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An Axe to Grind

By Hope Sullivan McMickle

Copyright 2008 Hope Sullivan McMickle

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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John Warren squinted in the glare of the late morning sun and watched the girl stagger across the grocery store parking lot. He leaned forward on his perch in the deer blind he’d installed in the tall tree beside the university library, slowly adjusted the focus on his binoculars, and studied her for a long moment. She appeared to be an ideal candidate. Despite her unwashed and tangled blonde hair and flaking purple sparkle nail polish, her lithe body was still somehow graceful. A thin gold bracelet glinted above her right ankle - a glittering bauble above dirty bare feet. He lowered the binoculars and raised the barrel of the AR 15 - not yet modified to fully automatic although he supposed he’d get to it one of these days - until the girl was framed in the crosshairs of the sight. She wore a black silk halter top above a pair of high-cut blue jean shorts faded nearly white. A spattering of blood partially obscured the rose tattoo on her left shoulder, trailing back to the gaping maw where her throat had once been.

He paused and swore softly under his breath, just to break the silence that filled so much of his days. He lifted his eye from the sight and watched her weave her way past the deserted parking area, getting hung up briefly in the cart corral, before resuming her lurching shamble in his general direction. Her age was right - she looked to be about 20 - her look was right, and her body was as yet largely unmarred by the decay that plagued so many of the others. As he watched, the dead girl made her way past the grocery store and approached the nearly invisible wire snare that he had rigged across the narrow alleyway between the store and the neighboring Domino’s Pizza, an area that created a natural bottleneck. At one time, the area had been notorious for exceedingly poor traffic flow but now it made for an exceptional capture point since traffic had ceased being an issue nearly two years ago. He knew the girl would keep coming, never straying from her trajectory as long as no obstacles got in her way and necessitated a change in path. It was the singularity of purpose and unity of the damned that he had observed a thousand times. Motivated only by hunger, the girl continued down the alley drawn to the scent of fresh blood that John used to bait the trap. There was an audible snap when the girl’s left foot triggered the snare. They fell for it every time. John laughed, clicked on the rifle’s safety, and climbed ponderously down the aluminum ladder to meet the new girl, who was dangling by her ankle in the snare.

He hesitated at the base of the tree to scan north and south along Commercial Street, then east and west down 12th. Although night was more dangerous due to limited visibility and the element of surprise, John found that daylight made them restless and he was more likely to come upon small contingents of them stumbling about. The dead demonstrated no capacity for planning or coordination, but their ferocity and tenacity could overpower and overwhelm those caught unaware, and he intended to put a bullet in his head before he became one of them.

John shouldered his rifle and walked over to the police car he had appropriated and retrofitted compliments of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department. Equipped with a 4.5 liter V8 engine, the Crown Vic Interceptor had a speedometer calibrated for 140 miles an hour. He’d got it up to 115 on the ten mile stretch outside of town, heading east to Olpe, before he chickened out and slowed down. Every so often cattle made their way onto the roads, and the idea of hitting one at that speed made his skin crawl. He retrieved a Kevlar vest, thick leather gloves, a utility belt, riot helmet, a pair of handcuffs and foot shackles, and a catch pole from the trunk. The catch pole he had discovered in the back of an overturned animal control van, and had found it to be imminently helpful. He donned the Kevlar vest, not that it would do him much good - it was designed to stop a bullet, not prevent a set of gnashing teeth from ripping his throat out or taking a massive chunk out of his forearm or thigh - but it did make him feel safer. He tugged on the riot helmet and hurried across 12th Avenue to properly introduce himself to the girl.

Her halter top had fallen forward over her head as she swung and thrashed in the snare, exposing perfectly rounded breasts that would have once been attractive but were now little more than sallow grey lumps. John gazed at her with clinical detachment; up close, he noticed more extensive damage. Tatters of bloodless flesh dangled from her palms, and bone gleamed from within a deep gash just above her elbow - clearly post-mortem damage. As John approached, the girl ceased struggling and stared in his direction, tracking his steps. Her eyes burned, not with any kind of cognition or intellect, but with hunger. She bared yellowed teeth and hissed. John hissed back with a wink and a grin. They were so easy to toy with.

He held his breath as the smell of decay enveloped him. He had never quite become used to the smell of them; the tolerable ones smelled like a gassy dead skunk baking on the highway in the Kansas summer heat. The bad ones emanated a sweet, cloying stench of rot and putrefaction that was nearly unbearable in close proximity. This girl smelled more like dead skunk. John drew in one last breath of clean air and stepped forward, focusing on the task at hand.

The girl resumed thrashing in her snare, fingers hooked into purple sparkle claws, reaching for him. The movement of her body swung her toward him, and John chose that moment to act. He swung the animal catch pole and deftly slipped the vinyl coated cable loop over her head and around her neck, then released the brake to tighten and lock the noose into place. The vinyl coating in the cable kept it from cutting too deeply into her flesh. The catch pole was six feet in length, but could be telescoped to eight feet, and was perfect for controlling feral animals and keeping them at a distance. John held onto the catch pole and as it shuddered in his hands, eased behind her and released the snare in which she’d been suspended. As he did, her body plummeted awkwardly to the ground and hit pavement with a sickening thud. She immediately began growling and crawling toward him. The whole operation had taken less than a minute but John glanced up and down the alley to ensure that the commotion, or more likely his scent, had not attracted more of her kind. He had been distracted and caught unaware several times before - most recently while helping himself to the Liquor Locker’s stock of Patron, when four adults, a half-grown boy, something that had once been a toddler, and a wolf, a fucking zombie wolf for crissakes, cornered him - and since that last near miss John had been vigilant almost to the point of compulsivity. The alley was clear, the parking lot vacant, and there was no sign of movement or sound other than the growling and hissing of the bag of flesh at his feet. Reassured, he stepped toward her and used both hands to leverage his considerable weight to flip her onto her stomach and drive her head - and most importantly her teeth - into the hot blacktop. He took another step forward and pinned her to the ground with a heavy leather boot caked with dirt and old blood.

