Zombies: The Recent Dead by Paula Guran Page A

going to last that long, I’m afraid. They had a candle burning, for heaven’s sake. You could see it from out in the back yard, and that is the one thing that you really can’t do. Three nights out of five I could have got there and been too late already. I got lucky, I guess. I waited until they put the light out, and then a little longer.
    The guy looked like he’d have just enough wits about him to trick the doors, so I went in by one of the windows. They were asleep. Worse things could have happened to them, to be honest, much worse. There should have been one of them keeping watch. He should have known that. He could have done better by her, I think.
    Getting them back to the cabin took most of the next day, one trip for each. I left the car right where it was. I don’t need a car, and they’re too conspicuous. He was kind of skinny, but she has a little bulk. Right now they’re the reason why the winter isn’t worrying me quite as much as it probably should. Them, plus a few others I’ve been lucky enough to come across—and yes, I do thank my luck. Sure, there’s method in what I’ve done, and most people wouldn’t have enjoyed the success rate I’ve had. But in the end, like my father used to say, any time you’re out looking for deer, it’s luck that’s driving the day. A string of chances and decisions that are out of your hands, that will put you in the right place at the right time, and brings what you’re looking for rambling your way.
    If I don’t go out hunting in the afternoon, then either I’ll nap a while or go do a little more sculpting. It only occurred to me to start that project a few weeks ago, and I’d like to get some more done before it starts to snow.
    At first, after the thing, it looked like everything just fell apart at once, that the change was done and dusted. Then it started to become clear it didn’t work that way, that there were waves. So, if you’d started to assume maybe something wasn’t going to happen, that wasn’t necessarily correct. Further precautions seemed like a good idea.
    Either way, by 5:00 pm the light’s starting to go and it’s time to close up the day. I’ll go out to the shed and cut a portion of something down for dinner, grab something of a plant or vegetable nature to go with it, or—every third day—open a can of corn. Got a whole lot of corn still, which figures, because I don’t really like it that much.
    I’ll cook the meat over the day’s third fire, straight away, before it gets dark, next to a final can of water—I really need to find myself another of those vacuum flasks, because not having warm coffee in the evening is what gets me closest to feeling down—and have that whole process finished as quick as I can.
    I’ve gotten used to the regime as a whole, but that portion of the day is where you can still find your heart beating, just a little. I grew up used to the idea that the dark wasn’t anything to fear, that nothing was going to come and do anything bad to you—from outside your house, anyway. Night meant quietness outside and nothing but forest sounds which—if you understood what was causing them—were no real cause for alarm. It’s not that way now, after the thing, and so that point in the schedule where you seal up the property and trust that your preparations, and the wires, are going to do their job, is where it all comes home. You recall the situation.
    Otherwise, apart from a few things like the nature of the food I eat, it’s really not so different to the way life was before. I understand the food thing might seem like a big deal, but really it isn’t. Waste not, want that—and yes, he said that too. Plenty other animals do it, and now isn’t the time for beggars to be choosers. That’s what we’re become, bottom line—animals, doing what’s required to get by, and there isn’t any shame in that at all. It’s all we ever were, if we’d stopped to think about it. We believed we had the whole