by D. B. Walker
OUT
OF THE BAG
He followed a line of uneven footprints in the undergrowth, his brother’s Marine knife in his hand. The knife had gotten Merle into trouble oftener than out of it, but it was sharp and could drop a walker quick enough.
Years ago, after Merle had left home for good, Daryl had stolen his brother’s old BB gun and taken off into the woods.
He hadn’t known what he was going to do with it. He didn’t even have hair on his face yet. He ran till he tasted blood in his mouth. He wanted to be alone, far from his dad’s brutal temper.
He fixed a scampering critter in the gun sight and fired. Just a damn squirrel. In his mind he could hear his brother laughing at him. But by now he was hungry.
He laid the animal belly-up on a fallen log. He opened it up with his hatchet and started to eat.
A twig snapped. He spun around to see a scruffy girl staring at him from behind a tree. She didn’t look as scared as he felt. He yelled at her to get the hell out of here.
She just kept looking at him. His cheeks burned and he closed up the squirrel to hide its exposed insides. He wiped at a drop of blood running down his chin.
Finally, she asked him for the squirrel.
He didn’t know what to do. He squinted at her and held out the dripping carcass. She took it from him and ran off, holding the animal at arm’s length. His brother would have laughed his ass off. But he never told his brother.
Next day she found him in the same woods. Without a word she offered him a paper bag. Inside was a hamburger on a bun with fixins. Well, sort of a hamburger. He recognized the taste. But it tasted better than any squirrel he’d had before.
Now he snuck up on a fat walker wearing a fluorescent hunter’s vest. He pulled its head back and drove the knife up through its chin, skewering it like a camo kebob.
Hell if he was going to end up like that old squirrel.
Whatcha Got Chipotle Cheeseburgers
WHATCHA GOT CHIPOTLE CHEESEBURGERS
serves 4
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 chipotle chile, minced
2 pounds ground whatever you’ve got (beef, turkey, lamb, pig, hamster)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup (2 ounces) grated Cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
4 hamburger buns
Lettuce, tomatoes, pickled jalapeños, as you like, for serving
1 Light the grill or heat up your grill pan. In a small bowl, stir together the mayonnaise and chile.
2 Divide the meat into four patties and season well with salt and pepper. Grill burgers until done to taste, 2 to 4 minutes per side. When the burgers are 30 seconds away from being done, top each with a quarter of the cheese. Let cheese melt, then transfer burgers to a plate.
3 Grill the buns on their cut sides until golden, about 1 minute. Serve burgers in the toasted buns topped with the chipotle mayo and lettuce, tomatoes, and/or pickled jalapeños as you like.
If you just call it a burger, no one has to know what you put in it.
YOU NEED A
MESS OF HELP
TO STAND ALONE
It looked like a damn county fair had crossed this field. The grass was trampled, the mud was churned. The tracks were cluttered and confused. He knew there weren’t enough survivors left around here to make a mess like this.
He could handle a lot of walkers, but the sheer size of this herd made him hesitate. Must have been anywhere from sixty to a hundred. And they were headed the same direction he was.
He slowed up and decided to look for a place to stop for the night. He risked a fire before the sun set. He took the flour he’d saved and made tortillas. A few dozen dead douchbags sure as hell weren’t going to keep him from dinner.
There was no way he could tackle this without help. He still had a woodchuck tucked in his belt. He silently thanked Mrs. Floral Print for the flour and Tabasco.
It was gonna take a lot of hot sauce to face that many biters.
Backwoods Burrito
BACKWOODS BURRITO
makes 4 burritos
GROUND BEEF
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound ground beef
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon ground cayenne
Coarse kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup beef stock or water
SMASHED BLACK BEANS
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 (15.5-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 chipotle peppers packed in adobo, finely chopped
2 tablespoons canned adobo sauce
4 tablespoons water
1 lime, zested and juiced
Coarse kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
BURRITOS
4 large flour tortillas
2 cups thinly sliced iceberg lettuce
1 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1 avocado, thinly sliced
1½ cups crumbled queso fresco
Sour cream, for serving
Salsa, for serving
1 Prepare the beef: In a large skillet over medium-high heat add the oil and heat until shimmering. Add the beef and season with cumin, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Cook until the meat is browned, 5 minutes, then stir in the stock and bring to a simmer. Cook until the liquid evaporates, 8 to 10 minutes.
2 Prepare the black beans: In a large skillet over medium-high heat add the oil and garlic and cook until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the black beans, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, water, and lime zest and juice. Cook, violently pummeling the beans with the back of a wooden spoon until the liquid evaporates and the beans are crushed but not yet a paste. Season with salt and pepper.
