Kwashon Blumenthal, 28

God, he hated being sick. Feverish, unable to swallow, wracked with chills and breaking out in unwelcome sweats. The bed suddenly was too soft; no position allowed him to lie in comfort. His sheets and pillow were perpetually damp, and he was too listless and miserable to focus on reading or even watching television. Just the endless hours passing him by, dragging slowly like codeine addicted mules through wading pools of peanut butter.

And on Memorial Day weekend no less! No justice in the world. He'd had to cancel the night out on Saturday with friends. The expected drinks, the pleasure of catching up with people he'd not seen in over a month. Had to then cancel his date on Sunday night, the third and supreme date where things were supposed to go to the next level with Rodnesha. Had to bow out of the bbq on Monday. 

Really, what was the point in living? He couldn't even swallow his own spit. Hurt to much, like a white hot nail had been driven into the left side of his throat. Instead, he had spit every fifteen minutes into a cup he kept by the bedside. Disgusting.

Through his open door he heard moans downstairs. Ha. His friends had shown up in sympathy. Kwashon wrestled with the petulant desire to remain sullen and the sudden upswing that their concern evinced. And, ontop of coming by, they were mimicking a zombie attack. Kwashon smiled, and closed his eyes. His friends were brilliant.

They made their way up the stairs, groaning, moaning, dragging their feet. "Oh God," said Kwashon sarcastically, "A zombie attack. What on earth am I going to do?"

The moans paused for a moment and then grew louder. Kwashon laughed, scooted up so that he was sitting against the headboard. His friends gained the landing. Shuffled over to his door.

"Man, you guys--" began Kwashon, and then stopped. The make up on the guy who came through his door was so good he couldn't tell which friend it was. Bulky, wearing some sort of blue mechanic's uniform, face all chewed up. "God," said Kwashon, recoiling. "That's nasty, yo. You guys went all out, eh?"

The man was followed by a skinny looking girl, but Kwashon didn't have time to look at her. With shufftling steps the man crossed the bedroom, stepping on his open laptop, knocking over a pile of magazines. 

"Hey," said Kwashon, suddenly annoyed. And then the man was on him, stinking of rotting meat, big, callused hands scrabbling at him as the simply fell onto him and buried his face into his neck. "Hey!" yelled Kwashon as more people in makeup entered the room. "Time out, yo, time out!"

Robert Enwalis, 39

He was a hoary old bastard, was Enwalis. Half pickled by a life time of boozing, made hard by too much sun and heavy lifting. Yard work, dock work, factory work. The kind of lean, leathery muscle that can take a swing from an iron pipe and ellicit little more than a grunt. Square jaw sandpapered with salt and pepper stubble, knuckles split from too many bar fights. Sour sweat smell, strong teeth run to yellow. Part junk yard dog, part rusted machine parts, with some tree roots and rock thrown in for good measure. 

Once, back in Cuba, he'd gone 37 rounds with El Gordo, bare knuckle fighting and drinking raw rum between rounds. Had lasted almost three hours. By the time he'd dropped the world was but a spinning deluge of crimson, smeared yellow lights and slurred screams. He'd lost the fight, but had been walking again in two days. El Gordo, the nominal winner, had remained bed ridden for the rest of his sordid life.

Nothing had ever come easy to him. Nothing had ever stayed for long in his hands. In his bed, in his bank account. Homeless now some two years, he'd thought the world had gone to hell a long time ago. 

Turns out he'd been wrong. 

Placing his hands on the small of his back, he leaned backways and heard bones pop. He grimaced. He hated mornings. No fit time for hard work. Reached down and took up a pipe wrench as heavy as sin and long as his forearm. Hefted it. 

The fucker's were come down the alley toward him. They'd killed his old dog three days ago. He'd been ducking them and running for near to three weeks. Enough. Time to step up and bat.

The first was a a young woman. Curvy, her slack, rotted face still holding hits of beauty. In the bone structure, he mused, as she shambled toward him. Good cheekbones. Stepping forward, he shifted his weight smoothly from right to left foot, put his hip and back into the blow, and ruined her cheekbones for good.

Down she went. That kind of blow kept them down. The second was an old lady, her hair plastered around her porcelain skull, her wrinkled face sagging almost off her skull. She went down easy, the force of the blow sending her stumbling to the left. A fat Japanese kid in a basketball jersey took a hammer blow right on the summit of his skull, and smacked down to his knees.

Enwalis hopped back a few steps, took a sip from his flask. There was another fifty or so of them coming. Spaced out some, but it would get intense pretty soon. The alley opened up behind him, beckoning, promising escape.

Fuck it. 

Wrench in hand, he stepped back into the fray. He'd gone three hours with El Gordo. Sure he'd been younger than. But these freaks didn't compare to that mighty Cuban, God curse his fat slarding ass.

