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it, the fact they
hadn ’ t seen a
zombie in more than a month leading all of them into a sense of
complacency. Frank brought the deer down with an arrow and relished
the thought of venison for dinner, again. It had been almost a
month since they ’ d brought down a deer and had been living on canned food
rooted out of houses in the town and smoked fish from the previous
summer.
    Running wasn ’ t an option. The super zulus
were all threadbare and skeletal while Frank, Will and Olandis were
all dressed heavily in winter clothing and heavy snow-boots. Frank
watched as Will shrugged off his pack and pulled his bastard sword
out, a weapon he ’ d rescued a year earlier from a long-forgotten Renaissance
faire and sharpened frequently.
    “ Olandis, get out
your blade and move over to the left and get ready to come in from
the side, ” Frank said as
Will side-stepped in the opposite direction.
    Frank had four arrows left in his
quiver, and he laced one into his bow and took aim at the lead
zombie, putting an arrow into it ’ s shoulder. It
didn ’ t notice
and kept skip-hopping through the drifts of snow on the street. He
readied another arrow, watched out of the corner of his eye as Will
kept moving to the side, sword at hand, and Frank released it. The
arrow sunk into the undead ’ s head and it fell into the
snow. Frank quickly readied another arrow and let it loose,
watching in disbelief as it sliced by the side of the
zombie ’ s ear
and fell into the snow inert. Then he dropped his bow and pulled
out his own sword.
    “ Everyone keep
falling back on me, ” Frank yelled.
    A runner was closing on him quickly, and Frank
raised his sword for a strike, watching in detached satisfaction as
Will took the head off of one and then sliced another down from
skull to neck. At the last moment Frank thrust the blade forward
and up through the soft spot behind the chin. As he pulled the
blade out and looked around, he saw Will striding toward Olandis
and he slashed at two zombies backing him up toward a store front.
He chopped through the wrist of one of the undead monsters, but
another step back and he tripped on something beneath the snow and
tumbled to the ground.
    The undead fell upon him
instantly. A moment later Olandis ’ machete punched through one of the creatures,
but the snow around the three was already turning red. Frank ran as
best he could through the drifts and arrived just as Will cut the
first zombie head off. Frank took the other head and they pushed
the dead undead bodies off of Olandis. It had only been ten or
fifteen seconds, but the two walkers had removed
Olandis ’ left
ear and portion of his cheek, slashed through his clothing with
their fingernails and cut deeply into his chest, broken his left
arm at the elbow and taken a chunk of his right
shoulder.
    Frank looked at Will and both
thought the same thing, though neither said it.
Olandis ’ days
as a member of the living had come to an end, and soon
he ’ d rise as
one of the undead. They looked down at the twenty-seven-year old
black man they had known for a little more than five years: Olandis
lay in the snow, dazed, his eyes slowly turning as if he were
looking for something upon which to fix some meaning to his
reality. Frank took Olandis ’ right hand in his and patted him tenderly on the
chest with the other.
    “ You were a good
man, O, and you ’ ll be remembered. ”
    And then Will sliced
Olandis ’ head
off.
    “ You
could ’ ve let
him maybe say something back. ”
    Will sniffed out a mirthless
laugh. “ They always
say, ‘ please,
don ’ t. ’”
    There were no tears when they got back to the
cabin and told the others what happened. It had happened so often
to each of them that they were long inured to the sudden death of a
friend. Frank had known Will for almost twenty years, had been with
him the night Will had met his wife, Cora, at the bar in a
steakhouse on the South Side of Pittsburgh. She was a
twenty-four-year old blonde