The zombie who had once been a salesman in a dark suit and tie walked stiffly up the dirt driveway and around a back corner of Neil’s ramshackle farmhouse, spotting the two old people asleep in their wheelchairs up on the porch. Neil herself had built the porch, which wasn't nothing more than a handful of plywood sheets nailed to some support posts sunk into the ground. The porch wasn't no more than two feet high and had no railings around it. If the old people were of mind to wake up and release the brakes on their wheelchairs and push themselves to the ends of the plywood, they could fall off.
But that never happened, which was why Neil felt comfortable being inside the farmhouse working on a neighbor's broken coffeemaker. Her job was fixing small appliances and motors, with some taxidermy done on the side. For years, to help make ends meet, she also served as caregiver for some of the town's seniors. The county's old folks’ home was too damned expensive for most of the families in the community, and Neil's place was much more affordable. All it cost was a couple bucks per day for the old folks to be a-settin' on the shaded porch for hours on end.
Neil was a tough woman, independent, had tried marriage once, to Toby, the drunk, but he had been careless one night and had gotten eaten. After that, she decided that there was no need for a husband, or children, because, hell, if a growed man could get himself eaten, what chance did a helpless child have?
Now in her early 30s, Neil looked a few years older than that, not wrinkled but just tired from lack of sleep. Some nights, when she wasn't ready to lay down, she would sit in the dark, a shotgun across her lap, waiting. With her short dark hair and lean body, and from a distance in her usual t-shirt and jeans, she looked like a teenage boy. But up close, her oval-shaped dark eyes and high cheekbones made her distinctly feminine, although she did nothing to highlight her features.
The old people—a white haired man and woman—snoozed contently. Inside the house, Neil’s dog Earl, sleeping, snapped its head up and started barking as it sensed something outside. What it sensed was the zombie, who by now was banging its legs against the side of the porch as it stiffly tried to negotiate stepping up on it. There were no stairs to the porch, and the only way on to it was to bend a leg and step up, or take the wooden plank that was leaning against the farmhouse and use it as a ramp. That's how Neil got the old folks' wheelchairs up on the porch.
But the zombie, being generally mindless, had no intention of using the ramp, which is why it kept banging its legs against the porch. Through all the commotion---the banging of the zombie and the barking of the dog---the old folks slept. Neil, inside the house, set the coffeemaker down and grabbed her shotgun. She pushed open the screen door and pointed the gun at the zombie.
“I don’ figure you aim to turn tail and git out a’ here,” she said in a raised voice. By law, zombies had rights equal to those of any human. No action could be taken against one unless it explicitly caused a threat. Although civil rights attorneys had argued that the mere presence of a zombie was not enough to cause a hostile response, the courts had found that any act by a zombie deemed to be harmful to a human could be a cause for termination.
Neil knew that the law would find that a zombie in her backyard was guilty only of trespassing, but that once it got close to the defenseless old people, she would have legal precedent to defend them. “Once you step foot on the porch, I will have right to do what I have to do,” she muttered, not sure if the zombie heard her above the barking dog.
The zombie had no intention of stopping. It could not stop. It wanted only to eat. Eventually the zombie lifted one foot and placed it on the porch. When it raised itself up and landed its second foot on the porch, putting it within three feet of the old man, Neil let loose with both barrels. The blast tore away the top half of the zombie, its parts scattering to Neil’s backyard that opened to the cornfield, and its bottom half teetering for a few seconds before falling back into the weeds surrounding the porch.
The old folks jumped awake at the boom of the blast, and Earl stopped his barking. There was nothing more to see here that any of them had not seen before, however. The old folks drifted back to sleep, and Earl--an old dog of mixed and unknown breeding--- turned and ambled through the open door to lay down inside next to the refrigerator. Neil lowered the shotgun and walked over to inspect the porch near where the zombie had stood. No black blood had splattered the porch deck, which was unfortunate because such evidence would make it an obviously justified shooting. But Neil reckoned that the angle of the blood and guts on the lawn and the position of the zombie's toppled bottom half in the weeds at the base of the porch was enough to make a convincing argument.
Neil went back inside and dialed the sheriff. “Nestor? This is Neil. I just kil't a zombie. Yes, it was self defense. Yes, I did issue him a warnin’, but he jus’ kept comin’. I would say that he is with the Lord now, but I don’ think even the Lord would want him. Okay, I'll be here when you get here.” Neil hung up the phone.
She went back outside and sat down on the porch, her legs hanging over the side. Glancing back at the snoozing old folks and pulling a cigarette from her sleeve, she turned back to survey the carnage, figuring she'd have to do some cleaning with the hose once the sheriff had come and left. "Damn zombies," she complained to herself, and took a deep drag on her cigarette.
