Think win-win. You probably won’t get it, but think it.

Although we had directions and all the PVC piping and netting materials we could ever want, need, or hate at the Lowe’s down the street from the library, creating the gun wasn’t as easy as the directions implied. In fact, it took us all the way until dark to get the damn thing even half made. There were at least three tantrums during the exercise (and only one of them was The Kid having a meltdown) and one half-assed threat of divorce (from David to me when I got tired and cried… just a little).

But by the time the morning light started peeking back through the broken glass doors of the home improvement store, we were looking at a net gun.

It was jacked up. It was ugly as hell. I think some parts of it were held together with only duct tape and a prayer, but it was a net gun. And as our five test runs with it had proven, it would work. In fact, we had caught a barbeque, several lawn chairs and even a pallet full of useless grass seed with it.

Surely those were viable replacements for writhing, biting, highly infected zombies who were just itching to devour our brains, right?

I guess we were tired, because at that point, we thought so. I smiled at Dave as he carefully reset the netting into the contraption. It had to be done perfectly or the gun wouldn’t fire.

“Think it will work?” I asked.

He shrugged even as he stifled a yawn. “I like it better than the stupid pulley system. At least we don’t have to be right on top of a zombie to get him netted.”

I nodded with enthusiasm. “So let’s get out there!”

He stared at me in blank disbelief. “We’ve been up all night fucking around with this, Sarah.”

“I know,” I said with a laugh. “But I have a new toy now and I want to play with it.”

He didn’t laugh with me. In fact, his dour mood was starting to bum me out. “Do you really want to go out and get into a fight with zombies while we’re exhausted? Especially after what happened yesterday?”

I flinched and turned my full focus on him. He was frowning at me, his face lined with worry and upset.

“And just what do you mean by that?” I asked though it was completely obvious to what he was referring.

“Yesterday you could hardly put down one zombie,” Dave said softly. “And we both know full well that catching is way harder and far more dangerous than killing.”

I stared at him. Not since the beginning of the outbreak had he actually questioned my abilities. He had been protective over the last few months, but never judgmental. So this was a new thing and I didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.

“You know, everyone has an off day,” I ground out past clenched teeth. “And you were just barely flicking the blood off your blade when I was done. So that means it took me what, one minute longer to take care of Nurse Betty than it did for you to take care of Ugly Naked Zombie?”

He held my gaze evenly. There was no hint of apology in his stare as he said, “A minute is an eternity, Sarah. A minute can mean the difference between safety and me having to put you down before you turn into a monster.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he plowed on without letting me. “You know that as well as I do. We’ve both seen the same fucked-up crap over the past few months.”

“That’s bullshit,” I snapped, even though I knew it wasn’t. “You are just so against anything to do with this mission that you are willing to say and maybe even do anything to sabotage it.”

“If anything is bullshit about this situation, that is. Come on—” he started, but I wasn’t about to hear it.

I snatched the net gun from his hands. “I’m going out to try out our new weapon and catch me a zombie. You’re welcome to come with me or not. Whatever.”

I turned on my heel and started for the door, but I admit I was listening for him behind me, hoping he’d say exactly what he said next.

“Come on, Robbie,” he called out, frustration still lacing his strained voice.

The Kid had gotten into one of those fake beds they have in home and department stores to show off their comforters and burrowed down in the covers with a comic book he’d gotten from one of his many pockets. I swear, he was like a secret agent with all that shit. Double-O-Annoying at your service. License to pester.

“We’re going,” Dave continued to call back into the unseen depths of the store. “If you want to stick with us, it’s time to mount up.”

I heard a lot of grumbling as I pushed my way through the once-automatic doors, but when Dave came out a couple minutes later, The Kid was trailing at his heels, rubbing his bleary eyes and muttering to himself about crazy grown-ups and stupid ideas.

I smiled with relief as I got into the driver’s side of the van and started her up, setting the net gun awkwardly between the two front seats so one of us could have easy access.

