While Josh yelled at he walker, Dave snuck behind the walker line of sight. At first Dave knelt down and started using the box cutter on the walker's pants. The pants were mostly rags and it took little time for Dave to cut and tear away the cloth fragments. Josh's eyes opened wide in surprise but the stream of abuse continued.
Dave wasn't making any effort to be careful in his treatment of the walker and just slashed quickly at the clothes with the box cutter. Dave was more concerned about his own safety. He preferred to cut quickly and keep his distance than stay too long near the tied up walker. As a result Dave ended up putting some really deep gashes into the walker's body. Dave's initial curiosity about how the wounds would bleed turned to shock when he saw what really happened to the open wounds.
The walker had lost all its footwear and was completely bare foot, this resulted in Dave standing up and cutting apart the torn shirt that the walker was wearing. A few more cuts with the box cutter and the underclothes were removed, leaving the walker tied naked to the light pole by its neck. Dave gathered up the removed clothing and tossed it against the defensive wall.
"Although he seems pretty well anchored to the light post, I don't really like how his hands are free."
"More nooses?" asked Josh.
Dave nodded and picked up some previously discarded rope from before. "Here," said Dave handing one piece to Josh.
Quietly they made up another pair of nooses. The walker seemed to be helping them as his hands were raised towards Dave and Josh. Dave carefully juggled his noose onto the walker's hand on his side, while Josh did the same with his noose and the walker's hand on his side.
"Tie these together around the back?" asked Josh.
"No. Hold your hand here for a moment. I want each hand tied separately to the light post."
With that Dave dragged the walker's arm downward and back. When the walker's wrist was close to the light pole, Dave looped the free end of the rope about the light pole and tied a rough looking knot. Dave stepped back and nodded towards Josh. Josh proceeded to do a mirror version of what Dave had just done. Once he had finished, Josh walked around to the front of the walker where Dave was standing.
"We're done," said Dave. "No need for any further song and dance. He isn't going anywhere and with his hands tied we should be somewhat safe as only his feet are free and he doesn't look like the kicking type."
"I thought that you were pretty sick there when you started to cut off his clothes. I'm not too sure about finding out that this is how you swing. I can live with gay but having a thing for the dead?"
Dave laughed. "No, I actually have a pants on explanation."
"This ought to be interesting."
They walked back to the defensive walk and climbed up. They turned to look west and sat down with their legs hanging over the edge of the bus's top.
"I got to admit that I hadn't thought that we'd be doing something this bizarre," said Josh.
Dave nodded. "I wasn't planning on doing this so soon, but we've managed to acquire our first specimen."
"Just fuck me now," said Josh laughing towards Dave. "I was expecting interesting, not fucked up."
* * *
Dave stood up and looked down at the walker that they had tied up to an electric light pole. "Let's leave Charlie for a moment and get back to our chores."
Josh also stood, and then thumbed at the walker. "So he's got a name now?"
"He was once human."
"But he's not any more."
Dave frowned. "How do we know that?"
"What?"
"If this only affected a small part of the population then our society could have mostly survived. The electricity would probably still be on and we'd have access to information. Even if in the form of statements from politicians. Most importantly there would be scientists. There would be people taking the time to look deeply into this and try and understand what happens."
"Do we need to know anything? Can't this just be some shit that happens and then we forget about?"
"If we don't even know what's going on then it becomes nearly impossible to talk about it. Here's something simple. When I first saw things like Charlie I struggled to find a name for it. You gave me the idea for the naming convention."
"I just called them 'shitters'. It's not a particularly technical expression."
"But you hit upon how we should name things for now. You saw something like Charlie attacking a living human and decided that was 'shitty' behaviour. You then used that as a basis for you name. In other words you didn't create a term that described what Charlie was instead you chose a name based on what Charlie did. You took a functional approach to naming instead of a descriptive one."
"I wasn't thinking that deeply at the time."
"Neither of us was thinking that deeply. I suspect that at the time neither of us actually understood what Charlie was. We saw living humans being ripped apart by the dead. Afterwards those pieces would then reform into a whole body. We sort of assumed that in the process of being torn apart that the original living human had died. But think about what it means when a reassembled body stands up. Standing up and walking around are simply not behaviours that a dead person does."
"So you're saying that our Charlie here isn't actually dead?"
"I'm saying that we don't know. The process in making a Charlie looks like it starts by killing a human being that's actually alive, but then these freshly dead don't just lie down like a dead body. There's something that we're missing and the terms 'alive' and 'dead' simply don't apply. At least not in the way that we applied
