About a Woman

“So what now?” Dora asked of Ned. They were standing at the counter enjoying another pot of coffee. Mary and Alex seemed to be reconciling out on the porch, at one point their reconciling had grown rather loud, then cut off so abruptly that Dora looked outside to see if Alex had the woman in a head lock or something. When she looked he was staring right at her, a shocked expression on his face. The reconciling had grown quieter after that.

“We gotta film. You will make a good case study, we'll edit it up a bit and just interview you, Paige and Mike, Mary doesn't want to be on, I didn't ask Alex, I am going to mention Marge as a cautionary tale to others not to get bit. We will go live in...” he checked his cell phone for the time, “seven minutes.”

“Fuck.” said Jeremy hurrying past.

“He is the Camera man, he needs to go get the gear.” Ned said to Dora's unasked question.

Jeremy and the guardsmen moved the couch out of the way then shot three zombies that were out on Dora's porch. Jeremy ran off towards the van, where they heard another gunshot. John and Kerim hauled Marge's bodies out the front door, they moved it off to the side and put it up against the house.

By the time they returned Jeremy, with Cameron's help, had the cameras set up and Ned had a small mic in his hand. He was coaching Dora, Mike and Paige on what to say, stressing them not to deviate too much.

“This is not news, you know that. It is not entertainment either. It is life or death for hundreds of thousands of viewers. Understand. No fucking around Dora, don't ad-lib or give us any of your crap on the air, the survivors need to know they can survive. We will get your story out and I will go over the evacuation points with Diane and Jim back at the station. You three just look confident and maybe, yeah, get your guns over here, get mugs of coffee, like this is just another day. You can be a little worried, but be worried with a positive attitude. You got all that?” Ned's phone rang and he answered it, “Hello?” He held up a hand to the trio and then said to them, “Be ready on Jeremy's signal.” Then started speaking on the phone.

Jeremy called out from behind the camera, “Okay see the green light on the front? That means you can talk freely, we are not broadcasting, when it goes red it means we are live on the air and don't fuck anything up, got it?”

“Yes, I think so.” said Dora, she stepped to the island to recover her rifle and a cup of coffee, she thought it might be Mary's. She filled it, added cream and sugar and then stood waiting. “Jeremy?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for having my back there, with Mary. You know, pulling out on her and all. Even if you didn't shoot her.”

“Ah, you are welcome. For the record I am glad I didn't shoot her.”

“Why?”

“Well, it was an accident. The shot that hit Marge was from when the gun hit the ground. Sure it was Mary's fault for starting the whole thing, she got all irrational. Marge forgave her, in that much pain, on her death bed, as her dying request. I think I can forgive her too.”

“Too easy, I won't let her off the hook like that.”

“You better, you have to live with her, not me.”

“What? No she is going with you, she said they were.”

Jeremy shook his head, “We will see, huh? But I don't think that is going to happen. We are live in five, four...” Jeremy counted down the rest of the way using his hand and holding up three, then two then one finer, which he pointed at Ned. The red light came on almost the same time.

Dora was so busy thinking “He is good!” that she missed the first part of Ned's statement, giving a synopsis of what happened in the house and how they fought their way over to it. She was not sure if she, Paige and Mike were on camera yet, or just in the wings, but she put a smile on her face anyway.

“Finally when all the dust settled we met up with the other survivors here. One had been bitten and, sadly nothing could be done for her, she passed away and we had to make sure she didn't come back.” Ned paused and it took Dora a moment to realize he was listening to a question from the studio in his earphone. “Yes Diane, the best, the only, way to make sure the zombie stays down is massive head trauma, take out the brain and the zombie does not come back.” Another pause. “We are safe for now, taking a brief rest before we leave the house of Dora Sturges. Dora is here with me now and has agreed to answer a few questions for us.” Ned turned and addressed Dora directly. “Dora how long have you and your friends been holding out here?”

Dora paused, took a slow sip from her coffee mug, then hefted the shotgun up into better view and said straight into the camera, “For about two days now.”

“What steps have you taken to survive?”

“Well Ned, right now we have been using the power and gas as much as we can, none of us think it is going to stay on much longer. We took out all the meat from the freezer and we are making beef jerky in the oven and on the grill. Who knows how long it will take before City Market will open again?”

“Did you have any trouble with zombies?”

“Oh, yes, we did! They were very troublesome. Fortunately my friends, Paige and Mike are really good at killing them. We must have killed thirty of the bastards yesterday and today, well, when my husband Roger came by to drop off his mistress we killed another twenty or so and when you got here, there has to be fifty more corpses out there.”

