Profits are everything. But to get them you have to catch a zombie.

Although our ideas for how to catch a zombie were pretty much… um… lame, we still rolled out of the mansion the next day with an action item list. This was my idea, of course, because I flipping love lists. Even in the midst of zombie hell, I still made them and checked them off. Dave shook his head at me, but whatever, I’m organized… bite me.

Unless you’re a zombie. Then don’t.

After a quick trip to the hardware store (with a list so we wouldn’t forget anything, thank you very much) we were ready to try our hand at a new offshoot of the extermination game: animal (zombie?) control.

So here was our big plan, and yes, it is straight out of the Wile E. Coyote playbook. Step one: obtain a net (check!). Step two: set up net in a high-volume zombie area. Step three: stand near the net to lure zombie/zombies. Step four: trigger net and voila!

A zombie in a net.

Like I said, lame. But there’s really no instruction manual on catching zombies (until we wrote one a few years later, but that’s another story) and I still say it was better than the “dig a hole and cover it with sticks” idea we had discarded the night before.

What can I say? We were tired and apparently watched too many Looney Tunes as kids.

But now we stood in the parking lot of the once very high class and snooty Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale. Well, I stood in the parking lot. Dave was up on the overhang that was part of the old entrance. He’d once been afraid of heights, but after months of running from monsters, old fears were sort of forgotten. Seriously, a zombie apocalypse is practically therapy for that petty shit.

Anyway, the overhang was made of a long, curved piece of steel and corrugated metal that was now covered in dirt and sand which obscured the sign that said SCOTTSDALE on the wall above it. The doors below, which led into the main mall, were once made of glass but had long ago been broken by zombies, looters, and people just trying to find a place to hide or sleep in this new world order.

Two marquis stores buffered the entrance. A Nordstrom (where that rich zombie woman from the mansion the night before once shopped, no doubt) and possibly a Crate and Barrel, although I couldn’t tell because all the letters on the sign had crashed to the ground during the bombings and now the shell of the building was only left with a capital C, two of the letter a, and one lowercase r to identify it.

“You know, I think I’d shop at a store called Ca-ar!” I shouted up to David. “What do you think it would sell?”

He shot me a look over the ledge. “Sarah—”

“Something Norwegian, I bet,” I continued.

“Sarah…” His tone was a mixture of annoyance and amusement.

“Like Ikea.”

He leaned a little further over the ledge and his glare silenced me. “You know, just because I can manage heights now, doesn’t mean I like them. Stop distracting me.”

I shook my head, but obeyed. I had to focus while I made another patrol scan all around the area anyway. The mall itself was half-collapsed, so I wasn’t too worried about it, especially since the last half an hour of our being here shouting at each other hadn’t brought out any zombie mall-walking groups looking for an easy meal.

Behind me, a few zombies roamed at the edge of the deserted parking lots. Most of them hadn’t seen us yet (their eyesight, not so good. Must have to do with the rotting), but when I checked through my rifle scope it seemed like one or two were shambling toward us rather than aimlessly in circles. I could only hope we’d get set up before they came roaring into our space. If we weren’t, we’d have to kill them and the noise and distraction of that would probably bring more coming.

It would be a pain in the ass if nothing else. Really, the best scenario was if we could just get one or two zombies coming at us rather than a crowd.

But that didn’t happen very often.

“Okay,” Dave said as he scootched to the edge of the awning and swung himself down onto the roof of the van. “I think we’re all ready up there.”

After he joined me on the ground, we backed up and looked at our handiwork. I’d love to say it was a really well put-together thing, destined to become the gold standard for this shit, but it wasn’t. The whole system was pretty shabby, but it was what we had.

I sighed. “So basically I’m going to try to get one of them to stand on the net and then you’re going to drop the weight and pull them up over the pulley system you created with that tree and the awning.”

He nodded without looking away from the trap. “You’re right except that I’m going to lure the zombie and you’re going to launch the pulley.”

I turned toward him. “What? No way!”

