the general either, couldn't bear to. "That woman, sir, she was someone's wife, someone's sister ... someone's daughter." He did not wait for a response because there would not be one. "Are you prepared for the consequences of this decision, General? If you do this, if you do this horrible _thing_ , you will change the world as we know it and damn us all in the process."

Now Lee did turn to the young officer. "Why are we here, dear captain, our boys, our sons of the South, bleeding and dying in the mud, if not to change the world?" He turned and walked towards camp. "And as for the other, well, that's for God to sort out."

Lee had his miracle.

*

Rutgers watched as the cooks unknowingly poured the blood of the damned woman into the pots of mishmash stew consisting of nothing more than potatoes and rabbit in hot water. They thought it was a base brought in by Lee to boost the morale of the troops, and Rutgers let them believe it. He watched the faces of the soldiers, his men, worn and battered, line up for their portions. Medics brought bowls of the steaming broth to the sick and wounded who were too damaged to get their own. He thought of the woman in the cage and what life she may have led. He imagined her with daughters, a pair of them, and a good husband. She was a seamstress, he decided. These men were no different, only their lives were not made up. He knew them; their names, their faces. They were good men, honorable men, most of them. They had children and wives and siblings and real lives far away from these blood-filled trenches. Whatever cursed deal Lee had made, Rutgers knew that by standing idly by while innocent men poisoned themselves, he had made too. A soldier on crutches took his helping, sipped and began hobbling back to his bedroll. He tipped his hat to Rutgers. "Mighty tasty, Cap'n."

Rutgers said nothing, only turned and walked back to his tent and ducked inside. From his foot locker he pulled a worn Bible, opened it to Psalms and began reading quietly out loud. After several minutes of this he pulled his revolver from its holster and blew his brains out.

Lee heard the shot and bolted from his tent, pistol drawn. A crowd was gathered around Rutgers' tent. Chunky goo not unlike the evening's stew ran down the inside of the tent wall, silhouetted black against the candlelight burning behind it. Lee sighed and stowed the weapon.

The bitch said that would happen.

Her accent, from somewhere in the dank bayous of the Deep South, was out of place in the dying East. Her affect, out of place anywhere, was straight from hell. He could still hear her laughter fading with the report of the gunshot that took Rutgers' life.

Because of McClellan's indecisiveness at Antietam nearly a year earlier, Lee was able to slowly and safely withdraw his troops while still harrying the Union lines. It had been an inconclusive battle tactically, but the South had suffered great losses and Lee knew that the day was significant; the tides had turned, and not in favor of the Confederates.

What was left of the Army of Northern Virginia stopped for the night on the Virginia side of the Maryland–Virginia border at a collection of abandoned, war-ravaged shanties gathered at an intersection of two back-country roads. Dark clouds were rolling in and the first scant drops of rain could be felt here and there.

"We'll camp here tonight. Officers in the structures. Enlisted in bedrolls," Lee said, dismounting, and officers dispatched into the brigade shouting orders. "Establish the war room there. There is much to cover." He pointed to the least dilapidated structure; a one-room cabin with a wraparound porch.

After surveying the watch line and being satisfied that the North had given up the chase, Lee returned to camp to find his officers laying out maps in a tent. The rain was coming down heavy now and water was running into the tent in small rivers. The supply officer held a pan over the table as the others arranged their documents.

"I told you I wanted the war room there, Rutgers!" Lee said and pointed again at the building.

Rutgers, his executive officer even then, stepped from the poor tent. "The men refuse to enter the buildings, sir."

Lee looked around and saw that not only had the war room not been established, but his other officers had taken to tents and even bedrolls despite his orders and the improved shelter of the buildings.

Rutgers continued, "There's something about them, sir, something wrong. It's the markings. I rather think the whole lot of us would prefer to get up and move on, rest be damned, than stay here."

"Markings?" Lee said, and Rutgers, without a word, walked him closer to one of the buildings. It was a barn, once red but now blackened by fire, roof partially collapsed. Across the wall facing them, a line of shapes and images was written out like a sentence from one end of the structure to the other, some two hundred feet. They were written in black and could not be seen against the charred wood without effort. Circles, half moons, eyes, an inverted crucifix could be made out; other icons not as easily recognizable, but nevertheless menacing and probably more so because of their obscurity, filled out the rest of the line. The other buildings, almost a dozen in all, were the same; the strange hieroglyphics lined them all.

