So like every Wednesday, you drive the 40 miles to Joe’s Diner and linger over re-percolated coffee and make small talk with what’s left of your Old Yellowstone Gang. You raise your glasses to salute the missing, and debate again where the zombies hide all day. You leave at dusk, later than you meant to, and halfway home get a flat and curse yourself for having no spare and you think about the coming night alone in the cab of the pickup with only a .357 on your lap and a half box of shells on the passenger seat. At midnight you feel thuds against the side of the truck. A bloody hand slaps the driver’s side window. Faces dripping flesh appear in the rearview mirror. You unscrew the thermos, tip a fresh pour into your
Coffee is Life mug, inhale the bitter aroma, and think,
Let ‘em come.
Tom Walsh writes these days from Cambridge, MA. His stories can be found in Emerge, Hobart Pulp, Lost Balloon, Bending Genres, HAD, Flash Frog, The Citron Review and elsewhere. He’s working on a flash-novel play about wildfire and fate. Say hi @tom1walsh.bsky.social.
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