It was bitterly cold, as it had been all month, and although it slowed Zack down considerably, it made searching for supplies a miserable task. I had been out with Geoff and Donna since eight that morning, and yeah, we’d found some canned goods and a little bottled water, but all any of us wanted to do was head back to the terminal, unpack our gear, and get warm.

Around noon, we were getting ready to call it a day, when Donna tapped Geoff on the shoulder and nodded to the one-storey house to our right. We both looked in the direction she had nodded in, and immediately saw the drapes sway shut in the window.

“What did you see?” asked Geoff.

“No detail, just movement at the window. It stopped when we all looked over.” Replied Donna, unclasping her ZED.

“Don’t be too hasty Don, that’s people in there.”

“How do you know? The cold mightn’t be so bad in there, the place could be crawling with Zack. I’m not taking any chances.”

“He’s right Don, if that was Zack, they wouldn’t have hidden, would they?” I whispered. “Plus, we’d have heard them by now.”

“Even so, better safe than sorry, guys. Stay alert.” Donna started toward the house, and we followed, scanning the surrounding area for any other movement. The house looked like all the others on Meyer, slightly dilapidated, dirty and weather-beaten, with an overgrown front yard. An overturned sneaker lay to the left of the door.

“How do we do this?” I whispered?

Geoff grinned and stepped forward. “Dude, we’re not savages!” he said, then reached up and knocked three times on the glass panel of the door, breaking the silence of the day. “Hi in there, anyone home? We’re not here to hurt anyone, we have food and other supplies at our base, and plenty of other people. You’re welcome to join us, it’s safe!”.

Silence.

Donna spoke up. “Are you alright in there? Do you need medical attention or supplies? We have both at the terminal, it really would be in your best interests to come with us.” Then, as an afterthought, “I used to be a cop.”.

There was a shuffling directly behind the door, and a female voice said “I-I’m fine here, thank you. I don’t need anything. Just leave me alone please.”.

“Miss, you have nothing to worry about.”  Replied Geoff. “We have people at our base, and heaters. We don’t have running water yet, but-”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Go away! Just turn around and leave me alone!”

Donna looked at me, puzzled. I shrugged and looked down the street to where our pick-up waited. Home and warmth. Geoff stroked his beard thoughtfully and spoke to the door. “That’s fine, miss. If you change your mind, you can find us at Hancock. Take care.”.

“Don’t come back!” came the reply. “I’m fine, so just don’t come round here again!”

Geoff furrowed his brow and motioned for us to leave. As we walked across the overgrown yard to the road, I noticed his hand had unconsciously rested on the butt of his pistol. “There’s something not right here, guys.”, he half whispered. “We need to take a closer look.”

“No way, man” I whispered back. We had reached the road and were passing the house next door. “She’s probably just scared and halfway down the road to nuts. If she wants to be left alone, let’s oblige her, and get home.”

He looked sideways at me. “Simon, we offered food, water and safety in numbers. We’ve got Don with us, so we don’t exactly come across as rapists or murderers, do we? I don’t feel right about this. Not one bit. At the very least, I’m gonna check out the rest of the outside.”

I groaned inwardly as we reached the driveway of the third house along from where we had been. Geoff glanced back the way we had come, then ducked down the side of house, taking out his pistol. “Jesus, Don, does he always have to pull this Rambo crap?” I sighed.

Donna laughed behind her hand. “Breaks up the day, I guess! Come on Simon, let’s go.” With that, she followed Geoff down the side of the house and to the rear gardens. I resigned myself to not getting home for another hour or so, and followed too, breath steaming in the cold air. The back yards looked worse than the front, mostly because of the detritus left from civilisation, a twisted climbing frame here, a rusted barbeque there. Looking at this kind of thing always hurt me deep in my soul, reminding me of just how much had been lost.

Geoff had his back to the wall of the house, and was staring off to his right at the back yard of the house we had visited. “I knew it. See that brick shed? See how the roof has caved in near the back, and the broken window?” He pointed to the red brick shack, which had certainly seen better days. My best guess was that in happier times, it had been used for storing bicycles or garden equipment. Nothing about it seemed out of the ordinary to me.

“So? It hasn’t been much of a season for home repair, Geoff!”

“Open your eyes, dude, and check out the door!”  He hissed, and I stared for a moment longer, uncomprehending. Then I saw what he meant. Attached to the door, about halfway down, was a gleaming padlock. “There’s no way that lock has been there since the panic, she obviously wants to keep something safe. If it was food or water, she’d have it in the house with her, and that shed’s not big enough to house any vehicle except a bike. You both know what that means.”

“Goddamn it” sighed Donna, and I clamped my hand to my forehead. We’d run into this situation several times before, and it was never pleasant. Some people, seeing their loved ones first die, then rise, just didn’t have it in them to behead, or burn, the people they loved the most. It seemed not to matter that their mom, kid brother, daughter or whoever it was that had fallen, wanted nothing more than to eat them. Some of these poor, misguided fools had, in their grief, managed somehow to restrain their loved ones without being bitten, and kept them around.