Lee surveyed the pride of the South, his soldiers, bloody and ragged, searching for comfort in the rain. "Poppycock," he said. "We stay here. If we go any further we'll outmarch the line." Several squads had been left behind to cover the retreat of the main body. They would, in turn, pull back at predetermined times throughout the evening and join the army here. By morning the Army of Northern Virginia would be whole—as whole as it would ever be again. Lee walked to the building where his council had been ordered to meet.

It was charred black like the others, and once on the porch Lee saw that writing absolutely covered the structure from top to bottom. A triangle, point down, with an eye shape in the center glistened in the fading light and Lee reached out and touched it. It was wet. It was raining, after all. He pulled his finger back and a thick red substance covered the tip.

Lightning flashed and something moved inside the house, its shadow crossing the single front window which still held its glass pane despite the fallout of war. A raccoon or other forest animal, surely. Lee felt all eyes on him, his men judging, weighing his every movement. One hand on his Colt, he turned the knob and pushed the door. It gave easily, swinging back on rusted hinges as if they had been oiled yesterday. Without looking back he stepped inside.

A rocking chair sat in the middle of the room. It swayed in the dying light, its curved rockers casting scimitar shadows across the floor. A stone fireplace filled the far corner. He realized with an internal grin that his mind half expected it to be smoldering.

Opposite the fireplace the room transitioned into a kitchen, and over a wash bin was another window. Movement again. Something was silhouetted against the window for a brief moment then disappeared into the murky darkness. Lee's internal grin vanished. He drew his pistol as the door shut behind him. He spun to face the door then sensed movement again behind him and turned back. A humanoid figure in the corner of the kitchen near a row of cupboards. A scraggly shape, long hair, the smell of fresh dirt filled the room.

"Generahl," a voice said, and Lee fired his weapon out of sheer instinct, then the fireplace flared up and the room was furnished and something was cooking on the fire. A table covered in books and wicker cages filled with all manner of birds. They had the heads of humans, people he knew; his mother, wife, even Rutgers. They flittered and chirped anxiously.

A pair of dogs lay on the floor; large, mixed breeds of no particular note. One lay over the other, their paws a jumbled mess of limbs stretching before them like tentacles. A tail, its owner undistinguishable in the mass of fur, swished lazily. The shape stepped forward from the kitchen and a woman, hunched and decrepit, tangled gray and black hair down to her waist, appeared in the light. Blood oozed from a hole in the center of her forehead where Lee's bullet had struck her.

"You is Generahl Lee, no?"

Lee aimed his pistol at the woman. "Who are you?"

*

Rutgers watched Lee step inside, and a moment later the door slammed shut and a shot was fired.

"Ambush!" he shouted, and immediately the army fell into a defensive position. Rutgers hailed a small group of soldiers, and the lingering officers all charged the cabin. Their weight combined could not take down the door. The front window pane would not be shattered, their bullets bouncing off like the rain, and although through the glass and gaps in the wall board they could see the general standing in the middle of the single room—violently rocking on his feet, eyes rolled back in his head exposing only the whites—they could not shout loud enough to wake him. Lee's pistol hung at his side smoking, and Rutgers could clearly see a bullet hole in the floor at Lee's feet.

*

"I ain't got no name," the bitch said and stepped towards him as he stepped away and circled into the room. An eye moved, following him as if sight were still possible from behind the flap of dry skin that covered the socket completely. The one good eye bulged in her head, ready to plop out onto the floor any second. She saw him staring and laughed.

"You look tired, Generahl," she continued. Lee said nothing. "You t'ink you can win dis war?"

"Of course," Lee said, but it sounded weak even to him.

The woman cackled. "Me t'ink not. Not widout my help anyways."

Lee grunted, "Your help? I think not, dear lady."

She shuffled towards him with a quickness that did not match her appearance. He did not shoot, but backed against the wall, barely missing the dogs as he did. The woman pushed herself against him. Her breath was rancid. "You t'ink dis is a joke, ah? Make-believe?" She backed off and motioned around the room to the space that was dead only moments ago. She stuck a finger in the bullet wound in her head and worked it around and smiled. "Where you t'ink all dis come from, Generahl, huh?" To punctuate her point, the bird with his daughter's head popped from its cage, the wicker door swinging open, and flew to the woman's shoulder. "You in the devil's den now, boy."