He grunted in that non-committal caveman way. Okay, so David can be a little protective of me. Even now when he knows I’ve got the chops for zombie killing, he still tries to shelter me. I love the guy for it, but it drives me nuts, too.

“There’s only one way to solve this,” I said with a sigh as I held out my fist toward him. “Rock-Paper-Scissors.”

“You want to Rock-Paper-Scissors for your life?” he asked after a slight pause.

I nodded. “We’ve done it for worse.”

“Oh. My. God,” he began, but I shook my head.

“No arguing. Time’s a-wastin’ and zombies are a-comin’. Now let’s go, best two out of three.”

Ten minutes later, Dave was back up on the roof and I was standing beside the net, staring up at him as I shielded my eyes from the bright sun.

“So I’m just going to try to loop one in, okay?”

He nodded. “I’ve got my rifle ready though, just in case you need coverage.” He hesitated. “Good luck. Be careful.”

I gave him a little wave. “Thanks, babe.”

With a deep breath, I turned back toward the parking lot. Now I just needed a zombie. Surprisingly, a zombie was going to be the hard part.

I stared out across the big lot. The slowly shambling zombies were still, well, shambling, but they were still too far away to get to them without attracting the attention of the five or ten more just aimlessly staggering around farther out.

I set my rifle down so it wouldn’t weigh me down when I had to run and checked in my waistband to be sure my 9mm was still there. The knife in the sheath at my thigh would also have to do, though I hated the idea of a close-quarters fight with one of the infected.

With that done, I started walking around the perimeter of the mall. And to draw the attention of any zombie/zombies lurking around without making too much noise, I began to whistle. First I whistled a little Killers, then some Bon Jovi, but it wasn’t until I moved on to 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” that I heard a faint rustling in some overgrown desert shrubbery around the corner from the mall entrance.

“More of a hip-hop fan, eh?” I asked as I edged closer. “C’mon, little guy. C’mon out and let Auntie Sarah have a look at you.”

I asked for it. With a wet, hollow grunt, a zombie burst from the bushes. He was holding a human hand in his teeth like a dog and I flinched. I guess we’d been too late to help his latest victim.

As the hand dropped from his mouth, he looked at me and I stared at him. He was no “little guy.” This guy had been big in the world before infection. Maybe even a bodybuilder or something. He was tall and broad-shouldered and once his chest had probably rippled with muscle.

I say once because the thing about death is that your muscles and tissues break down. This is true for zombies, too (though they do seem to top out on rotting after a week or ten days—again, don’t know why and please don’t tell me). With this guy, the decomposition had resulted in his muscle fibers drooping and pulling until they ripped away from the bones. Now they hung from gooey, fleshy hunks of meat like an ill-fitting shirt.

“Oh, buddy,” I said with a cluck of my tongue. “Not a good look for you.”

The zombie tilted his head with a questioning whine and smelled the air like they sometimes do. His rotting lips spread tightly against his teeth and he let out another groaning wail.

“Well come on!” I said, using a voice like I’d use with a puppy or a toddler as I started backing toward the front of the mall. “Come and get me.”

I didn’t have to ask twice. The zombie lurched out of the bushes, oblivious to the fact that some of the hard, dead branches had stuck in his legs and now tore loose and stayed in his flesh like weird porcupine quills as he walked. If it wasn’t so gross, it would have been pretty comical.

At first his movements were slow, but as I got further out of his reach, his hunter instinct kicked in and he began a herky-jerky jog.

That was it, all I needed to get my ass moving. I took off toward the front entrance, shouting, “I’ve got one!”

As I careened around the corner, I looked up. Dave was standing on the awning, one hand on the pulley mechanism to launch the net up around the zombie and one hand balancing the shotgun against his thigh, ready to take the shot if I needed him.

“Fuck, he’s a big boy!” Dave screamed back down at me.

I jogged toward the netting, and only once I reached it did I flip around so I faced my quarry again. He was pretty fast for such a big dude and was already just fifteen feet away.

