"I don't know what to do, Dad. I thought I could help you." Timmy swallowed. "I mean, I knew there was something here you needed, but I didn't know - didn't know you were ... like this." A small part of Timmy laughed. That's the pot calling the kettle black.

The naked zombie shuffled over to the other side of Fred and began pushing again. Fred moved a bit to the right. Pudgy stopped and stood still.

His dad looked right at him then.

"Timmy?"

And then Fred's head exploded.

Chapter 48.

Family Business Fred dropped to the ground.

The zombie army gave a collective moan and promptly went a little ape s.h.i.t.

Two zombies standing close to Timmy turned and attacked the burned man, who didn't seem interested in putting up a fight. Several were just moaning and walking in circles. Others wandered off into the night. The naked corpse that had moved his dad into the kill zone waited patiently until the zombies eating the burned man were done. Then he slowly shambled over to the corpse and began dragging it next to where Fred lay. To Timmy it looked as if he was trying to line the bodies up, side by side. As more zombies fell to their cannibalistic comrades, the und.i.c.k would shamble over and drag their corpses back, laying the dead out, more or less in a neat row.

All the while Timmy stood there unable to get a grasp on things.

"What?" His mouth opened and closed but no words followed. What happened?

Finally he walked over to his dad.

Fred lay unmoving on the street, a small hole in the back of his head.

"Daddy."

In his mind he saw Jon sitting at a small metal table outside the Starbucks, aiming his rifle. He squeezed the trigger and pulled back the lever. The naked zombie took a bullet in the head and collapsed at Timmy's feet.

The boy went cold inside.

"To me," he shouted. Most of the undead responded immediately, moving between him and the coffee shop up the street.

Without any ceremony he turned and walked right over to Comfort's oldest unliving resident, and quick as you please plucked the meteorite out of his head.

Mr. Potts stopped glowing, dropped his mailbag and fell to the ground.

Timmy immediately felt the light work its way inside him. A greenish radiance shone behind his dead eyes. He turned back to his dad. The f.u.c.ker had killed his mom, left him for dead in the tunnel, and shot his dad.

"Fetch."

A few hundred zombies with nothing better to do converged on Starbucks.

There was sporadic gunfire, some hoa.r.s.e screaming, and eventually they brought Jon to Timmy, still kicking and screaming.

He didn't look much like a killer now. b.l.o.o.d.y scratches marked his face. Two of his fingers were missing, obviously bitten off, and Timmy was pretty sure he had s.h.i.t himself.

Easy peasy.

"h.e.l.lo, Jon." He bent on one knee until he was face to face with the f.u.c.ker.

Jon looked up at him in confusion. "Timmy? How did you ...?"

"You killed my mom, right? I mean, I know you did, but I just want to hear you say it."

Jon regained a little composure. He even tried to smile.

"She stuck her nose in my business. I didn't want to kill her. Your mom was a great cook, and a great f.u.c.k. But she had to go in the end." It was a brave line, but he wasn't fooling anyone.

Timmy glared at him with bright, dead eyes, and Jon quickly looked away, muttering something unintelligible.

Timmy tightened his grip on the meteorite and smiled.

"Thank you, Jon." He stood and looked around the street. "I guess I'm the new boss. We should celebrate. Get up."

Jon stood up, a look of surprise on his face. Timmy laughed. "You've been bitten. You're not a zombie yet, but you're mine. All mine." Timmy placed a cold hand on Jon's shoulder. "Welcome to my party, Jon. Go eat something."

Jon dropped to his knees and crawled over to poor Mr. Potts.

"Hey! Kid! Please!"

Timmy's smile grew as Jon bent down and bit into Potts. Jon swallowed, retched, puked, and bit again; swallowed, retched ...

Timmy turned away, still smiling.

"Bon Appet.i.t."

He clutched the meteorite against his chest and started shambling down Main Street. There was a whole world out there that wanted him dead - deader, he supposed.

Miles to go before we sleep.

"Let's go."

THE DEAD END.

Here's What Happened Sometimes a zombie apocalypse is the least of your worries.

Comfort, Colorado, is a sleepy little village nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, just beyond the Eisenhower tunnels. Surrounded by a forest of gold and orange, it's a picture-perfect paradise on sunny, autumn days like today. Right now, the meteorite destined to slam into poor George Potts' head and begin the zombie apocalypse is still weeks away, Fred and Timmy are happy and breathing back in Jersey, and the Turnpike ... well, the Turnpike is still s.h.i.t.

'Take A Breather'

the prequel, will be available shortly.

Here's a little taste ...

President Dobbs looked a lot cheerier than he felt. Or ever was, for that matter. Cursed or blessed with cherub cheeks, Kris Kringle laugh lines, merry eyes and just enough fat to make him look honest, he gave off an aura of accessibility and friendly empathy.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up for one G.o.dd.a.m.ned minute, for Christ's sake, and let me see if I got this straight."

The bureaucratic murmuring stopped, treating Dobbs to a blessed moment of silence. They were in the War Room, as his predecessors had named it. Although these days war was more the norm than the exception and he thought it naive to keep the name limited to the one room. Two of the walls had large maps of the world, mostly for show these days. Two huge television screens made up the third and fourth walls. There were no windows.

