"That was a movie! Who has the gun right now? I'm not wasting the ammo. That thing is dead. D-E-D. Dead. Now stop harping on about it and light up another spliff. I lost my buzz killing that thing."

Bob rolled his undead eyes. That explained a lot. End of the world, and the stoners were still hiding out in an alleyway to smoke. Well, morons or not, they had his end in hand. He gave his leg a little twitch, just to assure them that he wasn't quite as dead as they hoped he was. Or as dead as he wished to be.

"There!" one kid shouted. "It moved."

"No it didn't," the other said. "Those are just aftershocks."

"After what?" Bob asked, which of course came out as a low groan.

"It groaned!" the first kid shouted.

"No it didn't," the second said. "It's just gas."

"Gas?"

"Sure. When a person dies, all the gas caught up in the body releases at the same time. My dad was a mortician. He told me all about it."

Gas indeed. These kids were starting to sound more like lunch and less like his deliverance. Bob groaned again, just to prove his undeadness.

"It groaned again!" the first kid shouted.

"Did it?" the second asked.

"Yes! Now will you please shoot it?"

"No."

Great gravy! What did a corpse have to do to get shot in this town? Bob rolled over and sat up, facing the two as he let out an extra-spooky, gut-rattling moan that meant something along the lines of, "Just shut up and shoot me already!"

"Arrgh!" the first kid screamed.

The other kid didn't yell. Instead, he fired his rifle and missed yet a third time. Too high and too wide he fired, scattering buckshot all across the alleyway behind Bob. This kid couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a bull. Even if the bull was less than an inch from the barn and all the boy had to do was nudge it. Bob slumped where he sat, frustrated and hungry and tired and hungry and hungry and hungry. And hungry. Boy was he ever hungry. What was he going to do now?

"What's it doing now?" one kid asked.

"I don't know," said the second, "I'm trying to reload."

"Who brings a single-cartridge buckshot rifle for defense against zombies?"

"Better than no gun at all."

"With the way you shoot, it's about the same."

The armed kid aimed his now-loaded weapon at his companion. "You're lucky I'm trying to save ammo."

"No, I'm lucky you're a lousy shot."

Bob growled, to remind the kids they were lucky he hadn't eaten them. Yet.

The first kid turned the gun on Bob. Good, that was a start. Now if there were a way to guarantee that the kid wouldn't miss. This time, the kid didn't fire right away, and that was good too. At least he was taking his time, measuring his shot. Perhaps, fingers and intestines crossed, the boy wouldn't miss.

"Look at it," the armed kid said.

"I am looking!" the unarmed kid yelled. "Now shoot it!"

"I mean look, it's just sitting there."

"What?"

"It's just sitting there. Why is it just sitting there?"

"Maybe you stunned it with your last shot. Finish it off. Put it out of its misery."

Finally! A word of wisdom from Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.

The armed kid shrugged away his worry and tried to aim his piece at Bob. And from where Bob was seated, he could tell the shot would once again go too high. So, to help the kid out-and not to mention save himself a whole lot of work trying to find another armed and isolated pair of idiots-he reached up and grabbed the barrel of the gun and pressed the end of it tight against his forehead. There was no way the kid could miss now. Bob closed his eyes and waited for the blessed end. The real end. The final end. All the kid had to do was pull the trigger. Just pull the trigger and that would be it. Just pull the trigger.

Pull the trigger already!

"Oh, my, God," one kid said in slow, punctuated bursts.

"Did he just do what I think he just did?" the second asked in a quiet, awe-filled whisper.

"He just put the barrel of my gun against his head."

"Yeah, that's what I thought he just did."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know."

"You suppose he ... he ... he actually wants to die?"

"I think he does."

"Does he?"

"Yes!" Bob shouted, which of course came out as a kind of squeaky grunt.

The kids jumped at his declaration.

"I think he just agreed," said one kid.

"You know what that means?" the second one said.

"Yeah."

At last, they were getting the big picture. Bob grinned as he realized that yes, zombies could feel happiness. He was feeling it right now. And even though the warm tingling didn't extend over the whole of his being, he was still pretty sure it was happiness he felt. Happy to be laid to rest at last.

"It means we can't kill him," said the first kid.

"No we can't," agreed the second.

"Waaa?" moaned Bob in confusion. What happened to the shooting and the killing and the joyful second death?

"A zombie that wants to die?" the first kid asked. "What's that all about?"

"I don't know," said the second. "Maybe the virus mutated and is making this one suicidal."

"We should catch him and take him with us. Maybe someone will know how to make the others be like him."

Oh boy! This day just got better and freaking better. Not only did Bob not consider himself suicidal-he just wanted what was rightfully his, a decent death, thank you very much-now these kids planned on leaking his slacking secrets out to every Tom, Dick and Harry zombie this side of the Rockies. Why was nothing ever easy? Why was everything one big conspiracy to make him work harder than he actually wanted to? Why was the kid with the gun screaming?

Well, the last one turned out to be the easiest to answer. The kid was screaming because, in his ponderings, Bob had grown hungry again. And in this state of hunger, he reached for the nearest snack, which happened to be attached to the hand, wrist and forearm of the kid aiming the single-cartridge buckshot rifle at him. Bob had the poor boy's index finger halfway down his gullet before he realized he was even chewing.