A slender man with a ridiculous moustache and a brown suit stumbled over the Japanese kid, righted and took the wrench to the face. Lost his jaw. Second blow crumpled his brain pan in. A seven year old kid took the wrench in a swing upper cut that lifted him off his feet and sent him sprawling back into the crowd. Enwalis switched the wrench to his other hand, shook out his fingers. 

The moans were everywhere. Still, he'd fucked some whores who had sounded even more bored. This wasn't so bad.

Skinny black man. Mexican dude in Lederhosen. Woman with her face torn off in beige buisiness suit. Police officer, almost six foot five, big as a linebacker. A pregnant woman, dragging a mess between her legs. A girl so skinny she had probably looked more dead than she did now. Crunch. Swing. Crunch. Down onto one knee. Crunch. Eye spouting out. Crunch, slammed into the wall. Steadily backing up. Swinging his arm to loosen the shoulder, warming up now. 

A moan from behind. Enwalis swung around without thinking, wrench cutting through the air to cave in an old man's chest. Double sided now. Enwalis looked up, gauging. Must be almost nine in the morning. He brought the wrench, slick with hair and jellied blood into the old man's face,  ended his moaning. More around him, tripping and climbing over the felled bodies. No way out.

But then, there never really had been. You can't pick what cards are dealt to you, thought Enwalis, taking a final swig of whiskey from his flask before throwing it in a fat woman's face. All you can do is decide whether you die swinging or clawed down from behind as you ran.

Three more dropped before one latched onto his left arm, teeth digging in. By the time he had knocked it off another had enveloped him in a hug, dug its teeth into the muscle of his neck. Most men might have gone down at that point. Not Enwalis. With a roar, he shook off the zombie like a bear might a drunken squirrel, and kept on swinging.

Crunch. Fall. Crunch. Fall. The ground slick beneath his feet. Breath heaving in his chest, superheated, rasping. Vision blurring. Turning and turning, bringing his wrench down, swinging even when he could no longer make out their faces.

Their moans changed. Became roars in his head, joined the rushing thrum in his ears to become old cries, old screams and encouragement. The lights were blurred, he could barely stand. Wiping his forearm across his face, clearing his eyes of sweat and blood, he grinned at his towering opponent. A mountain of a man. Pain was everywhere. Teeth slicked with blood, he laughed. A second chance to win that fight. With a final roar, Enwalis surged forward, and brought his wrench screaming around, and before the world went dark, before he lost track of it all, he saw El Gordo go down, and felt the sweet, sweet rush of a dark and thrilling victory.

Paul & Phil, 28

I.

“Shit.” said Paul, looking out the window of the third story Long Island City apartment he and Philip shared. “We seriously should have seen this coming.”

“20/20 hindsight and all that.” responded Phil, flipping through the seven hundred and fifty three channels of unique static on the television.

“No,” insisted Paul, turning away from the vista of shambolic death outside, “I mean we, you and I, should have seen this coming.”

“The thing is, Paul,” replied Phil, looking up from the screen, “we, you and I, are the type of people who are always expecting this to happen, all the time. Therefore, how can we, you and I, be blamed for not seeing it coming? Technically speaking, we’ve seen this coming for about, what, twelve years or so? So did Will, so did Sunir, so did a lot of people. But Will never petitioned NASA or the X-Prize or Lockheed-Martin to do anything about it, did he? Sunir went to med school, I taught those little punks in Miami and you grew taller, never really expecting this to happen. And honestly, what would we have done?”

Paul thought for a moment. “Not really sure…I guess. Gone survivalist I suppose.”

“Exactly my point. And what the fuck do we know about being survivalists?”

“We can both grow a pretty respectable beard.”

“There is nothing respectable about our beards. Besides, we should be happy we know so much about zombies. We’re better off than most. Some people didn’t figure it out until they were being digested. We know they can’t climb stairs with any degree of speed, we know to ‘shoot for the head’…if we had guns.”

“We really should do something about that.” sad Paul, half to himself. “I’ve only fired a gun once in my life and I was four. And that ended badly.”

“Well, not for you,” said Phil, turning back to the TV, switching on the Playstation 3.

“Who gives a four year old a .45?” demanded Paul.

“A Republican?” opined Phil.

“Zing.” answered Paul.

“So what do we do now?” asked Phil, picking up a controller and handing it to Paul.

“Well,” mused Paul, taking the controller from Phil, “I’d always thought if this all ever happened that you and Will would be the ideal people to be with, but since Will is off in Columbia, that really isn’t too much of an option.”

“Go on” said Phil, initiating a two player game of Wipeout HD.

“So, like any good hypothetical survivalist, I stroked my unruly beard…”

“As one must,” added Phil.

“And I considered an alternate third, in case Will was already ensconced in some NASA fallout zombie shelter and had neglected to tell us. And, based on his level of experience and insight into this particular situation, I would have to say B.J.”

Philip raised his eyebrows.

