How could today have started like any other day? Seriously.

  I feed Penelope and Marigold, staggering along with each step. The cold air was murder on my leg and I’m debating a rather strong bottle of wine I’ve left to ferment too long.

  Then the CB goes off. Staticky and low. I almost missed it from the kitchen, but the crackle catches my ears between the chirps of crickets. Low, and garbled. It stays like that for several seconds. I almost step back outside.

  But I can’t walk away from that timid little, “Hello?”

  The voice is soft. Small even. I slam a fist against the trim and sigh, “Dammit.”

  With each step up the stairs, the moans grow. They were garbled by the static but they’re definitely there. Low, monotonous. Overlapping the kid's pleas like waves on a polluted shoreline.

  I finally make it into my room and snag the handheld. “Yeah, yeah. I'm here.”

  “Can you help me?” His voice is a meek whisper and I finally understand why.

  The static is still garbling the background, breaking the rhythm of rotting flesh pounding on a nearby surface.

  I swallow the emotions, choking out, “Where are you?”

  The exterior of Lakeline Mall is like all the other buildings in Austin, so I don’t blame you for skipping yet another moss-covered block of concrete, so big it somehow makes you claustrophobic, and crumbling into its own parking lot. It’s not until you get inside that you see the grandeur.

  The high, curved ceiling gives you a feeling of walking under trees in the open air. It’s only in the preserved scent of long-rotting death that you can tell you’re indoors. The food court entrance, a huge gaping hole of crumbling brick and concrete, opens from one sky to another. A faded, rotted blue paint with cream-colored clouds. Oversized ornaments hang from the ceiling, their once bulbous shapes torn and tattered, faux baskets dangling threateningly by thick rusted cords that will give way any day. I have to climb the long-dead escalator, stepping around areas where people tried to scavenge the metal and wires.

  My leg still burns, even after making poor Marigold do most of the work today. The long climb up these debris-littered steps isn’t helping.

  I’m trying to approach with some stealth. The malls belong to the dead. I am always aware that I’m trespassing. I’m hyper-aware of the slow drip of some old leak and the soft squish of fungi under my steps.

  I turn on the step and just about jam my flashlight into a coagulated cavity of a face. It’s lost most of its jaw and tongue, so it can’t even groan to alert me. Only years of practice keep the scream inside as I stumble away, barely avoiding a fall down the escalator while slashing at the thing with my hunting knife.

  It startled me, but with no bottom jaw, I just have to avoid getting scratched. Shouldn’t be hard, given the thick layers of body armor under my jacket. The get-up makes my work sweaty, but I’d rather be smelly than dead.

  It shambles towards me, a large mass of gray, bloated flesh in torn, greasy clothes. My aggravated moan is muffled under a face shield and mask: “Daaaaaamit.”

  This one’s been around for a while and the old ones never come alone. They need motivation and company to bother moving. This one probably just couldn’t keep up with the rest.

  Even if the others are way ahead, I have five minutes, tops. The rest will hear the scuffle, and swarm me.

  Hopefully, the kid took my advice about hiding. This is going to take a while. Part of me wonders if this brat’s stupidity is worth a death sentence. Darwin says yes, but I doubt he had undead flesh-eaters in mind when he developed those philosophies.

  No matter my reasoning, I can’t stand here, dancing with this rotting skin sack, for very long. The lurcher lunges, gargling on its own rotted blood as it swipes at me. Bloated fingers graze the face shield and my helmet before I rush in, shoving the blade upwards.

  It sinks in the flesh, driving through the spongy, decaying bone. The lurcher keeps drooling and reaching for me. Oblivious to the blade halfway to its brain. The angle is all wrong and I have to adjust. The brain itself does next to nothing for these things. It’s the brain stem, that’s where the virus rides. But now my knife is jammed up into the thing's mouth and I can’t pull it free while it's still reaching for me.

  Big globs of coagulated blood and thick saliva coat my sleeves, the reek seeps through my helmet and mask. I jerk the knife, pulling this way and that, causing its head to saw back and forth, the greasy hair waving wildly as the moan becomes jagged and uneven.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It wraps those bloated fingers around my arm just as I manage to pull the knife free. It lunges for me again, that gaping maw dripping. It groans as I slam the knife back in, diagonally this time, shimming it back and forth until the thing stops reaching for me, the full weight of an over-bloated corpse sagging on my arm and pinning the blade into an awkward angle.

  Right as a whole pack rounds the corner. The little leader is a fresh one; rigor hasn’t set in. It bolts for me. I drop the body, leaving my knife and sprinting in the other direction. The food court floor is too open, it’ll be easy for them to swarm me.

  Shoes slap the filthy tile behind me, getting louder. And behind it, at least twelve more stumble and trip over each other. If I stop to fight one, the rest will have a picnic. My gear can only slow their teeth for so long.