In a single fluid movement, he let go of the catch pole and leaned forward, roughly cuffing her wrists behind her back. He then dropped to his knees and slipped a black leather bondage mask over her face and belted it behind her head. He’d found the mask on a mannequin at the adult bookstore next to the railroad tracks, and although he’d never been into the kinky shit, the mask certainly did an excellent job of preventing bites. He’s already zipped up the nose and mouth slits; the lack of oxygen was not going to be an issue for this woman.

“Let’s go, princess,” he said, laughing as she bucked and squirmed beneath him.

It only took another moment to secure her feet in the shackles and he stood back up, grimacing and rubbing his back. He watched the girl struggle for several long moments before he released the noose on the catch pole and removed it from her head, doing the same with the snare that had been attached to her ankle. He absently tossed the snare aside; he’d re-rig it tomorrow. The wind blew through his long, graying hair as John reached down and pulled her up by her manacled wrists and carried her like an awkward piece of luggage to the back of the police cruiser. He’d decided not to drag her since she was pretty. There was no sense doing more damage. He opened the back door of the squad car and shoved her in head first.

ACDC’s album Back in Black was in the rotation today. The ride to White Auditorium was less than two minutes, even though John took the long way so he could hear the end of Hell’s Bells. He’d ripped the two-way radio out of the cruiser and replaced it with an Alpine stereo and a 50 disc CD changer, which was housed in the trunk. Triggering the lift to the garage door, John parked in the empty bay of the fire station and leapt out of the vehicle to lower the door behind him.

The fire station had been housed in the massive city auditorium since it had been built in 1940 as a multi-purpose facility. With seating for 2,000, a fire department, and numerous city offices, it had been a simple task to clean, fortify, and defend. The facility offered him more room than he would ever need. The fire station served as his primary base of operations, although he maintained his living quarters on the second floor of the building. A little more than a year ago he’d spent a week removing the surveillance equipment from the jail across the street and re-installed it throughout his building. A large bank of generators he’d scavenged from the Home Depot were housed in a shed behind a small area of chain link fencing, and they provided plenty of electricity. He’d worried a little about electrocuting himself when he’d installed those damn things.

A quick glance at the monitors revealed nothing out of the ordinary, outside or inside the building. Satisfied, John hauled the girl out of the police car by her feet, sliding her onto the concrete floor. She gazed dully at him, oddly submissive. As she lay on the floor John retrieved the hand truck from where he’d stashed it and laid it flat on the ground beside her. The girl weighed no more than a hundred pounds, and it was an easy matter to roll her over so she laid flat on the hand truck, enabling him to secure her to it with thick leather straps that went around her shoulders, hips, and knees. Once she was secure, John removed the mask. She exceeded his expectations, and would make an excellent addition once he’d prepped and cleaned her up. John bent down and grunted with effort as he raised her to an upright position.

Behind him, fingernails scrabbled against the metal garage door. One of the external monitors confirmed that two walkers were outside, probably drawn by the sound of his engine. John figured if they continued to loiter around he’d burn their sorry asses, but at the moment, that sounded like more work than he’d planned on that morning over coffee. Getting the girl was plenty of work in and of itself.

Since the garage door was constructed with heavy sheet metal and secured with multiple locks from the inside, John figured they posed no immediate threat. Hell, there were dead people everywhere. He wheeled the girl up the access ramp he’d constructed over the concrete stairs to the first level office area. The building was stuffy but not unbearably hot. Air circulated through the open windows on all sides of the second story of the building, and the lower level tended to have an aura of damp coolness even in summer. The yellow brick façade of the building did a nice job of reflecting a lot of heat, although it was probably 92 degrees inside. John had sweated through his t-shirt before he made his way halfway down the hallway. The lack of air conditioning was something that he had grown accustomed to, but the lack of central heat in the winter was frustrating. Even with the generators, there was not enough power to run the heating and cooling system. Despite space heaters in the rooms he used with the greatest frequency, there was a deep chill in the building throughout the cold season, and John made do with many layers of clothing to combat the cold. In the winter, his fingers and toes seemed to be perpetually numb.

Now, he dripped sweat as he wheeled the girl into the clean up area, previously the city water and sewer department. Thousands of people had walked through the outer door to pay their water bills here over the years, but not anymore. John had installed metal hurricane shutters over the windows, machining most of the parts himself at the city maintenance shop across the street. Then he’d bricked up the doorway. It hadn’t been difficult to learn how to mix the mortar and lay the bricks; the public library was across the street and John had discovered that even without the internet it wasn’t too hard to find out just about anything if he spent some time reading books. He had plenty of time on his hands now.

It was funny how things worked out, he thought as he rolled the girl over and transferred her to the table he’d transferred from the mortuary and reassembled, welding shackles to it as a finishing touch. It gleamed in the cold fluorescent light. He turned on the CD player on his workbench and sang along with Black Sabbath as he worked. At forty-six, he’d long considered himself too old to learn another line of work but had, with practice, discovered that he had a knack for embalming. He inserted plastic tubing into an artery and a vein - they were easier to find on the walking dead than they were on a junkie - and turned on the embalming pump.

