SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, AND YOU'RE TO BLAME
YOU GIVE FUN A BAD NAME

'35 feet long, weighing approximately 600 pounds.'

'That's a big Twinkie.'

Ghostbusters was just as great as Winnfield remembered; she laughed at all the lame jokes, and even gave a chuckle every now and then at the bad '80s special effects. She hadn't told Columbus and Little Rock about her strange encounter in the living room, mainly because she didn't know how to put it into words. How do you casually work that into a conversation, let alone into an engaged silence?
'Oh, by the way, when I was getting a bowl for the popcorn, I found Wichita and Tallahassee in the living room smoking weed with Bill Murray'?

She hadn't quite gotten over the fact that she'd exchanged words with one of her all-time favourite actors, and in his own house, too.

"So, your sister's single, right?" Columbus asked Little Rock, breaking the comfortable quiet, "Nothing long distance or anything?"

Winnfield tore her eyes away from the film to give him one of her playfully-questioning raised eyebrows. How he expected Wichita to have maintained a long-distance relationship with some guy she had known before the collapse of civilisation, she had no clue; but she could see that Columbus was just trying to be smooth and nonchalant about things. Unfortunately, at least from Winnfield's point of view, he wasn't capable of being either of those things. He was amusing, though, she'd give him that. Little Rock didn't seem to think so, but she humoured him anyway with a shake of her head; no, Wichita was not in a relationship.

"And if she had, like, a type – if you can have a type – what would that be?"

"She kinda goes for the bad boys," Little Rock replied.

"Really?"

"Yep."

Sensing an opportunity to show he had a rebellious side, (which was a big lie), Columbus 'accidentally' knocked their newly acquired bowl of popcorn to the ground, spilling the contents all over the nice, clean floor. "Whoops."

"Hey! What...urgh." Little Rock rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

"It's alright, I'll go get more from the machine", Winnfield said. She got out of her seat and bent down to retrieve the bowl. As she did this, her t-shirt pulled up to reveal a little tattoo on the small of her back. It was a pair of interlocking wings, and in the middle of them, strung close together like a crossword, were four names. Columbus recalled Winnfield saying that she had three brothers, and he realised that, somewhere in this tattoo, was her real name. He narrowed his eyes to try to read the elegant script better. Jonah. Lewis. Michael. H-

Winnfield stood up before he could properly read the last name. He couldn't imagine her being any of the first three names, so he had just missed discovering her true name. There was something very unsatisfying about this failed attempt, as though he had missed out on some exclusive, secret information.

As Winnfield strode out of the room, Columbus followed her with his eyes, now intrigued about what letters came after that 'H'. His moving gaze came to a halt as he locked eyes with Little Rock, who was giving him an odd look. She thought he had been giving Winnfield the old once-over.

"I wasn't...I just...Didn't you see...?" But like so many other times in his life, the right words failed to present themselves.

Winnfield stepped outside the little theatre and approached the machine that sat over by the wall. She pressed the button that warmed up fresh popcorn and heard voices coming towards her from the hallway. Her natural instinct was to whip out the only weapon she had on her at that moment, which happened to be her knife, but logical reasoning quickly kicked in and she remembered that zombies couldn't actually talk. Putting the knife away, she refocused on her original task and turned her head as the voices drew closer.

"So Columbus is the scared one?"

It was Bill Murray again.

Winnfield felt a little pang of excitement and then reminded herself that in a world full of animated corpses, this really wasn't the time to geek out.

"Yeah, he's like a little bunny," Wichita's voice replied.

The post-hookah three stepped out from the corridor and spotted Winnfield restocking the snack supplies. Each of them were pleasantly and only slightly noticeably high.

Tallahassee put a finger to his lips to tell Winnfield to keep it quiet. He was finding whatever they had planned, very amusing. "We're gonna play a little prank on Shirley in there," he whispered, and Winnfield knew that he didn't mean Little Rock.

A tiny warning light went off somewhere in Winnfield's mind as she watched Bill zombie-walk his way into his private cinema, but she ignored it, too entertained to care about the questionable logic behind the prank. As a loud shot rang out, she knew she should have trusted her gut instinct, the instinct that had kept her alive in Zombieland for so long. Tallahassee and Wichita's eyes widened in alarm and Winnfield dropped the bowl she was holding, the sound of it clattering to the ground bringing them out of their stunned dazes long enough to race into the room.

Columbus was up from his seat, a smoking shotgun in his hands and a look of determination on his face. As soon as he heard Wichita's gasp, he knew that she wasn't about to thank him for saving her little sister's life.

"Oh my God, I can't believe I shot Bill Murray." Realisation began to sink in while the healthier, on-screen version of Bill discussed the best way to dispel Slimer from the Sedgewick Hotel. In reality, he lay on the floor with buck-shot littered inside his chest, alive but certainly not well.

"Is that the way you say 'Hello' where you come from?" he asked Columbus.

Everyone gathered around him, crouching and sitting beside him with grim expressions.

"I don't think we're going to be able to stitch this," Tallahassee said as he pulled back a little bit of Bill's shirt for a better look at the wound.

"Well, death is the ultimate punch line, right?" Winnfield thought aloud, "And since you're a comedian..."

She received a number of awkward looks.

"Not as comforting as you might think," Bill wheezed.

