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I'm not sure if they can see you too well, either."
        "How do you know all of this?" Karen asked.
        "I don't know it," Pat replied, cocking the gun. "It's just a theory."
        "I still think we should be careful," Karen said, pouting. She hated being patronised.
        Pat seemed oblivious to her mood. Or perhaps he was purposefully being insensitive. Either way, he wasn't sporting any kind of bedside manner. She was nervous; she needed reassurance and comforting. He looked like a man who would grin and bear it, rather than let anything like nerves grind him down. Maybe that's why he had survived this whole thing for so long.
        "Okay," he said, finally ready. "On three, I want you to unlock the door, pull it open wide enough to let one of them in, then shut it really hard."
        "What if it comes for me?" Karen asked, a worried look spreading across her face.
        "It won't," Pat replied, still checking his gun. He really seemed to like the gun.
        "How do you know that?" she persisted. "Another one of your theories?"
        He didn't respond to the rise, of course. His type never did.
        "No," he said, simply. "Just trust me."
        "What if they all get in?"
        "They're far too slow and stupid. You'll be lucky to get one of them in."
        "Why can't you open the door?"
        "You know why," he said, patronisingly again. "I've got the gun, and I need to be able to use it quickly enough."
        "What if you shoot me? "
        "JUST-"
        She had riled him. She hadn't meant to - she was genuinely scared. But she had worn him down with her constant OCD questions. That had been enough to make even a man as consistently deadpan as Pat lose it.
        Karen must have looked startled because he immediately calmed down, even smiling a little to placate her. It wasn't the cuddly, fluffy grandfather-like 'there-there' she was looking for, but it was something. A gentle, paternal smile that she wished he would use more often. She needed more of those smiles in this world.
        "Okay…" she said. "I'm going to do it…"
        Pat nodded, readying the gun. His hands were steady, his movements controlled. He seemed rather pragmatic about the whole thing, as if he was about to hang a door rather than shoot up some monster.
        Karen reached to unlock the door. Unlike Pat, her hands were shaking. Her heart was beating like a kanga hammer. She struggled with the lock, constantly looking out the window to check the status of the dead. Sure enough, just as Pat suggested, they didn't seem drawn to the noise. Not one of them flinched, morosely staring in the same direction they had been staring at for god knows how long. She could hear one of them coughing. She watched him spit and puke a thick gob of blood from his mouth. Karen immediately felt sick.
        She stepped back from the door, placing a hand over her mouth.
        "Are you okay?" asked Pat, sighing, gun still at the ready.
        "Y-yeah…" Karen replied, trying not to heave. "I'm okay, just give me a second then I'll open the door." She steadied herself, again, breathing in deeply, then out once more. She had to do this right - for herself, more than for him.
        She stepped forward and pulled open the door.
        For a man like Pat Flynn, putting a clean hole through a slow moving target with an AR 18 would prove easy.
        But this was not the kind of target he'd been used to shooting at through the years. No, his paramilitary 'career' involved more animated targets, regardless of how uncomfortable that had made him feel, at times. It was for this very reason that his current weapon of choice had been christened 'The Widowmaker'.
        He hadn't always questioned orders. But some people just looked less legitimate targets than others. The young men kissing their wives and babies before going off to do a day's work. The fact that their day's work involved an army camp was