It was funny how things turned out, he thought again, watching the flow of clear fluid in and brackish fluid out. He never expected to live out his days in a fortified public arena in a tiny town in the middle of damn near nowhere, fifty miles from Topeka and pretty much completely isolated amidst miles of tallgrass prairie. He’d had a gig that night and he supposed that it was just luck that it had been here rather than in Topeka, where he usually played, or Lawrence or Kansas City. Those places were death traps, teeming with ravenous undead.

Kickstart, his band, had just started their second set at Wranglers when things got weird. The house soundman had started coughing violently, sending what looked like a bright red arterial mist over his 32-channel mixer. That was repulsive enough but the crowd had just kept drinking and didn’t seem to notice, and so John had kept on playing to the skimpily clad girl in a cut-off Harley t-shirt and an older woman that could have been her mother who were sitting at a small table directly in front of the stage - he’d have done ‘em both for sure - soloing to LaGrange with his Les Paul behind his head and checking out the younger one’s substantial cleavage. He’d have the bartender send over a couple of shots of tequila for them before the next break. Suddenly Andy, who’d been dutifully playing a chunky blues rhythm under John’s solo, missed the key change. John looked back and glared at him, but his anger dissolved into disgust and amazement when he saw that Andy was leaning back against his Marshall stack with his eyes closed, chin drooping down toward the collar of the stupid black t-shirt he always wore (emblazoned with a request to PULL MY FINGER!), and a thick sludge of blood was running over his lips and dripping off his chin. His shirt was saturated with the stuff and it glistened nastily on his hands and guitar strings. Alarmed but not sure what to do, John abruptly ended his solo and turned back to the three-quarters empty room. He hoped no one had noticed--good paying gigs were hard to get these days. He figured he could take a short break, get Andy offstage, and finish the gig as a power trio while Tommy, his roadie, took Andy to a Med-Check.

No one in the bar had noticed, but then, no one in the bar other than the hotties up front were paying much attention to anything. A slender, slightly effeminate man in tight Wranglers, a white cowboy hat, and what were obviously his dress boots slumped over the bar, passed out. His wallet had fallen from his fingers and lay at the foot of his bar stool. Ty, the bartender and owner of the club, was polishing beer mugs with a grungy towel, his eyes half closed and his body swaying with the motion of his arm. From a distance it looked like he had a nosebleed, but John couldn’t see well in the stage lights and figured that would be too much of a coincidence. A woman in heels high enough to defy the laws of physics slithered off her barstool and unsteadily made her way toward the ladies room, sashaying past a pair of bikers arguing good naturedly and playing pool at the back of the room. He glanced back at Andy, who was still doggedly pounding out an A5 power chord oblivious to the fact that everyone else was playing in C, for the love of Jesus, and John opted to end the song. He’d had weird shit go down at gigs before but in his nearly 30 years of playing the bars, nothing compared to this.

“We’re gonna take a short break, be back before you know it. Don’t go nowhere we got some David Allen Coe and Skynyrd comin’ up.” John smiled at the hotties and switched off his mic, then rapidly walked back to Andy and ripped his instrument cable out of his amp - fucker was still playing. The rest of the band were staring at Andy with frank fascination. Blood now gouted from his nose and mouth. John pulled the guitar out of Andy’s hands and set it down in the stand beside his amplifier.

“C’mon, buddy, let’s get you some help. You don’t look so good right now.” Andy gave no indication that he’d heard, but complied when John began walking him toward the exit door to the left of the stage. Andy’s movement was sluggish and uncoordinated, and John grimaced when he reached out to steady him and pulled his hand back, slathered in viscous, clotted blood. They slowly walked past a big screen television where the Kansas City Royals were losing in high-def. There was some sort of disturbance on the field.

“Fuck this,” John swore. His cell phone had started vibrating in his pocket. He paused to pull it out, and was surprised to see on the caller ID that it was Nicky, his girlfriend. She knew better than to call him during a gig. He silenced the phone and put it back in his pocket. John had time to wonder why she’d called when Andy stumbled and collapsed by the exit as a woman’s shriek cut through the now-silent bar. John whipped his head around so quickly he felt the muscles in his already tense neck hyperextend and viciously cramp. He couldn’t believe what he saw. The woman in high heels had returned from the ladies room, so intoxicated or disoriented that she’d left her mini-skirt behind. Wearing only her heels, a black thong around one ankle, and a sleeveless maroon blouse, she stood gazing into the room. Clutched in her right fist was a mass of gore, and her jaws snapped open and shut, open and shut, gnawing on what couldn’t be - but sure as hell looked like - a dangling, glistening string of entrails that had smeared blood across her face and mottled neck. One of the bikers threw down his pool stick and ran past her to the women’s restroom, shouting the name of some woman named Sheila. Seconds later, John heard the man coughing, retching, and screaming in either pain or panic.

The other biker had warily approached the woman in high heels and had gotten within four feet of her when she suddenly rushed him. Taken by surprise, he stepped back only to have his boot come down on the discarded pool stick and fly out from underneath him. The biker twisted awkwardly and came down hard on his left side with a hoarse curse. Then the woman was on him, her jaws locking around his neck. She ripped her head back and tore most of the soft flesh of his throat out as blood geysered against a neon blue Bud Light sign and spattered across a cardboard Nascar cut out of Clint Boyer. The biker’s white t-shirt had rucked up as he fell, and her fingers scrabbled and dug into his abdomen. One of her manicured nails broke off, but the others found purchase, tearing into his flesh and ripping great gashes below his ribcage. She paused long enough to lean forward and bite into one of his cheeks. The man howled and struggled to push her away as she tore the flesh from his lower face in a long bloody strip. It hung from her bloodstained teeth as she resumed tearing into his abdomen.

