A Zombie Winter

Snow falling on a quiet city muffles life and brings the appearance of death.  People stay indoors, traffic stops as drifts build in the streets.  Peace settles on the hectic day-to-day and sepulcher silence sits over every building.

In my thirty years, many a November night was spent sitting at a window, staring out at the drifting snow.  First snows were times of quiet wonder, peaceful cheer and the knowledge of the end of autumn.  Never before has my heart sat so heavily in my chest.  Never before has the snow left a bitter taste in the back of my throat.  Never before has the snow meant the end of so much.

Grey ash mixed with the snow, the remains of a thousand cities burning.  I drew patterns in frost and ash on the window and tried to ignore the sounds behind me.  The snow was a welcome distraction.  It meant change was coming.  Change had to come.  The weather had made our decision for us.

“We can’t stay here,” I said loudly, cutting through the muffled argument behind me.

“The hell we can’t.” Ever petulant Eric sniffed through his running nose.  He had weak eyes and thick glasses, with limp brown hair and the holier-than-thou expression of an educated man who has yet to find a use for his erudition.  “It’s perfectly safe here.  We’ll stay until help arrives.”

Typical.  Bringing up an old argument to derail the conversation from the matter at hand.  I ignored him.  Sandra didn’t.

“Baby, you know rescue isn’t coming.”  She was a weepy lady at the best of times and the last two weeks had turned her into a veritable sponge, leaking tears whenever something prodded at her delicate sensibilities.  Her red eyes started running again as she clung to Eric’s arm.  “It’s foolish to hang onto false hopes.”

Christ.  I’m surprised she hasn’t dried up and died from dehydration by now.   “Listen,” I tried again, but was cut off by Eric, tugging his stupid turtleneck up high and bowing his head forward like he intended to head butt me through the window, his typical argumentative posture.

“Mark, she’s right,” he cut me off.  What Sandra was right about was lost on me.  Eric continued, rushing forward now that he had me silent for half a second.  I grit my teeth in frustration.  This filibustering of his must have been a trick he picked up arguing psychology with his college peers.  Bore the opponent to death and make him agree just to shut Eric up.  “It isn’t safe to step out of our room.  The … things are out there, and they can’t get in here.  If we leave, we’ll be eaten alive.  I couldn’t let that happen to poor Sandra.”

Sandra burst into tears on cue.  “And what about Phyllis and Charles?” Eric continued, gesturing over to the corner where our two wounded lay, “We can’t just leave them here!  They’ll die of exposure or starvation.  No, we will just stay here.  The roads will clear tomorrow or the next day and we’ll leave then.”

I avoided looking at our dwindling supply of canned food and bottled water.  Sandra buried her face in Eric’s armpit and I wondered what it smelled like.  “Eric,” I tried again.

Eric stood tall leaving Sandra clinging to his forearm, ruining his attempt at being imposing.  “No!” he shouted, drowning me out, “we can’t do it!  I won’t do it!  It isn’t the humane thing to do.  We have to cling to the last of our humanity, or we’re no better than the monsters on the street.”

Arguing with Eric was a pointless endeavor at best.  Action spoke better than words.  I took the ten steps over to our flat of soup cans and kicked the useless wrapper aside.  Four cans stood forlornly where sixty had sat a week ago.  I picked up two and put them in my backpack.

“You can’t take those!” Eric screeched, “That’s half our food supply!  What will we eat?”

How Eric figured out I was leaving was beyond me.  I wasn’t all smart like he was.  All I knew how to do these days was survive.  “You won’t be moving about.  I’ll need the energy to run.  Fair is fair.  Besides,” I rolled my eyes, “when the snowplows come through to clear the snow from the streets, you can just walk down to the corner store and get more.  Maybe the zombies will have left by then.”

“Don’t call them that!” Sandra cried.

“Why not?” I snapped, finally losing my patience, “What else would you call them?  They’re diseased, Sandra, they can’t think any more.  It’s all rage upstairs now.  They look like zombies, they sound like zombies, they kill like zombies.  That means they’re zombies.”

“Well, you can’t just leave us,” Eric said, “If we have to follow you, we won’t know what to do.”

“Then come with me now.”

“How will we bring Phyllis and Charles, though?” Sandra moaned, tears starting up again.

“Can you carry them?” I asked Eric.  He shook his head.  “I can’t carry them either.  That means they’re not coming.”

Sandra ran over to Phyllis and threw herself sobbing over the older woman.  Phyllis didn’t move.  That was interesting.  Normally that much pressure on her eviscerated abdomen would have caused her to scream in agony.

I strode over and hauled Sandra off the other woman then knelt down and checked her pulse.  Nothing.  I ignored Sandra’s bawling, thumbed an eyelid up and flicked my flashlight past Phyllis’ eye.  No reaction from the milky pupil.  I pushed her eyelid back down.  “Phyllis is dead,” I announced.

That seemed to shock my companions somewhat.  Sandra stopped crying and even Eric had nothing to say.  ”How you doing, Charlie?”

“I’m not dead yet,” he said, his normally deep voice high and quavering.  “I’m feeling much better.  I think I’ll go for a walk now.”  My lips quirked up in a smile.  Good old Charlie.  Always good for a laugh.  “Seriously though,” he continued in his usual voice, “my leg hurts.”

