After returning home from the pit, his eye stinging and puffy, he deactivated the electric fence and left it deactivated, then went inside to wait.

Maybe tonight would be the night.

Maybe tonight he'd just let them amble in and feast on his brains.

Maybe tonight, he'd let go.

It was only a matter of time before they'd notice the insect buzz of the fence was absent. And they'd come for him.

The silence was his white flag, his surrender.

Frank sat heavily into his favorite, threadbare easy chair and stared at the open door. The black rectangle of night, waiting just beyond, becoming a solid thing and gyrated slightly around the door jams as his focus lost its center.

He lit a cigarette and waited.

A minute passed.

Two.

Three.

"What the fuck am I doing?" he said as he pushed himself up and went to the security keypad near the door. He reactivated the fence and heard a moan and a wet sizzle. He couldn't see where it had come from in the darkness but still shouted, "You had your chance fuckfaces," then shut the door and went to the kitchen.

Time to get drunk. Or... more drunk.

He opted for drinking straight from the bottle—cut out the middleman, he thought. The cold vodka burned his throat and he wondered how something so cold could burn so hot.

This type of fate-tempting would happen from time to time. His loneliness would mix with the booze in just the wrong way to get the better of him. He'd sit there by the open front door, letting the cool, clean air wash over him and wait for a zombie to come end it all.

Why bother? He'd ask.

But he would always succumb to his boredom, his fear of death and his absolute devotion to procrastination. He'd shut the door, keep drinking and find himself talking to an old basketball he'd found in the closet, trying to get that whole Castaway thing happening, or jerking it until the sting of the friction-burn was too much to handle or simply drinking himself into a sloppy stupor.

That night, it was option three.

Soon, his eye was feeling better and the bottle was much lighter. His head swam in the milky wash of inebriation and he began reciting old songs. Strangely, the only lyrics he could recall in full were that of old gangster rap groups from the 80s, like, NWA. So, he sat with his back being warmed by the gently vibrating refrigerator (how could something that kept things so cold, be so warm?) and rapped Fuck the Police as he beat out a flouncing rhythm, on his thigh.

That was when he heard the dull thud on the porch.

It took him a moment to realize the sound hadn't come from inside his head. The thud came again, and Frank stood up, still rapping but now in a whisper.

"I'm tired of the muthafuckin' jackin'

sweatin' my gang while we're chilling in the shack an'

shining a light in my face and for what?

Maybe it's because I kick so much butt...

...I kick ass."

The thud came again but this time on the door. One of them must have come over the fence when it was off, he thought. He opened a drawer and found a snub-nosed revolver. He checked it was loaded and staggered toward the door.

After being stationary for so long, drinking and rapping, his body had trouble adjusting to being vertical. It was quite a shock to his system. The three-quarters bottle of vodka that was sloshing in his gut had begun the fiery climb up the back of his esophagus. His mouth filled with viscus saliva and sweat beaded under his eyes.

The contents of Frank's stomach wanted out.

He opened up the door and vomited violently on the porch. But not on the face of a zombie as he had half-expected. The porch, aside from the now steaming pile of disturbingly orange puke was empty.

He heard another thump and saw a rock bounce off the wall a few feet to the left of his head. That's odd, he thought. Rocks don't fly. He leaned against the door frame to steady himself. His stomach still lurching.

Just past the vomit, near the edge of the steps, lay another rock—about the size of a tangerine.

Is someone throwing rocks at my house?

He scanned the darkness, looking for the culprit but found nothing but pitch-black night. How could someone be throwing rocks at my house? The ghouls were nearly immobile—barely able to stand—there was no way they could grip a rock, much less throw it the 60 or so feet from the fence to the house.

"Whose there?" Frank belched out. He spit out stomach acid and wiped his brow, blinking rapidly trying to clear his eyes.

There was no response.

After a minute waiting for another rock, he stepped further out onto the porch as the thought of monumental change ushered in the stiff march of sobriety. This could mean there were other survivors out there. However, he'd forgotten about the vomit. So, when Frank stepped past the threshold, he slipped on the orange goop and landed hard on his ass.

Then he heard the laugh.

It sounded like a woman's laugh. There was a high, jagged lilt to it—bordering between a prepubescent crack and pure hysteria. Whoever it was had found it supremely hilarious to see Frank fall flat on his ass in a pile of his own feed. The laugh had ended as suddenly as it had started, sheering the black night with its pitches and falls then collapsing in on itself like a dying star.

He spent the remainder of the evening unsteadily searching the grounds with a flashlight but came up empty handed. There were no signs pointing to zombie or human.

The fields were empty and silent.

Eventually, he called it quits and dejectedly made his way back to the house wishing he had installed those flood lights to illuminate the surrounding areas. It would've been such a hassle though, he reasoned—and there was porn to watch.

He stopped.

Oh god!

What if someone has been watching me watching porn? he thought. Rationally, he knew it was near impossible, but still a part of him tightened with a panicked embarrassment. He tried to ignore the thought and went back inside, batting at a slew of other nagging questions circling his vodka saturated head.

Could it be a person? A living person? If so, why didn't they say something? Was it a zombie? How could they throw the rock?

Maybe they were mutating—becoming stronger.

But what was the plan with the rocks? Vandalism? Were they trying to lure me out? Was it a weak attempt at an assault? If they were trying to attack and were somehow able to harness their motor-functions, why not drive a car through the fence and into the house? Why throw rocks? It seemed so adolescent and ineffectual.

Frank decided to search for the answers in the vodka bottle. They weren't there but after another half-hour, heavy, dreamless sleep was.

As he'd always said, anything and everything could be figured out tomorrow. Lord help him if that day ever came.