John stood stunned. He felt Andy’s hand close weakly around his ankle but ignored him, instead surveying the carnage throughout the bar. It was a scene from a Romero movie, he thought. The cowboy had cornered the hotties, who were screaming and successfully keeping him at bay with a couple of barstools. He growled and swung his arms wildly at them as they screamed back in terror. The older woman had begun inching sideways toward the jukebox, jabbing her chair at the cowboy when she was grabbed and thrown to the floor by John’s drummer. His Iron Maiden t-shirt was covered in blood, and his eyes were yellow and dilated to the point that the pupils were empty, massive orbs. He ripped her long bleached blonde hair out by the bloody handful as she lay screaming and struggling.

The bartender was still polishing mugs, oblivious, his nose now bleeding profusely. He looked up with momentary recognition when John shouted “Ty,” but returned dully to his work. Panicked, John turned toward the back exit next to the stage. His bass player, Leon, lay near the door with his knees drawn up, cradling his stomach with both hands as he bled out from a series of bites that had virtually disemboweled him. His hair was plastered to his face, wet with sweat, blood, and tears. “Help me,” he whispered, but John shook his head and looked away. He could see Andy convulsing on the floor. A second later Leon was swarmed by the two bikers, his arms and legs wrenched in their sockets as he was tugged between the two men who were devouring all visible flesh.

Leon’s screams filled his head and made it difficult to think; Andy was again tugging at his leg. When he felt Andy’s teeth clamp down on his boot, John screamed himself and stepped away. There was blood everywhere and it was difficult to keep his footing. As Leon stood and lurched toward him, John grabbed a microphone stand off the stage and swung it in wild arcs, the centrifugal force of the heavy base nearly throwing him off balance. The circular base connected suddenly with the side of Leon’s head and caved in his skull. For a moment, John could see blood and grey flecks of brain matter silhouetted in the stage lights. Leon went down and didn’t get back up. John’s cell phone had started vibrating again but he made no effort to reach for it. He could hear the sound of sirens outside, and that’s when the power went out and left him in nearly complete darkness.

The Black Sabbath CD had ended. John had nearly finished the girl’s clean up. He’d washed out the debris and cut the tangles from her hair, and dug out the spots on her back where he’d found maggots in a couple of raw wounds. The embalming process had been completed with no difficulties. It would stave off further decay and reduce the stench - she already smelled immeasurably better; her internal organs had been removed and were piled wetly beside her on the table. Her chest cavity had been filled with polystyrene foam, trimmed to fit. She gazed at the organs beside her but John figured their significance didn’t really register for her. He’d stitched her chest cavity back together with a tidy line of little black sutures. Another recently acquired skill. The sutures wouldn’t look too bad once he’d gotten her dressed again. He’d also taken his standard precautions, cutting her fingernails down well past the quick - it didn’t hurt her and it ensured that she couldn’t him - although the first time he’d done it he’d cringed. It was still better than ripping them out with a pair of pliers.

He also felt much better about his new approach to dental work. With the first few, he’d simply pulled their teeth out with a pair of vise grips. That had seemed barbaric even though he understood that they would eat him sashimi-style at the first opportunity if he did not. It wasn’t until he was using a small Dremmel power tool to remove the head of an errant screw that the solution became clear. The Dremmel was now fitted with a grindstone attachment which made quick work of grinding down their teeth to smooth, harmless nubs. It even sounded a little like a dentist’s drill. Pain-free dentistry, thought John, who laughed out loud.

“Well babe,” he said, “I guess we finally got universal health care. How’s that working for you?” he asked, doing his best Dr. Phil impression. The girl didn’t respond, but John had not expected one.

The dead girl’s clothes were still in good condition, so John redressed her in them. Plus, it was a sweet little outfit, a fine look, showcasing a tight ass and long legs. Some of the others had worn their clothes to tatters and he had to provide them with new ones. Since most of the ones he’d brought in were women, he’d chanced a trip out to the Fashion Bug at the little mall on Industrial Avenue and picked up several cartons of clothes in a variety of sizes, but not plus sizes. He just put a bullet in the heads of plus-size walkers. They were too heavy and hurt his back.

With the majority of his work finished, John put a new CD in the stereo. Rust Never Sleeps. The dead didn’t sleep, either. John could hear some faint hissing and moaning outside the storm shutters. Something had riled them up and attracted them to the building. Figuring he’d better check it out, John left the girl secured to the table and trotted down the hall to check the monitors. Sure enough, he could see at least eight of them circling outside the west side of the building. All adults, no animals at least. Though they were dead, and as a result slow, dull-witted, and uncoordinated like their human counterparts, animals were far more difficult to deal with. Sharper teeth, better balance, a lower center of gravity, and much faster. So far, John had encountered more than three dozen dogs, the wolf in the liquor store, and six or seven coyotes. At least no mice, they seemed to be immune, along with cats and birds. Thank god no birds.

Outside the building, the monitors revealed four of the walkers milling about in front of the heavy metal doors to the fire station. Another walker had picked up the metal lid to a trash container somewhere and was banging it against the side of the building. Although the behavior looked far more random than volitional, John was concerned. So far they had not demonstrated the ability to use objects in even the most rudimentary way, but he knew better than to underestimate them. He’d need to go out there and torch some zombie ass. To the south, he could see storm clouds gathering in the distance.

