I held up a finger in the hopes that Chloe would give me a moment while I looked up how to weaponize household chemicals, only to find out my phone didn't have a signal.

I looked up to ask her if she had one, only to see her giving me a sad look. "Really? You thought with all this going on, you could make a call?" She shook her head at me. "Let me guess, another nine in mental."

I went a little gap jawed. "Okay, first off. I was trying the internet, which was I admit pretty stupid, but you never know if you don't try, and it might just be my phone. Off the slight chance it is just mine, could you check yours?"

She huffed and started digging through the Bag. "Secondly, my mental score is significantly above 10, but I don't like to brag." She paused her search to give me look with a single raised eyebrow, but let that one go.

An eleven mental score was significant to me at least.

"Finally, that was pretty mean. What going on with you?"

She had just gotten out her phone and tapped it awake when I finished up, then just kind of froze in place for a second. "I... I'm dealing with all this by being snarky, and angry, when I should be hiding somewhere where you can't find me, huddled up in a ball and crying, beet red, with snot running down from my nose.'

"What..." She go a thoughtful look. "We have someone to ask about this." She looked up and asked. "Director why aren't I more upset?"

She seemed to read something, then said "Huh. What can you tell me about my benefactor?"

Those seemed like good questions so I asked the same.

This question has been asked often enough we have made it a priority answer

Your benefactors have left it to me to limit your emotional reactions to prevent suicides.

I'm going to leave it up to each of you when to decide to change that.

You're welcome.

Hashtag. Welcome to the medicated life. We have juice and cookies.

Which I guess is a good thing, since I would otherwise be too busy freaking out right now to get anything done.

So who is my benefactor?

This question has been asked often enough we have made it a priority answer.

You're benefactor will either contact you on their own, or will choose to remain anonymous.

You're welcome.

Genre says. You might as well flip a coin

Again, Soooo helpful.

I could see that Chloe was looking a little odd. "What?"

She gave me a look I couldn't read. "It said I was saved only because I was in the same location as a chosen one."

"What?" No, seriously. "Director, what's a chosen one? Am I the chosen one?"

That go me two-

We have no answer for that question at this time.

Your question has been filed to be answered when time is available.

Secretary Prima. Sorry, but we are swamped here. We're trying to focus on life or death questions right now.

- in a row.

Chloe was looking me up and down with a forced smile. "So I guess you got a different answer?"

I nodded carefully. "All it said was my benefactor would either contact me when it wanted to, or would never bother." I raised my arms up a little. "Strictly platonic hug?"

She nodded and stepped up to meet me as I closed in on her. After holding her for a moment she started shaking, and I admit I did the same for a second or two.

I guess we weren't allowed to be sad, but we could still be stressed. So crying bad, heart attacks okay.

When she sniffled a bit and started to squirm, I figured out that she was done. I gave her a last gentle squeeze and stepped back. "Any luck on the phone?"

She looked at hers and shook her head no before looking toward the back of the church. "Does the old land line in the back room still work, or did it work at all before this, or whatever?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I only used it for local calls, why don't you try that while I go look at my laptop. I got it hooked up to cable internet.

I made it upstairs again and found my computer still powered up and running off the power cord. So while we still had power, it was no dice on the internet. There was nothing as far as having a connection went.

The old TV that could only be used with the cable, didn't have anything but a black screen, and I lacked a radio to check for any stations. At that point Chloe caught up with me with what I would call a bemused look. I looked at her expectantly in return.

"The phone is playing, "My way." The original version by the old guy. I can't get a dial tone or anything, it just played that song."

I informed her that the singer was "Sinatra", and that "My grandma loved that guy. Then headed into the bathroom.

"Ah Sean? I'm pretty chill, but maybe close the door. Not only don't want to touch them, I don't want to see them either."

I ignored her while I tried the water faucets in the now shiny new and clean sink. "Got cold water, but not hot." I checked the toilet and found it working as well, or at least refilling the tank and not backing up on the first flush.

