Chapter 4

It took two days to complete our "shopping" in preparation to leave the fair city. Only two hours to gather the goods, but the Fabulous Ms. Tiger and I between us put down over five hundred of the brain dead. Ok, I only lopped and chopped around one-twenty, but that still averages one every forty minutes for my waking hours. I am certain Ms. Tiger was keeping score, she seemed entirely too smug in the cock of her whiskers.

I was severely shaken at one point, it had been pretty easy for me to dehumanize the brain dead, because- well, quite frankly, they were pretty inhuman. However, I really felt soul sickened to have to lop one pretty young thing, still attractive beneath her slack features and dull eyes.

I guess I was still young enough to be suffering from lacka-nookie, all these many weeks since the eotw. Well, three weeks anyway, and a few more before the eotw besides. Hell, to be honest, I hadn't gotten laid for close to a year, it is hard to invite a pretty young thing home to check out the thread count on your egyptian sheets when you are couch surfing.

It had just seemed a waste of pussy, even though there had been nobody at home behind those dull unreasoning eyes. It pissed me off, and I put down twenty zombies in the next two hours to work off my mad. Ms. Tiger took it as a challenge, and took out over seventy. I had to laugh when she looked over at me smugly, and I took the opportunity to tell myself "Whee!"

The next day, I gathered up the rest of my list, including the waterproof matches which I almost forgot. Oh yeah, Zombies are attracted to fire, until they burn themselves, then they go the other direction for awhile. Then they notice the fire, and come burn themselves again. So, they have very short term memories, and they do feel pain somewhat. I should write a book.

I was anxious to start my vacation, and packed the night before, well, the evening, since the electricity had failed twelve or thirteen days after the world ended. Actually, it took the world about four days to end, from beginnng to end. It was exponential, the affected doubling in the first two hours, then doubling again every hour afterwards. It doesn't take many hours before that is a huge number.

It was chaos, violence and zombies and looting and mayhem. I drank myself stupid, and after 29 hours passed out for two and a half days, waking up in a puddle of puke with a terrible headache, hardly able to crawl into the bathtub, where I drank from the faucet and passed out again for another eight hours. When I woke up next time, it was all zombies, and me and myself. Kinda glad I missed out on all the excitement. I probably would have gotten shot or something.

I was pretty certain that no sane person would have stayed in a city full of over a hundred thousand zombies, but I admit I may not be entirely sane these days. Lets see, if Ms. Tiger and I can put down two hundred and fifty zombies a day, how long would it take to clean out the city? Screw it, Math was never my strong suite, and I didn't really need to put down all the zombies, they were too dumb to live very long.

I would get out into the fresh air of the countryside, and relax for awhile, it isn't like I had a home in this city anyway. Anything I needed, I could find anywhere it was to be found, I had the equivalent of an unlimited charge card.

When I woke up, carefully tied to the platform of a billboard advertising a concert which would never again be performed, I found the Fabulous Ms. Tiger sleeping on the roof of a nearby motor home. Golly, that was one genius of a Tiger! I had envisioned hiking out of town. Wouldn't it be preferable to travel in style? I was just so used to not having a vehicle, that, my borrowed armored car aside, I hadn't even considered driving.

I guess part of it was it is rather hard to use a sword from inside a car, and I had been pretty shaken up by the results of my experiment with the armored car, I guess I had a blind spot. Slinking away down a manhole. Lucky to get away, too, although I probably could have waited them out if I had stayed out of sight, as my zombie VS fire experiment had shown. Live and learn.