Mad Moonlit Musings of a Zombie Huntress

'There are no buts here, Sheila,' Joe's voice was soft, his tone patient. Joe was always patient, even in a situation like this one. Carrie could find patience only for the children and couldn't fathom how Joe could always maintain his inner calm, whatever the level of idiocy he found himself having to deal with.

Carrie herself would have explained the situation by connecting her size six shoe directly with Sheila's size 18 derriere. All things considered, Joe's method of handling these emotionally charged situations was probably better than hers would have been. Which is why everybody at Ramon had no trouble snapping to when he opened his mouth, whether it was a request to pass the salt at dinner or more ammo during a firefight. One of the myths circulating about Joe held that he'd once mumbled 'fire' in his sleep and six troopers blew away an unsuspecting maple tree while a seventh started a blaze in the middle of the parade ground.

'I understand what you're feeling,' Joe continued. His voice was soft and his expression was one of genuine regret. He focused on Sheila as he spoke, ignoring Carrie at his elbow and the harsh sounds drifting in through the back door, which was standing ajar. 'I really do, and God knows I wish we could make an exception. The fact is, though, that you're endangering everybody here. We don't have a lot of rules, but this one is written in stone. I'm sorry. I really am. But it has got to be put down.'

Sheila glanced towards the open door connecting the small kitchen in which they stood to the long back yard. It wasn't much of a yard, just a patch of dying crabgrass fronting a dozen concrete-floored dog runs, the chain link walls forming them rising to almost eight feet in height. The runs were covered by wood and shingle roofing to protect the inhabitants from the elements. Before the end of the world, as in five months ago, the twelve canine army members assigned to Fort Ramon had occupied these runs.

There was no reason to confine the army dogs, or any of the animals that had been retrieved from local homes and apartments, because none of the animals ever attempted to leave Ramon. The soldiers made their rescue attempts in hope of finding stranded humans, but none of the squad members ever complained about rescuing a dog or cat. Any life saved was a mark in the plus column as far as the inhabitants of Ramon were concerned.

Carrie followed Sheila's glance. She was standing behind Joe and could only see a small patch of grass and a bit of fence through the back door. She didn't need to see the runs to know what was housed there, though. The rattling of chain link and the growling of the current occupant were constant, never pausing for rest or to take a breath. The sound wafting through the door grated on Carrie's nerves, although she had almost ceased hearing the much louder version that constantly beat against Ramon's walls.

'But he's locked up!' Sheila protested. 'The run is padlocked. Nobody can get in, and he can't get out. Nothing will happen, I promise! I swear on my mothers life!'

'Oh, for shits sake!' Carrie was out of patience. 'You're acting like a kid with a stray dog. It isn't a God damned dog. You don't have Spot or Fido in there, you have a fucking zombie. You can't keep a fucking zombie for a pet, Sheila. Next you'll want to teach it tricks and take it for a walk down Main Street. Quit being such a fucking moron!'

'He's not a zombie, Carrie!' Sheila snapped, her voice losing its usual Brooklyn accent for a moment in angry mimicry of Carrie's Uptown inflections. 'That's my Charlie and he's not one of them! He's hurt bad but he's not dead and don't you go telling people he is! He's just sick! Charlie isn't dead!'

Joe raised a hand as Carrie opened her mouth to retort. 'No, Sheila,' he said, his tone still gentle. 'It WAS Charlie, and he is dead. What you have back there is a monster wearing his body. Your Charlie is dead and now it's up to you to do the right thing here. If there's anything left of Charlie in there, do you honestly think he'd want this? To be locked in a dog run to decay nice and slow while he bangs himself silly on the fence? Or worse, to get loose and kill you and God knows who else before somebody put him down for good? You know how much he hated these things, can you honestly say he'd want to BE one?'

