Hunting Season

[AJ Murphy (DELETED 10329)]

This used to be a nice town. A nice place to live. Harper Rock was a place you could raise your kids right. AJ was raised in Harper Rock and she is pretty damn sure that **** like this never happened when she was growing up.

Her sister left before the zombies. She packed up the kids and moved to Ottawa. Just last night she called, and she sounded like she was practically crying:

"For Christ's sake, Alissa, get out of there!"

"I got a job up here."

"They have cars in Ottawa!"

"I read the news. A guy got shot just up the road from you yesterday. That's where you're raising your kids?"

"The dead are walking, Alissa! The freaking army is out there!"

"Yeah. There you go. They got it under control."

"Mom isn't eating. You're killing Mom."

"What else is new?"

Well, so much for the job. AJ sits in the boss's office at Coleman Autobody, staring at his blank walls. Even his desk is gone. He is pulling things out of a filing cabinet and stuffing them into a briefcase.

"I wouldn't be saying this if I were still your boss, Age. You'd have to be crazy to keep living here. I mean really crazy. Like you need to be locked up, as a danger to yourself and probably others. Your sister moved, didn't she?"

AJ rubs her stubbly head. "Uh, it's more complicated than that. It's a temporary thing. Uh, she'll be back when this **** blows over."

Her boss stops what he's doing, snapping the briefcase shut, and stares.

AJ stares back, resting an ankle on the opposite knee. "You're ******* up, big time. We're like, the only place in town still open. Gary's is gone. Hooper is gone. People still need their cars fixed, right?"

"Age, the only people still in town who have cars are packing them so they can move somewhere else, so they don't die."

"We don't all have doomsday bunkers."

Her boss sours. For years, he has laughed at his cousin, a bona-fide doomsday prepper who lives outside Calgary. Now he is heading out west to join him.

AJ yawns and stretches. "I'll be fine. In a couple weeks the army is gonna have this whole thing cleared out and I'll be sittin' pretty. This is, uh, just a hysteria goin' on. But if you think about it, it makes sense-- y'know? Like, uh, you can pretty much--" She gestures in the air, miming the shape of a timeline. "--track the, uh, escalation and everything of this ****. With the 'vampires', and the quarantine, and now the zombies and all the army ****."

"Yeah. Nobody's saying-- yes, of course you can 'track the escalation', I-- Age, what the **** are you talking about?"

"This is all gonna blow over. In the meantime, I have a gun. I figured more people did. Me and some of the guys are goin' out tonight to see if we can find a zombie." AJ just grins. "Wanna come? One more party before you move?"

AJ's boss-- former boss, now-- stares and slowly shakes his head.