Hope I didn't waste that first flush if it decides to go and get backed up later on.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I came back out to the main room of the rectory. "So I guess part of the upgrade for the Church included power and water as well as fixing and cleaning the place up. But since the water is cold we might not have gotten gas for the water heater as part of the deal. Which most likely means no furnace either."

She nodded and gave me a grim look. "We can check, right now in fact , but I think we may be just trying to put off the whole "Risk our lives fighting the undead." today plan."

Oh yeah. "I wanted to look up something involving mixing chemical we could use, but we got some stuff that would help as is.

The entrance area of the church, the narthex, actually had three sets of doors, with two walking dead on the ones on the side each. They were steadily beating on the doors, along with another three on the middle set. That and another two who seemed to be wandering back and forth.

Our plan first involved lugging over two of the pews and setting them up with their backs facing in to limit how wide the doors could open. Which was going to be just big enough for one of them to squeeze through at a time, and then a third pew to close off the opening between the first two.

Another two pews got set in place with ends up against each of the two corralling pews to make it harder for anything to just push them aside.

After that I emptied most of a entire bottle of buck fifty dollar store off-brand dish soap on the floor between the pews in front of the doors. Lemon scented, or so it claimed. Then all we had to do was open the doors and let in the former people.

We both reached over from each side and I turned the dead bolt to open, then we both pushed down on the latch and tugged at the door handle to open one side of the central doors.

For a moment the zombies outside froze in place as the door cracked open a bit. a moment we took advantage of as Chloe slipped off the pew she had braced one knee on to lean forward to open the door. To instead stand on the side of the left pew ready to beat in some skulls with the Mop of Honor. I scooted down the right side pew with one knee still on it, as I had the hammer and had to lean in a bit to hit the hopefully fallen zombies as they hit the dish soap.

And it worked great, at first.

The zombies were more like skeletons with some very thin withered flesh coating their bones, and some nasty looking clothing from around the turn of the century. The first one that charged in the gap between the doors slipped and fell forward into a face plant as the others crowded in behind him. All of them slipping and sliding as they hit the detergent.

And then we played wack-a- zombie.

The undead had either fell down to one or two knees, down to their butts, or were too busy grabbing the back of the pews to maintain their balance. All of which kept them to distracted to worry about Chloe or me.

As I leaned forward and began smashing indiscriminately at heads, shoulders, spines and arms with my hammer, I noticed they didn't smell nearly as bad as I thought they would. More like a damp earth smell then scent of rotting meat I had been expecting. They were however, going down as easily as I had hoped.

Must be because you can't smell them in a movie that they usually don't make too much of a deal of it in the films and TV shows either.

I glanced up once to see Chloe using her makeshift Jo stick mainly to smash the arms of the one trying to keep or get back to their feet. More concerned about keeping them from becoming a danger then putting them down permanently. However it looked like even a one armed one trying to struggle to it's feet kept the gap between the doors blocked off just as well as a pile of all the way dead ones did.

Then two things happened. First I could see that what looked to be all the zombies that had once been at the doors on the other sides were now all at the front. Which would be great if we were going to make a run for it out the back door. The other thing that happened was I felt a cold boney hand grab a hold of my ankle.

They were probably all gathered up front since two people dragging pews around and arguing about how to place them, and if we really needed to get more, had probably made it real obvious we were up to something up front.

While the one grabbling my foot, who had been the first one in the door, had also ended up flat on the floor. It had taken advantage of being down low enough to crawl under the pew and grab hold of my foot. From there it began to crawl out from below the bottom of the pew still using my leg for a hand hold as I Iost my balance and fell to a sitting position on the pew. As it stood onto it's feet while useing me as a handrail. .

As I tried to get myself back up to my feet, another boney hand gripped my shoulder from behind as one of the ones who had fallen to it knees had reached over the back of the pew to grab a hold of me to pull itself to it's feet.

I tried to tug away the hand on my shoulder, jab the hammer into the face on the one getting to it feet with it's hand now on my knee, and stand up on my own feet. All at the same time.