“I’d imagine,” I allowed, “it being broken and all.”

“But if you fine folks are checking out of this hotel, I might be able to stand.”

…

Our “hotel” as Charlie so gracefully described it, was a four-story office building in downtown Spokane.  We were on the top floor.  A few hours with a fire axe and sledge hammer had collapsed the internal stairwell, leaving the fire escape as our entrance and exit.  The ladder on the bottom could be raised to the second story, easily high enough so the zombies couldn’t get to it.  It worked well keeping the zombies out, but it made it difficult to get Charlie down to street level.

By the time we were ready the sun had come within flirting distance of the horizon and long shadows stretched from the buildings.  I walked Charlie down the stairs, letting him use my shoulder as a crutch.  The metal railings were freezing and my bare hands were numb by the time we reached the first landing.

“This is real pleasant,” Charlie said as we paused on the third story landing.  He popped open his little bottle of oxycodone and tossed back a few.  “It’s nice to get outside.”

“Charles,” Eric called from above, “you have to be quiet.  The things will hear you!”

I rolled my eyes.  Eric was twice as loud as Charlie was.  “Thank you, Eric,” I said quietly, “thank you for pointing that out.”  I briefly contemplated pushing Eric off the ladder and letting the zombies eat him, but then I’d have Sandra to deal with.  As long as Eric was alive, Sandra could use his shirt as a snot rag.  Eric’s one saving grace.

Charlie gripped my shoulder, his face paler than usual.  “You’re a good man, Mark.”

“Thanks.  I think.  We’re almost down.  One more flight.”

“It’ll be easier to move once I’m on the ground, I think,” Charlie said through tight lips, “Just right now these stairs are a little rough after not moving for so long.”

We made our way down the last flight of stairs and I unhooked the long ladder, slowly lowering it down rung by rung until it came to rest, wincing every time it squeaked.  “You know how to shoot, right?” I asked Charlie, shivering a little as sweat cooled on my back.

“I’m not some wilting lily.” Charlie pointedly avoided looking at Eric.

“Good to hear.”  I pressed my .45 into his hand.  “It’s easy.  Point, click.  Play any shooters?” Charlie nodded.  “You’ll be a natural.  Just don’t shoot me, ya?”

“How come Charles gets a gun and I don’t?” Eric wanted to know.

I rolled my eyes at Charlie before turning around.  “Because he knows how to use one.  Now be quiet, we don’t want to attract the zombies’ attention.”  Before Eric could stop sputtering and formulate a coherent response, I started climbing down the ladder.  I was almost to the bottom before Eric realized the obvious flaw in my reasoning.

“If you just told him how to shoot,” Eric called down, “he doesn’t know how any better than I do!  I should have a gun too!”

I froze on the ladder, eyes scanning the alleyway, searching for any sign of approaching zombies.  My ears strained, trying to filter out Sandra’s hurried hushing of Eric and his petulant complaints.  I heard the zombie before I saw it, a rustling amongst the dumpsters and scattered trash a dozen yards from the ladder.

“Don’t shoot,” I cautioned Charlie, “we don’t want to attract any more attention than we have to.”

I dropped the last five feet to the ground and crunched into the six-inch-deep snow.  My boots were waterproof military issue, came up to just below the knee and laced over my jeans to keep them dry and me warm.  My backpack had a fire axe strapped to the back, chipped and notched from its use on the stairwell.  I worked it free, keeping one eye on the heaving pile of trash bags.

The zombie finally kicked its way free and surged to its feet.  Despite the snow hampering its movements, it waded toward me quickly, far faster than I would have been able to move.  It didn’t try to avoid me as I brought the axe down in a long overhead chop, burying the axe blade four inches into its frontal lobes.

The axe stuck and the forward momentum of the zombie ripped the haft from my numb fingers.  Sandra muffled a scream into Eric’s sweater.  I staggered a little before catching my balance again.  The zombie was quite dead, tangled in the axe and slumped against the wall.

“Nice, man,” Charlie said quietly and gave me a thumbs up.

I waved up at him and turned the zombie over with a boot.  Beneath the ruin of his upper face, the lips were pulled back in a rictus of snarling hate.  Other than that, he looked like he could have stepped out of the office ten minutes ago.  His sleeve bore the telltale rips and bloody cloth indicative of a zombie bite.  He probably got bit, fought his way free, then went and hid somewhere until the racking chills and burning fever drove him into madness.

They said a zombie was like a rabid man loaded with PCP and epinephrine.  It was a mélange virus, a new strain of encephalitis with a tendency to create rage and over-stimulate the adrenals.  Before the radios went off the air, they thought it might be carried through the lymph system, thus the rapid onset of symptoms.  Once the fever started, there was no cure.  If you treated the virus before symptoms occurred, a rabies-type vaccination was effective, though the incubation period could be anywhere from six minutes to six hours.  Dried dura mater from an infected host had to be injected into the abdomen and in the muscular systems around and upwards from the bite.  Attempts at inoculation resulted in infection.  Then the radios stopped transmitting.  We didn’t have to guess to figure out what happened.