“Get ready!” I urged.

“I’m on it,” came the reply from above in Dave’s most tense voice. He was not happy about this and I knew it.

But it didn’t matter, at least not for now. As I waited for the zombie, barely inching back to entice him with little shuffles, the big lug stepped onto the net.

“Now!” I screamed.

Up above I heard Dave doing something, but the net didn’t budge. It didn’t move even as the goliath of a zombie strode toward me like fucking Godzilla to my helpless Japanese city.

“Any time, dear,” I cried, my wide eyes glued on the monstrosity reaching for me straight out of some 1930s horror movie.

“I triggered it and—”

Dave hadn’t finished the sentence when the big infected creature stepped off of the net. The moment he was clear, the pulley system whizzed into life and lifted up to catch nothing but air. It kind of reminded me of those arcade claw machine things with the cheap stuffed animals I’d tried to win as a kid. Only I didn’t die when I didn’t get one.

“Shit, there’s a delay in the mechanism,” he called down.

“You think?” I called back as I started to run again. “Reset and I’ll try to bring him around for a second pass.”

I jerked from one side to the other as I tried to determine the best way to go. I was pretty sure I could get the big brainless monster to follow me, then all I had to do was make a big circle in the parking lot until Dave was reset and we’d try another—

Before I could finish the thought there was a wet thunk and suddenly the blade of a machete stuck out of the zombie’s head right between his eyes.

The massive bastard teetered for a moment, his rotting eyebrows knitted together like he had a question on the tip of his tongue, then he collapsed forward on his knees and finally face planted on the drive, his skull almost cleaved in half from Dave’s blade.

I stared at his dead body for a long moment, almost in disbelief. Then I slowly lifted my gaze to the awning. Dave stood on the edge, his rifle trained on the dead body before me.

“What the hell?” I called up as he turned the weapon away from me. “What the hell, David?”

He shrugged and looked anything but apologetic. “Look, it didn’t work and until I figure out the timing on the pulley, I won’t take the risk with your life that he’d catch you while you were running.”

“Shit, David, I could have jogged that prick around the lot for the whole day and kept trying to catch him.”

I threw up my hands and kicked the zombie to expel some of my frustration. My boot hit soft flesh with a sickening thunk. Great, now I had mung on my boots and even though that was my own fault, I’d decided to blame David for it, too.

My husband turned his face. “Yeah, and eventually the living dead coming over here from the edge of the parking lot would have reached us and then what?”

I stomped my foot (spraying ick on the pavement around me) and clenched my fists straight down at my sides.

“Well, first, the ones out there are lurching, not running, and you know they wouldn’t have started running until they could smell me, which would have taken half an hour at least. And when that happened, then you could have killed some of them. But shit, man, at least give the plan a chance. We’re never going to catch one if you give up and start throwing machetes the second a zombie looks at me cross-eyed.”

“I’m not even sure fucking catching these freaks is a smart idea,” he said with a deepening frown. “Is it really worth the risk?”

“Christ, stop being such a girl!” I snapped. “I mean, we could really do something and you’re ninnying around!”

There was a long silence from above and then Dave softly said, “Well, excuse me for trying to look after you.”

That shut me up. For a long moment we just looked at each other, kind of like the big zombie and I had around the corner. But this stare was waaaay more uncomfortable. Finally, he turned away.

“I’ll reset the pulley. From what I saw, I think I might have figured out the timing on it.”

I nodded as I turned back toward the parking lot with a sigh. I didn’t like fighting. We’d done enough of that in our life B.Z.

I guess I should have apologized or maybe gone up on the roof to talk it out with him, but before I could make any decisions about my husband, I saw something off in the distance that caught my eye. A flash of movement that was too quick and certain to be from a zombie.

I dropped down to grab my rifle and leaned it across my lap as I stared through the scope. I scanned the distance for the movement again and when I found it I nearly fell over.

“Holy shit!” I cried as I staggered to my feet. “Reset it, reset it!”