'Charlie wanted to live!' Sheila's voice trembled with tears. Carrie couldn't tell if they were tears of sorrow or pissoff, and she really didn't care which. She also didn't understand Joe's insistance upon getting Sheila's consent before putting a bullet in what was left of Charlie's brain. Not, she reflected, that Charlie had ever possessed much in the way of brains to begin with. If he had, he would have followed protocol and shot the goon on sight instead of dicking around playing some stupid macho game with it and getting himself bitten. He'd also have stayed with the group instead of sneaking away for some private shopping. He'd broken not one but two rules and as a consequence he was dead and she was stuck having this incredibly redundant discussion with this overblown twit.

Upon reflection, she thought that maybe Charlie had actually gained a few points on the old IQ scale by dying and forgetting to stay dead. Although if you followed that particular train of logic to its end you'd end up pitching Sheila into the run with Charlie, to see if a few bites could raise her IQ from its current level of moron up to something as exalted as village idiot.

At this point in time, though, Sheila was outside the dog run and planted firmly in the way of them doing what had to be done to keep their little community safe. Joe was the ranking officer at Ramon, and had opened the fort to all survivors. The only citizenship requirements were to stay alive long enough to get there, and abide by the rules that kept them all from becoming food for the undead masses waiting beyond the gates.

Carrie wondered with weary anger why, of all possible survivors, the duo of Sheila and Charlie had been among the lucky few to make it to Fort Ramon without becoming entrees. They wouldn't have managed it without help from Joe's soldiers, who had spotted the old Ford Charlie had been driving as it zig-zagged through Ramon park, pursued by several hundred ravenous zombies. Using rifles and flamethrowers, and at considerable personal risk, the troopers had held off the hoarde of walking dead long enough for them to get across the two mile stretch of park land and make it to the safety of the fort. She thought the numerous pets they'd saved were a much better return for the expended ammunition than Charlie and Sheila could ever be. At least the animals were grateful for the sanctuary, and they provided distraction and solace for the thirty seven children, mostly without parents, that the group had managed to rescue.

Charlie had been bitten during the last food run to the shopping center in Forest Hills and had concealed that little factoid from the rest of the group. Only Sheila had known, and in the brief period between Charlie succombing to his bite wound and reanimating with an improved IQ and an appetite for human flesh, Sheila had managed to drag his body outside and lock it in the dog run. Or maybe she'd dragged him out there while he was still alive. Carrie thought that scenario seemed more likely, given the brevity of the period between death and living death.

Joe was regarding Sheila with none of the anger or contempt that Carrie felt. All she could see in his face was sorrow and compassion. Not for the first time, she offered up a silent prayer to God thanking Him for making it Joe in charge of the fort when the world changed. If it had been one of the low forehead types, or Republican politicians, they'd have shut the gates tight against the civilian survivors and she and her son (and the five other kids Carrie had found hiding in Max's classroom when she had arrived at his school) would have been well and truly hosed.

Instead, Joe had opened the fort to all non-zombies, even those marginal cases like Sheila, Charlie, and the six survivors of the Bronx-based motorcycle gang who had arrived on their noisy choppers, stoned to the nines and roaring with laughter as they shot their way through to the fort. (Joe had also immediately relieved them of their weapons and drugs and locked them in the guardhouse until they were sober enough to understand and agree to abide by his rules. He'd also had the foresight to assign them all to different work details and shifts.)

Going even further, Joe had planned and led numerous rescue missions in the past months, slipping through the streets crowded with the ravenous undead, bringing any living thing, human or animal, back to the safety of the fort. He had once confided to Carrie that as a career military officer, he had been supported by taxpayer dollars all of his life. Therefore he saw it as his sacred duty to save as many taxpayer lives as he possibly could. Privately, Carrie thought it unlikely that Sheila, Charlie or the six bikers had ever paid taxes in their lives. Still, at least the bikers had proven to be hard workers and good fighters. Six out of eight wasn't bad.

Carrie herself had been a taxpayer before the change. Her contributions to the nations coffers had been financed by her job as an administrative assistant at Merril Lynch, which meant that she was used to following a CEO type around and seeing that his shoes were tied, his fly was zipped, and his directives were properly delegated.