The drive was uncomfortably quiet. Robbie was still half-asleep and jostled around gently in the empty expanse of the back of the van. For once, I wished he would talk so that I wouldn’t have to face the fact that Dave and I were still pissed.

Still when I looked at my husband from the corner of my eye, he was scanning the area for zombies. Even angry, he was dependable and I appreciated that.

Especially when he held up a hand to catch my attention and said, “Two o’clock.”

I followed his direction and saw two zombies about three hundred yards away down the long, wide road we had been following through town. They were hunched over a wrecked car that had flipped onto its side, its passenger windows facing the sky and wheels occasionally turning when the car was jostled to one side or another.

It was a late model sedan of no real description. It looked like every other car on the road had before the outbreak. Just the run-of-the-mill family car that got taken to church and the store and to soccer practice by a distracted mom or a weekend dad.

I know that’s probably disappointing to all you Mad Max, post-apocalyptic junkies who figure the second the shit hits the fan, we’re all going to start modifying our vehicles with flame throwers, but it just doesn’t happen. Or at least, not this early in the game. The Road Warrior types tended to get eaten because they were stupid and took silly risks at the front end of the outbreak.

So this wasn’t a Road Warrior Special, but just a car. From how little rust marred the dark paint, it appeared it had been driven until recently and even taken care of on some level. At least until it clipped the front end of an older wreck that was sticking half out in the road. In one instant, with one mistake, that older wreck had flipped this car onto its side the way it was now.

The accident had to have been recent, not only because of the lack of desert wear on the car, but because the two zombies actually had an interest in it.

See, the infected, they didn’t seem to have any desire to eat older dead bodies. They wanted live victims or ones that had just bitten the dust less than five or six hours before. There was something about fresh meat, fresh brains that gave them what they wanted. And right now they were shaking and quaking, almost with excitement, though the living dead don’t actually seem to feel any real emotion, as they reached in and out of the car with bloody fingers.

“Get the net gun ready,” I said softly as I slowed the car to a crawl and inched toward the pair of them. “And Robbie, wake up. We may need your help if we have uninfected victims in the car.”

The little boy suddenly popped his head between us and stared off toward the zombies.

“You think there might be people still alive in there?” he asked with a shiver.

I nodded. “With all that interest, I’d guess it’s a strong possibility.”

His head disappeared, but I heard him moving around in the back and loading up weapons. As we came to a stop about a hundred yards from the flipped car, he leaned forward and handed me a rifle and a 9mm, both fully loaded. I looked back toward him in surprise.

“Thanks, Kid. You might come in handy after all.”

He grinned and I swear he also blushed, but Dave interrupted our “moment” by maneuvering the net gun into his lap.

“Talk later. Let’s do this,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

I nodded. “I’m going to roll up until I’m as close as I can get. Take the shot and get one of them if you can. One of us will shoot the other and then we can deal with whatever’s in that car.”

Dave nodded and slowly rolled the passenger window down fully. After some grunting, he managed to get the unwieldy net gun positioned to point it outside. He had his hand on the release mechanism when I started to roll forward again, doing my best to be both silent and deadly.

The zombies were so focused on whatever they were eating that they didn’t even notice. Perfect.

“Now!” I whispered just beneath my breath.

Dave shot me a glare (apparently he didn’t need my direction) before he lined up the gun as best he could and released the net toward the male zombie who was leaning over the car. The thing looked almost nonchalant, like a mechanic looking at your car to say, “Well, there’s your problem, lady. Your car’s been swarmed by zombies.”

All the zombie needed was a cigarette hanging from his mouth and it would have been beyond perfect. Until the net hit him.

Pallets and lawn furniture didn’t do justice to what it was like to catch a zombie in a glorified butterfly net. He flew back against the car as the net closed around him, pinning him to the metal.

His feet went out from under him and he collapsed back, thrashing and whining as he clawed and chewed helplessly at the netting. His movements only tangled him more, though, and unlike a human who would probably stop thrashing once the contraption started to twist and hurt him, the zombie didn’t. Soon he was all wrapped up, mangled arms bent at odd angles behind and above him, and legs all akimbo.