“As a matter of fact, the place he’s living in Boston is ideal for this type of thing. A very steep hill, a sturdy old house, a bunch of guys well versed in the now-applicable art of zombie killing…”

“All right. Then we’re off to Boston?”

“Unless you have any better ideas?”

“It’s a shame we can’t bring the TV and Playstation. I’m getting quite good at Wipeout.”

“B.J. has an Xbox 360, so it’s not a complete loss.”

There was a pause in which they played the game, the sound of "Firestarter" sans lyrics filled the room.

“This really is the only fitting music for this game,” remarked Phil after a moment.

“Agreed.”

Max Brooks, 36

He was completely unprepared.

Jessica, 27

"Oh my God, Roger's dead!"

"Come on, we can't help him now!"

"Dave—"

"RUN!"

"Barbra, are you—"

"I'm fine...let's just...get there..."

They had started out as a group of nine.

Now three were left, almost four, but Roger hadn't been paying attention and had slipped in a puddle of something unmentionable, gone to one knee and, ostensibly, ended his life.

None of the final three had really known Roger, but even if they had, they would have been...not okay with his demise, but merely...less devastated.

Except for Jess.

Not to say that Barbra and Dave were stone cold, heartless mercenaries for hire or anything, but Jess was just more empathic than most people. Even after three months trapped in this nightmare, she was still unable to detach herself from all the death and pain and horror surrounding her. In a way, it made her more human, holding onto these vestments of emotion, but in another way, it made her more vulnerable.

Barbra saw this, but she had asthma, a much more evident vulnerability than empathy. Dave saw it too, but that was one of the reasons he loved her so much. Even amidst all this, even at the end of the world, he loved her big heart and it hurt him to see her in this situation. This was killing her and there was nothing he could do about it.

But she was surviving.

They were all surviving.

Well, all except Roger.

And Sarah and Ben and Noel and Graham.

Phil and Paul?

Who knew?

They’d had a skewed vision of reality before the dead had stopped dying and started eating.

They'd run into them a few weeks ago and they'd had this air about them...something...not quite right...but they had survived this far and that was what mattered right now.

They left, on their way to Boston, and soon after, Sarah, Ben, Noel and Graham had been killed.

And now Roger.

"Get inside!"

Dave had found an unlocked door and they all piled in, Dave last, pulling the door shut behind him.

That sat in the musty dark, panting.

Barbra's inhaler went off.

After what seemed like hours, they heard the moaning from outside the door, moving slowly toward them.

This part always terrified Jess. She knew from experience that these things had no logic or reasoning capabilities, that the zombies would never know they were hiding in this particular place unless one of them made a sound and even then they still might not find them, but that noise...just moving slowly closer in the dark...

Jess silently thanked Roger for his accidental sacrifice.

They may have gotten away with no problem, but with Roger as a...distraction, it was a certainty.

They would wait here until the zombies outside had passed and then either further explore this place or head out again.

This had become the routine: find a place, assess its positive and negative attributes as a temporary hideout and then either stay for as long as they dared or gather what useful items they could find and move on.

This was New York City after all and, overrun with the walking dead or not, there were a hell of a lot of places three people could hide.

Eventually, the sound faded and then there was silence.

After one more blast from Barbra's inhaler, Dave said "All right, let's find out where we are..."

At the moment, they each had a nice, sturdy MagLite with them, plus a backpack that had granola bars, Balance bars, dried fruit, nuts, jerky and as much bottled water as they could carry without overburdening themselves. Unlike the fiction that Jess had been working with for the past few years, this whole thing hadn't happened like in the books. Yes, there had been some rioting and some looting and some places were indeed stripped clean of every single bit of food and water, but the fact was, New York City was just too big for everything to be gone. On an average block, there were sometimes as many as ten delis, diners, cafes or grocery stores.

Food and water hadn't been a problem, so they had decided to flee on foot; they would find an adequate supply of food and water, hole up for a while and see what developed.

New York was brimming with supplies, but the places between New York and most other places weren't. Why add starvation to the list of things that could kill you?

So that's what they had done.

The problem was that the dead were everywhere. And although they didn't consciously hunt or form large groups, these things just happened. They were always awake and "looking" for food. Sadly, things had developed in a manner that left the three of them with very limited options. At this particular moment, they were toying with the idea of making their way to the Hudson River and seeing if there were boats either patrolling for survivors or simply left after their owners had abandoned them. They had unconsciously been making their way west for the past few days.

"All right," Dave said from the top of the stairs at the end of the darkened hallway, "there's an open apartment up here, looks pretty good. There's a fire escape outside the kitchen window so we have a way out if we need it."

Barbra and Jess followed Dave up and entered the apartment.

Dave was right, it was pretty good; a bit musty, but much better than some of the other places they'd walked into.

The door opened into a large living room with two bedrooms directly in front of them, a kitchen to the right and a bathroom to the left.