Taking up both screens at the moment was Mother Earth herself, seen in all her glory from a whole bunch of miles away and Dobbs was hard pressed to think of anything he could care less of a s.h.i.t about.

"A satellite has left orbit and is going to crash somewhere -"

"Not the satellite, sir, just its payload." Paul Reinman, NASA geek extraordinaire, continued. "What I mean, Mr. President, is that the satellite itself is still in a stable orbit. It's the detachable pod with -"

Dobbs interrupted right back "I know what you mean, Paul. The thing's crashing into earth as we speak, so I think calling it f.u.c.king 'detachable' is a bit redundant. Now, if you don't mind?" For a second Reinman looked like he was actually going to continue, but at the last instant thought better of it.

Thank you, Jesus.

"A pod has detached itself - don't say it, Paul - and is going to crash somewhere in the Continental US, three weeks from today."

"Sir." Stop the presses; Dr. Reinman had something to add.

"Yes, Paul?"

"The pod itself won't be entering the atmosphere for months. It's the pod's contents that will be making landfall in three weeks."

"Paul, does the fact that it's the pod's contents plummeting to earth, rather than the pod itself, decrease the chances of millions dying before Thanksgiving?"

Dr. Reinman glanced around the room looking for a sympathetic face and found none. "No, Sir."

"Then please, shut the f.u.c.k up and let me continue. Thank you." The President shut his eyes for a moment and took a calming breath.

"A G.o.dd.a.m.ned detachable pod has detached itself from a G.o.dd.a.m.ned satellite and it's going to s.h.i.t the apocalypse all over the G.o.dd.a.m.ned US of f.u.c.king A. Does that about sum it up, gentlemen?"

Proving that the DNA pool of the Tea Party was shallow but not empty, the room remained silent.

"I'm in office for six months," he muttered, "and today I wake up in a Michael Crichton novel. Tom!"

Defense secretary Thomas Manzo looked up from his papers. He was older, fatter and much less cheery looking than Dobbs. "Mr. President. Back in 1982 the CIA, as well as NSA - the National Security Agency - received credible information that Saddam Hussein had obtained various biological agents of weapon grade quality. Anthrax, small pox, Ebola-C, and others."

"Didn't he obtain those from us?"

"Yes, sir. Which is why we had little trouble verifying the information," Tom continued. "At the time the administration felt that Saddam Hussein was a reliable ally, but he later proved to be difficult."

Dobbs raised his eyebrows. "Ya think?"

"Yes, sir. Under a 'non-existing' Executive Directive, President Clinton approved funding for continued R&D on a few biological weapons, despite the 1972 ban on developing, producing and stockpiling biological and Toxin weapons."

Dobbs rolled his eyes. "Thank you for that legal opinion, counselor. Get on with it."

"Yes, sir. The result was Zygote3. A relatively hardy bacteria that thrives on inert material until introduced into a living host. It can remain dormant for excessive periods of time and needs only oxygen and hemoglobin to reproduce, which it does at an extraordinary rate ..."

"Blah blah blah. I read the back of the cereal box. It alters the cell structure of animals, turning them 'inert', but mobile. Now listen to me very carefully, Tom. What the f.u.c.k does that mean?"

"Yes, Mr. President. What it means, sir, is that once infected, the body ceases to live but doesn't die. Not exactly. That is, it continues to move in order to hunt. Zygote3 kills the host, but it needs living tissue to thrive. So the host is preserved to the extent that it's able to hunt and ingest living tissue. When the host attacks a living organism, the tissue, once ingested, provides the bacteria with what it needs to thrive, and the organism that was bitten becomes infected."

"Fine," Dobbs interrupted. "Sounds like a lot of work to kill a few enemies, but whatever. So now this stuff is headed to earth. How much?"

"Twelve hundred nodes, sir."

"That sounds like a lot," Dobbs growled.

"Sir. In order for Z-3 to be effective, it needs to be in a living host. I know twelve hundred sounds like a lot, but the chances of any of these hitting a living organism are slim to none. a.s.suming any even survive re-entry."

"Hallelujah."

"Yes, sir."

"Now the bad news."

"Yes, sir. It's going to be very difficult to retrieve all - or any - of the bacteria nodes, because they were encased in what for all purposes looks like a small rock. I mean, they are perfectly round so there's no mistaking them for actual rocks, but imagine trying to find one thousand two hundred gray marbles scattered throughout the United States and you have an idea of the enormity of the task."

Dobbs shut his eyes again. "Super. How long will the virus remain active without a host?"

"Well, we don't know, sir. All samples were put in orbit before tests were completed. The thinking at the time was - well, I'm not clear on exactly what the thinking was, sir."

"Great. Okay. a.s.sume we win the apocalyptic lotto and one or more people become infected. How fast can or will this thing spread?"

Tom Manzo cleared his throat. "Again, sir, we can't be sure. It only spreads by direct contact and that's not an effective method of transfer. It was designed to terrify as much as kill. But if we catch a bad break and don't contain it in time, it could be severe. Possible projections are in the synopsis."

Dobbs glanced at the paper again. "Yay. So. Possible plague of biblical proportions forecast for Thanksgiving, but football season and turkey continue to remain likely."

"Yes, sir."

"Could be worse."

end.