Keep Busy

3.

Frank leaned against the faded silver 4 Runner and lit up another cigarette, surveying the area. Apart from some stray pieces of paper stumbling through the gutters, the tableau there on Main Street was pretty clean.

Wholesome even.

A picture postcard of a small town.

Only it was eerily empty. A ghost town. The proverbial river had dried up or the gold nestled in the hillside had been depleted so, the settlers had packed up and moved on. All traces of life had stopped.

Death kept going.

And Frank.

Sure, there were other survivors at the beginning, but the germ was resilient, relentless and adaptive. It found ways to infect people who hadn't been bitten. It took flight—became airborne.

At the time, Frank had already settled in Cheney and was looking after a friend's 4-year-old daughter. The friend (or acquaintance more accurately), Dylan had left their boarded-up house to go to the gutted grocery store in a last-ditch effort to find something edible.

They, and a few other straggling, terrified survivors, had barricaded themselves in Dylan's house near the edge of town. It had an electric fence which had proven effective in keeping the zombies at bay and they were able to keep their cold-weather generator noisily churning along unhindered ever since gas had become free for the taking.

Frank had thought it was a nice place, but eventually, a rushed sense of precaution had won out over quaint appearances. What had once been a picturesque Craftsman-style, mid-century farmhouse was now besmirched by hastily nailed on broken tables, the odd slat of warped wood and lopsided closet doors which adorned the once-lovely, shuttered windows—giving the house a cartoonish façade.

The haphazard security measures irked Frank to no end. Why couldn't they be like those fastidious Floridians who used perfectly cut planks of plywood to cover their store windows to protect from whichever hurricane was approaching that week? Why couldn't they at least be symmetrical?

But obtuse angles and broken edges were hardly a concern on the day the germ found its way through the cracks and into that house on the edge of town.

Frank had been sitting on the couch absently reading a celebrity gossip magazine when Katie, Dylan's daughter, who'd been tooling away with an old set of Lincoln Logs, suddenly shifted from the gentle coos of youthful amazement to a tortured, lisping snarl.

"I'm hungry," she gurgled.

Frank instantly knew something was wrong. Something distinctly un-child-like and animalistic frayed the normal lilt in her voice. It was the timbre of pure, unfiltered need—a desperation reaching way beyond her years.

Seconds later, Katie was on him, jumping over the couch with hooked fingers and lips peeled away from pink gums by the promise of meat.

Frank was the meat.

He caught her in mid-air, shifted his weight and threw her straight into the TV. She wasn't fazed at all and bounded back as if pulled by wires.

She launched herself onto the couch, clawing and snapping her jaws, trying to get at Frank's tensed neck. As they struggled, Frank heard a series of dull thuds coming from upstairs, followed by screams and the horrific sounds of carnage.

The other survivors taking shelter at the house had become infected too and in the few seconds it took to change, they'd proceeded to tear each other apart. The gargled word "brains" echoed  down the stairs.

Finally, Frank realized he could no longer believe Katie was just having some kind of ridiculously violent tantrum. He had to overcome the thought that this little girl was no longer that little girl. After accepting Katie was dead, he stood up slammed her on the ground, unholstered his Glock and added an orifice to Katie's tiny face. A dime-sized hole just above her left eye. A single rivulet of blood issued forth lazily. Polling in her thin blond hair.