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I had a dream one night. I only mention it because nights of uninterrupted sleep are rare. I dreamed of a flat green field beneath a large blue cloudless sky. I was lying on my back with my hands tucked behind my head. I was just looking. No fear, no guns, no smells, just miles and miles of natural peace. It was the first dream I had in a long time that was not plagued with them. Since I was born after they started appearing I have few memories of places without them. The dream didn't last long because the alarm woke me up and I rushed to my place on the wall.

The wall is what keeps us protected from them. Once and while one of them approaches the wall trying to get inside. We have centuries posted in each direction to take them out, so it's not often that the alarm goes off. Sometimes they come in groups, and that's when the alarm used. I don't mind shooting them. The decay is so advanced now that they are barely human. I used to have trouble shooting the new ones…they had eyes. They would look up at us and stretch their rotted hands up to grab for us. Since we were taught to aim for the head you could see the eyes within the crosshairs of the rifle…that was always hard. I used to wonder who they were before or if they still had any humanity left, the eyes made it seem like they did. Some of the guys no longer thought of such things. They would laugh and play with them. A leg shot to bring them down, an abdomen shot to purge their last meal; they would laugh the whole time and slap each other on the back. After all that torture they still were without mercy. I would take the kill shot to end the suffering. No matter how inhuman they were I still felt like some part of them was in pain. We stood on the wall on some nights betting each other how many of them we could take out from a certain range, the whole thing became sadistic…but so had humanity. At first we let anyone alive into the compound surrounded by the wall. We could take anyone regardless of his or her position in the world before. Our resources began to diminish. Then we started running out of room. We had to start being selective. Prioritizing is what the people who controlled the wall called it. I called it murder. A list was devised to screen out those who were not useful enough to enter the wall. Money was first on the list, only people of a certain income level were allowed in, or anyone who could pay enough on the spot. What was money worth now? Society as we knew it had collapsed because of money. We still watched the numbers on Wall Street when we should have been concerned about the zombies on Main Street. Next on the list was family. Only people related to those inside our wall were permitted to enter. Soon that part of the list was rewritten to include only immediate family. I have seen men embrace their brothers' and sister's while their wives perished outside. Resource management they called it…prioritizing of the human race. I could not understand how one person was worth more than another because of a checklist. I kept this thought to myself fearing that my questions would arouse questions of my utility.

We mounted our positions on the wall and waited for the darkness beyond to reveal its horror. Blake, the guy always beside me, spun the bill of his hat around so he could better press his eye against the scope of his rifle.

"About time we had some action," he spoke.

This month had been rather quiet, which greatly diminished our trigger time. I could hear him breathing heavily and the finger of his trigger hand curl with anticipation. I peered out through the scope of my own rifle into the darkness beyond. A sea of moaning broke the silence. Each man on the wall shook with anticipation. The volume of the moans indicated there were many targets beyond the darkness. They had not staged a full frontal attack on our wall in a while, so their estimated numbers was a surprise.

"Oh yeah" Blake screamed as the moaning became louder.

All of us on the wall braced ourselves for the coming masses. The darkness only revealed one figure. A woman of middle age gripped tightly a bundle of cloth to her breast as she hurried to our wall. From the scope of my rifle I could see tears running from her eyes.

"Please God" I thought I saw her speak.

Behind her the moans of her pursuers became louder. Blake shook with anticipation as the woman entered his sights. She crossed the perimeter beyond the wall we erected catering to the length of our sights. She looked up and saw the line of men guarding the wall.

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