Mike's blistered hands shook as he held his last match under his last Marlboro. The cigarette had bent in his pocket and looked ruined.

"You can still suck through that thing?" I asked him.

He thought a minute, his lips working around the filter. Eventually a plume of thin smoke esceped his dry nostrils. He closed his eyes: the first puff is always the best.

"Barely," he replied. "It's not the smoke so much I want, though."

I looked out the window of our booth at the sun rising over the mountains. Good old Norm's restaurant, still standing on the corner of Van Buren and Seventeenth. When we'd busted the front door in there had still been the smell of pancakes. Of course the greeter hadn't been here to show us to our tables, and the cooks had all long since scattered out the fire door, but sure enough the freezers were still full of sausages and New York steaks, and the sleek stoves were easy enough to figure out. The "We Never Close" sign mounted on the pitched roof took on a comforting irony.

Mike stood up.

"I'm gonna make us some soup," he said, stretching. "I saw a bag of black-eyed peas in there. Maybe I can throw 'em in with rice and Italian sausage. Poor boy's lunch. You interested?"

I waved away his offer and continued to work on my jammed .38. I'd never taken a revolver apart before and I'd lost track of all the parts on our table. I knew that I'd have to borrow one of Mike's pieces.

A few hours before when our friend Jerry had been ovewhelmed in the alley behind Target the first thing I thought of was his weapons. As his screams started to bubble with blood I lamented the Desert Eagle he'd brought along—this is what desperation will do to you. I used to play poker with Jerry. I studied the parts of the gun I'd ruined.

Through the window behind the cash register I watched Mike cook. He had tied on one of the cook's old aprons, one of the few that didn't have blood on it, and he looked almost comical, with is bent cigarette sticking out of his face. He had three days' beard stubble and his hair was a ragged mess; and at nine in the morning he was making bean soup. I felt like a bachelor again watching him.

I noticed that there was no smoke coming from Mike's cigarette: the cherry was out. But he held it in his mouth like a pacifier.

When you are just the right kind of poor you understand why people do stupid things for money.

I realize now that the US Goverment had lost meaning as soon as the first grave had cracked open. The Senate had gotten together for some brief meetings behind very tightly locked doors, and the President had disappeared altogether. While things were still manageable enough for the news to broadcast there came the announcement: The US Government would pay $300 for each vanquished corpse that was backed with sufficient proof. Power to the people.

So I'd pulled my .38 out of the nightstand and called Jerry up. He suggested that we take thumbs as proof of our work—two thumbs for $300. I had been losing overtime at the plant and had adopted the habit of translating expenditures into hours of work. On plant salary, a good dinner's about forty-five minutes' work. Little over an hour for a good Zeppelin anthology. Killing a zombie would bring in two days' pay.

I'd gone pig hunting up in the mountains sometimes during the winter, so I had plenty of equipment, and I knew firsthand that my Chevy could withstand the charges of 300-pound boars in heat. I figured Mike and Jerry and I were in for a couple days of urban pig hunting with a few grand waiting for us at the end.

But a zombie's much harder to kill than a pig.

Riverside was one of the first cities to be deserted completely. The Riverside National Cemetery is one of the largest burial sites in the entire country. As soon as the dead had started to rise the National Guard came in and set up blockades on the 91 and 215 freeways. Of course, since this was happening everywhere, and since over a third of our guardsmen were fighting the good fight over in Iraq they quickly became overwhelmed by the tremendous growth of the dead force and the fight was up to the public.

Now, this stuff in movies about the living dead being stopped by a little shot to the head is a bunch of shit. They cannot be stopped. Plain and simple. Walk through the streets of downtown Riverside; you can see body parts squirming on the asphalt. The best you can do about the corpses is immobilize them enough so that they can't hurt you. Since arriving in Riverside I had seen people die without dying; they simply ceased to feel and wanted only to inflict pain. By the time Mike and I plundered Norm's restaurant I'd collected eight thumbs. I could feel them moving in my pack.

"Heard a line once about the dead coming back to life when Hell's full," Mike had said. "Always thought it was a fucking creepy thought. Maybe that's what happened. Hell is overflowing."

My wife didn't want me to come out here. She wanted me to stay with her and run away somewhere safe. My wife is smart; she doesn't care about money.

Mike sat back for a minute with a satisfied look after he finished his soup.

"Should I leave a tip?"

I'd ruined the Chevy a little while after Jerry had been killed. The old girl could handle charging pigs, but she could not handle being overdriven. While we were escaping from the Target I floored it and the engine had overheated; the head gasket blew like the cork off a champagne bottle. When I checked the oil it looked like chocolate milk.

"How many thumbs you got?" I'd asked Mike while we were looting the kitchen at Norm's. Half-joking. Dying inside.

"Hell no," he'd growled, missing my joke. "I'm not buying you a radiator."

There were a few abandonded cars scattered about on the streets. But I had no idea how to hot wire a car, and neither did Mike, and we weren't about to fry ourselves half to death trying to figure it out. Like a smart man I'd brought my cellphone, but there was no service. The towers were inoperable. There was no one to control them.

I was the first one to hear the footsteps.

Mike was still spaced out over his bowl of homemade soup. His smile faded away and he started to dig in his bag.

"My gun," I said. "I've got no fucking gun, Mike. Set me up."

He shot me a look. "Goddamnit." He dropped a .45 on the table. "Be careful, alright?"

I remembered the scene in Pulp Fiction in the restaurant. Guns on laminated pressboard tables. Except these guns were going to get used. You have strange thoughts when things get bad.

Mike got up and started to stride toward the front doors. We could hear the crunch of broken glass outside. Something gagged.

Mike was never a careful man. He had his gun down as he walked through the demolished front door; Jerry tackled him from the side, pinned him to the ground, and started biting his face. Another hiding alongside the building descended on his torso. Mike was too surprised to scream for several seconds.

The .45 he'd given me was useless. Soon Mike would be one of them too. And it'd be me on the ground.

Jerry stopped biting Mike's face long enough to watch me climb into the Chevy and force the engine to life. There was a smell of burning, and the truck shuddered when I stepped on the gas and aimed the front drive tires. I hope Mike didn't see me coming.

Even though the Chevy was a 4-wheel drive it struggled to get over the three of them. The front passenger wheel spun on Jerry's back. Before I came down on asphalt again there was a crunch and Mike stopped screaming.

I waited a few seconds before I got out. The sunlight was warm and I could hear birds. The three of them were shredded. Mike was motionless but Jerry and the other zombie struggled to move, unable to stand. I'd almost cut Jerry in half. Jerry had been a good card player.

I looked at Mike's head and knew he wouldn't be a danger. A brown pool spread slowly beneath the Chevy's powertrain; it wouldn't start again.

The lights in Norm's restaurant went out. The power had finally gone. The birds sang and the sun shone. The morning was beautiful and quiet.

I thought about my wife. I thought about my wife.

I found my knife in my pocket and looked for Mike's thumbs.