There was a love seat against one wall and a cheap looking Ikea standing lamp next to the door. Jess twisted the switch out of habit and was rewarded with a dry snapping sound, but no light.

They halfheartedly searched the kitchen for food or anything useful but found nothing.

They each ate some food in silence, and then Barbra and Jess made their way to the bedrooms while Dave set some glasses in front of the door and took his place as sentinel for the evening.

"Jekka..."

Jess smiled in her sleep.

She'd fallen back asleep again and they'd probably missed Brunch.

Oh well.

They could just order in or maybe see if the Brunch place had dinner.

It wasn't too strange to think that they would, was it?

She was pretty sure she'd seen them open after dark...

"Jekka...Barbra's dead..."

...she remembered seeing a neon sign in the window... a hand or something.

Maybe it was a fish?

She'd have to ask Dave.

"Jekka, we have to go before..."

Wait, the place was called Manus!

That's Latin for 'hand' so--

"JEKKA!"

Jess sat up and looked around the dim bedroom.

Dave was grappling with Barbra.

"JESS! FUCKING WAKE UP!"

Jess was alert and on her feet before she knew it, looking around the room for something, anything to—

Dave screamed.

Jess whirled around just in time to see Dave slam his fist into Barbra's face, sending her stumbling back into the wall. He then clutched his neck just below his left ear.

Barbra was slowly righting herself.

"Jess..." Dave grunted, "Let’s fucking go..."

He held out his right hand and she grabbed it.

They ran from the bedroom through the unfamiliar dimness of the living room and were just at the door when they heard the noise.

It sounded like a fist hitting a coffin full of glass bottles and for a moment, they simply stood, unmoving.

Then it clicked.

The glasses against the front door...

"All right," Dave started, "out the wind—"

And there was Barbra, tottering towards them, arms outstretched, chin and chest slicked with Dave's blood.

Dave glanced around the room quickly and grabbed the nearest weapon, the segmented standing lamp, from beside the door.

"I'm going to hold it off; you get the window open..."

That plan seemed to work for Barbra who began stumbling toward Dave. He cocked the lamp back and swung as hard as he could, base first, at her head. There was a metallic snap and an organic crunch as both the lamp and Barbra's skull broke.

Jess was frantically tugging at the window which wasn't budging an inch.

There was another, more insistent thump from the front door.

"Dave! It's not opening!" Jess nearly screamed.

"Locked?" Dave said in a clotted voice.

"Fucking idiot!" Jess said aloud to herself as she reached for the latches on top of the window. They clicked and one of the glasses fell over.

She raked the window up on its tracks and, thankfully, it stayed open.

Dave was looking down at Barbra, who was twitching minutely on the floor and another glass fell over.

"Close one." he mumbled, walking into the kitchen.

Jess was standing on the fire escape and looking down into the alley below where there was no sign of the things.

She helped Dave out as best she could and they unfastened the ladder which made a horrible screeching, clanging noise as it lowered.

They both made it down without incident and were just taking in their new surroundings when Jess gasped, "The fucking packs, Dave!"

He looked slowly up at the ladder when they heard the door inside open, shattering the rest of the glasses.

"Too late now..." he croaked.

It was almost dawn and, in the growing light Jess was able to get a look at Dave's neck for the first time.

It looked horrible. The flesh was shredded around the wound and, in the weak light, the insides gleaming wetly.

"Dave...are you..." asked Jess in a small voice.

"I'm in trouble, Jekka. She didn't severe the artery or we wouldn't be having this conversation, but I've maybe got an hour. I'm already fading..." he trailed off, looking down the length of the alley.

"Dave," Jess was trying to keep the tremor out of her voice, but she was failing. "Dave...I don't think I can...I can't..."

Dave turned back to her, the dazed, dull look gone from his eyes.

He grabbed her shoulders.

"Jess, if you don't, I'll turn into one of them and come after you, you know that! You don't have a choice!" He paused, "And I don't want to be one of them."

"Dave..." tears were streaming down her round, shocked face and dripping off her chin.

He silenced her with a small kiss and smiled.

"I'm not dead yet, Jessica. Let's find a new place before we deal with this."

One end of the alley was a brick wall, topped with razor wire and the other ended in a gate. They made their way as quietly as they could and paused for a moment at the mouth of the alley.

They could see the tail end of the horde that had entered the apartment just entering the building now.

"God, there must have been fifty of them..." Dave breathed.

They opened the gate slowly which, for a wonder, didn't make a sound and were about to make their way up the street away from the zombies when Dave stumbled and fell against a cluster of trash cans.

The noise was explosive in the early morning silence and less than a second after the noise had stopped, the moaning began.

Jess saw the last form that had entered the building pause, turn, pause again and then come shambling out into the bluish street.

The others were following it.

"Dave!" Jess shook him.

His eyes fluttered, opened, looked into hers.

"You gotta go..." he whispered.

