Zoic and I spent the afternoon clearing away the undead from the house. It takes the pressure off of us during the week because there are fewer of them to hear us and start crowding in. After killing around six of them with a combination of a shovel and a revolver that we found in a house a while back, we collected their bodies into a large pile in the middle of 32nd Street. Asphalt is good for keeping the fires at bay. Before we could burn them, however, we took their wallets and set them aside. Now, you might be asking yourself, why burn the bodies? If you haven’t figured this out for yourself yet, there are two main reasons. The first is the smell. They smell bad, and they smell worse while burning, but they smell for less time when burned. The second reason is illness. You might think that the virus, or whatever makes them the way they are, is our only concern, and that fear stops when they die. But this is not the only concern. rotting flesh brings bugs and bacteria and all kinds of nastiness. Fire is the purifier.

Now you might be wondering about the wallets. There are very few sources of entertainment in the apocalypse, and the vast majority of them are related to the infection. This is one of those. Zoic and I like to climb on top of the roof of our house and watch the fire, while we look through these personal items. That way, we can create stories about each individual that has just received the Joan of Arc treatment. Entertaining each other is the best way to prove our usefulness to one another, which in turn keeps us from killing each other in the middle of the night. I kid.

I opened up a wallet. Greggory Schuster. Brown eyes, brown hair, average height, according to his driver’s license. Drove a motorcycle. Had a number of business cards inside. Either he was a lawyer, or he got into trouble a lot. Three hundred dollars in cash. Probably a lawyer, but then again, might not be. Two condoms. Not many people carry two condoms. I never carried any, but the women I was romantically involved with were not so impatient that we couldn’t stop at a drugstore. I removed the condoms from his wallet and showed them to Zoic. I winked at her and smiled really big. She stared back at me, uninterested in this joke. You might be asking yourself, do I do this with every condom we find in a wallet? I do. Every single one. And I was tempted to do it once for each of the condoms I found in this one.

Greggory had a number of credit cards, some with very little wear. He was a member of a gym, and kept pictures of several women in his wallet. If only they could all be this interesting. Zoic and I determined that the beautiful brunette was his Jackie, attractive, yet presentable. The red head was his Marilyn, judging by the clothes in the picture. She had a face with certain feline traits, but the boobs were unbelievable. There was one last picture of a younger woman, maybe 19 or 20 years old. His daughter, perhaps? Then again, maybe we’re giving him too much credit. If he died, as most people did, during the night, then it’s possible they were all prostitutes, and he was going to see one or several of them with his 300 dollars and two condoms. He also had a Costco card.

Greggory Schuster. Lover of prostitutes. Friends called him The Schuster. Died once by infection, then again by the purifying flames of Rok and Zoic. If only we had a mandolin.