The Kansas wind whipped into him and nearly bowled him over as he stepped out onto the small loading dock behind the auditorium. Despite the earlier summer heat, the wind had a chill to it and John shivered. He was still wearing the same t-shirt he’d sweated through earlier, although he’d put his Kevlar vest, leather gloves, and riot helmet back on as an added precaution. The sun was obscured by thunderheads that had accumulated in the south, and occasionally cold spatters of rain foretold an impending downpour. Still technically tornado season, John worried about severe weather. There was no longer any such thing as Doppler radar. He was not so much worried about riding out a twister, because his building was built like a fortress and had a basement designed as a civil defense fallout shelter, but he did harbor major concerns about what he’d do if a tornado blew some fucking zombies in to join him.

John adjusted the straps of the fuel canister to the modified driptorch he carried and settled the device more firmly on his shoulders. Flamethrowers and napalm were the stuff of movies, but in the Flint Hills, controlled burns were common practice among ranchers and he’d had no difficulty finding several driptorches in a machine shed on the outskirts of town. He’d spent enough time working on motorcycles to have some mechanical proficiency, and it had required only minor alterations to the driptorch to enable it to spew flaming diesel in a fifteen foot radius. Although the driptorch could work with gasoline he’d found that diesel was far more effective because it was heavier and more viscous, and adhered better to the walkers.

Flaming zombies posed a special challenge; since fire didn’t immediately destroy or incapacitate them, they had a tendency to continue shambling around like torches until the flames superheated the cerebral spinal fluid in their brain cavities and their skulls exploded. His AR 15 was a far more useful tool for ensuring that they didn’t get close enough to matter. In addition to the rifle, he also carried a .38 revolver appropriated from the Gun Den, loaded with hollow point Fatboy cartridges designed to fragment and expand on impact. Perfect for head shots.

An armless corpse with gleaming, exposed ribs lurched around the corner of the building. It tripped over the rotting remains of a young man in a postal uniform that John had put down a week ago and hadn’t gotten around to hauling off to the burn pit he’d created at the city landfill. Somehow the thing remained upright, and it continued in his direction until John blasted the top off its skull off with the .38, casually returning the gun to its shoulder holster. At least four more of the walkers had made their way around the building, attracted to the sound of the shot and John’s scent. Two more of the dead things had emerged from the dark underpass below the train tracks where the Burlington Northern Santa Fe had made its daily run.

John clicked off the safety on the rifle, took a deep breath, and peered into the telescopic sight. He found the closest moving figure, a shambling, decaying shape that was once a middle-aged woman, centered the crosshairs on her forehead, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle slammed back into his shoulder and he grinned wolfishly as she collapsed first to her knees, and then forward onto the pavement with most of her head missing. One shot, one kill.

The corpses continued toward him, rotted flesh and rotted clothes fluttering in the wind. John shifted his aim, focused on another figure, and squeezed the trigger. He aimed and fired twice more. He put a single bullet through the left eye socket of a teenage boy in a faded black Slipknot hoodie. The back of the boy’s head exploded outward like gruesome confetti, streamers of gore in a macabre tickertape parade. His second shot obliterated the skull of an elderly man in coveralls and a red flannel shirt. Both corpses stayed down, brain matter leaking unceremoniously onto the pavement of Mechanic Street.

Rain had started to fall lightly but steadily. It beaded up on the shatterproof mask on his helmet, and his vision was obscured further by condensation building up on the inside. He removed the helmet and let the rain soak his hair and run down his flushed cheeks as he watched the two remaining corpses approaching the intersection about fifty yards from his vantage point.

At first he thought their height differential would be a problem; one of the walkers had been a little girl, her pink skirt floating above knees skinned to the glistening bone, the right side of her face missing, the left side sadly perfect. The other walker appeared to be a twenty-something Hispanic male with no apparent wounds other than a butcher knife embedded between his shoulder blades. They approached, jaws snapping, fingers clenching and grasping, stumbling his way like drunken marionettes. John watched with satisfaction as the older one tripped over the wire he had strung at ankle height between the light poles on either side of the street. A second later, the child-thing tripped as well, and both corpses landed across the coils of razor wire John had strategically placed across the road. Hung up in the razor wire, the walkers dangled and thrashed. John approached the wire barrier in several long strides and after assuring himself that they wouldn’t be able to tear themselves free, dispassionately set them aflame with the driptorch. The corpses were dry, and they flared up so quickly that they singed John’s eyebrows. He stepped back and watched them burn, and after several moments, watched their charred corpses stop thrashing.

Having cleared the south end of the building, John turned his attention to the west. He could hear rattling and scraping against the fire bay doors where several walkers were tearing at the building. Ineffectual as their efforts might be, they had to be stopped. Despite the lack of cognition, agitation seemed to spread through the dead like wildfire. A handful of agitated zombies would draw three times their number within five minutes, and then he would have a bonafide mess on his hands.

John risked a quick look around the corner of the building to get a sense of how many more walkers he’d have to deal with before calling it a day. A balding man in bloodied hospital scrubs leaned against the fire station door, hissing and running his hands over the smooth metal as if waxing a car. Two other walkers accompanied him. All stood with their backs to John, which was good. It provided him with an element of surprise. One of the walkers wore jeans and a black t-shirt, with a slight build and shaggy hair. John decided to save him for last; the others were bigger by at least a foot and most likely stronger and faster. He aimed his rifle from 25 yards away and put a round through the base of the skull of a tall, skinny main dressed in a three-piece charcoal business suit. The bullet must have entered his neck rather than his cerebellum, because instead of dropping like a sack of shit, the corpse swung around and growled, staring at John with yellow, vacant eyes. His shot must have done some damage because as the thing began to approach, its neck flopped loosely and was canted at an unnatural angle.