I planted a boot on the dead man’s chin and wrenched the axe out.  Blood, cerebrospinal fluid and brain splashed the brick wall.  Overhead, Sandra retched.  I hefted the fire axe, examining the gore on the blade.  Somewhere in that mess was the cure.  If only I had the knowledge on how to prepare it, it would prove invaluable in the hours to come.  Wishing wouldn’t get me anywhere.  If brighter minds than mine had worked on it and failed, what chance did I have at concocting a home-brew version of the vaccine?

I was pulled from my reverie by Eric’s boots passing by my face.  He plopped down into the snow and glared at me.  “You’re a monster.  A sick, violent lunatic.”

Eric’s incriminations were nothing new, but his vehemence surprised me.  “Excuse me?  If you hadn’t shouted at me, the zombie would never have woken up.”

“Blame me for your violence, will you?  That’s what all serial killers do.  I bet you enjoyed that!  What will happen when you don’t have a … thing to kill?  Huh?  What will happen?  Will you turn on us?  Go axe-murderer on Sandra?”

I didn’t know what to say.  Killing the zombie had felt good, the same way nailing a 3-pointer in basketball did, the same way any physical feat well-performed did.  Telling Eric that wasn’t smart though.  “I did it to survive,” I snapped back.  “When you have a zombie trying to chew off your face, I’m sure negotiating with it will work wonders.”

Our argument was cut short by Charlie reaching the end of the ladder and handing the gun back to me.  Eric stared at him like he couldn’t believe he’d hand over a gun to a known murderer.

“So where we going?” Charlie asked.

Grateful for the change of topic, I turned my back on Eric and waded through the snow drifts to the street and looked out.  In the center of the street the snow was slushy from the stored heat in the asphalt.  Once the sun set and the temperate dropped, that would freeze almost solid, giving us a firm traveling surface.  Until then, however, it would be even harder to walk in.  The wind was blowing from the East, driven before the cold front that had brought the snow.  Roads running east-west were swept almost clear, with the roads north-south, like the alley, heavily buried in drifts.

“We go west,” I announced.

Predictably, Eric started in with the disagreements immediately.  “We should go south where it’s warmer.  We’ll freeze to death if we stay this far north.”

“Our primary concern is getting out of the city.  Once we’re out, we can take the 90 to the 195 and then we go south.”  Actually, I had no intention of going south.  If we went south, the zombies wouldn’t freeze and nobody would be safe.  Here in the north, we could find a cabin and camp out the winter.  The zombies would freeze solid once winter set in and we would be safe going in to town for supplies.

“Besides,” I continued, “if we go west, it’ll be easier to travel through the snow.  Too many drifts  north-south.”

“Actually,” Charlie said, “I have a better idea.”

“I’m open to good ideas,” I shrugged, emphasizing ‘good’.

“We can go two blocks north to First Avenue then go west.  We’ll hit the police station and can get snowmobiles and supplies there.”

“That,” I said with a smile, “is not a good idea, it’s a genius idea.”

…

We made it to the police station without incident as the sun gave up the last of its light.  The driving snow was freezing and even with jackets we were numb to the core.  If we stayed out any longer, I would start worrying about frostbite.  With the setting of the sun, the temperature took a sudden plunge, dropping down well below zero Fahrenheit.  On any other day, this would be a night for snuggling up next to a fire with a blanket, a cup of cocoa and a well-thumbed book.

Not tonight.

We were all shivering as I made everyone stop outside the police station.  Inside was warmer by at least twenty degrees, and even if it was below freezing, we would be out of this soul-sucking blast of wind-driven snow.  But one of the front windows was broken.  There could be any number of zombies inside.  Regardless, we didn’t have much of a choice.

“Keep an eye out!” I shouted over the howl of the wind and pushed toward the broken window, Charlie hanging onto my shoulder half dead from exhaustion and pain.

I went in first and shone my flashlight around.  There were damp footprints on the carpet leading away from the spreading puddle of melting snow next to the window.  Every other foot dragged like the person was limping, but it was too regular.  Whoever was limping wasn’t feeling any of the pain.

Zombies.

I cursed, then ducked back out to help Charlie through.  Sandra and Eric were last, Sandra shivering so much she was almost as bad as Charlie.

“There’re zombies in here,” I warned in a whisper.  “Be very quiet until we find some supplies and get warmed up some.  We’re in no shape to run from a zombie.”

“Or kill it,” Charlie muttered.

Even Eric was too cold and tired to complain.

I drew my pistol and ejected the clip before working the action a few times to make sure it wasn’t frozen, then reloaded and chambered a round.  “We go slowly.  Check every room for supplies.  If you don’t see anything useful, shut the door behind you.  If you see anybody, living or zombie, call out.  Do not approach them, even if they look fine.”  I glared at Eric until he dropped his gaze.  “Does everyone understand?”

I got murmured assents.  I wasn’t satisfied, but at least I had warned them.  Gun held at the ready, I pushed through the door behind the reception desk and into the police station with the others following at my heels.  The building seemed abandoned; we went through half the first floor before we found anything useful.

I nudged the door open with a shoulder, gun low.  My fingers were starting to warm up and a painful tingle was burning through them.  I took that as a good sign.  If I could feel pain, then they weren’t frostbitten.  The room was an emergency supply room, the walls lined with cabinets and a few benches in the middle.  On one of the benches sat a young woman.

“Oh my God!” Sandra gasped, and I held out a hand to stop her from running forward.