"No! You said that you had—" Jess was very edge of the precipice.

"Might have been wrong...might have nicked the artery after all..."

Jess felt like a sunbather who opens her eyes just as the shadow of the tsunami engulfs her; paralyzed, unable to think or even comprehend the enormity of what is about to happen.

"Dave..."

His eyes slipped shut.

She had just enough time to trip behind a Dumpster at the mouth of the alley as they fell on him.

The last conscious thought Jessica had was:

at least I can't see...at least they're in the way...and I think he was already d—

Then Dave shrieked, an unending eruption of sound that told Jess her world had ended.

Jessica began to scream in response.

Their screams merged; his of agony, hers of terror and utter, abject loss.

There's something to be said for the human mind. How elegant. How multifaceted. How awe inspiring. It has the potential to create the most beautiful art, the most intricate formula, to be as complex as a galaxy and as unique as a snowflake.

It also has the potential to run binary.

Black or white.

On or off.

Fight or flight.

Underneath all the trappings in which society has swaddled the human mind, there lies the true Human Nature.

The killer, the survivor, the beast.

It was witnessing this horrible act of violence that finally cracked the facade, which had grown thinner and thinner as the world slipped faster and faster down the jagged slope into the Abyss. Seeing the person she loved most in this world torn limb from limb while these demons feasted on his still living, still breathing, still screaming body had shattered the veneer meticulously built over the past three decades.

What was left was not some cute, inoffensive woodland creature.

What was left was Hell Itself.

And It wanted vengeance.

Jessica stopped screaming. The tears stopped coursing down her face. She rose and looked around her, as if for the first time. The creatures in front of her were busying themselves by stripping the last remnants of Dave from what was left of his frame and did not take notice.

If they had, even these unfeeling, uncomprehending monsters may have known fear.

Jessica's eyes landed on the tangle of bodies which marked Dave's final resting place. She uttered a grunting bark that was just masked by the groaning, snapping noises coming from the zombies in front of her. She then drew in a breath and loosed a bloodcurdling noise, barely animal, nowhere near human. The things paused, looked up and beheld.

Before they even had a chance to totter to their feet, she was on them, tearing with her hands and teeth like a rabid dog. She didn't even register what she was slashing and biting at and in a matter of seconds, the seven zombies that had heard the trash cans and ended Dave's life (and, in some terrible way, renewed hers) were nothing more than seven piles of limbs and rags and muck.

She stood in the center of this massacre covered in gore and gobbets of red jelly and white, green and purple flesh from head to toe, the foul meat she'd torn from their forms sliding from her mouth onto the ground (for some part of her knew, even in this state, that to ingest any part of their filth would mean agonizing death). She turned and saw the rest of the groaning monsters begin to stumble out of the building back onto the street, roared like the Apocalypse and charged at them.

She hit the first one, which was standing in the doorway, with her entire body and, because of sheer momentum, knocked it and the dozen or so that lined up behind it like necrotic dominoes over in a row. Then she descended upon them like a buzz saw, morsellating their putrid, leathery bodies with every ounce of her being. Her rage had brought her to the foot of the stairs where she caught sight of another throng standing at the head of the staircase. It was over in a tissue and bone filled instant. And then she was at the top of the stairs, looking into the apartment which had served as the merest bit of respite for the past hours and contained the remainder of the horde that had caused such turmoil in the last few minutes.

Jessica caught sight of Barbra toward the back of the mob.

Her shriek was soul rending and nearly tore her throat to bloody ribbons.

She saw only Barbra, the cause of this tragedy, this cataclysm.

Jessica clawed her way through more than thirty undead bodies and, less than a minute after catching sight of Barbra, was standing before her.

Of course there was no recognition in Barbra's clouded eyes, how could there be? But Jessica wasn't here in the same way she had been five minutes ago.

Barbra saw only meat and Jess saw only enemy.

She shot her hand out, lightening quick, and tore Barbra's jaw from her face with a sound like a chicken being ripped in half.

Jessica felt the vibrations go through her body and liked it.

She dropped the jaw on the floor and began to systematically tear Barbra apart: her hands, arms, ears, eyes, head...it was the truest form of catharsis she'd ever experienced.

After utterly dispatching with Barbra, Jess fell, unconscious, to the floor in a slurry of undead bits.

When she woke, the sun was shining bright, making the fetid meat in the room produce an almost physical stink. She rose shakily to her feet and stared about her at the chaos she'd created. Then she began to weep, her small body pulsing with the sobs that escaped her. She half sat, half fell to the slick floor and cried, her tears cutting clean tracks through the crusted ichor on her face.

Dave was dead.

They were all dead but her.

The world was dead and it only kept spinning because it hadn't yet realized the fact.

After a while, she stopped crying and took in a deep, cleansing breath.

At least she wouldn't have to be a part of this farce much longer.

She looked down at herself and saw the dozens of tiny cuts and scratches covering her hands and arms.