The dogs rustled then and stood, and Lee realized in dumbfounded revulsion that it was not two canines, but a single amalgamated creature. It walked like a spider on half a dozen legs, one head drooping, the other alert. A seventh limb, clubbed and misshapen, dragged on the ground like an anchor, limp and useless. The alert head snorted at the air and looked at Lee, eyes tormented and sorrowful. It walked into the kitchen, exchanged some head bobbing with the birds and found a spot on the floor free of drama, circled and lay back down with a huff of tired air. Lee's wife-bird hopped and flew around its cage and came to rest as the hound lay back down.

The witch cackled again. "I give you dim soldjahs dat nevah die, Generahl."

Lee's head was spinning. He was speechless.

"Twenty piece of silvah all it take." She grinned. Her toothless, shriveled mouth looked like a diseased rectum.

Lee fought back vomit, but found his voice again. "Twenty pieces of silver? Hah! You think I'm a Judas? That I would hand over my soul for..."

"For da cause ... yes 'em, I do. You love your South, your precious Virginia. You do anyting for it, and I can give you dat anyting."

"For my soul you'll give me the war, victory? You're mad." Lee stepped back towards the door. She was mad, there was no question ... but then dogs didn't have two heads, did they?

*

"Cannon!" Rutgers yelled, and the command was echoed across the camp. The enlisted men on the porch continued to throw their shoulders into the front door and several officers had worked their way around the building looking for access, but it was no use.

Lee began to rock even more violently as the seconds ticked by. Several times Rutgers thought he might fall over his angle was so steep, his knees bending at an impossible degree to remain standing, but Lee's feet remained rooted to the floorboards and like a pendulum the great tactician always righted himself.

The cannon wheeled into the yard.

"Through the window here." Rutgers pointed to where he was standing, a point clear of the general should the shot penetrate the cabin wall, and then hopped from the porch. "Fire when ready."

*

"Be careful now, Generahl," she went on, "a decision like dis crushes men. Dim don't have what it take. It pushes dim right over dah edge. Din they lose everyting—soul and victory and their greatness." She placed her finger to her head, thumb in the air. "Soldjahs dat nevah die," she said again.

"Proof. I need proof," Lee said, his mind whirling. He would do it. He would do anything for his country and the cause, sacrifice anything, his sanity and soul—but it was all madness, wasn't it?

She dropped her thumb like a pistol hammer, a loud explosion sounded and fire washed through the room, then the hag was gone and Rutgers was in his face shaking him and yelling something Lee could not hear and the hag and the room and her wretched hound were all gone. He felt weightless and his point of view shifted dramatically, and then he was lying on his back, rain on his face, staring up at the building's rafters. His consciousness faded to the tune of birds chirping.

The buildings were razed to the ground, and the intrepid Army of Northern Virginia packed their gear and marched on until they could not walk another step. The luck of the beleaguered frontline soldiers who had drawn the short straws and been left behind to fend off the Union while the others fell back did not improve. They arrived at the rendezvous site exhausted and bleeding only to find smoldering buildings and a sign in the intersection that still stands today: "Devil's Crossing. Keep Moving."

They did.

July 3, 1863

Gettysburg, PA

The day the world changed ...

The bugle cried out and the blue-clad Union soldiers erupted from their positions and poured up Culp's Hill like so many ants. They had lost the key position the day before, and today they would have it back or die trying. They were greeted with heavy fire from the entrenched Confederates. All around, Blues were dropping, but they had the numbers and intended to use them and so the charge continued.

Jeremiah crested the hill, saw a gray coat pop over the edge of the trench, and he fired his rifle. The Confederate's arms went wild and he fell backwards, but another immediately took his place on the line. Jeremiah leveled his bayonet and screamed and closed his eyes as the enemy's muzzle flashed. He felt the blade bury into something and there was an unholy gasp of air in Jeremiah's ear and he was wrapped in a bear hug and going down.

He opened his eyes to see the life leaving the man on top of him, his eyes rolling back into his head. Jeremiah sighed and fought back a rush of emotion when he realized the man he killed wasn't much older than he was; fourteen, maybe sixteen, but no older. The boy's cheeks were still ruddy and flushed with youth. Jeremiah lay there with the dead body covering him and watched as more of his platoon leapt over the trench on their way to kill and get killed. Jeremiah was no coward, but he sure was scared shitless.