The woman looked up suddenly and turned toward us.  Her eyes looked at me, fear making her whites stand out.  She wasn’t insane.  “Hello?” I asked quietly, “can you hear me?”

She nodded and burst into tears.  “Oh God, oh God,” she moaned, “thank God you’re still human.”  She got up suddenly and we all shied back a step as one.

“Hold on,” I cautioned her.  “Were you bitten?  Were you scratched?”

“No, no.  None of that,” she assured me, but she held an arm behind her back.

“Let me see your hands.”

Trembling, she held out the hidden hand, wrapped tight in a bloody bandage.  I cursed explosively.

“Please!  It wasn’t a bite, I swear!  I cut my hand getting in the window.”  She took another step toward me and I raised the gun instinctively.

“You’re not going to shoot her!” Eric shouted and pushed past me, standing in front of the girl with his arms outstretched.  “You murderer.  She’s just a little girl!”

Emboldened by Eric’s posturing, Sandra rushed past and put her arm around the girl.  “Oh my, you’re burning up!” she exclaimed.  “You better have a seat.  When’s the last time you ate?”

“She has a fever!” I shouted at Eric.  “She’s infected.  She could be contagious now!  Any drop of saliva, of blood, of any fluid and you’ll be infected too.  Get away from her, Sandra!”

“Get away yourself, you monster!” Eric shouted back, “I won’t let you kill an innocent girl!  Bad enough that you’re killing infected people!  There might still be a cure for them!”

I couldn’t believe this.  I wouldn’t let Sandra become infected because of Eric’s stupidity.  I dropped my shoulder and checked him into a cabinet before running forward and yanking Sandra away from the girl, who fell to her knees, sobbing.

“Are you an idiot?” I shouted at Sandra, shaking her, “You know how the virus works!  We’ve all heard the radio.  First a fever.  Then shivering.  Then euphoria.  After that, it’s violence, frothing and insanity.”

“She’s just cold,” Sandra said, tears in her eyes.  “That’s why she’s shivering.”

“With a fever?  I doubt she feels anything at all.”  Eric finally made it back to his feet, indignation and rage warring for dominance on his face.  “And you, you bloody fool.  You’re an educated man!  This girl is sick.  Look at her!  Look at her, damn it!”  He looked.  “She’s sick.  She’s infected.  We can’t save her, even if we had a vaccine.  It’s too late now, she’s got the symptoms.”

Eric opened his mouth but he couldn’t summon an argument.  It was obvious I was right.

The girl’s sobs were petering out.  I pushed Eric back toward the door and turned to the girl.  She was rocking on her knees, a hideous smile on her face.  “I feel better now,” she giggled.  “I think my fever broke.  I’m cured!”  She surged to her feet, face stretched in a wide grin, skin flushed red with fever.  She took one step forward.

I heard a gunshot and looked down at the smoking gun in my hand.  The girl staggered, a bloody stain erupting from her chest, then fell forward, dead.

“No!” Sandra screamed.  Charlie grabbed her and they fell to the floor together.

Eric looked at me, hate in his eyes.  “God damn you, Mark,” he growled.  “God damn you and your blood thirst.”

I sat down on the end of a bench and bowed my head, the warmth from the gun feeling like a raging fire in my hand.  Eric helped Sandra to her feet and comforted her, alternating words of encouragement and heaping curses on my head.  I felt terrible, even though I knew the girl was doomed.  There wasn’t any choice.  But she was just a little girl!

Charlie crawled over to me and leaned against a cabinet, eyes locked on the spreading pool of blood around the girl.  “Hey man,” he said quietly, “that was a rough decision, but you did the right thing.”

“I know,” I said, tears in my eyes, “but I still feel horrible for having to shoot her.”

Charlie squeezed my leg and pushed open a cabinet.  He gave a low whistle, “Hey, check this stuff out.  Must be blizzard rescue gear here.”  He pulled out a strip of plastic packages.  “Heat packs.”  He tore off a few and cracked the capsule inside before handing them around.  “Warm your hands up, then put them inside your coat pockets to keep your hands warm.”

As Charlie made his way to the next cabinet, I curled around the heat pack, savoring the warmth.  Eric’s soothing was disrupted by his equally inane exclamations over the heat packs.  You’d think he’d never been in a cold-weather part of the country before.

Charlie found a medical supply case and he opened it up.  Splints, bandages, creams and, most importantly for him, morphine.

“Hey, Charlie,” I called over, “let me help you with that.  Let’s get a real splint on your leg.”

“Yes, but first,” he brandished the morphine, “a little something to take off the edge.”

As I worked to get Charlie fixed up, Eric and Sandra went through the rest of the cabinets, ignoring the body on the floor and gingerly stepping around the blood, turning out a wealth of supplies.  Thick, sub-zero temperature jackets, more heating pads, gloves, ski masks, goggles, rope, flares, backpacks, satchels, rations, bottled water, the list went on.

“Man am I glad you thought of coming here,” I told Charlie, “we would have been doomed out there without this stuff.”

“So true,” he agreed.  He had found some crutches in a corner and was moving about quickly, splitting the supplies into separate backpacks, apparently with no pain from his broken leg.

“Thanks for the help, Charlie, but you really shouldn’t be moving about more than absolutely necessary.  The morphine will wear off eventually and you’ll be sorry if you bung up your leg even more.”