How long had Dave said this stuff takes to change you?

She couldn't remember, not that it mattered, she wasn't going to sit here and turn into one of those things, feeling herself die and be reborn as some hideous cannibal. She slowly staggered to her feet again. Her body ached all over and her mouth tasted of unspeakable foulness. She reached the sink and washed her mouth out with the rust tasting water from the tap. She rinsed her hands, arms and face in the cool water and stood for a moment, dripping and just staring.

Then she nodded almost imperceptibly, walked over to the oven and turned the knob. The faint hiss told her there was still gas in these pipes. That was good. She found their abandoned packs in the bedrooms and located the pack of matches at the bottom of Barbra's.

Barbra had been a smoker.

An asthmatic smoker.

Brilliant.

She made her way back to the kitchen and closed the window. The air was already taking on a wavy quality. She went back to the bedroom she'd spent her last night in and changed out of her filthy rags into a clean shirt and pants. Back in the living room she dragged the love seat over to the kitchen and placed it diagonally against the cabinets under the sink and the wall with the window set into it, forming a small barricade. Then she made her way carefully through the abattoir in the living room, down the slimy stairs and outside.

She saw a small group of the things milling around at the end of the street, looking up at a pigeon perched on a lamppost and another larger group further up the street. None of them had seen her so she just sat, feeling the sun, warm and fresh, on her battered body for a few quiet moments. Eventually, she opened her eyes, and stood, taking note of the stiffness that was settling into her bones and muscles already.

She walked down the street, moving at a fast walk past the small group focused on the bird until she was in between them and the group further away.

Then she yelled at the top of her voice.

Slowly, very slowly, the group at the lamppost and the larger group began to stumble towards her, moaning and clutching.

Within five minutes she'd managed to attract about a hundred of the things, always being sure to stay well in front of the horde and well away from any tight spaces. She led them back to the apartment, the stiffness slowly turning to numbness throughout the trek.

Finally, she'd led the majority into the apartment building. They filled the entry way, the hallway, the stairs and the living room.

She took her place behind the love seat, still a good ten feet from the nearest one and went for the matches on the counter, knocking them onto the floor. She sat down, tried to pick them up again and failed. Her third attempt was successful. She looked around the room and everything appeared underwater; whether this was the gas or her vision, she wasn't sure.

She opened the matchbook and tried to tear out a match, but she couldn't make her fingers close on it. Her index finger did what it was told, but her thumb just twitched feebly.

"No..." she croaked.

She took a deep breath, which caused the world to strobe in purple and black, and tried again, but this time the thumb only trembled the faintest bit.

"No...no..." she said again.

She suddenly clamped her teeth down on her tongue and the world instantly flared with color.

As she tore the match out and flipped the pack over, she registered that her blood didn't have the rich, vital, iron taste it usually did.

She scratched the match against the rough strip but it wasn't hard enough.

The world was turning purple and black again.

Jessica bit her tongue once more, much harder this time and felt part of it separate from the rest.

It lay in her mouth like cold rubber and she choked it out.

She wasn't bleeding anymore.

Her stomach knotted painfully and as she pressed the match head to the strip one last time, she was swallowed by their shadows.

"No...Dave...n-"

Peter Lansky, 35

He yanks the rope hard, and the meat-hook on the other end obliges him by rising towards the proscenium arch over the stage. The zombie's arm, pierced at the elbow, follows it upwards, causing the creature to pirouette. The creature struggles against this, but the hooks in its other three limbs make the effort useless. It moans.

"If it were me," Peter says to the corpse, as he would to his actors, "I'd make myself into a doll. Make myself dance like I mean it!" Peter grabs two more ropes, and uses them to have the zombie goose-step across the stage. Peter is wearing headphones. The opera drowns out the creature's protests.

Peter kicks a weight off another pile of ropes. From the loft above the stage another zombie crashes to the stage floor. It is Peter's Ex-wife Anna: very recently his Ex. Peter had decided to call her his ex after she died.

"Learn the steps," he says as she rises to her feet. "Practice."

She lunges towards him, but from the house he has plenty of time to grab her leashes and put her on her mark.

It was sheer luck Peter hadn't been killed by the zombies. He'd been hiding in his wife's dressing room, waiting to catch Anna and her lover unguarded. He didn't get his chance, sadly. When Anna entered the dressing room she was already dead, like the other one here and all of them outside. He was lucky he already had the meat-hooks on him.

"I'd become the character, give myself over to it," he says. He brings the two meat puppets together fast and hard. With a flick the zombies fall into the bed placed on the stage and thrash around in the sheets wildly. There is more moaning. The opera has ended. Peter is crying. Peter is smiling.

"Because I cannot escape it," he lets go of the ropes and joins the couple in bed.

