Twenty years old. High school loser. College drop-out. Protector of Cheney, Washington.
Those left alive still don’t trust me completely, but I can’t really blame them. I snare zombies with catch poles and nets. Then I bring them home to execute in whatever wacky way I can think of. Hell, some of them I keep in a fenced pen like reanimated cattle. So no, I don’t get many people coming over for dinner.
Word got out that I was bit, but not infected. As a result I am seen as this half-man half-zombie vigilante. Honestly, I haven’t done much to squelch that rumor. Let’s face it, I’ve been called worse.
So some of the town’s residents don’t like me, but they still look to me to keep the area relatively zombie-free. Others think I am a maniac who is attracting zombie activity and that I should be locked away. One in particular has tried multiple times to gather a posse to come and collect me.
I won’t mind seeing him in the pen someday.
Until this is over; until the last zombie is cut to pieces; until all that remains of the zombie apocalypse is the smoldering remains of a great fire; until the voices in my head fall silent: I will not stop. I will continue to survive. I will find food. I will run down, capture, and eradicate every last zombie I can find.
It’s like caging crabs, really. Just stay away from the dangerous parts.
My name is Kyle Moore. And I am a zombie hunter.
Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.
W. Shakespeare
Love’s Labour’s Lost
CHAPTER 2
Lives Loved Lost
We’re all just trying to survive. The man who fashioned himself a tree fort. The couple who stole a houseboat. The woman who barricaded herself in a motorhome. The family with the huge friggin’ fence. All just trying to hide, and survive.
Fools.
Nice tree fort, Mr. Arnett, but real zombies can climb. They swarmed that tree like ants and you were little more than an apple waiting to be picked and devoured.
Handy that you found the houseboat, Jim and Lisa. Too bad you had to come ashore sometime. Got lost and wound up in the port of Zombieville. Population +2.
The motor home wasn’t a bad idea, Mrs. Treager. Clearly, you haven’t watched many zombie attacks, though. They tore that flimsy door off the side and scooped you out like the last dollop of peanut butter.
The massive fence? Not a bad idea, Calvo family, but it was a gamble nonetheless. Fences make you feel safe, and feeling safe is the first step toward becoming a meal. You wasted all your ammo shooting shufflers from the top of your precious barrier. When they came for you en masse and razed your fence to the ground, all you had left were a few bullets, some clubs, pointy sticks, and pocketknives. I hear you made a lot of noise while they ate you.
Fools.
Back when there was TV and the Internet, did you ever see video of crocodiles fighting lions? One crocodile can take out any lion if it plays it smart. Crocs won’t attack a lion on dry ground; it’s too easy for the lions to surround the river monster and soon half the pride is perched on him with a handbag of crocodile skin between each set of teeth.
See: Mr. Arnett.
See: Jim and Lisa.
No. The crocodile waits until the cats take a step into the river. The croc chooses the battleground. The croc holds the cards. Even the biggest and most dangerous of lions are little more than a furry fish while they’re swimming. They’re snapped up and dragged under like everything else. The croc doesn’t hide itself in lion territory and pray to go unnoticed. They’d be sniffed out and chewed up before their skin dried out.
See: Mrs. Treager.
See: The Calvo family.
If you want to stay alive in a land full of killers, you have to play it like the crocodile. You must be equally deadly and always confront the enemy on the battlefield of your choosing. Caught in the open, we are all dead. You may put up a fight but eventually the horde will overrun you, and baby’ll be sportin’ some new teeth marks.
We’re all just trying to survive. Some of us are just better at it than others.
◊◊◊
“Noooooo!”
The scream fades into a raspy exhale. The girl had seen horrors these last two years; worse things than she could have ever imagined. She was fifteen when the stories first broke. First there were the few weirdoes in Florida who attacked and bit people in broad daylight. Then more reports came in. Georgia. Tennessee. West Virginia. Oklahoma. Colorado. Pennsylvania. By then, the nation knew something bad had happened. Speculation of terrorist attacks and biological warfare burned across the country’s living rooms and coffee shops. The girl remembers the doctor on TV who said that this was the result of a dormant gene that had mutated and caused its carriers to attack non-carriers. This systems biologist said that unless a cure could be found, the plague would decimate the whole of the country and eventually the world, putting all of humankind at risk, carrier and non-carrier alike. By the end of the newscast, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were all declared no-man’s lands by the military. The country had just branded each of those six states a total loss.
That of course did not stop the spread.
Zombies were already in the west
