"Had to take a piss, been drinking since the sun came up."
"With a directional microphone?" Alex asked.
"Oh yeah, let me get that." Mad Jack turned back around and went into the woods.
"He's friggen crazy, Paul. We should just get out of here."
"Still have my ear piece on!" Mad Jack yelled back from the woods.
"Just kidding," Alex replied.
Mad Jack came out of the woods with an impressive array of equipment. "I was a techie nerd. Worked for the State Department before the biters came. Been ransacking Radio Shacks ever since."
Now that the threat was over, Paul walked over to look in the van to see what wares Mad Jack might possess. "Holy shit!" Paul exclaimed.
Mad Jack looked down at the ground. "Yeah, I really like Schlitz."
"Must be twenty or thirty cases of the stuff."
"Thirty-two." Mad Jack answered.
"I'll ride with MJ," Paul said happily.
Alex walked up to Mad Jack just as he pulled off his headgear. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties and as far as men go would be considered on the plus side of the good looking column. Not Brad Pitt but definitely better than Quasimodo. The relief in MJ's eyes was evident. He had been alone for a long time. They shook hands.
"What brings you out this way, Mad Jack?" Alex asked.
"Had an apartment in Kansas City before the city burned to the ground. Been on the road ever since. Seen some things that I can't unsee," he answered vacantly.
"That's the way of the world now," Paul answered, coming up to the duo. "Is that the only weapon you've been using?" Paul asked, pointing to the pellet gun.
"This thing is bad assed," Mad Jack said, plowing some rounds into the side of the tractor trailer. They bounced off hollowly. "See!" he said proudly.
"How?" Paul asked, shaking his head, meaning how had MJ survived so long.
After a few moments when the occupants of the truck realized that there was no immediate threat, they took the opportunity to stretch their legs and to meet the stranger.
Mad Jack could not keep his eyes off of April. She didn't seem to mind all that much but she remained guarded all the same.
"Oh, get a room." Mrs. Devereaux said, lighting a cigarette.
Mad Jack blushed.
"We really should get going," Marta said to Alex. Alex was inclined to agree. Standing in the open was an invitation for trouble.
"I'm glad you're letting me come with you," Mad Jack blurted out.
"Yeah, it's a good thing we said yes," Paul stated sarcastically. "It would have been a bitch treating all those red welts if you had opened fire."
"Which direction you headed?" Joann asked.
"Whichever way you are. I've only been wandering since I left home," MJ told her.
"Oh great, another mouth to feed for nothing," Mrs. Devereaux said.
"As opposed to all you bring to the table," April said sharply.
Paul would argue that they were both dead weight but he was not going to get in the middle of a catfight.
Mad Jack spoke up before things got really heated. "I know how to stop the zombies."
"That settles that. Let's get going," Alex said.
THE END…FOR NOW
BEFORE THE AFTERWORD - MIKE AND RON - 
It was a typical fall night in New England, mid-40's and cool. Mike was enjoying the start of his sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts, which typically involved entirely too much partying and entirely too little studying. His roommate and best friend Paul was at a social function for his girlfriend Amy's Sorority house. Mike's girlfriend at the time, Jamie, had gone back home to North Attleboro for the weekend. As was typical, Mike's dorm room door was open and The Who was singing loudly about Joining the Band over the stereo.
"Mike! Mike! Turn that down."
Mike's face was buried in a Sports Illustrated and had not heard Peter Cables from the room two doors down. Pete actually had to grab Mike's shoulder before he realized that someone else was in the room.
"Hey Pete!" Mike yelled.
"You mind?" Pete asked heading to the stereo.
"No, go ahead," Mike said putting his magazine down.
With the volume down to a dull roar, a somewhat normal conversational tone could be taken. "Hey Mike what you got going on tonight?" Pete asked.
"Whole bunch of nothing. Paul's at some dance and my girl's gone home."
"Me, Brian and Dean are going to get an ounce of 'shrooms;' you want to go in on it?"
"I'm in!" Mike got up, closed up his room and went on over to Pete's room.
"Hey Mike," Dean said. "Want a beer?" he asked, opening up a mini fridge stuffed to the gills with Budweiser.
At that time, Mike wasn't nearly the beer snob then that he would grow up to be. "Sure, thanks."
After a few minutes, Pete returned with a baggie half full of mushrooms.
"Threw in a few for free." Pete said proudly.
"Sweet." Brian said.
Pete divided the piles into four somewhat even, lumpy approximations of each other. "Bon appétit," he said, grabbing his pile and shoving the whole mass into his mouth.
The grimace he made as he chewed them down attested to the fact of why people generally cook these in brownies. Considering they were living in a dorm and didn't have access to an oven, this would have to do.
Mike grabbed his pile and took a more manageable amount, chewing and swigging beer as he tried to wash the foul taste from his mouth. A little card playing and a beer or two later and the full effects of the psychedelics began to kick in. Mike began to feel that surreal detachment from reality. A ring of light pressure formed around his eyes. This was Mike's tell-tale sign he had crossed over into the realm of transcendentalism. The images on the playing cards began to take on mystic proportions and had no meaning whatsoever in the world of the sane.
"What game are we playing?" Mike asked Brian, who had completely broken out into riotous laughter.
"He doesn't even know what game we're playing," Brian said, grabbing his gut, tears streaking down his face. "Oh no!" Brian said alarmed. "Neither do I!" That got the whole room in stitches. Breathing was becoming difficult due to the excessive laughing.
For the next two hours Mike fluctuated between great introspection into the workings of the mind to pre-pubescent humor revolving around flatulence. Now that Mike contemplated the whole process, he thought tripping should actually be called 'skipping,' because that is what you did, you skipped from thought to thought.
Pete, in addition to being the person you should go to whenever you needed to get 'hooked up' drug wise, was also a fairly responsible young adult. He was one of three people on the entire floor who had not had his phone turned off yet. Thus, the knock on his door was not unexpected. Pete was a businessman and visitors were frequent. What was the surprise was who was at the door: Jenny Murphy. She was fodder for just about every wet dream in the building. That she lived on this floor was just bonus points. She was easily on every guy's short list for most attractive girl on campus. Sure, there were other beauties but she ranked high among them. At 5'7", jet black hair and riveting deep blue eyes, she was a vision.
The room which had been near raucous a moment before was now as silent as a convent at midnight.
"Hi Pete, can I use your phone?"
"Sure, come on in," the ever affable Pete told her.
She scanned the room looking at all of the occupants. As her gaze swept past Mike, he hoped that she couldn't read his mind full of all the lascivious fantasies that he had ever thought regarding her. The more he dwelled on it, the more convinced he was that she could do just that. Like his head was an open porno magazine and she was the centerfold looking out at him.