A zombie came staggering into the street, holding a leg that was wearing Wood’s shoe.
How did this go so wrong?
How did this happen?
Zombies began to pound the truck.
Sissy.
I had to do something.
I found a safe route and made my way around the building. I found Wood’s club, bloodied and abandoned. In a rage, I bashed every zombie I encountered as I cut a path to the truck. Most were hobbling pretty badly at that point, but some were faster than I imagined possible. I crashed them all, one after then next, until I reached Sissy’s door. She opened it, and I pulled her out forcefully. Then I yelled for her to run to the mill. When I looked back, a zombie was breaking the glass on the driver’s door. A hand came through the window, and I turned my back on her mother.
More zombies were coming.
I chased the fleeing frame of Sissy, just praying that we made it back alive.
She screamed.
I pumped my legs with all I had.
I would not lose her.
She was dodging a slow shuffler cutting off her path. I reached her and blasted the zombie with the bat.
“My mother?!?” she yelped.
“She’s gone, I said. “We have to go!”
“No!” she screamed in response, and tore off back toward the truck.
I pursed, but my heart was failing. A hundred zombies were pouring into the street.
We were all dead.
WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE, BUT NOT WHAT WE MAY BE.
W. Shakespeare
Hamlet
CHAPTER 6
The Tale of Stuart Giesler
For as long as I can remember, I had wanted to be a father. Something within me, some primal need or biological instinct told me that I needed a child. There are those who feel they were placed on this planet for a special purpose. Men who do great things. Women who accomplish much. From youth, I surveyed as much of existence as I could and it was clear what moved me the most. I wanted to hold a baby girl in my arms, one that I helped bring into this world, and for that child to grow to love me and call me father.
You may think it strange that a man would desire such a thing. So often the most we hear of the desires of men amount to shallow pleasures and solitude. As my uncle used to say, “If you can’t shoot it, drive it, or fuck it, then who cares?”
Well, I have never really blended well with my peers.
I was a large boy in school. Not large in the sense of fat, but large in the sense that while I was proportionately balanced, I have always been substantially bigger than my peers. Huge, is the word I hear most often.
Think it’s difficult being a small boy who’s uncoordinated? Try being a massive kid who doesn’t even like sports or violence for that matter. When you’re six feet tall in the eighth grade and everyone’s calling for you to play football and basketball and all you want to do is sit with the girls and talk about life, school, and the other kids, well, that’s when people start thinking you’re weird. But I didn’t really care. While I was too big to be harassed about it, I was too passive to be invited to hang out with any male friends either. I didn’t have a desire to be with them anyway. Boys only seemed bent on proving themselves. I had no need to be some David’s Goliath.
So I divided my time between girls and solitude. To me, the arrangement was perfect. Alone, I could allow my thoughts to wander freely, and the girls always looked to me as some mythical creature. I was the gentle giant; the kind ogre; the loving troll. I towered over them, and they accepted me for who I was. They never seemed to see me as more, though. I was never relationship material. The girls of middle school and high school thought of me as a peer and not as a romantic possibility. When they began to talk of boyfriends, first kisses, and love, I had to smile and be excited for them when in reality I hated that by all appearances, I would not be sharing with them any of my firsts in the foreseeable future.
Oh, they tried to set me up with girls, but it became clear that my friends knew very little about me. They picked large, hard girls. Ones that picked fights and stole lunches. Girls from dysfunctional homes who distrusted males. In a word, the most masculine females they could find. I politely refused each suggestion, until eventually they stopped making them altogether.
I was a soft heart, who was hoping for my other half.
And then there was Penny.
I met Penny in high school. I was a junior, and she was a sophomore who had just moved from out of state. Her father was in parts unknown, and her mother had become unable to care for her and had shipped her to live with an aunt. I later found out that she and her mother had fought terribly for months straight, until the day came that Penny declared she never wanted to see her mother again. A week later, her things were packed and her mother moved her out. At the time, I felt that her mother must be a very hard woman to export her child in such a way. Penny had a little sister, who was allowed to stay, and this fact was not lost on Penny, who felt that she must be the bad child since her mother clearly didn’t want her anymore. Not knowing any of this when I met her for the first time, all I saw was a very small, extremely cute 10th grader with close-cropped hair and a mischievous smile.
I was hooked.
I spent every moment I could with her. She tolerated me at first since I was the only boy she knew and I had a car. When she began to confide in
