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out of his backpack and began to dig. The shovel was small and the dirt was packed hard. It took a while to make any progress. Sweating profusely, he turned over the chore after ten minutes and the others each took a turn. It took more than an hour just to make a hole three feet deep.
    Although Peter deserved a decent burial, that was the best they could do without staying exposed for too long. They placed his body in the hole gently, placed a reasonably clean handkerchief over his face, and then covered him up.
    Each spoke at an impromptu funeral ceremony. After more than fourteen months of fighting against the Zoms and losing so many friends, at this point they were emotionally numb. The speeches were short.
    Chrissy went first. “Peter, you were a good friend. You had a hard life and deserved a better fate than this. I’ll miss you.”
    Moose then said, “Dude, I know you’re in a far better place than this. Go with God.”
    Jesse followed with, “If my father were here, he’d have a ready speech about how we deserved all of this. That the apocalypse was a sign of God’s displeasure and this was a means of clearing out the sinners and starting over. I don’t buy all that bullshit. You were a good guy and should have been rewarded with a better life than this. At least you can rest now. Your fight is over.”
    Finally, it was Daniels’ turn. “I didn’t know you very long, but you were a hard worker who pulled his weight and rarely felt sorry for himself. It’s all too easy to fall prey to ‘why me?’ syndrome. But you stayed cheerful to the end. We’re better people for having known you.”
    And then there were four.
     

Cha pter Four
     
    Over the next few weeks, several hundred soldiers entered the city at different points and systematically worked their way from building to building, shooting at anything that moved and was large enough to be a threat.
    They killed thousands of Zoms. Many that survived learned to avoid the soldiers, in the same way wild animals learn to hide from the humans that hunt them. Some, because they were hungry, or to protect their territory, continued to attack.
    They didn’t all charge the soldiers. Some had just enough brain power to lure a few soldiers into a building or alley, whereupon the rest of the pack would jump out from hiding or drop from above into the midst of the soldiers, where they couldn’t effectively use their guns for fear of shooting one another. It came down to a matter of teeth versus knives.
    Many indigenes died that way, as did some soldiers. Still, the Drahtch had millions of soldiers to spare. The Drahtch army was winning, but not quite as easily as they had expected.
    Of course, there were more than ten million Zoms still roaming the planet…
     
    * * * *
     
    “Sarge, look at this.” Chrissy pointed at several dead Zoms huddled in a corner of an alley. There was a small amount of red blood near one of them, and a lot of yellowish blood on their clothing and around their mouths.
    Chick Daniels took a closer look. “Huh. Clearly they’ve been in a fight with our golden friends.”
    “Yeah, but like that other one at the warehouse I don’t see any serious wounds on these guys. So why are they dead? These guys also have a rash on their face, like the other one. I wonder if that’s connected to what killed them.”
    Daniels shrugged. “Maybe the aliens have some sort of weapon that doesn’t leave a mark. Poison gas, or sonic, or something.”
    Chrissy didn’t looked convinced. “Maybe. That could be bad for us, but I don’t think they’d use gas during a close-in fight. Too dangerous for them.”
    “Unless they had gas masks, or are immune to the gas.”
    “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe they died of indigestion. Who knows? Look at how they’re positioned. It looks like they crawled here to die.”
    “Indigestion. Ha! Good one. Well, we’d better get what we came for and get the hell out of this part of town. There’s a lot more aliens around