He lost track of the time, just waiting and watching the clouds drift by, listening to the bombs and the bullets like a symphony, and then he heard the bugler again and exhaled a rush of air that he must have been holding for decades. It was over. They had won the damn hill back. He rolled the dead kid off of him and tried to stand, but the boy had his jacket in a rigor mortis death grip. Jeremiah pried at the stiff hands, but they were steel clamps now and wouldn't give. A low, dry moan grew from somewhere like a toadstool in the dark. Jeremiah looked at the boy and the boy looked back, blinking slowly, only his eyes were white and colorless now. Blood-lined white teeth shone against already black gums. They were the last thing Jeremiah's mind consciously registered.

The dead boy-thing lunged. From afar the pair looked like two boys wrestling in the mud, except that one was biting the shit out of the other. Jeremiah died silently, mind petrified in fear, vocal cords frozen, unable to scream, as a chorus of moans echoed across the hills and valleys.

*

Major General George Meade, commander of the great Union Army of the Potomac, smiled as errant lead whizzed through the air and the bugle of victory sounded in the distance. He checked his map and his watch. That would be Culp's Hill—right on schedule.

At dawn Lee had come straight at them ... again, and for the third day in a row. Meade knew there would not be a fourth. It was all but over. Even now the Confederate artillery that was so eager and plentiful as the sun crested the horizon waned as it rose in the sky, where it now hung high, sucking the lead from their stores and the will from their hearts like a giant yellow sponge. This was the turning point of the war. Meade felt it, could feel the energy, the will to fight, leaving his foe like a morning bowel movement. If he repelled the Confederates today, he would break Lee and the South and tip the balance once and for all. He would make history here in a little piss-ant town called Gettysburg.

A slow rolling moan washed over the Union position and Meade's tent headquarters. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. The horses balked and several bolted, pulling wagons and cannon with them through the encampment, tearing down tents and stores as they went. Piercing the moan was the high sound of the bugle again, but this time it wasn't sounding the call of victory. It was signaling retreat, demanding it with panicked notes.

"Colonel!" Meade shouted, and a weathered, tired man snapped to.

"Sir."

"Who gave the order for retreat? I gave no such order! No such order!" Meade shouted, his face already simmering red.

"Sir..." the colonel began, but no words were necessary. The wave of graycoats careening over the hills, howling and moaning, was answer enough. All of them were bleeding heavily, obviously mortally wounded, many with missing appendages, but moving just the same. One soldier was directly struck by a cannon ball. He somersaulted backwards and landed hard on the ground. Meade watched horrified as the man rose to his feet, the left half of his torso missing, intestines dragging the ground as he rejoined his compatriots in the melee. They rose as quickly as they fell, a ceaseless juggernaut of gray wool and blood.

They swarmed over the Union line, eating blades and bullets as if the concept of pain was as distant to them as victory now felt for General Meade. His troopers fell like fawns, torn limb from limb by the unstoppable undead animals. And behind the beasts came more Southern soldiers, human and normal and firing their weapons into the Union camp.

"My horse!" Meade shouted, but the colonel was already gone. Meade watched him running from the camp as two Confederate monsters dragged him down, smashed his skull with hammer-fists and began scooping his brains out like pudding. Bluecoat soldiers were dying all around him. Many had broken ranks, their discipline shattered by outright terror, and were now headed for the hills with the Southern devils on their heels.

Meade heard his name yelled over the din of this apocalypse, and he turned. At the crest of the hill General Lee sat atop a white horse. As his steed rose up on its hind legs, thrashing the air with its front hooves, more Confederate cavalry charged past him, some mortally wounded and moaning, bobbing on their horses like ragdolls. Others were unharmed yet wild-eyed and bewildered at the lunacy unfolding around them; they rolled on, killing their Northern countrymen just the same. Lee pointed his saber at the Union commanding officer.

"No quarter!" Lee cried, and Meade saw that he was wearing a mad grin.

As the undead closed on the Union general, Meade pulled his pistol, crossed himself with the barrel before placing it in his mouth. The hammer had almost fallen as the first ghoulish fingers ripped the gold stars from his collar. The mercy round sailed into the air uselessly.

