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“I heard that. Nice to meet you, Rune. I’m Katie. ”

“Good to meet you, Katie. ”

Jenni liked his smile and thought he seemed pretty nice. As he tore into his sandwich, she happily chewed on her own. She was hoping she could get another ride on his bike if the good weather kept up.

Charlotte came over, sat down next to them, and started to eat slowly. She looked very thoughtful, her hand straying to the pocket where she kept her notes. She was a rather plain woman with mousy hair and a bland face. But her brown eyes were keen and her gaze intense.

“How are you today, Charlotte?” the Reverend asked as he handed out water bottles.

“Figuring it out still, Padre,” Charlotte answered.

“Figuring what out?” Jenni asked.

“The zombies. I’ve been studying them,” Charlotte answered around a mouthful of food.

“Yeah, we noticed that,” Katie said as she pulled the crusts off her sandwich. “Jenni said you were up on the roof watching some. ”

Jenni snagged the crusts and shoved them in her mouth.

Charlotte swallowed a bit of sandwich and drank a little water. “I’m trying to figure out how they tick. We have to know our enemy after all. ”

“True words for a sad time,” the Reverend agreed. He continued to hand out water and bagged lunches as more workers arrived for lunch.

“Notice anything?” Rune asked.

“Well,” Charlotte hesitated, then bobbed her head. “I noticed a few things.

I’m planning to put it all into a report for the council, but basically there are a few fundamentals. The first one is that they are decaying very slowly.

The regular process of decay is just not happening: the bloat of the body as the gases inside build up, rigor mortis, et cetra. I really expected there to be some exploding zombies. But not one. ”

“Exploding?” Jenni blinked.

“Gases build up in the body as it decays normally. You see it in road kill.

Sometimes those gases burst the body. But no, nothing like that.

Just. . . slow. . . slow. . . rot. ”

“And they’re fast in the beginning. That is so breaking the rules,” Jenni said with disappointment, then let out a huge hiccup.

Rune handed her another bottle of water as he said to Charlotte, “I noticed that they kinda beat themselves ragged real damn fast in the first days. They don’t stay fast long. ”

“Well, they do slow down fairly quickly. The truly dangerous ones are the new ones that are just turned, especially if they’ve only suffered minor damage to their limbs. They can have their whole throat torn out and nothing left in their body cavity, but if their arms and legs are fine, you better be able to run fast. The fast ones are why so many people died in the first days. ” Charlotte shook her head. “But, you’re right, Rune. They don’t feel pain so they just go and go, breaking apart their ligaments, tearing apart muscle, literally ripping off limbs as they try to get to prey.

The older they get, the slower they are. ”

“Ha! I knew Romero had it right!” Jenni grinned with satisfaction and hiccuped again. She knew she shouldn’t have eaten so fast.

Katie rolled her eyes.

“He did. C’mon. They are so much slower now. Everyone knows it. And it’s so much easier to kill them now. They are stupid and slow. ”

“They are very fascinated by our Christmas lights. I seriously don’t think we should take them down. ” Charlotte pulled out a bag of chips and opened it. “They will stare all night at the lights and only move when they are turned off. ”

“Really?” Katie lifted an eyebrow.

“Really. ”