Geron Kees

Haha. If you would like to be the one to go and tell the zombie to undress, I will not stand in your way! But...you are doing quite well with your thinking!

I think leadership should work this way, to a point. You cannot have nine people all making decisions on how to proceed, but you can have nine people express their thoughts, and discuss them, and then have one leader decide to proceed on a course everyone is aware of, and feels is necessary.

That pretty much covers it. You should be a writer!

Thanks. I am always remembering what Ricky Ricardo said to his wife, Lucy: "Looocee! You got some 'splaining to do!" Kidding aside, real people discuss things. Decisions have to come from a process of consideration, and when you have a tight knit group, everyone has to have some input. In order to move on with the story, I felt like the guys needed to really discuss what was going on, and their options for dealing with it all. And, to consider, even if just briefly, the import of where that planning was heading.

I don't think it was a factor, or, at least I did not figure that into the tale. Certainly, all the main characters are not LGBTQ. The zombie is pretty much asexual - or so he says - but there are rumors that he has copies of a certain type of magazine under his mattress.

You are not distracting me at all. I was eating lunch then, and what I do on my own lunch as an employee of myself is no concern of my boss self at all!

Jack was 27, and Mom, while her age is not known, seems 'old' to the kids. But I imagined her only 45 to 50 years in age. That young people mostly were survivors here at this site could be considered a fluke, as from the things Jack has said it can be inferred that quite a few 'adults' survived in the city. I decided to leave a number of things in doubt, simply because in a situation like this one, information on everything going on would be spotty, at best. There will not be pat answers for every single thing in this story, simply because there is an element of the unknown that weaves its way through the events here, and no one can possibly have all the answers. The greater mystery of why this happened will be solved, but some of the smaller mysteries within will remain exactly that.

I'm not telling. I could, but I won't. I am sitting in my office, supposedly working, yet I am in reality goofing off here. As I work for myself I can get away with it - briefly - but if I don't soon get back to work I will have to dock my pay, and I hate doing that!

Oh. Ugh. Arrgh. That's not punny...um, funny!

Wow. I wish I had thought of having Jack come back. Can you imagine what a guy like that we be like as a nasty ENEMY zombie? Too late, though. He was in pieces even before the story started.

Thank you!!!!!

Gary, you say very nice things, and say them very nicely, too. Thank you. I always wondered why zombies had to lose their brains. I mean, they were people, right? Most movie scenarios have them turning into single-minded killers that simply want to bite, eat, and destroy. I understand the scare-factor in all that, the mindless killer; but I always thought it just would be a lot more frightening if the things were smart enough to do more than crash through doors and grab you. I decided that Hollywood wasn't exactly dumb about it; they simply chose what looked best on the big screen: hordes of mindless attackers, mostly fodder for gunfire from the heroes, but occasionally getting hold of and killing the guy in the cast wearing the red Star trek shirt. If zombies kept their intelligence, and existed in the millions (or even just the thousands), there would just be no stopping them. Aha! So that's why Hollywood does what it does. You can either have millions and have them be basically hostile cattle, or you can have a very few smart ones, which simply doesn't have as much impact on a big movie screen. And so, here we are, trying a little of that now, on a somewhat smaller screen.

Fifteen pounds doesn't sound like much, but if you had to carry it around all day you'd get very strong or very tired. Hell, just think of what that Thompson that Albert Finney had must have weighed, with its 500-round magazine!

Oops. I'm sorry, Gary, I missed this comment originally. Oh...<blush>...lets not even talk about your toes!

Will anything that you could easily get your hands on stop a zombie? Hollywood churns them out by the millions, and there always seems to be more to step into the places of the vanquished. Just once they need to consider how the zombies feel about all this. Maybe they need a union.

Patience, grasshopper. All will be revealed at the proper time.

Probably scare anyone that wasn't a little out there already. Human imagination is really a wonderful, fun, and amazing thing. But sometimes it disguises that fact that the scariest things in our real world are the things that people do to each other.

I'm sure I'll be following right after you!

Chapter Six They waited until after dark to have dinner, so that they could all sit together and relax. The conversation at the table seemed unusually lively, the feeling being that they had all dodged a particularly deadly bullet that day. With no further sign of the zombie after the events in the drive, they had decided that it was a correct assumption that the creature needed to lay low a while in order to heal itself before it would be back. That reduced in their minds its seeming

Actually...oh, I won't say. I just looked up remedies for blue balls, and one suggestion is to lift heavy weights. Now we know why our boy was hefting a GMC truck!

And still does. I decided on oak because the barns I am familiar with (the ones still standing, that is) are often made of it. The stuff is durable, strong, and lasts. Still a wise idea to keep it away from blue guys with big fists and a bad temper, however.

I agree that oak is a good choice, but it was just a matter of convenience and luck that the barn was made of the stuff. Had it been pine, I would have been looking for a cave instead!

Oh, okay. I guess I'll have to look to know.

I considered that the silo would not be bulletproof, yes. It's built from oak planking from the barn, one inch thick. It wouldn't even stop a zombie, if he could get at it. The whole point was to keep him from getting at it. Had this story been longer, I might have done a few things differently. It might even be fun to revise it at a later date, maybe expand it a little. Jack wasn't so worried about being shot at, I guess. Maybe he should have been.

Uh oh. Are you answering your own comments now? Um...yeah. Suggest away! Russian-Canadian? I am intrigued already...