Within minutes the undead monstrosities of the Confederate States overran the most powerful army the North had to offer. The course of the war and the world were changed forever.

**October 10,** **1864**

Washington, D.C.

The early end of the American Civil War ...

They sat outside at a table on the lawn of the National Mall. The sun was high in the sky and unimpeded by any clouds. A light breeze snapped the flag of the Confederate States, red background, white stars on a blue cross rolling like tiny belly dancers. All around them the great city, the site of the Union's last stand, smoldered. Ulysses S. Grant sat across from his nemesis, Lee. Both men looked tired, worn out by four years of bloody war. Grant wore mud-stained trousers, a simple flannel shirt and suspenders with his rank pinned to them. Behind him was the ragtag remnant of his military council. In contrast, Lee was impeccable in dress uniform. Behind him stood his council, aides and officers, and behind them a corral of moaning, screeching undead. The once-human beasts writhed in frustration at the smell of human flesh so near yet so far. Their leather-clad handlers prodded the zombies with long sticks, pushing them back from the edge of the temporary fencing that made up their pen.

"You'll rot in Hell, Lee, for what you've done," Grant said. "It's an affront to God, those creatures."

"Perhaps, Ulysses ... and, yes, perhaps." Lee signed the treaty in front of him and pushed it across the table.

A Southern aide handed Grant a pen already dipped in ink. Grant signed absently as he stared past Lee at the half-completed Washington Monument rising from the earth like a broken tooth, the war effort having sucked every available resource from the project years earlier, completely halting construction. The arrested obelisk symbolized the virtues of a budding nation wholly embodied in a single man: honor and dignity, bravery, wisdom and humility. Those things were gone now. Grant panned to the zombie fold. Already his entourage was being marched to their end, the gates of the zombie pen opening like the mouth of Hell.

To no one he said, "We were nearly great."

The End

*****

Ten Count

Their increasing strength and speed was concerning but could be dealt with through the proper application of sharp objects and lead. The real problem was that the dead were getting smarter, learning ... problem solving. In the beginning they would mindlessly walk into walls, doors, and other obstructions until either their rotting bodies gave out or the barrier did. Two nights ago Ronnie watched one of the bastards flip a deadbolt and turn a doorknob. He wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. It was one of the scariest things he had ever witnessed, and in the eight years since the first pink had stepped on the scene he had seen some pretty scary shit.

They had spotted the trio earlier in the day methodically searching through the long-abandoned cars along the interstate like robins hunting grubs. Slowly but predictably the walking dead followed the urine and dog's blood trail that led them to the threshold of the burnt-out gas station's garage door.

Ronnie could not see them from this angle but knew they were on the proverbial X. The zombies shuffled into the grease-stained bay grunting and snorting like rutting swine. He nodded almost imperceptibly to James and they pounced.

Ronnie brought the machete down hard, splitting the nearest creature's head like a coconut. It dropped like the sack of bones that it was.

Movement from the corner of his eye; James charging in swinging his bat like a steroid-raging MLB player.

The second monster turned with a hiss and bared teeth, rotting and jagged, just in time to French kiss the Louisville slugger. Its face caved in and it too dropped. James stood over it breathing heavy, a distant stare in his eye. He would probably retch afterward; it was his pattern.

Ronnie spun, blade ready, looking for the third. The guy wearing the semi-nice leather bomber jacket that Ronnie had dibs on. He was going to trade it for food and other necessities. Where are you, fly boy?

"See 'em?" Ronnie shouted. James' eyes refocused and he returned to planet Earth.

"Oh!" James yelled, only now realizing there were only two pinks on the ground when there had been three. They circled back-to-back, squinting into the fading sunlight looking for the slightest movement, listening for the faintest grunt.

"You need to quit that crap, man. You're going to get us killed," Ronnie chastised his longtime friend as they turned. "You're in outer space again. You hesitated."

"Find another friend then. I need it, can't do this shit without it. I thought I recognized that guy from ... from before," James said. "Grocery store, man, I think he was the butcher." There was no sign of the bombardier. He had beat feet. They both turned and looked at the crushed face and decomposed body of the possible butcher, but positive identification was impossible.