Which didn't turn out all that great, since as it turned out, the one who had dragged itself under the pew had smeared some of the dish soup along behind it. Right in the spot I was trying to get to my feet on.

My right foot shot out and slid in-between the leg of the one in front of me, sadly to no effect, while my other leg twisted and bent the wrong way to send me, and the one still holding on to my shoulder to the ground in a clatter of bones being dragged over the top of the pew that had been between me and it.

I hit the floor with Mr. Over the Top half on top of me as the other finished climbing to it's feet.

Since it was too close to swing a hammer I pulled out one of the two screwdrivers and jammed it deep into the skull of the one on me, by way of the eye socket. Where it stabbed deep into something still solid in the things skull, and made it go still.

At this point Chloe calmly informed me that the other skeleton, Mr. Slip and slide, had taken a different tactic then jumping on me and trying to chew me face off. "It's going for the other door. Get it, get it, get it!"

Great. Mr. Fancy pants, the smart one, was directing them somehow.

By the time I twisted out from under the first man I had ever penetrated, got to my feet and on my way to the other zombie, she, from the tattered, stained, and now soapy dress, had already gripped both handles, pressed down on the latches and yanked back on them to open up the doors.

To no effect. As I swung at the back of her head with my hammer, I remined her. "Deadbolt. You got to open that too."

A I turned I could see that Chloe was getting overwhelmed, and if it wasn't for them all trying to get to her at once, they could have easily gotten over the pews on my side. Thing were looking pretty bad.

Then I heard a lone voice shouting out something like "Whaaarg!" from outside, a hallow "Clonk" sound and all the undead all seemed to pause for a second.

Don't know, do care, but I think that I got the situation in front of me to take care of first.

I took a running leap onto my original pew, less for drama and more to make sure I cleared the soapy spot that took me down the first time. The thing didn't even budge as I landed on it, lost My balance long enough to smack my knee painfully into the top of the pew's back, and then began raining down the hammer on top of the zombies who were all leaning away from me. With their backs to me and all of them standing on a slippery floor.

As the last of them went down, mainly to me as Chloe was mainly trying to keep them from getting over the top of the pew. As she and I whittled them down a bit, I got a glace at who was taking down the ones outside.

It wasn't human, but it was whaling on the ones still outside with a large tree branch held in one hand, as it's other hand was holding a towel wrapped around it's chest just below it's, well hers, arms anyways. I could see from the way the front of the towel was bulging forward just below "Her" arms.

She was tall, greenish gray, had no hair on her head. Or likely anywhere else on the rest of her body as the towel went down just to the top of her legs and was swinging back and forth as she fought, causing the gap in the cloth up in the front to sway open and closed..

Ears, more like raised bumps in the right spots with some folds and crevasses in them. Tusks, yes. Eyes, pale green in the middle of a black, circular band..

Was she close to a text book orc out of the rings movie? No. She had very smooth skin, symmetrical features and most importantly she looked to be on my side and about to get attacked from behind.

Sean to the rescue. I went over the top of the pew in a leap toward the door, slipping and falling face first down on the still slippery, smashed up zombie covered floor, because the dish soap was still there. The soap took me sliding out the front door along with a clattering collection of broken dead men, right down the front steps, and right into the feet of the two zombies about to gank Orcarella from behind, taking them both down to the ground with me.

Got the split.

Chloe more sensibly came out the the other set of doors on her side. The ones with no slippery dish soap. Then plowed into the last of then and helped finished them off with our new friend.

Who stood there looking back and forth between the two of us, wearing nothing but a dark blue towel with a light blue labyrinth like pattern on it. Then looked back and forth, from me and Chloe. "Dravo, gidjy mas itko seti?"

Great. "Director. Where's the auto-translator?"

This question has been asked often enough that we have made it a priority to answer.

We do not yet have a system in place to translator languages at this time.

Secretary Prima. If they're talking. They are people just like you and most likely just as scared and confused as you are. Take a step back, try not to be threatening and hopefully you can either work things out, or disengage without violence.

I gave the big gal a wave before I started getting to my feet. At least this time it was helpful advice.