3 Assemble the burritos: On a clean work surface, lay out the tortillas. Working one at a time place ½ cup of the shredded lettuce in the center of each tortilla. Top with ¼ cup of cilantro, a quarter of the beef, a quarter each of the smashed beans, avocado slices, and queso fresco. Fold in the sides of the tortilla and roll it up, enclosing the filling inside. Serve the burritos with sour cream and salsa.
It has not been clinically proven, but anecdotal evidence indicates that regular consumers of hot sauce are less palatable to the living dead.
WHEN
THE DEAD
COME SNACKING
He knew there couldn’t be anything still alive on this sad old farm, but he was too hungry not to check. If any chickens had survived this long, they weren’t going to survive much longer.
Daryl cut through the plastic poultry netting around the chicken run and skulked up the ramp to the coop door. He nudged it lightly with the hatchet. All quiet, nothing but a bunch of old feathers and dried-out eggs.
Then from under the roosts he heard a sucking sound. A bluish hand shot out from under the lowest tier and grabbed his ankle. He chopped at it with the hatchet and ran out of the coop, the severed hand still clutching his boot heel.
A biter in Carhartts and rubber boots rolled out of the coop and unsteadily gained its feet again. Daryl had dropped the hatchet and was hopping on one foot to remove the twitching hand from his boot. The biter lunged.
He had expected that, and had just enough time to load and fire a crossbow bolt between its crazed eyes. What he didn’t expect was the other walker that had sneaked through the tear he’d made in the plastic netting.
Daryl grabbed the new biter’s shoulders, spinning it and winding it up in the loose fencing. The more it struggled, the tighter the netting got.
He took a moment to watch the biter struggle like a big angry burrito. Then he grabbed the hatchet and split its face.
No chicken tonight. But he could smell the river nearby, and the poultry netting gave him an idea.
FAST AND FURIOUS FRIED CHICKEN WRAP
makes 4 wraps
RANCH DRESSING
¼ cup buttermilk or plain yogurt
½ cup mayonnaise
>
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
⅛ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
FRIED CHICKEN
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs, halved crosswise
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup buttermilk
Peanut or vegetable oil (for frying)
WRAPS
4 (8-inch) sandwich wraps
8 butter lettuce leaves
8 halved cherry tomatoes
1 Prepare the dressing: In a medium bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, mayonnaise, chives, parsley, lemon juice, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
2 Prepare the chicken: Season chicken with 1 teaspoon of the salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cayenne, black pepper, and ½teaspoon of the salt. Pour the buttermilk into another medium bowl. Working with 1 piece at a time, dredge the chicken in the flour mixture and shake off any excess flour. Dip the thighs in the buttermilk, allowing the excess to drip back into the bowl. Dredge again in the flour mixture, shaking off the excess, and transfer to a clean baking sheet.
3 Pour enough oil into a large heavy pot to come 3 inches up the sides and heat over medium heat until a deep-fry thermometer registers 350°F. Line a baking sheet with paper towels and set a wire rack on top. Fry the chicken in batches until golden brown and cooked through, turning the pieces halfway through, about 6 minutes total. Use a spider or slotted spoon to transfer the chicken to the rack.
4 Assemble the wraps: Lay the wraps out on a work surface. Top each wrap with some of the butter lettuce leaves, the tomatoes, and fried chicken. Drizzle each with 2 tablespoons of the dressing. Fold in the short sides of each wrap and roll up like a burrito, enclosing the fried chicken inside. Serve.
“Wrapping” is a kitchen skill that transfers well to fighting the undead. Rolled in a rug, sheet, or flexible fencing, your assailant will be unable to move, leaving you free to brain it on your own schedule.
LIVE BAIT
A man could keep going on squirrel sushi only so long. Daryl was nearing the limit.
He had finally reached the banks of the Flint. He could either swim it or go south to cross at the bridge, but it was getting late and he had to plan for breakfast.
He took a few feet of poultry netting he’d saved from the farm and stitched it into the shape of a pillow with some twine. He left narrow open funnels at each corner. He placed the last of the squirrel guts inside, and sank the thing at a slight angle into the shallows by the river. He wrapped himself in his poncho and hoped for the best.
There was an audible sloshing sound long before he saw them in the predawn darkness. Three shambling shadows making slow progress along the shallows. They were about to stomp all over his trap.
He sighed and got out his hatchet to defend his breakfast. He wheeled around the tree and chopped the lead walker. Too late he realized his mistake. There were at least a dozen walkers behind the first three, one right after the other like a chow line.
He swung the hatchet in a wide arc to win himself a little space. He caught one of them in the head, but the hatchet stuck hard into a tree trunk he hadn’t seen properly.
In the darkness one of the biters got the drop on him, pushing him forward. The hatchet pulled loose from the tree as he fell and its blade caught the meat of his calf. He bellowed angrily as he rose back out of the water and rained the hatchet down on the remaining biters until nothing moved. He dragged himself back to his camp to rest.