Disgusted with himself for sloppiness, John peevishly shot out its kneecaps and watched it drop. It began crawling toward him as the other two turned and stared at him. John sucked in a deep breath, shocked. He never expected to see anyone he knew, they were all nothing more than mindless and insatiable bags of flesh that had stopped being human years ago.

“Hey Andy, what’s happenin’?” he asked the smaller man. “Been playing much lately?”

John shook his head in amazement, smiled, raised the butt of the rifle, and pulverized the skull of the dead man crawling toward him. He appraised his old guitar player, who was lunging forward on awkward, unsteady legs. The man in scrubs had advanced and was reaching for him when John inverted his grip on the rifle, and brandishing the barrel like a five-iron, swung it in a smooth arc and teed off on the man’s head. His neck snapped back with a stomach-churning pop and most of his face caved in like a soft melon. Andy paused and glanced down before continuing toward John. The man in scrubs didn’t move.

“C’mon buddy, no hard feelings, right?” John backed up several paces, not taking his eyes off Andy, and weighed his options. He could either put his guitar player out of his misery with a single, clean headshot, or he could bring him in. Problem was, the capture pole was inside. John risked a quick look over his shoulder and scanned the intersection for walkers. Nothing but stillness at the moment. The rain had increased in its intensity and Andy’s shirt clung to him like a wetsuit. John didn’t look any better, his wet tie-dyed t-shirt was draped across his beer belly and hung from him like a sodden circus tent. He only had a moment to decide. He didn’t want to chance going back inside for the capture equipment and return to find 10 or 20 more of the things milling around. He also didn’t want to lure Andy inside unsecured. John had never been quick on his feet and had no desire to be in close quarters in a dimly lit hallway with a ravenous corpse, guitar player or not.

A sudden clap of thunder jarred him into action. John placed the rifle on the ground and, grasping his riot helmet in both hands, stepped forward and savagely jammed it down backwards on Andy’s head, obscuring his vision and trapping his gnashing teeth inside a cocoon of shatterproof plastic. The lack of sight did nothing to deter him; Andy grasped for John, who deftly grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt and roughly yanked it over his head, trapping his arms and pulling him forward and over at the waist. The neck of the t-shirt was too small to slip off over his head with the riot helmet on, and allowed John to drag him forward into the auditorium. Andy flailed and growled like a recalcitrant dog on a harness. As they entered the building through the loading dock the rain came in a torrential downpour.

John shoved Andy into the fire station ahead of him, forcing him down the ramp. He glanced at the now silent monitors, which showed no further activity outside the building. He found an additional set of handcuffs and foot shackles, and in three quick motions secured Andy to the front end of the police car. The front bumper was designed for impact and would be able to withstand any indignities acted upon it. Andy would be unable to get free or do any major damage. John left the riot helmet jammed over Andy’s head; it wasn’t like he would suffocate. Andy was still tugging and fighting his restraints when John left the room and returned to the city water department, which was now for all practical purposes a mortuary.

The girl was right where he’d left her, strapped to the table and gazing at the ceiling. She perked up as he entered the room; the chains on her ankles clanked against the steel table. John was glad he’d kept her. She was attractive, for a corpse, and he’d seen a lot of corpses. He’d put her in the front row for sure.

Working quickly, he slipped a thick black leather collar he’d specially designed around her neck and buckled it tight. The collar was attached to a seven foot metal chain that trailed down to the floor. Considerably more harmless without her teeth and nails, John unstrapped her feet from the table but did leave her ankle shackles on - a measure that constricted her mobility - just in case. He next unfastened the straps securing her waist, shoulders, and arms to the table and grabbed a shorter, telescoping capture pole. As she sat up on the table and turned to face him, John slipped the noose over her head and set the brake. He tugged her off the table and keeping her in the lead, guided her out of the clean up room and into the hallway toward the auditorium. She tried to turn around but he kept a steady pressure on the pole, forcing her forward.

The girl fell to her knees when her feet became tangled in the ankle shackles. The second time she fell, the skin on her right kneecap split open, revealing an expanse of raw dark maroon inside gray-blue flesh, but the injury did not bleed so much as ooze. John figured he’d stitch it back up once he’d gotten her seated and properly situated with the others.

A pair of heavy wooden doors were at the end of the hallway. An iron bar was shoved through the door handles as an added precaution. Before removing it, John glanced up at the video monitor mounted above the doorway. The occupants were restless, tugging against their chains and collars. Charlie Simmons, the one walker he knew by name, a heavyset man with thinning hair who had once been city manager, had somehow gotten his suitcoat wedged between the old wooden seats and now crouched awkwardly in front of his seat, unable to change position.

The Twins, two young women with nearly identical long blonde hairstyles, anorexic figures, and tank tops emblazoned with Greek letters for some now utterly irrelevant sorority, had become tangled up in each other’s chains and now lay squirming and struggling against each other in an aisle close to the stage. John wasn’t sure if he would untangle them immediately or wait a while. Even though they were corpses, it was still kind of hot.

He’d actually played a gig in this town once before in late 1998, back when Wranglers had been a strip club. Kickstart had been the opening act for a troupe of hot oil wrestlers. The tips had been particularly poor that night, John remembered. The cowboys were saving their small bills for the girls. He knew that the night would be pretty much a loss when they played Sweet Home Alabama and nobody got up to dance. He hated that fuckin’ song anyway. He was certain he would hear it in Hell.

With only the emergency lighting illuminating the doors and exit rows, it was dim in the auditorium. John hit the switches for the floods and waited for them to increase to full strength. The girl struggled at the end of the capture pole, and John gave it a quick, absent-minded jerk, as if bringing a dog to heel. Once the view on the monitors was full of bright light, he removed the bar securing the doors and led the girl inside.

