Frank leaned against the faded silver 4 Runner and lit up another cigarette, surveying the area. Apart from some stray pieces of paper stumbling through the gutters, the tableau there on Main Street was pretty clean.

Wholesome even.

A picture postcard of a small town.

Only it was eerily empty. A ghost town. The proverbial river had dried up or the gold nestled in the hillside had been depleted so, the settlers had packed up and moved on. All traces of life had stopped.

Death kept going.

And Frank.

Sure, there were other survivors at the beginning, but the germ was resilient, relentless and adaptive. It found ways to infect people who hadn't been bitten. It took flight—became airborne.

At the time, Frank had already settled in Cheney and was looking after a friend's 4-year-old daughter. The friend (or acquaintance more accurately), Dylan had left their boarded-up house to go to the gutted grocery store in a last-ditch effort to find something edible.

They, and a few other straggling, terrified survivors, had barricaded themselves in Dylan's house near the edge of town. It had an electric fence which had proven effective in keeping the zombies at bay and they were able to keep their cold-weather generator noisily churning along unhindered ever since gas had become free for the taking.

Frank had thought it was a nice place, but eventually, a rushed sense of precaution had won out over quaint appearances. What had once been a picturesque Craftsman-style, mid-century farmhouse was now besmirched by hastily nailed on broken tables, the odd slat of warped wood and lopsided closet doors which adorned the once-lovely, shuttered windows—giving the house a cartoonish façade.

The haphazard security measures irked Frank to no end. Why couldn't they be like those fastidious Floridians who used perfectly cut planks of plywood to cover their store windows to protect from whichever hurricane was approaching that week? Why couldn't they at least be symmetrical?

But obtuse angles and broken edges were hardly a concern on the day the germ found its way through the cracks and into that house on the edge of town.

Frank had been sitting on the couch absently reading a celebrity gossip magazine when Katie, Dylan's daughter, who'd been tooling away with an old set of Lincoln Logs, suddenly shifted from the gentle coos of youthful amazement to a tortured, lisping snarl.

"I'm hungry," she gurgled.

Frank instantly knew something was wrong. Something distinctly un-child-like and animalistic frayed the normal lilt in her voice. It was the timbre of pure, unfiltered need—a desperation reaching way beyond her years.

Seconds later, Katie was on him, jumping over the couch with hooked fingers and lips peeled away from pink gums by the promise of meat.

Frank was the meat.

He caught her in mid-air, shifted his weight and threw her straight into the TV. She wasn't fazed at all and bounded back as if pulled by wires.

She launched herself onto the couch, clawing and snapping her jaws, trying to get at Frank's tensed neck. As they struggled, Frank heard a series of dull thuds coming from upstairs, followed by screams and the horrific sounds of carnage.

The other survivors taking shelter at the house had become infected too and in the few seconds it took to change, they'd proceeded to tear each other apart. The gargled word "brains" echoed  down the stairs.

Finally, Frank realized he could no longer believe Katie was just having some kind of ridiculously violent tantrum. He had to overcome the thought that this little girl was no longer that little girl. After accepting Katie was dead, he stood up slammed her on the ground, unholstered his Glock and added an orifice to Katie's tiny face. A dime-sized hole just above her left eye. A single rivulet of blood issued forth lazily. Polling in her thin blond hair.

How am I going to explain this to Dylan? He thought. 

He knew he hadn't actually killed a kid—she was dead the second she'd become infected—he'd just vanquished the monster that took over her body. But still, he felt terrible and all wrong.

He sat on the couch examining the tiny, plump body, with its knee dimples and total lack of blemishes—the pale skin dotted with droplets of fresh blood—and felt his heart lurch. He eventually put a blanket over her and went upstairs to see what had become of his fellow survivors.

What he found was terrible. Blood was dripping down the walls, wads of flesh had been torn from arms and necks and faces, eyes had been gouged, limbs fractured and mangled by vicious teeth. He added a bullet to each of their skulls just in case and went down to the kitchen for a screwdriver.

The kind you could drink.

He wasn't quite sure what had actually transpired and why he was unaffected—but if this was how the germ was behaving now, he was pretty sure Dylan was dead too.

