Chapter 1

Someone had let the big cats out of their cages.

I mean, a good idea and all, what with the apocalypse and how few people there were who weren't brain-dead. I just wish I had known about it before I found myself face to face with with a tiger.

I think she was sort of glad to meet me, in a way, after no doubt getting tired of putting down annoying zombies. Not even good eating, and they stank, even to my human nose.

But, whomever had let the cats out had also released their prey, who were much more lost in a city filled with zombies than the cats were. They were pretty terrorized, but zombies are slow, so they didn't catch more than a few who just gave up, unable to deal with no free food from the zookeeper's assistants. The survivors survived, as they are so wont to do.

As soon as the tiger smelled that I wasn't like the stinky annoying ones, and admired my cool moves as my katana flickered in a three move pattern, left hand right hand head lop- (I had figured out that if the brain-dead couldn't grab you, they were at a huge disadvantage, being so slow and clumsy and stupid.)

Anyway Ms. Tiger seemed to accept me in a category of fellow hunter, and since I wasn't killing her prey animals and she hadn't settled into a territory (hardly possible with all the zombie mobs roaming about) she just gave me a respectful space, and continued her self appointed task of reducing the annoyances.

Ms. Tiger had her own technique, which I admired greatly, which was a leap just to the side of the zombie, a slight twist and slash as she went by, crushing the skull. She preferred to do it from the rear, especially when she was playing a form of zombie bowling, knocking down as many as she could if they were bunched up (as they often were) and rebounding out of the mess by striking with her hind paws.

Then they were safely laying on their faces, and she could run among them bashing their dead brains in. I watched her for awhile in admiration, as she lured a mob around a corner into a dead end alley, leaping over a fence and circling around to knock them all over like dominoes, then bashing them all out of her misery in under two minutes flat.

She was a much more efficient killing machine than I was, doing that mob one at a time would have taken me at least fifteen minutes. I gave up using guns and explosives days ago, it wasn't worth the way all the zombies within hearing distance started ingathering. Eventually you would run out of bullets anyway, and be trapped behind a heaping wall mound of corpses. I preferred to deal with them in smaller units, and be able to slip away as needed.

So, I quietly said to myself; (I don't deny that I might be crazy, and anyway there isn't anyone else to talk to, aside from whomever let the cats out, and Ms Tiger.) Note to self: watch out for wild, er, yeah, feral Zoo Animals. Hunger can motivate even the laziest layabout.