Meanwhile the other zombie who had been half in the car window, pawing at whatever was left in there, popped out, his face covered with blood and his red eyes bright with killing frenzy. He turned toward us with a guttural, angry roar.

“Gun!” Dave hollered.

The Kid handed forward a semi-automatic M1A and Dave repositioned himself on the window ledge. He fired off a shot just as the zombie lunged toward him and the creature dropped straight down and out of our line of sight with just a final whimper.

“Go, go!” Dave said as he immediately launched out of the van and hustled toward the flipped car with me and Robbie right behind him.

I thought he might go for the captured zombie first, since I had no idea how long he would stay stuck by the netting, but instead Dave went to the window of the vehicle without even double-checking our quarry (talk about making mistakes that could get a person killed, David).

He yanked away from the vehicle almost immediately and when he looked at me, his face was pale.

“What?” I whispered, nudging The Kid to keep his guns trained on the zombie as I moved to the window myself.

I peeked inside. It was a bloody mess but what had happened was clear enough. A girl probably about Robbie’s age was in the back, her head caved in from the impact of the accident. But by the blood around her mouth and on her nails, it seemed like maybe she had been turned before the car flipped. She had obviously attacked the younger boy who was next to her on the seat, slumped against the door. He was what the zombies had been eating and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Dad had been driving and was apparently distracted by the kids “fighting” in the backseat (I wondered if he’d told them he was turning the car around if they didn’t stop. My dad had always said that and it never worked, either). Their battle royale had probably led to the accident that ironically ended the girl’s killing spree and was why poor old Dad was now half sticking out the windshield, killed by the accident before the zombies went for him.

I guess he should have buckled up for safety like those old public service announcements used to sing.

“Shit,” I muttered as my stomach unexpectedly turned.

See, after three months of apocalypse, this kind of thing was actually rarer than it had been at the beginning. We used to see this all the time and had gotten numb to the violence and heartache of it in some ways.

But after at least a month of only finding victims who had died during a fight they’d chosen to take… well, a scene like this, a scene of a family turned upside down and ultimately destroyed by the infection… it was disturbing all over again.

“I’ve got to shoot,” Dave said softly, his lips thinned with grim determination. “I’d guess they could wake up any time.”

I nodded. There were varying amounts of time it took for a person to reanimate or change after a zombie attack. It was all based on where they were bitten and if they were killed by the attack or just injured. We pretty much knew the timetable by heart, but since we hadn’t seen the accident, there was no way to be certain how much time was left before we would be involved in a father-son game called Kill the Humans.

It’s almost like a three-legged race, but with more blood and screaming.

“Want me to do it?” I asked.

“No,” he snapped as he motioned me away. “Go take care of your precious zombie.”

I hesitated, but Dave put his back toward me as he leveled his gun on the child in the back seat. As I turned away, the car rocked from the first explosion of gunpowder.

The Kid and I both flinched as I moved toward him. The caught zombie was still snapping at Robbie, his fingers pushed through the spaces in the net so that they twitched and closed around air.

“Nice specimen,” I said with false brightness. “It should be worth a couple of showers and maybe some new shoes and some food, eh?”

The Kid glared at me. “How about something useful like grenades?”

I laughed. “Okay, we’ll ask. Though I’m not sure I like the idea of you running around with the ultimate fireworks.”

The Kid’s eyes lit up like he hadn’t thought of that before but then he sobered at just about the same time that Dave fired his second shot behind us.

“Without the thing hanging in the air, it’s going to get tougher to bind it up,” The Kid said softly, watching around me for Dave as he came over to us.

Dave’s face was pale and grim, but he managed a smile and a nod for the boy. “Yeah, but we’ll figure it out. Go get the rope, huh?”

As The Kid scurried off to get rope and a burlap sack for our “guest,” I returned my attention to David. “You okay?”