The last time I’d seen this had been in the summer, when Zack activity was high. My dear departed friend Piotrek had gone into a basement to investigate noise, and found a guy down there who had his two dead sons chained to the wall. The wails of pure rage and grief the guy gave, when Piotrek dispatched his dead sons, were almost as bad as the sound of Zack themselves.

Geoff unholstered his pistol, flicking off the safety. “If we’re lucky, she’ll have her husband or boyfriend locked up in there. If we’re unlucky, it’ll be the freakin’ Waltons. Either way, we have to take care of it.”.

“Why do we?” I hated the whine in my voice. “She might have anything in there, or nothing!” Donna slitted her eyes at me, bent down and picked up a small rock from the long grass. “You know better than that, Simon.”. She drew back her arm, and threw the rock toward the shed. As it whistled through the air, I already knew what would happen. The rock struck the door with a sharp crack, and a moment later, a low moan issued from the shed. Geoff and Donna both turned to look at me.

“Fine, fine, lets get this done.” I pulled the rifle from my back and joined Geoff and Donna in climbing the two short fences that separated the yards. Reaching the shed, Donna started using her ZED to pry the padlock from the door. Geoff stood facing the shed with his pistol raised in both hands, and with a metallic creak, the padlock fell to the ground. Donna leapt back, raising her ZED, and Geoff and I stood, poised to fire. The door slowly swung open, and the unmistakeable stench of dead flesh wafted out to greet us.

 “Okay, no problem.” Said Geoff, and inched forward into the shed. “I see him, she’s got him tied by the neck to a ring in the floor. Wait, is that….Oh my god!”. Suddenly, a series of rattling bangs rang through the air, and Donna and I whirled to see the woman inside the house furiously banging on the kitchen window. She was in her mid-twenties, and pretty, with her dark hair tied back into a ponytail, strands of which had fallen across her face.

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” she screamed, her face contorted in a grimace of rage. “I FOUND HIM FIRST, HE’S MINE! GET AWAAAAY!”

“Damn it, lets get this done and get out of here! Geoff, come on, man!” Donna cried, and we both turned back to the door. Geoff stepped out of the shed, a half-smile on his face.

“Guys, you are not gonna believe this! She doesn’t have her freaking boyfriend shackled in there, she’s-” The smile abruptly dropped from his face, and his eyes widened for a split second, before a roar went off behind us and his head disappeared in a red cloud. As Geoffs body hit the ground with a thud, a hot, wet mist covered my face, and I spun round to see the lady of the house stood in her doorway with a large, smoking handgun pointed in our direction.

“I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE HIM ALONE, HE’S MINE!” she screamed, and pointed the gun at Donnas face. For what seemed like an eternity, I stared at her, then she was flying backwards into her hallway, a gaping third eye in her forehead. I dropped my smoking rifle to the ground as if it were hot, and turned to Donna. She dropped to her knees beside Geoff and cradled his torso in her arms, tears coursing down her face. I stood there motionless, not knowing what to say, until Donna looked up at me, bitterness in her eyes.

“Take care of the Zed, Simon, I’m gonna make sure that crazy bitch stays down.”

“You don’t have to Don, it was a head shot, I saw it….”

“Just take care of the Zed.”. She stood, and wiping her eyes, strode toward the open door of the house, ZED in hand. I knew I didn’t want to see what happened next, so I knelt and picked up Geoffs pistol from beside his outstretched hand. Even though it was so cold, the noise of the shots would have attracted roamers, and I wanted to get this done. Stepping into the doorway of the shed, I looked at the ghoul before me. Dressed in what was once a nice casual suit, he swayed, arms outstretched toward me. The stench coming off him was repulsive, and I gagged slightly.

The mottled, grey flesh of his face was hanging off at the chin, and I noticed three fingers of his left hand had been torn off. He moaned, thick black spittle dripping from his lips and onto the heavy leather collar that encircled his throat. Looking at his face, I slowly understood, and raised the pistol to his forehead, squeezing the trigger.

I stepped out of the shed a moment later, and placed the still-warm pistol in Geoffs hand. “Rest in peace, man.” I muttered, and stood to see Donna walking across the yard toward me, blood on her hands which hadn’t been there before.

“We done?” she asked, and I nodded. “let’s go then.”. She looked down at Geoffs body one last time, and we turned and walked toward the road. Back on the street, she wiped her hands on her fatigues and looked at me. “So what was so special in there that she had to murder Geoff?”

“Just a Zed, Don. Don’t torture yourself. It’s gone now.”

“I want to know, Simon. She killed for it, said it was hers. So what was it?”

I cleared my throat and looked straight ahead. “Well, it was… oh crap, Donna, I’m pretty sure it was Brad Pitt…”

She stopped dead in the road and stared at me, seeing the truth in my face. She laughed most of the way home.