"If it means anything now, I am so sorry," Columbus said, his facing pulling into the miserable-puppy expression that was beginning to seem like his natural appearance. "It was just instinctive."

The ensuing silence was broken by Wichita, who seemed to want to find some way to brighten the gloomy mood, though this was near impossible. "Do you have any regrets?"

Bill thought about this before replying, "Garfield, maybe."

Winnfield grinned, but the moment of humour was short-lived as Bill began coughing and wheezing his last breaths. Winnfield was so suddenly overcome with memories of her brother, Jonah's horrible zombification process that she had to leave the room. She had gotten so used to suppressing her emotions since the zombie uprising that she was amazed by the rush of feelings pulsing through her mind. Of course, it had been easier maintaining an emotionless existence when she had been by herself.

To her surprise, it was Columbus that came out to check on her. When he noticed her somewhat inquiring expression, he said, "Tallahassee's gonna carry the body out. He's, uh, wrapping it up in one of the cinema curtains."

"Nice."

"Yeah. Real classy way to go."

They both smiled, but it was a tense, forced process.

"How come you left?" He couldn't really believe that it was because of the blood and gore, especially after some of the things he'd witnessed her do.

"You ever think of your family? I mean... have you ever had that moment when you just stop and realise how fucked up everything has become?"

"I used to have those moments before this happened," Columbus replied, "I guess it's what being in the army would feel like." Winnfield frowned but nodded to show that she was listening. "You don't feel so bad when you're shooting at the bad guys..."

"But then one of your guys catches friendly fire..."

"Yeah."

"Ah well, kid, what's done is done. Let's leave it at that."

"You're surprisingly optimistic sometimes," Columbus smiled.

"Yeah, well..." Winnfield told Columbus before going to retrieve her gun from where she had left it on the floor of the home cinema.

Tallahassee bustled through the doors at that moment with the suspicious looking bundle in his arms. He didn't seem to be having too much trouble carrying it by himself, but he made Little Rock walk ahead of him to open doors where necessary. Wichita walked ahead of her little sister, gun poised to fire at the slightest sign of movement. Though after what just happened in the theatre room, firing at anything that moved probably wasn't the greatest of ideas.

They gave Bill a hero's send-off, firing a few rounds into the clear blue sky before tossing the corpse over the balcony and onto the driveway below. As a loud crash sounded and they all stood in a stunned silence, Columbus fished something out of his pocket and offered it to them.

"Do you guys want some Purell?"

Needless to say, they accepted in unison.

Since the apocalypse had only come around a few weeks earlier, food wasn't as scarce as one might think. Winnfield offered to make dinner on the condition that they sit down together to eat it. If they were sticking together for a while, they might as well act civilised towards each other, she figured.

Her first order of duty was to throw away all the no-go items, first and foremost the meat, then items that were past their use-by date, followed by anything that came from a cow. It seemed illogical to the others that they should be forced to eat what was practically a vegan diet, but Winnfield wanted to be sure she wasn't serving up fried eggs with a side of mad-cow disease. That would ruin everyone's evening.

After making sure that everyone was okay with her selection for that night's menu, she set to work cooking some pasta and deciding the best way to make a sauce to go with it. She grabbed some tomato paste and tinned diced tomatoes from the cupboard, and even found some cloves of garlic hidden away amongst some onions.
She sighed as she stared into the boring red mixture, wishing she could throw in some minced beef at the very least. Hearing movement behind her she spun around and found Wichita holding a couple of bottles of wine. She placed them down on the counter and looked through the kitchen draws for a corkscrew. After she'd removed the cork from one of the bottles, she held it out to Winnfield.

"Think you can use some of this in the sauce?"

"Good idea."

She measured out two tablespoons carefully and then shrugged, tipping more straight from the bottle. Wichita left the kitchen as quickly as she had come in, and Winnfield was pleased to see that she was carrying some cutlery out to the table.

Just as the food was about ready to serve up, the power cut out.

Resourceful as ever, Columbus managed to find a torch and with it was able to locate some matches and candles. The next thing he did was hold the torch for Winnfield while she served up their belated dinner. Luckily, it was still relatively warm by the time it was finally set down on the table.

With the table lit with only a couple of candles, the level on anxiety seemed to rise a few degrees; everyone made sure their guns were within reach in case they had any unexpected visitors.

"You know, considering you had shit all to make this with, it's pretty good," Tallahassee commented, breaking the silence.

The others nodded in agreement.

"Thanks. I had to cook a lot for my brothers and my dad after my ma passed away."

Her statement did little to encourage further conversation. They cleared they plates without any further word.

"Look what I found when I was looking for the candles," Columbus announced, holding up a Monopoly box.

"Really?" Wichita asked, not at all excited by the idea.

"It's a good way to pass time."

"There's a reason they call them 'bored' games," she retorted.

"Hey! Lookie what I found." They glanced over at Tallahassee, who was holding up a few wads of cash.

"Sweet," Winnfield smirked, "Let's raise the stakes."

She grabbed the box from Columbus and set it out on the living room floor.

"'Raise the stakes'?" Wichita asked.

"You know what I mean," Winnfield replied, shrugging off Wichita's negative attitude. She set to work throwing a few cushions onto the ground for them to lie on, and then retrieved a few beers and cokes from the fridge. Whenever she felt a little rocky emotionally, she covered it up by being as productive as possible.

"Alright. Who's ready for Family Games Night?" she beamed.