  I hobble over an old, three-legged chair, kicking it behind me. Even bracing myself on a grimy table, my landing sends a jolt of pain up my leg. Every nerve is electrified and I can’t see for a second. But to stand still is to die. I blindly scramble forward, tripping and shoving chairs aside. As my vision clears, tiny hands wrap around my pant leg. It gnarls and claws for me.

  I flip to my back, shooting the heel of my boot into the little one’s teeth. They crunch, but the thing keeps gnashing the jagged edges as I kick again, grabbing a table leg and pulling myself away.

  Another creature flops onto the table to my right while something slams into an old trash can on my left.

  There isn’t time for this. I kick again and pull myself up, limping away as fast as my leg will let me. I shove chairs behind me; they clunk and clatter as the zombies stumble, still getting closer.

  I can’t look back, but I swear the moans double as I limp towards an old taco kiosk. I push aside the soggy cardboard cutout of a talking taco and hop over the counter, landing on my right leg. Pain bursts through every nerve. I howl in pain and crouch behind the filthy counter, the scent of rotting food enveloping every sense. I gag as I yank the rifle from my bag and start to count the stumbling bodies.

  “Dammit.”

  At least twenty.

  “Freaking kids.” I grab the glock from my holster and take aim. Even with the helmet, my ears ring but I need to move fast. Only trained practice keeps me from shooting wildly. Wasting bullets is the quickest way to lose your life.

  I aim for the closest one, a stumbling bag of rot and bloat. I sight it, force a long inhale, and squeeze the trigger. The head explodes in a gray and purple mist. I shoot again before swinging the gun right and taking down two that made it past all the chairs and tables.

  The faster I layer the bodies, the longer I’ll have to think and react. It’s my only chance. Their lack of survival instinct is both my curse and my blessing. They keep lining up, tripping over their fallen brethren, giving me more timber for the growing pile.

  By the time the last one stumbles over the rotting threshold, my finger aches under the callus. I can’t bring myself to care about the old grease coating my hands as I lean on the counter and pant. The adrenaline pumps through every cell and I’m sweating bullets. A disgusted voice in the back of my mind ponders how long it’ll take to get the smell out of my gear.

  Worst of all, my leg throbs, the ache growing now that the immediate danger is over. My breath turns to strangled sobs and I shove a filthy glove in my mouth to muffle the sound, waiting for the pain to numb to something bearable. As I wait, a couple crawlers to pull themselves along, sliding their useless bodies across the floor. I take these out, smashing their heads with chair legs, then slowly make my way to the little zombie I’d spotted at the start.

  He’s buried under two more, one of them fat enough to roll but too soft to push. It takes a few minutes of grunting and pulling before I can roll the kid over and look at him.

  Dark hair, blue eyes, and, most importantly, peach-colored skin with only a hint of gray. “Dammit.”

  I’ve gone through all this for nothing. Some civies might pay to get the body, but I have no idea where he was from. What am I going to do, ride all over the place with a rotting kid on the back of Marigold? Yeah, she’d love that.

  I sigh and stand, staggering out of the food court, not bothering to police my brass. I’m too tired and my client just tried to eat me. All the supplies I just replaced and bartered for, wasted in a single afternoon.

  But maybe it wouldn’t be a complete loss… Anyone traveling outside their civilization would have a kit. Food, water, warm gear. Maybe even the radio he’d used to call me.

  I’m exhausted. The last thing I want to do is limp around looking for this corpse’s leftovers. Time to go home and get so drunk I can sleep through the pain. But coming back later, with all the entrances letting in new vermin everyday?

  All I can do now is check the old Radio Shack for the twerp's supplies and go home. It will have to be payment enough.

  I stagger out of the food court, taking several breaks as I make my way to an old security kiosk. The map is barely protected under discolored plexiglass; it takes a couple minutes for me to figure out which way to go. I have to kill another crawler during the agonizing walk. I’m dreading the steps I’ll have to take before I can finally mount Marigold and go home.

  The Radio Shack is broken, the giant windows charred in a few spots and the shattered glass shiny with blood, old and fresh. The shelves are barren, only the occasional wire hanging loose or empty cardboard box sagging under several years of neglect.

  The kid had told me he was hiding under the counter, locked behind an employee gate. I’m not sure how he got there, much less how he screwed up the simple task of stay there and don’t die, but here’s hoping he left something useful.

  I’m surprised to find a few older zombies still milling about. I’m too exhausted to count; I just chop them up and move to the counter. The employee door is huge and I’m even more confused how the kid messed this up. The tiny window isn’t shattered or anything. The door doesn’t budge as I jiggle the stiff handle. Still locked.

  I’m about to break glass when a face appears behind it.

  Small, freckled, with intelligent brown eyes wide from worry.

  “Well I’ll be damned.”