Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The zombies are loose and getting more numerous.

Me, the missus and BioWeapon Mk. I are in the truck returning to the house. As we pull up at the curb I notice there is a bicycle, with a rake and some leaf bags attached to it, parked in the middle of the sidewalk in front of my neighbors house. Simple reasoning says that theres probably someone going door-to-door offering to rake leaves. Makes sense, given the evidence at hand, right? And I comment to the missus “I wonder where he is?”. And that shoulda been the red flag right there. Instead, I dismissed it, dropped of the missus and the Mk. I and headed on my way. As the missus approaches the back steps to the house a scruffy and rather homeless individual exits my house. My house.

Now, some quick backstory. The house I live in has an upstairs apartment and a downstairs apartment. Both of them share a hallway at the back of the house. You enter the back door of the house and you are confronted with a locked door for the downstairs apartment or a set of stairs that lead to a locked door for the upstairs apartment. End backstory.

The missus asks the fella what he’s doing there. (Keep in mind she knows the right questions to ask, and in what order, as she’s had this conversation many times with similar creatures in her earlier days on patrol.) He says he;s there to visit his friend. Whats the name of your friend, she asks. I dont know, he replies. You can see how this is going, right? He makes some lame excuse like “Lady, Im just trying to make a few bucks.” She tells him to beat feet and he leaves. She calls 911 and has a cop come out to find this guy and check him out.

Legitimate leaf-raking guy? Maybe? Homeless guy trying doorknobs at random hoping to get lucky? More likely.

Here’s the part that really pisses me off. (Other than my anger at myself for not going with my first instincts and checking out the house when I was wondering where the bicycle’s owner was.) Apparently, that back hallway or foyer is a common or public area and this guy being in there isnt necessarily trespassing or unlawful entry or anything else illegal that would give me the legal (if not moral) right to throw him down the stairs and out to the curb. Which is, of course, pretty much where things would have gone once the “Who is your friend? I dont know” exchange had confirmed that this guy had absolutely no business being there.

Lately, in the wee hours of the morning, when I have been taking the Mk. I for a walk, we’ll see some drunk or other useless waste of skin staggering down the street and I’ll comment to the dog “Ah, the things you see when you dont have a gun.” (Because, really, for the five or ten minutes we’re out standing in front of the house I dont feel like stuffing a Glock into my sweatpants [not that theyd support the weight of the Glock anyway]) But, as the missus pointed out, as the economy sours and things get tougher we should probably expect more zombie invasions and more security threats.

For those of you who might be curious, yeah we were both armed for this episode. She had her KelTec .32 and I had my G19 (and, on a rare day for me, a handful of spare magazines in an offside pouch.) However, neither Drastic Plastic made an appearance. The Bioweapon, by the way, was not terribly useful. Although the zombie asked if the dog was going to bite him the dog didnt do anything threatening other than express a desire to go over and lick him. The missus defends the dogs inaction by saying he hasnt been trained yet for the whole bark-n-lunge thing. I feel he should have instinctually sensed the vibe of the moment and gone into ‘defend the pack’ mode. Clearly, the training timetable may need to be adjusted.

The takeaways for this whole episode are:
Trust your instincts. If it looks suspicious, check it out.
Being armed is always handy.
I need to replace the back door of the house with something that locks securely.