We had a bit of a narrow escape this morning. When we woke up, there was a rather large mob outside of our home. We were stuck inside a layer of reanimated flesh no less than six feet thick. This came as a surprise because we haven’t seen these kinds of numbers in weeks. Yet here they were. We were able to catch the back layer on fire, but it used most of our remaining gasoline. The rest of them took some hands-on effort and what bullets we had. They were all dead again. Permanently, this time. But it was close, and a lot closer than it had been in a while. We’d grown careless.

I don’t want to give you the impression that we were not taking the proper precautions. We barricaded the windows and doors. That’s common practice. We also cut a way out through the roof, which we used for dispersing the fire. We had supplies ready in case of an event like this. But we used them all up.

“You know we have to go,” Zoic said.

“I don’t want to.”

“We have to.”

I let out a sigh. “It’s really going to suck.”

There is one gun store near us. We’ve driven by it a number of times. There is the largest pile of redead undead we’ve seen yet that we didn’t cause ourselves. The doors and windows are boarded up. Any number of horrors could be inside waiting for us.

“What if there’s still people in there. They might shoot us,” I complained.

“Do you think they wouldn’t have come out yet?”

“I guess you’ve got a point. What if it’s really gross inside?”

“We’ll live.”

We got in the car and drove. The smell of rotting flesh in front of that building is the worst I’ve ever smelled. We put on the long rubber gloves and did some dragging. Then we did some burning. It doesn’t take long, once you get into it. Then there was the matter of the door. I found an axe in a house recently, so I took it to the door. It was completely stuck, and no amount of kicking got it open. I hacked away most of the door and Zoic finished it off. I was never one for upper body strength.

The inside was dark. All of the lights were broken. I used my flashlight to look around. It looks like a gun store should. There were numerous guns around the edge of the room. Not as many as I was expecting, but a lot. There was no one inside, alive or dead. In the corner of the room, a door led to the bathrooms and the office. The office was empty, but the bathroom was not. I opened the stall door of the men’s restroom. Dried blood guided me. The owner of the store was inside. Mostly. He did what you might think that he did. He killed himself with a gun. I stared for a good long while. Zoic grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me out. She closed the door to the bathrooms.

“Like it never happened. Now help me pick out something cool,” she said.

We filled a bag with as many goodies as we could find. It took us a while to match the guns to the bullets, but we did. Outside, it was getting dark, so we decided to postpone the tests until the next day. I’d like to tell you what we took, but I really don’t know. I’ll probably just call them things like “the big one” in the future.