The sun rose an hour later and he limped back to pull his trap. It was filled up with a plate’s worth of red, brownish, and pink crawfish. There was even a blue one.
He figured he probably got twice as many because of his blood in the water. A mudbug will eat anything, and anything will eat him.
Well, almost anything. Even a crawfish won’t eat walker meat, and the walkers weren’t after his crawfish.
They’d never know what they were missing.
Creeping Crawfish Étouffée Toasts
CREEPING CRAWFISH ÉTOUFFÉE TOASTS
serves 4
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, chopped
½ cup chopped celery
½ cup chopped green bell pepper
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon hot sauce, or to taste
1 pound peeled crawfish tails, thawed if frozen (or substitute small peeled shrimp)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Toast, for serving
¼ cup chopped scallion, for garnish
1 In a large saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, and bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Add the broth, tomato paste, Cajun seasoning, bay leaves, and hot sauce and cook, stirring, until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Add the crawfish or shrimp and simmer gently, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Season the étouffée with salt and pepper to taste. Remove and discard the bay leaves.
2 Serve the étouffée spooned onto hot toasts and garnished with the scallion.
If you can’t scavenge bread, this is just as tasty over rice—nature’s perfect bunker food.
PLAN BEE
He limped alongside Wildcat Creek away from the river. He reached a road and saw a handmade sign: “Grumpy’s BBQ.”
Just next to the bridge was a cramped old rib shack with a corrugated tin roof. Inside were the remains of maybe five diners around a picnic table. The shriveled jerky that remained of their meals lay untouched on yellowed paper plates.
“Guess they weren’t the only ones who showed up for ribs,” he said to himself.
A high buzzing sound issued from the back room. He spotted a jagged hole in the wall, bees passing in and out of it.
Finally, he could do something about the nasty gash in his leg.
He tied a bandanna around his face. His reflection in the mirrored beer sign looked like a bank robber. He gathered his poncho tightly around him and draped his head with a screen cut from the window.
He sliced the tops off some beer cans, then filled them with twigs and lit them. When the room had filled with smoke, he set to work.
He cut out a large section of the wall around the hole with his hatchet. From the exposed joist hung an enormous sheet of honeycomb, filling the space between the old wood studs.
The bees buzzed around threateningly despite the smoke. He knew they could sense fear, so he kept his cool.
He picked up one of the smoking cans and held it under the comb. Bees calmed and dropped harmlessly out of it. He heated his knife on the hot twigs and carefully sliced a section of the comb free with the warmed blade.
Then he ran back to the creek, clutching the comb and coughing his lungs inside out. He mashed the comb over the screen with the knife hilt, filling an empty sauce jar from the BBQ place with the pale honey.
He slathered the livid cut in his leg with the antiseptic honey and breathed a little easier.
There was plenty left over to cook up some lunch. But first he had a couple dozen stingers to scrape out of his arms.
Last Stand Skillet Cornbread with Honey Butter
LAST STAND SKILLET CORNBREAD WITH HONEY BUTTER
makes 6 to 8 servings
CORNBREAD
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
1¼ teaspoons salt
1 cup sour cream
½ cup whole milk
⅓ cup honey
2 large eggs
¼ teaspoon baking soda
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
⅓ cup corn kernels, thawed if frozen (optional)
HONEY BUTTER
½ cup (1 stick) softened butter
1 to 2 tablespoons honey, to taste
Few drops fresh lemon juice, to taste
1 Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2 In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, whisk together the sour cream, milk, honey, eggs, and baking soda. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones until just combined.
3 Place a 9-inch cast-iron skillet over high heat until hot. Melt the butter in the skillet, swirling the pan to coat the bottom and sides with butter. Pour the butter into the batter and stir to combine. Stir in the corn kernels if using. Scrape the batter into the skillet.
4 Bake until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
5 Meanwhile, prepare the honey butter. In a small bowl, mix together the butter, honey, and lemon juice. Serve cornbread warm, slathered with honey butter.
Save your heavy cast-iron pans for small groups of undead. For braining larger packs or swarms, lighter pans or chef’s knives will prevent muscle soreness later.
A
WALKING SHADOW
It seemed to him the wood began to move.
On the hill above where he sat by the creek the line of trees teemed with walkers. Not just with one walker, and not a pack, but a swarm that didn’t end, like someone had evicted a cemetery.
Well, I’ll die with my bolts used up.
When Daryl was little, an old man up the road had kept bees. He’d spied the man, “robbing” the hive a couple of times every summer, digging sourwood honeycomb from the hollowed gum stump out back of his field. The old buzzard wasn’t one for sharing.