"They're not people anymore, James," Ronnie reassured his friend. "Just animals now. Just like coyote hunting. It's time you moved on." he knelt by the dead bodies, "You keep a lookout for fly boy while I tag these two." Ronnie pulled out two yellow tags the size of movie tickets and some wire ties from his pants pocket.

"Nice try," James said and handed his partner a tag from his own pocket. They both smiled in the darkness.

Ronnie attached his tag to the toe of the machete-split pink and James' tag to the toe of the butcher who continued his silent impersonation of a baseball.

"Your turn at the wheelbarrow," Ronnie said.

*

"I'm telling you the pinks are getting smarter," Ronnie said as they walked back to camp, James pushing the wheelbarrow loaded with the two twice-dead bodies. "He knew we were there and bugged out. When was the last time you saw a pink run away?"

"Pink" was short for "pink slip," and "pink slip" was short for "the walking reanimated extremely dangerous undead who killed and ate anything with a pulse." They were called pink slips because if they got too close you'd be terminated without back pay.

James drank from a chrome flask and said nothing.

"Never, that's when." Ronnie continued and then for the umpteenth time that day, "You need to quit that shit, man."

*

The next morning they stood in line at the tag agency, wheelbarrow full of the two pinks from the night before plus three others from earlier in the week. Counting this batch, that made eight for Ronnie and he had the state-issued chits to prove it. He needed two more.

The "tag agency" was nothing more than a window built into the exterior wall of White Oak, civilization's beacon of hope in a vast wasteland of walking dead, disease, famine, and radiation pockets. Behind the twenty-foot-high walls of steel and stone and the platoons of armed guards was a thriving metropolis complete with all the comforts of modern society, home to everything from booze and drugs to high-end salons and five-star restaurants run by real pre-apocalypse chefs. If the wind was just right you could stand on the south end of the compound and smell the cooking steak and imagine you were somewhere else.

The governing body of White Oak believed greatly in population control and touted it as the key ingredient in their success as a community and the driving factor behind the events that led to the outside world's current state. Thus White Oak's population was firmly fixed at 300,000 souls, no more, no less.

Once the population reached capacity, no one was allowed to enter, and if you left you could not return ... but no one ever left ... willingly. New residents were allowed in only after an existing resident died or was punished for committing a crime against society. This was a surprisingly common occurrence as the list of capital offenses was not short.

New residents were chosen based first on what skills the community needed, second through approved reproduction, and finally through the tagging process. Recently eighteen citizens of White Oak had been decapitated for various crimes against the state and a couple had been excommunicated for illegal reproduction. A husband and wife had secretly given birth to a bouncing baby boy without written authorization, therefore jeopardizing the delicate balance of life at White Oak. They were sent into the desert nude dripping with human urine, baby included. Whether the baby was healthy or needed by the community was irrelevant—a citizen could not disobey the state; examples to reinforce this infallible reasoning were etched in blood across the endless miles of hardpan.

Ronnie could not look the couple in the eye as they walked past his camp that night. Aiding the excommunicated would brand an individual ineligible for future citizenship, forever. He never saw them after that and didn't expect to. Human piss sent them crazy; pinks would come running like kids late for supper. Ronnie felt horrible but knew that their death meant two empty citizen slots, and citizenship meant life—not just existence, but an actual life.

Fifteen of the original eighteen openings went to doctors, engineers, tradesmen, and of course, women. Healthy women were prized as breeders and always made the selection. Three of these fifteen were promptly excommunicated as frauds (one man, dressed as a woman, had actually removed his genitalia by his own hand in a mad quest for the safety of White Oak), bringing the total open slots to eight, counting the two "illegal reproducers."

The skilled and educated population exhausted in those twelve and no confirmed healthy buns in any ovens, these remaining slots would be filled through the tagging process; the first eight healthy persons to present the state with ten twice-dead dead would be granted immediate citizenship into White Oak. Second only to radiation poisoning, pinks were deemed the largest risk to societal reconstruction. Their eradication was a necessity.

The unbearable sun beat down on James as he drank and watched the masses zigzag through the labyrinthine line towards the tag window. There were dozens of them; men and women of all ages, dregs of the wasteland, dragging, carting and pushing corpses in various stages of decomposition. Once they exchanged their tags for the state's paper chits, they took the bodies to the pits where they were burned. When the wind was just right you could stand just about anywhere and vomit uncontrollably.