Danielle, 30

This. Plan. Was. Perfect.
As soon as the first signs started, I knew exactly what was going on (thank you Philip and Paul, wherever you are right now) and I sent out feelers, risked my job and actually got a response. Skeptical at first, but, for whatever reason, not as skeptical as one would have thought.
*sigh*
Shame on me for not thinking that he was so accepting because he was out of his fucking mind. I mean, I knew he was out of his fucking mind, but not this far out. This asshole hasn't had contact with his mind since...shit, looking over recent events, ever! I have no idea. I really wish I had realized this sooner, but, I'll admit, I was star struck xmax. Ted Nugent! Come on, it was awesome!
That first meeting in the city before they shut everything down was amazing. A little weird, but in the way meeting any rock legend who isn't really...normal...would be weird. I was still kind of vacillating on the whole plan, wondering if the military would actually be able to handle this and just toughing it out with Phil and Paul in LIC since they were the most zombie savvy people I knew, but then two things happened: first, I envisioned Phil and Paul dead by my hand from over quoting Prince lyrics or personal jokes from eighth grade or something and, second, Ted gave me five pounds of venison...that he had killed himself...with his bare hands. That sealed the deal. I mean, what are the living dead to a guy who can track and kill animals with his bare hands?
So I told Phil and Paul I was flattered by that I was going to go up north with Ted Nugent. Obviously they didn't believe me but then I reminded them that the goddamn Zombie Apocalypse was about to begin. I could hear the simultaneous shrug as they agreed and said that stranger things have indeed happened and wished me luck. No, actually, they said "it was a pleasure working with you Dr. Venkman...see you on the other side". Yeah, I would have torn their fucking throats out with my teeth. A yot.
Anyway, right before the city was locked down, Ted picked me up in a helicopter and after a few hours flying north, he landed us in a field somewhere in the woods. He told me that from here we would have to drive and then showed me his modified Hummer. God damn but that man can modify a Hummer. I can't be sure, but at one point, I think we were actually just driving over rocks and the inside of the truck didn't even vibrate. He said the cabin was stocked with enough supplies to last two people twenty years and that it was my home as well but that his studio was off limits. He said "no one but Ted was allowed in the Magic Room". I completely understood and told him so. He said he didn't think I really understood, but he appreciated the gesture. Warning lights: zero. Idiot...
About forty minutes later we reached a high, sturdy gate that he said surrounded the whole estate and then I got to see just what a true survivalist with money can accomplish. His "cabin" made all the other cabins I'd ever seen look like a Downs Syndrome patient's refrigerator box fort by comparison. It was one of the nicest domiciles I'd ever seen, let alone been inside in my life. Not too shabby. At first, everything was just as excellent as I had thought it would be; he had a massive DVD collection, a private screening room, an extensive library, not to mention an incredible sound system. More food than I could ever eat, a generator, a back up generator, about eight bedrooms, six bathrooms, steam room, sauna, workout room, three water heaters and, most pertinent in our current situation, an arsenal. If he ever got tired of killing zombies with his bare hands, we'd still have enough ammo and guns to last a long time. On top of all this, he had some special satellite television that got thousands of channels (he said that when he would "go hermit" for months at a time, he still liked the option to stay up on current world events) so we were able to track the progression of this...horror for as long as there were people with cameras tracking it.
As the days went on, Ted taught me how to use the guns so that if I were ever attacked without him there I wouldn't be a victim. Pretty soon I was as deadly as a rabid elephant but as economical with my movements as a ninja. Ted Nugent had turned me into a rabid elephant ninja...and it was awesome. Not that that seemed to be a problem. After about three months, we had yet to have one breach. Occasionally we'd do perimeter sweeps, but, for whatever reason, the zombies never came up this far.
Like I said, things were going great...then...well...things got a bit odd and everything went down hill from there. One night at dinner, Ted surprised me by kissing my hand. First off, Ted Nugent is NOT the kind of man to kiss a woman's hand. He would offer up hugs that went on just a bit too long and sometimes, I'd catch him staring at me, just smiling. In a way, it was sweet and kind of flattering. But I had no interest in him, at all. I was thoroughly convinced that this wasn't forever, that there would be an end to it and everything would return to some state of normality. He didn't seem to agree. Things sort of came to a head one night at dinner when, out of nowhere, he said that he and I might be the last people on Earth, that we might be responsible for repopulating the planet like Adam and Eve. Before really thinking about the consequences I said that I doubted things would come to that and that the military were most likely working on a contingency and so on and so forth. I think he had stopped listening at "things would come to that". I may have put a bit too much of an edge on "that" and he was suddenly sullen. After the quiet dinner had ended, he told me he wanted to play me a song. We had occasionally listened to music on the huge system and it wasn't totally out of the ordinary for one of us to bring something to the other, but there was this strange gravity...I found out why in a moment. I'll cut to the chase: it was a power ballad in which Ted listed my attributes and then proposed marriage. I will never forget the line: "and in this corpse littered wasteland, we'll see the union of a woman and man". Shudder. Normally, I'd do this over Gchat or, even better, e-mail, but neither of us were online, so I had to tell Ted Nugent that I didn't see him this way, that I was very grateful for everything he'd done but that I just wasn't interested in him.