Some of the corpses were sitting in their seats. Others stood and strained at their chains, their mouths opened in rictus grins, emitting a cacophony of growls and groans that filled the auditorium. His first priority was getting the girl seated. He escorted her down the center aisle to the front row of seats.

“You’d have to blow a frat boy to get concert tickets better than this, princess,” John said, surveying the room as they made their way forward. Hands grasped for them, but John had distributed the audience well, seating them such that it would be impossible to reach him given the length of the lead chains which were padlocked to the heavy iron bases of the folding theatre-style seats. He could walk down pre-determined aisles comfortably out of arm’s reach, and in all instances had a route which would enable him to access the walkers individually if needed. Even without teeth and fingernails, John was loathe to the idea of one of them being able to grab him, though he doubted that they could inflict much damage.

Over time, he’d built up quite a following. Given his seating arrangement, the auditorium was filled to half capacity. Dull eyes and blank faces followed his every move as he forced the girl into her seat, using the catch pole to keep her head and upper torso back as he knelt and secured her lead chain to the base of the chair. Rising and stepping back quickly he surveyed his work; satisfied that she was secure, he released the brake on the catch pole and removed it from her head. She rushed forward as far as her lead chain allowed, growled deep in her throat, and grasped for him. That was fine, John thought. He liked his front row feisty.

Leaving her to her new surroundings, John walked past the Twins on his way out of the auditorium and decided to let them keep wrestling. He was in a hurry anyway. He needed to get Andy cleaned up and prepped for the evening, and it was already very late in the afternoon. He couldn’t see out the shuttered windows but could hear the steady patter of rain and imagined that it had already darkened outside.

Andy was somehow under the police car when John entered the room, pushing the handtruck he’d retrieved from the clean up area. He had to shove him out into the opening with a long-handled push broom. His snarls were muffled and he looked ridiculous in the riot helmet that was still on backwards. John gave the helmet a kick.

“Hey buddy, you ready to party?” he asked. “We’ve got plenty of booze and plenty of boobs. They’re more your type than mine now, I guess.” John paused, considering the state of his old guitar player, once again musing at how odd life turned out sometimes.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, man. You’re a fuckin’ mess.” John grabbed Andy’s leg irons while he squirmed on the floor, and rolled him onto the handtruck as Andy slammed his head repeatedly against the concrete floor. In just a few moments, Andy was secured to the dolly and after a grunt, a curse, and a twinge in his back, John was wheeling him Hannibal Lecter-style up the ramp for his appointment in the cleanup room.

The first thing he noticed was a sharp stench in the air; he’d forgotten to dispose of the girl’s internal organs in the covered plastic Hazmat barrel, and they stank of rot. Grimacing, John brought the handtruck to an abrupt stop and left it standing in the middle of the room to clean up the mess before he started on Andy. Nasty stuff, thought John. He’d cleaned out some walkers and bugs had crawled out of their chest cavities.

Needing either some levity or distraction, he walked over to his workbench and studied the CD collection he’d alphabetically arranged on shelves along the top. Everything from ABBA to ZZ Top, and he’d listened to all of it till he was pretty much sick. Hell, he played nearly all of it till he was pretty much sick. After a long moment he settled on Stevie Ray Vaughn, who could be out walking with the rest of the corpses for all he knew. John started work on Andy as the sounds of Texas Flood filled the room.

A set of thin, sharp shears made quick work of Andy’s ratty old t-shirt. His jeans had to go, too, although there was nothing more difficult than dressing a cannibalistic corpse in restraints. John idly wondered what had caused Andy to turn that night at Wranglers. His body revealed numerous deep gashes and scratches from his previous two years of - well, hard living so to speak - but no major trauma or mortal injuries were visible. He’d clearly been sick and fading fast onstage. John had long suspected that whatever the cause, it had initially been airborne, although his own immunity was something of a puzzle. His own health was a mess, and his girlfriend had constantly been on his ass to lose weight and drink less. He wondered what happened to her, but didn’t miss her bitching.

Andy’s thick brown hair was a tangled mess. Not wanting to waste time on it, John took his electric clippers to it and shaved it down to short buzz cut. It made Andy look meaner somehow. John then washed Andy down with a mixture of disinfectant and germicidal solution. He began thrashing when John inserted the IV tubing and started the centrifugal pump to begin forcing embalming solution into his carotid artery. As John massaged Andy’s arms and legs to break up clots and encourage the flow of blood out and the proper distribution of embalming chemicals, thick brackish blood flowed from Andy’s jugular and into the disposal tank at the foot of the examining table.

That step complete, John proceeded with the evisceration. He jammed a heavy black rubber body block under Andy’s back, forcing his chest upward, and with a decisive movement, made a quick incision from his sternum to his pubic bone. John cut deep, dragging the scalpel through Andy’s gray flesh to reveal his rib cage. Hands wet with gore and stinking of latex from surgical gloves and the pungent aroma of formaldehyde, John grabbed the Stryker saw and rapidly cut through the rib cage and spread it open with a set of retractors. After that, he made quick work of suctioning out the internal fluids and removing Andy’s major organs. It was gruesome work. The CD had ended some time ago, and John randomly chose another one, slamming it into the CD player and leaving a bloody handprint on the clear plastic jewel box. It was Lynyrd Skynyrd.

With practiced ease, John trimmed and fitted polystyrene foam that he’d acquired at the taxidermist’s shop on the far south side of town - disturbingly near the zoo - and after fitting it into Andy’s chest, closed the incision. He removed the IV and wiped Andy down a final time with disinfectant before leaving him to see what options he had in the walk-in closet he’d constructed in the corner of the room.