Initially impressed with her rescue of the six children, Joe had learned to value her administrative and organizational abilities as well. She had quickly become his right hand man, helping him stay on top of the hundreds of day to day tasks involved in keeping the fort safe, acquiring supplies, and performing rescue missions. She also helped with his less pleasant duties, such as the task they were involved with this morning.

Joe was still speaking softly to Sheila, who had segued from angry yelling to strident wails while Carrie had been chasing her own thoughts. He had one arm around Sheila's shoulders and he offered her his handkerchief. Sheila was sobbing loudly, and she blew her nose with a great honking snort. Her white blonde hair, black at the roots, was still perfectly in place, hardened into a helmet atop her head with the application of a good half can of hairspray. Charlie had always pocketed several cans of hairspray for Sheila during their supply runs. In fact, the odds were good that on his last fatal mission Charlie had left the group for the express purpose of acquiring more of the stuff. Carrie guessed that in the near future Sheila was going to be exploring the scary world of laquer-free hairstyling. At this moment, Sheila's eye shadow and mascara were rather badly smeared, making her look like a cartoon version of a punk rock raccoon.

After several more minutes of ever-weakening protests Sheila finally stopped shaking her head in negation and managed to nod jerkily to Joe, although she still glared at Carrie. As if, Carrie thought, she had arranged for the goon to bite Charlie just to enjoy the sheer pleasure of this moment. Joe gently put an arm around Sheila's shaking shoulders and steered her toward the door that led to Ramon's main 'street'.

'Will you be ok handling this?' he asked Carrie over his shoulder. When she nodded he added, 'I'm going to take Sheila over to where the people from that store we brought in last week are bunking and see if they can find an extra cot for her. I don't think she should have to stay here by herself after this.' What he really meant, Carrie knew, was that this small house would hold between two and six people comfortably and they needed the space.

Carrie waited until she heard the front door of the small house bang shut, then turned towards the back door and what waited for her out in the yard. She squared her small shoulders and stepped through the door, unslinging the shotgun from the strap that held it across her back. She preferred the accuracy and stopping power of the shotgun to either of the pistols she wore. Not to mention that they had a lot more shotgun shells stocked at Ramon than rounds for her smaller weapons.

As she stepped through the door, the thing that had been Charlie Vickers flung itself against its chain link prison with renewed vigor, bloody saliva drooling unnoticed from its lower lip. As it snarled at her it managed to spray the fence with what looked like partially masticated bits of its own tongue. One jaundiced eye was fixed on her, the other rolled wildly towards the roof of the dog run and the sky beyond.

Carrie allowed herself a moment of regret for Charlie. She had never liked him. Had, in fact, considered him a prime specimen of asshole, but he had been one of their small community and a living human being. Which had made him officially a member of an endangered species. Although Carrie didn't like Shiela either, Charlie had loved her and she had loved Charlie. The world had turned into a strange and hostile place almost overnight, and she guessed that things like love were in short supply. Love between people she didn't like was still love, after all, and she guessed that their diminished world was further diminished by its loss.

She shook her head, a quick gesture of negation. One day it might be her dead and disintegrating in a dog run, or Max, or any of the other five kids that bunked with them and that she'd come to regard as her own. As far as she knew, the whole planet was seething with hostile, ravenous corpses and sooner or later she'd fuck up, or somebody else would fuck up, and she'd get that bullet in the brain that meant game over, no replay. The only real hope of winning was to stay alive until the new masters of the world had rotted beyond their ability to move and lay where they fell with their jaws snapping uselessly at the air. When that happened they'd be able to emerge from their fortress, killing the dead in relative safety. What would life be like, on a world literally covered with billions of decomposing human beings? She shook her head again. Concentrate on her children, and on the now, and face the future when it becomes the present. In the meantime, there was work to be done, wasn't there?

'Oh fuck me,' she half sobbed, bringing the shotgun up and settling the stock into the hollow of her shoulder. 'Better karma next go-round, Charlie.' She squinted through sudden tears as she trained the gun sight on the bridge of Charlie's nose, above the reeking mouth which was now attempting to bite through the chain link, bloody drool hanging in long runners from the battered chin.

She fired.