“Let that lonesome whistle blow my blues awaay. Marty, grab me another beer, hot today.”
“You’ve got it, John.”
“Not a single bite today,” John sighed, drained the last stale drops from the can he’d been nursing, and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Marty tripped up the bank, catching himself on the cooler. “It’s just the heat,” he muttered to himself, tossing his empty can onto the collection they’d been forming that morning. He reached into the cooler for a fresh round and wiped a cold can across his forehead. The cool water running down his face felt divine. A branch snapping in the woods brought him crashing back to reality where he realized that his bladder was suddenly on the brink of exploding. He stumbled off the path to relieve himself, “It’s just the heat. Haven’t had that much to drink yet…”

John reeled his line in. The minnow was still intact. Where the hell are the fish? Where the hell is Marty? “Marty, I can feel myself getting sober down here!” He cast his line back into the creek, pushed the butt of the rod into the clay, and made his way to the cooler. At least he set a beer out for me, John thought. On his way back down the bank, he tripped on a root and rolled his way back to the creek, cursing the scrape on his elbow. He wiped the scrape clean with his handkerchief just as his reel began to click. Finally, some action, he thought as he looked up to his rod.

He looked up and saw, standing in the middle of the creek, holding the minnow on his hook, a haggard man. “The hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted to the vagrant who looked up from the lazily flopping minnow, tilted his head, and let out a groan. “You can’t just go ‘round grabbing up people’s fishing lines. It’s just… it’s just fugging rude!” The man dropped the minnow and lunged at John.

Marty laid on the ground, convulsing as the blood drained from his neck, mixing with the beer draining from the can. The air smelled like iron, cream ale, and piss. I thought there’d be a light. I thought there’d be a song. I thought…

John ran through the woods, digging for his keys. Just get to the truck. Marty’s a tough son-of-a. He can handle himself. It had been years since John had run, about 30 since he’d done so in earnest but he was still the same guy who had felt more akin to a whitetail than his classmates. He crashed through the underbrush as if he had been born for it. He came out on the dirt road, still a couple hundred yards from his truck. He didn’t hear his pursuer anymore but wasn’t willing to risk slowing down now. He broke into a full-sprint, kicking a cloud of dust up behind him. As he started his truck, he prayed that he’d have a chance to apologize to Marty.

After the long winter, the zoners needed some excitement.  The teams were divided into four groups. Each group matched up 16 squads according to their rank. The rules were simple. The squad with the most kills wins.   Brackets were filled out. Food rations were wagered. “March Madness” was in full swing.

In the first round, the 12th squad upset the 5th and the 17th shut out the 22nd.

Fun was had by both the Corps and the Zone residents.

The fun didn’t last.

Just like March’s of the past, the tourney was full of surprises. The biggest surprise came when, during the Elite Eight round, the 67th squad failed to return to Hancock.

Instead of Vandross singing “One Shining Moment” at the conclusion of the tourney, it ended with “On Eagle’s Wings” at their memorial service.

It started as kind of a joke, but by the end it had become much more. She didn’t mean for it to be a big deal. Who knew a sticker could change your world?

In the early days of the Blue Zone, Erin McGraw found herself separated from everything and everyone she had ever cared about. She left Cortland hoping to find safety to the north, but never made it past Syracuse.

Erin joined the Corps’ 17th and was issued her ZED. It was just your basic, everyday, all-purpose zombie bashing crowbar.

It wasn’t easy for Erin to wake up one morning and start killing the undead. She struggled with the “murder” aspect of the whole thing. “Kill or be killed,” Slater would say to her. “You’re really doing ‘em a favor, if you ask me.” Erin couldn’t help but imagine who they were before they became monsters with a taste for flesh. As she would lower her ZED into their skulls, she would picture them in happier times with their family and friends, and she would smile. Some in the Corps thought her smile was sick and that she found pleasure in killing. She didn’t. Erin smiled knowing that their suffering was ending.

Late one afternoon as the Corps was helping in the cleanup of Route 81, Chuck found a child’s backpack in the back of an abandoned minivan. After looking through the bag for anything worth saving Chuck called over to Erin. “Hey, McGraw! Get over here!” Erin ran across the expressway to see what he had found. “Check it out, it looks like you,” Chuck said mockingly as he held up a sheet of smiley face stickers.

Erin tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help it when Chuck placed one of the stickers onto her crowbar, “Just like when you were in school, every good student earns a sticker.” Erin’s face turned as red as the sticker decorating her ZED. She snatched the sheet out of his hand, raised the crowbar as if she would hit Chuck, but instead she then returned to her patrol.

Later that evening, as she warmed herself by the fire, she thought of the dozens of zombies that she had helped out already, and the countless that still remained. She wanted to pay tribute to the people that they had been. Their corpses weren’t buried with markers, they were burned. She wanted to remember the people that they had been, not the monsters they became. As she got up to leave the fire, she felt the pack of stickers in her jacket pocket. She had an idea.

The next morning, Erin found a quiet corner of the zone and applied a sticker for each of her victims to her crowbar. When she was done, she had barely covered any of the handle. She vowed to work to change that.

When the others saw her ZED, they made fun of the colorful zombie killer. The jokes usually stopped when she explained what they meant. As the weeks and years went on, any member of the Corps that came across any sheets of smiley face stickers would bring them back to Erin. Over time, Erin completely covered her crowbar five times.

Long after she was gone, Erin McGraw’s smiley faced ZED stood as an inspiration for all in the fight against Zack.