Feeling the air in his lungs, hearing the footsteps around him, smelling the rot in the air, Andy wished he were dead, for the mind need only die once. Or so he hoped.

How long had he been on the floor? His forehead burned from where the bullet had a cut a narrow groove across the wide span of flesh. One inch to the left and he would have been one of the lucky ones – one of the ones who wouldn’t come back. As it was, he was trapped.

But where the fuck am I?

“Assface,” Jackson had said. “Get your butt up Victoria’s Secret and get yourself a few pairs of panties. Some of the frilly stuff. The boys deserve it after a hard day.”

Frilly stuff.

Once upon a time Andy would have rebutted Jackson with the one finger salute and maybe a sock on the jaw. Such as it was, there was no pride left in Andy. A motorcycle bitch had no use for it.

A groaner shifted around a rack of oversized bras but managed to get tangled into it. It fell face forward on the tiled floor into a jumbled heap of discounted underwear.

Andy sucked his breath between pursed lips, digging his nails into his palms. He was surrounded, yet unknown to the mob. They
walked in a slow meandering circuit, coming close but never quite touching him.

And if they do?

He remembered the stress of organizing paperwork so that his small dye shop could pass a ISO 9000 certification in time for his print ads to run. What a joke. He didn’t know stress until the dead majority started to eat the living minority. He didn’t know stress until he was raped at gunpoint night after night. And now, with this life hanging on a thin filament over a score of hungry maws, he felt the fear deep in his bones. He wished he were dead. He wished the bullet had found its mark. He wished that he were never born.

Walking Dead (Part Two of Four)
Walking Dead (Part Three of Four)
Walking Dead (Part Four of Four)