Page 2

By noon I was ready to go.

On my right hip was my revolver and a pouch behind it with five speed loaders at the ready. To my left were two expandable batons and a metal flashlight fully charged. I had my paint ball gun loaded with ball bearings and my mask down over my face. Where at six this morning there had been a handful of the cadaverous beings bumbling through the parking lot, now there were hundreds. I took a deep breath as I grabbed my car keys from the hook by the door and began to turn the knob. It was only as the first rays of sunlight penetrated through a steady crack into the darkness of my living room that I remembered it. Stopping everything else I had been doing and losing what little common sense I had, I ran to the bedroom for my hat.

I couldn't wear the uniform of a mall security guard with out my hat. I'd have looked ridiculous. In hindsight, I suppose it was a stupid thought brought on by the stress and abnormality of the moment but what’s done is done.

Now, fully dressed and looking like Dudley Do-Right of Afghanistan I went back to the living room and steeled myself to walk out the door. I was ready to fling it wide open and make a mad dash for my car when it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to lock it when I went back for the rest of my uniform.

The little girl was standing in my kitchen when I came up, her head stuck in my refrigerator, totally oblivious to my presence. Carefully I came around the open fridge door to see the flowery blue print of her dress illuminated in the soft yellow glow inside the ice box. She didn't look dead really, a little blue but not dead. She felt my presence, looked up at me with pale eyes and closed the fridge. There was a piece of raw steak in her mouth, a piece I had intended on grilling that night were it not being held in the teeth of something so odd.

I poked her in the nose with the barrel of my paint ball gun. She wobbled backwards and fell into the cabinet behind her. She looked up at me, down at the steak and tore a piece of meat from it with her teeth. A tiny cyanotic hand offered up a slice of red sirloin to me.

"No thanks." I muttered, shaking my head. What else could I do? I am not, never have been, nor do I believe I will ever be versed in the arts and niceties of undead etiquette. Besides, I had no idea where she’d been and mother always told me never to play with dead things.

I closed the door behind me and made my way to the car. Mine was the most ragged of the vehicles parked in the apartment complex. The green Ford Taurus had been a faithful and reliable car since I was a junior in high school. Sure, the passenger side was dented from a hit and run at Wal-Mart, the mirrors on both doors had been stolen, the back windshield had been smashed by Karen when she left me and the steering, alignment and ignition were shot to hell; but all things considered, it was still a pretty good car.

Apparently, the living dead thought highly of it too as there were ten of them gathered around the green machine, rocking it from side to side. I leveled the paintball gun and fired a single ball into the back of the police man whose motorcycle helmet had been partially crushed in some recent accident. He straightened and turned to face me. There was a steady line of red down the left side of his face and his sunglasses had been pushed up into his cheeks and imbedded there by the force of the crash. He looked at me, shoved another ghoul and pointed a broken finger in my direction.

Butterflies began to flutter madly in my stomach.

The other ghouls turned to look at me and I realized exactly how serious my situation was. This wasn't a movie or a video game. I wasn't the hero who had all the right answers and a strong constitution. Come to think of it, standing there with a paint ball gun looking at a gang of corpses rocking my car back and forth, I felt rather stupid.

The first hand came through my open back windshield almost immediately after the car stopped shaking. It was followed soon by another, then a head and then the whole body of a little dead boy who had apparently crawled through my car on his trip to wherever he had been going. He looked at the assembled ghouls around him, grabbed the hand of what I assumed was its mother and quickly walked on, taking the others with him.

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