“I am,” Dave grunted from above. “Almost done, what’s your rush?”

“There’s a kid!” I cried as I trained my rifle on the scene unfolding across the lot. “And he’s got zombies on his tail.”

“What?” Dave asked as the netting dropped back on the pavement. He lifted his own gun and stared at the lot.

We both watched as the kid, maybe about ten or twelve—it was hard to tell from this distance—sprinted through the lot toward us. Behind him were two zombies, doing that run that is so Goddamned disturbing, no matter how much time has gone by and no matter how many times you see it. Seriously, the dead shouldn’t jog.

Although, to be fair, before all this started I was of the belief that I should never jog either unless something was chasing me.

So then things started chasing me.

But I digress. The poor kid was pretty athletic, actually. The zombies were still at an impressive distance behind him and he wasn’t allowing them to catch up.

“I’ve got the lead in my sights,” Dave said from above. “I’m taking the shot.”

I nodded and watched in my own scope as the explosive sound of my husband’s gun firing was quickly followed by the lead zombie behind the little boy dropping to the ground in a pile of brains and blood.

The child jerked a little in surprise, but quickly turned toward us. Smart kid, running toward the people who were your saviors. Trust me, in a post-zombie world, that didn’t always happen. People were a bit “Mad Max” at this point, a little wary of others who didn’t come from their own tribe or camp.

“I don’t have a clear shot of the one behind,” Dave said as he slid the action on his rifle. I heard the plunk of the empty shell hitting the mall roof.

“Just wait…” I said, hardly able to catch my breath from the excitement. “I can get him, but maybe we can use the kid to catch him instead.”

Dave jerked as he looked down at me. “Are you nuts?”

“Look, he’s perfect,” I said as I stared through the sight again. “Not too big, not too small—”

“Are you talking about the zombie or the terrified child?”

I ignored Dave’s outrage, too focused on the idea of capturing a monster to listen to him.

“Grab the rope, they’re almost here.” I moved behind the net and motioned to the kid. “Come on! Come right to me!”

The little boy didn’t need to be told twice. He rushed toward me and it was only from the closer distance that I noticed he was carrying a cute little .38 Special, just like a boy playing cowboys and Indians. Only I had a hunch his weapon was real and the zombie wasn’t playing.

“Shoot him, stupid!” the child screamed as he ran past me.

I readied my rifle to do just that, but as the zombie approached, his gaping mouth biting and his hands clawing, this time Dave’s timing was perfect. The net slung up under the rotting living corpse and sent him flying up in the air, his arms and legs akimbo as the trap closed around him and left him dangling from the awning.

The little boy and I stood below him, looking up as he clawed at the netting, chewing at the rope and snarling and spitting down at us. I tilted my head as I examined him closer. Was that a damn mohawk? Sheesh, kids these days.

“Why the fuck didn’t you shoot him?” the child finally said, and suddenly the little pissant was slapping at my arms, pummeling me with his tiny fists.

“Hey!” I cried as I slapped back out of instinct. I might have been a zombie killer, but our hands smacked like two stupid girls fighting over a washed-up singer on a reality show. “Why didn’t you? You had a gun!”

The little boy stopped slapping me and tossed the pistol aside. “Mine’s empty, dummy. Like your head. What, did the zombies already get to you, dumbass?”

“Ha, ha,” I said with a sneer.

Dave climbed down onto the van and jumped to the ground between us. “Okay, children, enough. Sorry we didn’t shoot, kid, but we were trying to catch this fucker.”

The little boy glared at us again, but this time his expression said he thought we were cuckoo. Not that I blamed him really, although I was still thrilled to look up and see a zombie swinging from the overhang.

“Catch one? You two are crazy.”

“That’s probably an understatement,” I said with a grin for David.

The little boy didn’t smile back. Instead, he reared back and kicked me straight in the shin with all his might.

“You still should have shot it.”

And that was how we met Robbie, otherwise known as “The Kid.”