Chloe looked resigned as she heard my sarcastic comment and sat down on the edge at the chancel, that one step up stage like part of the church with the alter, gave a sigh and ran her hands through her curly reddish brown hair that was cut just a little too short to be secured with any sort of tie.

"So what do we do now?

I considered sitting down beside her, but...I really did think doing something was better then nothing. "The Director said "Try not to die." and I think I agree with that advice. If those things get in here, I don't want to die. So we should get something to fight with."

I held out my hand to her rather then grab at her again. She looked up at me with a considering look, then took my offered hand as I helped her to her feet. More Symbolically then anything else.

She brought her bag around to her front and began digging into it. "I got a Taser, and some pepper spray."

Well...guess I'm even more glad I didn't try to drag her in earlier. "I, or the Director that is, said they are acting like we think they will act. And I don't remember any movie where either of those two worked on zombies, we can try, but I was thinking maybe something more like a hammer."

Her eyes lit up. "Oh, do you have like a shovel, or one of those metal rakes. I can do some damage with those."

I had to shake my head at her as I headed for the back steps. "Everything like that is outside in the shed. The best I can do is a broom for anything like that."

She let out a disappointed sound as I led her down into the furnace room where most of the old, rusting, and often unknown, to me at least, tools had ended up after I collected them from various corners of the church, scrubbed them down with baking soda, and oiled them. Which she completely ignored to head over to the back corner with a excited "Oh look at you, come to mommy."

What had gotten her excited was a heavy old mop I had replaced with a aluminum one rather then have to use the wretched old thing. Which she grabbed and then began to spin it around and and thump it against the concrete floor. "Nice. A lot more solid then I thought it would be. Do you think the "Context" would show me the stats on my character sheet."

She thumped one end of the mop to the floor beside as she looked up and called out "Information"

After a moment of her face slowly getting a depressed look she finally shouted in outrage. "What is this bullshit? Three stats, that it?"

I had picked up nice sized claw hammer that looked like it was in a lot better shaped then when I had first cleaned it up, as well as being set more solidly on it's handle. Then I tried to see what she was complaining about. "Information."

Physical 13

Mental 11

Social 9

Wait...? "Why do I only have a nine in Social?"

Chloe snorted. "A nine? I got a fifteen. Way to fail at human interaction." She began fiddling with the head of the mop. "How do you get the mop part off, I just want the shaft."

I gave her a look. "You told me quite the opposite."

She looked confused for a moment, then rolled her eyes and huffed at me as she tossed the mop in my direction. "Figure it out, use your magic guy abilities to mess with things."

I undid the latch, slid the now clean and almost fluffy mop head off before stepping over to her with the mop held up in front of me on top of my open hands. "Wield it with honor."

That got me a bit of laughter. "I will, but I need to get the metal parts off the end or they'll catch on things."

"Right, there was a rusted out hacksaw I tossed in the garbage can. should still be there and upgraded back to new..."

A minute or two later she had a five foot long, heavy wooden stick with a metal sleeve about two inches long wrapped around one end. She claimed it was now a jo staff, but I swore to myself to always think of it as the Mop of honor.

For myself it was the claw hammer as well as a pair of long screwdrivers in my pockets. I heard you could kill a guy with one of those if you got them in the eye.

Grabbed a few dozens nails as well. I figured as long as I was going to have a hammer with me, I might as well have the nails to go with it.

I gave Chloe a nod. "Now we need some armor." and headed for the activity room that made up most of the basement.

I could hear her from behind me just as I headed out the door. "What do you mean. Like magazines duct taped around your arms and shins?"

I stopped, marched back into the furnace room, past her, and grabbed a roll of duct tape off the work bench. "Yeah, that too."

As I headed back out and over to the lone closet in the back corner, I glanced over at the windows at the top of the basement walls. "All the windows down here got replaced with glass block after enough people tried to break in and got hurt from the twelve foot fall. Unfortunately that was before someone came up with the idea of putting little pop open vents in middle of the glass blocks. So no no air circulation, but no zombies down here either. "

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She muttered something about that being why it was always so stuffy down here.

I began fumbling trough the keys, I knew I had one for the lock, but the stick guys always opened it up on their own. After three tries with the dozen or so keys I was unclear on what they went too, I finally managed to pop the lock. Naturally with a key I had already tried two different ways already.

"Behold, all the loner armor and fighting gear of two generations of medieval historic recreationists. I think they clean everything about once every several years. Maybe less."

Chloe stepped back from the odor of manliness that wafted out of the closet. While the gear all looked shiny and clean, and new. The smell of soaked in sweat has apparently seeped into the wood work of the small, unventilated closet.

"Ugh! Oh god. Is any of it useable?"

I began hauling out the two big duffle bags. "Weapons? Not really. There made out of some soft wood so they don't break off to a jagged points. But the armor, the hockey gloves, maybe even the hand guards? They can stop a bite at least."

I could feel her stare digging into my back as I emptied out the bags. "Have you been doing this?"

I shrugged. "I can't afford to go out much for entertainment, while messing around with this stuff was free, and it was mostly one on one face offs, so it didn't need much moving around with my bad knee. My formerly bad knee."

She let out a surprised gasp, then hugged me from behind for a moment. "Sorry, I didn't even notice you weren't limping around anymore, and congratulations."

