Dunbar’s rule sickened him. Yes, there were no zombies, but this wasn’t how Americans behaved. This wasn’t how the military acted. This wasn’t human. Dunbar’s forces were worse than the zombies. The undead simply killed. The soldiers did much more.
He glanced around at his friend’s body parts. Where were they now, he wondered? Paul had never believed in an afterlife, but a month ago, he wouldn’t have believed the dead could walk again, either. Where did the Down Boys go, after they’d died?
The far door opened, and three zombies skated into the rink, their faces covered with hockey masks. All were armed with hockey sticks.
The crowd’s cheer thundered through the arena. Paul crouched, waiting. The first zombie sped towards him. The second tried to flank his left. The third hung back. Paul could smell the rot wafting off of them, even from the other side of the rink. Closing the distance between them, the first zombie raised its stick and swung at his head. Paul ducked, sidestepped, and wrenched the stick from its grasp. He turned the weapon back on the creature, breaking its legs first. As it collapsed, Paul clubbed the head. The face imploded behind the hockey mask. Blood and pulp squirted out the mouth and eyeholes like Play-Doh.
The second zombie tripped over a severed arm and fell to the ice. As it scrambled to rise, the third darted forward. Paul ran towards it as fast as he could without slipping.
Their sticks clashed like sabers. One blow smacked into his side, and Paul felt his ribs crack. He struck the creature in the side of the head, and its mask flew off.
Shannon stared back at him.
Paul gaped. Behind him, he heard the fallen zombie getting to its feet.
“Wifey,” he gasped, his voice thick with emotion.
“What did they do to you?”
Paul grimaced. The zombie laughed.
The crowd grew louder.
Paul lowered his stick. “Do it. I don’t want to live without her.”
The zombie’s laughter ceased.
“Just do it.” His stick clattered across the ice.
“Make it quick.”
“
He embraced Shannon’s corpse. Her teeth closed around his throat.
At that moment, the bomb they’d planted exploded, filling the arena with heat and light and wind. A moment later, the sound followed. Paul and Shannon shared one last kiss as the ice melted beneath their feet.
Then they both found out where the Down Boys go.
WALKABOUT
(Part Two)
Leigh Haig opened the dumpster lid a fraction of an inch and stared outside. Dark, ominous clouds dominated the sky, and cold rain fell in sheets. A flock of birds wheeled overhead, buffeted by the gale force winds. The storm lashed them, sending molted feathers and shreds of rotting meat plummeting downward with the rain. He remembered peeking out the window of his home before he’d departed, and seeing the sun. Now, he couldn’t remember what the sun looked like.Twelve days ago, he’d left his house in search of medicine for his wife Penny, whose body was being ravaged by the common flu. The sun was still shining when he departed. Now, it was raining, and he was hiding inside a garbage dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant, less than ten kilometers from home.
Ten kilometers. Not far. Not far at all. And yet, it might as well be the other side of the world.
Shivering from the cold, Leigh closed the lid. The darkness surrounded him again. His fingers and toes were numb, and his muscles ached. He felt for the rifle, a Yugoslavian-made SKS with a bayonet mounted on the barrel. He drew the weapon to him. Twelve days ago, he hadn’t even known how to fire it, let alone the rifle’s specifics. Now, it was his best friend. His teddy bear, after sleeping in the dumpster overnight.
After leaving the house, Leigh had gone one and a half blocks before encountering his first zombie, an elderly woman whose wig had gone missing and whose varicose veins had burst right through her skin. He’d smelled the creature before he saw it, and had time to hide behind the burned-out shell of a car before the corpse rounded the corner and started down his street. Armed only with a makeshift axe, Leigh had let it wander by. When the coast was clear, he continued on his way.
That was when the snake bit him.
He’d felt a sharp, jabbing pain in his ankle, and when he looked down, there was a snake clinging to his foot, its fangs piercing his sock and the flesh beneath it.
Leigh screamed, and that attracted the attention of the zombie that he’d just eluded.
The snake was already dead. Maggots squirmed in the open, ulcerated sores all along its body. One eye was missing, and more maggots filled that cavity. Muscles, free of rigor mortis, flexed as it clamped down tighter against his skin. It glared at him with its one good eye, and Leigh saw a dreadful intelligence reflected there.
He swung with his axe—two kitchen knives embedded in a wooden mallet. The blade sliced through the snake’s mid-section, cutting it in half, scattering maggots and innards. A dead mouse spilled out onto the road, the serpent’s last meal. Then the mouse began to move as well. Leigh stomped on the zombie rodent with his free foot. Tiny bones crushed beneath his heel.
The snake’s upper half held on to his ankle. Its severed end whipped back and forth like an out-ofcontrol fire hose. Leigh swung again, carving another six inches from its body.
The other zombie, the old woman with the missing wig, ran towards him.
With the snake still clinging to his leg, Leigh planted his feet and watched the zombie’s charge. His heart pounded in his chest. As it reached for him, he swung the axe with all his might. The blade buried itself in the center of the old woman’s bald skull, cleaving flesh and bone. The zombie collapsed to the pavement, blood and brains leaking around the weapon.
Leigh tried to retrieve the axe, but it was stuck. He heard more of the undead approaching, and cursed, tugging on the handle.
Suddenly, automatic gunfire rang out. Seconds later, an armored jeep pulled alongside him. The side-door opened, and a man with a red beard leaned out, offering Leigh his hand. “Come with us if you want to live, mate.”
Leigh jumped onboard.
There were four people in the jeep—two soldiers, a woman, and the red-bearded man. All of them were heavily armed.
“You’ve brought a friend,” the woman said, nodding at Leigh’s leg. “Lucky it’s not poisonous.”
The red-bearded man leaned over, pried the snake from Leigh’s ankle, and tossed it out the window. “We’ll have to get that doctored. Fucking things are crawling with bacteria.”
“I need a doctor,” Leigh stammered. “Medicine. My wife, Penny, she’s sick.”
“You’re in luck,” one of the soldiers said. “We’re from Box Hill. A bunch of us have holed up in the hospital.”
Leigh soon learned that forty survivors, mostly medical staff and military forces, were living inside the hospital. After arriving, a doctor fixed Leigh’s ankle and gave him something for the infection. But before Leigh could convince anyone to accompany him home to get Penny, the hospital fell under siege from the zombies.