“Why do you always have to be such a downer?” Eric muttered at me.  He wouldn’t meet my eyes, sullenly avoiding my gaze.

“He’s not being a downer, Eric,” Charlie snapped at him, “he’s pointing out the obvious and caring for me.  Caring for you, too.  You may not like it, but if he hadn’t done what he did, that girl would have infected all of us.  You can’t mope forever about it.  You know he was right, even if it wasn’t pleasant.”

Eric bowed his head, beaten but still angry.  “Maybe.”

I took it.  With Eric, I took whatever I could get.  “Okay, let’s get suited up.  I don’t want to waste any more time here, so let’s get down to the garage and see if there are any snowmobiles we can take.”  I figured getting us out of the room with the dead girl lying in the middle of the floor would do more toward calming everyone down than hours of speeches.

“We aren’t going to stay here for the night?” Sandra asked.  Her face was drawn and tired, her eyes red from crying.

“It isn’t safe,” Charlie answered, “We don’t know this building and there are too many rooms to verify there aren’t any other zombies.”

“They aren’t zombies,” Eric muttered, surly.

Everyone ignored that, even Sandra.  “I suppose, but could we at least eat first?  I’m so hungry.”

I nodded, surprised that I hadn’t thought of that.  Between the relief at getting out of the cold, then the girl and the wealth of supplies, I hadn’t thought about food.  My stomach growled.  “Excellent idea.  But not here.”

Even Eric agreed with that, and we left the room, burdened with our new-found goods.  I led the way through the police station, taking the time to make sure all the doors were closed.  I had found early on that zombies didn’t usually wander through closed doors.  If they weren’t wandering, they wouldn’t stumble upon you while you slept.

The hallway ended with a stairwell leading to the back of the garage.  Someone had set up a few bottles of Ever Clear and stuffed rags into their necks, preparations that had been abandoned along with a dirty Zippo.

“Molotovs,” Charlie said.

“I wonder if they work.”  I had an idea.  “Eric, you wanted a weapon.  Take these.  If we get swarmed, I’m counting on you to hold them back.”

Eric puffed up a bit, happy with the importance I had given him.  I guess the fact that he would have to kill the zombies hadn’t registered with him yet.  I hoped it wouldn’t until after he had already thrown the first bottle.

We took the stairwell down into the garage, taking care to close the doors behind us.  The cavernous parking lot easily had room for two dozen patrol cars and assorted vehicles, though most of the spaces were empty.  I imagined most of the patrol cars were out on the streets of the city somewhere abandoned.  There were only a few vehicles left.  The only patrol car was smashed into a pylon halfway in, leaking oil and antifreeze.  On the far side, a chain-link fence caged a pair of snowmobiles.

“Yes!” Eric cheered and jogged across the lot, pulling Sandra with him.

“We’ll set up for our meal here,” I suggested to Charlie.  “We can break out that Bunsen burner and heat up the rest of the soup.”  I ignored Eric, focusing on getting the food ready to eat quickly.  The sooner we ate, the sooner we could get moving.

“Mark,” Eric called from the far side of the garage, “the snowmobiles look in working order.  We just need to get the door open and…  Oh my god!”

Eric’s shout was punctuated by Sandra’s scream.  I stood up quickly, pistol in hand, expecting the worst.  I couldn’t see anything, but they were both staring fixedly at the patrol car.  I ran over, giving the car a wide berth until I could see what they were looking at.  A policeman was struggling free of the twisted wreckage, his arm broken in three places.

I raised my gun but Eric shouted, “No!  Don’t kill a cop!”

“What?” I asked, irritated.  “It’s not a cop any more, man, it’s a zombie.”

“It’s still a cop!  When the government returns, they’ll run an analysis on the body.  They’ll know you killed him.  Don’t you watch CSI?”

I lowered the gun.  “Okay, then you kill it.  You have the Molotovs.”

“I can’t kill him!” Eric sounded scandalized I would even suggest such a thing.  “It’s a policeman!  An officer of the law!”

“Yes, I know he’s a cop.  What do you suggest, then?” I watched as the zombie fell free of the door and picked itself up, standing limply, head lolling to one side, broken arm swinging gently.  “If we don’t kill it, it will attack us.”

“We don’t know that,” Eric rationalized.  “Just because a few zombies attacked doesn’t mean they all will.”

“Please, Eric,” Sandra moaned, fear making her voice thick, “Let Mark kill it.  A gun is much more humane than fire.”

That was probably exactly the wrong thing to say.  Eric turned on Sandra.  “You too?  I’m surrounded by murderers and cutthroats!  Anything for a quick fix of violence!”

“Please, I don’t mean it that way.”  She paused to swallow as the zombie rolled its head their way and started to shamble forward.  “But it is coming.  We have to do something.”

“Fine!” Eric shouted, “Fine.  I try to remain civilized, but one man can’t enforce law and order alone.”  He fumbled the Zippo out of his pocket and hefted one of the bottles of Ever Clear.  A quick tilt let an ounce of the grain alcohol soak into the rag and he lit it with a deft flick of his wrist.  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he had done this many times before.

