"There’s someone in there,” Lauren said.

From safely behind some tall hedges, Victor, Lauren, and Clint watched the entrance to the sporting goods store. A couple dozen zombies, bloody and in many cases missing limbs, were pawing at the door. The undead howled in chorus, and the group had heard the siege from three blocks away. The glass of the door was cracked, and it didn’t seem like it would be long before they were through.

“Yeah,” Victor said. “There’s got to be living inside.”

Clint nodded. “So what do we do?”

Lauren looked at him, her eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean, ‘what do we do?’ We kill the zombies.”

Clint shook his head. “I don’t know about this. Assuming I think it’s a good idea to use up our ammo on that many zombies, and assuming I think it’s a safe bet that there aren’t a lot more nearby, we don’t know who’s in there. They could be murderers – what do you think happened at the prison when the dead started rising?”

“You want to let strangers die because they could be convicts? Jesus, Clint, they could be nuns too. Victor, say something.”

Victor rubbed the back of his head, an old nervous habit from when he’d been in school. They both had good points. Lauren was morally right, there was no question. But where survival was concerned – Lauren’s survival, for that was all that mattered to him – how high was the moral high ground? “We need more information. Maybe we scout the back, see if we can get a glimpse of –” here Lauren rose and began walking towards the undead. He leapt to his feet and called to her as quietly as he could. “Lauren!”

She pulled the gun Clint had given her out of her purse and looked back at the boys. “It’s obvious you’re scared, so I’ll help you make the right decision,” she said. And then she turned around and fired her gun three times. Three headshots from fifty feet, and three of the zombies dropped to the ground. Even as his heart beat faster and his mind began to sprint through all possible scenarios, all ways in which she might have just gotten them killed, Victor couldn’t help admiring Lauren. He loved her, loved everything about her. And there were over twenty undead turning from the doors, half-running half-shambling towards her. She backed up a few paces, and then Victor was at her side, and Clint too. They all had their guns drawn.

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It was a slaughter. A firing squad. The crack of their guns in tandem drowned out everything else, and the smoke of gunpowder filled his nostrils, replacing the odor of rot that had emanated from the besieging undead. The freshly-killed zombies made for a carpet of bloody flesh laid out between them and the store entrance. Victor popped in a fresh clip and Clint rammed home a few more shells and they finished off the last couple stragglers. When it was over, Lauren put her gun in her purse, and turned to Victor. She smiled. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

When she took a step towards the store, though, he put his hand on her shoulder and held her back. “Okay,” he said, “but at least let them come out. You know, in case they really are murderers.”

She paused. They lined up, then, the firing squad, Victor and Clint with guns drawn and pointed at the entrance to the store, Lauren just waiting. Victor’s hands began to quiver, and the .45 rattled from the shaking.

After a moment, there was the click of a lock, and the door swung slowly open. He saw feet first, stepping from the store, and these were clad in flip flops. Bright pink flip flops. The girl who emerged along with the slippers was, plainly, tiny. Nineteen, maybe twenty years old, with a jean skirt and a swimsuit top on, she seemed to be dressed for a pool party. A pool party or, Victor supposed, a 110- degree heat anomaly. She wore thick black-framed glassesto match short black hair. She was, he realized, staggeringly beautiful, and he looked guiltily away for a moment. Lauren caught his gaze, and rolled her eyes at him.

She stood there, this girl, in mutual silence for what must have been a full minute before she spoke, her voice a gentle peep. “Hi,” she said. “My name’s Mandy. Thanks for saving us.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Lauren said.

Clint, meanwhile, stood gawking, a look of stunned ecstasy on his face.

“Mandy?” Lauren said. “Mandy?”

She smiled a cartoon smile, blushed a little bit, evidently embarrassed by all the attention, and shrugged her shoulders. “That’s me,” she squeaked.