“Marge?” Ned said, surprised, before he could recover Dora took the opening.

“Yes my husband was having an affair with my best friend, she is no saint either, but he was a rotten bastard. I don't know where you are Roger, but leaving all of us here to die was a terrible thing to do. Why would anyone do that Ned?” Behind the camera Jeremy was making a horizontal slashing motion with his hand, Dora waved at him. Cameron was grinning and trying not to laugh.

“Well, I...Lets talk to your friends here and see if they can give us any tips on putting the undead down? Mike, Paige you fought alongside Dora, how did you do it? There are just the three of you and you have accounted for more almost sixty dead between you.”

“Guns help. At first all we had were table legs and logs. Once we got our weapons it made a huge difference. My advice is to get onto a roof or shoot from higher up, like in a building.” said Paige, “Mike only taught us to fire the guns yesterday and we do okay now.”

“In only a day? Mike was it hard to teach them how to shoot?”

“Dora was a...challenging student. I covered gun safety with them first, then how to load and unload the guns, then finally how to shoot. That is really what got us into trouble. We shot all our ammo learning and the noise attracted a lot of zombies. Then we had to fight our way out of them with just the fire wood out back.”

“Quite a story Mike!” Ned turned back to the camera, “So noise seems to attract them, it doesn't seem that we can get a break does it Diane? The one thing that makes it easier to kill the things also draws their attention.” turning back to the three of them Ned asked, “You have been following the news that we have right?”

The three of them answered 'yes' while nodding, “Does it concern you that you sit less than a mile from the major highway that the masses of zombies are traveling down?”

Dora answered, “Oh no, we feel really confident now, yesterday I was not able to do much to defend myself and my friends, but now, I am sure we can handle ourselves.”

“Even against the estimated three to four hundred thousand zombies shambling down from Denver?”

“Oh they won't all come here, but if they do, well, I guess we will need more ammunition.” Dora answered.

“So you are not evacuating?”

“Not a change Ned. Not a chance.”

“Can other survivors come here if they cannot make it to the safe zones?”

“Only if they want to fight instead of running away. I am standing up to them. If they drag me down I will be fighting to the last. Never give up. Never give ground.”

“Do you feel the same Mike and Paige.”

Dora watch as her friends gave some less than enthusiastic nods back to the question. “Hopefully the soldiers will get her soon and drive them off. We can hold until then.” said Paige.

Ned turned back to the camera, “Well there you have it Diane, this is one group that is going to be hard to dislodge. If everyone is as successful as this group then the grocery stores should be opening up again very soon.” Ned paused to listen to another question and Cameron motioned Dora, Mike and Paige to step away from the front of the camera.

“No Diane, I cannot, in good faith tell people to stay and fight it out. The government has made it clear that that people need to evacuate to give the military a clear firing ground to meet the threat. This is American, however, and if the citizens want to stay and defend their homes and each others, I cannot, because of the things I hold dear, tell them not to do that either.” He paused again, listening, then said, “We have come about as far west as I was hoping to, we plan on looping around to the south and then heading east to get behind the lines, if we can. Unless we run into trouble we should be back at the station this evening. Thank you Diane. Stay safe!”

Ned cut off and immediately sagged back to a tired looking middle aged man.

“You mad at me?” Dora asked him.

Ned looked over at her and smiled, “No Dora, I wasn't sure what you would do and that went...better than I had hoped. We got a message out. Thanks for the interview. Can we use your address later? For others to come here? Can we give it to the military?”

Dora thought about it for a moment then nodded. “Sure thing Ned, sure thing.” She stepped forward and gave the man a long hug, whispering in his ear, “I think I hate Roger now.”

“That is better than feeling nothing, right?”

“I think you might be right.”

“Well, right or wrong, I would hate to be him.”

Dora pulled back from the hug and said, “You say the sweetest things sometimes Ned! Is that how you got Diane?”

“Now, now Dora, don't believe everything you hear.”

Looking over at the camera Dora saw that the red light was still on, she pulled back from Ned and asked, “You still recording Jeremy?”

The green light came on and Jeremy popped his head out from the screen behind the camera, “Recording, not broadcasting. Could make good footage later if we edit it up. Mind if I get you saying your address and if Ned asks you a few more questions for a canned interview we can broadcast later?”

“Sure I will do that stuff. Later...”

Ned stepped up and touched Dora's arm, turning her to face him, “There won't be a later Dora, we are not looping down south and heading east. The five of us agreed to that. We will send your interview in, but depending on how things go, it might air posthumously.”

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This section was last updated on 6 Aug 2009

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