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Gina was beginning to feel like a victim all over again.

She stood in the church lot in the damp fog and basked in the broad rays of the sun that cut swaths in the rising mists.  Littered at her feet were the scores of dead from the previous evening.  The smell was multiplied due in large part to the moist morning air.  It penetrated each fiber in her clothing, invaded every sinew and pore of her body.  She envisioned the sun's rays cleansing her despite the filth.

Either her fractured imagination or by sheer nature, the fog seemed to rapidly dissipate around her.  She could now see the entire paved lot littered with corpses and rancid splashes of body fluids tinted in perverse colors.  Green bile was a rusted orange-green and blood was a viscous black filth.  The surrounding grassy areas were obscured from view with a white wall of fog.  She realized she was probably drawing attention to herself whilst she stood outside, but hoped the stench of undead masked her own while she worked on clean up.  She feared starting a fire in the grass out of view of the church door.  Something could slip inside and surprise her. She opted to burn the bodies in the lot about ten meters from the Cordoba after she fixed the flat tire and found a place to hide it.  She decided to wait on moving the bodies to a pile until after the car was taken care of. The bodies in their current positions may create a perfect scent baffler against any wandering dead.  She made an involuntary glance to ensure Michael's corpse still lay where he had fallen last night before she got to work.  His abdomen and thighs were picked clean by the horde and an arm was missing.  His face was short an eye and the better part of his scalp. Michael's drained husk of a body was twisted and warped from countless clumsy zombie footfalls that crushed his ribs and splattered his intestines, dragging the stinking bits into the brush that surrounded three quarters of the parking lot.

Although the area was littered with bodies, she transfixed on Mark's crumpled and mutilated remains - the man she loved.  If she weren't numb, she would weep for him.

Her efforts at changing the tire were greatly hindered by her broken right arm.  She also realized focusing on detailed work was difficult when your eyes are swollen and throbbing and your nose is broken.  She had a very hard time keeping her attention divided between the tire and watching her back for shambling dead.  She leaned forward, firmly pressing her knee against her chest to reassure herself she still had a pistol tucked in her pocket.  When the pistol's molded metal casing brushed against her midriff, she brought her torso upright again.

As she raised her posture to a more comfortable position, her peripheral vision caught the reflection in the smooth hubcap knob and lazily transmitted the message through her bruised body to her fatigued mind.  She knew the distorted black shadow in the mirrored surface was dead thing.  She knew it was there before her body acknowledged it and granted her aching form permission to move.

She threw herself sideways, intending to roll clear of the zombie's reach, but fell short and slammed into the flat tire laying on her right. The zombie clawed at its meal, but fell forward towards the girl's previous position instead.  The undead thing's knees made a wet slapping crunch on the pavement and rotting innards spilled out from a gaping hole in the lower abdomen.  In desperation to get up, the zombie grabbed the wheel jack for support.  This shifted the jack's center-of-gravity.  In classic slapstick style, the jack dropped hard and struck the zombie across the shoulders, knocking it flat.  The car finished the job and landed upon the neck of the zombie, cleanly severing its head.

Gina held her breath to avoid inhaling the vapors and triggering a gag reflex.  She wasn't curious if puke would burn worse when the nose was broken.  She dropped down and looked under the lopsided car.  The zombie head was spinning on its ear in a pool of blood, finally stopping to meet Gina's gaze.  She laughed at the head's frozen shocked look and kicked it out from under the car.

After shooting the lock off the large storage shed behind the church, she stepped in to assess the total size.  The car might fit if she did some serious spring-cleaning, to include removing the low shelves from the walls full of varnish and paint thinner.  To her surprise, she found a large 10-gallon gas can in the back near the weed eater and riding lawnmower.  Aside from the tools, she found nothing of any real significance.  She spent a good portion of the afternoon clearing the shed. Her neck ached from looking over her shoulder.  She fetched the Chrysler and gingerly backed it inside.  She cursed herself for not being strong enough to pop the car in neutral and push it in.  She feared running the engine would draw more attention.  She knew she wouldn't survive another siege in her current condition.

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