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Suddenly, she started running eastbound, out of the park toward a row of houses. Craig could now see Carl sprinting through the park toward the little girl. The girl reached the street a good five seconds ahead of Carl. Carl never slowed down and kept running toward her. When the girl reached the first house, Craig and Phil lost sight of her when she ran around the corner. Seconds later, they lost sight of Carl as he ran around the same corner of the house.

Three gunshots echoed from the vicinity of the house.

"What did that fuckin’ idiot just do!" shouted Phil. "God damn that moron! If he shot her, I’ll kill him!"

"What the fuck happened?" shouted Craig into the radio.

There was no reply.

"Let’s get out of here before those things figure out where we’re at," said Craig.

Craig and Phil grabbed their rifles and ran out of the house toward where they last saw Carl and the girl.

Once on the street, they could see the ghouls they’d been looking at for the last day and a half stumbling toward the park. In addition to them, they could see several more now coming out of the abandoned houses.

"There’s going to be a big block party with these things if we don’t get out of here soon," thought Craig.

As Craig and Phil approached the house where they heard the gunfire, they carefully walked around the corner with their rifles at the ready.

On the ground were two bodies. Half of little girl’s throat was ripped out where she lay next to a very large zombie with fresh blood in its mouth and a gunshot wound to its head. Carl was standing over both bodies holding his pistol.

"You asshole!" shouted Phil. "Can’t you do anything right?"

"What’d I do?" asked Carl.

"We needed her alive! Now she’s just garbage!" shouted Craig. "All you had to do was catch her. Catch a five year old kid, but you let her get chomped on instead."

"Don’t blame me," complained Carl. "That fucker came out of nowhere and grabbed her before I could do anything about it."

"What do we do now?" asked Phil.

"We get the fuck out of here before the lunch-crowd arrives," said Craig.

As they ran they had to zigzag through the growing number of zombies that were now all over the street. A few moments later, they were back to their vehicles which were parked on the next block over.

"Now what?" asked Carl. "That kid was our ticket in."

"Once we get back on the main highway, we’ll radio Steiner and see if we can cut a deal with him," said Craig.

"I hate that sneaky prick," said Phil.

"He’s the only one that can get the shit we need now," said Craig. "So it’s either deal with him or think of something else."

The three men then entered their vehicles and drove off.

The Henshaw boys. Brothers Craig, Carl and cousin Phil. All born losers from the same shallow gene pool.

They were the family down the street that no one liked. Drinking, fighting and the cops at their home, at least once a week. Both brothers and their cousin grew up without any father in the home. When and if their fathers ever came home, it was because they somehow managed a successful parole or got kicked out of whatever situation they were currently living in.

The Henshaw boys’ lives were not a success story. For their first twenty-five years, it involved getting kicked out of every school for fighting, petty arrests, probation, and working menial jobs for lousy money. No one wanted anything to do with these three assholes. Nor would any halfway decent-looking woman.

Everyone knew that they wouldn’t amount to anything. Well, at least not until the world ended.

Luck and fortune, which had eluded them before, turned in their favor in the world of the dead. In order to survive, a person had to do whatever was necessary. The Henshaw boys soon became masters at survival.

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