No offers for work in the private sector presented themselves, everyone steering clear of the shame they’d wrapped her in. She had stood her ground, never changed her story, through everything, but no one would listen. Bills mounted, and Bunny tasted despair as she tried to climb out of the alcohol-drenched hell she had fallen into.
Then, one day, there came a knock at her door. Randy Cox, the sleazy-looking strip club owner she’d met over a year before, stood there. She had responded to a disturbing the peace call one night and determined that, despite the drunken claims of the man who said the girl, Rebecca, he’d groped asked for it, Randy did in fact have the right to kick the man in the balls.
He had come into her apartment, told her he was sorry for what happened to her, looked at the pile of past due notices on the table, and offered the only help he could give. It had been the sincerity in his eyes, the honest and true offer of sorrow he expressed that’d moved her to accept.
Soon, she found herself on a stage, taking her clothes off for a living. She became what Dyson had accused her of being, a tease. She’d swallowed the irony and did what it took to survive. She made friends with some of her co-workers, accepted the reality of her situation, and made the best of it. She reclaimed power from the words spat at her in her darkest hour, for herself and for no one else. After all, it was in her nature to make the best out of things.
Deep down, under her dreams, and naive presumptions, even below the anger at the injustice and jaded long nights with a bottle of whiskey, Bunny Beckman had been a survivor, doing whatever it took to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Even when the depression was so heavy it smothered her, she forced herself to take another step, and keep moving.
As she drove away from the clinic, she accepted it, after so many years. Three days after the world ended, Bunny finally understood who she was. Or so she believed.
She drove gradually north, weaving the car through the streets, dodging the dead whenever she saw them, and listening for anything on the radio. Every few minutes she changed the frequency, trying to find one with something besides static.
In the distance, she saw helicopters, so she knew they were still there. It was just a matter of locating the right band. Still, between that, and the roaming dead, it began taxing her nerves as she cruised through the lifeless streets.
Morning turned to noon and finding a route to the park proved easier said than done. She tried to count the number of times she'd driven by it in the past, barely noticing, but couldn't. Now, it was her only goal, and getting there was arduous at best, deadly at worst.
She rounded a corner and spotted a swarm of dead in the street ahead. They immediately turned to face her, the heavy rumble of the motor a beacon. Cursing softly, she backed up, only to find more behind her. She was penned in.
She headed down a side street, but the way north was blocked by burned out cars, forcing her farther west. To the south, the dead loitered, and she gave the Camaro some gas to get ahead of them, figuring if she could put enough distance, they would lose interest.
Unless some of them were smart then she was in trouble. She chewed her lip as she negotiated the maze the city had become, looking for her way to safety, and finding only more danger at every turn.
Soon, she found she’d made a wrong turn, and faced a dead end. With no way to go forward, she tried to back up, but saw shambling bodies filling the street behind her. With a heavy sigh, she looked around, not wanting to have to use the rifle to clear a path.
To her left, she saw a construction site, and pulled the car into it, thinking she could give the dead the slip by coming out the other side. Too late, she saw there was no other exit, and began to wonder if they’d been herding her.
She circled the complex once, finding no way out. Already, they were beginning to file into the yard, too many for her to fight, and without any windows, too many to barrel through. Bunny hesitated a moment, looking around, and saw an option.
Killing the engine, she pulled the keys free, grabbed the backpack and duffel bag out of the backseat and slid out of the car. Slinging them over her shoulder to keep her hands free, she darted across the yard, past the heavy machinery to a pile of girders left stacked and stained with blood.
Bunny paused, glancing back over her shoulder and saw them clustering around her car, a few already looking her way. She grabbed a nearby ladder and mounted the pile of steel, where she planted the ladder so its top leaned against the framework overhead.
"Here we go," she said to herself. "One-way ticket to nowhere."
Climbing the ladder quickly, she got onto the beam as the dead began to gather around the stack, a few of them climbing it in pursuit of her. There were a few smart ones in the pack after all, it seemed.
Straddling the beam, she grabbed the ladder and shoved it away as the dead reached for her. Standing, she hopped across to the next beam, smiling as the dead below her howled.
"No easy lunch for you today," she called down.
Wary, she walked the beam slowly, until she reached another, and began crossing that one, looking for some place she could hold out until they left.
