The team and I stood stiff in the middle of the dirt road, quickly preparing our assault on the advancing horde.

  “Okay, on three…” Rachel said as we both gripped our weapons. “One, two…”

  The town crier clambered over, one arm outstretched and the other still furiously bell-ringing – and I could wait no longer.

  “Three!” I screamed out, cutting off Rachel’s countdown.

  With an almost warcry-like yell, I charged at the town crier, holding my crowbar like a battering ram as I aimed it towards his head.

  “SQUELCH! CRUNCH! CRACK!” The crowbar went straight through the town crier’s face, snapping off the skull and leaving only the jaw on his neck. Blood spurted like a small fountain as I pulled back the crowbar, which was now slick with brain matter. As the head chunk hit the ground, the trefoil hat atop it toppled over. I bent down and picked it up, sticking it under my arm and noticing it had some heft to it.

  Looking back at the team, I realised I was the only one who had gone forward. It must have been adrenaline that had caused me to act. I was feeling protective more than ever, now that I had my own little family to protect – I wasn’t going to let an undead shonky park actor get in the way of our future.

  The horde of zombies slowly progressed towards us as I called forward the team.

  With a quick whistle and hand gesture, I asked Rat to run around the horde. He dropped one end of his rope and started running, Jagger picking up the other end. The two dogs managed to circle about a third of the horde and then came together, pulling the rope behind them as they ran back towards us. The zombies caught in the circle came tumbling down, the rope ripping straight through their kneecaps, leaving them pulling themselves along the ground. With the dogs now back behind us, I pulled out my bow and arrow and started firing into the crowd as Rachel dispatched the sporadic knee-less crawlers with her steel caps.

  “PIEW! PIEW!” Arrows shot from my bow, taking out zombie after zombie. This time, I decided to keep my eyes open. Between Rachel and I – and, of course, the dogs’ efforts – we had managed to thin the crowd down to about ten.

  “PIEW! PIEW! TWANG!”

  “Ouch!” I cried out as my bowstring snapped, rapping me across the knuckles. I dropped the bow to the ground and stood back momentarily, shaking my hand to alleviate the pain.

  Rachel and Artemis moved forward, armed with a hatchet and sharp claws respectively.

  They worked from left to right, slashing and clawing their way through the crowd. After a couple of chops, Rachel was surrounded, with one of the group splitting away and coming at her from the left. Forgetting my hand, which had immediately blushed red with a huge blood blister, I grabbed out my whip and cracked it in the air as a distraction. The zombies all paused momentarily.

  “Boys! Attack!” I called to the dogs, who sprinted over to the rogue zombie. Rat dove at the monster, bouncing off its torso like a trampoline as it toppled to the ground. Following behind them, I ran over and booted the fallen zombie’s head, destroying it with one kick of my pointed cowboy boot. Rachel, the animals and I then dispatched the remaining zombies, leaving a pile in our wake.

  “Phew!” I sighed. Everyone – bar Cooper, who had just watched the battle while perched atop the nearby signpost – puffed and panted as we stood, weary and bloodied, but thankfully largely uninjured.

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  “Is everyone okay?” I asked. “Rachel, let me do a health check.”

  The health-check interface opened and I quickly examined everybody one by one, administering medication or first-aid as it came up. Rachel, of course, had lost some health due to her illness, but we managed to sort that out courtesy of some blood-pressure medication. The dogs were totally unscathed, and Artemis had only broken one claw on his front-right paw. I bandaged it up and his health went back to 100%. I exited the menu and found everyone looking tired but relieved that this battle was over. Well, everyone except Artemis, who was now very cross that I had bandaged his foot. I threw the dogs their bear and doll, rewarding them for a good job.

  “Forgetting something?” Rachel asked, pointing down at my deep red knuckles.

  “Oh yeah, I guess I should get gloves,” I said as I quickly padded and bandaged my knuckles.

  “Well there’s probably somewhere here they have gloves; look at all these guys – every second one of them has some on!” Rachel remarked.

  We decided to check out the remaining buildings now that the occupants had been dealt with, searching for anything we fancied. We turned down the road to the left and headed past a small tearoom. The building had quaint glass windows that were clad in lace curtains. Inside was full of tables, laid out with fancy vintage crockery and doilies, and outside was decorated with various cooking-based accoutrements including milk cans, large wicker tea baskets and boxes of fruit. As we proceeded past, we turned to see a red-coated soldier standing in an alleyway, almost as if he were slacking off from his zombie duties.

  “UUGH!” He let out a dull groan.

  Almost instinctively, I retrieved the trefoil I had taken before and flung it at the soldier. The hat clocked him right in the nose but then just bounced off, landing in front of him. Almost annoyed that he now needed to try to eat us, he lurched towards us – but he took one step forward and then tripped, his left foot catching on the trefoil and causing him to teeter over until he found himself impaled on a nearby butter churn.

  I looked over at Rachel, who was smirking of the absurdity that had just unfolded.

  “Looks like you tre-foiled his plan!” she said, giggling at her own pun.

  The two of us cackled in unison as we started back on our way. However, no sooner as we had turned away had we heard a clanking and swishing coming from the alleyway. We turned back, prepared to once again see a zombie approaching, when down on the ground was a large Komodo dragon that had emerged from the dusty alley and was now gnawing on the zombie soldier’s leg.

  “Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed, the addition of a giant lizard completely throwing me. “Let’s get a move on!”

  The team and I continued down the road, heading left at a fork. We passed by a candlemaker’s store, a tinsmith’s hut and a leather workshop that was surrounded by trees. Intrigued by the wonderful old things inside, I pressed my face to the glass of the candle shop, scanning over hand-dipped tapers and cast-wax skulls. Rat and Jagger scampered about the area, playing with their toys, when Jagger called out in his traditional husky wail.

  “Awoooo!” he yelled, dropping his doll and looking into a small clearing behind a bush.

  I tore myself away from window shopping and went over to him to find out what was going on, and to hopefully stop his howls before he attracted more zombies.

  Rachel followed and we both looked to the clearing to see what Jagger had found.

  Crawling along the ground was the reverend zombie. He was dressed in a long black coat with a white shirt and collar, and was dragging himself along, his legs missing below the knees. Attached to one of the compound-fractured knees was a large lace monitor lizard, chomping on the dangling flesh and pulling the zombie slowly backward.

  I stared uneasily at the scene, knowing I was partially to blame for this man’s predicament.

  I grabbed my whip and cracked it in the air, spooking the lizard, who darted off. I parted the bush and approached the struggling straggler. Pulling out my revolver, I shot a solitary bullet into his brain, putting him out of his misery.

  “Now that’s the Kelly we’ve seen – not the maniac with a crowbar from earlier!” Rachel joked.

  I looked down at Jagger, who had picked his doll back up and was happily chewing it once again.

  “Good boy,” I said to him as I reached down to rub his ears.

  We started once again down the road when we spied a group of blue-tongue lizards parading down the path.

  “Yeah, it’s getting a little too Jurassic Park for me,” I said to Rachel. “I don’t think this is the farmland of our dreams.”

  Rachel agreed and we started to head back to the van, returning to the hunt for real estate and avoiding being hunted by zombies.