InsaneJournal

Who: Cooper
What: Rae had to do yard work today so... So does Coop!
Where: Cooper's yard
When: Saturday morning
Rating: He's raking a few leaves. How bad could it possibly get?
Status: complete unless someone living happens to drop by


It was one of those sunny autumn days with crystal clear air and brilliant blue skies and flame-bright maple trees that turned an ordinary small town into a picture postcard... As long as the photographer was careful not to frame any zombies in the picture.

One of the exceedingly picturesque maples happened to be in the center of Cooper's front yard. It had dumped its red and orange bounty onto the sparse grass and hard-packed dirt and Coop was currently absorbed in raking the leaves. He was proud of his modest little frame house and the notion of letting it get run down was unacceptable. Never mind that he'd abandoned the place to move into the safety of the county lock-up. Cooper harbored the secret hope that a good, long, brutally cold Midwest winter might get rid of Snyderville's little zombie problem. Maybe next spring they could all move out of the jail and back into their own homes.

Leaf blowers were noisy and obnoxious and Coop objected to them on principle. Nor was he a big fan of plastic bags. Why bother when there was a wooded lot right next door? His preferred method involved raking the leaves onto a drop cloth. Drag the cloth into the woods, dump the leaves, repeat. The work was easy, pleasantly monotonous. Cooper let his mind wander back to when his daughter was a toddler and there'd been the added step of building up the leaf piles as high as possible for her to jump into.

His reverie was interrupted by the unmistakable moaning of an approaching zombie. If he'd been using a leaf blower he might not have noticed the opportunistic cannibal until it was too late. There was a certain satisfaction to be had from the thought. Cooper dropped his rake and drew his pistol, suppressing the natural instinct to shoot immediately. Instead he waited as the zombie lurched closer. Closer...

It was almost within arm's reach and vaguely familiar. Coop was pretty sure he'd written the guy a speeding ticket once. He shot it cleanly between the eyes and the corpse dropped with a soggy splat, right onto the center of his leaf-raking tarp.

He rolled his eyes, holstered the pistol, and gathered up the four corners of the drop cloth.