He shrugged. “We haven’t had to shoot a victim in a long time,” he said quietly. “It just reminded me of Amanda. And Gina.”

I frowned. Amanda had been our neighbor who Dave had been forced to shoot in our car during our initial escape from Seattle. And Gina was his sister. When she turned, I had been the one to take care of her (and Dave afterward), but the particulars didn’t matter. Even all these months and all these kills later, Dave was still haunted. I guess all of us survivors were, we just covered it up most of the time. But there were moments… there were always moments.

I touched his shoulder as The Kid came running back up with the rope. “There are no more sacks, sorry.”

Dave swore under his breath as he grabbed the rope. “Shit. See, we should have taken our time better this morning. We could have cleaned out some supplies from the hardware store, but we weren’t paying close enough attention.”

I winced since the comment was directed toward me, but bit my tongue. “Maybe we can figure something else out for his head. Let’s just tie him up for now.”

Dave said nothing, just unraveled the coil of rope as he stared at the thrashing, hissing zombie. He was becoming increasingly loud as he looked from one of us to the other, trying to figure out if he could reach us and which one he wanted to eat first.

Finally, Dave shouted, “Will you please shut up!”

He was only venting, but to my surprise, it worked. The zombie’s jaws snapped shut and he stared at Dave almost like he understood him. But then the moment faded and he immediately started back into wails and groans of anger and distress.

“Fuck me, it’s worse than a damn cat in heat,” Dave muttered. He motioned to me impatiently. “Now come help me.”

I moved to his side. “So what, grab sides of the net and then try to hold him still while Robbie ties him up?”

Robbie took the rope from Dave and nodded. We exchanged a quick look and then each of us took a side of the twisted net. In one swift motion we flipped the zombie over so that he was face down and less likely to get to us with his gnashing teeth. We wrapped the net tightly around his back, holding him still as best we could.

Robbie jumped in between us, his small hands working swiftly as he tied a loop around the creature. Once his arms were bound tight at his sides, we started to roll him, wrapping him in the rope the same way we had with the other zombie a couple of days before.

The creature howled out his frustration with every spin, biting at us every time he faced us. But he was pretty much impotent by that point. Without him being able to scratch or grab us, his teeth were easy to avoid. The flying sludge from his mouth sprayed against our arms, but his teeth didn’t find a home in our flesh.

I sighed as we finally let him go and he hit the ground with a thud, his face down in the dust so that his grunts were mercifully muted.

“What about his head?” I asked.

The Kid had to sit in the back of the van with the thing that now sputtered in the dirt before us and I didn’t want him to have to dodge teeth the way he’d have to if we didn’t get the zombie’s face covered.

“What about a t-shirt?” The Kid asked, tugging his dirty one off his head to reveal his little chicken-y arms and chest.

“Great!” Dave said with a smile for him.

We flipped the zombie again and pulled him to a seated position. His garbled sounds of anger were muffled as we wrapped his head in the dirty white cotton t-shirt. I hoped he didn’t still have a sense of smell because p-u! That child had some body odor. A normal human would not have been able to survive, that’s for sure.

Finally we got our unhappy guest into the back of the van with The Kid sitting watch over him. And when I say over him, I mean it literally. The zombie was face down and The Kid sat on the middle of his back, holding him still as we took off.

Midday sun filtered down on us as we got back on the highway and headed back toward Kevin’s lab. With the temperature rising in the van, the smell of rotting flesh had both Dave and I rolling down our windows. As I drove, I wished I could put my head outside like a dog and just let the breeze fill my nostrils instead of the rancid smell of rotting, dead flesh inside.

“Put Febreze on the shopping list,” I choked as I got off on the now familiar exit and turned toward the lab.

Dave smiled, but that was as good as it got. I frowned as we came up over the hill and started the last half mile or so to the warehouse and the release of our stinky companion to Dr. Barnes. I could see the sunlight glinting off the slumped metal roof of the place, we were almost there…

And that’s when the zombie got his arm free.