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constructed from flowers, marching bands, and equestrian riders.  
    It was broadcast on multiple televison networks inside the United States, making Pasadena with its warm sunny winter days the envy of the nation.  
    The final parade featured 45 floats, 30 bands and 21 equestrian units with approximately 450 horses in all.

    Pasadena was also the home of many leading scientific and cultural institutions on Earth, including the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Art Center College of Design, the Pasadena Playhouse, California School of Culinary Arts Pasadena, the Norton Simon Museum of Art and the Pacific Asia Museum.

    With a population of 137,122 Pasadena was the sixth largest city in Los Angeles County and was ranked among the top three cities in Southern California best suited to raising a family.

    ***

BLACK CROW LAUGHING

    Tyler came to with a start, jerking his head back up and darting his eyes around in search of fresh danger. He'd fallen asleep again and not realized it. He could feel her back pressed to his—the weight of the small ax in his limp hands—the low rumble of the structure as it buckled under the constant pressure from the weight of the bodies outside, crushed together, yearning to get inside and tear them apart.
    Was I snoring? Did I make things worse?
    It hardly seemed possible. For a moment he wondered if he was still dreaming, until swirling snippets of the graphic nightmare he'd been having began to bubble up from his subconscious. He grasped at the fleeting images he could recall, feeling them slip away like shards of paper being torn from his hands and scattered by a hot desert wind.
    A loud caw from a crow outside set off a round of similar cries, and he jerked to full attention once more. Their number had swelled from a few loud hecklers with glossy black feathers, to a full blown murder since he and Emily had locked themselves into the woodshed in her parent’s backyard to get away from the living dead. Tyler was sure if they quietly waited, the monsters would get bored and leave, but instead more and more came, drawing the heartless birds with their low sustained moaning. Tyler wondered if there had always been so many crows, or if somehow they had begun to clone themselves since the bodies had started piling up?
    Were they always there in these kinds of numbers? Why didn't I notice them before? Had the sounds of the industrial world drowned them out? Had the cars and machines and planes and helicopters only masked their incessant cries? There are more of them than us!
    Another loud round of caws went around as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of his drab surroundings, and his mind came fully back online. It sounded like they were mocking his situation, like they were laughing at him as they waited to pick the unspoiled flesh from their newly deceased corpses. They were letting him know that they were patient. They would wait him out, and have their meal— one way or another.
    Why don't the zombies just eat the damn crows? They've been outside all night pushing their way in, keeping us trapped and terrified. Why don't they use that same kind of energy to catch wild animals and birds? Why do they prefer the meat of humans instead of every other species?
    It was a question that had plagued him since the dead began to rise. He'd seen freshly transformed zombies going after the family pet, but only after they'd exhausted every attempt to get a mouthful of fresh human flesh. Often they seemed dissatisfied, and abandoned their hard won meal mid bite. Tyler considered that they might need the rapid influx of protein from human meat in order to survive.
    They are fast , he thought. Once the rigor mortis ends they move at the same speed we do, if not faster! Maybe they need to feed in order to keep up their energy?
    He imagined large groups of zombies roaming through the countryside, like a gruesome congregation from some new demonic religion,