"Did you see that one cop? 'No! Don't hit me!'"the red-bearded man said in a mocking voice.
"Baked chips are weird," the man with theshaved head said.
"I just want to find some weed," said the tanman with the teardrop tattoo.
The chubby man with the funny-looking goatee said,"I wonder if my mom is still alive."
It was all worthless chatter, just noise to fill thesilence. Noise to push the fear back. Halfway through their meal, Ace heard thecrunch of broken glass, the glass they had busted to enter the shop. Somewhere,a silent alarm was going off, but there was no one to watch the monitors, noone to call the cops, and no cops to come even if the call were made.
Ace swiveled in his chair to see a woman strugglingthrough the light of the doorway. She wore a dress, a floral patterned number.She was covered in blood. Her halting, herky-jerky steps were the trademark ofthe dead. Ace wiped his mouth with a napkin, while the others droned on. Hewondered how long it would be before the men noticed the dead apparition movingthrough the restaurant, the floral pattern somehow seeming classy compared tothe restaurant's horrid yellow and green paint-scheme. Ace sat there,sunglasses on his face, watching.
She passed right by him, not even sparing a glance hisway, drawn towards the idle and meaningless chatter of his escape-mates. Sheshuffled towards his men, his tools. The chubby man with the funny-lookingbeard jumped out of his seat when her cold hands settled around his neck. Theytumbled to the ground together, and the man skittered away from the woman asshe tried to rise from the ground. The other men hopped out of their seats.They picked up the stools they had been sitting on with their hands and beganbashing the woman with the unwieldy weapons.
Ace watched from behind his sunglasses. He watched theirfaces, sick faces filled with a joy that shouldn't have existed. They likedhitting her. They liked breaking her bones with the stools. Madness twinkled intheir eyes. They were animals, but they had their purposes. Ace took a sip fromhis soda as they stripped the dress off of the broken creature, "Just tosee what she had going on," as the red-bearded man put it. Filthycreatures, Ace thought. He didn't know who was worse, the dead or theliving.
The chubby man with the funny-looking beard urinated onthe woman, his little penis dangling in the florescent light of the restaurant.Ace was done with his drink, so he dropped it on the ground, and hopped off ofthe stool. He exited the restaurant, the men following behind him like lostpuppy dogs.
"Where are we going?" the man with the teardroptattoo asked.
"We're going to get my coke," he told them.This set them into hooting and hollering. In their hands, they carried weapons,blunt machines, capable of caving in skulls and putting the dead down for good.As Ace walked through the valley of the city, the sun rose up high, the shadowsshifting, illuminating the walking dead spread out before them. Ace had a gun,but he didn't need a weapon. He already had four of them, living breathingweapons, ready to do what he said when he said it.
Ace told the chubby man about the club he had played atthe night before. The man knew exactly where it was, and he took the lead, Acestrolling casually along, his hands in the pockets of his leather pants, thecool metal of his handgun against the small of his back. They walked in thesunshine, feeling its June warmth spread throughout their bodies. The echo ofhelicopters thundered through the city, and smoke rose into the sky in everydirection that Ace looked. The city was crumbling in front of his very eyes. Whata great day, he thought.
There was no plan. He just wanted to get high. What goodwas the end of the world without a little buzz? When they passed a conveniencestore, his men were obviously thinking the same thing. Though the store wasobviously locked up, they found their way inside anyway. The crunch of brokenglass drew the dead towards them, circling in upon their location as theylooted through the store for beer and cigarettes.
Ace stood across the street in the shadows, looking likenothing more than a lifelike statue clinging to the shaded side of a talloffice building. He watched them move, the dead, drawn to the noise coming frominside the store. There were so many of them. Where had they all come from?Then there was more noise. From somewhere he heard an engine; it soundeddistant, but in the dead alleys of the city, it was hard to tell. As it turnsout, it wasn't as far off as he thought. When his men came stumbling out of theconvenience store, their arms full of beer, cigarettes, and snacks that couldonly barely be categorized as food, a military jeep swerved around the cornerand screeched to a halt in front of the men.
He watched as his men threw down their purloined goods,the man with the teardrop tattoo going so far as to put his hands on his head.A bullhorn clicked to life, and the man in the jeep said, "Stop rightthere. Put your hands on your head. The city is under martial law."
His men froze. The driver stayed put while the other soldiershopped out of the jeep and headed over to the men, their guns at the ready.They made one crucial mistake. They failed to notice Ace standing in theshadows across from the store, perhaps mistaking him for one of the dead. Hewatched as the man in the jeep took aim down the street, his focus drawnelsewhere as the dead closed in around them. There wasn't much
