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START
I
Anna started naming them.
Penny.
Bob.
Douglas.
The big one was Conan.
The short one, Little Pete.
There was Sharon Stone, Phillis, Ranger Stacy, Willy and Davey.
They waited for her all day and night, out in the street. All of them infected, itching to get inside and kill us. But not to Anna. She coped by keeping it light. ‘My fans,’ is how she described them. ‘I do what I can for them.’
She loved checking the gates. ‘Hi Guys,’ she’d say, feigning politeness, a high-powered rifle strung over her shoulder. ‘Hello Pete. Not too close now. Bob, get that camera out of my face.’ Bob was a paparazzo. Undead now, but still had the camera around his neck.
Giving them names, playing pretend, it passed the time. We all got a kick out of it. It lightened the mood while checking that gate, which was no picnic. That was the closest any of us got to them, and we had to keep them there. We didn’t have the ammunition to kill them all. We had to let them stand there and wait for their moment.
II
One day, we heard a pop in the distance.
Ellie went to the window. ‘Anna just shot one of her fans.’
‘Is everything okay?’
‘The gate’s okay, but she doesn’t look happy. She’s coming up.’
Anna came through the kitchen, put the rifle down in the corner. She stood at the sink and stared out. She stayed there until Ellie eased her to the table. ‘Sit.’
‘You want me to fix you a cup of tea or something?’ Sally said as she began fixing it anyway.
We watched Anna. The jug gurgled.
‘It was Edward,’ Anna said, eventually. ‘That’s…I used to be married to him. We split up, but… It was definitely him. I had to shoot him. Sorry.’
III
Anna took a spell from her fans for a week. The first afternoon back on patrol, I asked her if she was sure she wanted to go out. ‘The show must go on,’ she said.
A week later, she shot another one, another ex-husband apparently.
Then there were two boyfriends and an office fling.
She kept seeing these people and in the end, we had to give her something else to do.
END
