"Oh... for... Pete's sake!"

Columbus stared across the bridge that ran from the Mirage to the Venetian. The Venetian had been built not so much next door to the Palazzo as directly abutting it. Their sprawling outliers of courtyards, recreation areas, shops and parking structures merged into a single pseudo- Mediterranean megaplex, and even the main towers had only 421 feet between them.

Now, the Palazzo tower was a half-imploded hulk, its three segments tilting in different directions, with the left wing crushing through the congress center like a glacier through a mountain. At the foot of the tower, much of the ground floor and rooftop courtyards had caved in, most likely courtesy of a collapse in the sub-basement parking garage. One wing of the Venetian's Y-shaped main tower was leaning enough to cover the short distance to the further wing of a second, U-shaped tower, the other wing of which was visibly sagging inward over an elevated, central courtyard.

"They think," Columbus said, sounding dazed, "that there are zombies alive in there?"

"They gotta be coming from somewhere," said the TI squad leader. He was a man in the well-preserved fifties, missing a hand. Scuttlebutt had it that he had been bitten by a zombie, but saved himself by cutting off his own hand.

Columbus started across the bridge. Beside him, Little Rock asked, "Hey. Why didn't you say the word?"

"What word?"

"You know."

"No."

"You do it with my sister..." Columbus hunched his shoulders and walked faster. Little Rock took a look at the TI leader, and particularly his jutting chin. "Say... I think maybe I've seen you somewhere before."

"I don't think so," he said gruffly.

"Were you ever in movies?"

"A few... maybe," he said, now in a clear tone of warning.

"You remind me... What was his name..."

"My name," he said, "is Bruce!"

Columbus reached the end of the bridge, and turned back. "Okay, time to think smarter," he said. "Do those towers look even remotely habitable?"

Bruce shook his head. "No- but that doesn't mean zombies won't nest there."

"But what evidence do we have of that?" Columbus said. "Zombies do have survival instincts, and if there's anything they are going to avoid, it's a unstable building: Even if they aren't scared away, the noise, smells and dust will make them disoriented. So, we don't bother with the buildings, except maybe the edges. Now where else could zombies be?" Bruce looked to the left. Looming over the bridge was a partially constructed condo building.

"But they usually avoid construction sites!" he said.

"Yeah... Then there's that." Columbus pointed to a "clock tower" subcomplex, connected to the Venetian courtyard by a covered bridge. Bruce swore.

The "anchor" for the clock tower center was Madame Tussaud's wax museum. The air conditioning had been working only intermittently, keeping the sculptures intact, but allowing strange mutations. Little Rock paused before a Marilyn Monroe sculpture that had developed wrinkles, sagging cleavage and a bulging belly. "And people say you died too young," she mused.

Columbus beckoned her forward, waving for silence. She peered into the murk, and nodded. A male zombie was curled up in a fetal position behind Tiger Woods' golf bag. The zombie stirred at her approach. She slid a club out of the golf bag, and struck the zombie between the eyes with the handle. She stifled a gasp when it dropped dead, with blood trickling from its nose.

Both anxious, they proceeded more cautiously. Columbus still had no trouble surprising a zombie under Barack Obama's desk. They walked by Hugh Hefner's bed, then Little Rock took a second look at the women under either arm. Approaching from either side, the two of them each bagged one. As they completed a circle, Little Rock stopped and decapitated Simon Cowell. Columbus smiled, then walked solemnly toward a doorway marked: "Scream!" He drew a silenced .38 and unfolded an M6 Scout, a double-barreled survival weapon chambered for .22 rimfire and .410 shotgun rounds. Little Rock drew a PPK pistol. Together, they walked through the door.

Bruce and his men ran up at the sound of unsuppressed gunfire. He arrived to find the pair of faux zombies standing in front of the horror maze. "We got it all taken care of," the girl said casually. "It was a pack of nine, no big deal."

"Then why did one of you shoot without a silencer?"

"'Cause," said Little Rock scornfully, "somebody here used half the bullets in his silenced gun on a dummy!"

"Hey," Columbus said, "if I hear a noise, and then I see someone with a pale face and bloody teeth standing in a dark corner, what else am I supposed to do?"

"We've taken out fifty-one zombies today," Bruce said as 5:00 PM approached. "That doesn't explain the numbers we see in the Wynn and the mall."

"Then the zombies must have other ways to get there," Columbus said. He looked down from the marginally accessible roof parking area behind the Venetian's second tower. Across a driveway was a sprawling building called the Sands convention center. Across the street to the south were the Harrah's Casino and a connected parking garage. "Look there! There's a ped bridge from Harrah's to the garage, and the garage to the convention center. From there, they could circle Palazzo, keeping out of sight, and them pop in only as long as it takes to get to the footbridge. They could also climb and walk along those monorail tracks, as long as the power's out. But I'm guessing the main source of new arrivals is that parking garage across from the center. It has a ped bridge that goes straight to the Wynn."

Bruce nodded. "Oh- something else you should know: You got one of the most wanted. Big Bertha. She was one of the ones next to Hef in the wax museum. She wasn't half what she used to be, but I recognized her."

"There's confirmation, then," said Columbus, "that the zombies' food supply is running out."

"Then a lot of people will say, wait for them to starve," Bruce said.

"That's one way of looking at it," Columbus said. "But the other is that the only food left is us."