"Also, I would be the last person to try to geek shame you about learning some sort of fighting."

I grunted as I finished laying out every thing.

"Looks like you didn't need to grab that duct tape.

Besides two crappy helmets that no one who could afford their own wanted to wear, there was a variety of armor for strapping onto your chest, arms, legs and neck. All of which had been beaten, torn, and had been missing enough parts to require securing it to yourself called for the several types of various colored and partially used rolls of duct tape that had been needed to rig everything together enough to use it.

None of which was needed now as all of it had been improved. "See anything you like?"

"Well definitely not you, and is that smell really just coming from the closet?"

"Yep"

I got her to try on the smaller and not impossibly bulky helmet, but she just complained about the weight and lack of vision. I didn't like it much either, but I had learned how easy it was to target someone's head, so I was taking the one she had turned down with me just in case I ever had to fight something other then shambling corpses.

Some of the lighter stuff, like the child sized dirt bike vest, and plastic armguards, she did like, because as she put it. "It's a lot easier to get on and off then duct tape and old magazines.

Me, I took some leather arm guards with metal covers over the elbows, and some stuff that strapped around your waist with leg pieces hanging from it that had straps to tie them in place, again with metal covers for my knees.

Chloe eyeballed me as I gathered everything up. "Do we even need these? I haven't heard anything that sounded like they already got in upstairs, and I don't want to wear this stuff all the time." She tugged at the smaller of the two neck guard collars that we had found.

I blew out a thoughtful puff of air. "I don't think we should wait for them to get in, we need to go out after them."

She tilted her head at me as her eye went wide. "Say what now? Why should we go out and fight them, we got this big brick building with two inch thick doors. Maybe after we run low on food or something, but why the hell would we go after this soon?"

I looked up at the ceiling. "The church is on a high point now, with a five story bell tower. People are out there, lost and confused." I turned my head to stare her in the eye. "If they see the tower, they're going to head here, and I don't want somebody walking into that mob out there without any clue of the danger."

She pursed her lips for a moment. "Yeah I get it. How are we going to do this.'

I started heading for the hallway leading to the southern stairs on the far side of the church from the graveyard. "First I'm going to get my leather jacket since it's thick enough to stop a bite, I hope, then I'm going to strap on everything else over it."

As we began to head up the stairs, we could hear something begin beating on the doors on the opposite side from the graveyard. We looked at each other and began to race up to the doors, with me getting to the peephole first.

"They must have came around the building, they must be trying all the doors. That doesn't strike me as your typical slow mindless zombie."

Chloe looked down at the floor with her lips twisted off to one side. Her "Thinking" look. "You get armored up, I'm going to check out the windows and see what they're doing."

I gave her a nod and took off, racing up the back stairs to the rectory and for the first time since had I moved in, got up there without any pain in my knee. The priest's chambers were up on the second floor behind the alter, with a small kitchen, a bathroom and two good sized bedrooms.

I had thought about offering the second one to Chloe since I knew she could use a free place to live, but I had only known her for two months, and it had only been five weeks since I tried to hit on her. I had figured to give it another month before bringing it up.

So, jacket, collar, leg guards, arm guards, leather work gloves, the elbow length welding ones, and finally, my boonie cap.

The hat wouldn't stop a bite, but one of them might bite it first and have it come off in their teeth before they got all the way through. Which I thought might be better then them going straight to chewing on my scalp.

Heading back downstairs and into the neve I could hear the sound of boney fists now beating on all three sets of doors. Considering how thick the doors were, I was pretty sure their hands would give out first.

Chloe glanced over to me from the windows off the front steps from the front of the church and waved me over. "I counted three at the back door, seven on each side, and eight out front. And then we got Mr. Fancy pants out front. She waved me over to the window.

The one standing out on the front side walk did in fact have some fancy pants. Grimy, riddled with holes and stained with decompensation, but still a fancy yellow and blue checkered pattern of pants from some bygone age when men, young men at least, wore stuff like that other then at a golf course. Unless this guy was big enough of a golf fan to be buried in the uniform. No, his hat was a fedora, no pom pom cap for him.

Guess zombie clothes don't get fixed up as a Upgrade, I guess because the undead are supposed to dress like crap.

He was however, standing out there like he was in charge. I could tell by the way he wasn't doing any of the work. He also looked a bit smarter then the others, since he had turned his head and was now looking up at the same window I was looking out of of, and was slowly getting a look of unbridled anger on his face.

I ducked down and made a manly sound of concern. Chloe didn't buy it as all that manly.

"What, what happened? Why are you freaking out?" She tried to get a look outside, I pushed her away with a shove right into her hips. "Sean! What the hell?"

"He was looking right at me and looked pissed. I don't want him to see you, and you get triggered when guys grab at you, so that was shove of respectful concern, sorry."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Just use your voice, like a adult. I know you only got a nine social, but read the room."

"Bleah..." She grinned at my response. "Words Sean, words."

Hmm... "So if we got a smart one in charge, they really will get in at some point. Maybe not by beating on the doors with their fists, at some point they just got to try something else."

I looked over at her. "So we have to do this today, and before it gets dark."

I glanced out the window again to see the now bright blue sky above. "If it does get dark. Wasn't the sky green earlier?"

Fortunately we did have some time to plan. And a assortment of common household cleaning products in commercial sizes.