FEATURED STORY
They climbed to the roof of a seven story building where skinned and smoked chickens hung upside down. Milton broke off a leg, and
walked to the edge of the roof.
He looked out at what remained of the small town they’d manage to survived in, focusing on the grassy areas surrounding it. The noon
day sun was hanging high in the sky.
“You can almost see Memphis from here,” Milton said.
“Yeah but it’s still infested,” Stan retorted, “and I’m glad I’m not there. Every time I kill a Z boy, I think about how we all escaped. There
were like fourteen of us.”
“Fourteen, and now just two,” said Milton, as he looked down at the engraved marks on the side of the wall. Two rows of a small group
of scratches were crossed out. We been here two years.” He turns to a windmill pole and looks up at the blades cutting through the soft
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breeze. “Man you know them zombies can never get in here! This place is a fortress! We could stay here for another two years.”
“Yeah... but you still tripping over Brenda. When I saw you hitting those Z boys like a white policemen in the 1960’s, spraying civil
rights marchers I knew you were. I thought you forgot about her?”
Milton took a large bite of his smoked chicken. With his mouth full he said: “What I’m feeling, it’s bigger than Brenda. And on that
note, she was the last woman . How are we going to start the human race over without a female?”
Stan smiled and grabbed another piece of chicken. He looked over the other side of the building. “Oh boy I know it’s the end of the
world when you a whining over some woman. Plus which, Brenda lost her mind. She went crazy.”
“Crazy or she accepted reality.”
“What reality? That maybe God wants us to die?” Milton said quietly.
“Ha!ha!” Stan finished his piece of chicken in one bite and pointed it at Milton, Making him gag on his food.
“Now wants so funny about that?” Milton bristled.
“It’s not funny. I’m just happy to hear you talk about the Lord again. I thought you stopped believing in God. Look Milton, we’ve been
fighting these undead for a long time and you never mentioned God.”
“I don’t know whether it’s God or fate or whatever. I’m just thinking: the only reason why we have been fighting is because we’re scared
to die.”
“It’s just instinct to - “
“To what survive? We’ve been doing a lot more than surviving Stan. So we’re way past instinct. Brenda crossed over. She don’t have to
kill every day.”
Milton got up and opened a storage case: revealing a neatly packed rocket launcher and twelve rockets. He carefully pulled it out and
hoisted onto his shoulder. Looking through the scope he said: “No more death.”
“So what are you trying to say?” Stan asks.
Milton takes the big gun off his shoulder and drops his head looking at Stan “I’m saying are you scared of death?”
“Naw son! I just want live!” Stan yells.
“Forget this life!” Milton yells louder.
Stan gets up and walks around in a slow circle. He pulls out the bottle of rum from his side pocket and takes another one of his big
gulps. “Okay. Okay. I’m with you. I’m down. I sure don’t want to be in this world by myself. So what do you wanna do? How you wanna go
out?”
Milton smiled and led Stan back into the building. The two of them spent the rest of the day collecting all of their weapons. They also
collected all of the speakers from each of the apartments.
They brought everything down to front gate, and cleared away the fried bodies from the night before. They formed everything into a
circular bunker.
With the sun setting behind them they looked at each other. “I didn’t even know we had all this,” Milton said.
“I know.”
They went back inside the building, where they piled all of their food on the table. After they finished eating all the food, they went into
the control room. Milton stood next to a switch marked lights. Stan had his hand over a large dial.
Together they said: “One, two, three...” and turned the dial. The two friends flipped the switch causing: all of the perimeter lights to
come on and loud music to blast.
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“Kick in the door waving the four-four,” Stan sung.
Genesis Science Fiction Magazine Sept/Oct 2011