The rag burst into brilliant orange flame and Eric shied away from the sudden heat, almost dropping the bottle.  Then, his face set in determined self-righteousness, he threw the bottle at the zombie.  It bounced off its chest and smashed at its feet.  Immediately blue flames licked over the spreading puddle of Ever Clear and rose into an orange inferno.

The zombie moaned a choked-off scream and broke into a run, arms pinwheeling wildly, clothes burning with abandon.  Eric cried out and ran to the side, but Sandra froze, eyes wide in horror, stuck like a deer in headlights.

“Sandra!” I shouted, “Sandra, move!”  I raised the gun to shoot, then the zombie was on her and I lost my chance.

It was hard to see exactly what happened next through the flames, but the end was clear.  Sandra was still standing but with both hands clamped around her neck and the zombie was on the ground, burning.

Charlie limped past me on his crutches and got to Sandra first.  “Did it bite you?” he asked, sympathy heavy in his voice.

Sandra shook her head, but it was more in denial than a negative.

“Let me see,” Eric ordered, but Sandra shoved him away and turned her back on him.

I pointed at Eric’s jacket where a bloody smear was left from Sandra’s hand.  “She’s been bitten.”  Someone had to state the obvious.

“What and I suppose you want to kill her too, now?” Eric screamed at me.

“Wait, this is my fault?  If you had let me shoot the zombie, this would never have happened!”

“You’re the one who told me to use the Molotov,” Eric shouted back, “for all I know, you knew it wouldn’t kill the zombie immediately!”

“Don’t be thick,” I snapped, “of course it wouldn’t kill immediately.  It’s fire, stupid, not a bullet.”

“So you knew!  You knew and let me do it anyway!  You killed Sandra just as surely as the zombie did!  Murderer!  I knew it all along!”

“Listen to yourselves!” Charlie shouted, drowning out both of us.  “Your fighting has brought us to a very serious situation.”

I glared at Eric, but shut up.  Charlie was right.  Fighting between us would only result in further injury and death.

Eric wouldn’t let it go that easily, though.  He opened his mouth, indignation written all over his face and body language.  Fortunately, Sandra spoke, interrupting whatever it was that Eric was going to spout.  “I’m not dead yet,” she moaned, “please don’t talk about me like I’m already one of them.”

We all turned to look at Sandra, guilt and horror warring on our faces.

“Maybe she’s not infected,” Eric said, a wild note to his voice.  Charlie snorted.  “You don’t know she’s infected!  The zombie was on fire.  Fire kills bacteria, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a virus,” I sighed, “but yes.  Fire would kill the virus.  If the zombie’s saliva was boiled or burned away in its entirety or otherwise sterilized, the bite would not cause infections.”

Charlie limped over to the zombie and flipped it with his crutch.  “This guy’s toasted.  There is no saliva that I can see.”

“Jesus, Charlie, don’t encourage him.”

“Mark,” Charlie said, his face pained, “if there’s any chance she’s not infected, we should give her the benefit of the doubt.  If she wasn’t infected, and you killed her, could you live with yourself?”

Eric unconsciously took a step toward Charlie, as if their proximity would change my mind.  I shook my head.  “You realize what you’re talking about?  Sandra, I’m sorry, but you’ve been bitten.”

“So you’ll just kill her?  Without waiting to find out if she… if she’s infected?”

“No.”  I forced myself to look at Sandra, really look at her.  She had crow’s feet despite being under thirty and tanned skin from being outdoors habitually.  Her eyes were wet and red, but I’ve rarely seen eyes more green.  I cursed.  There was no way I could kill her in cold blood.  Leaving her here, even with weapons to protect herself, was the same as putting the bullet in her ribs myself.

“You’ll stay?  We’ll stay?” Eric couldn’t believe it.  He kept looking between Sandra and me, half-expecting me to change my mind.

“Yes,” I said heavily, screaming inside at my own stupidity.  She was infected!  She had to be.  But I was still human, I still cared about people.  If there was a way to stop the infection, I would do everything I could.  “Give me one of your Molotovs,” I ordered Eric.  He shied away.  “Christ, man, I’m not going to set her on fire, I just want to clean the wound out with the alcohol.  If 151 won’t kill the virus, nothing will.”

I helped Sandra to her feet, being very careful not to get any blood, saliva, or any other fluid on me, and sat her on a tool chest.  “Eric, go get the medical kit from the backpack.  There should be rubber gloves in it.”  Sandra was looking at me with those big watery eyes and I smiled at her, despite my instinct to run or fight.  “Don’t worry.  Tilt your head up so I can see where he bit you, okay?”

The wound was small, barely a scratch, really.  Under normal circumstances, I would have brushed it off as trivial, but these were hardly normal circumstances.  Eric brought the kit and I put on the gloves before soaking a pad in alcohol and holding it up.  “This is going to sting.”

Sandra nodded, tears rolling down her face.  I grit my teeth and set to scrubbing out the wound, forcing blood from the surrounding tissue like you would with a snake bite and repeatedly dousing the scratch with alcohol.  Sandra cried and moaned from the pain, but she didn’t move.

After a few minutes of it, I stood up.  “I’ve cleaned it as best I can, Sandra.  Now we just have to wait and see.”

Sandra hung her head.  She reeked of alcohol and the fumes were making even my eyes water.  I didn’t doubt hers were burning, but she didn’t say a word.  That worried me.  “How are you feeling?”