As he drank, the tangy orange juice pulp clogged up his throat and stuck to his teeth like paste—but the bite of the vodka promised it was all going to be okay. He spat on the floor and noticed the Lincoln Log house Katie had constructed.

It was square and perfect.

The little green roof slats delicately placed with meticulous precision.

She would've been a good kid, he thought.

That day, five months back, when he'd shot a 4-year-old in the forehead, had been the last time he'd seen another living human being.

Plenty of dead ones though.

In fact, he wondered, where were those bloated pus bags now?

Frank squinted as the smoke from the cigarette pinched in his lips curled around his head. He stepped away from the 4 Runner and peered up 1st street toward the library and antiquated fire station. Usually there were a few roaming around up there.

Then he spotted one.

It looked like Marlene.

She used to cut his hair when he was in high school. Now she was missing one arm, had barely any hair, her floral dress hanging in dirty ribbons as she lumbered down the street. The ubiquitous zombie shuffle quietly beating out the same rhythm.

Shhh, tuh, shhh, tuh, shhh, tuh.

Marlene was getting pretty close. Not close to Frank, close to the end.

Eventually, the zombies died for real. Without their feast of blood and brains to keep them going they'd ultimately collapse and rot away.

One day, Frank knew, they were all going to die properly, and he'd really be left alone.

Frank took a final drag and crushed the butt under the sole of his low top converse before lifting the hatch again and pulling out his rifle. Marlene's slowly melting face fit nicely into the small green world of the high-powered scope. He pulled the trigger knowing the report from the gun would call unnecessary attention, but it didn't really matter. Not like the zombies were going to come running. And he couldn't resist the temptation. Marlene had fucked up his hair all though high school and it was payback time.

Her head popped and she collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk.

He tossed the gun back in the truck and walked around to the driver's side. He'd just scoop up Marlene on his way to the pit.

As he drove a few crumbling forms emerged from between ramshackle houses, reaching out in cold desperation for one tiny bite of Frank's sweet, sweet brains.

It was sad really.

Whenever Frank could manage, he would swing the SUV up on a curb or slide sideways onto a front lawn and crush the poor bastards. Of course, when he did provide this service he'd have to stop and collect the bodies.

As close to sunset as it was getting, he didn't feel like taking any chances and decided instead to crank up the music to the point where the pain in his ear drums would distract him from the pain of existence.

His music of choice; metal.

More specifically, black metal. Evil satanic, apocalyptic metal.

The lyrics were indecipherable, the tempo maddeningly fast. The themes hinged on a vicious contempt for humanity. It exuded hatred. And for Frank, it was nice to let someone else shoulder the burden and energy it took to hate. It was possibly the reason he got into the music in the first place. He could ignore his own frustrations, projecting them on the faceless demons ripping holes through the speakers.

It was totally ridiculous music, but it didn't matter anymore. He could disregard his secret embarrassment and bang his head to his heart's content. Which is what he was doing when he came up to the pit, grinding to a stop on the gravel.

The pit itself wasn't by definition, a pit.

It was more of a pile.

Six months ago, it had been Cheney's compost/recycling center. Now it was a mass grave.

It seemed appropriate to Frank to drop the bodies off there. After all, they were recycled humans and soon they would merge with the earth and help the grass grow. All those self-righteous LA environmentalists with their I Suck Mother Nature's Dick, fair-trade, 100% organic cotton, tee-shirts, would be so proud.

The stench was awful, but he was getting used to it.

Still, as a matter of routine, he took a dust mask from the box on the passenger seat and placed it over his nose and mouth.

He wasn't worried about contracting the germ although, he knew it was only a matter of time before he'd succumb. Not in the same way all the zombies did, but as a result of the crushing isolation, the unhealthy introspection and the complete lack of human contact. Being the last person alive would eventually catch up to him and wreak havoc on his grey matter.

This he knew... and waited patiently, ready to hear the snap.

He hauled Marlene and the other woman out of the 4 Runner and dragged them a few feet closer to the dumpster. There he laid them out and checked their pockets for wallets or phones or whatever—looked for rings on knobby fingers, checked for watches hung on stick-thin wrists. This too, like the mask, was all force of habit. These small routines brought some element of order and sense to things, like putting your keys in a dish by the door when you come home.

