Hazleton PA: Bear climbed up the steel ladder they had leaned up against the bus. Beth sat looking out at the street in an aluminum lawn chair. She turned as he made the top and smiled. Bear smiled back, turned and looked back into the junkyard for a moment. The view was unobstructed. The yard stretched away before him. He turned back to the front. A house lined street, like any house lined street, in any city. He assumed it went on into Hazleton, but they had not followed it."Quiet?""Very," Beth agreed. "These zombies don't seem all that interested in us. Or... I don't know, they're stupid... mentally slower." She shruggedBear nodded. "But I wonder if it works the same. I mean, I wonder if these just haven't caught up yet. And when they do, I wonder if they'll be as bad as the others."Beth looked back at the house lined street beyond the bus. She had been watching the street, occasionally turning to the junk yard, and watching the fence line for hours now. She had seen two dead. Both had been farther down the street, a good quarter mile away, so far that it may have been the same dead woman both times. She had not really gotten much of a look the first time. "I guess I'm just glad we don't have to fight them like we were. The brain rest is good."They both fell silent. Bear crossed and sat in the other lawn chair that had been set up on top of the bus."We should probably move out in a few days," Bear said. "It's nice, but it's not getting us any closer to where we want to be."Beth looked over at him. "Where do we want to be, Bear?" she asked."South... west?""You thought much more about these people that have this city all set up?""Yeah, except I haven't heard anything at all about them on the radio. I wonder, if it truly did exist... if it has fallen to the dead. Just because they aren't too smart here doesn't mean they aren't there.""So you don't want to look for it?"Bear laughed. "Have you considered that maybe I am not a man who can live a settled life, that maybe my life will always be in flux? I mean, in...""I know what flux means." She smiled again "I am no dumb girl, Bear.""Oh, I didn't mean to..."She held up a hand. "I know you don't think I'm a dumb girl. I over explain sometimes. Or react," she colored. She turned away and looked over the street. The dead girl was back, wandering the street, stumbling from house to house, slamming into the houses as she found them, apparently unable to see them or stop herself. She and Bear watched as she wandered up the street toward them and the bus that would block her way."I guess a place to call home," Bear said. "The year is going by so fast. We need people who know how to plant gardens, raise cows, things like that.
About the Author: What is the best Zombie Movie in my opinion? Night of the living dead. The original 1968 film. I am a little older and so that was one of my earliest influences. It was a movie that struck right at that base fear in all of us, that the dead can still get you somehow. We don't know how. We know it is an unreasonable fear. But we know damn well that unreasonable or not they will get us. That movie threw that fear right out on the table and then picked at it for an hour and a half so the wound couldn't heal up. That movie also took on racial prejudices head on. A real big deal for those days. Being mixed race that was also important to me. The movie took on the real world with the real problems it contains. That is probably why it was so easy to accept the dead rising from their graves. They started with facts that existed and they only had to skew it slightly to play on our fears. And what young boy doesn't want to cheer the dead guy on to eat his sister?