"I can't do it anymore, dude," he said to no one in particular. "I thought I saw my mom in that Radio Flyer wagon over there. That shit's not cool at all, man."

"Hang in there," Ronnie said. "I'll make you a deal; the next four we tag are yours. That will give us eight each. I need you to hang tough, just a little longer."

"Sounds good." He patted his good friend Ronnie on the shoulder, but he wasn't speaking to Ronnie, he was speaking to whomever was at the end of that far-away stare. Maybe it was his mother. His butcher.

"Murderer!" They turned towards the scream. The man at the teller window snatched chits from the teller's steak-fat hands and broke rank, sprinting across the desert. The teller was screaming and pointing after him. A guard on the wall took aim with his rifle and calmly fired a single shot. A blood rose blossomed from the back of the man's head and he skidded across the hardpan, dead. The scene sort of reminded Ronnie of a five-point buck Ronnie had taken down as a boy.

Two more White Oak guards appeared from nowhere and pulled the lifeless body of a little girl from the "murderer's" cart. She had none of the typical signs of the undead. Her face had been sliced and dirt smeared across it to hide the clean whiteness of her still-vibrant skin, and clumps of hair had been yanked out. This healthy girl had been killed for a tag.

James watched them haul the little girl's body in the direction of the corpse pyres.

"I can't do it anymore."

*

Ronnie was startled to consciousness by the realization of nearby heat and light. He threw his sleeping bag off and jumped to his feet, reaching for his machete out of instinct, but it was gone.

"Easy, bro," James said. He was sitting on the tire they used as a bench. The machete was in his hand. The bat was nowhere to be seen. He pulled heavily from the flask.

"What the hell are you doing, you idiot!" Ronnie screamed and began to kick the fire out.

"They'll come from miles around!"

"Too late," James said, staring at the dying embers. "You're right, they're getting smarter."

The walking dead thing wearing the bomber jacket shambled from the scrub brush that surrounded them. He hovered at the edge of firelight and darkness, the flickering flames flipping his mouth from a wretched grin to a frown and back again.

"It followed us. I saw it in the bushes over there before we went to bed. They're getting sneaky," James continued, still not looking at Ronnie. "I just keep thinking—what if I see my little bro one of these times? What if I have to smash Aaron's head in, man? I can't do it. I think if I see him now I may go off the deep end." Tears began to fall.

The undead crept closer, pausing only a few feet from James' back, watching Ronnie cautiously. Ronnie grabbed a stick from the fire but knew it would not be enough.

"James, the machete, man! Now!" Ronnie yelled, but James did not respond. Ronnie looked down and to his horror saw the bright yellow tag hanging from James' toe, one of Ronnie's tags.

"I'd rather be dead than see Aaron again, man." James tossed the machete at Ronnie's feet. "It should just take a few minutes, but remember to wait until there are signs, visible signs."

James sat there unmoving as the creature grabbed him from behind and bit into his neck. He screamed and bit down on the flask and closed his eyes. Blood erupted from the wound, from his mouth. The flask slipped from his hands and his shriek pierced the night.

Ronnie jumped towards the animal, but he wasn't fast enough. Blood spurted from James' severed jugular, and as quick as it started the screaming stopped, his body went limp. The creature continued chewing on James, the intoxicating taste of fresh blood overpowering its survival instinct. It never saw the blade that took its head.

Nine.

Ronnie wept and held his friend's body until the twitching started and the eyes, specked with blood, reopened.

Ten.

The next night Ronnie ate the tastiest steak of his entire life.

The End

*****

The Crick

"You taking me to the crick, ain't ya?" Hank asked, anger and resentment in his voice. He looked like 250 pounds of hell stuffed into a cheap state uniform. Angry red lines of infection ran across his sallow skin like a roadmap. Dark bags hung from his jaundiced, bloodshot eyes, and the area around his lymph nodes was swollen and bruised. He was sweating like a whore in church, the government-gray uniform now black with perspiration. The floor and benches of the van were crowded with bodies, all inmates in similar condition.

"Of course not, buddy. You're sick. I'm taking you to County so they can get you fixed up." Roger had to drop his gaze from the rearview mirror and Hank's eyes; he was a terrible liar. Good murderer, but terrible liar.

