Zomblog II by T. W. Brown Page A

that makes a big bang. Only, you can actually separate a zombie’s head from its body and that head will still be active; sorta like a rattlesnake. Just because you lop the head off doesn’t mean the venom in its fangs won’t getcha.
    We’ve run across a lot of upper-bodies—and even just the heads—of zombies today. It is like walking through a minefield. It almost cost us Jenifer.
    Coach and Jonathan were leading. We had left the interstate behind just after a lunch of rice, beans, and canned apricots. (The interstate seems to become exponentially more congested on both sides the closer we get to downtown.) Anyways, we had to climb this hill and scale a fence which put us at the terminal end of a dead-end street. We decided that backyards were our best route. Staying on the street was asking for attention. The hard part was climbing fence after fence of varying types. Every time we crossed a yard, we had to keep an eye on the house. If a zombie was inside and saw you, it would start pounding on the window, which will just about scare the piss out of you—literally—when one catches you by surprise and breaks the silence with an open-handed slap on glass. Once we crossed the yard, we’d have to scout the next one. Then Jonathan would lift Coach over. Jenifer and I took turns being next. Jonathan always came over last. I’ll tell ya something, after a few hours of that, you are tired and sore.
    We started seeing heavily damaged or burned houses around 40 th Avenue. Keep in mind that all the yards are overgrown; knee-to-thigh-high in some places. We were crossing one, actually crouching low because most of the house was gone and we could easily see the street and front yard through the sections of burned out and missing walls. There was a stretch of four yards that had no real fencing left, so it was a lot of open area. We were so busy watching for anything that might wander past out front and see us that we missed one.
    It was only the head and a section of the torso that included the right arm. It was burned beyond the ability to identify it as male or female. Both its eyes had burst and were part of the thick, dried, scaly coating on its face. There wasn’t enough “body” remaining for it to even have any ribs left.
    The hand snagged Jenifer’s foot, tripping her. She shrieked as she fell. I heard moans in instant response. Coach started growling, but just that fast, they were coming from everywhere. Fortunately, Jenifer was wearing steel-toed leather boots. This thing bit down on the top of her foot with its jagged, broken teeth, but it did little more than put a few divots in the black surface. With her free foot, she kicked the thing in the forehead a few times to knock it loose.
    I brought my spear up and drove it through the eye socket of one of the first ghouls to emerge from the burnt wreckage of the house. I could see one of those bastards appearing to literally come out of the woodwork. I did have a moment to appreciate how Coach and Jonathan work as a team. The dog darts in snarling and snapping his jaws, which never failed to get the intended target to bend down and reach for the pesky pooch. That is when Jonathan brings the Wedge-o-matic (what he calls it by the way) down hard into the back of the zombie’s head. This usually drops whatever is struck. Sometimes a second or third swing is needed. Jonathan says that the back of the skull is actually much easier to break than the front. Who knew?
    Jenifer had dispatched her abomination; she and I were making for the fence when the first explosion came. A black pillar of smoke rose—about three blocks away—from back the way we’d come. The good news was that most of those things headed in the direction of the new sound. The bad news is that some unknown brand of nutjob was close by and blowing things up.
    We could see a mostly intact home one yard over and one back through the overgrown yard we were climbing the fence to get to. I decided to head