“It hurts,” she whispered.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered back, tears rising in my eyes that had nothing to do with the fumes.  “I should have shot the zombie right away.  I should have done a lot of things differently.”

Sandra didn’t say anything.  I leaned closer then realized she was sleeping.  The poor girl was exhausted, and so was I.  Now that we stopped moving, the tension and night of sleeplessness was catching up.

Charlie limped over and dropped a pair of handcuffs next to me.

“What are those for?”

“For Sandra.  We need to sleep and she shouldn’t be free to attack us if she turns.”

I sighed.  Of course.  He was right, but I didn’t have the strength to fight Eric about it.  “Okay.  Go ahead.”

Charlie looked at me for a long moment before nodding and setting his crutches aside.  The man was no idiot.  He knew what I was thinking.  Charlie snapped one cuff on her wrist, making sure it was snug but not tight, then snapped the other around a sturdy weld on the tool chest she was lying on.  The chest probably weighed half a ton, she didn’t have a prayer of moving it.

“Anyone hungry?” I asked.  Nobody said anything.  “Me neither.  Let’s get some sleep.”

…

I woke to a female voice singing.  I sat up, groggy and disoriented.  Where was I?  Why was it so bloody cold?  The smell of alcohol made me think I had gotten drunk and passed out somewhere.  Then the totaled patrol car registered and it all came crashing back.  Sandra.

I scrambled to my feet.  Eric and Charlie were crouching nearby, staring at me, obviously waiting for me to wake.

“She’s turned,” Charlie said hoarsely.

“No she hasn’t,” Eric said with the dull conviction that told he knew he was wrong.

I glanced at my watch.  Three in the morning.  There probably wasn’t a more miserable time to be up listening to a friend’s sanity drain away.  Sandra’s voice hesitated, then repeated the line of song again.  And again, like a broken record, the same words, over and over again.  “Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, little lamb…”

“How long?” I asked, rubbing my face.

“She started singing an hour ago,” Charlie replied, “First it was popular songs, then she started forgetting the words.  Now she can barely recite a nursery rhyme.”

“I thought you said she would be fine,” Eric mumbled.  He looked exhausted, both mentally and physically.

“Eric, I said nothing of the sort.  I cleaned the wound the best I knew how.  I guess it just wasn’t enough.”

“It’s never enough with you.  Not unless you’re killing.”  Eric slumped down and buried his face in his hands.

For a moment, I wished it was Eric who had been bitten.  I would have been so easy to pull the trigger.  I shook off the fantasy.  We still had to get out of the city.  The wind had stopped howling under the garage door, which told me snow had piled up deeply outside.  There was no telling how long this storm would blow for.  It didn’t happen often, but we couldn’t risk getting snowed in.  Not now.

“What are you going to do?” Charlie asked me quietly.

“What can I do?  I can give her a quick end before the euphoria fades.  That way, at least she dies happy.”

“Little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, little lamb,” Sandra droned.

“Better get on with it then,” Charlie said, face drawn.

“You’re going to shoot her?” Eric cried, as if this was new news.

“Eric, it has to be done!” Charlie shouted back, “Be a man for once and accept that!  Mark will give her a better death than the rest of the infected could hope for.  This way she can die with some semblance of humanity left to her.”

“Little lamb, little lamb, little lamb…”

I stood and drew the gun, my heart heavy.  I had no choice, but at least Sandra wouldn’t starve to death or freeze.

“No!” Eric shouted, springing forward and knocking Charlie backwards.  He ran to Sandra and stood in front of her, a few feet away.

“Jesus Christ, Eric, get away from her!” I shouted.  “She’s in the last stages of euphoria now, she could crack at any moment and go violent.”

Charlie was writhing on the ground, hand on his tailbone.  That was painful as hell, but as long as he didn’t break anything, or injure his leg again, it was temporary.  He could wait.  I took a few steps toward Eric, gun held in front of me.

“Get back!  I won’t let you shoot her!”

“Eric, be reasonable.  She’s not Sandra any more.  No more than any of these zombies are the people they used to be.”

“Little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, little…” Sandra dwindled off, losing track of even that simple rhyme.  She wore a big, strained smile and her face was flushed with fever.  She shivered and the handcuffs rattled against the tool chest.

“Eric, please.  Just take one step away from her.”  I held the gun out to the side.  “I won’t shoot her, if that’s what you want.”

“Drop the gun.  Actually, better yet, give me the gun.  I’ll be the one in charge now!  I’ll have the power!  You’ll have to do what I say!”

“Okay.  I’ll put the gun down, but you’ll have to come over here to get it.”  I knelt and lay the gun on the ground.

“Mark,” Charlie moaned, “don’t, the man’s cracked.”

I hesitated.  Charlie was right.  Giving Eric the gun was stupid.  Was it worth it to get him away from Sandra?  How far would I go to protect my group?  How far should I go?  I wished I had more time.

Sandra looked up, her eyes vacant, unrecognizing.  Her head tilted to the side a few inches and a look full of hate blossomed on her face.

“Oh no, she’s gone,” Charlie whispered.

I tried, I really did.  I lunged for the gun, cursing myself for lowering my guard.  At the same time Sandra hurled herself toward Eric, yanking the tool chest away from the wall with a screech of metal.  She grabbed one of Eric’s arms and with frantic strength pulled him in.  Her mouth opened and she screamed, then sunk her teeth into Eric’s wrist.