That...was a huge mistake.
After that night, he would spend more and more time either locked in his studio or out of the house. I was never outright worried because he was absolutely capable and besides, there was the gate, but every time he came back in he'd just have this look in his eyes. Like he was studying me...cataloging me. It scared the shit out of me. The arsenal was left unlocked and several loaded guns were always kept in a specific place in case they needed to be accessed quickly and, one night, I snuck down and grabbed a Walther PPK, just to have. I was beginning to worry. This ominous energy started filling up the place like a fog. Something was about to happen. We would sometimes still see each other at dinner, but he would either be silently angry or tears would stream down his stone-like face...it was getting to me.
Then one morning, I woke to find him in my room, sitting in a cane chair by the door. My hand tightened on the gun under my pillow and I may have done something...irreversible if it hadn't have been for the look in his eyes and the shotgun on his lap. I didn't know if he was going to kill me or himself or both of us. I just stared, too frightened to say anything and, after what felt like hours, he stood up and left. I lay there, thinking that, if he did ever snap...I'd be dead. No contest. He was an honest to God survivalist when things were completely normal, the recent world events had...shit...enhanced the natural survivor in him...made him more feral, less human. I'd hurt him in some fundamental way without meaning to or trying to but he was...he wasn't dealing with it very well.
I didn't see him for the next three days and I was just beginning to wonder if maybe he hadn't just...gone native....just dropped all pretenses of humanity and become whatever it was that lived at the center of him when he was there, in the living room that night, listening to music on headphones. I thought it would be best if I just went up to my room and so I did. All my clothing had been dumped out of my drawers and scattered around the room. I was beside myself but, what could I do? At dinner, I meant to bring it up...but I just couldn't. His eyes...
I lay awake for hours, terrified of what might happen. At one point, I thought I heard noises coming from somewhere in the house...the fucked up thing is...here I am in the fucking Zombie Apocalypse and I'm more frightened of Ted Nugent than the walking dead. I'd never even seen one of the undead thanks to the remote location and the gate outside...
The days passed in the same fashion and...I began...I began considering...I began considering killing him. I was living in fear and unable to function, there was clearly something wrong with him and I wouldn't stand a chance if he went off the deep end.
I was lying in my bed, thinking about the implications and if I would ever be able to do something like this to another human being when Ted made the choice easy for me. There was a thump at my door, like a half knock...and then the groaning. Ted? I called. No answer. I pulled my Walther out from under my pillow and pulled back the hammer, ready for anything. In the end, it was much less dramatic than one would have expected. I crept to the door, turned the knob and jumped back, gun at the ready. Eventually, there was another thud and the door swung slowly open. It was Ted. He didn't look as horrifying as I thought he would. I knew from the news that he had just been turned. He was wearing a bathrobe and from the waist down, it was soaked with blood. I didn't think anything about it at the time, I just aimed for the head and squeezed the trigger, once, twice. Turns out I didn't need the second shot. The bullet went in and he hit the ground like a pile of rags. There was no explosive exit wound or anything like from the movies, just a pop and a thump. I stood there for a bit, cried a little, more in relief than anything else, I'll be honest, and then I covered him with a spare sheet from the linen closet down the hall. Now, this is a little weird...because of the way he fell, his robe had opened a bit and...okay, I saw his dick. I wasn't looking to sneak a peek at zombie Ted Nugent's junk, but when I leaned down to cover him, I just saw it. It was where all the blood was coming from. Most of it was bitten completely off. I was stunned. What the fuck was I looking at? He didn't have any other noticeable bites on his body, just his penis. But that would mean that a zombie...had bitten it. And he was wearing a robe, so he hadn't been outside, it was the middle of the winter. I looked down at the body again, and noticed the rawhide strip around his neck. I bent down and pulled it off of his neck.
The key to his studio.
So...here I am...key in hand...standing outside the door that he told me never to go into. I have a pretty bad feeling about what's in there, but I also have five shots left in the Walther and, whatever it is, it's got to be done.
If he was keeping a zombie in here and...fucking it...well, I have to get rid of it.
All right...let's do this...
Wha-?
AARGH!
Ah....fuck! You survivalist DICK! An axe? A fucking axe?! YOU BOOBY TRAPPED YOUR ZOMBIE SEX SLAVE?
Ah...shit this hurts...bleeding like a fucking-wait...what the fuck? It's...those are...it's wearing my underwear? And...a wig? My make up?! Oh Jesus Christ! You sick...! Fuck you, Ted Nugent! Fuck you, you degenerate hillbilly psycho! You scum sucking zombie fucker! Oh fuck...where's...the gun...fuck...she's...gunna eat...m-