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entrance convenience store, Leslie found a .22 and ammo in the backseat of a truck—thank God, she’d thought, for that stupid fucking law that allowed any asshole to tote in a national park. Suddenly, their excursions into “busier” sections of Yellowstone became infinitely safer. Entertaining, in fact. Trailing a couple mumblers, they’d wait until they reached a clearing. She would plant herself as a leather-clad and safety-glassed Leslie, clapping and yelling to draw their attention, walked to one side of the open area. If the pair had lined it up right, she’d have easy head shots with plenty of time to refocus in between.
     
    As commonsensical as it now seemed, the head shot thing hadn’t come easy. She and Leslie had both seen plenty of horror movies, but a Savini make-up job didn’t quite compare to the real-life version of a blood-drooling dead dude intent on chomping your insides. In her ever-present initial panic, she’d blasted off arms and legs, dumped round after round into “vitals”— the very idea was a joke now— until eventually she realized, really, to aim for the head. Hollywood had been right about that. Motion-activated doors and cheese from a tube: was there anything writers couldn’t predict?
     
    The quarter-sized holes she thereafter began ripping through folks’ skulls never really bothered her, mostly because the stumbling, groaning mumblers chasing after Leslie didn’t seem much like folks anymore. More like gooey targets. When The Shit had been hitting The Fan for about a month or so, it even dawned on her that “killing” people was as much of a job as selling park passes had ever been. To break the monotony, she made a game of it. Individuals were one point. Because of their size and relative speed, little kids were five. Douchebags— the park visitors who’d died with gelled hair and artistic skull prints on their shirts— were 10. Sometimes she’d see just how close a mumbler could get to Leslie before popping it; she gave herself an extra point for any splatter on his face.
     
    Once, just to fuck around, she’d trained the sights on Leslie after the last kill of the day. The safety was still off, but her finger wasn’t anywhere near the trigger. He’d screamed at her, nonetheless.
     
    “What the hell, Valerie!” he’d gasped, breathless from running to her. “Why would you do that?”
     
    He was livid. Spittle at the corners of his mouth. A beard of scant brushstrokes across his face. So thin, so fragile. She felt the familiar gut punch of pity and handed him the rifle, though she knew he wouldn’t do anything with it.
    ***
    They passed October and part of November making corpses into corpses , melting into a rhythm of regularity that broke only with the first major snow. Volatile temps meant either mud or foot-deep drifts; both made for slow going, and they quickly lost their major advantage— after one blizzard, they were as sluggish as their targets.
     
    In addition to strategy, the change in seasons also necessitated a change in wardrobe. Val’s mental map of the area produced stacks of cheap-cotton sweatshirts festooned with moose cartoons and pink track pants sporting YELLOWSTONE in bold across the ass, but standard tourist fare wasn’t doing much to keep them warm after five-mile hikes.
     
    Sipping coffee one particularly frigid morning, Leslie broke from his usual monkish introspection by squeaking into the table:
     
    “I know where we can get equipment.”
     
    Val choked a little on her Pop Tart— she was used to mornings of silence. Demanded them, in fact. This was new.
     
    “Where? What?”
     
    “Ranger station. Coats, first aid, maybe some firearms.”
     
    Firearms , she thought. He talks like a bad Cops episode.
     
    “And how do you know this, Leslie?”
     
    “Just remembered.”
     
    She nearly prodded a little more but caught herself. It’d just make him feel important. After all, she reasoned, he’d known about the