It was a long shot, but it didn’t really matter if I missed.  I shot Sandra in the face, the impact of the bullet smashing her head back and splashing the wall behind her with blood.  Eric stumbled free, gripping his torn wrist in his good hand.

“She bit me!” he cried.  “You said she wasn’t infected, and she bit me!  Why didn’t you shoot her earlier?”

The man was too much.  I bent over to help Charlie to his feet and was knocked sprawling as Eric charged at me.  The gun skittered out of my hand.  I dove for it, but Eric beat me to it.  I froze as he backed away, gun in hand, a mad smile on his face.

“Not so confident now when I have the gun, are you, Mark?”  I didn’t say anything, not wanting to provoke him further.  “Well, I’m not going to let you shoot me!”  He fumbled behind himself, then with a clank and a groan of stressed machinery, the garage door started rising.

A small avalanche and a blast of air so cold it stole the breath rushed into the room.  Eric was still shouting, but his words were lost in the rush of wind.  He turned to run into the swirling snow and stumbled over something.

A hand, blue with cold, burst from the snow and grabbed his ankle.  I watched, frozen in horror, as zombies crawled from the snow and converged on Eric.  He fired the gun, the report echoing through the garage again and again.  I counted the shots and saw Eric realize the gun was empty.

“Come on, Charlie, it’s time to go.”

“Truer words were never spoken.”

I dashed over to the snowmobile cage as zombies fell on Eric, muffling his screams in the snow.  The lock and chain were still in place and I wasted precious seconds swinging the pack off my back and extracting the fire axe from its lashings.  The chain took three hard swings to part and I hauled the cage door open.

Charlie wasn’t next to me and I spun to see what he was doing.  He was leaning into the smashed patrol car and a second later came out brandishing a shotgun.  Charlie threw the gun to me and limped over.

“Good man.  You know how to drive one of these things?”

Charlie nodded.  “I’ve spent my share of hours on one.”

“You know, it’s really too bad your leg is broke.  We should have ditched those others two days ago.”

“Don’t say that,” Charlie shook his head, “your compassion is your best feature.  Don’t throw it away because Eric was a twat.”

I snorted.  “He was, wasn’t he.  Okay, let’s get these things going.”  The zombies had finished with Eric and a few were swinging over to look our way.  They were passive for the moment, but that wouldn’t last.  “Charlie, get a snowmobile going.  I’m going to delay these things.”

“Be careful, man.”

I grabbed the fire axe and moved to meet the zombies.  I buried the axe in the head of the first zombie to come toward me and kicked the next in the chest, knocking it backward.  Hoping the shotgun had more than one or two shells left in the magazine, I raised the weapon and carefully shot the next zombie in the head.  Blood exploded everywhere, spattering my jacket and pants.  I turned my face away, hoping none of the blood landed on my skin.

The next zombie was on me before I had a chance to check and I knocked it back before shooting it in the head.  The zombies kept coming.  My shotgun emptied and I used it as a club, swinging it by the barrel until the stock shattered against a zombie’s skull.

“Charlie!” I called, “Please tell me we’re almost ready to go!”

A snowmobile’s rumbling roar greeted my question.  I grabbed a tire iron to replace my shotgun and smashed out a zombie’s knee before knocking it backwards into the oncoming horde.  They tripped and stumbled over the fallen zombies, but they kept coming, more than I had time to count.  Where had they all come from?

I danced to the side, crippling and killing as I went, drawing the horde away from Charlie and the snow mobile.  So far the zombies were just shambling.  The glimpses of exposed flesh I saw was blue with cold.  It was likely they were barely alive.  It was the only thing keeping me alive.

“Come on, Mark!” Charlie shouted.

I threw the tire iron at a zombie’s head and sprinted around the totaled patrol car.  The horde of zombies turned slowly to face me as I ran, faces blue with cold and frosted with ice twisted in hate and rage.

I reached the snowmobile and Charlie gasped.  “Dude, your face…”

I pulled off a glove and touched my face.  Cold, sticky blood met my fingers.  I hauled off the ski mask, but the spaces left by the eyeholes were slick with blood as well.  I didn’t have to feel my eye sockets to know.

I made a decision then.  “Go!” I shouted at Charlie, “Go, I’ll cover you.  Go north and east, into the cold.  Find a cabin and hole up for the winter.  Once your leg gets better, keep going north until you hear the zombies are gone.  If that never happens, go to Alaska.  The weather will keep the zombies out.”  I picked my backpack off the floor and strapped it onto the back of the snowmobile.

Charlie shook his head, pain in his eyes.

“Don’t be an idiot.  Look where that sentiment got Eric and Sandra.  Just go, damn it!” There were tears in my eyes.  “Go before this gets any harder.”

Charlie gunned the engine and nodded.  “I won’t forget you, Mark.”

“Save it.  Get going or you’ll lose your chance.”

The roar of the snowmobile filled the garage and Charlie waved one last time before rolling out the door into the swirling snow.  I watched him go until the sound of the engine dwindled in the distance.

The zombies were waiting for me when I turned back.  “Okay you bastards,” I snarled.  “Let’s do this.”