At first glance, it looked like a costume room for a high school musical, filled with shirts, shoes, and pants with a flair toward biker fashion; black leather vests and jackets, Harley Davidson t-shirts, sequined tank tops and mini-skirts, and numerous pairs of blue jeans heaped on the floor. He’d raided the Victoria’s Secret in the mall, and although the guys all ended up in cheap Walmart boxers, he’d brought back nothing but the best for his girls. He selected a faded pair of blue jeans and an Abate t-shirt for Andy. Come to think of it, even though he’d gigged with the guy 4-5 days a week for nearly two years, he hadn’t talked to Andy enough or paid attention enough to know if he had a bike. He still didn’t particularly care.

Returning to the table, John removed the body block and dressed Andy. Even though they were worn and filthy, he gave him back his shoes. He’d never seen him wear anything other than Chuck Taylors and had no idea where he’d find a replacement pair. He’d never seen any at Brown’s Shoes just down the street, and the Jock’s Nitch at the mall pretty much had nothing but high-end basketball shoes and cleats.

Andy’s feet were in bad shape, he noticed. The great toe on his left foot had turned black and looked as if it would fall off. John’s own feet were also in poor shape; managing his diabetes had become a daily challenge and although he maintained a refrigerated stockpile of insulin he’d obtained from the four pharmacies in town, the circulation in his feet and lower legs had become increasingly poor. John decided against removing Andy’s toe, because he would need it later for balance, and his coordination was already bad enough. He loosened the grimy laces and jammed the Chuck Taylors back on Andy’s feet before returning him to his secure position on the dolly for a trip to the auditorium.

Flint Hills Music had the best selection of guitars and amps in a 60 mile radius, which had worked out well for John. He’d found the store while reconnoitering Commercial Street during one of the early days, looking for food and bottled water. He’d only glanced through the large plate glass window before hurrying on.

He hadn’t forgotten about the music store, though, and returned two months later after constructing a crude but functional barricade and shelter on the second floor of White Auditorium. As the second floor was only accessible by a narrow, enclosed stairwell on the north end of the building and a nonfunctioning maintenance elevator at the opposite end, it was an ideal structure for maximum space and relative security. John had gone back out to gather supplies, intending only a quick trip to Reeble’s Grocery, and passed the dark music store. He’d never returned to Wrangler’s after deserting Kickstart - what had become his band of walking dead - and regretted losing his guitar and boutique amp. It had never been worth the risk of returning to the far west side of town, although he supposed he could have.

It hadn’t required much to convince himself that he needed a guitar. He’d been bored out of his ever-loving mind, anyway. Instead of continuing to the grocery store and filling his duffle bag with canned goods and pre-packaged meals that hadn’t yet been ravaged by vermin (the rats and mice had gotten bad quick), he continued on down the block and then backtracked down an alley until he found a nondescript metal door with peeling letters spelling Flint Hills Music. The door was locked, of course. He didn’t think it was possible to shoot out the lock on doors like in the movies, especially metal ones, and so returned to the sidewalk in front of the store and considered his options.

John Warren, as a general rule, wouldn’t piss on most people to put them out if they were on fire, but he maintained a certain respect and appreciation for guitars. They had clean lines, perfect balance, were reliable and consistent, and didn’t bitch at him about how he spent his money or where he spent the night. It was a whole hell of a lot easier to find a good guitar than it was a good woman, and the store was full of good guitars. After another moment of consideration, John kicked in the bottom half of the plate glass door, knocking out the shards with the thick sole of his steel-toed workboot, and ventured inside.

It appeared that the store had been locked up tight when all the shit had gone down. Nothing moved in the shadows, and John had a clear line of sight to the back of the store. Satisfied that it was empty, he decided to keep it that way. Making certain that no walkers were outside, he rapidly stacked several heavy cardboard cartons in front of the door. He’d discovered that if there was no sound or other reason to attract them, the walkers generally did not attempt to enter buildings unless they happened into them randomly. He hoped his barrier would hold, because he had no desire to have to clean the building out later, flushing zombies out in the darkened confines of the building.

He’d hurried down Commercial to Sixth Avenue where he’d left his Astrovan in the middle of the intersection. He drove it to the music store, where he loaded it with a Fender Hotrod Deville amplifier - with two 12” speakers and 60 scorching tube-driven watts, it had all the power he could have ever wanted or needed in the myriad clubs and biker bars he’d played in over the years. It took him longer to select a guitar, and he finally settled on a Gibson Les Paul reissue and an acoustic Martin six-string. Until he figured out how to get the power back on, he’d need an acoustic.

That had been twenty-one months ago. Since that time John had made many trips back to Flint Hills Music. He’d also found some exceptionally high-quality music gear in the private residences he’d searched for food. The equipment now stood mute onstage in White Auditorium, presiding over an audience of corpses. John had added an Ampeg bass cabinet and amplifier, which provided him with eight 10” speakers, 450 watts, and thick low end. Next to the bass rig a DW drumset was set up on a small drum riser John had constructed. It’s black sparkle finish gleamed, and the Zildjian Custom A cymbals gleamed. They had never been struck, never been marred. John didn’t play the drums and had no desire to. His Fender Deville was set up on an amp stand next to a bulky Crate amplifier atop a stack of four 10” speaker cabinets. He’d never been a fan of Crate products, but it was as close to a Marshall stack as the music store had to offer. A single microphone stand was located at the front of the stage, flanked by two vocal monitors. The PA mains were stacked on top of large subwoofer cabinets on the left and right sides of the stage.