All In A Day's Work

Chapter One

There is nothing better than the smell of gunpowder first thing in the morning. That hint of burnt metal and sulfur is more electrifying to me than the scent of freshly cooked bacon when it comes off the griddle. Bacon is amazing and all, but gunpowder does a little bit more to my libido. It's powerful and erogenous in a way that only young women like me can understand. A woman who kills things for a living. Who also carries a Judge revolver in a holster on her belt every day. Who gets paid to be a badass and protect a bunch of people she's never met.

Yep. That's me.

I am that badass.

The Judge is my favorite gun. It isn't a practical weapon for my line of work. It only holds five shells in the cartridge and takes too long to reload, but those are my only complaints. I love the way it feels in my hand when I take aim and how intimidating I look with it attached to my belt. From the first time I held it, it became an extension of my arm and nestled perfectly in my palm. The trigger is smooth and easy to squeeze. When polished, I can see my reflection in the chrome and a smile comes to my face. Add all of these details to the smell emanating from the barrel after each shot and I'm a woman in love with a gun.

There are worse things out there to be in love with. I'm not talking about a person, although some of them don't deserve an ounce of that emotion. I mean an object. A thing that is only there to provide you with comfort. Some people are in love with cars or jewelry or food. I once met a woman who had an obsession with wigs even though she had a full head of thick blonde hair. Then there was this kid who collected pine cones. Sure, that might be cute if you're into that sort of thing, but this kid when berserk if you even looked at one of his precious cones the wrong way. I'm sure I can think of other things and maybe those two examples aren't strange enough, but that's all I have to work with here. If the world were a normal place, there would be a plethora of oddities to be in love with.

A sound steals my attention away from the digression. I look to the meadow we're guarding. Our watchtower is twenty feet off the ground. We keep the rope ladder pulled up while we're inside. No need to risk an unwanted guest making a surprise appearance. The lights are off and the radio is quiet. We don't need the lighting with the sun cresting over the horizon anyway. That big ball of fire casts a lovely array of orange and blue hues to flood the meadow with beauty. A picturesque scene that makes you almost forget about the bad shit that happened to the world. Twenty or so miles behind us is the Wall that surrounds the metropolitan area and keeps humanity safe. We thrive and grow in those cities. Out here in the wild, we fight to ensure the safety of those behind the Wall in hopes of one day expanding the borders. The best damn job a girl could ask for.

And what exactly are we fighting?

I have an answer. We fight some of the many grotesque, humanoid beasts like the one lumbering through the tall ragweed thirty yards out. The sound I hear comes from the ragged groans escaping its mouth. It sounds like he has a hand wrapped around his throat and the only sound he can make is that gurgled, suffocating rasp with just a hint of saliva dripping down his chin.

It's disgusting, but we're used to it.

Once upon a time, the creature was a man. A tall, slender man with dark hair and tan skin. He probably spent his vacations on a beach somewhere with his family of four—a wife, son, and daughter. He wore a suit and tie to the office and spent his days trading stock to some rich guys he'll never meet in person. Maybe. I'm not sure if that's even how that career worked in the olden days, a hundred years ago. We don't trade stock in New Metro. And this guy certainly doesn't work there.

He is far from his suit wearing days anyway. His skin is the color of the sky after a rain storm. It's ashen and cracked like the clouds. A permanent haze gleams in his eyes that lack the vibrant color they used to be. Patches of greasy, black hair had been ripped from his scalp some point during his afterlife existence. His teeth are black and rotten to match the sliver of a tongue crammed in his mouth. If we were closer, we'd smell the stench of death decomposing on his skin and melded into the tattered clothing pasted to his body. 

In all sense, the guy is dead. His brain and organs no longer function. He doesn't breathe or talk, but has the ability to create raspy sounds like the groans I've grown to hate. Blood stopped flowing through his veins the very instant his heart took its last beat. He was reborn as a monstrous ghoul left to roam the countryside until a person like me can end it all.

Some call them zombies. Others simply call them the dead. I've heard children call them ghosts which hardly makes sense. You can see through ghosts and they disappear shortly after their arrival. Ghosts are a mystery. The monsters outside the Wall are not. Those of us who fight and kill them call them Zees. It's not clever, by any means, but it's short and easy to remember.

The hideous creature is fifteen yards away now. I raise the revolver and find his head in my line of vision. I line the barrel up with the center of his forehead. He moves, but not enough to alter my stance. One deep breath in, a squeeze of the trigger, exhale, and the guy drops. A perfect shot to the center of his forehead and the lights are out. If there were any lights left on in the Zee's head. Odds are; there weren't.

"How are you able to do that every time?"

Cliff Davis, my partner in the tower and my closest friend. He has always been envious of my sharp-shooting abilities. He has a steady aim as well, but tends to miss by an inch or two on the first shot. He didn't join the fighters to help his aim, though. He joined to attract members of the opposite sex. Being a twenty-seven-year-old, good-looking man with Zee killer written on the top of his resume has been known to be a turn-on for most women living near our base of operations a mile inside the Wall. Those young women swarm at him from time to time when we return home after a long day. He'll relive his heroic tales of our shift in the Dead Zone and they'll swoon like school girls, drooling over his every word. I'll sip at my beer and watch in annoyance as he embellishes the day's events until they are more farfetched than true.

It's exhausting.

He's my best friend, though, so I deal with it.

I shrug at him and breathe in the smoke from the Judge and say, "Takes practice."

"Being born with that ability isn't what I call practice, Sly." He argues and takes a sip from his water bottle.

He's not wrong, but I say nothing. Best not to brag or boast. At least not yet.

I lean against the wooden railing and check the ammo in my gun. After that shot, I'm left with three rounds. We ran into a Zee on the drive to the tower. Cliff took the first shot, but it was my bullet that finished the job. Anyways, it's time to reload.

**Thank you for reading the first chapter. Feel free to vote or leave a comment. Have a wonderful day out there!