*

A new arrival had reported to the infirmary with common flu-like symptoms two days ago. That evening two more inmates complained of similar symptoms and by morning officer Hank Stewart and a dozen others were coughing up blood.

The duty physician said it was a rare strain of flu and the infected should be removed to County immediately before the entire penitentiary succumbed. All it took was the word "epidemic" to be spoken aloud and the warden saw his gubernatorial bid evaporate like ice in the summertime.

"Epidemic! Well, they sure as hell ain't gonna find patient zero at my damn facil-tee."

The sick and dead were loaded onto an undocumented inmate transport that very night. As Roger swung behind the wheel, the warden stopped him with the stern, no nonsense look that he was so famous for, the one he used on all the billboards. "Take these boys to the crick, son," he said, the trademark toothpick dancing between his lips as he spoke.

"Then take Hank to County?" Roger asked.

The warden was incredulous. "We have a situation, son. It's time to put your big-boy pants on."

Roger had killed inmates before, been to the crick many times in fact, but a fellow guard? A protest crossed his mind, fleeting morality, but was quickly sidelined. If he didn't do it, someone else would, and Roger, complete with a dime sized hole in his head would be joining the sheet covered cargo. Oh yes, Hank was going to the crick.

*

"I don't believe you," Hank said in a slur, chin resting on his chest. The blood from his nose and mouth mixed with his sweat and fell in watery orange-red drops like a Rorschach test on the white linen shrouds.

"Oh come on, bud—" Roger's reply was interrupted by a coughing fit so fierce that he momentarily lost control of the van and swerved several times across the road before regaining control. The stacked bodies rolled off the benches and fell into the aisle in a heap of the sick, dying and dead. Hank clutched the bench railing, grimaced under the strain, then laughed.

"That's how ... it starts ... buddy," he said through waves of nausea. "Better slow down—the turn's up ahead." Hank chuckled.

Roger cursed silently at both Hank's awareness and the bright red mist on his sleeve. Slowing he turned left onto a wagon-wheel road, a thick wall of southern pine on their left and the creek on their right flanked by more trees beyond that. They were thirty miles from town, but might as well been on the moon. Roger set the trip meter and killed the headlights, allowing darkness to engulf them.

Roger coughed again, but this time Hank did not laugh ... he moaned.

"It'll be quick, buddy, I promise," Roger reassured his coworker without turning. The moans increased in volume and number like a chorus with each mile.

The crick, the dump, could not come soon enough. Roger willed the trip meter to move; eventually it clicked on 10 miles and he stopped the van. His sigh of relief was lost in the groans as he punched the interior light on.

He turned to face his sick cargo and was greeted with Hank's face plastered against the expanded metal cage. Hank looked at Roger intently, analyzing him; head cocking to one side before his mouth suddenly snapped open with a hiss, exposing bloodied teeth and gums.

"Jeez...!" Roger fell against the dash, pulled his revolver and emptied it into Hank's chest. Hank went limp but was held up, pinned to the cage by the mass of other infected that had risen from their linen body bags, sallow and swollen, moaning and snapping at the air. Black fluid escaped from Hank's slack mouth and eyes as the mob pressed his body against the cage with the full weight of their throng.

The cage creaked under the strain, and the anchor bolts snapped. The diseased poured into the cab as Roger stumbled down the steps, slipped on the last, dropped his gun, fumbled for the rail, missed and slid down the muddy bank.

His head struck something that was too hairy to be a stone. As his vision adjusted to the ambient light of the moon, he recognized the rotting face he was looking into; Rodriguez, an inmate beaten to death a month ago by the night shift.

Roger gazed across the mass grave that was "the crick." Dozens of bodies in various stages of decomposition lay in the creek bed, illuminated in the moonlight, some stripped naked, others wearing the international orange, state-issued coveralls. Night birds hopped about pecking at the decayed remains.

Roger tried to stand but was tackled from behind. He whirled on his attacker, but it was too late—they had fallen on him, clawing and biting. Skin and muscle tore from bone in agonizing shreds. Roger's shrieks pierced the night if only for a few seconds. Soon the creatures joined the night birds in their search for edible morsels among the murdered.

They did eventually make it to County.

The End

*****

Sean lives in central Oklahoma with his beautiful wife Tammy. They share their home with a pair of three legged dogs. His short fiction can be found in various anthologies, e-zines and periodicals.

Return to TOC