"Shoot him!" the second kid yelled.

"I can't!" the first screamed. "He gnawed off my trigger finger!"

"Then give me the gun." The second kid held out his hands. "I'll shoot it."

Bob supposed he hadn't heard anything so clever in all of his days. The second one was bound to be a better shot. Wouldn't he? Surely he would. An epileptic, blind, one-armed man with all the directional sense of a demagnetized compass was bound to be a better shot than that kid. And since he was missing his trigger finger, he had no choice but to let his friend- "No!" the first kid shouted. "I wanna kill it!"

"But it ate your trigger finger," said his friend.

"I still have my left hand."

The kid held up the hand in question, as if showing it off. Bob put an end to that nonsense right quick. He snatched the kid by the wrist and sheared off the boy's left index finger with one powerful snap of his undead jaws. Pointer went from full-grown piggy to eaten sausage in a matter of moments.

"Why were you still standing so close?" the second kid asked over the agonized cries of the first.

"I don't know!" the first kid cried.

"Give me the gun."

"No!" The first cradled the gun in the crook of his bloody arms. "It's my dad's gun! He said not to let anyone else shoot it!"

"But you can't even shoot it," whined his friend. "You don't have any trigger fingers!"

The boy stared at the evidence before him, his face growing paler with each spurt of blood from either stump. Speaking of growing paler, Bob had no idea why the kid wasn't face down in the dirt already. All it took was a nip to the ear from a manic mailman and Bob was flat on his backside doing the obituary mambo. Then again, he always did take to easy chores like a fish to barrels. No that wasn't right. It was fish to something else, wasn't it? He couldn't remember.

"Okay," the kid finally said. "Take the gun."

"Good!" the second shouted, taking the gun. A few awkward moments passed as the kid acquainted himself with the firearm. Bob filled this time with thoughts of what a fish took to, and the probability that he could bite off rest of the boy's fingers before his friend fired a single shot. That probability was beginning to look really good, considering how long the new gunman was taking.

"What's wrong?" the fingerless wonder asked in a weak voice.

"How ... how do I fire it?" his friend asked.

"You point the hollow end at him and pull that curved bit. But watch out; it kicks like a mule. That's probably why my shots have been so wild."

"Sure. That and you can't aim."

"Can't aim? You can't even shoot!"

"I can too." And to prove his point, the boy did just that.

Bob took the shot full in the face, blowing his brains out the backside of his skull and painting the end of the alleyway in delightful hues of putrid green and midnight black. As he fell to the ground his last thought was this: Carpe Mortis.

Yes, that sounded about right.

To learn more about Tonia and her books, visit : http://thebackseatwriter.blogspot.com/?zx=9d8df29683bab8bb Or you can email her - thebackseatwriter@gmail.com Catt Dahman Mr. Romero's Warriors "George Romero was spot on."

"Dead on. Get it? Dead on? It makes it more witty."

"Wittier," She nodded. "You must be witty at all costs."

"He wasn't exactly right, but he was close."

"By far. He insisted they were slow," She nodded. "He is like a Romeropedia."

He smiled, "And thanks to him, we know better than to run over to the mall. No mall shopping."

"No. I was thinking that some things aren't exactly like he thought."

That wasn't the right line. Neal frowned, tilting his head and drumming his fingertips lightly on the arm of the chair. They had done this routine a thousand times, albeit with a few variations. Sometimes the routine was funny and sometimes it was grim, but it was always safely predictable. He tried to get her back on track, "The mall is closed."

"Not really closed. Closed to us, I reckon, but that's what he was wrong about. They don't just stand outside the mall doors forever and moan and shuffle aimlessly."

Neal sighed. This was becoming a conversation instead of a routine and he didn't like it. "Okay, let's do another routine. We can do the one about blondes being safe because they're brainless. That one is funny." But none of them were really funny; it was just better to laugh at something of your own doing than to start laughing as if you were insane. Some did that: laughed or cried until they sat down and refused to move even as the shamblers came around, laughing while they were ripped to shreds.

"Do you dream?" Jenny asked.

"No," he lied. Why had she asked that? It wasn't fair. They both knew Neal was lying because sometimes he whimpered in his sleep and she reached over to pat him.

Neal saw that some of the others were glancing at them, listening. Had they stayed with the nice, safe routine, no one would have looked up. They preferred a witty conversation, not one with meaning.

"I dream. Not like the dreams before or right after...not like those," Jenny said, "but other dreams. They dream too. Mr. Romero didn't know that, did he? He didn't know they slept and dreamed. He thought they would be just walking dead people.

Crawling dead if you shoot 'em in the legs, he thought. That was a line from their routine but Neal didn't say it. Why had she brought this up? Why did she mention that and make Neal think of how they appeared to sleep and dream, moaning and maybe human-like verbalizations?

In some ways, it was worse than when they chased him. When they dreamed, it made them seem almost, well, human. If he thought about it too long, he would....

"Scream," Jenny said. "I think sometimes they scream when they dream. We could add that to the routine but I don't think you like it."

"I don't."