During the early days he had collected quite a stash of jewelry and cash on the off-chance things went back to normal (most of the money he'd accrued over the years as a producer had gone to his lawyers). But things hadn't gone back to normal and his cache collected dust that mingled with the dead memories attached to each item.

The large dumpsters where he'd been depositing the dead had long since become filled. However, the problem of the overflowing containers was cleverly solved by his self-professed uncanny sense of composition. He would rotate on four corners each time he made a visit. The effect from the sky would have looked like a huge X. He imagined it would look pretty cool and severe and maybe a bit ironic, not to mention serve the added bonus of providing an X marks the spot for any planes that happened to be passing by looking for survivors.

Of course, there hadn't been any planes in months.

At first, when the dumpsters were beginning to fill with decayed flesh, he entertained a private hope in the back of his mind that someone would someday come and empty them. He remembered as a kid taking trashcans full of grass clippings and soggy cardboard boxes clinking with aluminum cans down there with his father. Miraculously, the bins were always kept at a reasonable level. He never saw the people who removed the waste but had a strong respect for them. Like they were anonymous superheroes, doing the work of the good for the land they protected.

Now, those mysterious bastions of order were probably buried under a good six feet of decaying flesh somewhere in the pit. So, Frank decided to make the endeavor a project. Piles of living dead cannibals, twisted, rotting and pain-free had finally found their purpose in his massive, macabre art installation.

Somewhere near the bottom, Katie played her part—a few layers above her, her dad added his contribution.

One day, he mused, he'd set the whole thing on fire.

Maybe he'd even jump in.

Maybe one day.

The pounding music coming from his open door rattled a loose piece of metal nearby. Frank closed the hatch and the license plate buzzed to the lightning-fast beat.

It was time for another cigarette before heading back home.

He hummed along to the bass heavy rhythm when he noticed the tiny rattle of the loose piece of metal was no longer in synch.

He turned around just in time to see the boney fingers a nanosecond before one poked his eye and two others found their way into his mouth, abruptly cutting off the surprised gasp rocketing up his windpipe.

The weight of his attacker forced him backwards toward the pit. A few more steps and he'd lose his footing, his worn Chucks would fail to find purchase on rolls of liquefying skin. He had to react fast.

He grabbed the arm around the elbow and attempted swinging it like a baseball bat. The flesh peeled down to the wrist where it collected like a gelatinous bracelet and worked as an anchor for Frank to rotate. The frail body came around and he slipped, accidentally pulling the thing right down on top of him.

His vision was blurry from getting poked in the eye, but he could definitely hear the teeth grinding and snapping by his neck. The sound was terrible, cutting through the barrage of guitars and double bass pounding from inside the car.

While he believed he was immune to the infection, he had never been bitten and didn't want to take his chances. His blind hands scrambled for anything he could use to defend himself as the teeth continued clacking.

He grabbed what felt like an unusually heavy cantaloupe and slammed it against the hungry chatter. The impromptu bludgeon collapsed in his hands when it made contact. He knew it was someone's head.

Fucking gross, he thought, feeling the cool slime seep between his fingers. The impact hadn't killed his attacker but had definitely slowed it down. Frank was able to push the corpse off, stand and blink his vision back into semi-focus.

It was another woman.

A relatively young, petite woman—which accounted for how easily he was able to swing her around. There was a twisted clothes-hanger caught on her ankle—the rattling metal he'd heard.

She started to sit up and he kicked her in the head.

He kept a loaded gun near each door of his vehicle in case these types of situations should arise—and they always did. He opened the driver-side rear door and grabbed an enormous Colt .45 handgun. The adrenaline coursing through him faltered a bit at the weight of the weapon.

This is going to hurt, he thought as he leveled the barrel with the girl's dripping visage and closed his eyes.

He squeezed the trigger.

The noise was worse than the music and the teeth. It was ridiculously loud. Laughably loud. In fact, as he rubbed his vibrating arm which ached instantly from the force of the recoil, he did laugh.

The girl's head had vanished entirely in a cloud of bone fragments and black blood mist.

He tossed the gun on the back seat, still laughing and went to straighten the girl's corpse—dragged her to the pit and put her in line with the rest of his mixed media.

The hysterical laugh continued to scratch at the back of his throat as he got back in the truck and sped away from the pit.

Dirty Harry must have been one deaf son of a bitch, he thought.